A/N: Hey guys! Well, looks like this wasn't a total bust! No one trying to burn me out of the fandom…yet, lol. To Udrianopel, inulover1993, BJL and Kidonia Shinji…thank you so much for your reviews and encouragement! I hope I continue to keep you guys interested! With this next chapter…what's written in Beej's point of view is quite a bit more crude than how I'm handling Lydia's POV. But I figured…its necessary for the character. He's not Lyds and his thought process differs INCREDIBLY. So the language is harsher, needless to say.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Beetlejuice and make no profit from the writing of this fic.

Chapter Two: Intriguing

He drummed his red polished nails against the scarred surface of the table placed below a large, age-fogged mirror. His narrowed eyes watched the woman sleeping on the bed with a uncultivated mix of irritation, spite and curiosity. His mind was having difficulty wrapping itself around the fact that it was the same Lydia Deetz he'd known from years ago – the same one he'd threatened, the same one he'd tried to coerce into marriage, into owning up to her end of their little deal, the same one that had stood by with a dumb, vacant look on her face when that Maitland bitch had sicced a fucking sandworm on him.

A large beetle stupidly chose that moment to scuttle past him. Without taking his gaze from the woman, he slammed his hand down with much more force than necessary, effectively cutting the bugs life short. A quick toss and the oozing insect found its way into Beetlejuice's mouth where it was carelessly crunched on with only a modicum of the usual interest.

He leaned forward further, stopping just shy of pressing his nose against the cool surface of glass. Who was she? The Lydia Deetz he knew was naïve. She held herself to morals far higher than most people he knew. Then again, most people he knew were dead and scoundrels in their own right. Those that weren't…they were boring and not entirely worth his time unless he was scaring the ever-loving hell out of them.

Lydia Deetz then? Small, slightly pitiful, dark and cryptic, easily manipulated by the dead. The few years that passed in between the night of their "wedding" and the time in which he visited her again to demand that she held up her part of their bargain hadn't done much of anything to change her. She had a bit more of a backbone but still held onto that image and the body of an underdeveloped teenager.

Lydia now? This smoking, drinking, cocky, self-assured…woman? She was something else. She had attitude, she had malice and he had a feeling she was only giving him a glimpse of just how much of each she had. And the body? He would have to be a goddamn blind eunuch to not appreciate the way that body curved in every single place that would drive a man insane. She was still pale, though not as sickly pale as she had been when she was younger. The dark circles under her eyes had vanished. Maybe she'd just been using make-up for that effect. Knowing the Lyds back then…it was a possibility.

She rolled over onto her back, moving one arm over her head. The glossy raven tresses slid like water away from her closed eyes. The silk top slid dangerously lower, pulling taut over her right breast.

"Fuck me…" he breathed, inching closer to the mirror.

Wait…what the hell was he doing? Lusting after her? Lydia Deetz? The girl who owed him a one way ticket the fuck out of here and wasn't complying? He growled and shoved away from the mirror, spinning to face the vacant, cobweb draped confines of his room. The only lust-filled thoughts he should be having about her should be ones involving masochism, near-death, torture. Thoughts of tying her up, etching long, deep marks in her skin with a rusted over razor blade and taking in the sweet, seductive sound of her screams muffled by a piece of ducttape…NO…a strip of metal! That would be some freakin' poetic justice alright! Those are the kind of thoughts he should have been having.

Okay, maybe not quite that sadistic.

"Focus," he muttered to himself. He wasn't sticking around to kill her, or take some kind of sick, perverse joy from tormenting her in the grossly creative way possible. He may have been pretty bad a times…okay, at most times. But he wasn't that twisted. What he wanted with Lydia Deetz was what she had promised him. He wanted out. And he wasn't going to get out by threatening her, though the devil knew how badly he wanted to.

So torture was out, threatening was out…that left one thing. And that one thing left a sickeningly disgusting taste in his mouth. He sneered and snapped his fingers, summoning a bottle of beer and taking a long pull. Talking with a human. How the hell was he supposed to have a serious, worth-while conversation with someone who could still breathe? With someone that didn't understand what being dead was really like? With someone who, for all he knew, loathed his non-existence.

His feet left the ground and he crossed his legs, resting his elbows on them and letting his beer bottle hang lazily from his fingertips. The nails of his other hand drummed on the glass and he frowned as he thought, purposely ignoring that damned mirror. This entire fuckin' scenario was going to be tricky. He hated tricky. Tricks…yes. Tricky…not so much.

A soft, sultry moan drew his attention. He turned his head slowly, attempting to look bored for no one's benefit really but his own.

Lydia had turned on the bed and now lay curled on her right side. The quilt had slid from one long leg, exposing the limb to the hungry light of the moon. Her toenails were painted, he noticed. Not black, but a shimmering, feminine red. And there was simple band of silver around her second toe. She shifted again, flipping onto her back.

What the hell…he didn't remember her being such a restless sleeper.

The shirt crept up, revealing an indistinguishable tattoo riding just above her hipbone. He uncrossed his legs and levitated closer to the mirror, his interest piqued. As he tilted his head to the side, attempting to catch a better glimpse of the mark. It was then that she frowned, her full lips pursing, her dark brows lowering.

"Beetlejuice…."

His eyes went wide, one brow arching high. "Whaaa-?"

Another soft moan and she settled, snuggling into her pillow, the faintest of smiles erasing the consternation that had marred her delicate features only for a moment.

"Well," he murmured. A sinister grin curled his dry, cracked lips and his eyes albeit glowed with a feral light. Things had just gotten very, very interesting

The sun violated her sleep, pulling her insistently from a night blissfully lacking any dreams. She screwed her eyes shut, willing the light to go away. Of course, it wouldn't. And the only way it would was if she forced herself out of bed and drew the thick drapes over the French doors, blocking it out. She would have to be awake for that. She didn't want to be awake. For once she hadn't dreamt of him. Hadn't dreamt of his hands on her body, of his dry, dead lips on her flesh, she hadn't woke up slick with her own sweat, shaking, and frighteningly confused. She had just…slept.

Wakey, wakey…

"Piss off," she muttered, flipping onto her side and throwing her arm over her eyes.

Shift a little more to the right and you're gonna make it a hell of a good mornin' for me, babes.

With a gasp, she sat up, her hands instinctively going to the hem of her shirt and yanking it down. She looked around wildly, hair hanging in her eyes, her cheeks flushed from a combination of sleep and mortification. The room was empty. No ghouls lurking in the corners, no grotesque smiling face in the mirror. She was completely alone.

"My God, I'm losing it…" she muttered, shoving her hair out of her face.

Throwing the blankets back, she swung her legs over the bed. It never struck her for one moment as she left her room that she hadn't pulled the blanket over herself the previous night to begin with. She padded downstairs and made a beeline for the coffee maker, stumbling to a stop when she saw it was already full.

"What the-." She slowly crossed the kitchen and placed her hand against the pot, jerking it back when she found it hot. Had she set the delay? No. That wasn't something she did unless she had to be up in the morning and wanted coffee ready. And this coffee maker…she couldn't remember if it had a delay function or not.

Gritting her teeth, annoyed over the fact that not only was there coffee ready for her but also that her suspicions concerning a certain ghost had been confirmed, she grabbed the pot and dumped the contents into the sink. As the darkened water sloshed nearly over the basin, she swore she could hear a soft cackling from behind her. Her shoulders tensed. Bracing one hand on the counter, she closed her eyes, took a fortifying breath, then set the pot in the sink and refilled it.

What a waste of perfectly good coffee. I was just tryin' to be nice.

"Right," she muttered as she poured the water into the percolator, then dumped the grounds and refilled them. "Because that's what you're known for - being nice."

I said tryin'.

"Try harder." She whirled around, eyes narrowed and studying the room. Empty. "Where are you?"

Silence stretched on into obscurity and again, she started to doubt her sanity. But the coffee…

She glanced back at the pot, watching the new coffee spill in a steady stream, the splash against the bottom of the pot the only sound. No, she hadn't had a thing to do with that. He was here.

"Just being a dick," she muttered, turning and pulling a coffee cup from the cabinet beside the sink. Again she heard the distant cackle, though this time she chose to ignore it. She filled her cup, then pulled up a seat at the kitchen table and sank into it.

Her spot gave her a direct view into the front rooms – the ones that had been reserved for Adam and Barbara. The early morning sunlight slanted over the floorboards, dust dancing along the bright beams. Thick dust. That probably wasn't the best thing. Then again, the entire house was in need of a good clean. Her father had hired help when they had first left the house shortly after Lydia had gone off to college. But after two years his attention to the process of selecting and paying decent help for upkeep of the house had become lax. It made her sad, to look upon something that had once been the personification of edgy home décor and see just how little her parents cared about maintaining it.

Though…if she were going to be fair, she couldn't really blame them. Once Lydia had selected her college, applied and been accepted, her parents eagerness to get the hell out of the house they had poured so much into had been obvious. They'd seen too much there, experience the paranormal and the horrors of the beyond to a point that even allowing Lydia to constantly interact with the Maitlands hadn't been something they were entirely comfortable with. The only thing that should have surprised her was the fact that it had taken three weeks instead of one for her parents to vacate the premises.

Using the chair opposite her as a foot rest, Lydia leaned back in hers and wrapped her hands around her mug. She didn't think her parents would ever sell. The house was too close to where she was for them to ever think about selling it. Though her and Delia were on the outs now, her father still kept the house open for her just in case she needed to "escape the city." However, if they did sell…there was no way anyone would show it in this condition. And the Maitlands things really should have been put into storage, not collecting dust like some unwanted past-life paraphernalia.

She tilted her head to the side, contemplating her options. Staying wouldn't be a horrible idea. It wasn't like she was needed in Hartford. A simple phone call to a local phone or satellite company and she could be hooked up with internet service which was all she really needed to run her business and keep in contact with her clients. She could stick around, clean up the house, take a much needed reprieve from the commotion of steady city activity. She could ensure that Adam and Barbara's things were cared for with the respect they deserved and put away in the house where they belonged, not shipped off to goodwill.

You could see him...see if he really is here.

She jerked up, gasping softly at the sudden, unexpected thought. No! He had nothing to do with her staying here. She wanted to take care of the house, of her house. She wanted to make sure that Barbara and Adam's things were well taken care of. It had nothing, nothing to do with that sadistic, crude, disgusting ghost!

Keep telling yourself that, the treacherous voice murmured, sounding almost amused.

And she did. Throughout the remainder of the day, as she made phone calls to clients and local businesses to make arrangements, she forcefully reminded herself that she was not staying in the house just to be near what she was still debating was or wasn't a figment of her imagination. After an hour of arguing with herself, followed by an hour childish internal tantrums, she resigned herself to a simple dull mantra of "not here for him, not here for him, not here for him" as she set her own affairs straight and arranged time slots for satellite and internet connections, checked the propane level on the tank in the backyard and called the local distributor for a fill.

Satisfied that she had tied up every loose end, she stood in the foyer between the Maitlands' rooms and the renovated portion of the house. Hesitation to face the loss of Adam and Barbara, to pack them away for safe keeping, stalled her from making a move in either direction. For one brief, desperate moment, she wished for that damn voice to tell her what to do. Of course, it didn't say a thing. Voices belonging to twisted imaginations never did when you were actually looking for them to.

She finally turned from the older setting, deciding that she couldn't face the emptiness today. She would put it off…again. Instead, she would work on cleaning the year's worth of dust and grime from the home her parents had remodeled.

With the stereo in the living room cranked to its full potential on a station that played a random mix of anything that would keep her from getting sick, she poured her time into dusting, sweeping, moping and vacuuming, not stopping until each surface, each floor, each cupboard looked as it had when they had first been moved into the house.

By the time she was finished, the sun was sinking into the horizon and her stomach was reminding her that all she'd managed to put in her system the entire day was coffee. She trudged back to the kitchen, her skin feeling decidedly grimy.

While washing the ruminants of hours worth of cleaning from her skin, she tried to decide on who to call for some decent delivery. The usual fast food places came to mind along with the pitiful amount of pizza delivery places. She sneered at each one of them, grabbing a nail brush and scrubbing the dirt out from under her nails. She wasn't in the mood for fast food, or pizza, or Thai food, or Chinese food.

Flipping the tap off, she turned to the table and picked up her cell, using it to do a quick search on anything else available in the area. Sure, there were phone books – but with the house being empty for as long as it had been, she was certain that it was dated and that half of the establishments no longer existed. Within five minutes she had found a Japanese restaurant that had earned several good reviews and had ordered enough sushi for four people.

Order placed, she tossed her phone back onto the table and reached for the pack of discarded cigarettes. She pulled one free, lit it, then grabbed a small ashtray from one of the many junk drawers and wandered the house aimlessly. Inspecting her thorough job – that was her excuse. But her eyes lingered towards ceilings, mirrors and dark corners. They lingered…expecting to see something, anything.

Lookin' for me?

She whirled around and in her haste, caught her hip on a high display table. Swearing profusely, she rubbed at the spot, glaring around the room. "No," she lied.

Right…not buyin' it babes.

"What are you doing here?"

What are YOU doing here? The Maitlands'r gone. Dead, dead, deadski. He taunted her, throwing her careless echo of his words form years ago at her. So what'r you still hangin' around for?

"The place needs to be cleaned up if we're ever going to sell it." Another lie. But this one worked. He fell silent and remained that way for the rest of the evening. Through the appearance of the young, slightly afraid looking delivery boy, through her meal, through the clean up after. He was so quiet that she fooled herself into believing that he was gone. Fooled herself into believing that he'd returned to the Afterlife so she could enjoy a soak in the indoor hot tub in peace.

She didn't bother with a bathing suit. What was the point? She was in her own house and supposedly alone. After filling a glass with wine and taking a moment to wonder whether or not she may be a closet alcoholic, she wandered back to the newest addition her father had splurged on before moving out – an extravagant half deck overlooking the town of Winter River. Windows bowed around in a half circle and the middle of that circle was an enormous hot tub that both she and Delia, amazingly enough, had tried to talk her father out of. Now, staring at it and wondering idly why this one room seemed well cared for when the rest of the house had gone to waste, she was glad her father had ignored them. After the week she'd had a good, long soak was just what she needed.

Deciding to leave the lights off, she pulled the cover from the hot tub and was greeted with muted lighting waving below the blue-green surface of water. She tested it, surprised further still to find the water alluringly hot. Surprise never gave away to apprehensive questioning. Setting her glass of wine on the edge, she flicked the switch to start the jets, then pulled her shirt off and tossed it aside. Quick to follow were her jeans and last her bra and underwear. She stepped into the hot tub, the water lapping at her bare skin, then sank down with a blissful sigh until she was seated right in front of a jet. She dropped her head back, closed her eyes. It didn't take long before the tears started.

The week had been wearing on her. Her work was demanding, her clients even more so, her deadlines were too close together and her agent had almost gotten himself a restraining order due to the borderline harassment to meet them. As it were, she was seriously considering getting rid of him all together and hiring a new one. That added to the disturbing dreams and the loss of Adam and Barbara, a quiet house with no distractions….

Lydia allowed herself to, for the first time in years, quietly fall apart.

End A/N: Yes, Lydia feels like she got a good night's rest. She had no idea she outted herself through a dream she couldn't remember. :)