by B. T. Alive
Gradually I realized that my little inner voice was nagging me again, trying to shout something as it splashed around drowning in my sea of hormones. Some question.
With an effort, I tried to focus. What were you saying there, little petty voice of reason?
Oh.
When I realized, my head cleared in seconds.
I had a psychic Touch power. I’d been training for months to try to get it under control, ever since I’d come here to Wonder Springs, but after all that work, the only other person I’d been able to touch yet without some kind of jolt (or worse) was my trainer, my Aunt Helen.
Helen was Tina’s mom and also an empath, and even though she was super advanced and an expert at shielding, even with her, I’d only been able to manage a normal, jolt-free touch when we were both calm and focused and in the controlled environment of her private room up in an Inn tower.
So how on earth had some random, handsome dude just taken my hand, jolt-free?
I realized that my palm was still tingling, flush and warm. Across the plaza, the man who had touched me disappeared into the Inn.
With his wife.
Chapter 3
“Summer? Are you feeling well?” Elaine asked, her look of concern almost masking a knowing leer.
“I’m fine,” I snapped. I turned my back on the Inn and the mystery of Mr. Touchable Married Movie Dude. For now. “I’m just trying to find Tina.”
“I know! You said that,” Elaine said brightly. “That’s what I was trying to tell you before we met that… dish.” She waggled her salt-and-pepper eyebrows and used her sweatered shoulder to give me a conspiratorial nudge.
“Tell me what?” I said, trying not to squirm. “Did you see her?”
“I did!” She beamed.
“Where?” I said, straining to keep my voice calm. Trying to get the simplest information out of this woman could require a crowbar.
“In my store, of course. She was buying a wedding gift.”
“In your store?” I blurted. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
Elaine looked hurt, but I was too worried about Tina to feel bad. Like I said earlier, Elaine’s Essentials is literally the most expensive boutique in Wonder Springs—and that’s saying something.
“When was this?” I said. “Is she still there? Tell me she’s still browsing.”
“Oh, no, she left,” Elaine said. “Glynis came in and scooped her right up.”
“Glynis Beverley?” I said, my stomach roiling with dread.
Elaine frowned, thoughtful. “Do we have more than one Glynis?”
She had a point.
“That tears it,” I said. And leaving Elaine gaping with surprise by the fountain, I marched off toward Haven Island.
Tina was in even worse trouble than I’d feared.
Glynis Beverley was this British lady in her fifties who was polite, unflappable, and always put together; you could imagine her waking up to a zombie invasion and, with a slight disapproving frown, proceeding as usual to make her morning tea. When she spoke, her gorgeous accent throbbed with quiet authority, with a presence honed by decades in the service of her two chosen professions.
Glynis Beverley was the Wonder Springs funeral director.
And she was also the Wonder Springs wedding planner.
It’s a small town.
And if Glynis had “scooped up” Tina, that could only mean one thing. Not only was Tina hanging around up at the site of tomorrow’s wedding, she was probably helping with the decorations.
Was Glynis that clueless? I’d have thought the whole town would have heard the story. I had to get Tina out of there before something happened, away from that creep…
“Unbelievable,” I muttered.
“I’m surprised too,” Elaine breathed in my ear. “I really thought we just had the one Glynis.”
“Gyah! Elaine!” I said, jumping away from her for the second time in ten minutes.
I’d thought I’d left her in the plaza, but here she was striding merrily beside me, her long, bristly gray hair waving on her shoulders like a flag. The woman was like human crazy glue.
She hadn’t always been like this, but lately she’d really been latching onto me. I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe she felt like I was a fellow “outsider” to Wonder Springs? I mean, I’d only arrived here the previous spring, and she’d only been here, what… five years? Six?
(Small towns. Sheesh.)
“Did Glynis say whether the… couple… is up there?” I asked her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. Then she dropped her voice. “Oh, you mean… with Tina?” She sucked a theatrical breath, and then placed a hand to her mouth. “Oh no, I didn’t even think about that.”
Like I said. Pretty much the whole town knew. Elaine hadn’t even lived here then, she wasn’t “local” or a Meredith like me, but she clearly knew all about it. Or at least, the salient points.
In fact, I realized, as we walked along a narrow side street and she slipped me a sideways glance, her sudden interest in a walk up to the Island might have a lot less to do with me as a potential friend than as, alas, a source of information. Tina was my cousin and we were pretty much besties; surely she’d told me some juicy details beyond the official town gossip?
You would think.
But that was just it. Tina’d barely told me anything.
This was a woman who could gush over the innermost feelings of a kumquat. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But not much. And with some of the dudes she had to deal with, I’d have rather have heard about the fruit.
But with this cretin… she’d hardly been able to bring herself to state the bare facts.
And if I so much as mentioned his name around Aunt Helen or Grandma… well, I’d only tried that once, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Those are two women you don’t want to see rant, except from a safe distance. Like, Toronto.
So all I knew were those bare facts.
It had all been seven years ago… she’d been 18 years old. Still in high school. A teenage empath.
Even today, Tina couldn’t get through her day without some new dude temporarily crushing on her, and she, being an empath, feeling the crush right back.
These days, she’d just roll with it, let the feelings pass like waves and then try to get some distance before she did anything stupid. I could only imagine what she must have been like at eighteen, surging with sparkling hormones, with her neocortex basically offline, her beauty incandescent, and everyone else’s feelings seeming like her own.
And then came Dante Radcliff.
In his freaking forties.
The part I’d never understood, that Tina wouldn’t even hint at, is what had made him different. I mean, she was surrounded by guys who wanted her. Desire was the air she breathed; she was the Wonder Springs Queen of Perpetual Ache.
And yet this Radcliff dude came moving into town, total new guy from nowhere, a grown man who was more than twice her age… and within a few weeks, he’d proposed.
No, not gotten her pregnant. That wasn’t Tina, not then, not now. If he wanted to cross the line, even he, the great Dante, he had to bring a ring.
So he did. And she said yes. In high school.
And pretty much everyone flipped out.
Especially Grandma. Though I’m sure her mom Helen wasn’t far behind; even her sweetheart dad, my rumpled Uncle Denny, must have been roused. Within days, Dante Radcliff was… requested to leave.
And he totally did. He ditched her.
Which, of course, yay. I still have no idea what they did to him; although the strict Meredith policy is to shroud our psychic powers in the utmost of secrecy, they might have made an exception for Dante Radcliff.
So he’d left. Utterly vanished, not a whiff of contact. And Tina had gotten over it, she said. Years ago.
But as far as I could tell, she also hadn’t really dated anyone since.
And then, only a week or two ago, he’d exploded out of nowhere back into her li
fe.
He was coming back, bringing a bride. Having the wedding right here in Wonder Springs. And the invitation had “joyfully” invited her to watch.
I might not have been worrying so much if Tina hadn’t… changed. I’d seen her when she slipped the glitzy card from the creamy envelope, seen her eyes widen at the name, her lips crease tight to hide the tremble. That tightness hadn’t left her face for days. She hadn’t smiled once, not for real.
Which was devastating.
So now I was hustling across Wonder Springs, working my way around to the north side of the hill that holds our town.
Hoping that I wasn’t too late.
Chapter 4
Wonder Springs is really an island, ringed with a river that’s surprisingly fast, even dangerous, and shielded by the Blue Ridge mountains on every side. Our only point of entry (or defense, if you ask my bearded Uncle Barnaby) is a single covered bridge that joins a country highway.
But when you live here, you tend to forget it’s an island, because of the smaller islands on the northern side. Around here, those are the “islands”, and the largest is called Haven. Compared to Wonder Springs, it’s tiny, but like the town, Haven Island has a wide, generous slope to the southern sun.
Decades ago, the island’s owner had planted that slope with a vineyard.
While that did mean bottles of delectable Wonder Springs wine, it also meant that with the vines, the sun, and the 360-degree views of the surrounding valley and mountains, the vineyard was the premier destination for a Wonder Springs wedding.
And as I rushed across the low concrete bridge over the roiling river and up the long gravel entranceway, with Elaine still tagging along behind, I could see that I’d finally found Tina.
She was sitting, hunched, at a long table at the top of the hill that was smothered with decorations, with massive balloons and white ribbons and lace. Her hands were moving in repetitive arcs, and not till I drew close could I tell what she was doing.
Folding napkins. Thick, cloth napkins, gleaming white. For the dinner.
She was staring out over the vineyard, not even watching her hands.
“Tina?” I said.
She jerked, and eyed me with surprise. After a tiny delay, she forced her heart-shaped face into a friendly imitation of a smile. It was ghastly.
Then she groaned. “Lunch! I totally forgot! Summer, I’m so sorry.” It was the most emotion I’d heard from her in days. “I was talking to Glynis and she said he needed help—they needed help…”
As if against her will, she swung her face away from me, back toward her view of the vineyard.
Beside me, Elaine followed her look—and gasped in surprise.
So I looked too.
Have you ever seen a vineyard at harvest time? Even on a “small” plot like this that was maybe an acre, the grapes spread before us like a red sea of abundance. A soft, warm breeze wafted their sweet, rich scent, moving me with some obscure stirring, like an ancient memory of the promise of future rejoicing.
In a central path at the heart of the rows, a white trellis arched over the platform where they’d speak their vows. A serious photographer with a careful beard was brandishing a massive zoom lens, and there, posing on the platform, stood Dante Radcliff and his bride.
Beside me, Elaine breathed, “They’re… perfect.”
I tried to disagree.
I’m not sure what I’d been expecting. For starters, Dante looked surprisingly dashing, at least for a dude who had to be pushing fifty. At this distance, he looked like some kind of genteel pirate, with long curly hair that was still mostly black, an open white collared shirt and tight jeans that flattered his spare frame, and an expressive Italian smile and aquiline nose. As we watched, he struck one nimble pose after another, circling his bride like a dancer.
As for her, Lee Lannon (I knew her name from the invitation) was tall and slender, almost waiflike, with dark straight brown hair framing a thin, pretty face that couldn’t be older than forty. Every move he made seemed to make her laugh with delight, her thin shoulders shaking in her sleeveless top, and she followed him with bright eyes that never released him for a single breath.
And all the while, during this whole performance, the photographer never stopped snapping. They were going to have enough photos to max out an entire stream on Tribesy. It was silly… it was excessive and over-the-top and indulgent, and I still caught myself wondering if Cade and I would look that good.
“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Elaine whispered in my ear. “Rich, too. Or at least well-off. I heard they used her savings to buy this place, cash down.”
“Buy it?” I blurted, stunned. “The vineyard? I thought they were just blowing through for the wedding!”
“Oh, no, I heard they bought it all,” Elaine said, gleaming with gossipy glee. “Not just the Haven, but the island behind, so they can live at the Respite. They’re here to stay.”
As she relished this final word, her eyes darted past me, and her smile crimped into concern. “Tina?” she said. “Are you… crying?”
I spun back to Tina, already starting to list the reasons why she had to get the heck out of her. But when I saw her face, my voice died.
She was crying, all right. But with rage.
Her face was twisted like I’d never seen her, never even imagined she might look. Her smooth brow had clenched, her wide eyes shut to slits, and I could hear her literally grinding her teeth. It was an awful, unnatural sound, like something was about to shatter.
“Whoa,” I said, soft and tentative. “Let’s go. Forget these twerps.” Slowly I reached a hand for her shoulder.
But she drew back and jumped away, screeching her metal chair on the concrete.
“Stop acting like you care,” she hissed. “If you had any idea what love was, you wouldn’t be stringing along Cade. Using him.”
I gaped. I was dumbfounded. It actually crossed my mind to wonder if she was on drugs. It was so utterly unlike Tina, so… unfair.
But it still hurt.
And the more I tried to tell myself how ridiculous it was, the deeper it dug, like jabbing tweezers at a splinter when it’s already sunk beneath your nail.
“Hey,” I said, still managing to sound gentle. “I know you’re upset about this wedding—”
“Wedding? This is a travesty,” she spat. Her voice was nearly strangled with fury, and I found myself stepping back in dismay. A tremble was spreading in my chest. “And what are you all doing about it?” she demanded. “Nothing!”
“Do?” I said. “Tina, honey, it’s a wedding. They can marry whoever they want.”
“That’s not how it was for me!” she shrieked.
The noise was so startling that Elaine and I both jumped. Down the slope, both Dante and his bride Lee squinted up toward us with concern, and even the photographer lowered his lens to look.
Tina froze, flushing with shame. Then, without a word, she whipped away and ran. Before I could gather myself even to call after her, she’d bolted over the crest of the hill.
Beside me, Elaine clucked.
“I think she still has feelings for that man,” she said, with a sage nod. “That’s hard.”
Down the slope, the trio resumed their photo shoot.
For the rest of that day, I felt pretty slow and stupid, like I was sleepwalking through a vat of molasses. I’d been through a lot since I came to Wonder Springs—I’d discovered the corpses of murder victims, suffered psychic attacks, and nearly gotten murdered myself, on multiple occasions.
But I wasn’t sure anything had hurt quite like this.
Toward evening, it occurred to me that I should try to go check on her. Maybe she’d calmed down, and we could talk. Or maybe she hadn’t, and it was precisely the time that a real friend would hunt her up.
At dinner, in the oak-paneled dining room at the Inn, I ate alone, both hoping and afraid to see her. When I didn’t, I told myself I’d go out and look for her, but I just needed a quick nap. I felt draine
d, and what good would I be to her exhausted?
But the next thing I knew, the early sun was slanting in my eyes, through the panes of my bedroom window. And standing by my antique bed was Grandma. Even her impeccable morning makeup job couldn’t hide the lines of concern.
“What is it? What happened?” I said, still groggy even as my heart started to race.
“When did you last see Tina?” Grandma asked, and her aristocratic Southern lilt was more quiet and serious than I’d ever heard.
“Tina?” I gasped. Now I was awake. I struggled and sat up. “Where is she? Is she okay? What happened?”
From his antique basket bed on my dresser top, my sweet white Ragdoll cat, Mr. Charm, leapt to my bed and, with an air of dignity, settled into my lap. I might not be able to touch people, but my faithful cat always knew when I needed his warm purr. As I stroked his throbbing back, his calm presence began to soothe and dissipate my panic.
Until what Grandma said next.
“Tina never came home last night,” she said. “We have no idea where she is.”
“What? Are you sure?” I said. I tried to stay the calm, but my mind was looping her strange anger, her final outburst and running off into the wild. “Maybe she took a late-night walk. She loves the woods. Or those caves, she’s always talking about finding new tunnels—”
“There’s more,” Grandma said. She took a deep breath, then sat on the edge of the bed and studied her slender hands. For the first time, I noticed that she was clutching a single folded sheet of paper.
Finally, she said, “Last night, the vineyard was vandalized.”
Whatever I’d been expecting, that one definitely came out of left field. Maybe from outside the stadium entirely, from some random parking lot.
“The vineyard? Vandalized?” I said. “Like how?”
“Someone cut the grapes from every single vine,” she said. “The place is a ruin.”
“What?” I said. “All those grapes? They’re just… gone?”