I DUCK as the gun goes off. The bullet misses me, passing straight through Kat and ricocheting off a couple of appliances in the kitchen before embedding itself in a wall. So fucking weird. Kat’s body flares where it pierces her, but she shows no signs of damage. She flashes me a wicked grin.
“What the hell?” Harris stares at the shattered door, now hanging by one hinge, bits of broken wood littering the floor.
From where I crouch, I raise my hands in the air. Not doing anyone any good if I get myself shot, but I might trick him into moving close enough for me to try something. “Okay,” I say, making my tone gentle. “Let’s all calm down here.”
Max storms toward me, gun still pointed into the kitchen. Good. Maybe he thinks I have backup. If he keeps the weapon trained away from me….
He walks right past where I crouch.
A cold chill replaces the rage.
“Whoever you are, come on out. If I find you myself, I’ll shoot you.” He stomps back and forth across the kitchen tile, opens the pantry, peers into the hall I came through. Nothing. Kat leans off to the side, arms crossed over her ample chest, watching his every move.
“Flynn,” Genesis hisses.
“Not now,” I hiss back. I put together the pieces, and I don’t like what I’m building.
“Flynn?” Chris groans, blinking rapidly like he can’t quite focus. Considering the head wound, he probably can’t. “Where?”
But he should see me, even if I’m nothing more than a blur to him.
And he doesn’t.
Oh. Shit.
Trembling takes up residence in my arms and legs, but it doesn’t prevent me from sticking my foot out as Max returns to the library.
He walks right through my outstretched limb.
I think I’m going to throw up.
Gen opens her mouth to say something else, but I shake my head hard, and she clamps it shut. No use giving me away if I can find some way not to be completely useless here.
Sudden pain flares in the side of my neck, and I grab at the spot, gasping. It forces me onto my side, where I curl into a ball of agony. While Harris launches a kick at Chris’s ribs, I spend the next minute catching my breath. I cringe when a cracking sound comes from Chris’s chest.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kat demands of me from the doorway. “Do something.”
The neck pain eases, and I lever myself up, first to my knees, then to my feet. The glare I give her could melt steel. It’s the one I always used when she pissed me off, and the familiarity of our interaction rocks me back a step.
“Why don’t you?” I say, recovering my senses at least a little, knowing Max won’t hear me any better than he heard Kat, which is to say, not at all.
“I can’t,” she says, pouting, hands on her hips. “But you—”
“What did you do to the door?” Max shouts into Gen’s face. He must assume she used some sort of magic to burst it open. A ghost… or rather, ghosts, as I’m coming to realize… don’t occur to him.
Of all the stupid times for me to die.
I don’t know how it happened. I guess there’s a connection with the pain in my neck, now almost unnoticeable, but I bet it will be back. If Gen can see me, and Chris and Max can’t, then that’s the only explanation I can come up with.
Dammit, Gen, I’m so sorry.
I stagger to the bar, leaning on it while I come to grips with my current state. Who am I kidding? I’m not coming to grips with this anytime soon.
When Genesis fails to answer him, Harris draws back the gun and slams it across her face. She screams, falling to the side, hand cupping her cheek as blood pours from her mouth. Chris pushes himself up on his elbows but falls with a groan.
My teeth grind together. I grab the closest bottle of some brownish whiskey and hurl it with all my strength at Max’s back.
When it actually flies toward him, impacts, and shatters, I’m speechless.
I interacted with the bottle. I interacted with the kitchen and library doors and the knob on the closet. I can touch things in the living world. Not people, but things.
And the people can’t touch me.
Oh hell yeah.
Max flops forward across the armchair as I seize two more bottles, one in each hand, and let fly. One hits. The other misses its mark and slams into the bookcases behind the chair. Pain lances through my left shoulder, and I suck in a sharp breath, exhaling slowly. Even if I pulled something, it’s too much pain just from throwing a bottle. Way too much. Max spins, grabbing at his skull, blood running over his fingers. His wild eyes search the space behind him.
Of course, he sees nothing.
Behind me, Kat laughs and cheers. I risk a glance back. She waves her hands like little pompoms, and she’s no longer alone. A second ghost, another woman, has joined her in the kitchen doorway. Gorgeous woman: perfect figure, long, dark hair, large breasts, trim waist. Max’s second wife. I don’t know how I know that, but I’m certain. She nods at me, both acknowledging and encouraging.
“Teach that bastard a lesson,” she tells me… no, begs. She’s begging me to put an end to all this.
Movement draws my attention back to Max. He punches Genesis in the chest, doubling her over. She mewls like a wounded kitten while he screams down at her, “Stop it. Stop it now.”
Shit. This isn’t what I want to happen. I need to make this fast.
No more bottles out on the bar, and the cabinet beneath has a lock. I take three steps toward the bookcases, my right leg buckling on the fourth. Crashing down on one knee, I grab heavy hardback tomes from the lower shelves and hurl them, one after another, at Max’s face. He brings up his arms to block them, then wrenches Genesis to her feet and holds her before him like a shield.
I manage to deflect my aim on the last book, barely missing hitting Gen in her already bruised cheek.
“Enough,” Max growls. “You won’t stop, I’ll stop you.” He places the barrel of the gun in contact with Genesis’s temple.
I stop throwing things.
“Tell me where the other dyke bitch is,” he says.
So that’s why he hasn’t killed Chris and Gen yet. He thinks I’m here with them, and he wants me. He wants me dead.
Oh, the irony.
“She’s here somewhere, isn’t she?”
Gen shakes her head, wincing as the gun barrel scrapes along her scalp. Tears pour down her face. Max cocks the old-fashioned revolver. Her eyes meet mine.
We’ll be together, but I don’t want it this way.
The pain courses up and down my leg, but I clench my jaw and ignore it, forcing myself upright. I step over Chris and lean so my hands are within grasping reach of a heavy ottoman, but I can’t pick it up or throw it without risking the gun going off.
“Kick him,” I say, knowing she and the other ghosts are the only ones who can hear me.
Her eyes go so wide I can see the whites all the way around.
“It’s your only chance.”
Genesis swings her foot back, nailing Max in the shin. At the same moment, she drives her elbow hard into his chest. I heave up the ottoman and drop it down on him. The gun fires. The bullet burrows into the furniture’s thick cushion. I reach out and wrest the revolver from his fingers. Gen ducks under my upraised arms and throws herself across Chris to protect him from further harm. He protests from beneath her, but she isn’t budging.
Max, stunned but still conscious, stares wildly around the room, focuses on the gun, which to him must look like it floats in midair, then makes a break for the door on the opposite side from the kitchen, leading back into the entry hall. I fire off a shot, nailing him in the upper leg. He stumbles but keeps going. Then he’s out the door.
The dead wives cheer and high-five one another.
I gather my strength to go after him, working my way across the room by leaning on one piece of furniture after another.
“Flynn, wait!” Gen’s voice stops me in my tracks. “Things aren’t what they seem to be.”