by Alyssa Day
I locked my car—also a new development, locking cars; nobody would have stolen my previous car if I'd paid them to do it—and ran up the stairs, unlocked my door, and hurried inside.
"I hate this," I told Lou, who blinked sleepily at me from her perch on the back of the couch. "I hate that this stalker person made me feel unsafe in my own home."
I hung up my church clothes, poured a glass of iced tea, and then spent some time cleaning and checking my rifle. I tried to practice with it once every couple of weeks these days, and I'd gotten to be a better and better shot. Jack would be surprised when he saw how much I'd improved, and Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby would be proud.
"A woman on her own needs to be able to protect herself," my aunt and uncle liked to say, and they'd done their best to raise me to be strong and independent. I was lucky to have them, even if they still did tend to treat me like I was sixteen instead of twenty-six some days.
Rifle maintenance done with, I turned my attention to a far more important matter: what was I going to wear on our date?
I threw open my closet doors and immediately realized two crucial facts:
1. I had no idea where we were going, and
2. My entire wardrobe was awful.
I sighed. I didn't own much in the way of fancy date clothes. My best friend Molly and I had made a special trip to buy The Dress for the first time Jack and I had tried to have this date. I couldn't wear it again. I needed something new, something with no bad associations connected to it.
Most of my wardrobe, if you could even call it that, consisted of jeans and Dead End Pawn polo shirts on one side of my closet, and a few dresses and pairs of nice pants with tops I could wear to church on the other. I'd been able to wear church clothes on dates with Owen, my ex, because he was a very sweet dentist and, most of all, he'd never made my pulse race to the point where I'd been desperate to wear something sexy enough to make him jump on me.
I had very fond memories of the way Jack had practically swallowed his tongue when he'd seen The Dress.
"Maybe I should just wear it again," I told Lou, who didn't seem particularly sympathetic, but then again, she always wore the same thing and looked spectacular.
"Not all of us have fur coats," I told her, sitting on the edge of my bed and giving her a quick cuddle. She purred and rubbed her cheek on mine, and suddenly I didn't mind so much about not having fancy clothes. I loved my cat, my family, my friends, my house, my small town, and my business.
I was incredibly lucky—I loved my life.
Well, except for my 'gift.' And except for when criminals and dead bodies were involved. I knew how fortunate I was, and I made a mental note to give another donation to Kiva.com, because I loved supporting women entrepreneurs like myself around the world with microloans.
"Which are the only ones I can afford, anyway," I told Lou. "But it's important to share when I can. I helped a woman in the Philippines buy stock for her tiny store the last time."
My phone buzzed, and I put Lou back down on the bed and reached for it, happy to see Molly's smiling face on the screen.
"Molly! It's like you're psychic! How did you know I was desperate for fashion advice at this very moment?"
Molly's lilting laughter sounded in my ear, and I felt myself relax for the first time since I'd opened that box. My best friend Molly Chen was an actual rock star, and her band Scarlett's Letters was on a national tour of small venues, which was the first step toward international fame, I was absolutely sure.
"Hey, Tess, glad to hear your voice. It has been nonstop here. Rehearsal, performance, rehearsal, performance, recording studio. The label seems to think we're the next big thing, but I'm still having to keep Dice from bashing one of the suits over the head with her guitar. That anger management class is wearing off, for sure. And she never was good with stress."
I rolled my eyes, glad Molly couldn't see it. She was a loyal friend, even to people I wasn't sure deserved it, like her perpetually troubled bass player. But, as Molly had reminded me more than once, if she dumped friends for being trouble, I'd be at the top of the list. Given how wild my life had been recently, I couldn't argue with that.
We spent a little bit of time catching up—mostly on her part; there was no way I was going to tell her about the stalker—and then she cut me off in the middle of my story about what had happened at church.
"Why fashion advice?"
"Jack's back."
Silence.
"Molly?"
"Tess, you know I like Jack, but I love you, and if he's going to jerk you around by disappearing and then reappearing with no notice, is that really what you want? You like reliable people and situations—"
"You make me sound very, very dull. Or a hundred years old!"
"You like reliable because your dad wasn't, this isn't hard to figure out; we've talked about this, and especially with your 'I see death' thing. So all I'm asking is this: Is Jack the right guy for you?"
She was right. I did like reliable and dependable.
But Jack had been completely reliable and dependable when all the trouble had hit this year… And I really, really liked him.
"I don't know, Molls," I admitted. "But isn't it worth at least having one date to figure it out?"
She sighed. "I can't argue with that. But only one date until I decide if he's good enough for you! And you have to call and tell me everything. Not tonight, but tomorrow, when the shop's slow."
"It won't be slow, it's a GYST day." Molly knew all about how hectic the shop got when the Golden Years Swamp Tours bus stopped by a few times a week on its way to take the nation's senior citizens on their AARP-approved jaunts into swamp territory and alligator viewing.
"Okay, okay, but after. Or when you eat lunch. Promise?"
"I promise! But this isn't solving the immediate problem. I don't want to go on this date wearing a church dress or jeans. I feel like I have a lot to live up to, after The Dress."
Molly, who'd practically tied me down to force me to buy that red dress, chuckled. "I still can't believe that saleswoman. Anyway, the problem is already solved."
"What? Which problem?"
"The fashion problem. I got you an early birthday present when I was in New York. It's in a garment bag in the closet in the spare room. I knew you wouldn't find it there until I was ready for you to see it."
I jumped up and dashed over to my spare room, which was easy enough, since it was just across the hall, and yanked open the closet doors. Sure enough, in pride of place in the middle of the closet, with my winter coats pushed to one side, was a black garment bag.
I made a sound that was somewhere between a squeal and a shriek, much to my embarrassment.
"What did you do? Oh, Molly, I told you—"
"You said not to buy you anything expensive, but I told you in fourth grade that you were not the boss of me, and it's still true. Just open the bag, so I can hear your reaction, and then I have to run, they're banging on my door, but you send me a selfie the second you put it on, you hear?"
I put the phone on speaker and tossed it on the bed and then carefully unzipped the bag.
"Oh, Molly."
I was almost speechless, opening and shutting my mouth like a fish.
"Oh, Molly. It's… it's beautiful."
"I know," she said smugly. "If I weren't a kickass musician, I'd be a world-class fashion designer. Or an astronaut. Oh, damn. I have to go. Try it on and send me a picture! Jack doesn't deserve you."
"I will. Molly, thank you so much! But it's too expensive—"
Click.
Molly, always impatient with gratitude, hung up, and I took one of the most beautiful dresses in the world out of the garment bag.
It was emerald-green silk, which would look amazing with my red hair. There wasn't much to it—it was a deceptively simple sheath. No frills, no ruffles, no decoration except for an embroidered pattern in a deeper green ribbon band that ran round the hem. It wasn't short enough to make me uncomfortable, and
the scoop neckline wasn't deep, but it was, in spite of being conservatively cut and oh-so-proper at first glance, an incredibly sexy dress.
It was all in the fit. Molly, who'd grown up with me, probably knew my measurements better than I did, and I'd eat the garment bag if she hadn't had this tailored to fit me like a glove.
I was almost afraid to try it on, but there was no way I could resist.
I yanked off my barn clothes, stepped into the dress, and pulled up the back zipper, and then I ran back to my bedroom to look at myself in the full-length antique mirror I'd restored and refinished a few years back.
"Oh, my goodness," I whispered. "Lou, I'm beautiful."
And I was. Somehow, the green was the exact shade to make my eyes look even bluer and my skin glow. I released my hair from its French knot, and it fell almost to my waist. I hadn't cut it in a while, partly because I'd been too busy to go the salon, and partly because I really loved it long.
Jack loves it long too.
I told my inner voice to shut the heck up, admired myself for a while longer, and then carefully hung the dress on the hook on a hanger on my bathroom door, where I'd be able to admire it while I was getting ready, later.
But the date was for six o'clock, and it was only going on two now. I pulled on a sundress, because it was at least 80 degrees outside—August in Florida may be all Death Heat and Humidity, but September wasn't much better—and sat down at the kitchen table with my tea and made a grocery list.
I loved my lists. People made fun of me, but I had no idea how anybody in the world got anything done without lists. I had lists at home, definitely lists at work, and even lists of things I wanted to do and places I wanted to see in the future, if I could ever figure out a way to travel while wearing gloves at all times, just in case someone accidentally touched me.
I did not want to know how the waiter in the Paris café was going to die. Or the ticket taker at the British Museum. Or the guide at the Vatican.
I sighed, pushed all that out of my mind, topped up Lou's water dish, kissed her head, and headed out for Super Target. We had no real grocery store in Dead End beyond the Pit Stop, and I wasn't a big fan of buying milk and bread in the same place that sold fishing bait.
A short drive later, I was wandering around the big box store, trying to resist the allure of great deals on well-displayed merchandise, because I had a big problem with Target: I could not get out of the non-grocery side of the store without spending two hundred dollars.
Even if I just went in for milk.
There were always such great deals on things I hadn't even realized I had to have, and before I knew it, I was wheeling a cart stuffed with two hundred dollars' worth of stuff to my car, not quite sure how it had happened. I figured better safe than sorry, so now I avoided the shiny aisles unless I definitely needed something.
A pawnshop in a small town is not a high-profit business, so I couldn't afford to be frivolous with my money. Also, I'd had a period of being overextended on my credit card just after I bought the house. The new curtains, rugs, and dishes and everything else had been so much fun to shop for, but not nearly as much fun to pay for. So now I was more careful, and my stress level at bill-paying time thanked me for it.
I rounded the corner into the soups and pasta aisle, and almost ran my cart into one being pushed by the pastor's wife.
"Hello, Mrs. Nash."
"Henrietta, please, Tess," she said, smiling. She really was a nice woman when she wasn't trying to keep me from singing in church. She was maybe five and a half feet tall, slender, with dishwater-blond hair and lovely brown eyes, and she still wore her yellow church dress and low heels, which seemed like a bit much for Target, but what did I know about the standards pastors' wives had to hold up? Pawnshop owners were perfectly dressed in jeans and T-shirts, so my sundress was a step up for me.
She was alone, which was unusual. I never saw her anywhere without her three kids, who were all somewhere between five and ten years old.
"Left the kids at home for Pastor Nash to take care of?"
She gave me a worried frown. "No. Well, yes, but mostly because they're all sick. The doctor says it's just a cold, but it's a bad one. I hear it's going around."
"I'm sorry. That must be tough, when all of them get it."
"Yes, and keep an eye on Shelley. She's in Missy's class at school, and I hear half of them are down with it." She gestured to her cart. "I'm stocking up on tissues, chicken soup, and frozen fruit bars for sore throats. It's going to be a long week."
I made what I hoped was a sympathetic face and not an 'oh, boy, trapped in the house with three sick kids sounds miserable' face, glanced down at her cart, and froze.
Sure enough, there were several cans of soup, three boxes of tissues, two boxes of frozen banana bars, and a lot of the other things a growing family needed, but none of that was what had caught my attention.
No, my gaze was glued to the three bags of peppermint candies tucked into a corner of the cart.
Surely not. There is no possible way that Pastor Nash is my stalker.
Or—worse—Mrs. Nash. Does she hate my singing enough to leave me amputated body parts?
I realized my thoughts were growing more and more ridiculous.
"Um, doing some early Halloween candy shopping?" I pointed to the peppermints, as if she might be confused and think I was talking about the chicken noodle soup.
"What?" She glanced down and laughed. "Oh, no. Those are for Caleb. He gets such a dry throat giving those sermons. I've told him maybe he could talk just a little bit less, but he says Jesus deserves our full attention, and if he only has an hour and a half each week, he's going to make the most of it."
"For the pastor," I echoed weakly, my mind going to all those movies where the nun was a psycho serial killer. Nuns, pastors, there wasn’t that much difference, right?
Argh.
"Yes, he eats them like, well, like candy, I guess. Goes through a few bags a week. Anyway, Tess, it's nice to see you, but I need to find the children's cold medicine and get home to the kids. See you next Sunday, I hope?"
She smiled again, and Southern manners compelled me to tell the possible wife of a finger-chopping-off lunatic that it had been nice to see her too.
And then I just stood there, frozen, trying not to believe that our church pastor was sending me amputated fingers.
When I started walking, my phone rang, startling me so much I jumped, and I fumbled it out of my purse.
Jack.
"Hey, Jack. I may have a suspect," I whispered, although I'm not sure why, since I was alone in the condiments aisle. Not a lot of interest in pickles and mustard today, apparently.
"That's good, because I ruled one out. Brigham Hammermill the Fourth is definitely not your stalker."
"I didn't think he would be. But how do you know for sure?"
"He's dead. Died two months ago in a freak squall that capsized his yacht. Evidently it was great timing, if you can ever say that about someone's death, because he was drowning in debt and his business was failing."
I rolled my eyes, even though Jack couldn't see me. "Yacht accident and drowning in debt? Really?"
"Sorry. I didn't even plan it. But what about you? Who's your suspect?"
"I don't want to talk about this over the phone. We can discuss it this evening. Where are we going on our date? I need to know what to wear."
"We're going out to dinner."
I sighed.
Men.
"Yes, okay, but where? McDonalds? Beau's Diner? Somewhere fancy where I can dress up? A food truck?"
He laughed, and the low, sexy sound gave me shivers. "Definitely somewhere fancy where you can dress up."
Ah ha. The green dress would be perfect.
"Where? Orlando? Not Carlos's club, though, I'm not in the mood for a vampire dance club tonight."
"No vampires, I promise. Well, unless Daniel and Serai are visiting."
"Where, Jack?"
"You don't w
ant it to be a surprise?"
"I hate surprises."
"Okay, Tess. We're having dinner in Atlantis. See you at six."
7
He hung up before I could demand details, like how and why and how and what?
Dinner in Atlantis. Wow.
It wasn't even possible, unless he had a plane ready to take us to the official ships that were the only way anybody was allowed to travel to Atlantis. Since the lost continent had risen from the depths of the ocean in the area formerly known as the Bermuda Triangle a few years back, everybody in the world had wanted to visit.
But the Atlantean royal family had quickly set guidelines and strictly limited visitors. Mostly historians, linguists, artists, and ambassadors at first, and then they'd slowly allowed a small amount of regular people—tourists, really—to visit.
The king, who was rumored to be hundreds of years old because of Atlantean magic but looked like a hot thirty-something, had even married an American!
But, no.
Surely Jack had been joking.
He knew I had to work in the morning, and that Susan would be coming by the shop too. Surely he didn't think I could just hop on a plane and a boat and be gone for days, even if I knew he could probably arrange it, since he was a friend to the Atlantean royal family and had helped them with dangerous missions in the years when Jack had been a rebel leader.
"Move out of the way, girlie!"
I blinked and realized I was still standing in the same place, and a very tiny woman who was maybe eighty going on a hundred and fifty stood glaring up at me.
"You're blocking the pickles, and I need pickles for my digestion," she informed me at the top of her lungs.
"I'm sorry." I hastily moved my cart out of the way.
"Wait! Since you're here, you may as well reach those pickles on the top shelf down for me," she commanded. "You're tall enough."
"Yes, ma'am." I got her pickles, accepted her grudging thanks, and headed for the checkout.
Atlantis.
No. He had to be kidding.
He wasn't kidding.
I was so anxious and, honestly, stressed out of my mind, that I was completely ready to go by five thirty. I'd tried calling Jack back, but it had rung through to voice mail, which meant either that he was busy or that he didn't want to answer any more questions.