15 Amityville Horrible by Kelley Armstrong Read Free Book Online

gasped as he slid into me. “Very welcome..

Seven
     
    I stretched out in bed, Jeremy warm against my back, sheets tangled around us. I idly pulled my knee up and fingered the protection rune tattooed on my ankle.
    “Yes, it does appear to be defective,” Jeremy said. “The artist should give you your money back.”
    I laughed softly and flipped over, curling up under his arm. “If it brought you to me in that basement, then it’s working just fine.”
    “Actually, you left a scent trail.”
    “Ah. Right. But if I hadn’t, you’d still have found me.”
    “Perhaps. The tattoo, however, is only tangentially related to that.”
    Both came from the same place—his kitsune blood—but they were separate powers. Powers he’d never comfortably rely on, having spent most of his life not knowing where they came from, only that he was different from other werewolves. Uncomfortably different.
    He rose on his elbow and looked down at my foot.
    “It works just fine,” I said. “The runes add protection; they don’t protect absolutely. Nothing can. Whatever I saw in the basement didn’t hurt me, just scared the crap out of me, and that only bothers me because it hasn’t happened in a very long time. I think I’m long past the point where a ghost can send me shrieking into the night and then…” I shrugged. “It happens. It seems there’s always something new lurking around the corner.”
    I glanced up at him as he settled back on the bed. “Did Elena say she’d have time to check the inn?”
    Elena was a Pack werewolf, the Alpha-elect, to succeed when Jeremy stepped down. She was mated to his foster son, Clayton. Along with their five-year-old twins, they lived at Stonehaven with Jeremy.
    Elena was a freelance journalist, with access to online media searches I didn’t have. If there was a story on my dead girls, she’d have found it.
    “She texted back while you were dozing,” he said. “There’s nothing.”
    Now it was my turn to rise, hair tickling as it fell over my shoulder. “Nothing?”
    He pushed the hair back. “No murders at the inn. No hauntings at the inn. No crimes matching that description in Amityville or the surrounding area. Which means you were not seeing a residual.”
    “So I was hallucinating.”
    He met my gaze. “No, you were seeing ghosts. Real ghosts.”
    “But how? Why? What reason would ghosts have—”
    He leaned down and cut me off with a kiss. “Questions for another time, though I strongly suspect I already know the answer.”
    “Which is?”
    “They were doing what ghosts always do. Trying to make contact. With added drama to get your attention. They’ve piqued your interest. Now, when they come with their message, you’ll be so curious that you’ll listen.”
    That sounded good, but it left too much unexplained. Jeremy hadn’t been there; he didn’t know how real it seemed, trapped in that room with their terror. Still, it was a possible explanation, one I’d accept for now.
     
    …
     
    I stood in the Amityville front yard looking up at the house. It really was a ringer for the famous one. I wondered how much of that was original and how much had been cosmetically altered. That may seem like a lot of wasted money, for a single episode, but it would still be a damned sight cheaper than the expenses incurred by a scripted show. Afterwards, they could likely sell it for a profit. All the creeptastic allure of living in the Amityville Horror home, without that icky tragedy.
     
    I met the cast—the “real” folks who’d be joining us—briefly. Very briefly. As I was saying my hellos, Mike waved from the front stoop. It was time for my closeup. Only…not so close. I was about to detail that tragedy from the second-story porch. It was a tricky shot, but Mike had insisted.
    So I was led through, my first time setting foot inside. It looked like a typical family home. Nothing the least bit spooky. That was, I suppose, the point. Look at this house. So nice, so