Page 9 of Possessed

“Ah, come on, Kent, relax. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,”she said, still smiling joyously.

“Raef.” He ground the word out automatically, the usual gruffness of his voice intensified by the force of the emotions filling him. “People call me Raef.”

“I’m not going to,”Aubrey said.“I like Kent better. Plus, you can’t really call me a person anymore, can you?”

Raef just stared at her. Had a spirit ever called him anything? No, hell, no, none of them had. He usually just Tracked the negative emotions left by the bad guys. He followed violence and hatred and fear until it led him to a living murderer. Ghosts didn’t have shit to do with him.

Untilthisghost.

Aubrey’s gaze went from him to sweep around Swan Lake.“It’s beautiful here, don’t you think? The trees are particularly lovely. So wise and strong, like soldiers standing guard.”She turned shimmering blue eyes back to him.“They must take a lot of care.”

As soon as she’d spoken the words Raef felt it. The slicing pain hit him as Aubrey’s semitransparent body doubled over. Lauren moaned, and her arm trembled violently under his grasp.

“Kent!”Aubrey gasped. “Help us!”

She disappeared as Lauren collapsed into his arms.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Oh, God,” Lauren groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“No. Not here.” Raef slid an arm around her waist and half carried, half dragged her from the dock and through the gate. He’d retraced their path and was almost to the car when Lauren spoke again.

“Wh-where are we going?”

“Don’t know. Right now I’m just getting us the hell outta here,” he said, wrenching open the door to the car and guiding her semicarefully into the passenger seat. He hesitated, watching her closely as she sat, face in hands, and trembled. “You still gonna be sick?”

“Maybe,” she muttered into her hands.

Yeah, well, me, too,he thought, but instead said, “Try not to be,” then closed her door and hurried around the car, putting it in gear and getting the hell outta there. Silent and on autopilot he drove, turned left on Lewis and was halfway to Fifteenth Street before he realized he was heading for his house.What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m taking a client home?Raef glanced at Lauren. She’d taken her face from her hands. Her arms were wrapped around her, as if she was literally trying to hold herself together. Her face had gone from dead pale to splotchy pink. She was still trembling.

Suddenly she reminded him of Christina Kambic all those years ago, and he had a terrifying urge to protect her.Shit! Shit! Shit! What’s wrong with me?

“I’m not going to be sick. At least, not right now,” Lauren said stiffly, definitely misunderstanding his sideways glances.

“Want me to take you home?” he asked inanely.

“No.” Lauren made two quick shakes of her head.

“Your mother’s place?”

“Hell, no.” She looked straight at him then. “Anywhere but there.”

He only met her blue-gray eyes for a moment before making his decision. Raef grunted and turned right on Fifteenth, catching the green light and taking a quick left on Columbia, entering the quaint little neighborhood that was hidden between busy Fifteenth Street and kinda dicey Eleventh Street. He drove down a couple side streets, took another left and then pulled into the cobblestone driveway of the 1920s-era brick house he called home.

Raef turned off the car and looked at Lauren, who was gazing at him, an obvious question mark on her flushed face. He blew out a long, frustrated breath, got out of the car and opened her door for her. “It’s my place,” he explained. “I don’t take clients here.”

“Yet here I am,” she said as he closed the car door behind her.

“Yeah, well, that’s just part of a list ofdon’tsthat I’ve broken today.” As they walked together up the curving sidewalk that led to his spacious front porch, he held up his hand and ticked off fingers like an umpire keeping count of strikes. “First, Idon’tusually feel as fucking bizarre as I did right before I met you.” He paused when they were standing on the porch and added, “And your dead sister.” Another finger went up. “Then Idon’tgo to a murder scene—a documented scene of a death—and not pick up death emotions.”

“Death emotions?” she interrupted.

He bit back his annoyance and answered her with a sharp nod and a sharper tone of voice while he dug in his pocket for his house key. “Yeah, death emotions. Bad ones. Like fear and panic and agony and hatred. Being able to Track negative emotions is my Gift.”

“That sucks,” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s the way it is—the way it’s been since I was nine.”