Page 1 of Possessed By Shadows

Prologue

Ghost hunting was not my chosen profession.

Standing outside a dilapidated house in the middle of the bayou was not my idea of Friday evening fun. A distance from the city in gator filled swamps on a chilly and overcast night, made me wonder about my brother’s sanity. His idea, even though Micah, my boyfriend, and I stood with him and a half-dozenprofessionalghost hunters.

“Are we being paid for this?” I asked Micah quietly. He shook his head. “Dammit.”

Sometimes Micah and I did ghost hunts with a group of tourists, who paid us to lead them into the scary darkness. We even had some basic equipment like thermal cameras and EVP devices. Not that we ever caught much. More often we’d see something—well, I’d see something and Micah would feel something—and we’d catch nothing on video. Sometimes something would show up that we couldn’t explain. Photo evidence that had everyone debating for months. Well, not Micah and me. We sort of knew the truth behind the rare glimpses of supernatural in our lives. We could both do with a little less of the unexplained, which was something we were working on.

Tonight, I was loaded for bear. Or a ghost-vampire-yeti of some kind. But not with equipment for detection, rather talismans of protection. Every charm or trinket my brother Lukas thought wouldsave mefrom the dark unknown he couldn’t see. Micah stood next to me, wary, tired, but determined to stay at my side.

We were both bundled up against the early January cold. Phones in hand. I had the thermal as well as a digital recorder. Micah had a camera and was to keep eyes on me at all times. I glanced his way, he was frowning.

“Cold?” I asked him, feeling like the wind was blowing right through my jacket even while the trees didn’t appear to move much. This deep in the bayou, having driven far outside the city and taken a boat to get to this middle of nowhere falling down house, I felt very alone.

Micah nodded, glanced at my brother who was standing in a circle of paranormal investigators, and said, “Ants on my skin. Made worse by goosebumps.” He often felt things long before I saw them. Though his awareness of the supernatural, or paranormal, or whatever the fuck it was, had increased of late. I suspected that was my fault, but tried to remain positive.

“Want some of my charms?”

He gave me a teasing smile. “I always want your charms.”

Which of course made me hot. “Stop being sexy while we’re stuck in the swamp.” He wasn’t doing anything at all to be sexy. Bundled up in a thick coat and even a pair of mittens he’d dug up somewhere, with a beanie pulled down over his shoulder-length chocolate brown hair, I couldn’t see much more than a pale gleam of the camera light on his face. The high cheekbones, delicate lips, and pale blue eyes all hidden in the shadows. I could spend hours counting the freckles across his cheeks and nose, loving them. He hated them.

Thankfully, we’d spent enough time together in the dark that I seemed to find comfort in the overlap of our souls. Or spiritual energy, which is what Sky called it. She said she could see the way it draped over us when we were together. A version of kindred spirits perhaps. Not that it mattered. Having Micah close, hearing his voice, and knowing he was mine, turned my slow libido into hyperdrive, and brought me peace, all at once. He didn’t look at me and think I was insane or broken.

Micah leaned in close, having to stand up on his tiptoes to kiss me. I lingered with the warmth of his lips on mine. Hard to believe we’d been together a few months. Life had become fairly normal. The New Orleans ghost tours we did had died down for the winter, leaving us with holiday shoppers and planning for the upcoming Mardi Gras and music festivals. We’d been expanding the online version of Micah’s shop, Simply Crafty. Building a strong e-commerce version as well as regular video tutorials, which meant a lot of shipping, product photos, and constant movement in the shop. Life had become… quiet, almost mundane, but steady.

Not that I was protesting.

Meanwhile Lukas seemed to be struggling.

“It will be okay,” Micah said.

I sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t let me vanish, okay?”

“Same?”

“Agreed,” I said. My eyes were on him, his on me.

“Alex,” Lukas called. I pried my gaze from Micah’s shadowed face to find my brother in the sprawl of overgrowth and ghost hunters. He’d decided to go from police homicide detective, to paranormal detective. I was not a fan. But he didn’t see the same sort of stuff I did, and it seemed to be a goal to either prove me right, or crazy. I wasn’t sure.

“Stay close to Micah. Keep to the back of the group. The house is big, but I want to keep us together for the most part. One team out here monitoring cameras. The rest inside in small groups.”

Alex looked at the team. They had set up a sort of tent-like thing filled with equipment that looked a lot like the setups we used for craft tutorials. All of them were fairly new to the ghost hunting thing, or so I’d been told. Lukas had been running this group a little over two months. Building up an online reputation with a handful ofspookyvideos. I don’t know if he was hoping to catch more with Micah and I around, or if he really wanted the charms-of-a-thousand-legends to work and keep everything away from me. So far, other than the cold and an eerie sense of being watched, which was a normal part of my life, everything felt ordinary.

“Sure. Do I have to wear the garlic all night? Or will there be a warning of oncoming vampires?” If there was a legend to prevent the supernatural that I could wear, Lukas had found it. I was going to need a shower before getting in bed tonight. Even a normal garlic fan was not going to enjoy the extended stink. “Was crushing the cloves necessary before I put it on?”

“Keep it on,” Lukas said. “All of it.”

“How will we know what works and what doesn’t?” If any of it worked at all.

“Keep it all on.”

I sighed. Micah stifled a small laugh, keeping close to my side.

“You’re the one who has to smell me.”

He shrugged, obviously not bothered. “Stop tugging on your hair or it will come out of the braids,” he said. The snug beanie I wore wasn’t going to help that, and it itched.