Under My Skin Read Online Free PDF Page A

was starting to get there.
    “I saw…” She blinked at me, looking as if she’d just come out of a dark room into sunlight. “Are there people here?” she blurted.
    “Carla, it’s just me here. Now what’s up? Come on, come in, and let me get you some coffee. Or at least some water.”
    She came in slowly, still glancing around nervously. “Juliet, I saw two people in your attic window. A young girl. She was pretty. She looked familiar, too. And then…” She shook her head, took off her floppy hat.
    “And then?”
    “A man behind her. A man who looked, well, he looked horrible. Cruel, I mean. Like a snake, coiled and ready to strike.”
    “Huh,” I said, noncommittally. But inside my heart was pounding wildly. That’s a lot of energy for a spirit to manifest. To let a person like Carla, without a sensitive bone in her body, see your form isn’t easy to do. So if Lanie was making her presence known, she was committed to her request of me. And if was doing it, he was pissed.
    After managing to convince Carla that I was okay and that Montgomery House was not going to go all Amityville on my ass, I shooed her along. Then I called the only person who would be able to handle this scenario. She was my fraternal twin, she’d listen and not judge.
    The air was cool and the light dim out on my back patio. I sat under a lilac that was on the verge of dying for the season. Fall was nipping at our heels.
    “What do you mean she wants to walk?”
    I sighed. “Sorry. Old saying of mine. She wants to walk around in me. She wants to inhabit me to reconnect with Elijah and usher him out of this life…into the next,” I said softly.
    There was a great pause and I could hear my sister’s big-big heart reacting. She sighed mightily, and it sounded like she might cry. “Oh, Juliet, that is so romantic.”
    “I know.”
    “And sad,” she sighed wistfully.
    “I know!”
    “Do you think she’s all evil and whatnot?” Minnie asked.
    “Not at all. I think that the spirit of pushed her that day. I think part, if not all, of her spirit is stuck here. I think me taking her on will accomplish two things, solace and love and help for Elijah and safety for her. With some closure for garnish.” I sipped my coffee and glanced up to the attic window. Nothing. No one. No sign of the lovely Lanie or the evil Montgomery.
    “Three women,” my sister tsked. She sounded so small and tinny over the phone line. “What can you do to get rid of that bastard?”
    “I’ll figure it out. He’s picking on the wrong human. But for now, I want to focus on her. What do you think, Minuet?”
    She snorted. She both loved and hated when I called her by her full name. Juliet and Minuet. Everyone assumed she was a Minnie as in mouse, when in fact we were rhyming twins after all.
    “I think I should punch you in the forehead for calling me that.”
    “It’s your name.” I grinned. My heart felt lighter just talking to her.
    In the back of my mind I recalled my dream of Elijah. His hands on me. His lips on my lips. The perfect sense of love and peace I felt when he held me—Lanie’s feelings. She deserved so much better than to die and then linger in a dirty old basement under the hand of a vicious killer. And I had no doubt at all that he was the killer now. I trusted my instinct one hundred percent.
    “It’s my name,” she said, breaking me out of my mind’s wandering. “But it is supposed to be super top secret.”
    “Who’s here to hear me, Minuet?” I snickered.
    “Stop!”
    “Seriously.” The levity had fled, leaving me worried again. “What do you think I should do, Min?”
    “If you feel no oogie feelings off Lanie, if you think she’s safe, I say go for it. Let her walk. It’s what I would want for me if I were dead and had access to someone like you. Someone who could give me that chance.”
    “I know,” I said. “Me, too.”

Chapter Five
     
    Old Chadwick Montgomery gave it his best shot on my third night