A Gift of Grace

by Sarah Wynde

  “Sylvie, yeah.” Grace picked up a pen and tapped it against the side of her desk as she thought. She didn’t know what to do and she hated feeling uncertain. But she wasn’t going to lie to him, not again. “Ghosts.”

  Noah scowled. “What?”

  “Akira. She’s an expert on ghosts. She wouldn’t appreciate me telling you that. She’d want me to tell you about her thesis, her physics research, the work she’s done on sonoluminescence. But really, it’s ghosts.”

  “You believe in ghosts?”

  Grace couldn’t tell whether he was taking her seriously or not. He looked skeptical and he sounded skeptical but she thought she could hear something else in his voice, too. Could it be hope?

  She kept her words light when she answered. “I believe in everything.”

  His mouth twisted wryly, as if he thought she was kidding. “Right.”

  “No, really.” Grace set the pen down. “I believe in ghosts. I believe in psychic phenomena. I believe in angels and auras and energy, and that there’s infinitely more to the universe than we understand or are even capable of perceiving.”

  Noah did not seem convinced. “Werewolves?”

  Grace laughed. “Okay, maybe not everything. Shape-shifting is probably biologically impossible. Converting functioning cells into another form — at speed, while maintaining life — would take a tremendous amount of energy. It would explain, of course, why werewolves are always depicted as ravenously hungry. Unless they were in an area of incredibly abundant protein sources, they’d starve to death. The law of conservation of energy means the math would never be on their side. If a virus caused shape-shifting, it would kill the host really quickly. Evolutionarily speaking, it’s tough to see how it could survive.”

  Noah blinked.

  “Vampires, now, I wouldn’t rule them out,” Grace said with enthusiasm. “We’re not working on life-extension technologies, but there’s some interesting research being done on coenzymes that could reverse cellular aging processes. And, of course, parasites and bacteria are already known to cause food cravings. Yeast wants sugar. Maybe some other bacteria wants something in blood. Iron, maybe, or a protein.”

  She shrugged. “Immortality through human blood consumption is unlikely, but maybe not the unlikeliest thing ever. Changing into a bat, though, that’s gotta be wrong. And the fear of crosses, also implausible. But garlic — now, that’s cool. Garlic contains a chemical compound, allicin, that’s got anti-everything properties — anti-microbes, anti-fungi, anti-bacteria. So if a bacteria both caused a craving for human blood and regenerated dying cells, garlic might actually kill it.”

  “You think vampires are caused by bacteria?” Noah was looking at her as if he still wasn’t sure whether she was joking. “You seem to have put a lot of thought into this.”

  “Well, yeah,” Grace admitted. “Once you accept that ghosts are real, you do start wondering about the rest of the things that you don’t believe in. And I say ‘you’, but I really mean me. Once I accepted that ghosts were real, I took a long hard look at everything else on my list of impossibilities.” She gave him a sympathetic smile.

  “Okay, so…” He rubbed his hands over his face like he was trying to wake himself up. Abruptly, he stood. “I should go.”

  Grace jumped to her feet. Damn. She’d screwed up. She’d chased him away with her talk of ghosts and she didn’t want him to leave. Not just because of Dillon and not because her dad and her brother, in their own separate ways, were going to annoy her to death if she lost Noah again.

  But there was something between them, a chemistry she’d never felt before, and she wasn’t ready to let him walk away from it.

  “Give me a chance to prove it,” she said, with no idea of how she could do so. She’d heard Akira grumble about how hard it was to convince family members that their loved ones were still around and Akira could communicate with the ghosts. Grace had no such ability.

  But her eyes fell on her phone, still sitting at the edge of her desk where Noah had placed it.

  There was one ghost she could communicate with. If he was willing to help her out, maybe between them they could make Noah believe.

  “How are you going to do that?” Noah shook his head.

  Before he could continue rejecting her outright, Grace put up a hand. “Come kayaking with me.”

  “What?”

  “Kayaking,” Grace repeated. “I was planning to go later, after work. But we can go now. Guaranteed privacy. Only some birds and maybe a turtle or two to hear what we have to say.”

  He hesitated.

  “It’s a beautiful day for it,” Grace coaxed. “And come on, you can’t come to Florida and not do anything fun. The tourist board would be devastated.”

  He didn’t smile, but she thought she could see amusement in his eyes.

  “Neutral territory,” she continued. “A place of your choosing. I’ll shift the seats in the kayak. I’ll even let you have the rear.”

  “Control freak, huh?”

  She lifted a shoulder. She wouldn’t call herself a control freak. True, the world ran more smoothly when she was in charge, but she didn’t mind letting someone else steer now and then. But she could see that he was wavering. “You came all this way. Aren’t you curious to hear what I’m going to say?”

  If he wasn’t, she was. How was she going to persuade him that ghosts existed?

  He obviously knew something. But he couldn’t see ghosts the way Akira did, because if he did, Dillon would be talking to him directly. Still, he’d stood up in the restaurant, been about to leave. Maybe ghostly messages came through to him like intuition, a sensation of dread or a premonition of danger.

  He nodded slowly. “I guess I am at that. Lead the way.”

  Noah had driven his own truck to GD, but when he started toward it, she stopped him.

  “Not a lot of parking where we’re headed,” she said. “Let’s take my car.”

  “Where are we headed?” he asked, but he followed her without waiting for her answer.

  “I was going to go to Sweet Springs,” Grace said as she hit the button to unlock the doors. “It’s nice. Sort of a winding stream under live oak trees. Very peaceful. But since you’re coming, we should go out on the St. Johns.”

  “Why’s that?” he said, taking his seat.

  “It’s wider. More scenic. More birds. And this time of year, with the weather not too cold, we’ve got a chance of seeing manatees.”

  “Manatees? Aren’t they hard to find? I thought they were endangered,” Noah said.

  “They are,” she agreed. “Endangered, that is. Hard to find?” She tilted a hand side-to-side in an equivocal gesture. “No guarantees on the river. If we had more time, though, we could head down to Blue Springs. The water’s warm year-round there, so they’re practically a sure thing this time of year. On the river, the water’s a little cooler, so you never know.” She shot him a glance. “Have you ever seen one?”

  “Not a lot of manatees in Maine. Or in the Middle East. Those are pretty much the only places I’ve ever been,” he replied.

  Grace frowned. “Your apartment’s in DC. AlecCorp was based in Virginia. And Army basic training, that’d be what, Georgia? Then there was the hospital. That was in Germany, wasn’t it?”

  She could feel Noah’s eyes on her so she glanced his way again. He was staring at her.

  “You going to tell me that a ghost told you all that?”

  “Tempting.” She laughed. “Seriously tempting. But no. I ran a background check on you.”

  She kept her hands in the perfect nine and three positions on the wheel, waiting for him to react. Would he be annoyed?

  “A background check?” He sounded more surprised than annoyed.

  “Well…” Grace cleared her throat. Should she admit this? “Actually, more of a high-level security clearance investigation. It’s a little more in-depth than the average background check. By this time next week — well, or maybe the week after — I’ll kno
w what you ate for breakfast. In kindergarten.”

  “What? Why?” The surprise had become shock. Still no annoyance, though.

  Grace kept her eyes on the road. “We run background checks on everyone we hire,” she finally answered. It was true, but disingenuous. But she wasn’t going to tell him about Dillon, not yet, and she didn’t want to admit to her own curiosity, either.

  “I didn’t apply for a job.”

  “And yet…” Grace turned onto the narrow, one-lane dirt road leading to the river. Her car rumbled along it, bumping over uneven ground. “Here we are.”

  The distraction was nicely timed.

  “Where’s here?” Noah asked as the road opened onto a small clearing with enough room for three or four cars to park on the graveled dirt.

  “An access point for the river,” Grace said with satisfaction.

  She did a three-point turn to back into the parking space closest to the wide downward slope at the river’s edge, glad that she wouldn’t have to back all the way down the forest service road and look for a different spot instead. On a day as nice as this one, the parking spaces could easily have been taken.

  She hopped out of the car and began undoing the tie-downs that held the kayak to the roof, whipping the straps free with practiced ease. As Noah emerged, she tossed the straps into the car and then headed to the back of the car to begin tugging the kayak free from the saddle.

  “Let me help,” he said, joining her and reaching for the kayak.

  “Sure.” Grace stepped to the side and let him take the stern of the boat, picking up the bow as it slid off the rack. With two of them, shifting the kayak to the water was easy. Grace left Noah at the water’s edge and went back to the car, opening the back door and pulling out the paddles and a waterproof dry bag.

  Rejoining Noah, she placed the paddles on the sandy ground next to her and held open the bag. “Anything you want to keep dry?”

  He tilted his head toward the car. “I stuck my wallet in the glove compartment. It seemed safer. Wouldn’t want to lose it to a hungry ‘gator.” His smile invited her to share the joke.

  For a moment, Grace couldn’t breathe. The heat of attraction surged through her veins. She wanted to step closer, to lean up to him, to wrap her arms around his neck — and maybe he could see that on her face, because his eyes darkened and his gaze dropped to her lips.

  But then he flinched and glanced to the side before dropping his gaze to the ground. “Want me to adjust the seats?” he asked, voice brusque.

  “Yeah, okay,” she said, wondering about his reaction. He’d done that in the restaurant, too, she remembered, but she’d thought nothing of it at the time. There’d been other people around and she’d assumed he was paying attention to something she hadn’t noticed.

  But they were alone in the clearing. Could he be responding to the ghosts?

  With quick competence, he moved the back seat from its usual center spot to the rear of the kayak and slid the front seat back to a more usable position.

  “I take it you’ve kayaked before,” she said, bending to pick up the paddles.

  “Yeah. When I was a kid, our house was on a lake. We had canoes, kayaks, row boats, sail boats. During summers, my brother and I practically lived on the water.”

  Damn it. The last thing she needed was another reason to like him. But she loved the water. She could pretend to be a city girl when she needed to, but most of the time, her kayaking trips were the highlight of her week.

  “All right, then,” she said briskly, passing Noah his paddle. “You get the rear. You get to decide where we go.”

  “Upstream, downstream?” he asked. “What are the currents like?”

  “The St. Johns is the slowest-flowing river in the entire United States. It flows north, so head south if you want the easier ride back, but it doesn’t matter much. More chance of manatees to the south, though.” She glanced at his sneakered feet. “You worried about getting wet?”

  “In this weather? No.” He wasn’t laughing at her but his chuckle was rueful. “This could be August in Maine.” He glanced around and added, “Well, except for the trees. The colors. The humidity.”

  Grace followed his look. The colors were mostly muted shades of tans and browns and amber, with streaks of gray Spanish moss and splashes of deep green brush. Sprinkled light green marked new leaves just sprouting. It looked like mid-winter to her. And the air held a hint of moisture, but also the brush of a light breeze off the water and the prickling warmth of strong sunshine. It was definitely not humid.

  Noah inhaled. “It smells wrong, too. Good, but wrong.”

  Damp earth, rotting leaves, growing plants, and the fresh scent of flowing water all smelled exactly right to Grace. “What should it smell like?”

  He inhaled again, his chest rising. “More pine, I guess. Crisper, somehow.”

  Grace pointed to the nearby scrub pines. “Pine trees,” she said, feeling defensive for her forest.

  Noah grinned at her and shook his head. “Not the same. You’ll have to come to Maine sometime.”

  “I’ve never been there,” Grace admitted, stepping into the kayak and taking her seat, her paddle propped across the boat in front of her. “In fact, all I know about Maine is lobsters and L.L. Bean. Or is that Ben & Jerry’s?”

  “Ben & Jerry’s is Vermont. Not actually the same state.” Noah lifted the stern of the kayak and slid it forward a couple more feet, until it was almost entirely in the water, then climbed aboard with a splash or two.

  “Proving my lack of knowledge.” Grace waited until she heard the sound of his paddle sliding into the water before lifting her own. “Do you miss it?”

  “I...” Noah hesitated. “I do, yeah. It’s been a long time, but it was a great place to grow up. Can’t say I miss the winters much, though. We used to cross-country ski and snowboard, of course, and that was fun, but most of the time, during school and all, it was just dark. Dark in the mornings, dark by the time we got home from school.”

  In the bright Florida day, with the sun glimmering off the water and the sky the purest shade of blue, it was hard to imagine. “I got my master’s degree in Virginia, but that’s as far north as I’ve ever lived.”

  They were gliding through the water, stroking in unison, their paddles pulling together in a rhythm they hadn’t had to coordinate. Noah’s stroke gave the kayak more power, so it felt like they were almost flying over the river’s surface, but Grace didn’t feel any push to compete.

  They talked inconsequentially — about places, sports, childhood activities — until Grace caught sight of movement in the plants at the edge of the river.

  She lifted her paddle out of the water, holding it chest-high. Noah caught her signal and stopped paddling. She indicated the motion she’d seen. “Slowly.”

  She let him steer the kayak, even though her fingers itched to control their direction, and they drifted closer. The plants were disappearing, strands of leafy water hyacinth being pulled under the dark water.

  “Do you see it?” she asked, voice hushed.

  “See what?”

  “The plants?”

  “Something’s eating them,” Noah realized. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.” Grace smiled, pleased by the incredulousness in his voice.

  “That’s—”

  “A manatee,” she supplied as the gray sea cow floated to the surface.

  “It’s huge.” He sounded appropriately awed.

  “They’re pretty big,” she agreed. The manatee drifted toward them, almost brushing the kayak, then dropped down into the depths, becoming invisible in the dark water. The leaves of a nearby plant began rustling as the manatee began chewing its roots.

  “Wow. Okay, that’s cool.”

  Grace looked over her shoulder at him. He looked lighter on the water, easier, as if the sun was chasing away his demons.

  It was time to talk.

  20

  Dillon

  “We need to talk,” Rose sai
d.

  “Yeah,” Dillon agreed, but he was watching Grace. She was turning around to face Noah, tucking her legs up before swiveling on the seat, her paddle braced behind her. The kayak rocked precariously and Dillon held his breath, but Noah compensated perfectly, leaning forward and shifting until they were balanced again.

  Grace laughed. “Not up for a swim?”

  Noah grinned at her. “Not sure I need to meet any alligators today.”

  Dillon wanted to tell him how unlikely that was. Not that there weren’t alligators in the St. Johns — there definitely were, loads of them. Any body of water larger than a puddle in Florida could have an alligator in it. But most of them were small and they avoided people and they weren’t likely to be leisurely swimming near a kayak in the middle of the day in February. Maybe in May, when it was warmer. Or at dusk, when they typically hunted.

  Instead, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. It was weird being out on the water like this, no boat involved. It felt familiar yet wrong. When he was a kid, he and Grace and his grandfather had come kayaking most weekends in the winter. He wished he could tease her right now, reminding her of all the times they’d overturned kayaks when he was little. Sometimes Max had dumped them out on purpose to teach them how to recover, but sometimes they’d tried to bounce one another out.

  And then sometimes they’d gone in the water completely by accident. One time they’d been eating lunch while floating along one of the local springs. He and Grace had spotted a turtle at the same moment and they’d both leaned too far. He still remembered the shock of hitting the cold water before coming up to see Max calmly treading water while taking a bite out of his peanut-butter sandwich. He wondered if Grace remembered that day.

  “What did you tell them?” Rose asked.

  “Not to talk about it,” Dillon answered her.

  With the exception of Rose, the ghosts had all gotten dragged along to General Directions with Noah. Dillon wasn’t sure whether that meant his theory about the accumulation of spirit energy creating the attraction was wrong or not. Some of the ghosts — the singing lady, the guy with the peanut allergy, a few of the white balls of light — were gone, lost to the vortex, but enough were left that the pull might still be caused by having too much spirit energy in one place. Or maybe it was something about Noah, as they’d been thinking before.