Dark Traveler

  Contents

  Series List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Wrong Turn (Excerpt)

  Let’s Stay In Touch

  About the Author

  Dark Traveler

  Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers #9

  Copyright © 2017 Catie Rhodes.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by: Long Roads and Dark Ends Press

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover artwork by Book Cover Corner

  Content Editing by Word Webber Press

  Copy Editing by Julie Glover

  Proofreading by Deborah Digrispino

  ISBN Ebook: 978-1-947462-16-8

  ISBN Print: 978-1-947462-01-4

  First Printing, 2017

  Rhodes, Catie.

  Dark Traveler/ Catie Rhodes. — 1st ed.

  Visit the author website: www.catierhodes.com

  Series List

  Forever Road (Book #1)

  Black Opal (Book #2)

  Rocks & Gravel (Book #3)

  Rest Stop (Book #4)

  Forbidden Highway (Book #5)

  Rear View: Prequel (Book #6)

  Crossroads (Book #7)

  Dead End (Book #8)

  Dark Traveler (Book #9)

  Wrong Turn (Book #10)

  Last Exit (Book #11)

  Dark Traveler

  Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers #9

  Catie Rhodes

  1

  The dead lady whispered in my ear, “Tell him my wedding band is in the cookie jar on top of the refrigerator, but don’t tell him his father killed me.”

  I broke my connection with the spirit and gave the cowboy across from me what I hoped was a mysterious smile. “Your mother says her ring is in the cookie jar on top of the refrigerator. And that she loves you.”

  “S-s-seriously? I been looking for that thing for the better part of a year now.” The cowboy was young, early twenties at most. Lean, hard body in tight jeans. Sleeves of his western cut shirt rolled up to reveal tanned, muscled forearms. He’d have been cute if it hadn’t been for his buck teeth. Less than two years ago, I’d have come on to him just to see what happened. But I’d changed since then. The cowboy leaned a little closer. “Lemme axe you something. Was that real? All them shadows moving behind you? The way the room got cold?”

  I pushed away the defensiveness I felt when they asked this question. They meant no harm. They were just responding to something they didn’t understand. “I didn’t see the shadows since they were behind me, so I don’t know if they’re real or not. As for your mother’s spirit? Sure. She was real. Redhead, right? Pretty eyes?” I didn’t mention the way the side of her head was dented or the gash on her face.

  The cowboy’s face paled beneath the smooth, tanned skin. “Yep. Died in a car wreck eighteen months ago. Somebody ran her off the road.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and a shiver rolled through me. I itched to tell him his father had something to do with it but knew I wouldn’t. It wasn’t my business. We never interfered with townies. It was the unspoken rule of Sanctuary, the traveling community of grifters and magic practitioners I helped lead. Instead, I’d close the transaction and let him go.

  “Sir, are you satisfied that I answered what you came in here to find out?” I pushed the silver jar toward him.

  He dug in his pocket but stopped short of getting out his wallet.

  My stomach hardened. I’d had a few people try to cheat me. Here, surrounded by friends and family, all fiercely loyal, that kind of thing wouldn’t fly. But the fights were nasty.

  The cowboy cleared his throat. “I know the price you gave was just to contact my mother and find out where the ring was, but can you tell me if asking Harley to marry me is the right thing?” Those buck teeth made him look like a brown rabbit.

  “Sir, I could take your money and tell you something, but I don’t have the gift of precognition.” I glanced behind me as though my great-uncle Cecil or his wife, Shelly, were about to rush out of the shadows and scold me for turning down money. That didn’t happen. They were both busy with their own jobs.

  The cowboy, eyes downcast, took out his wallet and peeled off the agreed upon amount, plus one dollar, and dropped it into the jar. The last of the big tippers.

  I bit back a smile, thanked him, and followed him out, closing the flap of my tent and hanging up a "Be right back" sign. Summoning his mother’s spirit had taken a bite out of my energy. She’d been a sad spirit, and she hadn’t wanted to cross the veil. I needed a spike in my blood sugar if I wanted to last the rest of the evening. The freaks came out on Saturday night, which meant a chance to earn big money.

  People moved past my tent, most barely giving me a glance. Finn, my cousin, called them sheeple. The rest of my family, still new enough to me to seem mysterious and exotic, called them townies. I’d resisted the classification but had gotten where I classified people within a few minutes of meeting them. Thrill seeker. Wannabe mystic. On the grift. Too stupid to live. On a Saturday night in the rural part of the Texas Hill Country, an hour minimum from any large city, Summervale Carnival was the best show for miles.

  I stepped into the throng, determined to eat and feel more human. Hot, dry July wind ruffled my hair, drying the sweat on my face and powdering it with dust. A chaser of rancid grease and burnt sugar hit my nose. My appetite shrank. I lit a cigarette and strolled, coaxing myself to force down some kind of sustenance. Anything other than carnival food sounded good.

  Sometime in my few months of traveling with the carnival, the honeymoon had ended. But Cecil had contracted Sanctuary to work the Summervale Carnival through Labor Day. We had our own little area in a hidden corner people seemed to find no matter how out of the way it was.

  In addition to the spirit work, I sold spells that worked so well they scared the smart-ass out of the people who bought them. But money wasn’t the only reason to be out here.

  As long as Oscar Rivera’s soul remained, he constituted a threat not only to me and my family, but to the world in general. Oscar Rivera, known as the Coachman, had been a nasty man and a nastier ghost. Neither my family nor I would be truly safe until I banished Oscar from the living plane. Otherwise, he’d eventually find a way to get revenge for the way I’d stomped his ass a few months earlier.

  The search brought us to the Texas Hill Country because, in a vision, I’d seen Oscar hide his soul in what looked like a cavern. This part of Texas was known for its underground caverns. My best friend, Hannah Kessler, and I had been scouring newspaper archives and stories of old murders, trying to f
ind a trace of Oscar during his human life. Our luck hadn’t hit yet, but I held out hope it would.

  I stopped walking, letting people stream around me, and sucked in a deep breath of the dry Hill Country air. I tilted my head upward to stare at the sky. So huge, so many stars. Unfettered by the branches of tall pines we had in East Texas, the sky here opened up and stretched out into eternity. The summer heat was as unforgiving as a brimstone-preaching evangelist. But at night, like now, the stars seemed closer and sharper, like I could reach out and cut my finger on them. The energy flowed from them into me.

  Tired as I was of Summervale Carnival, I wasn’t tired of the Hill Country. This place grabbed me and held on tight. It had a different feel than East Texas, sort of an Old West vibe. The sight of actual cowboys on their way to work at nearby ranches captivated me. Germans had been the ones to settle much of this county, and their influence still colored the style of buildings and the local restaurants. And the country itself. Breathtaking. The land stretched out into hills and valleys covered by clumps of hairy looking grass and squat, gnarled trees.

  My stomach rumbled. Accepting the inevitable, I stopped at a booth selling tropical punches made out of “100% real fruit.” The owners sold moonshine out of the back of the booth. They’d said it came from a recipe in the family for three hundred years.

  “Ms. Peri Jean.” The female half of the couple who owned the booth passed me a cup of punch with a slice of pineapple garnishing the cup’s edge. I dug for my money. She raised her chin. “Nope. On the house. That spell you sold us to increase our business really worked.”

  I nodded my thanks and cut back into the crowd, guzzling the drink. My tent and maybe more customers awaited. Before long, I reached the row of tents belonging to the traveling community of Sanctuary. Made of a heavy vinyl-coated material, the tents rattled and flapped in the hot wind.

  A shadowy figure leaned out from the edge of one of the tents as though taking a peek at me. That cowboy’s mother’s ghost. I groaned.

  Some of the spirits I contacted for money weren’t so eager to go back where they came from. I had learned to deal with them in a businesslike way and to act confident.

  Spirit, be gone. I drew on my magic and gave it a hard push. The spirit disappeared. I rejoined the throng of drunk townies, wild-eyed thrill seekers, and bored parents walking the dirt path through the makeshift carnival and walked past my family’s row of tents.

  I stopped at the sound of Dillon’s husky smoker voice ringing out of the first tent. The sign outside read “Stop smoking with HYPNOSIS! $75 per person.” A peek inside showed me she had a full house.

  A Sanctuary member stood just inside the entrance taking a wad of money from a woman whose wizened skin made her look like an advertisement for quitting smoking. The Sanctuary woman, on the run from an abusive husband, raised her brows in question. I smiled, backed out of the tent, and peeked into the next one.

  My cousin Jadine sat staring into a crystal ball. Inside the ball, a mist of smoke moved around. The sign next to Jadine read “See into the future. Ask Mistress Jade for a reading.”

  “Peri Jean, I need to talk to you.” Jadine raised her head and stared in my general direction. Her accuracy still amazed me, especially since she was blind.

  “How’d you know it was me?” I stepped the rest of the way into the tent.

  “Your soap. And you coughed a couple of times.” Jadine took her hands off the crystal ball, and the mist stopped moving inside it.

  “I think you like catching people off guard.” I moved close enough to give her a playful nudge but didn’t sit at her table. My butt was tired. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell anybody this.” Something in her voice raised my drama antennae.

  I’d sounded that way too many times not to recognize it when I heard it another woman’s voice. “What is it?”

  “Brad’s asked me to marry him.” A little smile hovered on her lips.

  I swallowed my first response, which was incredulity. Brad Whitebyrd loved playing the field, loved thinking he was a ladies man. Had Jadine stolen his heart? I counted how many times he’d visited camp, even going as far as to work while he was among us. His actually doing work convinced me. “What’d you say?”

  “That he’d have to ask Papaw. What do you think Papaw’d say if Brad asked for my hand?” I thought it over. Cecil would be brokenhearted that the only child he’d raised to adulthood thought herself ready for marriage. His heartbreak would come out in anger and admonitions.

  I had my own misgivings. Jadine was only twenty-one. She really ought to date a bunch of guys and make a more informed choice.

  But what did I know? I’d married young, divorced quickly, dated a bunch of guys, and still spent every night alone, the man I loved completely cut off from me. By choice.

  “Peri Jean? Are you saying nothing because I ought to tell Brad no?” She clenched her hands in the lap of her brown, flowered dress.

  “Just thinking.” I came close enough to put my hand on her shoulder. “You’re old enough to do what you want, no matter what I or anybody else thinks.”

  She grinned, and I thought I knew why Brad Whitebyrd would swear off bachelorhood for Jadine. She was gorgeous. “So you think Papaw won’t get angry?”

  “Oh, I didn’t say that. He’ll scream. He’ll cry. He’ll tell you not to do it.” I giggled, and Jadine joined me. “But once he gets over it, he’ll welcome Brad into the family. He’s a pretty accomplished energy witch. Cecil will want him in Sanctuary after he thinks about it.”

  “I can see us being happy together.” The look of hope on her young, untested face made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  I’d have never told her she was wrong. Sometimes you just know when somebody’s the right one. I’d leave the persuasive speeches to Cecil and Shelly. Jadine’s adoptive parents, especially her mother, would probably drive her crazy. Shelly viewed her daughter as a princess and thought she’d marry a prince. Brad Whitebyrd was more like a spoiled frat boy.

  “Will you go with Brad to talk to Papaw?” Jadine twisted in her chair. I knew this request came from Brad.

  “Nope. If Brad’s big enough to get married, he’s big enough to do the hard stuff on his own.” I leaned down and slowly pulled my cousin into a hug. She squeezed tight and let go of me.

  “There’s something else. I had a vision, a real one.” Jadine plucked at the rayon of her dress.

  My breath caught in my throat. This might be the break I needed, the thing that would make all these weeks with Summervale Carnival worth the effort.

  “Something with Oscar Rivera?” I willed her to say yes. The worry about what I was going to do when I found his soul and could dispatch him was eating me up worse than just finding him and fighting him.

  She shook her head, frowning. “It was a man asking about us, like he was looking for us. He was in San Antonio at that RV park where we stayed.”

  I quickly calculated. Our stay in the city of San Antonio had been two weeks ago. “What did he want with us?”

  “I don’t know. But he had a snake for a necklace.” She made a face.

  My guts twisted as I considered all the people or things that might wear a snake for a necklace and might be looking for me. Anybody from Sol, my contact across the veil, to a topside supernatural overlord and slave trader I’d nicknamed Mohawk. I turned my attention back to Jadine. “Tell me more about this man.”

  She shook her head so hard, her blond waves whipped back and forth. “That’s it. Then the vision flashed to you. You had a hole right here.” She tapped herself on a spot above and between both eyes. “Bright light was streaming out of it.” Her breath came faster. “Those runes—the Coachman’s runes—were floating around you, and they were glowing.” She gulped.

  I took a step away from her, freaked out by what she’d seen and unable to make sense of it. Sometimes Jadine’s visions were symbolic. This one would take some thinking.

  “I
did a search on my phone for the part about the light coming out of your head.” She gave me a sly little smile. I wanted to thump her. Brad Whitebyrd had probably taught her how to talk to her phone and make it talk back.

  “Find anything interesting?” I did all I could to keep the amusement out of my voice.

  “I found stuff about an evil eye and stuff about a third eye.” Jadine shrugged. That was the extent of her knowledge, which was more than she’d have been able to access on a smartphone a few years ago.

  “Okay. Thank you for letting me know. If you think that man is getting any closer, or if you somehow sense him here, come get me. Immediately.” Feeling eyes on my back, I glanced at the tent’s flap, only to see the shadow pull back quickly, as though to avoid detection. That was it. I’d banish this damn spirit as soon as I got away from Jadine. I turned to go. “Good luck with Cecil and Shelly.”

  Jadine blew me a kiss and went back to her crystal ball.

  Outside I disconnected from the noise and stench and searched for the shadow. At first, I felt nothing, but that prickling feeling of someone watching me soon returned. I did a slow circle until I spotted the shadow. It hovered right at the end of my family’s row of tents. I walked toward it.

  With each step, my black opal necklace sent shocks of heat into my skin. The necklace, a gift from an ex-boyfriend’s mother, magnified my natural gifts and warned me of nearby supernatural activity. The stronger the magic, the sharper the black opal’s warnings became. The level of heat the gem was generating made no sense for an everyday ghost.

  The shadow and I watched each other for several seconds. With no warning, it flew right at me, smacked into me, and knocked me off balance. Several people who’d been too close shouted as I slammed into them. I hit the dirt with a grunt and got up mad.