Page 19 of The Devil Went Down to Laughlin
Another glance at the phone didn’t reveal an answering text, which he’d already known. Still, he hated the thought of their one means of communication being completely unavailable.
An uneasy sensation inched its way down his spine.
What if it wasn’t the cell towers at all?
What if she was really in trouble?
Oh, shut up, he told his brain, but it continued to manufacture worst-case scenarios.
After all, he’d seen an angry spirit attack her in this very house — okay, out in the backyard — so he knew that ghosts weren’t always wispy blobs of vapor, entirely harmless. What if an equally vengeful specter was haunting Aaron’s family’s house in Laughlin? Would Delia even be equipped to handle that kind of assault?
She had holy water with her, but Caleb didn’t know whether that would be enough.
Damn it.
He picked up the phone and entered her number, since by this time, he had it memorized and this was faster than going to his contacts list. Three rings, and then he heard her standard message.
Hi, you’ve reached Delia Dunne. I’m sorry I missed your call —
An annoyed breath passed his lips, and he touched his finger to his iPhone’s screen to end the call. Maybe that was rude, and he should have just left a message anyway, but the whole point of him reaching out was to talk to her personally and make sure she was okay. If all he got was a recording, there didn’t seem to be any reason to stay on the line.
And if she was all right, then at some point she’d probably notice that he’d called but hadn’t left a message, in which case, she’d contact him anyway.
As much as he didn’t like it, there didn’t seem to be much he could do right now except sit and wait.
Even though it wasn’t even two o’clock in the afternoon and Aaron had opened all the drapes and blinds to let as much light in as possible, Delia still flicked on the lights in the stairwell as she made her way up to the second story. True, the stairs were enclosed, so daylight didn’t help much, but it wasn’t as if she was going upstairs in the middle of the night or something.
All the same, the sconces on either side — unattractive things that she guessed had also been installed sometime in the 1980s — helped a little. Not all the way, because she could think of about a thousand places she would rather be, but it was still better than heading up there in the dark.
Okay, half-dark.
The stairs terminated in a landing with two doors facing her. One of them was a bedroom with nothing in it except a pair of empty white bookcases, and the other was a bathroom that looked fairly large, considering the age of the house.
Two more doors revealed two other bedrooms. The first looked to be about the same size as the one that faced the staircase, but the other was much bigger, obviously the master bedroom, even though it didn’t have an en suite bath.
Again, a lot of houses of this vintage didn’t have that amenity. Anyone who bought the place would have to deal with the setup as-is or figure out a way to steal some space from one of the other bedrooms to create a master bath and a decent-sized closet.
Not your problem, she told herself, but that was just how her brain worked. After being in real estate for so many years and flipping a dozen or so houses along the way, the second she set foot in a place, she started assessing its strengths and weaknesses, trying to determine what should be updated and what might be left alone to save a little money.
Besides, thinking about harmless stuff like how to reconfigure the upstairs to fit the needs of a twenty-first-century family kept her from wondering about the entity that appeared to have taken up residence in the house…and how she was going to get it out of there.
The secondary bedrooms were mostly empty except for the odd bit of furniture inside, like the bookcase in the room that faced the stairs. However, the main bedroom still had an entire suite of furniture — a four-poster bed, two nightstands, and a long dresser with a matching mirror that hung about it — as if no one had known exactly what to do with the outdated ensemble and had hoped maybe the new owners would want to keep it.
Fat chance of that.
All of the pieces had their share of scratches and dings, and besides, most people these days didn’t want matchy-matchy bedroom sets like the ones their parents and grandparents had preferred.
Delia moved farther into the room and stood there for a minute, doing her best to sense its energies. Again, she had that feeling of someone watching her, but nothing more than that. She certainly couldn’t tell if the presence was male or female.
Or even if it was human.
A shiver inched its way down her spine, even though it was probably about four or five degrees warmer up here than it had been on the ground floor, the swamp cooler straining against the ninety-degree temperatures outside.
“I’m here if you want to talk to me,” she said quietly, then waited.
Something went thump inside the closet.
Her heart made a valiant effort to leap into her throat, but she choked it down. She absolutely was not going to lose her shit in here, no matter how hard the ghost lurking in this house seemed to want to play with her.
