by Minard, Tori
“She must have been really hip.”
His face was drawn into thoughtful lines, his dark-blue eyes far away. “I might know what this is about.”
“What?”
He glanced at me. “It’s something I don’t like to talk about.”
“Okay. But it has something to do with me, or Retro-girl wouldn’t keep coming to my room.”
“Retro-girl?” He grinned. Oh, boy, that grin. It just about knocked me down.
“I don’t know her real name.” I angled my body toward him. “I can’t make you tell me, but I’d really like to know. Why is she here?”
Max’s grin faded. He regarded me for a minute or so, then closed his eyes and drew a deep breath in through his nose. “Carter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I received a message recently that he’s trying to get in touch with me. Maybe Retro-girl is helping him. Maybe she finds you easier to contact than me, so she got you to alert me.”
“But...how the heck do you receive a message like that? Did you get an email? A text?”
He opened his eyes again. They sparkled with humor. “A ghostly text? That would be convenient, but no. The message came through the Tarot. A friend read for me last weekend.”
“What’s the Tarot?”
“A deck of cards with a different scene on each card. They’re used for divination.” At my uncomprehending stare, he said “telling the future.”
“Fortune telling? A fortune teller told you Carter is looking for you.”
“No, not a fortune teller. A diviner. Marie isn’t one of those fake gypsies with a crystal ball. She’s very good at what she does and she takes it seriously. It’s a calling.”
“I see.” Really, I didn’t. Then I thought...Marie. Did Max have a girlfriend? I didn’t like the surge of jealousy that came over me. I had no right to be jealous over Max. I glanced at him. “Um...is this Marie person some kind of witch or magician?”
“More or less.”
“Is she a close friend of yours?” I said, trying to keep my voice casual.
“She’s my foster mom.”
“Oh. Foster mom.” I nodded sagely, hoping he hadn’t noticed or guessed my true reason for asking. “You told me that the other day, didn’t you?”
“She and her husband Brad took me in when I was seventeen. If it weren’t for them, I’d probably still be on the streets. Or dead.” The reverence in his voice moved me.
“They mean a lot to you.”
“Yes, they do.”
“Are they the ones who taught you about ghosts and stuff?”
He smiled. “Not exactly. I started seeing a spirit named Frederick when I was thirteen. He’s another one I owe a lot to. He’s always looked out for me and given me good advice.”
That made my eyes go wide. “You’re saying you have a friend who’s a ghost.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sidelong glance at me. “I’m not crazy.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“It’s all over your face, though.” He watched me knowingly. “I don’t tell people about Fred. Only you and my circle.”
“Why me?”
“Because knowing about Fred might help you be less afraid of Retro-girl. He kept me alive. When I was so down I didn’t want to live another day, Fred kept me going.”
I wanted to take Max’s hand, to comfort away the sadness I saw on his face, but I was afraid the gesture would be misinterpreted. “I’m so sorry, Max.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s over. I survived.”
And he didn’t want my pity or my sympathy. He’d made that clear before. I cast around for a change of subject.
“Trent told me you’re a magician.”
Max laughed. “I’ll bet he did.”
“He also said you were a Satanist and a witch.”
He laughed. “He’s just throwing every scary occult term at you that he can think of.”
“What did he mean?”
“That I’m a crazy sonofabitch who thinks I can turn people into toads or some shit.”
“That isn’t what you think?”
“No.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Real magic isn’t like that.”
“Oh.” I’d never heard anyone use the term real magic as if it could be something almost ordinary, something regular people could do. “What is it like, then?”
“Real magic means manipulating energy. My energy, the energy of the earth, the stars, whatever is available for use. We channel and direct energy to influence events.”
I frowned at him. “That sounds totally New Age.”
“That’s because the New Age people borrow terms and ideas from ancient magical and spiritual systems. They just kind of repackage it is all. And they charge a fortune to teach stuff that many occultists can teach you for free or only a small fee.”
“And you’re an occultist.”
He met my gaze, square on, no flinching. “Yes, I am.”
I took a deep breath. I had the feeling I was standing on the edge of something big, like maybe an enormous canyon, something I could fall into and hurt myself irreparably in the process. Something that would forever change the way I saw everything in existence. I could tumble in and break my bones on the rocks, or I could learn the terrain and move slowly and safely into this new territory. Or I could turn around and run back to my safe, ordinary, previous life.
“Not a Satanist or a witch,” I said.
“I’m neither, although what I do is pretty close to witchcraft. I’m more what you’d call a wizard.
“Wow,” I said after a long hesitation. “That’s a lot to take in.”
“I hope you’re not afraid of me now,” he said softly.
My gaze snapped up to his. “Not at all.”
His eyes softened. “Good. I don’t ever want you to be afraid of me.”
“Have other girls?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s why I don’t tell people about Fred or any of this other stuff until I get to know them really well. And most of the time, not even then.”
The urge to touch him was growing stronger with each moment that passed. “You don’t know me all that well. What if I run around blabbing this stuff to everyone?”
“I’m trusting you because of Retro-girl.” He reached for me. Took my hand. “Can I trust you, Caroline?”
It was only our hands touching, but it made me tremble and ache. I laced my fingers with his. “Yes.”
“Okay. The first thing we need to do is try to get Retro-girl to talk to us. It sounds like she’s having trouble with that, so we need a tool to help her.”
“Like what?”
“I normally use a pendulum, but mine is at home. Do you have a necklace I can borrow? The best kind is a simple metal chain with a pendant.”
“I might have something that will work.” I got up and went to the built-in wardrobe that functioned as my closet. My small jewelry box had several necklaces in it. I pulled out a silver heart and held it up so Max could see it.
“Will this work?”
“Perfect.”
I dropped it into his palm. He patted the bed beside him and I sat down. I wasn’t sure what had just happened between us, but it felt like more than friendship.
Max closed his eyes, holding the pendant in the palm of his hand. I didn’t know whether it was okay to look at him while he did that, so I stared at my lap instead. After a few minutes of meditation—or whatever he was doing—he held the necklace by the end of the chain, so the pendant swung gently in the air.
Once it settled down and stopped swinging, he started talking to it. The fact that he was talking to what I’d always assumed was an inanimate object gave me pause. It was just too kooky. But I’d asked him here; I’d asked for his help, and it would be extremely rude for me to show how uncomfortable this made me.
He asked it basic stuff, like what direction was yes and what was no, was his name Joe Smith—that was a no—and were we on the surface of Mars.
I gave him a few sidelong glances during this process, while biting my lip to keep from nervous giggling. He seemed completely serious about it.
“I’m asking these silly questions to get the feel of this particular pendulum,” he said softly. “Not because I’m an idiot.”
I looked at him, wide-eyed, and said nothing.
Max grinned. “Okay, now down to business. Retro-girl, are you here?”
The pendulum remained still.
“Blond girl from the sixties—we don’t know your name, so we’re calling you Retro-girl. I hope you’re not offended by that. We mean no offense at all. Can you tell me if you’re here? If you can make this pendulum swing in the yes direction, then we’ll know you’re here and you want to talk to us.”
Still no response. The silver heart remained motionless at the end of its chain.
“Is there someone here who would like to communicate with us?” Max said.
We waited. And waited. Still no response.
“Is there a blond girl who may have died in the late sixties or early seventies?”
The pendant simply hung there like an ordinary piece of jewelry.
Max sighed. “I don’t know. It seems like she’s not around anymore or maybe she just doesn’t know how to get through to us.”
“Is there anything else you can do? I don’t want her appearing to me like that again. It scared the shit out of me.”
He handed the necklace back to me. “I’d have to go home and get my kit. I came right over when you called me because you sounded so worried I didn’t want to take the time to go home first.”
“Okay.”
“Thing is, if I prevent her from coming back, we’ll never know what it is she wants to say.”
I chewed my lip. “I don’t know if I can sleep in here, knowing she might show up any time.”
“Can you get someone to stay with you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Paige is spending the night with her boyfriend.”
“What about Trent?”
I looked him in the eye. He showed no sign of jealousy or resentment of my boyfriend. “He’s out with his friends tonight. I don’t want to ruin his good time over this.”
“Does he know about the ghost?”
“Yes. But he thinks it’s my imagination.”
“Well.” Max looked down at his hands, clasped in his lap. “I can stay with you, if you’d like.”
My heart jumped. I went hot all over. “I don’t know, Max...”
“We won’t do anything except sleep. You can put this extra mattress on the floor, if you don’t want me in the bed with you.”
The problem was I wanted him in the bed way too much. My skin burned even more hotly. I was sure he could see me blushing. Hell, they could probably see me blushing all the way on the other side of campus.
This was such a bad idea. If he stayed here, something would happen between us. I knew it. He probably knew it.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You can come over to my place and sleep in my bed. I’ll take the floor in the living room.”
“I don’t want to make you sleep on the floor,” I said.
“I’ve got a sleeping bag.”
“Still—”
“Caroline, I’ve slept in much worse places, believe me.” He smiled. “Really, it’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me.”
“That’s because you’re so sweet. But it won’t hurt me to sleep on the floor once and I don’t want you staying alone if you’re going to be scared.”
The achy butterflies were back. I wasn’t sure how he could call me sweet when he was the one making all the sacrifices. And sleeping in his bed...it sounded so intimate, even if he wouldn’t be there at the time.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Come on. Do it for me. Otherwise, I’ll be up all night worrying about you.”
I gave him a skeptical glance. “You will?”
“All night long.”
I closed my eyes with a sigh. This was going to change things between us, not to mention between me and Trent. There was more at stake here than the way my relationship with Max would develop.
But I didn’t have to let it change anything, right? We could hold on to our friendship, and Trent would never have to know I’d spent a night at Max’s place. We’d go on the way we’d been before. It was just this one time, after all.
“Okay,” I said. “But just this once.”
“Right. Just this once.”
I gathered a few things and threw them in my backpack. We left by the back door and I didn’t see anyone on the stairs or in the quad when we got outside.
***
It took Max and me about twenty minutes to walk to his place. He lived close to downtown, in an old house that had one of those high, curved roofs like the ones you see on traditional American barns. The house was painted yellow, not red, though, so it didn’t actually look like a barn. It was cute, but there was something spooky about it too.
“Your house gives me a weird feeling,” I said as we walked up the concrete walkway to the front door.
“It’s in the same style as the Amityville Horror house,” he said, opening the door.
“Oh. Yeah, you’re right.”
“It isn’t haunted, though. Except by Fred, but he’s only here because of me.”
I swallowed. “Am I going to meet Fred?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t usually show himself to visitors, but with you he might make an exception.”
The foyer of the house seemed incredibly small, considering the size of the building. But I guess it had been carved up into apartments, so whoever had adapted it had probably carved up the original foyer too.
We climbed a narrow staircase to a small landing on the second floor. Max opened the flat, apartment-style door and let me into his living room.
It was a long, mostly empty space with bare wooden floorboards, a metal filing cabinet, old wooden desk, and one chair. On the desk was the biggest computer monitor I’d ever seen.
“That’s a huge monitor,” I said.
“It helps me when I’m designing. I like to be able to see what I’m doing.”
Oh, right. That made sense.
Max slipped off his jacket and hung it on a nail in the wall next to the door. “You can put your coat on the back of the chair.”
I followed directions. It was an office desk chair. Did he have any normal, home-type furniture at all? The place wasn’t very cozy.
“Want a beer?” he said.
“Sure.”
I trailed after him as he went into the kitchen. It was a pretty good size for an apartment, and it looked like it had been built in the fifties and never updated. There was a red laminate counter with a metal edging, like the kind you see on mid-century diner-style tables. There was a wooden drop-leaf table shoved under a window on the near side of the room.
Max opened the fridge and pulled out a couple of beer bottles, handing one to me.
“Do you have a bottle opener?”
He reached into a drawer. “Here you go.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” I said as he handed me the bottle opener.
He gave me a wary look. “Why not?”
“Because of Trent. I feel like I’m cheating on him.”
“We’re not doing anything like that. We’re just talking. Hanging out.”
“Yeah. I guess.” I opened my beer and gave the opener back to him. “Why does he hate you so much, anyway?”
Max opened his own beer and took a swig. Was he trying to avoid my question? He kept the bottle in his hand, staring down at the brown glass, his brows crimped together.
“He always hated me, from the day we met. I think he resented my dad, too. He didn’t like the fact his mom was remarrying.”
“That’s too bad. Are his folks divorced?”
“Yeah. And his dad almost never sees him. My dad is more of a father to him.”
“And he still hates you even though h
e’s so close to your dad?”
“Obviously.”
I tasted my beer. It was good. Not what I was used to, because I usually drank the cheap, mass-produced stuff. This was better.
“I think that’s incredibly unfair.”
He shrugged. “People can’t help how they feel, I guess.”
“He doesn’t have to be so mean to you.”
His lips curled up. “Taking my side, Caroline?”
Someone had to. Although I was still a little skeevy about the whole murder thing...but it had happened when Max was only ten and nothing he’d done since I’d met him had given me the impression he’d ever enjoy hurting another person.
“I hate it when people are cruel to others, especially to my friends,” I said.
“Am I your friend?”
“I hope so.”
His smile turned a bit bashful. “I’ll be as much of a friend to you as you’ll let me.”
Wow. I wasn’t sure how to take that.
“I still don’t get why Trent hates you and not your dad,” I said. “Your dad is the one who married your mom. Not you.”
“I was an easy target. Small for my age. Trent got a kick out of picking on me.” He said it matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t a big deal.
“Right now I don’t like him very much.”
Max leaned back against his kitchen counter. “I don’t want to get between the two of you.”
“You’re not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I lifted my shoulders. “You know, sometimes lately I’ve been wondering where I belong, though. The people I usually spend time with...they don’t understand about the ghost thing. They either laugh at me or tell me I’m being stupid. And those are the ones I’ve been dumb enough to talk to. Most of my friends I wouldn’t even try to say anything about it because I know how they’d react.”
He listened with sympathetic eyes. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“But you have friends who understand. You have your circle. Isn’t that a group of people who do magic together?”
“Yes. Where did you hear that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe I read it somewhere.”
“I do have my circle,” he said. “But most people don’t understand and I’m careful how I talk about it in public. I made the mistake of telling some people about Fred when I was young, and the fallout was ugly.”