Took a lot of courage. Only fair I do the same for him.”
“But why that house? And why didn’t you pull him all the way out?”
“Because I can’t,” he says simply. “I tried. That was my intention. But…I couldn’t.”
“And the house?”
“It exists on a different plane.”
“But don’t you think it’s weird that I was there?”
“Not at all. It makes sense. Energy attracts energy. There are no coincidences.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
He pulls the car into the parking lot of a 7-11 and turns it off, twisting in his seat to face me. “You keep saying I instead of we. Dex wasn’t there?”
“He was there. But Max said Dex wouldn’t be able to see him.”
He seems to ponder over that, sucking at his teeth for a moment. “Why were you there?”
“We were filming…”
“You’ve gone back to the show.”
“No, this is something different. Dex thinks we could become paranormal investigators. To help instead of exploit.”
“I see. And why that house?”
“Because we were hired to…try and talk to a man’s dead wife.”
He mulls that over. “What is the name of the wife?”
“I think it’s Samantha Poe.”
“Poe?” He looks surprised.
“Yeah. Like Edgar Allan Poe. But not. Actually, the son, Atlas, says he’s his descendant but I looked it up. Poe didn’t have any children.”
“No legitimate ones, no,” Jacob muses. “And have you talked to Samantha?”
“We don’t know. Max is the only one I could say for sure. There’s a lot going on in that house.”
“So it would seem.”
“I’m just wondering, if you can’t pull Max out the rest of the way, maybe Dex and I can.”
Jacob stares straight ahead, thinking. I’m so tempted to try and slip inside his mind, but I know he’d block me in a second.
He turns his head to look at me in amusement and I know he could tell what I was thinking.
Don’t even try it, he says inside my head. A smirk follows.
“Don’t try to read your mind or don’t try to rescue Max?”
“Both,” he says. Then he opens the car door. “I’ll be right back.”
I watch as he goes, briefly wondering what it must be like to have lived so long, to find yourself in this crazy fucking decade.
Then I think about what he said.
That we shouldn’t try to bring Max out.
I sigh, not sure what the hell I’m supposed to do now. Just leave Max stuck there for eternity? Granted, I’m sure it’s a lot better than Hell, but still. Maybe being tied to that house as a ghost is its own form of Hell.
Jacob comes back, a pack of cigarettes in one hand, a bottle of champagne in the other. He gets in the car and hands the champagne to me.
“Happy birthday, love. It’s the finest that 7-11 had to offer.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, touched by the gesture. Seems like the universe is telling me to get drunk today.
He starts the car then pulls a cigarette from the pack, popping it into his mouth. “Do you mind?” he asks, the cigarette bobbing as he talks.
“No.” I shake my head. “Those things will kill you, you know.”
He grins at my choice of words and rolls the window down a crack before lighting it with an old tarnished gold lighter. “No, they won’t.”
He takes a puff, trying to blow it out through the crack, and reverses out of the space, pulling the car back onto the road.
“So, why can’t we try to bring out Max?” I ask him after a few minutes of driving in silence.
“You really love to question everything, don’t you?”
I shrug, watching and waiting for an answer.
He puts the cigarette to his lips and takes a drag, in no fucking hurry at all.
“I’m not sure that you and Dex can,” he eventually says. “If I couldn’t, then I’m not sure why you’d be able to. But even if you are successful, it’s far too dangerous.”
“Why?”
“You said there’s a lot going on in that house, including Samantha Poe. Don’t be mistaken in thinking this is an ordinary woman you’re dealing with. She’s not.”
“She’s not? How do you know?”
“Call it intuition. Nonetheless, it’s hard to bring people out of the Veil without other entities hitching a ride. I know you know this firsthand. If you bring out Max, who is to say that he’ll come alone?”
“You think Samantha will come with him?”
“Perhaps.” I watch as the smoke falls from his mouth.
“And that’s a problem because?”
“Because I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with. Perhaps you need to figure that out first. At