“He kept saying . . . God, I don’t want to even say this out loud, but I need to.” Visibly pale, she pulled away from the wall. “He kept saying, the . . . the devil is coming.”
Chapter 3
The only two devils Rosie sort of knew were the perfectly sugared beignets that were to blame for her rounded hips and a de Vincent.
But could this spirit be talking about a de Vincent? Or was it a de Vincent? That just sounded out of this world, but . . .
Clutching the bottle of wine, Sarah sat down next to Rosie on the couch. All the lights were turned on in her apartment, and Sarah had put the kibosh on any attempt Rosie wanted to make to communicate with whoever the hell it was that had come through. Sarah claimed the spirit was gone now, but as Rosie sipped from her wineglass and Sarah drank straight from the bottle, she wasn’t sure she believed her.
“Has that happened before?” Rosie asked as she pulled her leg up onto the couch.
Sarah stared straight ahead, her blue eyes focused on a pink-and-blue, bohemian-style wall tapestry hung behind the TV. “Yes. Not often, but sometimes a spirit will sort of . . . ride another spirit through the connection. I’ve done readings where complete strangers showed up and wanted to talk. I mean, sometimes the spirit knows the person, and the person just doesn’t realize that, but there’ve been cases where it was a random spirit hitching a ride.” She turned to Rosie as she lifted her hand to her neck. She began rubbing it again. “I think . . . I think he was trying to jump me.”
Rosie sucked in a sharp breath. “Are you serious?”
She nodded.
“That’s . . . that’s not good.” And it wasn’t. Jumping wasn’t the same thing as full possession, but it could still wreak havoc on a person’s mind, body, and environment. It occurred when a spirit jumped into a person’s body to communicate through them. People might find themselves saying things they normally wouldn’t, having odd accents and even mannerisms that were unlike them. When a person was jumped, they might even experience how the spirit died, and that could really mess with someone’s head.
And from her own experience with investigations, Rosie knew that only a very strong spirit or a very determined one could jump a living human.
“You know, I’ve let spirits in many times during readings, when they wait for permission, but this guy . . . he wasn’t waiting for permission. He wanted in and he was furious.”
Feeling guilty, Rosie touched Sarah’s arm and winced when the woman jumped a little. “I’m sorry. I—”
“This is not your fault. You don’t need to apologize, but I do need to tell you this, and not just because you’re my friend.” Still white-knuckling the wine bottle, she dropped her hand and twisted toward Rosie. “I’m pretty sure this spirit didn’t know you personally, but I got the feeling that he . . . he hitched a ride with you and not another spirit and it wasn’t a mistake.”
Rosie’s brows lifted as she nibbled on her lower lip. That wasn’t something anyone wanted to hear. Not even her.
“Do you have any idea of who that could’ve been?” Sarah asked and then took another big, healthy gulp of the wine.
Rosie could easily be a spirit beacon, especially considering all the investigations she’d taken part in with NOPE over the years, but she didn’t think it came from any of those cases. She looked away from Sarah, not sure if her suspicions were on point or not.
“What are you not telling me?” Sarah demanded.
Drawing in a deep breath, Rosie leaned forward and placed her wineglass on the coffee table. She hadn’t really allowed herself time to think about her brief meeting with Devlin, because there truly was no point, but she couldn’t help but feel like they’d had a . . . a moment, hadn’t they? That indefinable connection that even strangers could make in a short period of time.
“Okay, this is going to sound crazier than what just happened, but when I was at the cemetery today, I saw this guy drop his flowers in a puddle,” she told Sarah. “They were ruined and he’d tossed them, and I had more than enough flowers. I split the peonies and found the guy to give them to him, because that had to suck, you know?”
Sarah nodded slowly as she took another drink.
“I swear I had no idea who he was until I found him and he was standing in front of the de Vincent mausoleum. It was Devlin de Vincent.”
“The Devil .” Sarah let out a hard, short laugh. “That makes me feel better that he could’ve been referencing a nickname and not the actual devil.”
Rosie snorted at that.
“You know, literally everyone seems to know his nickname, but no one knows why they call him that or how it got started.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess the nicknames for all the brothers started when they were in college up north, but yeah, I would love to know why they call him that.”
“Ditto,” murmured Sarah. “What happened when you gave him the flowers?”
“We chatted for a couple of minutes and then I left. I thought he was there because of his father. You know, he passed recently.”
She blanched as she lowered her gaze. “Didn’t he . . . ?”
“Yeah, he killed himself. I said that I was sorry to hear about his father’s death, and he corrected me, said the flowers were for his mother,” Rosie continued. “I figured he just wasn’t ready to even acknowledge his father’s death, and I totally understand that. Anyway, that’s where the whole peony thing is from. I didn’t even tell Nikki about that when I saw her tonight and you know she works in the de Vincent household. Do you think the spirit was him—Lawrence de Vincent?”
“God.” Sarah leaned back against the cushion, lowering the bottle to her stomach. “You know, it’s possible. He could’ve been hanging around Devlin or the cemetery, saw you, and attached himself.”
“But why? I didn’t know him and I don’t know Devlin. That was the first time I saw him in person.”
“Sometimes the reason why a spirit attaches to someone is never known.”
Rosie’s lips pursed. “Well, that’s not cool.”
She slid her a dry look. “Most people would be more freaked out about that possibility.”
“Most people don’t hunt ghosts.” Rosie shrugged, but she was a little disturbed. Especially if this ghostie was an angry one. She wasn’t about that kind of life. “I mean, hey, if I’m going to be haunted by a ghost, I figure a de Vincent is like the gold standard.”
Sarah giggled and then smacked her hand over her mouth. “That’s not funny.”
“Yeah.” Rosie grinned. “It kind of is.”
Sarah let her head fall back against the couch. “But seriously, I don’t know if that was Lawrence or someone else, but I do know he was angry and . . . I think . . . I think he said something else, right before I closed down communication.” She exhaled roughly. “I don’t know if I heard him right. He was trying to jump me and I don’t need that, so I cut him off, but if he was Lawrence . . .”
“What? What do you think he said?”
She turned her head toward Rosie. “I think he said he was murdered .”
Not unexpectedly, Rosie had one hell of a time falling asleep that night.
Back at her apartment and in her bed, she stared up at the glow of the dark stars stuck to her ceiling. They didn’t glow green. They were a soft, luminous white, but yeah, they were still tacky.
Rosie loved them.
They reminded her of infinite space, and while that may be a weird thing to want to be reminded of, she sort of found it comforting that in the big scheme of things, she was just a tiny speck of flesh and bone on a giant rock hurtling around the sun.
The stars also helped her fall asleep. Usually. But not tonight. Tonight she could only think about the reading with Sarah and the question her friend had asked her before she’d left.
“Are you going to say something?”
Rosie snorted-laughed into the relatively dark bedroom. Was she going to say something? To who? Devlin? Yeah, that was not going to happen. Her reluctance had nothing to do with Rosie not believing Sarah. She totally believed her. Sarah had connected with someone who was very angry and quite possibly could’ve been murdered, but—and it was a big but—who in the world would believe Rosie if she came up to them and said something like that?