Body Temperature and Rising - Book One of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy by K. D. Grace Page A

dead, a fact Marie couldn’t quite get her head around. 
    ‘Tim says that ghosts have no flesh without the Love Spell, and yet here you all are.’
    Fiori smiled. ‘Sky and I were both riders in life. We knew the spell. It’s no more effort for us to do on ourselves.’
    ‘Riders? That’s what you call yourselves?’
    Sky sniggered over her teacup. ‘Ghost riders. It’s Fiori’s little joke about what we do, and well, it stuck.’
    ‘And Anderson?’
    ‘I’m a bit of an exception.’ He offered a self-deprecating smile.
    ‘Anderson came by enfleshment a different route, a route most ghosts can’t access,’ Tara said. ‘He comes from a long line of witches who walked in the Ether. The Ether is neither the place for the living or the dead, so to them, it didn’t much matter.’
    Marie shifted on the camelback sofa, suddenly feeling the weight of a reality that logically shouldn’t exist, and yet did. ‘I don’t understand how any of this could happen. Why me?’
    Anderson moved to take her hand, but she pulled it away. ‘Don’t touch me. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust any of you at the moment.’
    ‘But you’re scared,’ Tara said. ‘And there’s no one else you can turn to but us.’
    The area below her navel burned and tingled and made her feel wrong-footed. When Sky refilled her teacup, a particularly strong burn had her grabbing her belly.
    ‘If you let us we can teach you to control the power surges and channel them,’ Fiori said.
    Anderson shot her a warning glance.
    ‘Who was the man in the mirror?’ Marie asked still clutching at her stomach, wondering about the nasty knot that tightened in her chest when she thought of him. ‘In the dream, he killed you,’ she said to Fiori, fighting a sudden wave of vertigo at the memory.
    Fiori nodded. ‘Sadly that bit wasn’t a dream, and he takes great pleasure in reminding us all of it. He wheedled his way into our dream magic, just like you did, and then, he decided to visit you too.’
    ‘We hadn’t counted on this,’ Tara said. ‘We didn’t suspect, though I suppose we should have.’ 
    ‘What should you have suspected?’ Marie asked.
    ‘You. After what you did to Anderson, it should have been obvious. It was you. You unleashed him. You unleashed Deacon on us,’ Tara said, holding her gaze.
    Suddenly Marie realised they were all staring at her. ‘What? I don’t understand? I haven’t done anything. What are you talking about?’

    For a long time the darkness was like warm velvet against cool flesh, and Tim could almost feel his bare feet slipping along it as he walked, walked with no destination, no intention, no forethought. 
    At some point, he really couldn’t remember when it happened, he noticed there were shadows swaying in the darkness. Strange that before he noticed the shadows were actually people, he could hear their breath, at first just barely, then like a ragged wind beating a rocky coast. That was the moment he realised just how many of them there were. That was the moment he felt his skin prickle, felt his stomach lurch. Then the people became sharply defined, and he wondered how he could have possibly walked all this way and not seen the horror of them. A woman reached out to him. Her eyes were bruised, her nose was bloodied. She clutched a torn dress over her breasts. There were deep, raw gashes along her bare back. Opposite her a woman writhed in a circle of leaping flames. Her terrified eyes bulged from raw sockets; her teeth gleamed from a lipless mouth. The stench of smoke and burning flesh filled the air.
    Tim would have turned to run, but it was as though he were suddenly rooted to the ground. Shards of ice ran up his spine as the smoky shadows parted and Deacon stood before him, arms folded across his chest, bullwhip curled in his hand. 
    ‘You did this.’ Tim choked out the words. 
    But the man shook his head and smiled sadly. ‘No, my dear boy I did not do this. Tara Stone did this. She is