Obsession

Obsession

(Song & Shadow #3)

by

Annie Oldham

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Obsession

Copyright © 2017 Annie Oldham

Cover design by Renée Barratt

www.TheCoverCounts.com

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this book, purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, visit smashwords.com to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

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For my beautiful, selfless mother

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Contents

1—Full of Grief

2—Waking Up

3—Done with Nothing

4—No Assurances

5—Roiling

6—Tinted with Sorrow

7—Venom

8—Worst Kind of News

9—Empty

10—Missing

11—Betrayed

12—Second Guessing

13—Torture

14—A Fortress

15—Only in Dreams

16—Ugly

17—More Hollow Than Whole

18—Illusions

19—Repurposed

20—Cake

21—Some Kind of Demon

22—Judgment

23—Shadows

24—Together

25—Full

About Annie Oldham

Other Books by Annie Oldham

1

Full of Grief

Constance wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. The winter chill hung heavy in the air, and the cemetery was washed in gray as clouds threatened to choke out the remaining watery sunlight. Constance held herself tighter, hoping that if she squeezed just hard enough, she wouldn’t fall apart. And maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t cry again. She felt dried up, and wondered if she did shed another tear, if she might just shrivel up into nothing.

I know it’s not a lot of help right now, but eventually it gets easier. It’ll never go away, but it will be easier.

Constance startled at the sound of the voice and turned to see Seth standing a few paces behind her. His black curls stirred in the dusty wind. There was a haboob coming up—Constance could see the dust cloud looming over the tops of the mesquite trees—but Seth didn’t look in a hurry to leave. His hands were in his pockets, and his feet shifted as if he were unsure about whether to come any closer.

I lost my dad too, you know, he said. The wind snatched at his words, but Constance heard enough. When I was eight. I still miss him all the time, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.

She closed her eyes and felt another tear trace a path down her cheek. She had thought she was as arid as a desert. She was wrong.

You’re right. It doesn’t help now. She looked back to the gravestone glistening in the pale light. Paul Jerome. Beloved husband and father. Two weeks. It was only two weeks ago that she still had her father. This happened because of me. Because of what I am. And even as her voice trembled with tears, she couldn’t keep the bitterness out of the words.

Seth decided to cross the gap between them, and he eased one of his hands into one of hers that was pressed tightly against her ribs. She turned to look at him.

It’s not your fault. His eyes were bright, and his face was inches from her own. It’s Mr Ransom’s fault. You’re a good person, Con. An amazing person. You and your parents. It’s other people out there—other people who are greedy and manipulative and power hungry. It was the decisions he made that led to this, not anything to do with you. You were doing what’s right, do you understand?

But even though Constance understood the logic behind his words, she couldn’t feel the truth of them in her heart, not when her heart was so full of grief that there wasn’t room for anything else. She turned away from him, and his fingers slipped from hers, taking their warmth with them. She felt cold without him, and the sorrow overwhelmed her. She shivered again.

He ran a hand through his hair, but the wind tore it free from his fingers as the dust cloud descended upon them. Constance pressed her mouth closed in a tight line and turned from the dust flung by the wind. Seth turned with her, squinting his eyes from the grit in the air.

How can I show you? he murmured. Then he raised his voice to speak over the wind. How can I make you understand?

You can’t, she said, and her words caught on themselves, tripping over the sob in her throat. "Dad tried to tell me how dangerous this was, and I saw how worried he was every single day. The worry just lived in his eyes, and he tried to smile through it and support me and Mom. But it was always there. He almost died once before, did you know that? When he and my mom were first married. He went with her—he wanted so much to be able to protect her—but instead he almost died. And now he is dead. He was the only one that could make me understand. And now he’s gone."

Con. Seth’s voice was dark and urgent, and when she reluctantly turned to him again, he shielded the wind from her eyes and their faces were only a breath apart. She chanced a look into his blue eyes and saw the pain he felt for her. She took a shuddering breath, and both his hands came up to cup her cheeks and pull her face through the bare space toward him until their lips were touching.

Constance had always imagined her first kiss would be an explosion of sound and color and feeling—a hot wash of emotion so strong she would never want it to stop. But this. This was not what she was expecting.

She felt nothing.

The kiss lingered through the wind and the thunder crashing as if Seth could heal all her wounds with this single moment, and when he finally pulled away, his eyes held hers. She could see the instant when he realized what she felt. He sighed and tipped his forehead to rest against hers.

I’m here, Con. Whenever you need me.

Constance turned back to her father’s grave, and Seth let her go.

For whatever comes. Do you understand?

She nodded and heard him turn and walk away. All that was left of the kiss was dust on her lips. She stayed until the brown cloud had blown past, and the dark rain clouds billowed close behind them, the rain beginning to fall as they stalked across the sky. She turned away then and hurried back to her bike and pedaled home as the rain mixed with the tears on her cheeks.

2

Waking Up

The rest of January was a blur. Constance’s father had died. . . . no, her father had been killed on the eighth. It was now the beginning of February, and Constance couldn’t remember what she had done for the past few weeks in school. After she had her time to grieve—some prescribed amount that the school counselor deemed appropriate—she then went through the motions. She had gone to school, of course. She went through the routine just like the counselor suggested she do.

She woke up for school each morning.

She went to class.

She stopped at the bookshop to help her mother pack up the books and ship them to their buyers.

Jerome Rare and Used Books was closing its doors and all its inventory was being sent to the highest eBay bidder. And as the shelves emptied into bare skeletons and the red velvet curtain was always open because there was nothing to see in the back room but more skeletons, Constance couldn’t quite remember it as it had been when her father was behind the counter or the way it made her feel.

She didn’t notice any of it. And she did nothing when her mother sat and cried each night after she thought both of her children were fast asleep in their beds.

Constance couldn’t bring herself to care about the way her teachers cast worried looks at her whenever they returned graded work to their students. She sat three chairs away from Seth in calculus. For the first week after her father’s death, he had saved her a seat every time. When she purposefully sat three seats away for five days in a row, he finally stopped. When Mr Mason returned their homework assignments, Seth received better scores than she did. Constance’s meticulously groomed grades plummeted. And she didn’t notice.

She left behind her carefully guarded spark of newfound self-confidence to hide behind her hair again, scuffing her shoes down the linoleum floor and hunching her shoulders. She didn’t notice the change. But Greta did.

Con, this has got to stop, Greta said by their lockers, and Constance didn’t notice that Greta was trying to keep her voice calm but was failing and that this must have taken all the courage she could summon. I know you’re broken up. I am too. I loved your dad. But you can’t live this zombie life forever.

Greta had wanted to say this to Constance in private, but Constance hadn’t returned any phone calls or texts. So now this was being said at the only time their paths crossed these days, in the middle of the Milltown High School hallway. Luckily, the flow of students gave them a wide berth.

Of course the whole town had heard what happened to Paul Jerome in the cemetery that night, though the news didn’t report the particulars of the crime—what particulars could they have reported? Cause of death? Unknown. Suspects? None. Suicide? Unlikely. And whether or not the case seemed similar to the death of the previous principal, Harold Clark, no one said anything. The coverage had been aired on local television, and Veronica was so distraught that she hurled one of Kyle’s video game controllers at the TV and cracked the screen. They no longer watched TV although Kyle did persevere in playing video games with a fracture down the middle of his game. Constance hadn’t noticed.

Now the kids in school stared surreptitiously at Constance as they stepped past her in the hall. There had been a string of vandalism and strange goings-on in the cemetery last year, but this was far beyond all that. The police were clueless, and this was quickly going to become a cold case, just like the unsolved murder of Mr Clark. Milltown was no longer the idyllic, safe town it used to be. Constance turned from Greta without saying a word and went to sit through another class that she wouldn’t notice.

And Mr Ransom hadn’t shown his face since the night it had happened. Constance rarely thought about it as she was so absorbed in her grief, but Greta, Seline, and Seth all talked about it and found it odd. But then that first Monday in February, the silence broke and Mr Ransom had the gall to call her into his office. To offer his condolences, the note from the office secretary had said.

This Constance noticed.

She crushed the paper with such force that her fingernails bit into the skin of her palm. She flung the paper across the classroom—Mrs Bishop’s fingers freezing over the piano keys as the crumpled note came to rest against the toe of her shoe, and the choir slowly petered out—and then Constance stormed out and down the hall, and for the first time in her life, sloughed school.

Constance ran from the high school and down Main Street through downtown, her legs churning as she passed the pink awning and pink door of Powdered where Trudie stood behind the counter with her kingdom of doughnuts before her, past the paleta shop and the open area lush with winter grass where the farmer’s market was held. Her breath came out in frosty puffs in the February cold, and her numb limbs warmed with the physical exhaustion. Her legs didn’t stop pounding down the pavement until she was in front of the bookshop.

The gold lettering had been removed from the awning, and there was a sign in the window that said For Lease. The shop was completely empty; even the skeleton bookcases were gone. Constance put her hand to the glass, her fingers leaving marks on the cold window. She imagined Mr Ransom standing here in the dark that awful night, hiding in the shadows as he watched her father work, as he made the phone call to let Constance know what his intentions were, as he then used his spirit servants to terrify her father into coming with him to the cemetery.

That rattled something loose, and as Constance placed a hand on the glass that used to show the store hours, an ugly sob burst free and Constance sunk to her knees and cried.

She cried for an hour. And after an hour, Greta finally found her, sat down beside her, and wrapped her arms around her without saying a word. She just held Constance until she finally looked up. Constance knew her face was a blotchy, mottled mess. She knew her nose was drippy and her eyes were achy and red. She didn’t care. A hiccuped sob escaped, but her tears had slowed. She wiped a hand across her face.

Greta’s embrace loosened, and she leaned back against the bricks below the shop window. I’m going to miss this place, she whispered.

Constance tried a smile, but her lips were too unsure of it. And she hardly trusted her voice when she said,Me too.

The leather chair that used to be under this window, that was my favorite homework spot. And I miss the way your dad would come out from the back and his glasses would be slipping off his nose and he would try to get us to spill the gossip with him even though he knew we would never ever tell him anything. But he kept trying. . .

The words just faded into nothing, and Greta brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. She had been growing out her pixie cut ever since Constance had sent the poltergeist back to the Lower Plane. On the night that Constance’s father had . . . he had . . . .

I’m going to miss the smell of old paper, Constance said.

Greta smiled. I’ll miss the way your dad would get us paletas when it was hot. Especially that day the air conditioner broke.

I’ll miss the sound the bell made when someone walked in.

I’ll miss your dad’s laugh when helping a customer, Greta said, watching Constance closely.

I’ll miss reading any of the old books I wanted to.

Greta clutched her hand. It’s okay to say you miss him, Con.

But that would be admitting that he was really gone. Constance pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, feeling a fresh wave of grief overtake her, pressing on her heart and making it hard to breathe. She began to turn away, but Greta snatched her other hand and then held them tightly, not letting her turn away from life again. Constance wasn’t sure whether to love her or hate her for it.

What happened at school? Greta asked. Why did you take off?

Constance turned to her. Mr Ransom. Constance told her about the awful note.

"He wrote that? What a jerk!"

Constance laughed, and it wobbled in her throat. I know. Reason number fifty-three that proves he’s the dark necromancer.

Greta put her arm around Constance’s shoulder.

He was behind everything, you know.

What do you mean? Greta turned to face her now.

Mr Ransom. That night. Constance closed her eyes and shuddered. Waking up was painful, and hearing his words in her brain, the slipperiness of them, the cloying—Now that you’ve relieved Ms Charles of her spiritual companion, I just wanted to let you know that I’m standing outside your father’s bookshop—was even more painful. They were just words, but they still gave her nightmares. When he called. He knew what we had done about the poltergeist. He knew everything. I think the poltergeist was just a distraction to keep us away from what he was really doing. Her voice cracked and faded.

Greta coughed. Things are worse now. I don’t know if you know that.

Worse how?

More vandalism at the cemetery. Weird things that no one can explain.

Constance raised her eyebrows.

Greta shook her head quickly. Nothing major, but nothing the police have been able to stop. You know, because how do you explain that it’s a dark necromancer at work?

He took Mom out of commission.

Greta nodded. Yeah. He took both of you out of commission.

Constance felt the weight of it.

Greta leaned her head on Constance’s shoulder. I’ve missed you. It’s been a month and I feel like you’ve been gone.

Constance looked at her hands. Her fingers were long and tapering, and there were callouses on the palms. She flexed them. I have been. And she could finally admit it. She had been completely off the radar. One side of her mouth quirked up into a smile and she knew she was sorely in need of practice.

Seth kissed me. Then the smile disappeared as she remembered what the kiss felt like.

Greta saw the look and frowned. When was this?

Two weeks after Dad died.

Why did it take you so long to tell me? Greta’s voice was quiet and hurt.

Like you said. I’ve been gone. And, well, it wasn’t that great.

Seth Gossman is a bad kisser? You’re kidding me.

How would I know if he’s a good kisser or a bad one? I’ve never kissed anyone before.

"Oh no. Oh no. Don’t tell me you just stood there and took it? And it was nothing?" Greta made a nonchalant face and swept her hand to the side.

Greta, Dad had just died. Her heart hiccuped again, but the tears didn’t come.

I know. Greta put her hand on Constance’s. And I’m glad you’re finally surfacing. But I think you’d better talk to Seth.

"Why? We went to the dance in December and he said maybe two words to me afterward. And then I was an idiot and decided, Why yes, he should know that I’m a necromancer. What harm could it do? And then he didn’t even say two words to me after that. And then he kisses me and I haven’t seen him since. No thank you."

Greta laughed an enormous, rasping laugh—one that could fill whatever space she was occupying at the moment. And for a laugh to fill up the street—and probably most of the park across the street—took real skill. Constance was surprised at how much she had missed the sound and she hadn’t even realized it. Greta was free with her laugh, and it was infectious. Constance couldn’t help but smile, and this time it felt closer to genuine.

What’s so funny?

Oh, Con. I forget how absolutely clueless you are, and I mean that in the best possible way of course.

Of course. So what were you laughing at?

Con, Seth likes you. Really likes you.

Constance narrowed her eyes. He sure has a funny was of showing it—what with all the ignoring.

Greta patted Constance’s hand. Oh, I know. But trust me, he does. But he’s not going to keep putting himself out there. You’d better talk to him if you’re at all interested.

Why?

Greta rolled her eyes. "Because he’ll think you’re not interested."

Oh. Hmm. Constance had never thought about it that way. She suddenly noticed the concrete scratching at her palms, and she pushed herself up. Her right palm still hurt where her fingers had dug so hard crumpling the note, and sure enough, there were crescent shapes still imprinted in the skin from her fingernails. Her hips and back ached all over, like she had been asleep in a very uncomfortable position for a month and was just now waking up. Which, she supposed, she actually was. The fog that had held her in its numbing embrace was starting to trail away, and things felt clearer than they had in weeks.

I need to get home, she told Greta. And she did. She suddenly realized what she hadn’t noticed for the past month as she had led a parallel life to her family: that her mother had been up crying every night. Constance had been too far gone to do anything about it.

Greta stood and brushed off her pants. She pulled