by Sarah Wynde
“That one’s mine.” Akira didn’t react to the sound of Rose’s voice behind her, just pasted a smile on her face for Meredith’s benefit. “But you can share it, if you like. I wouldn’t mind having a roommate. Oh, and if you like television at night, that would be so terrific. I promise I wouldn’t talk much.”
Akira glanced in the room. It was bright and big, but she kept walking. The next room was smaller and must have once been a child’s room. She skipped that, too.
“Henry mostly stays downstairs, so you don’t have to worry about him.” Rose’s tone was a little plaintive, as Akira opened the door to the turret room and stepped inside.
She crossed to the window and looked out, more to hide her face from the seemingly perceptive Meredith while she thought than to admire the view.
As a matter of principle, Akira avoided ghosts. She knew from painful experience that her interactions with them were hazardous. But these ghosts weren’t the dangerous kind: Rose had said they were friendly, but Akira hadn’t needed her words. She could recognize a dangerous spirit from a distance, sometimes even from just a vibration in the air.
Of course, any ghost could become dangerous. And if her father knew she was even considering the idea of living with ghosts . . . but she didn’t need to worry about his reaction, not anymore.
And then there was Dillon. Talking to him had been an impulse. When he sighed and mentioned the parking lot, she’d guessed he was tied to the car. That meant safety for her: he wouldn’t be able to follow her home. He wouldn’t be showing up in her bedroom or her shower or her classroom, like the ghost she’d spoken with back when she was a teenager who’d proceeded to make her life a living hell for months out of his own loneliness and misery.
She’d taken the risk, thinking it was for an afternoon, but she’d liked him. They’d fallen into conversation as easily as if they were old friends, talking about astronomy and science and movies and Harry Potter. Like most ghosts, he seemed desperately lonely but he was also curious and interested in the world. And he’d been willing to accept that she didn’t have any answers for him.
Now she’d taken an even bigger risk by leasing the car. But bringing him here, to this house, might be good for him. He’d have at least two other ghosts to talk to, maybe more if the faders in the backyard weren’t too far gone. It wouldn’t be like life, of course, and every time she drove to work he’d have to come with her, but he’d have company.
Decision made, she turned back to Meredith. “I’ll take it.”
“You—? Okay. I’ll arrange for the paperwork.” Meredith looked a little surprised, although pleased, but her reaction was nothing compared to that of Rose who screamed with joy, and rushed away, yelling, “Henry, Henry, she’s moving in.”
“My office is on Millard. Why don’t we go down there and you can take a look at the town while I get the lease together?”
“That sounds good.” Akira looked around the turret room and smiled. Okay, her reasoning was logical. Scientifically sound. But she could also admit to herself that living in a turret would be a childhood dream come true.
On Millard Street, Akira strolled while Meredith drew up the paperwork, finally returning and sitting on a bench outside the realtor’s office. The main street had a block with the usual shops: a gas station, with convenience store attached, a grocery store with a row of parking out front, even a small hardware store. A restaurant that hovered somewhere between being a café and a diner sat next to a small bookstore, an antique shop, and a store that looked as if it sold nothing but crystals.
She hadn’t kept walking because the shops seemed to end and the buildings mostly became houses or small office fronts, lawyers and accountants, and perhaps the occasional doctor or dentist. It all seemed very typical. But there was something off about it. It was like a tourist town, but smaller, dustier, not as brightly colored or as artificially friendly. How did the town survive?
“My, what a beautiful aura you have, my dear.” Akira automatically glanced in the direction of the voice, but then looked away, hoping the ghost wouldn’t think anything of her response. A small woman—smaller even than Akira herself—dressed in a flowered muumuu had stopped and was staring at Akira. “It’s lovely. Why, that blue is almost iridescent. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a shade before. Do you have an unusual gift, child?”
“Hello, Mrs. Swanson.” Meredith had opened the door to the realtor’s office and Akira stood, surprised. So the little woman wasn’t a ghost?
“Hello, Meredith, dear. How’s your mother doing? I’ve been meaning to stop by.”
“Oh, she’d be delighted to see you. She’s been a little better lately, but she always likes to hear what’s going on in town.”
“Have you noticed your friend’s aura? It’s really quite remarkable.” The little woman reached out as if to stroke Akira, but instead patted the air near her arm. Akira shifted, uncomfortable, but not wanting to be too obvious about her retreat. She threw a desperate look at Meredith but the realtor was smiling.
“What does it tell you?”
“Why, I’m not even sure. I was just asking her if she had a gift. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an aura like this before.”
“This is Akira Malone. Akira, Mrs. Swanson, one of the long-time residents of Tassamara. She owns a small business a few blocks down. Akira’s a new scientist with GD, Mrs. Swanson. I’ve just been showing her houses, and she’s rented the old Harris place.”
“A scientist? Well, that just seems wrong. But it’s a pleasure to meet you, child.” The woman reached out and took Akira’s hand in both of her own, clasping it in an almost handshake, while gazing at the air around Akira’s head.
“I, um, likewise, I’m sure,” Akira mumbled, trying to retrieve her hand and succeeding.
“Akira needs to come in and sign her lease now, Mrs. Swanson, so we’ll see you later.” Meredith waved and Akira nodded a good-bye as she entered the realtor’s office.
“Is she—was that—what does she do?” Akira asked. Was there a polite way to find out if Mrs. Swanson always accosted strangers on the street?
Meredith walked around to the other side of her desk and took her seat. “She’s an aura reader, of course.”
“A what?”
“She reads auras.” Meredith said the words matter-of-factly.
Akira looked out the window at the departing back of the tiny woman and then at Meredith. “Are you serious?” Akira asked, as she sat in the chair in front of Meredith’s desk.
Meredith looked surprised. “Of course. We’re no Cassadaga, but Tassamara is a town of psychics. That does make us a bit unusual.”
“A town of what?”
“Psychics. Cassadaga, of course, is famous for their spiritualists. We’re much more private here.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice, and added, as if confidentially, “I think we have more of the truly gifted here, too, but I shouldn’t really judge.”
Akira’s face felt frozen. Meredith pushed the lease across the desk to Akira and dropped the keys on top of it, smiling.
For a moment, Akira paused. What had she gotten herself into? But, biting her lip, she picked up a pen and signed the lease, then scooped up the keys.
This town might be crazy.
But then, she might be crazy, too.
CHAPTER THREE
The black car was empty. Akira was surprised by the stab of disappointment she felt. Ghosts disappeared, she knew that. She had never known what exactly happened to them, but one day they’d be there, the next they were gone.
As a physicist, she’d theorized, although—with the exception of that one academic-career-destroying paragraph in the Energy Review Quarterly—only privately, never publicly. Were the spirits just a form of energy? Did it dissipate slowly for some, the faders, and burn out quickly for others? Or did it change? The first law of thermodynamics said that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed, so did spirit energy become some other form of energy
? And if so, what?
But at the moment, the only important question was that she’d just leased an old black Taurus for no real reason, and did she want to keep it? She glanced back at the small airport building. She’d picked up the keys at the desk, and dropped off the keys to her rental car, as Grace had told her to do. She supposed she could go back in and say that she’d changed her mind, but that might be just as hard to explain as wanting the car in the first place could have been. She might as well just keep it.
She slid behind the wheel and adjusted the seat, and then the mirrors. Whoever had driven it out here had been a lot taller than she was. Set to go, she slid the key in the ignition, backed out of the parking space, and started to drive away.
The scream was piercing in its intensity, terrifying in its volume.
Akira slammed on the brakes, throwing the car into a skid. A flash of white, a loud bang, and suddenly the car was filling with smoke.
The next thing she was aware of was the feel of a strong, warm hand on her back as she tried hard to cough out her lungs to the sound of a teenage boy’s voice saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again.
“Just relax and try to breathe.” That was an older, but also familiar male voice. Akira looked up. For a moment, she didn’t recognize the face—it was too unexpected. But the dark hair, the blue-gray eyes—finally the pieces fell into place and she realized it was Zane Latimer, her erstwhile interviewer. “I’m calling an ambulance,” he continued.
Frantically, Akira started shaking her head, while also trying to wave off Dillon’s apologies. Through coughs, she gasped out, “No ambulance. No.”
“Uh, yes, ambulance, yes,” said Zane. “You were unconscious. I had to pull you out of the car because of the dust from the airbag. God knows what damage I might have done.”
Through the coughing, through the pain that she was just starting to feel, Akira had room to feel a little burst of fear. Ambulances led to hospitals, and hospitals were bad. Very bad.
She was sitting on the gravel of the parking lot, she realized. Zane was crouched next to her, his hand on her back, and she was leaning against his legs. Dillon was on her other side. He’d stopped apologizing when she spoke, but he had his fist pressed against his mouth, his face frantic with worry.
She tried to smile at him, but it probably looked more like a grimace. It hurt to breathe. She thought that was just from the coughing, although she could tell that she would be bruised from the seat belt. And her arms hurt, too—long marks along the inside of her wrists were almost like brush burns, scraped and raw from the airbag’s impact.
“I’ll be okay.” The words sounded strangled but she got them out.
“You were unconscious,” Zane repeated. “I’m no doctor, but I know enough to know that unconscious is bad. You need to get looked at.”
“I’m fine,” Akira insisted. “It was just the airbag. I wasn’t going very fast. What did I hit?” She tried to stand, pushing herself up with one hand. Zane slid his arm under her elbow and helped her to her feet, rising with a smooth, unconscious grace that she couldn’t match.
“Looks like a parking post. You didn’t do much damage, only dented the fender. It’s too bad about the airbags, though. Cleaning up after a blown airbag is expensive. And it’s an old car, and not worth much. The insurance company will probably want to total it.”
“Total it?” Akira looked at Zane in dismay.
Standing by the car, Dillon’s eyes went wide, and he put a possessive hand on the hood. “What will happen to me?”
Akira started shaking her head, “No, no, there’s no need to call the insurance company. I’ll get it repaired.”
Zane’s eyes narrowed. “You seem determined to keep this car.”
Akira paused. She glanced at Dillon, and bit her lip, then looked away. What could she say? She coughed gently a few times, a delaying tactic as she tried to think things through. Should she let the car get totaled? Taken away to some junkyard? Stripped for parts, and then crushed? What would happen to Dillon?
If her father were here . . . but he wasn’t. He’d been dead for three years.
Chin set stubbornly, she said, “I am, yes. I’ll get the car fixed.”
“Tell you what,” Zane offered. “You let me take you to the hospital and have a doctor take a look at you, and I’ll see about getting the car repaired.”
Akira shook her head again. “No hospitals. I don’t—I don’t do hospitals.”
“How can you not do hospitals? You’re hurt. You could have internal injuries, a concussion, brain damage for all I know.”
“I’m fine.” The wince as she touched her chest probably didn’t help convince him, but she did think she was fine, just bruised.
“I’m your boss. I could order you to go to the hospital,” Zane suggested, exasperated.
Akira just looked at him. Obeying orders to go to the hospital was not in her job description. It was a vague job description, but if it entailed hospital visits, she was not going to be sticking around, contract or no contract. And while he might technically be her boss she was going to have a hard time thinking of him that way. Even in the formal interview setting, he had a casual air about him that said he’d rather be having fun than working, and today, in his blue jeans and t-shirt, he wasn’t a convincing authority figure.
“Yeah, I didn’t think that would work.” Zane scratched his head. “What about this—my sister is a doctor and GD has a medical lab with all the latest scanners. Will you let her take a look at you?”
Akira thought about it, and then nodded. Medical care wasn’t the problem. She just didn’t like hospitals.
“All right.” He took her chin between two fingers and tilted her head up. She met his gaze, surprised to feel a tingle of warmth touching her cheeks. What was he doing? Her lips parted slightly, almost involuntarily, as she realized how attractive he was. She hadn’t thought of him that way, but standing so close to him, with his arms almost around her, his eyes intent on hers, she couldn’t help but notice. “Your pupils are both the same size. That’s about the only thing I know how to look for.”
She pulled away. “I don’t have a concussion.”
“I’m going to call Nat and get her to meet us at GD. Will you wait here?”
Akira’s confusion must have shown.
“I drove this car here,” he said, nodding toward the black Taurus. “I was going to have a flying lesson, so my ride home won’t be ready for a while. I’ll see if I can clean this up enough to be drivable. Or at least enough to get us to GD.”
“Oh, you know, if you have something to do, I’ll be okay—” Akira started.
“Nice try.” He brushed a finger along her cheekbone. “Wait here,” he ordered. “I’ll be right back.”
Akira leaned back against the hood of the car. As Zane strode away, Dillon spoke, “I’m so sorry. I was working on stretching. I was in the hangar. But when the car started moving, it really hurt. I didn’t realize what was happening.”
“It’s okay,” Akira spoke quietly, watching for anyone who might be looking at them. “I’m sorry I messed up your car.”
“What do you think would happen to me if the car got totaled?” asked Dillon, his tone fascinated yet uncertain.
“I think you’d be living in a junkyard,” Akira answered. “I never have figured out how and why ghosts are tied to places, though. And with a car—well, I don’t know. It might depend what you’re really tied to. If it’s the cushions or the spark plugs or the lights—maybe you’d move on with a part of the car?”
“Wow, that’s a whacked idea. That’d be really strange. Stranger even than being a ghost in the first place.”
“Kind of, yeah. Good thing you don’t have to worry about it.”
“It might be handy, though.” Now that Dillon didn’t have to be afraid, either for her or for himself, he was getting cheerful. “Just think, if I was tied to a spark plug, you could put it someplace cooler. Like maybe an arcade o
r something. Or a movie theater. I wouldn’t mind haunting a movie theater.”
Akira grinned at him. “Well, maybe we can experiment. But I think I’ve found us someplace to live that you’re going to like.”
“Someplace to live?” Dillon’s face stilled. “Are you—” He stopped and Akira could see in his expression all of the loneliness and misery he’d been feeling, alone, trapped in a car, no one to talk to, for months or maybe years. Just the possibility of change had him frozen with doubt. She felt a wave of sympathy for him. She knew what it was like to be lonely, to not have anyone to talk to.
“I’ve leased the car, so you’ll be staying with me.” Akira tried not to get involved with the ghosts she saw. But Dillon was different. Maybe she couldn’t find him a white light or fix whatever had made him a ghost in the first place, but she could make sure that his car was someplace nicer than a parking lot. “We’re going to have to have some ground rules, though.”
“No more parking lot?”
“No.” Akira shook her head, but she couldn’t help smiling at the look on his face. “And like I said, I think you’re going to like the place I found for us to live. If you’ve been able to stretch enough to get into the hangar here, you’ll definitely be able to get into the house. You might even be able to reach the town’s main street, which could be fun, although what a weird little place that is. But—oh, hey, first rule.” She turned so that she was facing away from the quickly approaching Zane. “Don’t ever talk to me when people are around. Never, okay? It gets too confusing for me,” she whispered.
“Okay, I won’t. But thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the coolest person ever. You are the best. You—” Dillon put his hand over his mouth, as if to stop himself from talking.
Akira tried hard to stop smiling and look as if she was inspecting the car but Dillon’s expression was so joyful that it was tough not to respond to it.
“Still feeling okay?” Zane asked from behind her.
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, not looking at him.