The Ghost Host: Episode 1 (The Ghost Host Series) Read online

  Malachi and I have the same talent. My abilities are what led to me being recruited to work undercover during the war. I wasn’t alone.

  Whatever’s preventing her from fully explaining everything isn’t doing a very good job. Understanding starts to unravel as I piece things together. Whatever protection Malachi is supposed to provide me, Madeline was able to do the same thing. During the war, she must have had someone like me she worked with and protected. I’m at a bit of a loss about what ghosts had to do with the war, but I suppose maybe dead Nazis were more willing to talk than the living ones?

  “Madeline, can you tell me anything about what happened to Archer?”

  Only that it will happen again if you’re not careful.

  Not pressing her for more details is aggravating, but I know she would tell me more if she could. “I’ll make sure Malachi goes back,” I tell her. “We’ll go together, okay?”

  Madeline nods gratefully, but she doesn’t slip away just yet. Instead, she gestures for me to lie down and rest, then moves closer and keeps watch over me while I try to fall asleep. For a few moments before sleep claims me, I feel like a little girl again, back when the ghosts were playmates and talking to them was okay. It takes me back to a time when I was happy and unafraid, something I haven’t been for a very long time.

  ***

  (Malachi)

  I’m dying here. Kyran won’t talk to me. Holden told me to stay away from the girls’ apartment until either he or Echo gives me the go ahead. And when Zara dropped Kyran off yesterday, I swear she looked like she was ready to murder me if I blinked. Everyone’s pissed at me. Hell, I’m pissed at myself, probably more than any of them are. I don’t totally understand what happened, but I hate myself for hurting Echo. Oddly enough, Holden seems to be the most understanding.

  I know I screwed up big time. Despite what Echo wanted in that moment, I knew she was scared and wanted to take things slow. She told me straight out and I promised I would respect her wishes and protect her. What did I do? I caved. Even though I knew something was wrong, because Echo would never act like that under normal circumstances, when she told me I had to save her, it was a push I didn’t know how to resist. Maybe I just I wanted to believe what she said and what I felt in that moment, but I knew I should have stopped regardless of what she said or any other weird influences. I just…didn’t know how in that moment. It was almost like I couldn’t, but that doesn’t make any sense.

  Pacing, I can’t focus on anything but what an ass I am. Kyran was right. When he came home yesterday looking like he was ready to take a swing at me, I didn’t even try to talk him down. I wanted him to do it. After all, I would have deserved it. I deserve worse.

  Whatever happens between Echo and me after this, I’ll just have to take it and deal. How am I going to argue with her if she ends things?

  I’m still pacing and berating myself when Kyran actually comes out of his room. The same scowl is still there to greet me, but he surprises me by actually speaking. “Echo wants you to meet her. Twenty minutes. Starbucks on the corner.”

  That’s it, and he seems pissed to have had to deliver even that short message. The fact that she called him and not me makes my stomach drop. We’re over. She just wants to tell me in person. It almost would have been better if she’d just sent a text. I don’t know if I can face her. Kyran has already disappeared back into his room, and there’s no way I’m going to tell him to tell her I’m not coming. He’ll murder me in my sleep.

  I suspected Kyran had a thing for Echo since before she got here. Well, I think he’s had a thing for her from a distance for a long time. Now, though, I realize just how deep his affection for her goes. He’s never been this pissed at me before. No way I’m doing anything he might interpret as me hurting her even worse. Swallowing hard, I decide I better just get this over with and head for the door.

  I don’t drive. Starbucks is only two blocks away, so it’s a short trip either way, but I’m not in any hurry to be dumped even though I know I deserve it. In reality, I need the extra time to try to somehow prepare myself for this. Shaking the feeling that I’ve screwed up so much more than just my relationship with Echo is impossible. She can’t leave. I can’t explain why not, but a nagging and uncomfortable feeling is pushing me to find a way to make her stay whether she breaks up with me or not.

  My feet are already dragging, but they seem to glue themselves to the sidewalk when I reach the café and spot Echo waiting for me through the window. I can only see a small section of her face with the way she’s positioned. Deciphering her expression is impossible. I have no choice but to rip my feet up from where they’re rooted and face my fate.

  She doesn’t notice when I come in. Walking up to her table feels like waiting for a wave I know is too big and will take me under. Maybe that’s why I feel like I can’t breathe as I finally step up to the table.

  Echo’s head pops up when she sees me from the corner of her eye. A dozen emotions splash onto her face all at once. Shame is the one that sticks. Her eyes drop, but she says, “Please, sit down.” Hair falls to cover most of her face. “Thanks for coming even though I’m probably the last person you want to see right now.”

  “The last person I want to see?” I ask in confusion. “I’m surprised you’re even speaking to me. I’m the one you probably never want to see again.”

  Echo doesn’t meet my eyes, but she cringes. “I’m so sorry about the way everyone’s been treating you. This is all my fault.”

  Her head drops even lower and it kills me not to grab her chin and force her to look at me. My hands stay fisted at my sides. “None of what happened was your fault, Echo. None. Don’t even think about blaming yourself.”

  Finally, Echo looks up at me. Her pained expression and watery eyes tear straight through me. “I was the one who kept pushing…even after you tried to get me to stop.”

  It’s obvious the guilt and shame are tearing her apart, and that makes me feel even worse. “Echo, you weren’t yourself. You’d just been through something pretty freakin’ terrifying. You reacted. You weren’t thinking straight.” Shaking my head, I scrub a hand through my hair as I try to say what needs to be said. “I was thinking. I knew something wasn’t right. I knew I should have stopped and, I don’t know, left the room or something. You told me what you really wanted a few days earlier, but I didn’t listen. I gave in, and I hurt you.”

  “I’m the one who hurt you, Malachi,” Echo argues.

  “How?”

  Sighing, Echo buries her face in her hands for a moment before forcing herself to look at me again. “When I woke up, I still felt the effects of what Archer had done, and it scared me. Being close to you, it…I felt better. Safer. Protected. I needed that so much in that moment, I didn’t think about anything else. Certainly not about you. I needed something from you, and I pushed you until you gave it to me. I think maybe I did more than that somehow. I don’t know. It’s so confusing right now. Something happened I can’t explain, though, and I think it was me that did it.”

  There’s way more information in what she just said than I can take in all at once. First off, even though I’ve felt like there’s some kind of weird connection between Echo and me since our first phone conversation—and Kyran’s hinted that he thought the same—I had no idea Echo felt anything similar. More even. What she feels seems to go beyond just a strange familiarity. I’m not sure what to think about her needing me in some supernatural way. Is that why she’s really here? I try not to dwell on it.

  What freaks me out the most is that she seems to have felt some kind of weird interference, too. Was it her? Maybe it was me. It could have been the ghosts or something we don’t even know about. The possibility that something could exert that kind of power on one or both of us, and neither of us being able to recognize it enough to stop what was happening, is more than a little disturbing. I’m not about to put all the blame for me caving when I should have been protecting Echo, on some bizarre experience, but it’s tro
ubling all the same.

  “Look, Echo, whatever else might be going on between us, I knew you weren’t ready for sex. You asked me to wait and be patient, and I failed to do that. Nothing else matters.”

  “But…”

  Before she can say anything else, I grab her hand and shake my head. “No. It’s not your fault. Don’t make yourself feel awful about what happened.”

  “But I used you,” Echo argues. “That was a terrible thing to do.”

  “Look,” I say, “yesterday, that wasn’t how I’d been hoping our first time together would go, but the fact is, I care about you a lot. Maybe I am supposed to be near you for some ghost-involved reason, but even if that weren’t true, you’re the only person I would have wanted to end up in bed with. I feel like an ass for how things went down, but I promise I’ll make it up to you if you don’t dump me on the spot.”

  Echo’s eyebrows scrunch together. “Dump you? Why on earth would you think that?”

  For a few seconds, I just stare at her. I get that she’s harboring a lot of guilt for what happened, but does she really not blame me for any of it? Surely the idea of breaking up with me crossed her mind at least once. Is that naiveté, or does she really feel that completely responsible? For someone who’s never been allowed to make her own decisions before a few weeks ago, she’s certainly no stranger to accepting responsibility, I suppose. Even though none the ghost stuff was really her fault, blame was never in short supply. Realizing that makes me feel like the biggest tool in the world.

  “Malachi,” Echo says when I don’t respond, “I’m not breaking up with you. I do think I need to take a few steps back, though.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask warily.

  Echo looks down and shrugs. “I thought I was ready for all of this, but I’m just not.” She looks up and bites her bottom lip. “Not just you. Everything. Ghosts, my own apartment, the FBI, your grandma…I can’t handle everything coming at me at once. I care about you a lot, and I don’t want to screw this up even more than I already have, so…well, I think I need to deal with a few other things before I can really make an attempt at being someone’s girlfriend.”

  “That sounds an awful lot like you breaking up with me,” I say with a half-smile. The logic behind what she’s saying keeps me from panicking.

  Smiling a little, Echo says, “I know it does, but I think I just need some time to sort things out before we take things any further, or well, you know, rewind and try again.” She bites her lip again and looks at me worriedly. “Is that okay?”

  “Well, considering that I walked down here pretty well convinced you hated me and were about to drop me to the curb, I guess I can deal with a redo. It’s more than I deserve anyway.” Her shoulders drop in relief when I smile back at her. It’s certainly not what every guy wants to hear from his girlfriend, but in Echo’s case, I know she really needs this. To be honest, I do too. I wasn’t lying when I said I cared about her, but before our relationship goes any further, we both need some answers.

  “You said you need to deal with a few things,” I say. “Would Archer and Grandma Maddie’s message happen to be on that list?”

  Echo’s hand disappears from sight as she reaches for something on the bench. Her nervous energy makes a reappearance and I tense. “Actually,” she says, “I’m beginning to think those are one in the same.”

  “What?” Completely lost again, I can’t imagine what Peter Archer would have to do with my great grandmother.

  Instead of explaining, Echo lays a piece of paper flat on the table and smoothes it out with her hands several times before stopping with them still covering the majority of the surface. “I tried to fill in the parts I said so it makes sense.” Several of her fingers tap against the paper anxiously. “I tried to get as much information as I could but…well, you’ll understand better if you just read it.”

  Her hands slide back slowly, leaving the sheet of notebook paper on the table. Even without an explanation, I recognize Grandma Maddie’s handwriting immediately. Even if I hadn’t, her opening question would have been more than enough. I can almost hear her voice grouching at me for not having done as she asked yet.

  Why hasn’t Malachi gone back to the estate and retrieved what I left him yet?

  “I don’t know,” is Echo’s answer.

  Something tells me there was probably a little more to that explanation than what Echo chose to write down. She knows I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this, but I just hope she doesn’t take that to mean I don’t believe her. What’s happening to Echo is real. Knowing my role and what I’m supposed to be doing is a whole other deal altogether. Certain I won’t work everything out sitting in Starbucks, I keep reading.

  I understand Malachi is afraid, but he must go back. He won’t be able to protect you if he doesn’t.

  What? Whatever she left in the stairs closet will help me protect Echo? How? What is it? I pause and shake my head. Why would Grandma Maddie have something like that?

  The next bit looks like Echo tried to scratch it out with a pen, but I can make out the letters well enough to realize Grandma Maddie is more than aware of what happened yesterday, and her response is exactly what I would have expected.

  Also, none of this is your fault. This morning included.

  There’s something oddly comforting about getting more or less chewed out by her. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten in trouble with my great grandma, but she never held back when I deserved a tongue lashing. She always followed up a punishment with a hug, too. She’s been gone a long time, but I still miss her an awful lot.

  Going back to the paper, I read Echo’s next response.

  “What’s at the house? And why does Malachi need it to protect me? Are Kyran and I right that there’s something more between Malachi and I when it comes to the ghosts?” she asks.

  In my state, I’m prevented from talking about it in detail, but you are right about Malachi.

  Well, at least we were on the right track. It kinda freaks me out to have something like that confirmed, but it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it right now. I just wish I knew what this connection was and where it came from.

  “Who or what’s stopping you from explaining?” Echo asks next.

  The same beings that killed Archer, and if you want to prevent it from happening again, you must get Malachi back to the old estate. He will fail without what I left him.

  “How do you know about all of this?” Echo asks.

  Malachi and I have the same talent. My abilities are what led to me being recruited to work undercover during the war. I wasn’t alone.

  Whoa! What? Grandma Maddie protected someone like Echo during the war? Is that really a thing? Now there’s some kind of serial killer ghost or whatever that’s going around taking out people who try to help mediums like Echo? That concept is enough to put me over the edge, but I glance back at the paper hoping for more answers.

  “Madeline, can you tell me anything about what happened to Archer?”

  Only that it will happen again if you’re not careful.

  It takes me a moment to realize that’s the end. Just to be sure, I flip the paper over, hoping to find more. Nothing. Flipping it back, I let it fall to the tabletop. The second it settles, I zero in on Echo. “These ghost things killing people, do you have any idea what they are or how we keep them away from you?”

  Echo shakes her head slowly. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. I tried asking Holden, but he didn’t know either. He said he’d research it and let me know.”

  Falling back against the booth, I drag my hands down my face slowly. A million different thoughts race through my mind. Catching and holding one feels like trying to catch pollywogs in the creek. On the surface, it seems like only the barest of information, but the longer I roll around each detail, the more connections I make.

  “Echo,” I ask slowly, “I know you don’t remember much about meeting Archer, but…from what your mom said, it seeme
d like you two hit it off real fast…just like…”

  “Just like we did?” Echo whispers.

  My stomach sinks as I realize she’s seen the possible connection as well. “Could it be possible that Archer was…whatever I am?”

  Echo only shrugs and pulls her arms around her body more tightly.

  “Is that why they killed him?” I ask.

  The bob of Echo’s head is so slight I almost miss it. What she says next…I can’t not hear it, no matter how much I want to. She blows out a shaky breath before saying, “I think that’s why they killed your great grandma, too.”

  32: The Choice to Stay

  (Echo)

  They all wanted to come. I practically had to beat Holden off with a stick when Agent Morton picked me up at the apartment this morning. There was a small moment when I considered telling him I could drive myself, but I didn’t want to make the trip alone, and I honestly don’t know what condition I’ll be in after the hypnosis session. Dr. Rosemond promised I’d be perfectly fine. Forgive me if my trust level is riding pretty low at the moment.

  “You have all your wards in place, correct?” Dr. Rosemond asks for the third time.

  Not rolling my eyes at her is tough. “Yes, thank you, I do.” To reassure her—and maybe myself—I touch the headband, necklace, and bracelets Kyran’s aunt made me. I’ve got everything on today. There’s no way I want to risk Archer or any other ghost busting into my head while I’m under hypnosis. Who knows what kind of trouble that could cause?

  Glancing up, I look at Agent Morton wistfully through the glass separating us. I kind of wish he was in here with me, but Dr. Rosemond insisted on no distractions. Too bad the ghosts don’t listen. Archer is absent. I pretty much threatened to leave him in the deep, dark abyss of ghostliness if he interfered. I’m sure he’s not far away, but he at least listened and isn’t skulking around in a corner. There are three others who I guess couldn’t resist the show. I ignore them.