by Vivian Barz
OTHER TITLES BY VIVIAN BARZ
Forgotten Bones
Hidden Bones
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Vivian Barz
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542027939
ISBN-10: 1542027934
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
For Kevin, King Toad of Lily Pad Kingdom
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
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
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
Goody Two-shoes.
That’s what friends at Lamount University called her, and not only because she was always first in class to raise her hand, even when the questions were meant to be rhetorical, or because she didn’t curse and said things like gosh darn it and oh fudge on the occasions she was exasperated, or because she rarely put out—she’d slept with only one boy in her entire twenty-one years of living, and that had been after spending three and a half years as high school sweethearts. No, it was mostly because Samantha was a lightweight; she couldn’t hold her alcohol if her liver had a set of handles, they teased her at parties she rarely attended, as if being a drunk was a status to strive for.
Samantha was on her second house margarita, which was more sugar and artificial lime flavoring than anything else. Despite its wateriness, she’d worked up a decent buzz (or what was decent for a lightweight) and the nerve to do what she’d been putting off for weeks. One more round should just about remind her of the backbone she’d once had. No need to be dramatic about it. Just a few simple words, and she’d be free.
Her gaze drifted to her blustering companions, Kimmy, Miguel, and Marty, whose cheeks were aflame with outrage over the latest exploitation of Earth. Forests had been slashed, fires ignited, animals slaughtered . . . and capitalism was at the root of the evil. That’s what she envisioned, anyway. She’d learned to tune them out over time, just as she was tuning them out now.
Good evening, friends—what shall we be outraged about tonight? she mused silently and then immediately felt a pang of remorse over being so dismissive. It wasn’t like she didn’t care about these issues—it was a great priority of hers to make the world a cleaner, better place for herself and future generations—but irate conversations such as these always marked her with depression that lingered for days, even weeks. She was having trouble sleeping because of it. It would be nice if, only just once, they could discuss topics that weren’t so doom and gloom, even if it was something as vapid as their favorite films.
There was that, plus Rodent and his devoted band of cronies’ insistence that the times of armchair activism were over, that TALK WAS CHEAP—that any poseur could post memes and political rants on social media, but true warriors didn’t hide behind computers. They put their money where their mouth was—the key being their money and never his—used connections, and never backed down from a fight. They created narratives that fit the cause, stretched and bent the truth so frequently that the lies came out as easily as saying one’s own name. Samantha, who avoided face-to-face confrontation as much as she avoided making enemies, had been wanting to distance herself from the group for weeks because of it. While she suspected they’d begun to sense her growing anxiety and displeasure for some time now, she’d been struggling to find the nerve to start an actual conversation with them about it.
Good thing that she had those watery margaritas to fall back on.
Her vision went blurry around the edges as she screeched her chair away from the small splintery oak table they sat crammed around. The bar stank of pre-exam stress, ancient beer spills, and bigheaded sweat (the lacrosse team, sporting their soiled game-day jerseys, was celebrating a 0–15 win against Fresno). It was an unpleasant, but not unusual, collegiate potpourri that never failed to make her nostrils flare in distaste, though tonight it was making her downright nauseous. Samantha halfheartedly asked her crew if they needed another round and then sauntered off before anyone had a chance to reply. As a broke college student—well, as someone who played at being a broke college student—she’d wisely ascertained that requests for alcohol tended to take on an extravagant note when it was somebody else doing the buying.
Bryan was giving her his full frowning attention from behind the bar, hawk eyeing her as if she were a frail old woman in grave danger of falling down on a patch of ice. She focused hard to keep her gait from straying sideways, smiling at him as if she didn’t have a care in the world. He pursed his lips in disapproval, clearly not buying it.
With a long sigh, Samantha aimed her eyes at the ceiling. That he should be the one casting dirty looks her way was ridiculous—it had been Bryan, after all, who’d ended their relationship two weeks into junior year. Yet, in the time since, he’d behaved as if they were still together, quizzing her jealously about the males he’d seen her walking with around campus.
His frustrating behavior only validated her parents’ disapproval of their daughter attending the same university as the boy who’d been her high school sweetheart. Explore your options, they’d hounded her relentlessly; get out and meet new people. Which, of course, was their way of saying that they didn’t think Bryan—who was more blue collar than blue blood—was good enough for their sweet baby girl, who deserved nothing short of a prince. How ironic it was, then, that it was ultimately he who’d thought that she was not good enough for him. To save face with her parents and friends, she’d implied that she’d done the dumping.
She would have avoided speaking to Bryan altogether now, but he was the only one available to furnish her a drink. Keira, the other bartender on duty, was busy breaking up a blossoming fight between a territorial frat boy and a lecherous middle-aged sleazebag who was far too long in the tooth to be trolling for a romantic hookup at a college bar, which was exactly what Samantha had insinuated to him earlier when he’d tested his luck hitting on her. She’d heard that you can’t blame a guy for trying, but she certainly did.
Despite her petite stature, Keira was fierce, and anyone with half a brain cell knew better than to mess with her. Samantha watched the drama with woozy interest as the two drunk buffoons, chests puffed like gorillas, swore that, no, they were absolutely not going to have a problem. To e
nsure this, the bartender lingered nearby.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Bryan cut into her thoughts.
She nearly quipped, Who are you, my father? But it seemed like too much effort in her buzzed state and would undoubtedly instigate a debate. She settled on “Okay, Dad,” though, in truth, she was wondering if maybe those margaritas weren’t as watery as she’d thought. She was feeling rather . . .
Funky, she decided.
Bryan grunted. “If I were your father, you wouldn’t be allowed to slum it in this rathole.”
“Because it’s so uncivilized in here,” Samantha said with a snort, ignoring the irrelevant dig at her family’s wealth, which had been an exasperating bone of contention during their relationship. As if she could change the family she’d been born into. She plopped her empty glass down on the bar. “And I’ve only had two drinks—”
“Or hang out with those maniacs,” Bryan continued right over the top of her, hurling a dark look at her friends. “What could you possibly get out of spending your time with them? You’re going to land yourself in jail, if you’re not careful. Or worse.”
Samantha raised an eyebrow at her ex, who was looking irritatingly handsome in a tousled, informal sort of way; it would have been far easier to extract him from her life had he not always looked as if he’d just returned from a photo shoot at the beach. Despite their split, he did still care about her. This was something he’d told her on multiple occasions, though Samantha would have known it without the reassurances—Bryan had always been decent like that. She reminded herself not to read too much into it now. Just because he felt love for her on some level, it did not mean that he was in love with her.
Had they still been together, she might have felt obliged to reveal that she shared his unflattering opinion about the individuals he believed were her friends and that she was planning on cutting ties with them tonight. But, he’d broken up with her and had therefore lost the right to question her personal relationships. Who she kept company with was none of his business.
He removed her empty glass from the bar. “You want the same?”
She nodded. He turned his back on her so that she couldn’t see how he was making her margarita. Adding as little alcohol as taste buds would allow, no doubt, or maybe none at all. He twisted around and set the glass down on the bar. She picked up the drink, sniffed it suspiciously, and took a long swig.
“Good?” he asked, watching her closely as if offended.
“Good enough,” she answered vaguely and shrugged. Both she and Bryan were aware that she was not an experienced enough drinker to confidently argue that she’d been hoodwinked with a virgin drink without sounding paranoid.
Samantha cast a glance back at her table, where it took only one look at her companions’ flushed faces to know that the angry tirades had not ceased. She weighed her options—a stilted conversation with her ex or the indignation she’d face at the table—and decided to remain standing at the bar. Of the two devils, it was the one she knew best. She was aware that she was stalling the inevitable, but what did a few extra minutes matter as long as she cut ties with the group before going home?
She made a move to set her drink down on the bar, but it was her butt that she parked on the closest barstool instead. The fact was she’d had enough. The sweetness of the drink, initially as tasty as candy, had become cloying, and she chastised herself for being excessive, for not stopping at two. When she finally did rest the glass on the bar, Bryan was there to take it away in the blink of an eye.
“I wasn’t done,” she said, more out of irritation than anything else.
“Yah,” he said, placing a glass of cold water down in front of her, “you are. Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
Had she mentioned that she was feeling off—hot, sticky, confused? She couldn’t remember. She rubbed her temples, swallowing down the bile that was beginning to burn up her throat, a reminder of why she never drank.
Bryan appeared at her side suddenly. “Come on—I’ll take you home.”
“But . . . my stuff.” She peered at her table, not really caring if she left her things behind. Not when she was in imminent danger of throwing up in front of everyone inside the bar.
Bryan lifted an arm, showing her the jacket and purse he was holding. “I got everything.”
“My friends—”
“I told them I was taking you home.”
Without further debate, they left the bar, and not a moment too soon. A few yards from the entrance outside, she bent at the waist and retched into a row of bushes. The invigorating San Francisco air was cold and dewy against her skin, yet that didn’t stop her from throwing up again as they reached Bryan’s car on the street. Samantha no longer cared that her ex was judging her as he made a move to hold back her hair, or that she’d failed to tell her so-called friends that she wouldn’t be seeking out their company anytime in the near future (nor after that). As the world around her dimmed, she could think only of home, her bed, and the bliss of permitting her eyes to slide closed—forever, for all that she cared.
She couldn’t recall the drive to her condo, yet here they were pulling up in front of it. And now here was Bryan at the curb outside, laboring to extract her from the passenger seat. Her limbs, warm and oozy as melted caramel, slackened against his struggle. “Christ, help me out a little, would you?” he growled, but to her ears, it sounded like something else. Something sweeter.
I love you.
“Iloveyoutoo,” she slurred in an exhalation of breath, a sentiment that garnered her one of Bryan’s notorious fed-up frowns. It was a look she’d grown accustomed to near the end of their breakup, though back then it would have gotten a rise out of her. She blinked at him slowly.
They were at her front door lickety-split—or what seemed fast to her, though Bryan might have argued about the time and effort it had truly taken to get her up the flight of stairs—and she searched in her handbag for her keys, dropping her hairbrush, wallet, and cell phone onto the ground as she rooted. She didn’t bother to pick anything up, either not noticing or not caring.
Bryan fished Samantha’s keys out of her handbag and picked her items up in what seemed like one fell swoop. She stumbled over her own feet as they crossed into the entryway, where Bryan didn’t bother turning on the lights. He knew her place so well that he could locate her bedroom within darkness. Limp as a rag doll, she let him drag her down the long hallway toward it, her eyes dropping closed as soon as he laid her down on the bed.
CHAPTER 1
Had it not been for the mysterious and, more crucially, wealthy benefactor who’d swayed the dean of students at Lamount University to take on a new professor, Eric Evans never would have landed his prestigious teaching gig. While the benefactor in question had insisted on remaining anonymous, identifying themselves as simply J. Doe, the reason behind the donation had been made perfectly clear: the philanthropist had a keen interest in the paranormal, and they felt that LU students could use some long-overdue clarification on the topic.
Also made clear was the sole condition that had accompanied the endowment, which was to be utilized for campus improvements at the school board’s discretion: Eric, a small-town college professor who’d used his otherworldly intuition to assist authorities in capturing perpetrators in two high-profile West Coast cases, must be granted a full-time teaching position . . . however. He was not to act as an expert in geology, a subject he’d spent over a third of his thirty-seven years either studying or teaching. He must, J. Doe had insisted, focus his lectures solely on solving crimes through supernatural means.
Eric, who was absolutely flabbergasted that a complete stranger would drop seven figures just to see him standing at the front of a classroom in San Francisco, had initially balked at the idea. He wasn’t some performing monkey, eagerly waiting to shock and amaze the crowd with his curious talents at the snap of some stranger’s fingers. (Yet, he realized with some chagrin, he also wasn’t employed.) That he would be thr
owing away years of training—never mind the small fortune he’d dropped on tuition—was the least of his concerns. What vexed him most was that accepting the teaching position on the new terms would only validate the ludicrous speculations the media had and continued to spout about his purported supernatural gifts.
He’d been fighting an uphill battle with the press for more than a year. It started around the time he’d become embroiled in the Death Farm case, which had received international infamy after twenty-three murder victims were unearthed on a private residence in Perrick, a bucolic town just off the Northern California coastline. Later offering his expertise to the FBI to expose why so many locals in Clancy, Washington, were disappearing without a trace had only added fuel to the fire. Reporters who’d elevated his status to that of a quasi celebrity, albeit one known most in amateur sleuth circles, had called him an assortment of names in the time that had passed: psychic, hack, or just plain crazy. While some reported that he talked to ghosts, others insinuated that he might have even committed a few of the grisly crimes himself, for no other reason than to seek attention.
It was partly because of these vulturelike journalists that he was obliged to take the offer at LU once it arrived seemingly out of nowhere, despite his initial displeasure with the topic he was being sought to teach. Eric couldn’t have remained at Perrick Community College, the small campus he’d been employed at after his relocation to California from Pennsylvania, even if he’d wanted to; the media’s relentless obsession with uncovering a truth that could never justly be explained—that he used cryptic messages from the dead to help solve murders—saw to that. He hadn’t been at the institution long enough to develop friendships, let alone garner allies, and his welcome had worn out swiftly once the press had started stalking him on campus. Students and professors alike were cornered with questions, classes were interrupted in the middle of lectures. Then came the lookie-loos who’d begun registering for his course in droves, their interest in geology nil but their desire to catch a glimpse of a real live psychic immense.