A Ghost of a Chance, Cherie Claire [a court of thorns and roses ebook free .txt] 📗

I hear the voices before I see them, particularly Winnie insisting someone take me to a hospital. I suddenly remember the line of doctors at the Cajundome in Lafayette, checking vital signs, poking me as they looked for infections and god knew what, probing me with needles to prevent new ones. After two days on a roof you’d have thought that they would have let me rest, showed me to a comfy bed and a hot meal, but we stood in line for two hours filling out forms and getting poked.

I bolt upright and practically shout, “I’m fine.”

Winnie rushes over and takes me in from head to foot like a mom. I now realize I’m lying on a couch in the cave office. How did I get here?

“How do you feel?” Winnie asks.

“Like running a marathon,” I answer weakly.

A sliver of a smile emerges on its own but Winnie’s in mom mode, touching my head for fever, checking out the back of my head where someone has placed a gauze.

“You hit the back of your head,” Winnie tells me. “But you must have bit the inside of your cheek when you fell because there was blood on your face.”

I explore the area around my mouth, hoping it’s not that bad, but it feels soft and clean. Bless her heart, that Winnie. She cleaned me up.

“What happened to the girl?”

Everyone stops for a moment, gazing at me like they’re afraid I might have dislodged something inside my brain. It dawns on me that the schoolgirl might have been my imagination again — or worse. And now everyone is concerned I might have lost my mind.

“What girl?” Charlene asks from behind Winnie.

I lean over and spot Charlene, ashen face, hands clutched tightly in front of her, and gather that she’s worried I will sue them, put them out of business before they have time to adequately start their new adventure.

Or maybe she knows something.

Before I have time to inquire, a paramedic arrives at my side, carrying all sorts of torture. It’s more gauze, antiseptic and what looks like some Acetaminophen but there’s a big needle in the pile.

“I’m fine,” I reiterate, never taking my eyes off that needle.

He follows my gaze and to his credit reads my mind instantly. “When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

I can’t help but laugh at this. Ten a.m. Wednesday, September 1, 2005. “Within the last few months,” I answer.

“Are you sure?” He looks at me sternly. Must be a dad. Do they go to school for this or something? “Because most people can’t remember. And it’s important that you have one.”

I smile like a good student. “Trust me. It was within six months.”

He relaxes and starts bandaging me up and it’s here that I catch his name on his right breast pocket. Peter Parker. Really? I start to giggle which turns into a snort and then suddenly gag on the blood that must have been waiting inside my throat. It tastes nasty but Winnie and Charlene are looking at me with concern so I don’t want to spit it out and have them faint at my feet. I swallow the nastiness and grimace, which makes Spiderman suddenly concerned.

Wow, blue eyes, I think as he turns his attention away from my wound and into my face. Maybe I’m not dead to men as I thought. Reece, my gorgeous Cajun landlord, comes to mind and that childish grin keeps on keeping on.

“You okay?” he asks and I nod like a teenager.

“Is your name really Peter Parker?” I am a teenager.

He gives me a smile he must bestow upon half the population who routinely ask that question, the one that says “Yes it’s my name and I know, I know” but what he’s really thinking is “Get over it, why don’t you.”

“It’s a family name,” he says politely, and I suddenly feel stupid. People in glass houses, you know? Viola Valentine is no walk in the park.

“My last name is Valentine,” I tell him, hoping this will bond us. “I got a lot of grief in school, especially because I never had a date.”

“I doubt that.”

He’s not flirting with me — believe me I know because I’ve had a lifetime of people not flirting with me — but it’s sweet of him to say. I smile politely, kicking myself for laughing at his name. He’s cute, but I now realize as I gaze into a head full of thick black hair and a face devoid of life’s harsh lessons that he’s about five years younger than me.

“She needs to go to the ER,” Winnie says from somewhere, bringing me back to the pounding in my head. Amazing how blue eyes and a cute ass (Okay, he turned at one point and I looked; I’m not dead, thank you Jesus!) can take your mind off the pain. But it’s there, dull and consistent, and I’m ready for drugs, not a hospital. A strong martini might do the trick.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” I tell Winnie.

“You blacked out,” she insists. “Poor Bud and Joe had to carry you up the hill unconscious. Viola, it could be something worse.”

I stand up to test my sea legs and find it’s a throbbing headache but nothing else. I teeter a bit, but I’m fine. Instinctively, I know there is nothing worse going on in my head. Well, physically that is.

“Look,” I proclaim to everyone in the small room that appears to be the office off the gift shop. “I’m fine.”

Winnie places hands firmly on her tiny waist and gives me a stare. For a petite woman, she packs a force. “You were talking about some girl down there.”

At this point, Spiderman gives me a questioning look and starts to ask, but Charlene jumps in the mix, gently pushing Winnie and Peter out of the room. “Let me talk to Viola for a minute, please you all?”

“I need to check her blood pressure,” Peter insists and Winnie starts mentioning hospital again, but Charlene gently nudges them toward the door, convincing them in her sweet Southern accent that she will only be a moment.

“A little girl talk, that’s all,” she concludes as Winnie and Peter slide into the gift shop and Charlene closes the door.

I don’t even give her time to speak. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

She pauses, which makes me worry I may be wrong and I’m indeed insane from post traumatic stress. But Charlene nods and I find myself exhaling.

“What in the world…?”

Charlene looks around even though we’re alone. She pulls up the stool Peter was using and scoots up close. I can sense she doesn’t know what to say or how to explain this, pulling her hands through her hair nervously and causing a bit of it to stand up straight on top. I want to smooth it down, but she suddenly finds her voice.

“I’ve heard screaming in there. In fact, pretty much every time I go past that entrance.”

“It’s where the spring is, isn’t it?”

Charlene nods.

“Have you ever been down there?”

I can tell she has and it was an experience she regrets. I sympathize. “Once, I took a strong lantern and ventured down about a quarter mile. I found the spring, which is quite lovely and pure. I took some water in a jug to have it tested and headed home. And that’s when I saw her.”

I sit up eagerly, which makes my head pound but I don’t care. These are the best words I’ve heard someone speak in days. If they were food, I would be devouring them like dessert.

“I can’t believe you saw her,” I manage without chocking up. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

“You’re not crazy, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I lean back in my chair and exhale again, wishing I had taken that Tylenol before Peter was rushed out the room.

“Was she a schoolgirl? Dressed in