Ghost Seer Read Free Page B

shuddered.
    Then Enzo blinked and rolled to sit and looked like a goofy pooch again.
I will help. It will be fun! I love you and you love me! Thank you for the petting!
    Cold, cold, cold, she scrunched down into the bed and pulled the sheet up, staring at the vaporous dog.
    I’ll be your sidekick!
Enzo grinned and licked her cheek. She noted that his touch didn’t seem as cold as when she’d initiated the contact. Rules. There might be rules in this madness. In seeing ghosts . . .
    “No,” she said, denying him. Denying that the thing was even there. Not logical. No and no and no.

THREE

    D ENVER, C OLORADO, THAT NIGHT
    A MOANING WOKE Clare and she sat up straight against the curving wood of her headboard.
    The figure of a man stood at the end of her bed. In her
bedroom
! A shadow of shifting grays. From the size of her footboard beside him, she understood he was shorter than average even for the mid-1800s garb that her mind had clothed him in.
    His suit and shirt and vest looked to be made of quality materials—good and expensive—and she saw the chain of a pocket watch across his front.
    He had no beard or mustache, but his hair seemed darkish and reached his chin. He didn’t appear like a gunslinger or a cowboy, but a businessman. His lowered brows and set mouth showed determination as the illusion stared at her.
    I need your help.
Each word dripped like cold, small droplets of icy water into her mind. The August night had finally turned tolerable, but she kept her window and ceiling fans rotating at top speed. Tomorrow would be another day in the high nineties.
    And the ghost man brought a chill with him, much as Enzo had. Her gaze slid to the bottom of the bed, where the illusionary dog had been “sleeping.” She saw nothing, but a tickle in her mind said Enzo was there.
    Again the hallucination spoke, and this time she saw the slight darkness of his lips against his pale, pale skin as his mouth formed the words.
I. Need. Your. Help.
    “No.” Whispery words spurted from her mouth. She made pushing motions with her hands. “No. Go away.”
    Events cycle. It must be soon that you help me. I am trapped.
His mouth twisted.
Not where I died, but where I lost my sanity and sinned the most. Help me.
    Fear dried Clare’s throat so she couldn’t swallow, and she had to raise her voice past the rawness. “No!”
    Enzo coalesced into whiteness even as the other faded. The dog lumbered up the bed and snuffled in her ear, whining.
    She gave him two pats with trembling hands before she realized she was trying to pet a nonexistent mutt.
    He licked her cheek again, and she felt the clamminess and she slid back down and pulled the sheet over her—all the way over her head—then turned on her side and curled up, hoping her quivering would soon still. Enzo poked his muzzle through the sheet and stared at her with wide, dark eyes.
    Clare made a strangling sound.
    I will protect you!
he said mentally, and barked.
    He couldn’t protect her from her own mind . . . and, and, another whispering part of the back of her brain that accepted the illogic of night visitations told her that the ghost man wouldn’t consider a dog much of a threat, neither in his current condition nor when he’d been alive.
    As the steel bonds of fear loosened around her, she considered the apparition again, realizing that she’d seen a picture, or maybe a drawing, of him before. Her brain had picked an image to hang the illusion on. So he must be featured in one of her books on the history of the American West. She’d loved that time period. Once.
    She wasn’t going to look him up. In any way, shape, or form.
    But since her physical exam had proved her vision and hearing okay, she’d have to set up an appointment with the top shrink in Denver.
     • • • 
    By the time Clare left to pick up the last box of her things at her old job in downtown Denver the next morning, she’d begun muttering to Enzo as if he might really be there.