“Shelley’s body hasn’t been released to the family—or to Marty and Nick Nicholson,” Jake said, pacing the floor in the bedroom. He stopped and stared at Ashley. “So, yes. It’s still possible to see her. To touch her.”
“I just feel that if…if I get a real chance, I’ll be able to communicate with her,” Ashley said. “And even if she can’t tell me who killed her, if they came at her from behind and she couldn’t see them—she might be able to tell me more about Jonathan Starling. We can find out if he is sincere. Or if the people at the art gallery really are practicing some kind of weird murder rituals—and Shelley just wound up in the way. I’m just afraid that if we ask to see her body again, they’re going to think we’re stark-raving mad.”
“No, it’s all right,” Jake said, waving a hand in the air. “Jude McCoy was with the NOLA office before he was with the Krewe—he’s good at dealing with Orleans Parish and the M.E.s here. We’ll be fine.” He offered her a lopsided smile. “Hey, we’re the Krewe of Hunters. We believe in…whatever needs to be believed in.”
“Thankfully. But shouldn’t you be in New Orleans? You know I really need to stay out here. The next five nights will be hard for everyone because it’s the end of the season. I mean, I want to go into New Orleans and back to the morgue, but after that, I need to be home. Still, as far as you going back…”
“Parks is a good detective. He’s had his men out and watching Picture This, and Nick and Marty Nicholson and the young artists working at the shop. They’ve all been quiet. Either cops or FBI have followed them all and they’ve done nothing but eat, buy supplies—and deliver paintings. Oh, the woman you met at Jackson Square—Geraldine Sands—has moved in. Jackson was by there and met her. She said that she has your painting and she can arrange to have it delivered or we can pick it up.”
“It’s a nice painting,” Ashley told him. “Not quite as haunting as the one I bought by Shelley.”
“Hmm. And you just had to wear the costume that made you appear to be the same person—hauntingly brought back to life?” he queried.
“She calls to me, Jake,” Ashley told him softly.
He inclined his head, and then nodded. “All right. We’ll get to the morgue. And then we’ll get you back here.” He hesitated, shaking his head. “I don’t like it. I just don’t like it.”
“What?”
“Halloween. Even here in this place, when it’s open to the public,” he murmured.
“We know everyone working here—and costumes other than on our actors are not allowed. We have a security company and a cop. And we have Cliff, and—trust me—Frazier knows how to use his double-barreled shotgun.”
“I know. Still… He might just be a damned good liar. But Jonathan Starling remains a person of interest, you know.”
“He’s one man. And there are three killers.”
“You have three witches working your gingerbread house.”
“That would equal four.”
“There could be one mastermind—and three carrying out the plans,” Jake said. “That would be four.”
“Go to work, Jake. Don’t worry so much about me. Nothing has happened out here. I mean, first take me to the morgue. Then go to work.”
He nodded. “Think we’ll actually make it to a wedding?” he asked her.
She nodded. “And a honeymoon.”
He grinned at that and put through a call to Jackson. They drove back into the city.
The same M.E. met them and watched curiously as they studied the body. It was just Jake and Ashley this time. Jake questioned the M.E. a bit, trying to distract her so that Ashley could get closer.
Shelley remained very cold. Icy to the touch. Ashley closed her eyes.
“I’m here. I feel you. Shelley, please let me help you.”
The corpse remained cold. Jake continued to speak with the medical examiner. They left a few minutes later.
“Anything?” Jake asked when they were outside.
“I know she’s here—somewhere,” Ashley said softly. “I don’t understand why I can’t see her, hear her, when I’m awake. I know it’s her, and I’m getting closer to her in my dreams.”
Jake’s phone rang as she was speaking and he excused himself to answer it. She watched his face grow grim as he listened.
“That was Jackson,” he told her briefly. “I’m going to head out to Baton Rouge with Jude. The police there spoke with Angela, and they started to draw up a few of their own comparisons. These people might have been busy for a long time in Louisiana. We’re trying to work up a timeline—when people could have been where.”
“Jonathan Starling pointed out that our witches were working when Shelley was killed.”
“Maybe—and maybe not. Shelley Broussard’s body was set up. But still, she was dumped. She was killed elsewhere. And the M.E. can’t really pinpoint time of death."
“Jake, with everything that Angela discovered… And if the Baton Rouge police are right and anything they have corresponds with these killings, this trio might have been at this a very long time. There—there may be no solution here—even if the art shop is watched every day. Even if Jonathan Starling is in some way guilty of something.”
“No. They’re making mistakes. And we’ll catch them.”
A car pulled up and Jackson stepped out of it. Jude, who was driving, waved to Ashley. She waved back. Jake gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Jackson will be with you. He’s going to work at the plantation and…”
“And he’ll be there, watching over me, through all the Halloween shenanigans of the night,” Ashley finished.
“Precisely,” he said.
“Go,” Ashley directed. She smiled and he went out to join Jude.
Jackson walked up to her, carrying his computer case. “Seems like you get me for the evening. Sorry.”
She smiled at him. “I never mind having you for the evening. In fact, I’m honored. I’m being watched over by the best there is.”
“I’m sure that’s debatable,” he said. “But, onward. How did the morning go? Am I driving or are you?”
Ashley opted to drive. And as she did so, they spoke about the case. “The thing is, I don’t think that the killers knew most of their victims in any way, shape, or form. Except for Shelley. Then why are they associated? I mean, would vigilantes kill a girl so sweet and innocent?”
“The greater good,” Jackson said.
“The greater good?”
“If they felt that they were on an important mission, then maybe. Also, there’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone is so full of their own ego that it just doesn’t matter. If you can touch her… If you can find out what she felt or believed regarding people, it would definitely help.”
Soon enough, they reached Donegal.
Donegal, decked out in black drapes, spiders here and there, ghosts and goblins hanging about the porch.
Jackson told her he was going to head out and make sure that everyone was where they should be—and that it was the right people in the right place for Donegal in the evening.
Ashley found her grandfather in his study, seated at his desk. She walked behind him and slipped her arms around his neck. He patted her hand. “You stay up by the house tonight, you hear?” he asked.
“I’ll stay up by the house,” she promised.
“I’m imagining it now,” he said. “Lilies, gardenias, magnolias…white and light. And you and me walking down that stairway, Jake and his men coming from the other side, everything beautiful. The best of it all being that you’ve found the right young man—you’re going to lead a good life. Okay, a crazy life, but…with a good man. It’ll be a good life. And eventually, there will be little feet running up and down the stairways again.”
She smiled. Frazier was definitely ready for great-grandchildren.
“Little footsteps,” she said.
“Of course, these days, there could have been little footsteps already. But though I am anxious—and you two did take forever—I like the order we’re working in. Wedding, and then children.”
“Glad to please,” Ashley said lightly. “I’m going to go up and change into something 1860s so that I can help Beth wrangle our haunted-house-goers.”
“I shall be here—far from the cackling witches and madmen or whoever else you have out there,” he told her. “I’m looking at taking in a rescue horse from the Florida panhandle. Poor thing. No brand, just wandering off I-10. Call me if you need me.”
“Will do,” Ashley promised him.
The grand foyer was empty. If she wasn’t quite so caught up in what was happening, she would be marveling more about her own upcoming wedding.
But that time would come.
And she did have Beth and Cliff, and her amazing grandfather, and all kinds of people who would help, who would be there.
She hurried upstairs and went for the costume she used during re-enactments.
But chose not to use it. Standing in her underwear, she found herself staring at Shelley’s painting.
As she watched it, the character in the painting seemed to move. To reach out. The eyes grew even larger…
“Shelley, damn you, speak to me,” she said.
“I’m—I’m here.”
She turned.
At last, a very pale image of the woman she knew through the painting, through her dreams—and through the morgue—appeared. She stood just inside the French doors to the wraparound balcony like she was created of just a bit of substance and light from the day’s dying sun.
But she was there.
“Shelley,” Ashley breathed.
“Help me,” Shelley whispered. “Lord, I’m praying I can…can help you help me.”
* * * *
“I wound up talking to Nate Gallen, one of our patrol officers,” Captain Raoul Peterson told Jake and Jude. They’d easily made their way to Baton Rouge and were discussing the case in the captain’s office. “He’s not a detective, but he was first on the scene. It wasn’t quite a month ago. October 1st, to be exact. Gallen came upon a murder. Terrible site, blood everywhere. And when he reported to me, he told me that he saw ghosts leaving the scene. So naturally, he took a lot of ribbings. Whoever the murderer was, the victim was one slippery eel. He’d just gotten let out on a murder charge himself. I remember the case. Judge declared the evidence against him was ‘fruit of the poisonous tree,’ something about a warrant not being right. Anyway, the dead man had supposedly left a few dead men behind. But we didn’t have evidence—except for that obtained before a search warrant was granted. Thing is, my officer swore that he saw three ghosts. Even when his buddies all teased the bloody hell out of him. And it wasn’t the ghosts that got to me so much. It was the fact that he’d seen three of them.”
Jake glanced at Jude.
Ghosts. Three of them.
“Anyway, I have the case files in hard copy there for you, and we can email anything else that you may want as well,” the captain said. “It sounds like they’re out of our jurisdiction now, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope to hell you get those ghosts. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, my officer was babbling. That’s why no one took him seriously. But he was babbling about Halloween. About Halloween night being some kind of a grand finale to what the ghosts did.”
“Can we see him?” Jake asked.
“Poor fellow—we had to put him on leave. Doctors have him somewhere in Montana right now. I can arrange it, if you like.”
Jake’s phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” he murmured. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Special Agent Mallory,” he said.
“Mallory, Jake… You gave me your card. This is Richard Showalter.”
Jake could barely hear, since the man was almost whispering.
“Yes, what is it? What’s happened?”
“There was supposed to be an officer watching me. He…he’s not here. He was here. He went out to check on a noise… And he’s gone.”
“All right, stay calm. I’m a distance away. I’m having Detective Parks get someone there right away. Are you inside? Is the alarm on?”
There was no answer.
“Captain, thank you,” Jake said, rising. Jude did the same. They both shook hands with the captain and Jake led them out at double speed.
“What’s going on?” Jude asked.
“That was Richard Showalter. He can’t find his cop.”
“He might be doing rounds.”
“Showalter’s phone cut out.”
Jude swore softly.
As they headed to the car, Jake called Parks, and then Jackson.
And they drove like hell toward New Orleans.
* * * *
“Why were you labeled a traitor? Who did this to you?” Ashley asked.
Shelley smiled sweetly. “I don’t know.”
“I know your killer came up from behind, but… Why a traitor?”
“I didn’t want to be involved.”
“In what?”
Shelley waved a hand in the air. “Whatever it was that they were doing. We’d have all these ridiculous meetings—as if we were back in high school trying to pledge for some kind of a club. I wanted to do other things. I didn’t want to be a part of them.” She closed her eyes. “I guess that means they killed me.”
“They?”
“And the other two, Samantha Perkins and Emily Dupont. They told me they were part of the League of Reformation, and that I needed to be one of them. And to do that, I had to learn to behave and obey. I laughed them off a few times. I got angry a few times.”
Ashley’s phone started ringing. She dug in her pocket for it. As she did so, the image of Shelley began to fade away. “No, no, no,” Ashley said.
But Shelley was gone.
She answered the phone.
It was Beth. “Come on down. The gates are open. You’re helping out tonight, right?”
“Yes, on my way.”
She silently swore as she dressed hastily—in the witch costume—and hurried downstairs. She’d had Shelley with her. She was so close. And now she knew. She knew that the girls that Shelley had lived with were in on her murder. She called Jake as quickly as she could, heading down the stairs.
“Jake, I saw her—I saw Shelley. And the women she lived with are in on it. I think that makes Nick Nicholson the head of it all.”
“I’ll have them picked up. Right now… Right now we have a cop down. He isn’t dead. He was guarding Richard Showalter.”
“Is Showalter dead?”
“We don’t know. He’s gone. There’s a lot of blood. We—we don’t know if it’s his blood mixed in there or not. Ashley, be careful. Don’t leave the property.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
She reached the porch and quickly joined Beth in handing out little paper bracelets, colored for time and place on the haunted tour of the property.
But then she looked up.
And saw Shelley Broussard.
Walking toward the family graveyard.
“Sorry, be right back,” she promised Beth.
And she hurried after the ghost, forgetting that she looked exactly like the dead girl herself.
* * * *
They were nearing the plantation when Jake saw that Parks was calling him.
He answered.
“We picked up the girls,” Parks said. “And Marty Nicholson.”
“What about Nicholson himself?” Jake asked.
“I don’t think he was part of it.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s dead. His throat was slit.”
* * * *
“You didn’t tell her that we’re on our way to Donegal,” Jude noted.
“You don’t know Ashley,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I’d hear about her being fine, and that I should be going where I was needed. This way, there’s no argument. I’ll just go there. And…” He paused.
Jude looked at him. “And?”
“Parks and the police are covering New Orleans right now—including anything to do with Showalter’s house and the injured detective. Maybe these killers are getting better at watching out for decent targets. We need to be at Donegal Plantation.”
“Why?”
“Because Ashley knows that the girls living with Shelley were involved. There are two of your witches.”
“So that’s it—two witches?”
Jake shook his head. “No, three witches—and some sort of a commander, priest, evil god—a man.”
“Okay, so Nick and Marty Nicholson.”
“Marty, yes. She’s the third witch.”
“And Nick?”
“Could be, though I doubt they killed their leader.”
“It could be someone else. Thing is, Parks has to get those women behind bars. Tonight. Quickly.”
* * * *
The graveyard at Donegal Plantation was truly beautiful. A collection of funerary art, it covered mid-nineteenth century to the present. The Donegal family tomb was most grand, offering up angels and cherubs and gargoyles.
The ghost walked right through the gate and the wall that surrounded the cemetery.
Ashley had to unlatch the gate—she was afraid of hurting herself with a leap over the little wall in her elaborate dress.
“Shelley, wait.”
But as she walked in, she saw that the ghost of Shelley was crying out and running.
And as she chased after Shelley, Ashley realized that someone was chasing after her.
Jonathan Starling.
Shelley was running, but…
Did Starling see the ghost?
Or was he running after her?
Ashley’s heart began to thud.
Jake had been afraid for her, angry because of this very costume. And now this man who had harassed Shelley, who had claimed to love her, was chasing her.
Ashley turned back. He was wearing his bloodied costume and carrying a meat cleaver.
She hopped over an in-ground stone and swung around a cherub before she was able to dive behind the Donegal family tomb. She saw an old brick that had fallen free from a planter and snatched it up quickly.
When Jonathan Starling came around the tomb, she raised the stone high. And as she did, she remembered that she had clocked Cliff once long ago—afraid that he was a killer.
She struck.
Jonathan fell.
And the ghost of Shelley Broussard appeared.
“No, no, not Jonathan. Never Jonathan. He loved me. I love him.”
“Then?” Ashley whispered the word.
“Miss Donegal, I’m so sorry. So, so, sorry that you can’t let things go.”
She turned.
And found Richard Showalter stalking her way.
He was alone, she saw. He hadn’t slit anyone’s throat—he’d had his followers do it for him.
But that didn’t matter.
He was a killer, through and through.
“You are truly an idiot,” Ashley said. She was far enough away, and the brick was still in her hand. “You’ll definitely be caught now. You’re going to try to murder me—on my own property? Tonight?”
”You’re a meddler. And a traitor to good. You have to die.”
“I’m a traitor? Because I want to stop you?”
“I have been working for justice. You are a traitor to justice. Happy to let killers walk. I hunt down monsters.”
“You killed Shelley.”
“Shelley was a traitor.”
“You can’t just kill people.”
He continued walking toward her, smiling. “You’re going to hit me with that brick?”
“You’re a hypocrite,” she told him. “You’re the monster.”
Closer, closer. She kept her eyes on him while she spoke.
“What did you do to get here? Kill a cop? The clowns weren’t coming after you to kill you—they were coming for instructions. Richard Showalter,” she sneered. “Known for his work against vigilantism. You hypocritical bastard. And you killed Shelley. Killed Shelley because she wouldn’t become part of your killing machine. You—God… You’re absolutely a monster.”
“And you’re absolutely dead.”
The closer he came, the greater the terror that filled her. She saw what he carried.
He hadn’t killed before. But he planned to kill now. He had an ice pick. If he was able to get in just one good blow…
Suddenly, the ghost of Shelley Broussard raced out, a cry of fury on her lips.
The man paused, blinking. As if fog had gotten in his eyes, as if he’d seen something but didn’t understand what.
He staggered, coming toward Ashley. She raised her brick and bashed him.
He caught her arm.
She screamed.
And even as the sound left her lips, Jake was there. Pulling the man from her, throwing him to the ground. And Jackson was behind Jake, ready to wrench him up and handcuff him.
But as she rushed into Jake’s arms, she dimly realized that Jackson wasn’t arresting him. Parks had arrived and was angrily reading Richard Showalter his rights.
“You nearly killed my man—a good man!” Parks roared.
“He killed Shelley,” Ashley said, staring at Jake. “He killed Shelley. Whether he drew the blade or not and— We have to get an ambulance. Jonathan Starling came out here and…”
“And you clocked him?” he asked, but pointed to Jackson, who was already helping a dazed Jonathan.
Jake was smiling, but his eyes were filled with concern, and she felt him shaking.
He loved her so much.
As she loved him.
“You do seem to like to clock the wrong people,” Jake said and tightened his hold. “What am I going to do with you? I have to keep you out of danger.”
“Well, you are marrying me, of course.”
“Not so sure that’s really going to help,” he teased.
And then he kissed her.
* * * *
In the days that followed, the horror of what had been going on for weeks began to become clear.
Nick Nicholson had really just been a nice guy—trying to help artists. He hadn’t known that his wife started out having an affair with Richard Showalter—only to become so infatuated with him that she more or less became the mother for his cult of monsters recruited to kill monsters. He thought himself a genius. Use monsters at Halloween. Who would notice?
But Shelley Broussard could not be coerced, brainwashed, or convinced in any way. And with the rest of the women in the household killing, she had to play a part.
Or disappear.
Ashley spent time with Jonathan Starling and hoped he was really going to be all right.
He had seen or sensed something about Shelley. And the day after Halloween, when the cast came to help clean out and pick up their own belongings, she saw him in the cemetery. And she saw Shelley sitting next to him.
Then Shelley was gone.
Ashley went to talk to him. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “She told me I must move on,” he said. He looked at her. “I saw her. I really saw her.”
“I believe you. And I believe that she’s moved on now—and that means that you must, too. You must move on.”
They sat together for a while.
And then she went back to the house, where Frazier, Beth, Cliff, and Jake were all debating if they should wait, if Ashley was all right with what had happened.
“I’m getting married right here. In two weeks,” Ashley said. She saw Jake smile, and that was all she needed.
And, two weeks later, they were back.
The spiders were gone, along with the black draping, the ghosts, the demons, and all else that had been part of Halloween.
Flowers were everywhere.
The plantation had never looked more spectacular.
Most of the Krewe were in attendance. Jackson and Angela, and Whitney and Kat and Will and so many others.
It was splendid. Frazier was dignified, and he cried when he had to give a speech at the reception. She and Jake caught him in a sandwich hug, and she gave a speech back, thanking him for being the best grandparent ever.
And that night…
Well, the grounds thronged with Krewe. While the honeymoon beckoned come morning, for the night…
They would never find a place so safe to abandon all and make love.
And make love.
Again, and again, and again.
Even a lifetime might not be enough. Then again…
It seemed that love could last forever, far longer than a lifetime.
* * * *
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