Reawakened Passions Read online

  “You know what? I’m going to go,” she said.

  “That’s for the best.”

  Mel frowned, then decided there was no point in pussyfooting around it. She jabbed a finger at him. “You know, you really need to work on your people skills.”

  Jon blinked, then passed a hand over his mouth. Tension coiled up between them, fueled by her anger and the stupid, still-unfulfilled sexual promise that had started on that damned couch behind her. Curse her body. Curse her heart. Why did she always have to fall for the crazy ones?

  “Why’d you even start this, if you couldn’t finish it?” She meant for it to come out harsh and stern, but she only sounded sad.

  “He wants something from you,” Jon said. “And I need to get him to leave, so—”

  The top of Mel’s head just about blew off. She thought she’d been pissed off at him before, but she went from simmering irritation to volcanic fury in a matter of seconds. “He? Him? Some ghost wants something from me, and so you just got me off on your couch to what, appease a spirit?”

  His face said it all.

  “Fuck you, Jon! Fuck. You.” He moved toward her, but she jerked away. “Don’t you touch me. If you don’t want to be with me, you should just say so. Not make up some kind of lame excuses. I deserve better than that.”

  “Yes,” Jon said. “You do.”

  Mel thought there would be more, but he only walked her to the front door and even opened it for her. Mel paused in the doorway to look at him, waiting until he gave her his gaze before she stepped through it. Some witty last line would probably come to her later, but for now all she could do was shrug.

  “See you around, Jon.”

  He nodded and closed the door behind her. Mel climbed the stairs to her apartment, wondering if she should burst into tears or kick something. Not that he deserved so much of a reaction, she told herself.

  Lilac, the smell thick enough to choke her, hit her as soon as she walked through the door. Mel sneezed, then coughed and waved a hand in front of her face. She went to the window to crack it open, but the smell barely dissipated. It was the worst it had ever been, no longer pleasant but cloying and nauseating.

  What she found in the bedroom was worse.

  The makeup box she used for her daily face had fallen off the small plastic crate she used for storage, the contents dumped across the vanity’s top. Glittery eye shadow powder covered the pale wood. A lipstick that had been securely sealed was broken in half. The small vial of perfume she rarely used had spilled, filling the room with musk that mingled even more disgustingly with the overpowering stink of lilac.

  Worst of all was the mirror, which had cracked in a starburst pattern from the center out. It looked as if someone had thrown a baseball at it. Several pieces of the glass had fallen out, leaving Mel’s reflection as broken as the mirror. Broken as her heart, she thought, moving carefully forward over the crunch of glass and spill of cosmetics.

  She looked at the mirror, then at the ceiling and window to see if somehow something had fallen or come through from outside. Nothing. The smell of lilac faded as she looked over the vanity, calculating the damage, and faintly as though from far away, she heard soft and wrenching feminine sobs.

  Chapter 6

  Jon didn’t think you could dream if you didn’t sleep, but apparently his brain was such a mess that he’d slipped into the sort of alternate world he’d watched in the movie last night. He opened his eyes to the dark, but he didn’t sit up or otherwise move. It seemed the surest way to sink back into sleep.

  He wasn’t alone.

  He wasn’t surprised, of course. The second Mel had entered his apartment, the presence inside it had started to circle. Jon had been an idiot to invite her inside, but damn it…she was a fun. She was sexy. She was sweet. She was smart. Was it so wrong to want to spend time with a woman he liked and who seemed to like him?

  It was when he let himself get carried away. He’d spent the entire movie aware of every shift she made on the couch next to him. Every whisper of her breath. Every time she licked the salt and butter from her fingertips, it had sent a zing of delight right through him. One minute they’d been reaching for the popcorn, the next he’d been on top of her, desperate to be all over her.

  He should’ve stopped with that first kiss, but it had gone on and on, and every second that passed had led to another broken promise to himself that he’d pull away. She’d tasted so good, all he could think about was being all over her. Inside her.

  Too bad he’d probably kill her.

  Not your fault. You didn’t know. I forgive you.

  Jon had encountered hundreds of spirits in the three years since he’d been turned. Hundreds of voices had whispered to him, reliving their last moments. Out of all of them, the only one he’d have welcomed was Naomi’s, and unlike all the poor souls who’d been stuck here when they should’ve gone somewhere else, she hadn’t lingered.

  He hadn’t known. That was the truth. And Naomi had forgiven him every dumb-ass trick he’d ever pulled, every mistake he’d made, so he could believe she’d forgive him this one too. But no matter how hard he tried, Jon could never convince himself it hadn’t been his fault.

  Psychopomp—a conductor of souls to the afterworld.

  That was the definition of the word the man had whispered to him that day on the street. Jon had done a lot of research into the mythology of it. None of it had explained how, like being bitten by a vampire, he’d been turned into one.

  Jon’s father had taught him to swim by literally throwing him into the deep end. Sink or swim. Succeed or fail. He was no stranger to the method, and yet even at three when he’d been floundering, swallowing enough lake water to choke him, feet paddling as fast as he could, he’d known his dad was up there ready to yank him out by the hair, if he had to. Terror and instinct had forced him to swim, but he’d still known his dad would save him. The guy who’d turned him into this had merely abandoned him.

  God, he hated that guy.

  Jon drifted now, toward sleep but not yet into it. This was the worst time, the most vulnerable. When he was awake and encountered stuck souls, he’d learned to filter out their yammering until he could deal with it privately. Almost asleep, his guard was down. And this guy…this guy who’d been here for years, the one who’d perked up the second Mel walked through the door…he just wouldn’t quit.

  Most of the time, Jon dealt with spirits that hadn’t been around very long. They clung to the physical for a few hours, sometimes days, but not longer than that. And he avoided, when he could, places where long-term spirits clung, because the longer the spirit stayed, the harder it became to push it through.

  The guy in this apartment had been here for a really long time, and he didn’t want to leave it. Jon had not yet figured out what it was that kept him here or how to get him to let go of it, because every time he focused, the guy managed to fade away. It was frustrating and annoying, but until Jon had invited Mel in to watch the movie, it hadn’t been particularly dangerous.

  Revenge. Guilt. Lust. Those were the motivations that kept most spirits tethered to this plane. The guy haunting Jon’s apartment had a healthy dose of all three.

  Lillian.

  The whisper of a name. The scent of a perfume. The touch of a woman’s hand.

  Jon was already suffering from a spectacular case of blue balls brought on by his make-out session with Mel, so it didn’t take much more than the brush of silky hair on his cheek to get his cock throbbing. The low, throaty laughter ringing in his ears reminded him of Mel, and it was her face he thought of when the sweet press of a mouth crept over his.

  Except it wasn’t over his. It was over…Rolly’s. That was the guy’s name. And Rolly thought Lillian was the cat’s meow.

  She moved over him, straddling, the weight of her familiar and phantom at the same time. Her bare knees pressed his hips just above the waistband of Jon’s pajama bottoms. He felt the rolled edge of her silk stockings, the fringe of her dress.