Came Back Haunted (Experiment in Terror #10) - Karina Halle Page 0,14
baby mama drama thing where they live together but aren’t together, and the last I heard was they were screwing each other. I don’t know, it’s hard to keep up.
“Yeah,” she says, lowering her voice and glancing at an oblivious Lucinda. “Things were getting too much, too complicated. I love Dean, I really do, but I don’t…I don’t feel that fire. I want to be with someone I do feel the fire for. And the more I’m, you know, with him, the more I feel like I’m leading him on. He wants more, something I can’t give him.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, knowing what a tough spot she’s in. “Have you thought about moving out?”
“Well, honestly, now that I’ve got the show going, and he’s working, we don’t really see each other that often. We’re basically trading off shifts with Lucy Goose and that’s it.”
Rebecca used to have a show called Wine Babes (alongside she who shall not be named) with Shownet, the company that put EIT on the web. For a little while there, she was even a third member of our crew until we decided that shit got too real and we needed to walk away. After floundering for a bit, she finally got cast as a host on a Seattle house-flipping reality thingy. At least this one is a little different from the rest because it’s two (hot) women doing the flipping, Rebecca as the interior design expert.
“You’ll make it work,” I tell her while the waitress brings us our food. “I know you will.”
We all dig in, Lucinda putting her game away to devour the cake. I don’t talk much, the truffle pasta blowing my mind as it always does, and we comfortably sit in silence until I’m absolutely stuffed.
I push my plate away and pour the rest of the wine into our glasses. “So, how is your co-host anyway? Claire?” I ask her. “She’s…” I glance at Lucinda, who is staring at me with big eyes, cake on her face. “Very pretty.”
Rebecca can pick up on what I’m getting at because she gives me a flirty kind of smirk, which tells me she thinks she’s quite pretty indeed.
“Claire’s great,” she says emphatically while she takes her napkin and wipes the cake off her daughter’s face. “Someone I’m eager to get to know better.”
Just as I thought.
I gulp some wine, smiling at her when suddenly the hair on the back of my neck starts to raise and the air around me goes shockingly cold.
I stiffen, quickly swallowing, trying to get my bearings on why I’m feeling creeped out all of a sudden, when my gaze goes to Lucinda.
While Rebecca dabs her napkin on Lucinda’s sleeve to get a smear of frosting off, Lucinda’s eyes go as round as saucers, staring across the restaurant.
I blink at her and then slowly turn my head, following her gaze.
The nearest table has a single woman sitting at it, her back to us.
Her hair is long, all the way to her ass, and black. Wet, even. Actually, the more I look at her, the more I realize she’s soaked to the bone, dressed in an almost translucent, white lacey gown that sticks to her skin.
Her hand is pale, smeared with blood, and it’s holding on to a chain leash that disappears into the blackness under the table.
Everything inside me goes absolutely still.
Holy fuck.
I’m looking at a ghost, aren’t I?
More than that, it’s the leash that’s getting me, the way it leads to something that I can’t see, that I don’t want to see.
I’ve seen something like that before.
So has Rebecca.
“What is it?” Rebecca whispers harshly. “Lucinda? Perry!”
I pull my eyes away from the dead woman and glance at them.
Rebecca is looking between the two of us, frowning, while Lucinda’s eyes are still fixed on the woman in a look of both fear and curiosity.
“What are you looking at, Lucy?” Rebecca asks, her voice growing higher.
Lucinda doesn’t answer.
I look back toward the woman, expecting her to be gone.
But she’s still fucking right there.
And now…now there’s a hint of a leathery tail sticking out from underneath the table.
My mouth goes completely dry, the room starting to spin. I press my hands down on the table to steady myself.
“You don’t see her?” I manage to ask Rebecca, not taking my eyes away from the tail that’s twitching ever so slightly.
“See who?”
“The lady,” Lucinda says quietly. “The lady with the monster.”
“What?” Rebecca hisses. “Lucy, please love, what are you talking about?”