Connor’s eyes widened and he said, “Do you really think that?”
“No,” I said, sitting back down. “I don’t think so. I’m just scared and Hazel still needs our help, or maybe she doesn’t, and whoever is pulling this Psycho, Norman Bates shit in the bathroom is freaking me out.”
He placed a warm hand on my back and rubbed gently. Nina sat through my whole rant, calm and at ease in her chair, looking disinterested. “Come on,” I said to Connor, reaching for my bag. “I think Jeannie was wrong to send us here.”
“What?” he asked, jumping up. “Don’t you want to hear what she thinks?”
“She thinks this is some kind of sex-regret drama,” I snapped. “She doesn’t get what we’ve been through.”
“I don’t think this about regret, although obviously you two have some issues to deal with on that front. But that’s about you two and not the supernatural,” Nina said from her seat. “I agree something weird is going on. There is some sort of intense connection between you and the other side, Jane. These spirits seem to seek you out specifically and they like to cause problems. But I’m also wondering if there’s something you’re missing. Some greater meaning behind their interactions.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, you said sometimes these spirits just want to get your guidance and move on. The other times, like with this girl Tonya, she had a specific need. She’d waited around years for your help.”
“And she helped me back.”
“Right.”
Nina crossed her legs. “Then you have the ones that are looking for trouble.”
I nodded. “But with Charlotte, she had a personal connection with Connor. She was using me to get to him.”
“Okay, but the writing in the bathroom seems like someone’s playing manipulative games and no one at school has a connection to either of you.”
I interjected, “How do I know the difference between the ones that need help and the ones with a greater purpose?”
“I’m not sure,” she confessed. “You may have to press them.”
Nina got out of her chair and went to a cabinet across the room. She opened it and there were rows of jars inside, filled with herbs and other items. She picked several out and, one by one, tucked small bits inside a leather pouch. “Wear this when you talk to them. Well, wear it all the time,” she said. “It should protect you.”
I took the pouch and hung it around my neck. “Thanks.”
“As for your sex thing? I’m thinking that dorm may be built on a hotspot of some sort.”
“What do you mean?” Connor asked.
“Spirits have a way of finding places to come and go. You two are such places. Wherever you are, they can pop in and find you. You’re like a beacon. But there are also places in the Earth that allow supernatural passage more easily. I’ll try to do some research for you, but I’d be careful. Jane could be right. Last night may have been a possession of sorts.”
Connor and I looked at one another. Gross.
Nina ushered us down the stairs and back through the parlor. Connor stepped outside and I asked him to wait a minute while I apologized for interrupting her day off.
“It’s okay. You’re under a lot of stress. Sometimes I come off as aloof when really I’m just trying to figure everything out,” Nina said.
“So, it’s okay if we come back?”
“Yes, and I’ll do some research and follow up. Definitely let me know if anything out of the ordinary happens.”
“I will. Thanks.”
I pushed open the door and Nina said, “And Jane? Remember the purple I saw binding you in the aura?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Connor. I don’t know what happened between you last night, but his feelings for you are real. He’s tied to you and has been for a long time. Don’t make any rash decisions with him.”
I looked at Connor out on the street, tired and disheveled. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me looking. “I won’t,” I told her and stepped out to join him.
Chapter 15
“How many do you see?” I asked Connor outside my dorm.
“How many what do I see?”
“Ghosts. Right now. How many am I missing?”
Looking up and down the street, his eyes settled across the park. “Over there.”
I scanned the area. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s a woman. Older, grey hair and limping. You don’t see anything?”
I squinted and barely made out a wave of blue. “A little, but only because you pointed her out.”
“When do you think this started?”
“Maybe when I moved here. I don’t know. I have no standard to set it against. I’ve been on my own the last year, you know.”
Connor ignored my jab. “You’re not seeing the ghosts around you, but at the same time you’re using them for energy or something?”
“I was last year and when I first got here. But, increasingly, I just used Evan for my hits. He was willing and definitely safer.”
“Define safer?”
“I trust Evan. There’s nothing safer than that.”
He wanted to follow me up to my room, but I declined when I saw more girls had returned since I’d left that morning. He and I needed a little space to figure this out. I wanted to see Ava and sleep for a couple days.
“Call me if you need anything.”
“I will.”
“I’m serious, anything.” He kissed my cheek and walked down the street toward his dorm.
My building buzzed with life and I ran past the bathroom without the slightest glance inside. No, thank you.
“Hey,” I said, entering the room. I flopped on the bed, exhausted.
“How are you?” Ava asked. I turned my head and saw the concerned expression on her face. Break-up concern. Little did she know I’d already moved past all that to freaky ghosts, psychics and mystical break-up sex.
“I’m okay,” I lied. I’d have to tell her everything eventually, but not now. I was too tired. “How about you? How was New Year’s?”
“It was great,” she said, unable to hide a smile. She stifled it because she thought I would be hurt, but I’m not. At this point, I can’t even be angry at Louis anymore. Obviously, his concerns were real.
I hugged my pillow. “How great?”
“Pretty great,” she smiled again. This time she blushed, too. “I made my sexual debut.”
I snorted and laughed. “What the heck is that?”
“Well, I think the term ‘losing your virginity’ is kind of depressing, so I made this one up instead.”
I sat up. “You and Christian did it?”
“Yep. On New Year’s, which I know is totally cliché, but the timing just worked.”
“No,” I told her. “I think it’s really great.”
She sat on her bed and said, “I feel horrible about Louis. What a douche.”
“Can we not talk about him? It’s really okay. Probably for the best.”
“Sure.” She shoved her suitcase under the bed.
“Tell me more about your trip,” I told her. “Everything.”
“Everything?” she asked.
I nodded, crossing my legs underneath my body. “Yep, everything.”
*
Evan and I sat on the wall feeding the ducks. It felt warm outside and I had on shorts and flip flops. He had on the same shirt and holey jeans he always wore. He looked the same. He was the same. Safe.
Evan held the bread and plucked it into tiny pieces. He rolled the soft bread into balls and dropped them into my hand. I threw them to the ducks under our feet.
“Look over there,” he said, nodding across the water. I glanced over. People roamed around the sandy beach. Dozens of people.
“What about them?” I asked.
“I hope they can’t cross the water.”
A bird swooped down and tried to steal the ball of bread from my fingers. I snatched it back. “Why would they cr
oss the water?”
He looked at me with sad eyes and I wondered for a second how we were here. How did we leave my room? The edges blurred around him. “Remember what you need to do if they cross the water.”
“Remember what?” I asked. Another bird swooped down, searching for the bread. I held out my hand and it landed on my empty palm. Black talons dug into my skin. It didn’t hurt.
Evan stared out at the water. The people on the sand had started to wade in. Knee deep and walking toward us. I made out their features. Ellen. John. Tonya. Charlotte. Their faces were wrong. Less like ghosts. More like zombies.
“What do they want?” I asked, feeling the prickling fear in my stomach. Another bird landed on my arm and one on my knee. They pecked my skin with their beaks.
“You,” Evan said. His face darkened and his skin twisted, turning him into a grotesque creature. A sharp, clawed hand reached toward me and the crows lifted off my body, rushing him. Brown eyes peeked out beneath the monster’s face and he and the birds vanished.
*
I woke up sweaty, my shirt damp and stuck to my skin. The bag of herbs hung heavy against my chest. The clock said it was 4 a.m. and I quietly got out of bed to search for a clean shirt. Ava was a sound sleeper and rarely moved if I got up in the middle of the night for the bathroom. She didn’t notice as I shut the door and stepped into the hallway.
There was always someone awake in the dorm. Girls sitting on the floor outside their rooms whispering into their phones, calling their boyfriends back home. People playing cards. The lounge usually had someone on their laptop finishing up some homework. But right now the dorm was quiet.
I shuffled to the bathroom, exhausted and worn out from the dream. Or not dream. I no longer was able to tell. Did Evan and I travel now? I supposed it was possible.
Everything seemed a little fuzzy lately. The stuff with Connor, the dreams, whoever left the messages in the bathroom. I stiffened when I heard a sob coming from behind a bathroom stall. Pressing my back to the sink, I said in an even voice, “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Can you hear me?” I asked. “Because I think you can.”
The sound of a toilet flushing filled the bathroom and water sloshed from under a closed stall door. Great. We had a haunted toilet. I felt like I was in the middle of a Harry Potter book. “Look, bathroom stalker, you obviously want me to know something. Or you’re trying to scare me. I’ve faced scary before, so why don’t we just get this over with? Do you have some kind of connection to Evan?”
I stood against the sink for a while trying to figure out this ghost. I couldn’t. I had no idea what the deal was. I was about to leave when the stall door creaked open and I saw a flash of brown hair.
She finally emerged and, for once, I saw her face. She was around my age with long, straight brown hair. She wasn’t thin, but not big, somewhere in the middle with curvy hips. I saw fierce purple bruises on her neck in the shape of fingers.
“Kelsey?” My eyes were glued to the neck of Amber’s missing roommate. Guess that was one mystery solved. “What happened?”
“Why do you care?” she asked, skirting around me to look in one of the mirrors. Oh, God. She haunted a bathroom. She had to know something was wrong.
“Because you’re haunting the bathroom and I’m tired of hearing you cry all the time,” I snapped. “Look, I can help you, but you’ve got to be honest and help me back. How do you know Hazel and Evan?”
“It’s too late to help me,” she laughed, tugging at the collar of her shirt. There was no way to hide those bruises. Why would a ghost need to hide bruises? “And the others – really, we’re not the ones that need help.”
“What? You want to be here forever?”
She scoffed. I noticed the heavy bags under her eyes. Once glance in the mirror told me I had the same ones, maybe worse. “You need to mind your own business, that’s what he told me. Mind your own business, bitch.”
“Who?”
She turned and stared at me with blank, dark eyes. “Daddy said to hide down here, for when the man came with the gun.”
I braced myself on the sink. Hazel’s tiny voice came out of this girl’s adult mouth. “Hazel?”
“I told you to stay hidden, but Daddy told me you wouldn’t listen. You never do.”
A door down the hall slammed, but I never took my eyes off the girl. “What do you want? What is this?”
“This,” she said, back in her regular voice, “is your warning.”
“For what? Warning for what?”
She cocked her finger, pointed it at me and, with a wild look on her face, said, “Bang.”
Chapter 16
I walked into art history and scanned the room for a seat. New semester. New classes. I arrived early enough that I had my choice, but Connor nodded to me from a spot near the window and I had little choice but to go over.
Everything between us should be really awkward, but it wasn’t. Maybe I just had too much else on my mind.
“Hey,” he said, fooling around on a sketch pad.
I unloaded my bag and sat down. “Something happened today,” I said in a low voice.
“Water tower?”
I shook my head. “Yeah, but even stranger than that, believe it or not. The girl crying in the bathroom? I know her. Or knew her, kind of.” I explained who Kelsey was and how we thought she moved out.
“She had bad bruises on her neck and talked to me in Hazel’s voice. It’s like she’s channeling them or something. This whole thing is so confusing.”
The professor walked in and we quieted down. I had no idea what to think about the morning, but I needed to focus on school. Rumor had it this class was a killer and history had never been my best subject.
After class, Connor followed me out the door. “Do you think she’s the one who wrote in the mirror?”
“Yes. She said, ‘bang.’ What’s with all this gun stuff? Hazel talking about guns and the creepy messages. She cocked her finger like she was shooting me. That’s a long way from some spirit trying to body snatch me.”
“Guns are decidedly human,” Connor agreed.
We reached the outside door. “I’m meeting Ava for lunch then I have a painting class. I guess I’ll see you around.”
He blinked. “Right. Around.”
Okay, maybe things were awkward after all.
“I need some time to wrap my head around all of this,” I told him. “I’m not blowing you off.”
“I know.” He pulled the cap off his head and his hair stuck up in wild spikes. “Don’t hold back on me though. Not because of what happened between us.”
“I won’t,” I lied. The darkness and the dreams. I did need to tell someone, but I didn’t want to burden Connor. He didn’t need any more demons to fight.
We parted and I found Ava in the campus café. She had her phone out and her fingers flew across the screen. The smile on her face bordered on stupid, but I guess that’s what love does to you.
“Still celebrating your sexual debut?” I asked, sitting across from her
“Yep,” she nodded, placing her phone in her bag. “Can’t you tell? Don’t I have that rosy de-virginized glow?”
I studied her face and I noticed a hint of a glow. “Honestly? Yes.”
She dropped her head into her hands. “Gross. Okay, I’m done. No more gushy stuff.”
“Eh, you’re entitled. At least one of us has a cut-and-dried love life, right?”
She made a pouty face. “No word from Louis?”
“Ugh, no and thank God. I just don’t have time for all that right now.”
Ava glanced at me while organizing her lunch. “You sound sort of… over it?”
“Um, well, not over it really.” My face heated up. I had no intention of telling Ava what was going on with me and Connor when I had no idea what was going on with me and Connor. “I’m just busy and obviously he can’t handle me being down here. I’m just ready to move on.”
“Move on to�
��”
“Stop.”
“Just wondering… you and Connor have been spending a lot of time together.”
I took a bite of sandwich and swallowed before saying, “It’s going to be a lot more, too. We have art history together and some brewing ghost drama.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Study groups. Projects. Late nights. No wonder you’re ready to move on.”
I gave her a steely look.
“Fine. I’ll stop.” She held her hands up in defeat. “But I’m going to say ‘I told you so’ when the time comes.”
Too late, I thought and switched subjects. “I do need to tell you about this thing that happened to me in the bathroom at 4 a.m..”
She tilted her head. “What?”
I explained what happened, including the dream. When I finished I took a deep breath and said, “I may be going crazy. Er. Crazi-er.”
“I think we should go talk to Amber and Lila. See what we can dig up.”
“I guess we should.” I’d learned a lot about domestic violence and abuse over the last couple of years and there was no way I could stand by and not do something. Observation told me Kelsey died from those neck wounds. My gut told me she knew who did it.
“Oh, hey, Tony,” Ava said, looking over my shoulder. I turned and waved.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Ava pushed out the chair and he sat down. “Oh, there’s a girl from my math class. I need to ask her something,” she said, hopping up with a notebook and walking away.
“Nothing much,” I said. “You?”
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you since the Christmas party.”
“What about?”
“That palm reading thing. You know your stuff.”
“Not really. Just a party trick.”
“Nah, that was the real deal. Or close to it.”
“My aunt reads palms. Like really reads them.” I shrugged.
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