CHAPTER SEVEN
AS THEY STOOD IN THE ENTRY, EVE FELT ZANE’S SEARCHING DARK eyes skimming over her, where she still stood in the protective circle of Ran’s arms. It felt good to be there. Too good. Eve flushed and moved away.
“How did it go?” Zane asked.
Ran pulled out his cell. “We’re just getting ready to discuss it.” He pressed one of the contact buttons. “We’ll need the car out front,” he said, presumably to his driver.
Eve was grateful for the moment to compose herself.
“Jesse has the chairs back in place,” Ran said. “Why don’t we all sit down at the table in the dining room?” His hand settled at Eve’s waist as he guided her into the room, clearly remembering this was the place she felt safest downstairs. Seating Eve to his right, Ran sat down at the end of the table. Zane and Violet also sat down.
Ran sent Eve a reassuring smile, then turned his attention to Violet. “Interesting evening,” he said. “What do you think?”
The lines around Violet’s mouth tightened, creating little puckers. She shook her head. “I don’t like it. Whatever’s going on, it’s very dark and ominous, and considering what happened to the flowerpot, there’s a chance it could be dangerous.”
Zane’s dark eyes widened. “The ghost did that?”
“Something did,” Ran said.
“There’s another problem.” Violet sat up a little straighter. “I wish I didn’t have to say this, but whatever energy is in the house, it seems to be fixed on Eve.”
Silence fell.
“How can that be?” Eve asked. “I’ve only been living here a couple of months. My uncle never had any problems.”
“That you know of,” Ran added, repeating what he’d said before.
“That’s true, but I was here every summer, Christmas, and spring break. Wally never reappeared, and nothing else happened.”
“You never noticed anything out of the ordinary?” Ran asked.
Eve forced herself to think about those days long ago. “I don’t know. Whenever I was here, I was always busy. I had friends in the area. As I grew older, I was immersed in the world of being a teenager, mostly worried about being accepted and thinking about teenage boys.”
Ran’s mouth edged up in amusement.
“Your uncle was here when you came for a visit,” Violet was saying. “Perhaps he was a mitigating factor.”
“In what way?” Ran asked.
“The spirits were used to him.” She looked over at Zane. “I’m making assumptions here, Zane. Eve said her family owned the house for generations. Am I correct in assuming George St. Clair lived here all his life?”
“That’s right. The house was originally constructed in 1921 by a banker man named Reginald Maitland. He owned all the land around here. Two years after he and his family moved in, Reginald contracted pneumonia and died. His widow sold the house to Arthur St. Clair. After that, it passed down through the eldest son until George St. Clair willed it to Eve.”
“Find anything in the family history that might have relevance to whatever is happening in the house? A violent death? Murder? An unexpected illness that resulted in death? Those are the kinds of things we normally encounter that can keep a spirit earthbound.”
“There were deaths, of course,” Zane said. “Aside from Reginald Maitlin, who died in the hospital, George’s father, James St. Clair, died in his bed upstairs, but he had been ill for some time. I didn’t see anything that stood out.”
Zane glanced down at the notes he had made on his phone. “One more thing. Just before I headed back to the hotel, I ran across the mention of another house previously constructed in this location. Over the years, it fell into disrepair, and Maitland tore it down to build the one Eve is living in now.”
Ran’s gaze swung to Eve, and she could read his thoughts. Another house was here before. The tempo of her heart picked up as she considered the possibilities.
“When was the first house built?” Ran asked.
Zane shook his head. “I don’t know. I need to do a little more digging, take a look at records stored in a different location. As I said, I only stumbled across a mention of it at the end of the day.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Ran said. His gaze went to Eve. “Perhaps what Zane finds out will explain your friend Wally.”
“What? You think Wally is real?”
That intense gaze didn’t waver. “What do you think?”
Her heart was still beating a little too fast. “That . . . that isn’t possible. I mean . . . Wally seemed real when I was a child, but . . .” Her hand came up to her throat. “Oh, my God.”
“The question isn’t what’s real or what isn’t. Not at this point,” Ran said. “The question is, what do we do to make sure you’re safe in the house?”
Her chin firmed. “I live here. I’ll be fine.”
“One of us could spend the night,” Ran suggested.
“I could stay,” Katie offered. “I could sleep downstairs on the sofa, and you wouldn’t even know I was here.”
Eve shook her head. “Please don’t worry. As I said, I’ll be fine.”
“You could stay at the hotel for a couple of days until this all gets sorted,” Ran pressed.
Eve dug in even deeper. “I have several clients scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll need to prepare. Besides, I’m not letting any invisible, intangible—something—force me out of my own home.”
Ran smiled. “I’m glad to see your spirit returning—if you’ll allow me the pun.” He turned. “Violet?”
“As Eve said, she’s been living here for a while. I think we were the catalyst for what happened tonight.”
Eve forced a faint smile. “It’s settled, then.” She rose from her chair. “I’ll be looking for all of you tomorrow night.”
Ran stood up, too. “The car should be here by now. Katie and Jesse are finished packing up. If you need anything, I’m not far away.” He handed her a business card. “My personal cell number is on there. Don’t hesitate to call.”
Eve just nodded. In minutes, King and his people were gone.
Though the house was dark and quiet, she didn’t feel any of the fierce emotions she had felt before. Perhaps Violet was right, and it was having strangers in the house that had caused such a wild disturbance. They were gone now. She should be fine.
She glanced around. Nothing moved in the shadowy corners of the living room. No sound of voices down the hall. She blocked thoughts of other nights in the house, the reason she had contacted Paranormal Investigations in the first place.
She had to admit it gave her a sense of comfort knowing that Ran and his team would be coming back. Maybe together they could figure out what was happening and find a way to make it end.
Eve prayed it would be so.
* * *
Ran phoned Eve the following morning. “It’s Ran,” he said. “You have any more trouble last night?” It bothered him that he’d left her alone. Someone should have stayed to be sure she was all right. He’d wanted to be that someone, which was the reason he hadn’t offered.
His attraction to Eve was a complication he didn’t need.
“I told you I’d be fine,” she said. “And I was.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“I’ve been sleeping on the sofa, but after last night, I . . . umm. . . moved back upstairs. It was nice and quiet. Now that Violet explained the energy contained in the clutter downstairs, I think that could be part of my problem.”
“Could be.” But it wasn’t the only part. “Any chance you could make time for lunch? There are some things we need to discuss.”
“I . . . don’t know. I have a client scheduled for two o’clock.”
“We could eat at noon, if that would work.”
“Wherever I am, I guess I have to eat.”
“Good. I’ll send the car for you. It’ll be outside at quarter till.”
“All right, that sounds good.”
Was that interest he heard in her voice? Problematic as it was, he hoped so. “I’ll see you at noon.”
Ran hung up and relief trickled through him. Eve was all right. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened after he’d left her last night.
He leaned back in the black mesh chair at the desk in his suite. They’d had several cases where their intervention had made the disturbances worse. Suspected poltergeist activity in a house in Connecticut—items moved from place to place, glasses broken, writing on mirrors in the bathrooms—had worsened after the team had gotten involved.
At one point a butcher knife had flown across the kitchen and slammed into a wall. Fortunately, it soon became clear the poltergeist activity was being generated by the single mother’s two teenage boys, who were practically at war with each other over a girl in their high school class.
Once the kids realized the danger they were creating—unbeknownst to them—they talked things out, settled their dispute, and the poltergeist activity ended.
Only once had they tackled a truly evil spirit, the ghost of a man who had murdered four women before he’d been shot by police. The woman who had moved into the house where he had lived before his death had suffered an attempted strangulation in the middle of the night and a brutal sexual assault by her invisible attacker.
The force was so powerful even the members of the team were frightened. In the end, Ran had gone to a friend for help, Lucas Devereaux, a former priest.
A full exorcism had resolved the problem. The demon who had possessed the man was purged and banished to whatever fate awaited him.
Ran thought of the energy it had taken to move the glass flowerpot, thought of the malevolence in the voice they had heard, and vowed that until this case was resolved, Eve wouldn’t be spending another night alone in the house.