Clare stood up and slipped from the café, though she dearly wanted some coffee, and she’d entered the establishment and stayed safe and had purchased nothing; that wasn’t fair. Well, she’d come back some other time.
She moved among the crowd on the sidewalk just enough to get a good view. A few minutes later, policemen came out hauling the suspects, and Zach and another officer exited.
He looked . . . right. Where he should be, doing what he should do, his lean face interested and animated. Back at work at his old job.
And Clare felt separated from him by more than people and cars and the street. He was back in his element and for better or worse—no doubt worse—she’d stepped over into the crazy and illogical side of life.
A ghost from the past had warned of something going on in the present. In real life. She couldn’t ignore that anymore.
Thinking of which, the ghost materialized right before her, right now! Then collapsed at her feet. She squatted down, forgetting and putting her hand on his icy chest.
He gave her a lopsided smile. I didn’t die here, not really. But I was bound here by Those Who Be, bound ’cuz of my bad nature.
She shouldn’t be looking at those eyes, eyes already dead, black eyes fading, fading to light brown as the whole world turned to sepia tones. The rest of him thinned; his chest went in with a sigh, then vanished as he said, I’m glad to be going on along, now. Thankee.
And he was gone, completely. She blinked and the browns and beiges vanished. Had she seen him well enough to lock him in her memory, maybe be able to discover who he might have been? No. She shook her head. Her hand dropped to the warm sidewalk, and slowly she stood, almost hearing her bones creak as she rose.
Waiting for you. Enzo’s mind-voice sounded scary and deep and she didn’t dare look at him, though she felt him beside her.
She didn’t want to ask the question, but the words formed on her lips anyway, dropped quietly under the noise around her to ghost dog ears. “Waiting for me?”
There are always incidents to prod the reluctant. Not the robbery. That was not fated. But an energetic, perhaps violent incident that would trigger a bound and waiting ghost, yes.
A little too much weird-ghost-logic-rules for Clare to wrap her head around, though she strained to grasp at wispy concepts while Enzo paused.
You could do as your great-great-uncle Orun did: Ignore this incident. When Enzo “spoke” next, his tone sounded as clinical as one of the doctors she’d visited. Though I don’t know that you will last long enough for another incident or two. Your gift must be very strong for you to deteriorate so fast.
Clare flattened herself against the building, one of the tall wooden beams that separated the windows. Wonderfully warm on her back.
Her ears rang and colors whirled about her in bright smears, and she knew that despite thinking she’d been forced into believing in ghosts and accepting her gift, this was truly the moment of truth. She had to consciously accept the logic-illogic of her psychic gift and ghosts. She had to give in, surrender to her new “reality.”
She had to decide that she had a gift, turn her back on the past when she wasn’t so cursed, and face the future as a . . . psychic. Or die.
Now her eyes were too dry to produce tears.
Choose, Clare. Enzo’s words boomed in her mind as if a bell tolled, being amplified and funneled down all the streets of Denver to her.
EIGHTEEN
HER BREATH CAME raggedly and she thought her heart just might give out in the next minute.
Lips numb, she said, “I believe in ghosts. I have a psychic gift.”
Would she have to clap her hands?
Enzo snorted as if he heard her, sat on her feet with a coolness like a breeze instead of like a melting ice cube, and looked up with a wrinkled doggie face. We will be FINE.
Clare hoped so.
Then the crowd parted again and she looked up to see Zach across the street, the man next to him gesturing to the open door of the back of a police car. Zach stared at her with an inscrutable expression.
Definitely on opposite sides of the reality line now.
He shook his head a little at her.
So he hadn’t mixed her up in this, mentioned her name to the police. Such a good man. She dipped her chin in response and turned back to walk to the mall bus terminal. She’d take it to one of the stops close to a hotel with taxi service straight home. She didn’t have the energy to deal with Mrs. Flinton. She’d call and have someone pick up her car and drive it to her place.
She didn’t look back but knew it was over between her and Zach.
The ghosts she met along the way—fully dressed and looking normal again—acknowledged her, murmuring in her mind.
She murmured back.
• • •
By the time Clare returned home, the news feeds had picked up the EZ Loan Check Cashing robbery “thwarted by an ex–deputy sheriff from Montana, currently on staff of Rickman Security and Investigations.”
She listened to the television, but the sound bites didn’t have any information she didn’t know except the names of those apprehended, including the man who’d tried to escape on foot.
Her focus now was entirely on herself and her still-felt-problematic future.
One good thing—her real estate agent had called and set up a viewing of the house Clare wanted for the next morning. Just the thought of a new house, one with air-conditioning unlike this small rectangular hot box, had Clare sniffling. For the first time in a week she felt the temperature.
She opened both doors and windows for cross-ventilation and turned on the window and ceiling fans.
Maybe she could move on the other house rapidly, buy the thing.
She settled in her one comfortable chair and pulled out her tablet computer, looked again at the pics she’d taken just hours ago when she was . . . dying? . . . and yet trying to finesse having the money without the gift? With a sigh she thought for the umpteenth time that if she’d been given a choice, she would have chosen no money and no gift.
Instead she got the option of money and gift or death. Craziness might still loom large; hadn’t her great-aunt Sandra said something about that? Not that Clare wanted to contemplate the fact—facts! rules! with regard to this weird stuff? Ha, ha, ha—she didn’t want to consider the fact that she might still be in danger of losing her mind. Much nicer to stare at photos of a two-point-five-million-dollar home.
Enzo came over and put his head on her thigh. The ghost dog was still cold, but tolerable. The chill didn’t go straight to her bones and make them ache like just that morning.
His eyes were dark but didn’t hold that more-than-dog otherworldliness that creeped her out. I am glad you are staying here with me, Clare, and that you are not dying like your great-great-uncle Orun.
That had her stirring a little, but did she dare attract the notice of the . . . spirit, the Scary Specter . . . that sometimes inhabited Enzo. Maybe. “What do you know about Orun? He must have been long gone before you were a live puppy.”
Enzo rubbed his chin on her leg, rucking her dress up a little. Sandra spoke about him, and she played with the box toy like you have—he tried to swipe his phantom nose on her tablet and she jerked it aside—that showed people’s names and lines. The dog trotted over to the box that held the video disks and nosed in it . . . and one levitated upward.
Clare yelped, shoved her tablet off her lap, and lunged toward the box, grabbing a disk. “Don’t do that. No moving solid objects! How can you do that, anyway?”
You have a lot of psi power, Clare. I can borrow it when you aren’t using it.
She stared, mouth down, panting breaths. “But . . . but you are a ghost, not material.”
Power is power.
Clare raised her hands to run her fingers through her hair and maybe massage her scalp, since her poor he
ad hurt inside and out, and clunked the disk against her face. When she looked at it, she saw it was a genealogical program.
Her heart bumped in her chest. Yes, of course, for research—both on her family and with the ghosts—the software could be invaluable, and something she could understand. Facts.
Abandoning her tablet, she went to the closet in her small office, where her secondary laptop sat with a thin layer of dust on a shelf. It was old and sturdy enough to have a video player.
There are papers, Enzo said, hopping up and down by one of the boxes.
She returned to the box and saw a brown paper portfolio nearly the same color as the cardboard. Opening it up, she saw two pockets; in one was handwritten notes, and the other had printouts.
A family tree!
Back at her desk, she looked at the family tree, all the way back to Bohemia and the generations there, then returned to the later generations, tracing the chart with her right index finger. Someone had emphasized certain names in deep purple: Orun, Amos, Sandra, Clare; at the next colorful name her breath just squeezed out in a whoosh.
“Ah, ah, ah.” She tried, but breathing was hard. Darkness edged her vision; pinpricks of black floated before her eyes.
She felt a thump against her back, hissed out the last of her air as Enzo leapt through her, head and shoulders appearing above the desk, then sinking.
“Eeeee!” She sucked in a breath on a long, shocked squeak.
Her chair and desk began a slow room-spin as if she were drunk.
BREATHE! Enzo shouted. Count with me to seven.
She did. Her breathing and pulse steadied; her chair stopped midswoop, then righted.
“Dora,” she squeaked when she had breath. “My niece Dora—” She couldn’t say the words.
But Enzo was there nodding at her. Yes, if you had not believed, the gift would have gone to her.
“She’s only nine!”
A ripple of a shrug went down Enzo’s back. It’s a family gift, it stays in the family. His head tilted. I’m going in the backyard to play. You and Sandra are no fun when you are on the big toys. Not even anything to see but words, words, words. His tail slapped against her arm and he took off for the back door and the enclosed yard.
Clare didn’t call him back.
Now she could stab her fingers in her hair, and, of course, the more she did, the more she ruined the smooth sleekness, and it stood out from her head and the locks curled against her face and neck.
“Dora lives in Williamsburg, Virginia,” Clare said aloud, not even pretending now that she was talking to anyone—Enzo, any ghost that might traipse through her house; she was talking to herself. She’d never approved of that—it showed a disordered mind—but she continued to whisper, “Dora likes living in Williamsburg, likes colonial history.”
Clare had been tired but wired—body sagging with weariness, mind zipping around at a million miles a minute. Now she propped her elbows on the desk and sank her head in her hands, staring down.
Another reason she couldn’t opt out. She loved energetic, optimistic, slightly nerdy little Dora. A girl who’d grow into a strong, vibrant woman.
If she didn’t have some stupid family psychic gift thrust upon her at the tender age of nine.
Sweat coated Clare’s body. Her light sundress stuck to her, the ceiling fan drying it with cool sweeps that she still didn’t appreciate. She’d been so cold for this entire week that she’d fought her gift that she didn’t think she’d ever like winter again—and Denver had cold winters; perhaps she should move . . . Hawaii?
Enzo growled. He was back. You should stay here. Your gift is formed by your location. THIS CITY, this STATE is where you belong. We belong.
More damned rules.
“Wha—what happens if I don’t stay?”
His expression became disapproving. You’ll still encounter ghosts, but they will be easier to control if they are ghosts you understand. He smiled and she thought it was genuine; she didn’t like the often shifting from cute dog to Scary Specter. Like cowboys, and gunfighters and miners and ranchers and railway men and pioneer women . . .
“Uh.” She rubbed her head, feeling as if each strand of her hair were bursting out of the coating of taming conditioner, turning into the uncontrolled curls she’d fought all her life. Again she felt tears rising under her eyes, prickling. Tears and pity for herself. Wah, wah, wah. Too much wallowing now, get over it.
Granted, she wasn’t in the best physical or emotional shape, so it was easy to cry self-pitying tears, but she would not give in again. She had more spine than that. She straightened said spine.
Enzo licked her hand. When she stared down at him, he had his own soulful doggie eyes. I love you, Clare.
Swallowing, she stroked him; it still seemed like plunging her hand into ice cubes. One scritch of the ears and she lifted her hand. “Yes, I love you, too. So, um, is Colorado my limit?” Maybe she could handle this . . . though . . . she frowned. “Didn’t Aunt Sandra spend some time in New York City and other big cities back east?” Had to be mobsters from the twenties and the thirties everywhere; even Denver had its gangster factions. And what had been Aunt Sandra’s time range? A grudging feeling coated Clare; did Aunt Sandra only have about three decades? And what were Clare’s limits? She’d thought about 1850 to 1900. She glanced at the tower of journals.
But Enzo rubbed against her, answering the question she’d forgotten she’d asked. You can go to Montana or Utah or Nebraska or Wyoming or California or Idaho or—
“I get it. Ghosts of the Old West.”
Another chill lick of her fingers. You are SO smart, Clare.
Smart enough to try to figure out the parameters of this weird infliction plaguing her. She stood and stalked to the box of disks, pulled out the ones for her brother and his family and her niece and turned them over in her hands. She had a sneaking suspicion that Aunt Sandra had a whole other set—and other instructions for her attorney—if Clare died fairly quickly, before probate was all tied up.
Which reminded her that she should make a will, should have done so before now. Thank heavens she was thinking clearly. It seemed as if her brain had de-iced.
She would not use the Chicago attorney; better to keep her business affairs local. She’d call her old boss for recommendations regarding a law firm and interview a few.
Setting the videos aside carefully, she understood she was also compassionate enough not to want Dora to have this terrible gift foisted upon her. Somehow Clare would have to try to prepare her niece . . . dimly she recalled Aunt Sandra talking to her about “special gifts” when she was a child . . . but whatever help Aunt Sandra might have given her over Clare’s youth had been lost since she’d lumped Aunt Sandra in with her feckless and partying and traveling parents.
Though she knew right now that Aunt Sandra must have worked hard and shown a knowledge and dedication to her work that Clare had never given her credit for.
More tears came and these she let flow unchecked, tears for Sandra, tears for Dora. Groping for the remote, she set Aunt Sandra’s video to play once again from the start, then plucked a tissue from the box on the coffee table and blew her nose. She wandered into the kitchen wondering if she had any lemonade; she could really use some iced and tart lemonade.
And it was darn well time to rev up the swamp cooler in the living room again.
• • •
Zach’s self expanded during the time he spent with the police. It was good being back in a cop shop, getting some respect from folks he also had respect for. The paperwork, as always, was crap.
Nice bullshitting, talking a little about the case, until he was done giving the report—that took hours he didn’t grudge at all—and stood with the help of his cane. Then pity draped over him like a shroud, from the two who’d been talking with him. He thought he might have even seen a touch of fear in the on
e young man’s eyes. Yeah, Zach wasn’t that much older than the guy to have his career cut short.
And he walked stiffly away from the place, more because of his foot than any pride. A police car waited to drive him to his ride southwest of the main station, and he was dropped off at the paid parking lot with thanks that he returned.
He’d paid enough to take the time to sit and think a little, slump in the softer seat than the one he’d been in at the station. He let all the leftover tension drain from him, rolled it from between his shoulders, even left the door open to massage his foot, and that felt good enough that he knew he’d have to schedule a regular therapist to work on his ankle and foot.
His phone buzzed, a default sound he’d given Rickman until he knew the guy better. He’d had it set on vibrate. Now he pulled his cell from his pocket and saw that he’d missed another call from the man soon after everything had gone down, two calls from Mrs. Flinton . . . and nothing from Clare.
That last had a surge of melancholy yearning rushing through him. She’d be sympathetic; she’d know what he was going through, the longing for his old job.
He shook the emotion off, answered the phone, “Slade.”
“You need anything from me or the business?” Rickman asked.
“No.”
“Fine. Good publicity for the firm, so thanks for that.”
“No problem,” Zach said dryly.
Rickman barked a laugh. “You’ll be getting a bonus in your check.”
Zach just shrugged a shoulder, and strained muscles eased a little more.
“And I want to say that you’re an asset to the firm. We’ve had a mutual wariness thing going on with the local cops.”
Because most of Rickman’s operatives were ex-military. Rickman and those guys might have federal contacts, but . . . they hadn’t worked in the same places—police and sheriff departments—that Zach had.
“How’d they treat you?” Rickman asked.
Nearly like one of themselves. “Fine.”
“You make some good contacts?” Rickman pressed.
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