Oh, oh, OH! It smells like Sandra! Enzo said, and his eyes looked watery, too. As far as Clare knew, dogs didn’t cry.
Grumbling, she picked up the heavy boxes using her legs, not her back, braced them against the house as she opened the screen door and unlocked the front door, then staggered in and set them down near the coffee table. When Enzo joined her, she said, “Maybe you should, ah, pass on, like Sandra.”
No, he said.
She sank onto the couch, head drooping into her hands. This whole thing wasn’t working well, trying not to talk to him and believe he didn’t exist. But she didn’t want him to exist. Didn’t want Sandra’s life.
It was easier to think she was going crazy, though that had her hyperventilating. Now tears did leak out of her eyes, dribbling warmth onto her fingers. After a minute she got up and started water for peppermint tea, then got a box cutter and opened the well-packed carton from the attorney.
The whiff of scent—more than just the perfume Clare had been finishing off—that consisted of Sandra’s lotions, the incense she used during her sessions, wafted around Clare, and she sat down on the floor and wept.
It is sad we are left behind, Enzo said. For once he didn’t come up and lick her or move into her body, making her even colder, and for that she was grateful.
“You can go on to be with her!” Clare assured him through sniffs, groping for tissues in her bag and blowing her nose.
No. You need me.
But she damn well didn’t want him. Didn’t want this. Even with all the money that came with this, this . . . stuff . . . that was tearing her apart. It had been only five days since she’d left Chicago and started seeing strange things. Not very long in general terms.
Long enough for her to doubt her sanity.
Anger warmed her, and she gulped back lingering tears and took out the inventory sheet. One line engendered dread: Twelve journals with miscellaneous dates in each volume. Hell!
Frowning, Clare pulled them out, one by one, all with colorful covers. She picked up one with a fairy dancing on the breeze that she remembered from a childhood visit. It fell open.
On the left hand of the page was a date ten years ago, on the right, about six and a half. Totally random entries, great, how was she supposed to research that! Then a sentence caught her eye:
I think Clare must be my heir. She doesn’t think much of me, but that doesn’t matter. Or perhaps it will be a child of hers or Tucker’s.
Goddammit! Clare dropped the book, opened the second box, and rooted around for hard copies of whatever Sandra had recorded. Lots of videos, one for each of her parents and them as a couple, one for her brother, her brother’s wife, their little girl, and her brother and sister-in-law as a couple and them as a family. Finally one for her, at the bottom. Why hadn’t the lawyer’s office put it on top?
She readied the video, went back to the sofa, and sat down. Enzo came to her feet, looked up at her, and whined. With a huge sigh, she patted the sofa and he leapt up and settled next to her, not draping himself over her legs, thank goodness.
Clare pressed the play button on the remote.
Sandra, with her orange hair, blue eyelids, pink cheeks, and red lipstick, looked old and sick and scrawny, stabbing Clare with guilt that she’d avoided her great-aunt for so long . . . just saw her on holidays when Clare’s parents were in the States, or when Clare went to her brother and his family’s. Clare had actually been the one who visited Sandra the least once she was an adult—and had been all the more surprised that she’d been named as Sandra’s heir.
Enzo wagged his tail and grinned. She looks GOOD!
Great-Aunt Sandra wore her favorite silk and cut-velvet scarf-jacket, deep blue with a sequined peacock and long tasseled fringe.
“Dearest Clare.” Sandra smiled, showing perfect and natural teeth. “It’s your weird great-aunt Sandra.” She laughed. “Bet you didn’t know that I knew you kids called me that.” She raised her red-brown penciled-on brows, but her eyes remained merry. “All the kids.” She paused and her old, soft face fell into folds. “As those of my generation spoke of my great-uncle Amos as ‘eccentric.’” Shaking her head, she sighed, then looked directly into the camera, with the wealth of her home showing behind her. Clare was suddenly reminded just how fabulous it had been to play in that house. Hide-and-seek had been amazing, and Sandra had been absolutely marvelous in her childhood. Clare swallowed hard.
She wondered if Sandra had ever wanted children, or if her “gift” had prevented her. Was that why Sandra’s house was so large? She’d expected to marry and have children?
Zach came to Clare’s mind. She could see him as a loner, for sure, even though yearning for him, his touch, his lips, his body in bed with her bloomed inside her, made her ache.
Would it be an addition of crazy to complicate her life with an affair with him? Probably.
Could she get emotionally hurt? Oh, yes. But Clare began to think that grabbing whatever she could of life, living it to the fullest, was worth any pain.
“By now you’ve had your gift a while and know that ghosts aren’t a figment of your imagination, and that they aren’t going away.”
Oh, no. No, no, no! Clare’s thumb slid over the remote, but Enzo knocked it from her hand. A solid object. Her mouth dropped open and she stared, and though he appeared like the dog she’d kept seeing with her peripheral vision, he stood on the couch and his eyes were that otherworldly dark with knowledge that squeezed her lungs empty.
Sandra’s voice jerked Clare’s focus back to the video, where she saw the hazel eyes she’d inherited go steely and the red lips thin. “And, lovey, brace yourself, because I have more bad news and this will come as a real shock for someone as repressed as you are.”
Clare tensed.
“There are great benefits to helping ghosts transition . . . both emotional and financial . . . the universe rewards you.”
Ha, ha, ha. Clare would snort, but the woman had died wealthy . . . and Clare had found out how her parents could afford to globe-trot—from a trust Great-Great-Uncle Amos had set up for his nephews and nieces.
Would she be doomed to being a spinster aunt, too? She really didn’t want to embrace the lifestyle of the eccentric or weird.
“Listen close, lovey. There are great rewards, satisfaction, and fulfillment that come with our gift.”
Maybe for others, but Clare doubted that for herself.
“But there are also costs.”
Oh, yes, the acid coating Clare’s stomach was back.
“And the greatest threat, the greatest cost comes if you don’t accept your destiny, if you ignore the ghosts.”
Cold seeped into the room as the specter of Jack Slade, short and slender, solidified in the doorway to her bedroom, staring at her with an inscrutable gaze. Enzo settled next to her, looking nearly solid. Listen! he commanded in that low reverberating tone, glare fixated on her.
Dizziness had her tilting, her mind swimming, and she finally took another breath, drew it deeply.
Listen. It came like the rumble of the beginnings of a mountain avalanche that would destroy her life.
FIFTEEN
AUNT SANDRA’S LIGHTER voice spoke words that seemed to pierce Clare and coat her bones with ice. “If you don’t accept your gift, you decline and die,” Sandra said. “I watched it happen to Uncle Amos’s brother, who inherited the gift first.”
Clare’s vision cleared to see Sandra’s lips twitch into an unamused smile. “Though Amos’s brother liked the money that came to him with the talent, fine. Just as, I believe, you do.” Her voice softened. “Don’t be hardheaded, lovey; accept the talent, our psychic gift.”
Sandra’s mouth drooped, and her shoulders slumped. She wheezed for a long minute, losing her upbeat appearance, fumbling for a handkerchief. Then she straightened slowly, drew a deep breath, coughed again. Now her expression was bleak, as if
her natural optimism had faded. Her gaze fixed directly on the camera.
“I love you, Clare. Please accept the gift, learn to live with it. I know it will be hard for you, harder than it was for me, but please . . . try.” Sandra blinked rapidly. She gulped. “I don’t want to see you hurt . . . or follow after me so soon.”
Clare gulped with her.
Sandra sat up even straighter. “You can do it.” She put a clenched fist over her heart—that old and fading heart. “I know you can.” Sandra lifted her droopy chin. “And I know you can be better than me. You have a good heart, lovey. Use it, let your heart rule your head for a little bit, please?”
Both Clare and her aunt Sandra inhaled at the same time. “Do this for me, first. If you think you really, truly can’t, open the envelope my attorney is mailing you today. There are more consequences for the family, besides your death, if you refuse the gift.”
Tremor after tremor rolled through Clare as she hugged herself.
Sandra cleared her throat. “Enough of that right now.” She gestured to a low and sturdy prairie-style table where her journals were stacked. “I’ve written now and then about my experiences, telling you some stories. And sometimes wrote down what I think the rules to be about our gift, and whatever I recall Uncle Amos telling me.”
“Rules,” murmured Clare.
Sandra smiled wistfully. “I’m sure you’re thinking about ‘rules’ now.” Her fingers fiddled with the fringe of her jacket and her gaze shifted to the side . . . looking out the window, Clare knew. For an instant she grieved that she’d sold that beautiful house . . . but her parents would never settle and her brother lived in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Sighing, Sandra said, “I’m afraid you won’t find my journals in good order, Clare.” Another flex upward of Sandra’s lips. “I’d have done better if I’d been a teacher.” She stared directly at the camera again, “I wanted to be a teacher, did you know?” Shrugging, she went on. “But I made a very good life for myself.” And Clare saw cheer bolster Sandra’s body. She chuckled. “And the ghosts can be very entertaining.”
One last intimate look. “I think that you are regretting not seeing me, feeling guilty. Don’t do that, lovey. We both had lives to live.” She looked to the side, “But John, John Dillinger here, says mine is coming to a close, and I’ll pass in peace and have help all the way to whatever is next. You can do it, lovey. Be well. I love you.” She blew a kiss and the video went dark.
Clare looked at the ghosts, Jack Slade and Enzo, thinking of rules and consequences. “You’ll hurt me if I don’t . . . help you?”
Jack Slade scowled.
Enzo yipped and slurped her cheek with a cold tongue. Of course not.
The . . . universe . . . works in strange ways, Slade the ghost said.
Clare managed a nod.
Jack Slade said, Gifts are given with strings attached. He stared beyond her. I had talents I used, and a sense of justice; sometimes they were great burdens, and I did well at first . . . but I didn’t overcome my problems. He switched back to looking at her. Don’t be like me.
Licking dry lips, Clare asked, “If you . . . if ghosts don’t hurt me . . . what happens to me?”
With a shrug, Slade said, I don’t know. His strong chin jutted. I haven’t been near a ghost seer in a long time. It ain’t a talent that comes around often . . . at least not around here. He smiled, and there was humor and gentleness and compassion. I’d be honored if you helped me out.
“Out of where?” Clare muttered between cold lips.
His face hardened. This hellish existence of no life, of memories and no reality, of impasse. His eyes narrowed. I listened to the old one speak of your family and your gift, and us.
Enzo barked.
The old one, Great-Aunt Sandra. Clare stared at the ghost; he appeared a little more dissipated, but Slade-the-ghost had not made old bones, he’d lived to thirty-three.
She shivered again. Older than she if she died soon.
Clare lowered her head between her knees. Her heart raced at the threat to her life.
She thought of Zach Slade . . . the sexy man, and ignored Jack the demanding ghost—though both men were tough enough to handle life-and-death situations every day of their life. She was a sissy marshmallow.
And handling life-and-death situations on a regular basis had harmed both of them; she saw that, too, through the black spots floating before her eyes and as her torso went up and down from her pumping breath.
But nobody other than she could save herself. She had to do it.
Alone. Because who would believe her?
If you don’t accept your gift that you can see ghosts, then you will die. And if you don’t help them, you can go crazy, Enzo said.
Clare jerked in a shudder. Exactly what she’d always feared—madness. She was living in it now.
The video clicked off. End of the post-grave “instructions” from weird Aunt Sandra. Clare held on to that appellation as if it were a lifeline rope and she hung over a cliff after an avalanche, pebbles still pinging against her body.
What Sandra had babbled about was what Sandra had believed. This was not the truth. Not reality.
She spoke the truth, and you know it. Deep in your marrow, in the depths of your mind and your heart, you know this, Enzo said.
The alarm Clare had set for an hour before tea with Mrs. Flinton pinged. She stood on shaky legs and rubbed her arms under the long linen sleeves of her blouse. She’d dressed professionally again in a skirt suit but was suddenly sick of that, the past she held on to so strongly.
Heading toward the shower, she stood under it until she felt nearly hot and better, then dressed in a short-sleeved dress with a hem longer than she usually wore to keep her legs warmer. She picked up a sweater just in case Mrs. Flinton’s mansion had air-conditioning.
Clare would be seeing Zach. That was a definite plus, though she still hadn’t taken the time to do a search about him on her computer—later.
So many things she was putting off until later, a new and bad habit, since at work she usually tackled the most distasteful task first. All right, she definitely was fumbling with stuff in her life—but, again, as Dr. Barclay had pointed out, she’d had a lot of stress factors lately.
With a map in hand of the circuitous route she would be driving to Mrs. Flinton’s, she headed out to her car. She’d like a new one but wouldn’t buy until . . . until.
Enzo followed her with no goofy comments and hopped through the door into the passenger seat, and her stomach clenched, feeling very empty. She grimaced. There’d be solid food to soak up the damn acid soon enough.
The drive went well; she must have kept her imagination under wraps because she saw very few apparitions. Five minutes away from reaching Mrs. Flinton’s, she realized she was too early, so Clare drove around a few neighborhoods.
Large shady trees threw shadows over the streets, and she felt nearly warm in the ninety-seven-degree weather. She seesawed back to denial, refusing to consider that her body temperature indicated something was wrong with her. Or that a spectral dog was curled up asleep on her passenger seat.
Then she saw it. Her gaze caught on a bright green-and-white real estate sign first, and she slowed and pulled up in front of the house, holding her breath and hoping Enzo wouldn’t wake.
Slowly, slowly, she hit the lever to move the seat back, hoping the wonky thing wouldn’t stick and would be quiet. She opened the sunroof. Equally carefully, she stood and turned, staring at a Tudor-inspired house of brown brick and roof. It was framed by beautiful bushes and mature trees, with ivy along one side of the house. The exterior wall showed that distinctive plaster and half-timbered wood—surrounding a doorway that was a rectangle with a pointed top. The most charming features were the leaded glass windows, one bowing out round in the front.
The house stood two and a half stori
es, maybe three. More of a smallish mansion than a house.
She wanted it.
In this neighborhood, it wouldn’t come cheap. No little plastic box with the info hanging on the low brick wall in the front, a wall that towered to twelve feet along the sides. Nope, no tacky plastic box revealing stats on a place like this.
She snapped pic after pic with her phone, found the location and address on her maps app and took a shot of that, then e-mailed it to Arlene with the text, I want an appointment ASAP.
Breath coming quick in excitement, she slipped back down into her seat.
Enzo opened his eyes, and for an instant she saw depthless holes and shuddered. Then he perked up and hopped to his feet, front paws on the top of the passenger seat and head out the sunroof.
Is that our new home? Oh, it IS. It IS! You found it! I will go check for ghosts of your time period. He slanted her a quick reproachful look. I don’t know why you don’t want to live with ghosts.
She ruthlessly shut the sunroof. He leapt out of the top of her car.
Hadn’t she just decided not to purchase a new car? Foolish to consider a house now, with a new threat hanging over her head.
She didn’t drive away. Rubbing her chilly goose-bumped arms, she jerked the seat forward again. The house would be more than a million, wouldn’t it? Probably. More than two?
Her throat tightened at the thought of so much money being tied into real estate . . . even though something like this would hold its investment value.
She wouldn’t pay two million dollars for this. Outrageous.
She lied. She’d pay almost anything for that house. It was right.
And Aunt Sandra’s house, a few blocks from Lake Michigan, had sold for just under five million . . .
Enzo zoomed through the car door and hopped onto the seat, eyes gleaming. It does not have any ghosts from your time period. His tail wagged. It is BEAUTIFUL.
She wondered what the kitchen looked like.
Her phone alarm beeped, set for fifteen minutes until tea with Mrs. Flinton.
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