by Sarah Wynde
“Are you sure?”
“Things to do, places to be.” He kept the words light, but the key was digging into his palm. He forced his fingers to relax.
“Are you going to talk to Avery?”
“The sooner the better, I guess.”
“Well, don’t… don’t do anything drastic, okay?” Grace’s eyes shifted around the parking lot. Maybe she was addressing Dillon.
“I’ll send a text,” Dillon replied. He sounded quite cheerful.
“He’ll text you,” Noah told Grace.
“That’s…” She sighed. “Yeah. Okay.” She glanced back at the door to the offices. “I should go deal with my brother. Unless you want me to come talk to Avery with you?”
“I think I can manage a conversation.”
“Right.” She looked at him, eyes searching his face. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Was she trying to convince him or herself? Noah couldn’t tell, but he gave her a nod that he hoped was reassuring.
Back at the bed-and-breakfast, Noah found Avery sitting on the back patio, with a sadly depleted plate of cheese and crackers on the table before them and a glass of wine in their hand. Empty glasses and crumpled napkins gave evidence that at least some of the guests had enjoyed the cocktail hour, but Noah was grateful to find Avery alone.
Grace had assured him that Avery would be perfectly comfortable talking about ghosts, but Noah wasn’t sure he was comfortable bringing the subject up.
Ghosts.
Was he living in the Matrix?
But if he was, there was a computer-simulated voice that very much wanted to be heard talking over his shoulder. The stream of words that were probably not Chinese had continued almost non-stop ever since the other ghosts had started trying to communicate with Chaupi. Noah might as well give in to the construct.
“Ah, welcome.” Avery stood. “Tail end of the snacks, I’m afraid, but I can still offer you a drink. Wine? Beer?”
“I’m good, thanks.” Noah waved off the invitation. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“Oh, no, no, not at all.” Avery set their glass down on a side table and began gathering up the used glasses, setting them on a tray.
“I would like to talk to you, though.” Noah dropped down onto the bench. “Do you have a minute?”
Avery paused. “Of course.”
“So, Grace tells me…” Noah started. Then he stopped. How exactly was he going to ask this question?
“Just say it,” Nadira said encouragingly.
“Spit it out,” Sophia added.
“Do you want me to send a text?” Dillon asked. “Avery knows about me. Everyone does in Tassamara, pretty much.”
“Guys, if you could maybe just let Noah talk,” Joe said.
“Yes?” Avery repositioned the ice bucket, shooting a glance at Noah.
“I have to ask you…” Noah ran a hand through his hair, shifting his gaze away. “I’m sorry. This is uncomfortable for me.”
“Yes?” Avery repeated, but their tone was warier.
Noah blew out a breath. Why was this so damn hard? But the idea was so absurd. And he’d hidden his secret for so long. He’d rather go on a thirty-mile forced march than tell a stranger that he heard voices. But finally he said flatly, “Grace tells me that you believe in ghosts.”
“Oh!” Avery’s eyebrows arched in surprise. They tilted their head to the side. “That was not what I was expecting.”
For a second, Noah was confused. Then he realized Avery must have been anticipating a more personal question. A corner of Noah’s mouth lifted in wry acknowledgement. Everyone had secrets, didn’t they? And of course, their own secrets were always the ones they cared about the most.
Obscurely comforted, he said, “I hear voices. I’m told they belong to ghosts.”
“They do belong to ghosts.”
“We are ghosts.”
“Told?”
“Do you still not believe in us?”
“Right. Yeah, I heard about that,” Avery said casually.
Noah stared at them. “You heard about what?”
“Oh, not the details.” Avery continued clearing up desultorily, picking up a napkin, moving a small plate to the tray with the glasses. “Just, you know, that you had a gift.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Noah muttered. How the hell could Avery have learned about the ghosts? Not even Grace had known until he admitted it to her and he’d been with her until he’d left her at General Directions. Had she called while he was driving here, trying to smooth the way for him? He supposed he shouldn’t be annoyed with her if she had — she must have meant well — but he didn’t like it. “Did Grace call you?”
“No.” Avery must have heard the annoyance in his voice because they shot him a doubtful look. “My next-door neighbor told me. She works at the spa.”
“The spa?”
“Sure, down the street.” Avery gestured vaguely toward the fence.
“It’s hard to keep a secret in a town of psychics,” Dillon said.
“It’s hard to keep a secret in Tassamara,” Rose corrected him. “Always has been.”
“Small towns. Alike the world over,” Nadira said, voice dry.
Noah leaned back against the bench.
Okay, weirdest day ever.
His deep dark secret, the burden he’d been carrying for what felt like forever, was now gossip. Not even very interesting gossip, if Avery’s calm reaction was anything to go by.
“Were these ghosts messing with my television yesterday?” Avery perched on the edge of the bench across from Noah.
“Yeah.” Noah braced for their reaction.
“That is so cool.” The innkeeper clenched a fist over their heart. “I have a haunted inn. Oh my heavens, it’s like a dream come true. Can you stay? Can they stay?”
Noah blinked.
“I like this guy,” Joe said.
“She is not a guy,” Nadira said.
“They aren’t a guy,” Dillon corrected her. “They aren’t a she, either.”
“Right, right. Whatever. I like them,” Joe said.
“Actually, that’s not what I’m hoping for,” Noah replied. Behind him, Chaupi began speaking again, a fast blur of words that Noah couldn’t understand.
“I’m working on it,” Noah said. The voice — the ghost — didn’t slow down. Noah raised his hand, palm up and open, in a stop sign directed over his shoulder. “Give it a rest, man.”
“A ghost? Really?” Avery gave a shiver of delight.
For a moment, Noah thought about telling them exactly how many ghosts seemed to be following him around, but then he shook his head slightly. Even someone as excited about ghosts as Avery might not want to know that their home was currently infested with the spirits of the dead.
Instead, he said, “One of the ghosts haunting me doesn’t speak English. Do you think you could help me talk to him?”
“I would be delighted.” Avery clasped their hands together in front of them. “It would be an honor.”
Noah wanted to object. An honor? More like a nightmare. But he wasn’t going to argue with Avery’s willingness to help. With a nod, he said, “In your language, could you—”
“Which one?” Avery interrupted. “I know several.”
Carefully, trying to get each syllable correct, Noah repeated what Chaupi was saying.
“Quechua,” Avery said, and then rattled off several sentences at a speed that Noah had no chance of following. Chaupi obviously had no such trouble, responding eagerly. And far too quickly.
Noah sighed. This might be harder than he’d anticipated. “Maybe start by asking him to slow down.”
“Ari.” Avery nodded. “I mean, yes,” they added, before returning to Quechua for a quick couple of sentences. Finished, they waited expectantly for Noah’s next words.
“One of the other ghosts, Rose, says that you have a doorway, a path to the next plane of existence.” Noah felt like an idiot saying those words aloud, but A
very didn’t seem fazed. They translated eagerly.
“The other ghosts wonder why you haven’t used it and would like to join you when you do,” Noah continued.
Avery’s brows rose, but they spoke again.
For the next several minutes, Avery and Noah went back and forth, exchanging phrases. It wasn’t simple: the language was so unfamiliar to Noah that more than once he stumbled over Chaupi’s words while trying to repeat them for Avery, and had to ask the ghost to slow down and try again.
But finally he said, “I think that’s it.”
Avery waved a cocktail napkin where they’d scrawled a few notes. “So is this what you do? You find out what they need and help them move on?”
“I wish.” Noah took the napkin from Avery and smoothed it over his knee. He stared at the name and the address, the first things Avery had written. “They never do seem to move on. But…” He looked up and shot a quick grin at Avery. “I also didn’t know they were ghosts until I got here. This could be a first.”
“That is so cool. You could travel the world, helping spirits. You could be like that guy on television, the medium. The one who tells people how their relatives died.” Avery shook their head. “Like they need to know that. It would be so much more interesting if sometimes he could tell them things they don’t know, instead of just the things they do.”
Noah didn’t have the slightest desire to be on television. And he was not going to wander around the world looking for ghosts to help. But it would be nice if he could help this one specific ghost. He lifted the napkin. “How do you suppose I can find her?”
“Not a problem.” Avery whisked the napkin out of his hand. “I’ll call Grace.”
“Grace?” Noah wanted to grab the napkin back. If anyone was calling Grace, it should be him. But he resisted the impulse. Over the course of the past twelve hours — or maybe it was the past four days — his entire life had been upended. From the moment he’d seen Grace’s green eyes in the restaurant, the world had stopped being a place he understood.
And maybe he’d stopped being someone he understood, too. For so long, he’d felt trapped. Somehow his choices had turned him into a person that he’d never wanted to be, someone who couldn’t let go of the past, couldn’t move on.
He’d thought he knew what the world was. He didn’t believe in magic, he didn’t believe in miracles. And he knew himself, too — damaged beyond repair by what had happened to him, by what he’d done.
But now… it was like the world was a kaleidoscope and Grace Latimer had given it a good hard spin. All the pieces — everything he understand about reality, about existence, about who he was — they were spinning and shifting and he didn’t know yet where they were going to wind up, what the world would look like when the spinning stopped.
26
Dillon
“Dang it.” Dillon had been pacing behind Noah as he listened in to the three-way conversation between Noah, Avery, and Chaupi, but now he took himself off to the far end of the patio, dropping into one of the empty chairs with a sigh. Most of the other ghosts followed him, leaving Chaupi and some of the wisps hovering by Noah and Avery.
The news wasn’t good. Chaupi had left behind a pregnant girlfriend in Peru. He wanted her to know his fate, that he hadn’t abandoned her intentionally. But it had been thirty years, maybe more, and all he had was the address where she had once lived.
“Hmph,” Nadira snorted. “A man who conceived a child outside of marriage? This is the gate you would have us go through? Surely it must lead to a particularly dark corner of hell.”
“No, it won’t,” Rose said absently, watching Chaupi with a frown.
“Tell me that after you have gone through a dozen of these doorways, not just one,” Nadira said smartly.
“Maybe we could go through his door without him,” Dillon suggested. “Rose, if you can show us where…”
Rose interrupted him, shaking her head. “If that worked, one of you would have popped out of here by now. You’ve walked right past the door more than once.”
Dillon scowled. It seemed unfair that Rose could see it and he couldn’t. “You could take us through, couldn’t you?”
Rose wrinkled her nose. “What if using it closes it? I’m not stealing Chaupi’s afterlife from him.”
“Maybe we could convince him to go without waiting.” Dillon eyed the older ghost. Chaupi was standing by Noah and Avery, head cocked to one side, as if he was trying to understand their conversation. He’d been a ghost long enough to have started fading, the colors in his plain t-shirt, white apron, and khaki pants beginning to wash out as if they’d been out in the sun for too long.
Nadira followed his gaze. “Can we not find another doorway? One that does not belong to an adulterer?”
“How can he be an adulterer if he wasn’t married?” Joe took a seat in the chair next to Dillon, leaning back and extending his legs.
“You know nothing about sin.” Nadira rolled her eyes.
“What’s an adulterer?” Misam asked.
“Never you mind,” his mother said. She waved him toward the grassy lawn. “You go and play.”
He ignored her.
Unexpectedly, Sophia spoke up. “Why don’t we have doors of our own? If he gets one, how come we don’t?”
“I think it’s because we shouldn’t have died when we did,” Rose responded. “We’re like the unripe fruit of souls, not ready to be picked.”
“Ew,” Nadira protested. “I am not fruit. Or a chicken.”
“You had a door, though, didn’t you?” Dillon asked Rose.
“Yes, but only after Henry came back. If I’d lived, I would have been pretty old by then, so maybe that’s when I would have died if I hadn’t… well, made a mistake,” Rose said.
“What was your mistake?” Misam asked Rose.
Dillon opened his mouth to say something, anything. He knew how Rose had died. Akira had told him the whole story after Rose had moved on the first time. He didn’t want her to have to share it if she didn’t want to.
But before he could think of what to say, Rose, quite calmly, said, “I conceived a child outside of marriage. And then I tried to stop it from being born.”
Nadira drew in a sharp breath as Misam asked, in a tone of innocent curiosity, “How did you do that?”
“Never you mind,” Nadira snapped at him. “Go and play. Now.”
He ignored her again.
Rose smiled at him. “It’s not important.” She looked at Nadira and said, “My doorway didn’t take me to hell, and Chaupi’s is probably safer than mine was. Less of a sin.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.
Nadira bit her lip, looking troubled, then put a hand out to Rose. “I am sorry for your loss. And for any offense I might have given.”
“None taken,” Rose assured her.
Sophia said, “If we’re unripe fruit, shouldn’t we wait? Until we get our own doors? Until we’re ripe?”
Dillon wanted to bang his head against the nearest brick wall. “It’s not an invitation-only party. We’re dead. That means we’re ready.”
“Hey, I hate this as much as you do.” Sophia folded her arms across her chest.
“More, probably,” Dillon admitted. He hadn’t managed to create a vortex until he’d been sure he’d totally screwed up his mother’s life.
“But maybe we’re supposed to resolve our unfinished business.” Sophia hunched her shoulders. “I could probably talk to my parents.”
“What and then you’ll get a white light? And your grandparents waving at you from the other side? I’ve talked to my parents. I’ve seen my grandma. It didn’t help.” Dillon jumped up from the chair so he could start pacing again.
Calm, he told himself. Calm. He didn’t want to open a vortex just because he was so desperate to avoid one. He took a deep breath and let it out in a quick exhale. “Sorry.”
At the other end of the patio, Noah nodded at something Avery was saying and then started talking, his expression
serious.
“If we have unfinished business, Misam and I, it would be in Iraq.” Nadira pursed her lips.
“Do you think we need to see Papa?” Misam sounded doubtful. He slipped his hand into hers.
“I don’t know what there would be to say to him. And…” Nadira glanced at Joe, then looked away. “Well. No.”
Joe studied his toes, but his dimple flashed in a quick smile.
“It’s not right,” the angry man muttered.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I’ll never get this clean.” Mona dropped to her knees and began scrubbing the paving stones of the path.
“That’s for sure,” Sophia said. She crouched next to Mona and pointed at the moss and grass flourishing in the tiny gaps between the stones. “They need the dirt to survive, Mona. Leave it alone. Unless you want to be a plant-killer.” She said the last word with an emphasis that made it sound equivalent to serial killer.
“Oh, dear.” Mona sat back on her heels, eyes wide and perturbed.
“Mona’s unfinished business seems to be cleaning something she didn’t get clean enough the first time,” Joe said.
“Trying to get it perfect for her husband, yes,” Nadira agreed.
“Even if we could find her husband, she should tell him to get lost instead of trying to clean for him,” Dillon said firmly.
Sophia stood and turned to Joe. “What about you?”
“Me?” Joe looked surprised.
“You. What’s your unfinished business?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Dillon grumbled. He’d done the unfinished business thing. His business was done, as complete as he could get it, but he still didn’t have a door. At least they weren’t arguing about whether to go, though. That was progress.
“I don’t know.” Joe shrugged. “I mean, my whole life is unfinished, isn’t it? I was twenty years old. I don’t think there’s some magical thing I needed to accomplish to make my life complete.”