Rush Read Online Free

and
pot, but I sat up a little straighter as some of the dreamy relaxation left me.
    “Why?” I frowned. “What do they want?”
    “I’m not sure. Perhaps you should talk
to your circle about it.”
    “I’ll think about that.” My circle was a
group of people with whom I performed occult work—rituals, divinations, that
kind of thing. I wasn’t sure I wanted them in on the matter, given my plan to
seduce Caroline. They wouldn’t approve.
    “Did you ever wonder,” Fred remarked, “why
Brad and Marie chose to move down here, knowing your stepbrother was enrolled
at Central Willamette State?”
    “Nope,” I said flatly. “Marie inherited
some property. That’s why they came here.”
    “Is it? She could have sold the farm.
Could have made a great deal of money on it, in fact, given the way property
values are going back up around here.”
    “You into real estate, Fred? That’s a
funny hobby for a ghost.”
    “Any hobby is a funny hobby for a ghost.
I’m merely pointing out the fact that Marie wasn’t required to move here.”
    “Okay.” I shifted my weight on the hard
floor, looking for a position where my ankle bones weren’t grinding against the
wood. “She always liked it here; always wanted to live on her grandparents’
farm. She said so. That’s why they didn’t sell.”
    “But you didn’t have to follow them.”
    I narrowed my eyes at him. “Brad and
Marie are the closest thing I have to a family. No, I didn’t have to follow,
but the fact I did has nothing to do with Trent. Pure coincidence.”
    “I thought you didn’t believe in
coincidence.”
    I groaned. “Give it a rest, Fred. I didn’t
come here for Trent. Got it?”
    “Sure, Max.” He smiled knowingly at me.
    The problem with having a ghost for a
friend is they often think they know better than you do. They’ve passed on to
the Great Beyond, and that supposedly makes them wiser. Unfortunately, it seems
to make some of them busybodies who think it’s their job to monkey around in
the lives of those of us who are still mortal.
    I loved Brad and Marie. They’d taken me
in at a time when I was perched on the edge of disaster, a runaway living on
the streets in Seattle, ready to spiral down into hard drugs and God knows what
else, maybe even sex for hire. People do desperate things when they’re cold and
starving.
    They’d saved me, gotten me off the
streets and into a GED program. They’d taken me into their home, treated me
like a son. When they’d decided to move to Avery’s Crossing, Trent’s presence
there was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to be with my family, and the
graphic design business I’d started could be run anywhere since most of it took
place on-line. Moving here had been a no-brainer. The business program at
Central Willamette was a bonus.
    “I passed through this town once, back
in 1853,” he said meditatively. “I was on my way to Montana.”
    “Why go through Oregon?”
    “Because I started out in California,
obviously.”
    Oh. Right.
    “The place has changed quite a bit since
I was here last,” he said. “Quite a bit.”
    “The women wear shorter skirts.”
    He laughed. “That they do.”
    “Is it fun for you to watch them go by,
dressed the way they do?
    Fred smiled, but instead of answering,
he countered with his own question. “So what are you going to do about
Caroline?”
    “Do? I’m not going to do anything.”
    He still gazed at me like he could read
my thoughts. I was pretty sure he couldn’t, but not absolutely positive.
Christ, I hoped he couldn’t. He was enough of a pain in the ass with his
know-it-all advice; if he could read my mind, he’d never stop telling me what
to do.
    “She has feelings, too, you know,” he
said.
    “Alert the media. They’ll want to hear
about that for sure.”
    Fred sighed. “I can see you don’t want
my perspective.”
    “Not right now.”
    “All right. I’ll be on my way, then.” He
stood up and offered me his hand. “Good