Nightfall grim gate book.., p.1
Nightfall (Grim Gate Book 1), page 1
Nightfall
Book One in the Grim Gate Series
Emily Goodwin
Nightfall
Book One in the Grim Gate Series
Copyright 2021
Emily Goodwin
Cover photography by Lindee Robinson
Cover art by Covers by Christian
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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 or places is purely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
To Mom and Ashley-thank you for being my first readers
Contents
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Thank you
About the Author
Also By Emily Goodwin
Chapter One
Well, shit.
I reach for my wine, needing a big sip of Pinot Grigio before I can turn and look at my date, who’s apparently not the man sitting at the table across from me.
“Anora?”
“Yeah,” I reply as soon as the wine goes down my throat. I push my shoulders back and smile, bracing for the inevitable look on my date’s face, because there’s a good chance he’s been standing there a while, watching me have a conversation with a man he can’t see.
In fact, I’m sure no one in this Mexican restaurant can see him…which explains why he didn’t eat a single chip. No one can resist a fresh bowl of chips and house-made salsa. Well, apparently ghosts can. I quickly blink and inhale, forcing the mental shields back up. When I open my eyes, the man across from me is gone.
“You must be Gavin.” The guy—who I know is Gavin because he actually looks like his profile photo—looks at the empty seat across from me for a moment and then glances back at me.
“I, uh,” he starts, probably wondering if I’m too crazy to sit and have dinner with. Then his eyes go to my breasts and he nods. “I am.” Hesitating another second, he slides into the booth across from me. “Sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“It’s okay.” I take another sip of wine. “I got off work earlier than I thought I would.”
“What do you do?” He reaches for the basket of chips and slides it from the center of the table so it’s directly in front of him.
“I’m a vet-tech,” I tell him, certain now that he only looked at my photos on my online dating profile. I proudly have my occupation listed twice, which might be overkill, I know, but it is what it is. “And you work in IT, right?” I did check out this guy’s profile, and then looked him up on social media. I call it being thorough, not stalking. I want to make sure the guys I’m going out with are not psycho killers. Well, not according to their Instagram at least.
“Right.” He pulls the salsa over as well, double-dipping his chip.
“So, um, what do you do?”
“Mostly tell people to unplug and plug back in their printers.”
I laugh. “Technology can be hard, right?”
The waiter comes over, bringing another menu. He eyes me curiously, and I’m sure he saw me chatting it up with a dead man, only to him it looked like I was talking to no one. I’ve been a medium my whole life, able to see and hear ghosts. Most of the time, the ghosts pay no attention to me, stuck in the loop of a memory significant to them for one reason or another. Every once in a while, I run into a spirit like the one I’d just been talking to. They appear corporeal, coherent, and are able to carry on a conversation.
With twenty-four years of experience at this, I’m normally better at sensing them. I get that hair standing up on the back of your neck feeling, and there’s a shift in the energy around me. I’ve tried to explain it, I know it’s hard for people to understand. If they can’t see it, then it’s not real, and I get it. I really do. It’s hard to believe in something you’re unable to see, and even harder when said unseen thing can be scary. People don’t want to believe in ghosts.
When vampires made the shocking coming out a few years ago, I thought people would become more open to the supernatural, but I was sadly mistaken. There are a growing number of people who see vampires for what I know they are: the mysteriously sexy yet dangerous supernatural creatures we read about for centuries. Though there are still a lot who refuse to believe in that, my parents included. With my mother being a doctor and my father teaching physics, they insist there has to be a scientific reason for vampirism. Yet no one has been able to prove scientifically why someone would be able to survive only on blood, not age, and recover from what would otherwise be lethal injuries.
Because it’s not science, it’s some sort of dark supernatural force we’ll never fully understand.
“What are you getting?” Gavin asks me.
“Combination number three. It’s my favorite.”
“You eat here a lot?”
I shrug. “Not really. It’s close to work so we order from here at least once a month.”
“I’ll try it too.” He closes his menu and rests his hands on the table. “Are you a natural redhead?”
“Yeah,” I say, annoyed but used to getting that question a lot. “I am.”
“You’re very beautiful.”
“Thanks.” I set my wine glass back down.
“You look like my sister. I thought you were her when I first saw your profile. I couldn’t swipe fast enough.”
And now I’m picking my wine back up. “Oh. That’s, um, interesting.”
His eyes drop to my breasts again. “She wore green a lot too.”
“You two must be close.”
“We were.” He sits up, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “But then she got married.”
I finish the rest of the wine in my glass. If I’m going to make it through the rest of dinner, I have a feeling I’m going to need the whole bottle.
“You were right. I should have stayed home with you.” I shoot the deadbolt in place and let out a sigh, crouching down on the ground to take off my heels but get bombarded with slobbery kisses from Hunter, my German Shepherd. “But the night is young, and we can salvage it with junk food and horror movies.”
As if he can understand me, Hunter excitedly runs from the front door and jumps on the couch.
“Give me a minute to change,” I tell him and pull off my shoes. “I swear, pushup bras are nothing more than modernized medieval torture devices.” I shrug off my purse and reach behind me, unbuckling my bra as I walk through my small brick house.
“Hey, little dude,” I say to my sleeping ferret when I get into my bedroom. Pulling my bra through the sleeve of my dress, I drop it on the floor, topping the pile of laundry I swore I was going to put away yesterday. Romeo wakes up, stretching and yawning as I strip out of my clothes. Someone dumped him off in front of the vet clinic my first year there as a vet-tech, and I’m a sucker for a sad, homeless animal. I change into PJs, refill Romeo’s food and water, and go into my small kitchen.
“Need to go out?” I ask Hunter, who’s sitting by the backdoor waiting for me. My yard is tiny but fenced in, not that I necessarily need it. Hunter is very well behaved, thanks to whoever owned him before. I found him wandering through my parents’ neighborhood five years ago, and after getting him scanned for a microchip—he didn’t have one—and contacting over a dozen shelters and vets in central New York, he officially became mine.
I open the back door, letting Hunter bound out into the night, and stick a bag of popcorn into the microwave. I grab a bottle of pink Moscato from my fridge and pour myself half a glass. I like wine as much as the next twenty-something-year-old-wino, but it’s hard to keep the mental shields that block out the ghosts up when I’ve had too much to drink.
Taking a small sip of my wine, I step outside, standing on the small cement square I call my patio. It’s relatively quiet on my street, and both neighbors on either side of me are in their eighties and keep to themselves. I look up at the sky, watching thin dark clouds slowly roll over the crescent moon.
Hunter bounds over, leaping up the three steps onto the patio and pushing his way inside. The microwave beeps a few seconds after I get the back door locked, and I grab the bag and go into the living room, settling on the couch with Hunter at my side.
“True crime or eighties horror?” I ask as I flip through my suggested shows on Netflix. “Or something light-hearted and funny?”
Hunter nudges me with his nose, wanting popcorn and not caring what
It’s not uncommon for me to have weird, vivid dreams. I assume it has something to do with being a medium. Not only do I see and hear spirits, but I feel their emotions from their last moments on earth…which usually aren’t pleasant. Most of the time, it comes on suddenly without warning as I pass by the emotional stain left on the earth.
I stopped trying to make sense of my dreams years ago, but I have one repetitive dream in particular that has always bothered me, not because it’s any more cryptic than someone’s last memory before dying, but because there’s something familiar about it…which makes no sense. And tonight is no exception, as the dream starts to play out before me.
Like always, I’m walking through the woods. I’m not alone, yet I can’t see who I’m walking with. I’m happy though, and always wake filled with a sense of family and belonging. Sometimes Hunter is with me, and sometimes a black cat trots along ahead of us, stopping between two large trees. A brilliant blue light starts to flicker between the trees, glowing behind the shadow of a door as someone chants.
“Invoco elementum terrae. Invoco elemuntum aeris.”
I can feel someone’s hand around mine, and the smell of sage and lavender hits me right when I wake up. It’s always there, right before the door opens. I’ve never stayed asleep long enough to see what’s beyond the door.
Except I do tonight.
“Invoco elemuntum aqua. Invoco elemuntum ignis.”
Whoever is holding my hand lets go and steps forward, face hidden behind the hood of a black cloak. She pulls a knife from her pocket and presses it against the tip of her finger, carefully smearing the bead of blood on the blade, and then plunges the blade into the ground. The door swings open, and my heart hammers in my chest.
“Come along, Anora,” a woman says, reaching behind her for my hand again. I inch forward, dry leaves crunching under my feet, stretching out my hand. I look through the door, seeing a large brick building past a dark courtyard. The familiar feeling of going home after a vacation swells in my chest, and for a brief moment, I feel like I’m right where I belong.
And then I suddenly wake up, with Hunter’s head pressed against me and an overwhelming sense of missing a place I’ve never been. I run my hand over Hunter’s head, slowly sitting up. It’s a little after one AM, too late to text Laney, my best friend, to tell her about the dream. She’s one of the few people I can be open and honest with, and one of the fewer people who actually believe me.
“I think it’s time for bed,” I tell Hunter, heart still aching. How can I be homesick for a place that not only have I never been to, but I’m pretty sure doesn’t even exist? The damn dream feels more like a memory, and that woman’s voice is so familiar. “It’s just a dream,” I mutter as I pick up the bowl of popcorn and my wine glass, taking it into the kitchen and dumping what’s left into the sink.
I put the popcorn on the counter, not wanting to waste it. I lie to myself, saying I’ll eat it tomorrow, but will probably end up forgetting about it until it goes stale. Double checking that the house is locked up for the night, I flick on the porch light and then head to bed.
“Hey, Mom.” I sit up, running my hand over my face, and hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder.
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I’ve been up for hours.” I have been. And then I fell asleep on the couch again. I tossed and turned until dawn last night, unable to get that dream out of my head. Frustrated with not being able to sleep, I got up and took Hunter for a walk and came back home with the intention of doing that deep cleaning I keep meaning to do. Instead, I passed out on the couch with my cup of coffee still on the coffee table in front of me. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, of course. I wanted to make sure you’re still coming over for dinner tonight. Harrison will be there, and it’s been a while since we’ve had a family meal.”
“What time?”
“Does six work for you? Dad is golfing and promised to be back by five.”
“It does. I’ll be done with work by then.”
“I thought you had Saturdays off,” Mom says. “You didn’t go back to that circus, did you?”
I slowly inhale. Mom’s correct to call my previous place of employment a circus, yet I have to remind myself to let it go. I took the job as a medium thinking I could really help people, but my boss was just as big of a believer in the supernatural as my mother. I freaked him out big time, as well as most of the clients who came in. I did exactly what they asked me to do, but it wasn’t all sunshine and roses.
“I have Saturdays off from the clinic, but I give riding lessons now. I got a new student,” I tell her, knowing exactly where this conversation is going to lead…especially since Mom knows my lease is up on this house in December and I haven’t signed a new one yet. Teaching riding lessons at Hollow Creek Stables is the only way I can afford to continue to pay the monthly board for my horse, Mystery, and most months are pretty tight.
“You’re welcome back home so you don’t have to work two jobs,” she starts, and I close my eyes, reminding myself her heart is in the right place. “There’s no shame in staying here for a year or so in order to pad your savings account. Paying rent on a house and board for a horse is a lot for anyone, Anora.”
“I know,” I say with practiced patience. It is a lot, and staying home the year after I graduated was tempting, but my relationship with my parents has always been a bit rocky, and I needed out of the house as soon as possible. It’s been a good thing, and my relationship with my mother has gotten much better since I moved out.
A big believer in science, Mom insisted the spirits I saw were “all in my head” and I lost count of how many therapists she had me go see as a child. Eventually, I learned to keep my mouth shut, but there’s something about your mother thinking you’re crazy to ruin that mother-daughter relationship.
We got into a heated argument just last week about vampires. I insisted what I know to be true: vampirism is the result of a curse or some sort of dark magic, and she insisted magic isn’t real and we’ll get to the bottom of the disease that causes them to not be able to withstand sunlight, consume “typical” food, and be subjects to outbursts of dangerous rage. Being invited to dinner tonight is Mom’s way of offering an olive branch, and the fact that she got Harrison, my twin brother, to come lets me know she really does want to put this whole thing behind us.
“Do you want me to bring anything to dinner tonight? I cleaned out my pantry last week and found a bottle of blueberry wine I got last spring from that vineyard by Aunt Muriel’s place.”
“Ohh, that was good wine! Yes, bring that, but nothing else is necessary. When are you going to the barn?”
I look at the clock, suddenly panicked that I don’t even know what time it is. I let out a small sigh when I see that I didn’t sleep through my lesson. “In like an hour or so.”
“If you want to drop Hunter off here on your way, you can. Buster needs someone to play with. That dog is driving me crazy.”
“Probably because you let Dad name him Buster.”
Mom laughs. “It’s not the most original name, I’ll side with you there.”
“I’ll get dressed and will head over now.”
“I’ll see you soon then, honey. Love you.”
“Love you too,” I say and end the call. Sighing, I get up, raking my fingers through my messy hair as I walk into my bedroom. I change into boots and breaches, feed Romeo, and grab Hunter’s harness and leash.
