by Nicola Marsh
“At the end of the clip, I saw a room with a girl lying on the floor. Couldn’t see her face, just lots of red I assumed was fake blood.”
A tiny slash appeared between her brows. “Go on.”
“Problem was, no-one else could see it. Angie, my boyfriend Ronan, no-one except me.”
“It could be a sign—”
“It’s not a sign, Mom, it’s someone toying with me. Have to admit, I did get a little spooked so I visited a medium, who conducted a séance and…uh…”
I knew she’d high-five me if she heard the next bit, what with me retrieving lost souls and all.
“Apparently the spirit she contacted was Noah.”
Mom’s eyes widened, her frown vanishing and I held up my hand before she could speak.
“I did some digging into the medium. Turns out her dad’s a magician who performed at the fair the night Noah and I danced in front of everyone, so the séance could’ve been bogus.”
“But why would this magician want to mess with you?”
Trust her to go all logical on me now.
“No idea. Anyway, the stuff I didn’t tell Angie about? It’s kinda big.”
She patted my foot, waiting patiently, and I rushed on. “A hand-delivered parcel arrived for me.”
The shock of seeing Noah’s necklace still reverberated through me and I suppressed a shiver.
“It was Noah’s necklace, the one I gave him, the one I buried next to his grave a week after his funeral.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“Then I was out with Ronan another night and a voodoo doll of me with a noose around its neck was planted in my bag.”
Her jaw snapped shut with an audible click. “Not good. You don’t dabble in darkness unless you mean business—”
“Or you’re someone trying to convince me I need to believe in the otherworld.”
I let the implication sink in, curious as to what she’d say.
When the spark of understanding lit her eyes a second later, she surprised me, the spark replaced by speculation. “You think Angie’s behind this?”
“Is she? After the wild story you just concocted out there, maybe you’ve finally succumbed to her pressure to get me to believe? Maybe this is all some grand plan between the two of you to convince me all this crap is real?”
“Enough.” Her lips thinned and she removed her hand from my foot. “Angie is one of the most powerful witches in New York City. She wouldn’t stoop to cheap tricks to encourage her niece towards a new way of thinking. Nor would she use occult practices to do it.”
She huffed out a sad sigh. “Besides, despite her overt enthusiasm to get you to believe in Wicca over the years, she’d never do anything to hurt you.”
I had to ask. “What about you, Mom? Is this some ploy to—”
She grabbed my hands so fast I flinched. “I would never hurt you. Ever. Whatever I’ve done these last few years is about protecting you from…from…everything.”
Nice euphemism for the lost souls who apparently clamoured to get to me through her.
I turned my hands over and held onto hers. “I’ve never had a psychic experience in my life. I’ve never heard a voice or felt a presence or any of that other stuff.” Discounting Kelsey’s séance and those freaky voices I’d attributed to the girls playing pranks. And the séance at 666. Hmm…possibly I needed to amend “never”.
“Hell—” she frowned and I modified to, “Heck, I rarely experience déjà vu. I can’t be this…this…soul person you think I am.”
Her solemn stare bored into me. “Have you ever thought maybe Noah is trying to contact you?”
I flung her hands off in disgust. “That’s crazy. So what, now ghosts can hand deliver goods and tamper with computers?”
No freaking way.
“Just because you haven’t exhibited a sign yet doesn’t mean you don’t have the power.” Her soft, caring tone gave me chills and I rubbed my arms.
“Listen to me, Mom. I’m glad you’ve got your act together, I really am but…”
That’s when the enormity of what she believed hit me.
If what she said was true, now that I’d returned, would she relapse? Start hearing supposed victims again? Would the downward spiral begin, culminating in more alcohol and talking to the walls?
No matter what she believed, I couldn’t be a part of that. If my absence had helped her pull herself together, I couldn’t stay.
“But what?”
“I was going to say I can’t believe in your soul retriever theories, but let me ask you something. If what you say is true, is my being here a problem?” My breath hitched on a needy hiccup. “Am I ever going to be able to live here again?”
It hadn’t been much of a home for the last few years but it was the only one I had. And while I’d be going to college after high school, I liked the option of knowing this place was always here. I liked hanging onto the dream it would return to being the warm, cosy, safe home it had once been.
“Once you turned seventeen, your inner power became more concentrated, more focused, and not controlled by hormones careening through your body.” Her gaze never left mine, showing just how much she believed this. “When I’m with you now, it’s like the voices are muted. Present, but on a lower frequency that I can handle.”
I should have been relieved she wouldn’t be doing vodka shots in the next hour, but all I could think about was how the only family I had left in the world was so different from me. I could handle the witchcraft. Wicca was a religion, a pathway followed, same as the Protestant and Catholic faiths and the rest. There were thousands of witches worldwide, co-existing in harmony with their mundane husbands/partners/co-workers.
I’d seen Mom perform spells and rituals in the early days, all perfectly peaceful stuff, and not at all like the bad rap witches got from Hollywood.
Yeah, I could accept the Wicca, easy. But this soul retriever theory? Way over the top.
“You coming home will never be a problem.”
“Good to know.” It would have sounded more convincing if my voice didn’t wobble.
Needing to escape the confines of the room and our conversation, I patted my stomach. “I’m starving. Can we order pizza?”
“Sure honey, whatever you want.”
I struggled not to gape. It was another of those perfectly normal things a mom would say to her kid but for five years mine never had.
“Any preferences?”
And then she had to go a spoil it with that. She’d forgotten my favourite pizza topping.
“You choose, as long as it’s got pepperoni, onions and mushrooms on it.”
She smiled, a real teeth-revealing smile and her unexpected beauty made me want to bawl again. “I’ll order. You wash up.”
She left the room and rather than head out for some fresh air, I lay down, the room immediately feeling lighter and less claustrophic. We hadn’t discussed the death signs or the fact the faceless body had become Sammy, and that was just fine by me.
I’d expected my homecoming to be understated; I’d slip into the house, Mom wouldn’t notice me and I could do some investigating on my own. Instead, I’d found Mom had a radical makeover because I’d removed my power from her sphere.
Some homecoming.
THE DOORBELL RANG while Mom was setting the table so I grabbed some money out of my purse and went to pay the pizza guy. When I opened the door, Kelsey’s snub freckled nose and curious brown eyes were the first things I noticed, before realising she clutched a huge, flat cardboard box.
She grinned and hoisted the box. “Mom’s idea, to help top up my college fund.”
“Good for you.” I smiled back at her, realising how much I’d missed her. Not that I’d ever let anyone get super close, what with my home situation, but Kelsey and I had hung out at her house, ate lunch together, done girly stuff like paint our nails and lust over movie stars.
I’d liked her because she never pushed me for answers, never intruded upon my
preciously guarded privacy. Not that she didn’t know about Mom’s drinking: the whole town knew. Which made me wonder. What did the fine folk of Broadwater think now? I left and Mom sobered up. Chalk another black mark next to my name.
Kelsey and I had grown apart when I started dating Noah—my fault, not hers—and I hadn’t responded to her condolence text or email. My bad.
“You’re back?”
“Just for a couple days.”
We stood there, like awkward strangers rather than best friends and I regretted alienating one of the few people in this world I could call a friend.
“It’s good to see you.” She thrust the box at me and I took the pizza, handing her the money in a smoothly coordinated exchange.
“You too.”
She shuffled from side to side, like she didn’t want to leave, which added to the awkwardness between us. “How’s the Big Apple?”
“Great. Big. Busy. Bustling.” I sounded like an inane advertisement and clamped my lips shut.
The polite thing to do would be to ask her about Broadwater and school…school.
“How’s the gang at Broadwater High? Latest scandals? Runaways?”
She shrugged. “Same old, same old. Not much happens round here. About the only excitement we’ve had lately is Sammy going AWOL the last two weeks.”
Shit.
Kelsey misinterpreted my stricken expression and rushed on, “I know she was a bitch to you when…um, Noah died. Guess I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” She winced and edged back. “Sorry, that was kinda dumb.”
“No, it wasn’t. I’m just a little strung out coming back after…well, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I welcomed her sympathy and wished I hadn’t blown off everyone when I’d left.
“Hey, maybe the next time I’m home, we can catch up? Go for a soda or something?”
Her face lit up. “That’d be great.”
I smiled as she bounced down the path to her pale blue VW, a smile that faded as I closed the door.
Sammy was missing.
And I’d seen her dead body on a video, dated two days from today.
Optimistically, I would like to believe whoever was doing this had faked the dead body and superimposed Sammy’s face. Hell, if they could hack into an IT genius’s IP address without leaving a trace, they could do anything with a video clip.
Logically, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was part of some greater plan, like I’d been singled out to save Sammy from the fate I’d seen?
If so, I only had forty-eight hours to do it.
Without a clue where to start.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHILE HAVING MOM sober and lucid was a welcome change, the normality of sharing blueberry pancakes and freshly squeezed OJ for breakfast while making small talk felt weird. We hadn’t done anything like this in years and it was almost like we were tiptoeing around each other, excessively polite and scared of delving into the tough stuff from yesterday.
I went through the motions, wanting to put her mind at ease before I escaped for the day to do some serious investigating.
After mulling at length last night, I now had a clear plan.
Check out Sammy’s known haunts for any clues to her whereabouts—though if my suspicions were correct, she’d been lurking in New York City, torturing me.
According to Kelsey, Sammy was the only one who’d been away from school for two weeks, giving her ample opportunity to skulk around New York and torment me for supposedly stealing her boyfriend.
It was the only explanation that made sense.
As for how she would have crossed paths with Tabitha and obtained Noah’s necklace…I really didn’t want to go there. Someone digging anywhere near Noah’s grave made me feel ick.
“You being back here is more than escaping the nasty stuff in New York, isn’t it?” Mom stared at me over a mug of coffee, her gaze probing and I almost felt bad for thinking I liked it better when she didn’t care what I did.
“Can’t hurt to check out who’s behind all this,” I said, my feigned indifference not working as her eyes narrowed.
“This could be more than you’re capable of dealing with.”
Uh-oh, quick diversion needed before she started the supernatural soul spiel again.
“I actually think Sammy Van Cleave’s behind it. She hated me after Noah and I started dating, bad-mouthed me to everyone.”
She sipped at her coffee, her forefinger tapping the mug, a surefire tell she was thinking. How many times had I sat at this table as a kid, watching her pore over a book of spells or a Wicca journal, doing this very thing?
Nostalgia clogged my throat. I would give anything to go back to those carefree days when the craziest thing Mom would do was dance naked in the moonlight and the only supernatural things I believed in were Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
She lowered her mug, her finger still tapping the ceramic. “What about the séance?”
Trust her to focus on the one thing I couldn’t clearly pin on Sammy or explain away. Refusing to consider Mom’s possible theories—I could only imagine her explanations—I pushed a piece of pancake around my plate with a fork.
“Look, Mom, I’m taking this one clue at a time. I think if I talk to Sammy I’ll get some answers.”
“You seem so sure.”
“What other explanation is there?”
Bad move.
She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to one side, as if listening to something.
That was my cue to leap from the table, dump the rest of my breakfast and rinse my dishes. “I’ll probably be gone all day, but you can reach me on my cell.”
I slung my bag over my shoulder, and had almost made it out the door when she called out, “Be careful.”
Sure thing, Mom. Her bizarre soul retriever theory was far scarier than anything I could possibly encounter in town.
“There’s more to this than a schoolgirl’s revenge—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest.
TWO HOURS LATER, my hopes of discovering Sammy’s whereabouts lay in tatters.
Her mom said she hadn’t seen Sammy in weeks, Sammy hadn’t taken any of her stuff and she didn’t particularly care if the “ungrateful little bitch” never returned, before she slammed the door of her ramshackle trailer in my face.
I checked at the diner, the movie hall, the gazebo—all the places the kids in town hung out. No-one had seen Sammy in two weeks.
Then I hit paydirt.
Jed, the retired colonel who spent his days swapping war stories with whoever would listen as they entered the corner store, mentioned he’d seen her get on a bus for Broad River a few weeks ago.
Okay, so that shot down my theory she’d been stalking me in New York, but it was a start. What I couldn’t fathom was why she wouldn’t have taken any of her stuff from home if she intended on coming back, which meant either she’d run away, hooked up with some guy in the next town or…
I refused to believe that video clip was true. Or a prelude to what could happen tomorrow if I didn’t find her.
I stood in the middle of town, my head pounding with indecision. I wanted to hop on the first bus to Broad River. And do what? Ask a bunch of strangers if they’d seen a runaway teenage girl? No, I needed to research more thoroughly now that I had a lead, and that involved computer work.
Unwilling to have the local nosy librarian staring over my shoulder as I scoured the internet about one of the town’s own, I trudged home, hoping Mom hadn’t let her internet connection lapse.
To say her face lit up with relief when I strolled through the door would be an understatement, which exacerbated my guilt. For all her physical changes and home improvements, I didn’t take her seriously.
Her revelation yesterday and her weird “off with the fairies” lapse at breakfast only cemented what I knew deep down: that any effort towards normality was temporary.
She really believed there were otherworldly
forces at play here, whereas I couldn’t contemplate it without conceding I might have inherited one iota of what plagued her.
“How did it go?”
“Okay, I guess.” I dumped my bag in the kitchen, pocketing my cell. “Is the internet still hooked up?”
She frowned at my condescending tone and I made a mental note to play nice for the remaining time I was at home. Tomorrow was the deadline on that calendar in the clip, so by my calculations I’d be back in the city by Sunday.
“Sure, computer’s in the spare room.”
“Thanks.”
I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter—I hadn’t seen it filled with anything other than crumpled bills, string and recyclable grocery bags for ages—and bit into it as she said, “Going to Broad River is a bad idea.”
I choked, swallowing several times to get the first bite down. “How’d you know I was thinking of heading there?”
Her mouth made a strange little moue before she turned away to gaze out the window and I knew what was coming next before she spoke. “Trust me, honey. Don’t go.”
Appetite gone, I lobbed the apple into the trash. “You can’t keep pulling the dead voices trick—”
“Explain how I know about Broad River.” She threw it out as a challenge, one I had to win to shut her up about the spirits once and for all.
“Lucky guess? Deduction? Rumour?”
She eyeballed me. “Try Noah.”
Sadness pierced my normality bubble. Coming home to a spick-and-span house and a sober mother had lulled me into a false sense of security. After all, Mom had come far in six months with the makeover, the sobriety and her general wellness. So I’d attributed her soul retriever theory to a minor regression.
But she wasn’t letting go of this bizarre soul retriever theory, and all the filled fruit bowls and clean kitchens in the world wouldn’t change facts: my Mom was still loony.
Trying to be patient, I perched on the edge of the island bench. “Mom, this has got to stop. I don’t care what you believe but stop messing in my life—”
“I’m trying to save your life.”