by Lena Gregory
“Okay, guys, what’ll it be?” Elaina Stevens stood beside the table, pen poised over a small pad.
Cass plastered on a smile. “I’ll have two bacon cheeseburgers, fries, coleslaw, and a chocolate shake.”
Elaina just stared at her.
Cass frowned. “What?”
“Uh . . . oh, nothing.” Small patches of red blossomed on Elaina’s cheeks as she quickly scribbled the order and shifted her attention to Bee. “What’ll you have, Bee?”
Bee and Stephanie simply sat, staring at Cass, Bee’s mouth slightly agape.
“Okay, what’s the problem?” Cass shrugged. “So I’m hungry.”
Bee cleared his throat, holding her gaze.
“Oh, fine. One of them’s for Beast.” She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I know, I know, Doc said to stop feeding him so much table food.” She thought of Beast roaming freely through her house. Hopefully, he was either sleeping or lying in the kitchen, chewing one of the million toys she had stashed, not doing any serious damage. “But I promised him a hamburger if he didn’t eat the kitchen while I was gone.”
Bee burst out laughing, then shook his head and placed his order.
Stephanie only ordered coffee. “I ate earlier with Tank.”
“I’ll be right back with this.” Elaina hurried off to place the order.
“Is he working tonight?” Bee asked. Even with the truce he and Tank had sort of achieved, Bee was still leery whenever Stephanie’s husband was around. The fact that he was a detective only added to Bee’s unease.
“He’s sleeping now, but he has to go in at midnight.” She pinned Cass with a stare. “So, what’s up?”
Cass folded the corner of the paper place mat. Then, she folded it again in the opposite direction and smoothed the crease. How could she explain what was happening to her when she didn’t even understand it herself?
“Last time you ate that amount of food in one sitting was . . .” Bee made a production of scratching his head. “Hmmm . . . you’ve never eaten that amount of food.” He rested his clasped hands on the table. “Spill it, girl.”
Cass laughed, but sobered quickly and massaged her temples. Bee and Stephanie were her best friends. They’d stand by her side no matter what. Who knew? Maybe they could help her make sense of . . . whatever was going on. “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in more than a week.”
Bee frowned and patted her hand. “Are you feeling all right?”
Leaning against the seat back, Cass slid lower. “I’ve been having nightmares.” She paused. If she were to be honest, they weren’t exactly nightmares, they just felt like nightmares. If she wanted their help, she had to try to be as accurate as possible. “Okay, not exactly nightmares, but really weird dreams about a woman.”
Bee waggled his thick, bushy eyebrows and grinned. “Really?”
She kicked his shin under the table. “Knock it off, Bee.” But some of the tension drained away. She sighed. “At least I think I’m dreaming. I keep dreaming that I open my eyes, and there’s a woman beside the bed.”
Stephanie leaned forward. “What does she do?”
“That’s just it. She doesn’t really do anything. I can’t tell if she’s standing or sitting. I can only see her head and neck and a little bit of the front of her blouse. She stares at me for a while, then speaks.”
A tremor ran through Bee. “What does she say?”
“Help me.”
“Okay, that’s creepy.”
Eagerness lit Stephanie’s eyes, whatever was bothering her earlier obviously forgotten. “Are you sure it’s a dream? Maybe it’s a—”
“That’s it.” Bee held a finger up in warning. “If this conversation starts heading down the heebie-jeebie path, I’m outta here.”
Stephanie shot him a glare. “Well, how would you explain it then?”
“I have no idea, but I don’t want to hear anything more about . . . whatever it is you’re thinking.” He turned to Cass. “Now. What does this woman look like? Could it be someone you know?”
“I . . . uhh . . .” She started to tell them about the painting in the art gallery window, but she hesitated, afraid if they went back there it wouldn’t be the woman from her dreams at all. Had it just been a hallucination? “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before. And it’s odd, but it seems as if she lived in the past. Her hair is pulled back tight against her head, and she’s got on one of those old-fashioned blouses with the collars that button up all the way to your chin.”
“Can you see the whole blouse?”
“Actually, no. Just the collar and a bit of the chest. I assumed it was a blouse, but I suppose it could be a dress or something.”
Bee frowned. “Hmmm, I haven’t—”
“Here you go, guys.” Elaina sorted out the food, placing each of their orders in front of them, and handed Cass a foam box. “That’s for Beast.”
“Thanks, Elaina.”
“Do you need anything else?”
“We’re good, thank you.”
Cass studied her cheeseburger, which was loaded with cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and two huge onion rings, then doused it all with ketchup and squashed the bun down on top.
“I cannot even believe you’re going to eat that.” Stephanie frowned. “No wonder you’re having nightmares.”
“Oh, knock it off,” Bee said around a mouthful of cheeseburger. “You can’t live on salads and tacos.”
“And McDonald’s. Don’t forget she eats cheeseburgers from McDonald’s.” Stephanie laughed.
Bee waved her off. “Those cheeseburgers don’t even count. They’re like . . . what . . . a quarter of the size of these?” He bit into his burger again.
“Once in a while she eats a Big Mac, I’ve—”
“What did you start to say before, Bee?” Cass interrupted before their argument could escalate any further. The scent of fried food made her mouth water, and she took a bite while she waited for Bee to finish chewing and answer.
“Oh, right.” He dabbed his mouth daintily with a napkin. “Keep in mind, just because the clothing appeared to be old-fashioned, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s from the past.” He shifted a bit to face her and hooked his elbow over the back of the booth seat, warming up to a discussion of fashion—or more likely just happy to have moved past the mention of ghosts. For a man who didn’t believe in anything otherworldly, Bee avoided the subject like the plague.
But fashion was Bee’s thing. If anyone knew about women’s clothing, it was Bee. “It could be someone you saw in a movie that was set in the past, someone you noticed but don’t necessarily remember.”
She thought again of the painting in the window. Maybe it had been there all along and she just didn’t remember seeing it, but somehow it had stuck in her subconscious. Then again, maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her, and it wasn’t the same woman at all. There had definitely been something different about the mouth, if she could just—
Bee intruded on her thoughts. “Or it could be a costume of some sort. Or, it could be thrift shop clothing. There have been several times throughout the years when those high collars were popular, some not that long ago.” He grinned, mischief dancing in his eyes. “Or could be she just has terrible taste in clothes.”
Cass laughed, feeling considerably better since she joined her friends.
“What? Some people do, you know.” He returned to his cheeseburger.
Stephanie squirted a pile of ketchup onto the side of Cass’s dish, snatched a fry from Cass’s heaping pile, and swirled it through the ketchup. “Is the dream always the same?” She popped the fry into her mouth.
“Yes.” There was no background she could ascertain, just blackness with a woman’s head and shoulders floating. A chill gripped her. “But that’s not the only weird thing. The man that came in for the
reading tonight?” She grabbed a fry before Stephanie could finish off the pile. “His adult daughter is missing.”
Stephanie’s hand stopped midway to her mouth. “Do you think it’s the same woman?”
Tossing the fry she’d been about to eat back onto the plate, Cass sat back. “I have no idea. When he came in . . .” She wasn’t ready to share the vision of the woman who’d accompanied Artie into the shop. It didn’t really prove anything. It had been so hazy, and she couldn’t tell if it was the same woman. Heck, she couldn’t even be sure it was real. Maybe she was losing her mind. “I didn’t care much for him, and neither did Beast.”
Bee frowned. “Beast likes everyone.”
“I know, right? But he didn’t like this guy. For a minute I thought it was going to be a repeat of when he chased Jay Callahan out of the shop.”
“That bad?” Bee finished off the last of his burger.
“The man’s not coming back again, is he?” Stephanie gave up on the fries and sipped her coffee.
Cass shrugged. “He didn’t schedule another reading, but I have no idea.”
“Maybe you should go to the police,” Stephanie suggested.
Bee’s eyes widened. “And tell them what? She had a dream about a woman?”
“You know . . .” Stephanie sat up straighter. “. . . like those psychics that work with the cops to find missing people. Maybe the woman is still alive and—”
“Think about that for a minute.” Bee lowered his voice and leaned across the table toward Stephanie. “Cass is supposed to be a medium. If your theory is correct, which borders on absurd, the woman is obviously not still alive if Cass is seeing her.”
“Hmmm . . .” Stephanie pouted. “You could be right. All the more reason to talk to the police.”
“We’ll see.” Cass had no intention of going to the police. For what? To tell them she’d had a bad dream? Besides, Artie said he’d already been to the police, and he seemed frustrated enough with their lack of results that she believed him. But she didn’t feel like arguing. Easier to just change the subject. “Do either of you know anything about the new art gallery?”
“Oh, don’t they have the loveliest paintings?” Bee clapped his hands together. “I was thinking of stopping in there one of these days and taking a look at one of the beach scenes for Dreamweaver. There’s one in particular, at sunset, and the colors would complement my beach wedding line perfectly.”
He gushed for a little while, but Cass tuned it out. She’d have to go by there again, and if the woman in the painting actually was the woman from her dreams, maybe the owner could help make some sense of what was happening.
3
“Help me.” The voice, on the softest breath, caressed the back of Cass’s neck.
She jerked awake. She must have fallen asleep curled in the living room chair. Trying to stretch the kink in her neck, she opened her eyes—or at least she thought she did.
A woman’s head, surrounded by blackness, floated a few feet in front of her. “Help me!” The woman’s lips didn’t move; they remained firmly pressed together in a thin line. The voice slid into Cass’s mind, more insistent this time.
Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, Cass pressed her head as far back against the chair as she could and counted to ten while she tried to coax the crazy staccato of her heart back into some sort of rhythm. She willed the vision to evaporate, to go back to whatever crazy corner of her subconscious had fabricated it.
Ice-cold tendrils of air curled around her neck.
Cass’s eyes shot open, and she gasped as she jerked upright in the chair.
The woman’s face had come closer, hovering only a few inches in front of her, their noses almost touching, her brows drawn together in a frown. “Help me.”
Cass opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. Instead, a whoosh of air exploded from her lungs. She sucked in a ragged breath and tried again. “Wha . . .” The whisper of sound was all she could manage past the fear clogging her throat.
The woman’s head spun abruptly away, moving toward the opposite side of the room at about the right height for a woman who was a bit shorter than Cass’s five-seven.
Without waiting for her to turn back around, Cass leaped from the chair, vaulted the new leather couch, and ran toward her bedroom. What am I, crazy? Changing course in the hallway, she slid on the area rug but managed to regain her footing. She headed toward the kitchen. When she slammed through the door, Beast shot to his feet.
“Come on, boy. We’re outta here.” Barely slowing her pace, she grabbed the leash and keys from the hooks beside the back door, yanked the door open, and ran out with Beast on her heels.
He seemed to think it was some sort of game, though, because he danced around in the mud then jumped up, propping his big paws on Cass’s shoulders. Mud splattered her face and neck, and a big glob ran down the inside of her shirt and got caught in her cleavage.
“Beast, no!”
He licked her cheek.
“Down, boy.” She pushed against his chest, which had somehow also gotten caked with mud, and he dropped to the ground, rolled onto his back, and squirmed back and forth in his very own mud bath.
Ugh . . . really?
She eyed the back door and swallowed hard, the taste of mud clogging the back of her throat, then glanced at the new Dodge Dart she’d bought with the insurance check from the Jetta she’d wrecked a few months ago.
Beast jumped to his feet and shook himself off, spraying mud everywhere.
That solved that. She wasn’t going anywhere covered in mud. And no way was Beast getting into her new car like that. Well, actually, the car was used, but it was new to her, and she didn’t want mud all over the clean interior.
She tried to wipe the mud from her clothes as she walked toward the back door, but she only succeeded in smearing it more. Ghost or no ghost, she needed a shower. She glanced down at Beast.
He’d stopped short beside her, staring at the door. He whined and moved closer to Cass, pressing his side against her leg.
Never mind. Mud probably wouldn’t stain the black fabric seats anyway. She bolted for the car, cringed as Beast climbed into the backseat, and hopped in. No way was she going back into the house alone. Five after seven. She could call Luke, but it wasn’t like he’d be much help from the mainland. Besides, what was she going to tell him? Their long-distance relationship was proving hard enough without making him think she was crazy.
Stephanie was probably still sleeping, but Bee might not have gone to bed yet. Since he worked on his designs all night, he usually didn’t go to bed until seven or eight. Definitely a better option than running into Tank and having to explain why she was so frazzled. She headed for Bee’s house.
He would not be happy to find her on his doorstep, covered in mud, at just past seven in the morning, but what else could she do? She hadn’t grabbed her bag or her cell phone in her hurry to flee the house . . . uh-oh. She lifted her foot off the gas and slowed. What was she going to tell him? If he knew a . . . something had spooked her, he’d never agree to come over.
The drive over was not comfortable. The mud had started to dry and was tightening her skin, and the damp clothes were bringing a chill, but it was better than being alone at home. Of course, nothing was stopping the woman from materializing in the car. She started to look at the—hopefully empty—passenger seat, but thought better of it and kept her eyes firmly on the road until she reached Bee’s driveway and parked. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Probably.
“Come on, Beast.” She hooked the leash to his collar, stepped out of the car, and started toward the door.
Before she even reached the porch, Bee had opened the door and was doubled over laughing, gasping for air.
“Not funny, mister.” She strode toward him.
He bit back the laughter—sort of—when his gaze landed
on Beast. His eyes widened, sending his bushy brown eyebrows straight up beneath his bleached blond bangs. “Oh, no. Stay right there, missy. Don’t you dare come any closer with that animal.”
She kept walking toward him without slowing her pace.
“Did you hear me, Cass? I’m not kidding. You are not coming up here with that dog.” He squinted and eyed Beast more closely. “What on earth happened to you two?”
Cass finally stopped. “I need you to come home with me.”
He lifted a brow, and a smirk played at the corner of his mouth. “That is so not happening, honey.”
Cass held the leash in the air, keeping a firm enough grip so that Beast couldn’t escape—unless he really wanted to.
Beast wagged furiously, spraying mud everywhere.
She cocked a hip and propped her free, mud-covered hand on it. “Either you come home with me, or I’ll let him go.”
Bee’s mouth fell open. He snapped it shut and narrowed his eyes, pinning her with a glare. “You wouldn’t dare.”
She loosened her hold, letting the leash slip just a little.
Beast crouched, practically vibrating with the need to escape, barely able to restrain himself.
“Okay. You win.” Bee held up his hands in defeat. “But I’m following you in my own car.”
“Fine.”
Keeping one eye glued to the rearview mirror to make sure Bee stayed true to his word, Cass drove home. When she got there, she left Beast in the car with the windows cracked, and left the car running—you never could tell when you might need to make a quick getaway. She climbed out and wiped her now-sweaty palms on her filthy yoga pants.
Bee parked behind her, turned off his car, and got out. Muting the rumble of the black Trans Am Bee called his baby left a deafening silence as he strode toward her. “So what’s going on?”
“Uh . . . weeell . . .” She squinted and scratched her head, unsure of how to break the news that she had a ghost following her without making him run screaming in the other direction.
Bee firmed his mouth into a tight line, propped a hand on his cocked hip, and tossed the end of his multicolored scarf over his shoulder. “Spill it, girl. Now.”