Brush of Shade ((YA Paranormal Romance/Fantasy) The Whisperer's Chronicles)

by Jan Harman

  “Olivia. Olivia?” Aunt Claire shouted from the hall.

  I yanked an earbud out, turned sideways, and gave her my profile when she stepped into my room.

  “You never made an appointment with the school counselor. Are you listening to me?”

  I flipped open my laptop on my desk, missing my connection to the outside world. The background, a photo of JoAnna and I decorating last year’s homecoming float, reminded me of something Detective Lawson had said and my long overdue mail. A few taps on the keys made the photo disappear and my playlist start.

  My aunt made a frustrated sound as she crossed over to my desk and closed my laptop. “An ongoing dialogue is crucial to your adjustment here. Dr. Martins was quite insistent.”

  “I’m not going. What’s the point? I’m already living a lie.”

  Her face crinkled up on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “Are you? You met with Dad? He wasn’t in London. He was here in Spring Valley. Did you argue? All this time Trent was right. I’m rich. Is that why you took me in? Is that why you pretended to sell your paintings?”

  “I don’t appreciate the attitude after all I’ve done for you. If you must know, a private collector purchased my art.” She stared down at my lap, her lips pursing. “Look at you; you can’t stop twisting your hands. You’re working yourself into another one of your distressed states. Next, you’ll sink into your, I don’t care about life mood and start hanging out for hours in that gazebo with your music instead of people. Honestly, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  “I’m confused. First, you drag me off to Spring Valley away from everything and everyone I know and expect me to suddenly be normal. Like my life is perfect. Like you know anything about me. Now, I find out that you’ve been hiding things from me, but that’s okay?”

  “When you’re adult enough to finally handle the situation calmly and rationally, we’ll talk. I’ve calls to return.”

  I stalked behind her, stopping just inside the entrance to the downstairs study. “I see, we can only have an ongoing dialogue on your terms. Have my nightmares then tell me to be calm and unemotional. I’m sorry I’m not progressing at whatever absurd time schedule you’ve worked out with Dr. Martins. From the way I see it, I’m not the only one who’s big into avoidance. You can’t even talk to me about your childhood in the valley or why it’s so hard for you to live here,” I said, my voice cracking as it got louder. When she wouldn’t turn around, I lashed out. “So sorry you’re stuck here with your flawed niece who put a major crimp in your exciting life, or that I hang out in the gazebo instead of pretending to be a normal teenage girl. My dad built the gazebo. That and football are the only things I’ve got that connect me to the valley and my father. Everything else I know is from before.”

  “You haven’t given the valley a chance. It’s only been a few months. By the end of next summer, you’ll be sad to leave this place for college. You’re going to make friends. I know it.”

  “If I do, my head will get crowded with fresh memories.” I gulped in air, my chest heaving. “I can’t picture Danny in my head anymore. It hurts like a fire in my stomach knowing the same will happen to my memories of Mom and Dad. Do you honestly think I want to talk to a stranger about the moment everything I loved was stolen? I know I’ve got to get unstuck, but you can’t face any of it with me or don’t want to.”

  Aunt Claire paused with a palm pressed to her chest and her shoulders stooped. In a sad voice she said while staring down into a box of files on her desk, “I didn’t mean to come off as uncaring.”

  “Then please stop running.” I waited for her reassurance, willing at this point to grab onto platitudes. My stomach fluttered. She looked too fragile to be what either of us required to heal. “I don’t know why you’ve always felt like you couldn’t settle down in one place. Now I need for you to do more than drop anchor. I need you to establish roots, so I can stand up strong. Because I’ve got news for you; I can’t move forward when the ground underneath doesn’t feel stable. I can’t move forward when I’m stuck at that night, alone.”

  While I’d been speaking, she’d taken a step closer to me. Her probing gaze watched as I rocked in place, one hand clutching the other arm just above the elbow. “Don’t look at me like that,” I snapped, backing into the hall, before I lost control without a safety net. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize someplace safe. A hunter green, pick-up truck popped into my head.

  “How am I looking at you?” She asked, following me out into the hall.

  “All tense and worried like I’m broken. I hate it. I hate feeling this way.”

  “Sweetie, you’re hurting. I don’t know how to help you.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “The situation is complicated.”

  The back door banged shut followed by the sound of boots stomping in the mudroom. “That would be Shade. He’s been helping me with a few minor repairs around the place,” Aunt Claire explained.

  Saved by the clumping of boots. I was never going to get any answers.

  Shade poked his head around the corner and said, “Hello, ladies. I was putting my supplies away in my truck when your load of logs arrived. I showed the guy where to stack them on the back patio.”

  “Thank you,” Aunt Claire said. “Why don’t you head on out. The other thing we mentioned isn’t going to work out for today. Olivia’s feeling anxious.”

  “Aunt Claire!” I exclaimed, feeling my cheeks getting hot.

  To my chagrin, Shade came down the hall and rested his hands on my shoulders. “Olivia, there is no need to be upset.”

  “You wouldn’t think so if you wanted to know what was going on, but all you got were lies and avoidance,” I retorted, moving away from Shade and his annoying calming influence.

  “For your own good,” Aunt Claire said.

  “Right? I think you’ve got that backwards.”

  She dabbed at the corner of an eye and looked to Shade. “See, it’s like I told you. That detective turned her against me. She’s afraid of me.”

  “I doubt that, but she will be if you don’t open up.” He bent over and picked up my earbuds that must’ve fallen out of my pocket. “This is tearing the two of you apart. Allow me to help,” he offered, speaking slow in that low voice of his that sapped the tension out of the air.

  He held out my earbuds and dropped them into my hand. I itched to stuff them into my ears and let the music take me away to safe memories. Through my lowered lashes I watched my aunt’s face, trying not to care that she had bags under her eyes. “Give me one answer. Why was my father here?”

  “Town council business,” Shade answered in my aunt’s place.

  “But we didn’t live here. Aunt Claire, were you here, too?” I demanded, finally lifting my head to look at her straight on. She hesitated and appeared to look to Shade to intervene. But this was family business, he shouldn’t be involved.

  “I was visiting friends in the valley,” she answered.

  “That was convenient timing, considering you’ve led me to believe that you rarely ever returned to the valley, because it was too difficult to be here. So you did lie to Detective Lawson and to me. But that’s okay. I should just trust you to look out for my interest and the wealth I didn’t know I had?” I accused. I had the satisfaction of seeing my aunt’s expression crumble. She deserved my contempt. Guilt washed over me for all those days of immobility when she’d been at my side in the hospital, wiping away tears I couldn’t reach and crying an equal measure herself.

  “Shade?” I said, my voice not as certain or as angry now.

  “You’re justifiably frightened,” he said with a pointed look at my aunt, “and old enough to forgive. Do you have it in you to trust?” he asked, surprising me by his question. “Do you require a steady shore to feel safe? Can you survive on a wobbling boulder? Olivia, this is no easy predicament for your aunt and me. If we judge wrong in the first case, more lives than yours are in
jeopardy. If we judge wrong in the latter, we lose you, the last of the Pepperdine’s as well. How far can you leap?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Which is why you’re afraid. The truth you can handle later may not be the truth you can handle now. We need to take this one carefully nurtured small step at a time. We must proceed with caution.”

  Caution? Was that a polite way of saying be careful of the unstable girl? I considered the antidepressants and anxiety medications I’d been prescribed since my parents’ deaths and my wild girl scene triggered by slick roads. If I counted everything, the check marks in the unstable column climbed to a disturbing total. Then don’t include them. It was just the meds making me see things, and the voice was just a product of my scrambled memories. Things just don’t move out of the corner of your eye when you’re alone. I remembered tree limbs morphing, becoming long, nearly transparent arms with long fingered hands that scratched and burned my face. Jeez, I was a mess. My fingers curled about the hem of my sweater. Ethereal Shade had been a product of my high fever. I didn’t want to think about the hallucinations. We’d driven all the way home. No way had Shade . . .

  Dear God, Shade was right, I was fragile. Only it was getting worse. I ducked my head, curling my shoulders, shrinking inward, my beige blonde hair tumbling over my shoulders, hiding me from their scrutiny. I hadn’t woken up in a padded room, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t heading there. “What’s wrong with me? Am I crazy?” The words had tumbled out before I could stop myself, my voice, like the rest of me, trembling.

  A warm, minty breath washed across my cheek. I turned into Shade’s shoulder before I saw the truth in his compelling eyes. His breath washed across my other cheek. He gently separated my hands and turned them over, revealing the red patch on my left wrist by my watch from where I’d been pinching the skin. He rubbed the spot with his thumb until the tender area grew warm. My earbuds—that I didn’t remember stuffing into my ears—were removed. In a low, firm voice he said, “Livi, I swear to you on my life that you’re whole of mind.”

  “Then explain what I saw,” I said, my chest loosening now that he was next to me. I had it bad. What a fool. Don’t let him see. Breathe like a normal person, like he’s a friend. Boyfriend. No, think about Trent, the actual boyfriend. I looked up, straight into Shade’s piercing gaze. “I need to know what is going on. No more delays. Tell me, now.” For once, the words came out smooth and strong.

  He sucked in a quick breath, as though caught off guard by my insistence. Something like fear flashed across his face. The idea that he was afraid—of what, me knowing the truth—shattered my calm state. I began to shake ever so slightly. Another warm breath tickled my ear.

  A finger under my chin kept my head up, so he could look directly into my moist eyes. “In your veins, you’ve the strength of the first Pepperdine warden. I ask that you listen with a receptive heart.”

  “I’ll try,” I replied, sensing that it was important to him that I do so.

  Crystal eyes rooted me to the floor; accusing me of doubts I couldn’t yet form. He moved suddenly down the hall as though the matter were settled. Grim faced, he waited at the top of the basement stairs for us to catch up.

  Wordlessly, I followed my aunt through the basement door, my fingers twisting the cord to my earbuds into a knot. “The truth is in the basement?”

  Bulbs screwed into overhead sockets bathed the staircase in light. Black non-slip strips that looked brand new had been nailed onto each step. My hand glided along the railing. The smell of varnish mixed with sawdust clung to the air, becoming less pronounced at the bottom of the stairs. Someone, I had my suspicions who it might be, had kindly put time into making sure the stairs were safe for someone unsteady on her feet.

  I paused, taking a moment to pull my sleeves down over my hands. The temperature was cool to the point where I contemplated getting a jacket. But I didn’t want to risk my aunt changing her mind. I took a moment to look around, seeing only the sort of items I normally associated with a basement: a tool bench with an assortment of tools, metal shelves full of boxes, the furnace, a deflated ball, and an old bike propped against the wall. I saw nothing mysterious here as well as nothing that would yield answers.

  They waited for me around the corner from the furnace next to a ratty, woolen quilt attached to the wall. My mouth dropped open when my aunt pulled the quilt aside, revealing a thick door with engraved panels of Conestoga wagons crossing the Great Plains. It required both of her hands on the metal ring to tug the door open.

  “I’ll schedule someone to come oil the hinges,” Shade said in a mater-of-fact tone as though everyone had a door to a secret passage in their basement.

  Just how many knew about this, whatever this was? The idea of something secretive going on inside my family home gave me a case of the creeps. I wondered what else was hidden on the property.

  Plush carpeting sprang beneath our feet as we crossed what would pass for an office building’s reception room. Mirrored panels reflected the light, making the room feel airy and spacious. Along one wall, an artist had painted a scene, depicting the valley back when the town consisted of only a handful of buildings. Tucked into the corner of the room, an intimate seating area with a loveseat and two matching chairs was grouped around a glass topped coffee table. On the opposite side of the square shaped room, a leather bound, sign-in book sat open on a narrow table next to a pair of double doors.

  We had that many people coming down here that we needed to keep track? How had I missed them? I gripped my arms to my chest and followed Shade over to the double doors.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked. “Your pulse is racing. Take some slow, even breaths. There is nothing to be afraid of. This is an intricate part of your family heritage.”

  “Yea?” I replied, finding it hard to speak, envisioning ghoulish, ritualistic sacrifices.

  He chuckled. “Our ancestors did have a sense of drama when they built this place.”

  We were related? My question got stuck in my throat when Aunt Claire swung open the double doors revealing, a long, narrow room with eight rows of padded benches divided by a center aisle. An ornately carved, wooden pulpit stood in the center of a raised dais at the far end of the room. Hand painted on the off-white walls beneath the crown molding and again on the terra cotta tiles leading from the double doors up to the dais were sage-green vines matching the print on the bench pads. Several landscape paintings, one that I recognized as my aunt’s work, adorned each of the long walls. I dragged in a breath of lemon-scented wood polish.

  Thus far everything appeared normal, if I ignored the pesky fact that we were in a secret room off my basement. Wasn’t this the point in the story when the heroine becomes the meal or mate of a grotesque creature? Great plan coming down here; I hadn’t cast the hero yet.

  Shade’s footsteps slowed to a respectful pace. Aunt Claire slipped past us to flick a switch at the pulpit. Florescent lights came on, highlighting relief work that curved around the back wall.

  “If this is a place for twisted worship or . . . you know what I mean, then I don’t want this truth. If you have a heart or a measure of respect spills over from my father to me, then be kind. Don’t destroy him for me. I couldn’t take that,” I pleaded.

  “Olivia, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ll have you know, the majority of us attend the Methodist Church around the corner from the high school, while the rest are divided between the Presbyterian Church at 3rd and Jackson and the Catholic Church over in Salida. This is a place of words, not violence. From this pulpit, your father’s words of unity rang out to the council on the night before he died,” Shade said reverently in his deep, southwestern drawl.

  “Dad spoke here?” I swallowed hard, missing him with such fierceness that my voice got rough. “Town council meets at City Hall not in a secret underground chamber. I thought I was going to get the truth,” I said hesitantly, not sure I still wanted it. The steady shore was looking awfully
comforting right about now. The problem was that I’d gone this far. I couldn’t resume a normal life by pretending everything was fine. I certainly couldn’t ignore that door in my basement.

  “You’re right. The town council for Spring Valley meets at City Hall the first Tuesday of every month. Our town council is temporarily meeting here in our clan room while the facility on Washington Street is being renovated,” Shade explained.

  “You say that like you, I mean we, aren’t part of Spring Valley.”

  “If you’re talking the geographical boundaries of the town, then your property is part of Spring Valley while mine is unincorporated. This will be easier with a history lesson first,” Shade replied, leading me onto the raised dais and circling to the left around the pulpit to join my Aunt Claire in front of the first panel.

  “For our purposes here today, the story of our people unfolds when they lived nestled in the dark forest of Austria under the shadow of nearly inaccessible mountains on whatever small scrap of land that could be found, or in caves large enough for our dwindling clan. Life in those remote areas, as you could imagine was difficult. Food was scarce and crops were hard to grow in the poor soil and in the shorter growing seasons. Each time we thought ourselves safe, settlers or hunters would discover our locations. Our differences scared the superstitious people of that time. Many clan folks were butchered in the name of witchery. We were never what you would consider a threatening number. These losses hit us very hard and churned up old tendencies.”