Page 39

CHAPTER 38

“W hat are ye doing, lass?” Shayne asked as he appeared right next to her, startling a small scream out of her and making her drop her cellphone.

“What’s wrong?” Declean demanded as he appeared on the other side, scaring the living hell out of her.

“What’s all this screaming for, lass?” Connall asked as she banged into him.

“Stop doing that!” Marty snapped, placing a hand over her pounding heart as she struggled to calm her breathing. Honestly, they were going to give her a heart attack.

“Doing what?” Finn asked as he suddenly appeared, sitting in the black leather chair that the brothers seemed to favor.

“Scaring the hell out of me!” Marty snapped, taking a deep breath as she bent down and picked up her phone.

“Ye didn’t have to yell, lass,” Connall said, pouting as he dropped down on the couch.

Shayne let out a long-suffering sigh that left her torn between rolling her eyes and smiling. “She always was a violent little thing.”

“Aye,” Finn readily agreed, giving her a pointed look.

“Remember the beatings?” Declean asked conversationally as he sat on the couch near Finn.

“I doubt any of us will ever be able to forget the beatings,” Connall said in a harsh whisper that had the others nodding solemnly.

“Are you done yet?” Marty asked, refusing to be amused by this. She had something that she needed to do, and she couldn’t do it with an audience.

“Why?” Shayne asked, his eyes twinkling with amusement, “are ye gonna beat us?”

“You really are related to Tristan,” Marty muttered, shaking her head in disgust as she turned around and walked out of the room.

“What are we doing?” Declean asked as he appeared on her right side, startling another scream out of her and causing her to stumble.

“Anything that we can help with, lass?” Quinn asked, appearing to her left and catching her by the elbow and steadying her before she fell flat on her face just as the rather frightening screams started from what sounded like the kitchen.

Instead of answering him, because at that moment she was pretty sure that she’d lost the ability to talk, she blindly reached out and grabbed his hand. She squeezed the hell out of it while she watched a half-naked man with shaggy, dirty-blonde hair run out of the staircase wall, across the small hallway, and through the opposite wall.

“Get back here, ye little bastard!” Aidan shouted as he ran out of the wall, across the small hallway and through the opposite wall after the shaggy-haired man who wouldn’t stop screeching.

“Are ye hungry, lass?” Declean asked, giving her hand a gentle tug that had her automatically following him. A few seconds later, he pulled her back when the shaggy-haired man, still screeching, suddenly jumped out of the wall and ran back the way he came.

“We could get ye some bread or fruit,” Quinn offered.

She couldn’t do more than shake her head as she watched Aidan come running through the wall, looking really pissed as he ran across the hall and into the opposite wall.

“Ye really should eat, lass,” Declean said, giving her another nudge that had her once again walking towards the kitchen.

“Stop trying to touch me, you pervert!” the shaggy-haired man screeched as he once again made an appearance, but this time, she’d heard him coming and managed to stop on her own without having to be prompted. They watched as he ran back through the wall, and then as one, they turned their heads and watched as Aidan stumbled out of the wall after him.

“Will ye be needing some help with this one?” Quinn asked, sounding thoughtful.

Without sparing them a look, Aidan flipped him off as he took off after the shaggy-haired ghost who couldn’t seem to stop screeching. Quinn and Declean chuckled as they once again started to lead her towards the kitchen, but between the screeching, the men scaring the hell out of her by popping in and out of the room, and watching the two men run back and forth, she had the start of what promised to be a really bad headache.

“I’m going back to bed,” Marty announced, turning around and heading for the stairs, deciding that she could make her call upstairs before she crashed for the night.

“Are ye sure, lass?” Quinn asked, joining her on the stairs.

“Yes,” Marty said, pressing her fingertips against her temple that was already starting to throb.

Instead of disappearing like she’d expected him to, he continued to walk with her up the stairs. When he took a right turn at the top of the stairs to walk towards her bedroom, she said, “You don’t have to follow me.”

“I’m afraid that I do, lass,” Quinn answered with a careless shrug and a gesture for her to keep walking when she stopped to frown up at him.

“No, you don’t.”

“Aye, I do.”

“No, you really don’t,” Marty stressed, feeling her patience begin to fray.

He leaned down until his face was only a few inches away from hers and with a devilish grin, said, “Aye, I really do.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because it’s my watch,” Quinn said with a wink as he stepped back and gestured for her to continue.

“There really isn’t any point in arguing with you, is there?” Marty asked, too exhausted to put up much of an argument and not dumb enough to even try for two very important reasons.

They were dealing with spirits and as stubborn as she was, Marty had to admit that she was out of her league on this one. She didn’t know how to protect herself against them and doubted that it was even possible since their touch seemed to paralyze her with fear and dread. It was an experience that she never wanted to repeat again if she could help it.

The other reason that she didn’t bother to argue with Quinn was very simple, he was Tristan’s brother and obviously just as stubborn as her husband. Any other situation and she’d probably argue with him just to wipe that smug smile off his face, but today, she was exhausted, cranky and wanted nothing more than to crawl back in bed with her husband and sleep the rest of the night away.

“Ye won’t even know we’re here,” Quinn explained with a touch of arrogance that had her rethinking her decision not to argue.

“Fine,” Marty sighed, resigning herself to the fact that she just didn’t have the energy to do anything more than send her father a text message letting him know that they were both going to be out sick today. Once that was done, she turned her phone off and placed it on Tristan’s bureau as she walked by it. She’d wait until after they got some sleep before she worried about how she was going to drag Tristan to see a doctor for his shoulder.

It was probably going to take a lot of threatening, pleading, and manipulation on her part to get him to a doctor, but this time, he was definitely going. Last night, she’d been overwhelmed, stressed, and trying to get over the scare that Tristan gave her to put up much of a fight when he’d refused to go to the emergency room. His arm and shoulder were covered with bruises, swollen and obviously causing him a great deal of pain. He needed to go to the doctor and if she had to, she would drag his stubborn ass all the way there. First, she really needed some sleep before she dropped dead from exhaustion.

She nearly wept with relief when she pulled back the covers and crawled in bed with Tristan, who was still sound asleep. The half-hour of sleep she’d managed to get a few hours ago hadn’t been enough to wipe away a month’s worth of exhaustion. A day of rest should take care of that problem, she’d decided an hour ago when she’d forced herself to get up and go hunt down her cellphone so that she could call in sick.

Tristan wasn’t going to be happy and he’d probably bitch and glare at her when he woke up, but she didn’t care. He was just as exhausted as she was, if not more. He needed some rest and if this was the only way to make sure that he got it, then-

Why was the bed so hot? It felt like she’d crawled into a sauna. In a matter of seconds, she was sweating and shoving the covers away.

“Is everything alright, lass?” Quinn asked, stepping away from the wall, disappearing a split second later and reappearing by the bed before she could tell him that everything was fine, but one look at Tristan’s still body had her questioning that assumption.

“Tristan?”

When he didn’t open his eyes or show any sign that he’d heard her, Marty placed her hand on his good arm to give him a little shake, but the instant that she touched him, she knew that she’d made a mistake giving in last night.

“Tristan?” she said, trying not to panic as she shook him. “Tristan?”

“Lad?” Quinn grabbed Tristan by his good shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. “Ah, shit…”

“I-I need my phone,” Marty said, swallowing back the panic as her eyes locked on the large, dark purple bruises covering his left shoulder and half of his arm. That alone would have been enough to terrify her, but the swollen, angry, red, almost purple skin that surrounded the bruises was the real reason that she was suddenly terrified beyond words.

She was by no means an expert on injuries, but thanks to the summer first-aid courses that Tom ran every year, she knew enough to know that Tristan’s injury was definitely infected. They needed to get him to the hospital so that a doctor could have a look at his shoulder and fix it so that she could kill Tristan for scaring the hell out of her.

“I’m verra sorry, lass,” Quinn sighed with a small shake of his head as he stepped back.

“You’re not the one that hurt him,” Marty pointed out as she pressed the back of her hand against Tristan’s damp forehead.

“That’s not what I’m sorry for.”

“Could you get my phone, please?” He was definitely burning up. Maybe she should grab some ice packs and try to cool him down while they waited for help. She moved off the bed to go grab as much ice as she could carry when she remembered that she’d forgotten to make more earlier after she’d used up all the ice.

Shit .

Wait, no this wasn’t a problem, Marty assured herself as she headed for the door. Beth always kept a couple of bags of ice in the chest freezer just in case they lost power. Hopefully, Tom was home and could bring the ice over because she didn’t like the idea of having to leave Tristan’s side right now. Before she did anything else, she still needed to call 911, Marty realized when she saw that her phone still sitting on top of the bureau.

“Lass,” Quinn said softly as he appeared in front of her. “There’s nothing that ye can do to stop this.”

“Of course, there is,” Marty mumbled, only half listening as she reached around him to grab her phone as she debated whether she would be better off calling Tom first and-

-saw the drops of blood on Tristan’s pillow.

“There’s nothing to do now but wait for the curse to finish.”