Spirits: Heather Despair Book Three

By Leslie Edens

Emmett Fitzhugh doesn't believe in ghosts. The others insist the place is haunted. Emmett knows it's nonsense. This worries Heather. A lot. Emmett's a very special person. He should not be alive. She brought him to the mortal world, but the spirit world desperately needs its champion. And he's sitting in her house, unaware of his destiny. It's all her fault. Can she fix this? Things keep getting worse. An ancient rival awakens. One who demands an impossible sacrifice. Buried in a deep abyss, can Heather protect Emmett? Can she help him avoid his fate? And will they ever see the light of day again? You'll love this story for its supernatural twists and turns and because everyone loves a quest in a fantasy world. Start reading today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie Edens
• Release date: Jan 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215886052

Leslie Edens

Leslie Edens lives in Bellingham, Washington, between the mountains and the sea, where she writes of ghosts, aliens, vampires, witches, werewolves, and magical teenagers. She loves coffee, making collages, and bookstores. She grew up in New Mexico near a small town.

Book preview

Spirits

Heather Despair Book Three

Leslie Edens

Spectricity Books

Copyright © 2019 Leslie Edens

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Spectricity Books

Bellingham, Washington

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Copyright © 2019 by Leslie Edens

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices. For information address Spectricity Books.

Second Edition

Cover art by Mariah Sinclair

To my dad.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

About The Author

Other Books by Leslie Edens

Chapter One

Sweethearts

Adark form, falling out of the window. That’s all I saw when I entered the Round Room that lazy afternoon. Someone was already there. And that someone was going out the open window.

Emmett! I screamed.

I recognized his coattails, black as Victorian coal, as they slipped rapidly over the sill. I lurched, gave myself a bit of float, and struck out with spectricity. The blue fire of spectral electricity flowed from my fingertips and latched on to his coat. I pulled, drawing the stream of energy into my hand. Emmett fell back inside the Round Room, reeled in by his coattails, and sat bewildered on the cushioned floor.

I quickly hid my hand behind my back. I pretended to be busy putting on a sweater. The temperature was pretty chilly in the Round Room, so we kept sweaters hanging on a hook beside the entrance.

Heather! What happened? Emmett said, his black eyes focused on mine.

He scratched at the perfectly straight part that divided his dark curls, causing his hair to frizz up. In his stuffy Victorian suit with its high collar, he was the picture of befuddlement.

I hoped he hadn’t seen what I could do. It would only scare him.

I crouched next to him on the cushions. Emmett slid his arm around my shoulders without hesitation, and my face grew hot.

Sweethearts. That’s what he called us. And although his strict Victorian upbringing had so far prevented him from actually kissing me, he showered me with his chaste displays of affection. Hugs. Hand-holding. Gazing into my eyes. For three weeks, it had gone on like this. Emmett was incredibly cute, and it was driving me crazy.

I would have preferred a kiss. I did not grow up in the Victorian era. I, a normal, fifteen-year-old girl, wanted a normal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Even if my sweetheart was pretty recent to the mortal realm, having existed as a spirit until only a few weeks ago.

Normal, however, may not be a word that applied to me so well either. My father had been a well-known spiritualist around town until his death from a spirit attack when I was eight. After that, I lived in a junkyard owned by my stepfather, Bruce Slade, and both I and my brother Sam experienced a lot of unsettling paranormal weirdness.

For Sam, it was mainly visions, day and night, and voices that he heard and couldn’t tune out. For me, the biggest problem was spectricity. I experienced uncontrollable energy in the form of blue electricity shooting through my body and out of my fingertips. I’d been desperate to figure out what was happening to me. Ironically, that was my name at the time: Heather Desperate Despair. And I had been desperate and in despair too.

At about that point, I started seeing ghosts. Emmett had been one of those ghosts. Meeting him changed everything, because he’d escorted me to the spirit world, where I received the Ring of Esperance and learned my true name: Heather Esperance d’Espers. Heir to the powerful spiritualist legacy of the d’Espers, passed down for many generations, and fated to become a medium between worlds.

Emmett had been teaching me about all that. When I put on the Ring of Esperance, it kept my spectricity under control at last. Then I accidentally performed an incantation that unlocked something hidden within Emmett and he transformed—into the All, one of the four great spirit gods! He’d become locked in battle with the Bellum, an evil spirit god—although not so great, I’d say. The battle went badly. To avoid defeat and the destruction of the spirit world, Emmett had been forced to transform himself into a mortal. Now helpless, mortal Emmett had no place to go. So I’d brought him back with me to the mortal world. To the Vic, the very huge, very haunted Victorian house where I lived.

Okay, I might have had ulterior motives when I brought him to live here. He was awfully cute, especially once he was alive. But the last time he’d been mortal, the year had been 1900! In some ways, Emmett was still stuck in stuffy Victorian manners.

I tilted my face toward him, hoping he’d be tempted. Our lips were inches apart. I waited . . . and he turned to gaze out the window at the green Hebrides sea. He kept staring, wrapped up in his thoughts, until I cleared my throat a few times.

Emmett! I said. He glanced at me with sad eyes.

What were you thinking about just now? I asked.

He shivered against me. Nothing, really. A daydream. I was a dead soul floating under the sea. Can you imagine how beautiful it must be under there?

He turned to the window again, to the dark, brooding skies, the thrashing waves of the alien and otherworldly sea. The Round Room was not exactly on Earth, and it was not exactly in the spirit world either. From here, we saw in between—a halfway space, suspended between both worlds. Emmett had been spending more and more time up here—like he instinctively wanted to get closer to the spirit world.

Something’s bothering you, I said.

I suspected I knew what. I laid my head on his shoulder since he wouldn’t kiss me.

His voice came out hollow and distant. I feel . . . there is something important I’m meant to do. I’m so distracted, and I have the weirdest dreams. When I can sleep at all.

He released a huge sigh, which disheartened me further. When he had been a spirit, Emmett had always reprimanded me for sighing. He claimed it was unsanitary and broadcast all my emotions and desires to anyone in the spirit world who cared to listen. But as a mortal, Emmett sighed all the time. After three weeks, he’d lost all memory of his former spirit manifestation.

I said, "Maybe I was wrong to keep you here. What if I said there is something important you’re supposed to do?"

He said, I would believe you in a heartbeat. But what is it, I wonder?

I hesitated. Dare I tell him about Dead Town?

✽✽✽

In my opinion, Bellum’s playing Emmett for a fool, Lily had said to me a week earlier. She’d crossed her arms and stared at me over her glasses, daring me to challenge her.

The Paranormals—Lily, Oskar, Trenton, and of course, me—had gathered in the Vic’s sunny kitchen around the long table in the cheerful yellow room. Some days, I loved exploring the enormous, decrepit Victorian house I inherited from my father. I liked to wander its many creepy passages and haunted hallways, or hang out in the paranormal bookstore we ran on the first floor.

But on this sunny day—the first day of summer vacation—the Vic felt kind of gloomy for four very alive teenagers. So, me and my mortal friends, the three who’d helped me discover the spirit world, sat enjoying our first free afternoon in the brightest, most alive room in the house—the servant’s kitchen. This cheery room was formerly populated by cooks, maids, and butlers who long ago would have prepared and served meals for the master of the house. Despite this, it was a seldom-haunted room—maybe because of all the sun. Lately, when we just felt like being ourselves, we gathered here.

Trenton and Oskar played spectral spades, a spiritualist’s game that involved guessing the real cards versus those that would go up in smoke. Guess wrong three times and the cards buried themselves by sinking into the table.

I guessed they learned the game up in Dead Town. After I became Emmett’s protégée, the spirits held a party in our honor. Lily, Trenton, and Oskar had attended. Apparently, they’d brought home a few new tricks, as well as new dance moves.

Boo! shouted Oskar. Trenton squealed as three of his cards evaporated into smoke.

Lily dug through her overstuffed binder, flipping her black hair streaked with pink. She’d started compiling her paranormal notes the second school got out. I could already tell she’d obsess over her spiritualist historian project all summer.

This is for the official record, she said, raising an expectant eyebrow at me. She straightened her argyle sweater. Please explain the rivalry of the spirit gods.

I groaned. Another round of questions from Lily. I was tense enough from constantly watching over Emmett and from waiting for my brother Sam’s missives from the spirit world. Sam’s messages came regularly but never the news I hoped for—that he’d found our dad.

Lily tapped her fingers impatiently on her notebook. Come on, Heather. I’m the official spiritualist historian of Portales Espirituales. Uncle Arturo said so. He was the previous historian, and he’s teaching me. I’m his protégée.

All right, all right. I blew out a careful breath—not a sigh—and explained what I knew. There’s an ancient rivalry between Bellum and the All. Bellum is the Lord of Chaos, and he wants to rule the spirit world, but to do so, he needs to vanquish the All and bring about the Coming End. As long as the All can avoid fighting Bellum, Bellum can never win, so the spirit world is protected.

Lily scribbled some notes, muttering, Demon dogs, evil birds . . . destruction of the Four . . . She raised her eyes to mine. Destruction of the Four. Tell me everything we know about that.

I groaned. Again?

"For the record, Heather," said Lily in a sharp voice.

Okay, but this is the last time I’m telling you. Twenty years ago, four spiritualists led the mortal community in Portales Espirituales. They were called the Coterie Four. My father, Able d’Espers. Your uncle, Arturo Benavidez. Their close friend, Valente de los Santos. And a fourth man, Maximilian Pollander. I bit my lip as my voice wobbled. The Bellum destroyed all four spiritualists.

Killed them, you mean, said Lily, her voice somber.

Yes, killed, destroyed, scattered them to the wind. When he couldn’t kill them himself, he sent his mortal followers, the Turned Against, to do it. No one knows exactly why, I said. I assume the Four were getting too powerful. I swallowed a lump in my throat. I wished Lily would stop bringing this up—my father had died, for All’s sake!

"And no spirits protected them. I wonder why, in all I’ve studied, the Bellum never previously attacked mortals," said Lily.

I pushed Trenton’s spectral cards away before they went up in smoke in my face. I didn’t like where Lily was going with this. Maybe mortals had never been that powerful before. I have a theory that Bellum believed one of the mortals would take him out. Why else would he specifically search out the Coterie Four and target them?

According to what I’ve gleaned . . . Lily pushed her glasses up her nose with a superior sniff. The All was subdivided into a mid-level spirit at that time and had given up his godly power.

Emmett? Yes, he became a mid-level spirit after his last death in 1900. With no memory of being a god, I said.

I fidgeted. It kind of sounded like she was blaming Emmett for the deaths of the Four!

So, these more aggressive actions on Bellum’s part—probably the result of the All giving up, said Lily, scratching notes.

Wait! No! Emmett’s not responsible! I said.

I think we’ve established that much, said Lily in a dry voice, her lips pursed.

She was blaming Emmett! My heart stabbed with pain—the way she made it sound, my father’s death was the fault of my would-be boyfriend!

You can’t blame Emmett for their deaths! I said. How could he know what the Bellum would do? Besides, if Emmett becomes the All and fights Bellum, you don’t realize how dangerous that is. The All could lose. Then the Bellum would take over, destroying the worlds as we know them! I lowered my head. I never would have incanted Emmett into the All if I’d known what could happen.

"I know you didn’t mean to cause an epic battle between the gods, Heather, said Lily in her sharpest voice. But you really should be more careful. Next time, do your research and find out what these incantations do before you use them."

I said nothing. I kinda deserved that. If it hadn’t been for my impromptu incantation, Emmett never would have transformed into the All, revealing his god-ness. And the whole epic battle, with my friends trapped by Bellum in the Lexiverse, none of it would have happened.

I did get us out again, I finally said.

"I suppose that’s true. After we got caught in the middle of Clash of the Titans," said Lily, her lips still pursed in disapproval.

Trenton yelped loudly, and Lily jumped. She fanned away smoke from Trenton’s exploded cards. Trenton dug his fingers into his springy blonde hair as his cards wafted away into the air.

Why do you always beat me, Oz? he said.

Oskar flashed a handsome smile and swept back his auburn hair. He slid his hand over Trenton’s, and their eyes met. Oskar kissed Trenton gently on the cheek.

I could let you win, said Oskar in his smooth woodwind voice.

No, it’s okay, said Trenton in an awed voice, staring at Oskar. As long as you love me, I can bear any defeat.

Are you sure? Oskar lowered his eyelids in a smoldering come-hither stare.

Positive! Trenton flew at Oskar, nearly knocking him off the chair, and embraced him. They were kissing passionately when I tapped Lily’s shoulder and nodded at the door. We quietly got up and tiptoed out. We stood outside the kitchen door, talking quietly in the narrow hall.

They need alone time, I said.

Definitely. Doesn’t help when Trenton’s parents won’t accept it, grumbled Lily.

He still hasn’t told them Oskar’s his boyfriend? I said.

I envied their kissing. They were so natural together, so easy—not awkward and shy like me and Emmett. But their relationship had to be kept secret from Trenton’s parents, and I did not envy that. "How can his parents