“We both did,” Jessica interjected. She was right. He’d been able to draw her into contact with the dead man’s depraved soul. It had sickened them to their core, but also gave them what they needed to find his rotting corpse and put an end to his reign of terror on the poor girl he’d attached his desires to.

“For me, it feels like it accelerated things, so much that I couldn’t keep up. All of the controls I’ve spent my life putting in place were blown wide open and I can’t get them back. I’ll be able to see and hear the EBs on Ormsby Island. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to make much sense of them.”

“Have you spoken to your father or any of your professors at the Rhine?”

“No.” His relationship with his father, a burned out psychic, was tenuous at best. He could have called the Rhine, but a part of him didn’t want them to know he’d failed being on his own.

Surprisingly, she gently placed her hand over his. “Hey, we’ll get through it together. At least you haven’t spent years running from yourself.”

He met her eyes and was relieved to see the sympathy there. “There is one good thing. Since I met up with you, other than on the island, the EBs have been staying away. I think, and this is no joke, that they’re afraid of you.”

Jessica chuckled. “I guess it’s cool to see that I’ve made a name for myself on the other side.”

He paid their tab and agreed to meet in the lobby at nine the next morning. They rode the elevator together. When Jessica was getting off at her floor, he said, “That island is a bad place. We’re going to have to be very careful.”

“I know. Try to get some sleep. Call me if any dead strangers won’t leave you alone.”

The doors closed before he could ask what she would do if he called.

Once in his room, the first thing he did was scoop up several small bottles of vodka from the mini bar, setting them on the bedside table. He showered, changed and watched the news, waiting for the dead to come.

The room remained empty. He closed his eyes, entering his barn talisman. The old structure looked older, with jagged cracks splitting the wood-flaked beams. The doors remained open wide, a crumbled defense that couldn’t even hold back the whisper of a summer breeze. Dragging a bale of rotted hay to the center of the barn, he sat and waited. They would come. They always came. And then he would drink the vodka.

But they didn’t. Even the heavy scent of the tall grass outside the barn would not enter.

Eddie came to in his bed with a start. His eyes roamed the room, searching for motorcycle crash victims, suicides, cancer patients, pretty women with impenetrable souls chanting Perfect. Not perfect.

The news had given way to a late night talk show.

He eyed the vodka bottles. The craving had nothing to do with aiding his escape to empty dreams.

I have to stop living like this.

Unscrewing the cap of Absolut, he brought the tiny opening to his lips. Before the burning liquid could touch his tongue, he flung the plastic bottle across the room, splashing the mirror and writing desk. He scooped up all of the bottles, dumping them in the sink one at a time.

Digging through his luggage, he found the bottle of Xanax. Jessica’s father had become addicted to the pills after his wife had died in her sleep, terrified of being the sole caretaker for a small child, terrified of being alone, terrified of dying, terrified of living. It had been his undoing for many long years. He knew that if he’d told Jessica he had been taking them, she would have read him the riot act, maybe going so far as to physically impress upon him why he had to stop.

“I don’t need this,” he said, staring at the bottle in his palm.

But of course, he had needed it. How else was he supposed to sleep surrounded by the clamor and push of the dead encircling his bed every night?

They weren’t here now.

Jessica was, although floors away.

Taking a deep, hitching breath, he poured the blue, oval pills into the toilet, flushing before second thoughts could take hold.

Chapter Thirteen

This time, Paul was waiting for them, wearing the same clothes he had the day before. He helped them load their bags into the boat. It was another sweltering day. Jessica was grateful they were going to be on an island that was impervious to the South Carolina summer.

“You folks have breakfast?” Paul asked. “If not, there’s a great pancake shack a few docks down I can take you to.”

“Thanks, but we took full advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel,” Jessica said.

Eddie had been very quiet since they’d hit the buffet line this morning. It looked like he hadn’t slept much at all. He was an attractive guy, so much so that Angela had thought Jessica was insane for not even thinking about taking things to a romantic level. Now, with his sunken cheeks, sallow skin and overall haunted expression, he looked like an undertaker from a bad horror movie. What was that guy’s name from Phantasm? He was the Tall Man, or something like that. Lucky her, she had Tall Eddie on her side.

“You know the deal. Hang on,” Paul said, speeding away from the slip.

It was beautiful out on the water. There was a time when Jessica craved the dark and all its mysteries. Now, she could just as easily have spent the day on a rented boat skimming through the harbor, enjoying some cocktails and a sunset dinner on the top deck. Time and money certainly weren’t issues that she ever had to struggle against.

You’re helping innocent kids, Jess. You don’t want them to end up like you. Maybe we can get things under control for them. She gave a short laugh, causing Eddie to look to her for the joke. She shook her head. Just because you didn’t take to Eddie’s help doesn’t mean they won’t. Maybe they can all teach me a thing or two.

Ormsby Island emerged from the shadow of a larger island they had to navigate around. From a distance, it looked like an arboretum or animal sanctuary. It was hard to believe there was a massive mansion within the crush of trees.

Paul docked the boat and helped them with their bags up the uneven path. “Daphne and the kids are out back. I’ll show you to your rooms and you can meet up with them in a bit.”

“It feels at least ten degrees colder on the island,” Eddie said, his and one of Jessica’s bags slung over his shoulder. She reached into her knapsack, finding the digital thermometer. Before they went in the house, she turned it on and took several temperature readings.

“Close,” she said. “It’s thirteen degrees cooler than it was on the dock in Charleston. It’s either the trees or EB air conditioning.”

Paul chuckled. “EB air conditioning. I like that. Tobe told me that’s what you call ghosts. Sounds as good as any other name to me. Well, wait till you feel the EB central air in the house today.”

True to his word, an icy draft went straight through their bones the moment they stepped into the deceptive colonial.

“This is what my apartment was like when I came home from work one day in winter and forgot I had left a window wide open,” Eddie said. His expression morphed from his new standard—haunted—to concerned. “Is it always like this in the morning?”

Paul shook his wooly head. “It’s been getting a little colder each day, but it took a big leap last night. You think it’s ghosts—I mean EBs—absorbing all of the energy from the atmosphere? They make cold spots when they’re around, right?” He seemed genuinely excited and not the least bit worried that he might be surrounded by the dead. Jessica jotted that down in her mental notebook. It was obvious he was a fan of the rash of paranormal TV shows, spouting the jargon like the gaggle of pseudo-experts that paraded on millions of screens ever week.

“That’s one theory,” she said.