by Sarah Wynde
“So the town. . .”
“Attracts people with gifts, yes.” Max nodded. “We look for them, too, and find them and bring them here, but some show up on their own.”
Akira looked around the restaurant. She wondered how many of the people in it were like her. Not that they could see ghosts, of course: Max wouldn’t have been looking for a medium for so long if mediums were easily found. But keepers of secrets that most of the world scoffed at?
“Vampires? Werewolves? Ectoplasmic blobs?” she finally asked.
Max looked mystified by the question, but Zane grinned. “No, no, and you’d probably know better on the last. Although I should probably say, not to the best of our knowledge. We’ve never met any.”
Akira ate another bite of rice. Could this be an elaborate practical joke? “You realize this is a little tough to believe.”
“Zane’s best at providing proof,” Max replied readily.
Akira glanced at Zane. He was psychic, too? That was unexpected. “Can you tell me—um—what I’m going to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning?”
“Yogurt,” he replied without hesitation and then chuckled at the look on her face. “Did I get it right?”
“Yes,” she replied, but something about the laugh in his eyes was making her feel more defensive than convinced.
Max shook his head. “You give psychics a bad name, Zane.” He sighed. “That was a cold read. Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know anything about the future.”
“Rabbit food, California girl, easy guess,” Zane agreed. He was watching Akira and she shifted under his gaze. His laugh, the warmth in his look—that tingle was back and more inappropriate than ever. But she could feel her heart picking up its pace a little, her pulse accelerating.
“A cold read?” Akira asked, pulling her eyes away from Zane with an effort, and looking at Max.
“There are a lot more fake psychics in the world than real ones. A cold read is when a pretender makes likely guesses and uses your responses to improve further guesses. Zane’s got a gift but it’s not precognition.”
“I find things,” Zane told her. “Lost anything recently?”
“No.” Akira thought for a moment. “But most of my belongings are on a truck somewhere. Can you tell me where it is?”
He nodded, and held out his hand to her, palm up. She looked at it and raised her eyebrows questioningly. “It’s easier if I’m touching you,” he explained.
Touching her? That seemed like a bad idea. But Akira placed her hand on his, and as his warm fingers closed around hers, she tried hard to ignore the melting feeling that was starting in her belly. His eyes were closed and she watched him in fascination, wondering what he felt, what was happening inside his head.
And then his eyelids flickered open and his eyes caught hers, the pupils dark and dilated in the gray-blue, and for just a moment he was leaning toward her—and then, hastily, he dropped her hand and pulled back and said, with a slight rasp to his voice, “Outside Jacksonville. The truck will get here tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? It could be a guess. But she’d find out soon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Akira paced across the porch.
If only she’d gotten here before the movers. But they’d arrived too early. She had only the loosest grasp on Florida geography, but Zane could have been right the evening before, when he’d said her belongings were outside Jacksonville. Either way, the moving company had made good time. She’d gotten the call at the hotel and by the time she arranged for a ride to the house, they were here. Unfortunately, that meant she’d had no chance to introduce herself to the ghosts.
She’d been anxious enough about those introductions. It had seemed so simple when she’d made the decision to rent the house. The turret room, the lovely backyard, Rose’s enthusiasm, Dillon . . . it all added up to a worthwhile risk. But she’d imagined herself starting by calmly sitting down in the kitchen, talking to the ghostly inhabitants, setting some ground rules, establishing a few guidelines for how they could all live together. If the ghosts were typical, they’d have questions for her—questions that she probably couldn’t answer—and maybe a few tasks that they hoped she’d do. As long as no relatives were involved, she didn’t mind running a few ghostly errands.
Instead, she was forced to try to pretend she couldn’t hear Rose’s running commentary as the movers carried her belongings into the house.
“Yes, that goes into this front room.” Akira directed the movers carrying her sofa up the front steps.
“Ooh, those muscles are dreamy.” Rose jumped onto the piece of moving furniture and draped herself over it, eying the young man in a tight t-shirt who was carrying the front end. “You’re just my type. I wonder if you like to dance. I’d love to go dancing with you.” As the movers placed the sofa, Rose slid up the seat to the end, until the man lifting it gave a convulsive shiver.
“Cold in here,” he said to the other mover.
Akira chewed on her lower lip, as Rose sighed, and collapsed back onto the sofa melodramatically, before springing to her feet again and following the movers back outside.
“Now that’s a pretty chair,” Rose said about a floral-patterned wing-back chair the mover was pulling out of the truck. “Awfully old-fashioned, though. I guess you inherited all your furniture. You don’t look like the flowery type, bless your heart. I mean, those clothes. And that lipstick. No, I’m thinking that was your grandma’s chair.”
With an effort, Akira kept from looking down at her clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt seemed like a practical choice to her. And what was wrong with her lipstick?
“Ooh and speaking of dreamy.” Rose clasped both hands together under her chin, and took a deep appreciative breath. Akira followed her gaze and tried not to smile. The black Taurus was parked behind the moving van and Zane was stepping out. Dreamy, huh?
“He can visit us any day,” Rose continued. “Look at that hair. I just want to run my fingers through it.” It was nice hair, Akira agreed inwardly—dark and wavy, with coppery glints in the sunlight.
After exchanging a few words with the movers who were offloading boxes, Zane headed up the walkway. Spotting Akira on the porch, he grinned at her.
Dropping her hands, Rose clutched the porch post. “Oh, and that smile,” she squealed. Akira couldn’t resist finally letting her own smile break free. Back at the Taurus, Dillon hovered uncertainly next to the car door, looking up at her. She nodded and tilted her head, a slight gesture to tell him to come on in.
“Jacksonville yesterday evening,” Zane drawled as he approached. “You convinced?”
“Not exactly,” she answered, stuffing her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and shrugging her shoulders. “Could have been a lucky guess.”
“Huh. A skeptic. Not what I would have expected.”
“Why? Just because—” Akira stumbled to a halt as the movers walked toward them.
“Television in the living room, ma’am?” one of them asked her.
“No, no,” she said hastily. “Put that upstairs, in the bedroom right off the top of the steps. Oh, and hey, bring that flowered chair up there, too, please.”
“Oh, yay, a television in my bedroom! And the chair? But that’s—the bedroom? My bedroom?” Rose was staring at Akira, and Akira couldn’t resist widening her eyes at her.
“Can you see me?” Rose’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Can you hear me?”
Akira looked at Dillon, and raised her eyebrows, trying to signal to him to explain to Rose, but he was staring at Rose, mouth agape. Akira looked back at Rose. Oh. Oops.
“How old was Dillon?” she asked Zane.
“When he—?” Zane started and then answered, “Fifteen. Why?”
Lovely. She’d just thrown a fifteen-year-old boy ghost who’d been alone for years into close proximity with an extremely pretty girl ghost. What a good idea that was. She put her hand up to cover her mouth, and the smile that she couldn’t contain, and shook her head. Zane was lookin
g at her, waiting for a response. Rose was staring at her. Dillon was staring at Rose. And the movers were still moving boxes and furniture into the house.
“Maybe we should all—I mean, maybe we should go into the kitchen?” she said to Zane. “I could maybe make you some tea?”
“Tea?” His tone didn’t conceal his dismay at the idea. “Coffee?” he suggested.
“Green tea is extremely good for you. Polyphenols, antioxidants, lowers your cholesterol—and for a guy whose favorite meal is a cheeseburger and fries, that’s probably a good idea.”
“It also tastes disgusting. Like drinking grass, and not the entertaining kind.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll make you some nice mint tea, then. It’ll taste like gum.”
“Can you see me?” Rose repeated urgently, ignoring the conversation that Zane and Akira were having.
“Um, she can, yes,” Dillon answered, finally finding his voice, while Akira turned and entered the house, Zane and the ghosts falling into step behind her.
She shivered in the hallway when Rose burst through her, calling for Henry. As they stepped into the kitchen, the older ghost was tucking his newspaper under his arm, saying calmly, “Rose, now, honey, slow down, you’re talking so fast I can’t understand a word.”
“She can see me, Henry, she can see me,” Rose burbled. “And look, she brought one of us with her.” She gestured, wide-armed, at Dillon.
“Well, how do you do, son?” Henry reached out to Dillon but his hand passed straight through Dillon’s. “Oh.” He looked surprised, but Dillon was unconcerned, just turning the shake into a casual wave. He’d gotten over his stunned amazement, Akira noticed, and was now bouncing on his toes with excitement.
Akira looked around the kitchen, debating her next move. With the movers in the house and Zane in the room, she shouldn’t talk to the ghosts. Or maybe she should. Maybe it was time to see if Zane was really as nonchalant about the idea as he acted. Then she imagined trying to open her mouth and say hello to the ghosts with him watching, and her heart quailed. She bit her lip uncertainly.
“Aha, a perfect test,” Zane said. He was looking around the kitchen, oblivious to the ghostly conversation. The movers had stacked half a dozen boxes on the floor next to the sink, and Zane crossed to them, walking through Henry without blinking, although Akira winced. Running his hand down the sides of the plain brown boxes, he stopped, crouching, at the bottom. “Always the last one.”
Standing, he shifted the boxes, and then pulled out the one he’d picked. He looked over his shoulder at Akira, and tilted the box, so that she could see the label on top. In her own careful handwriting, it read “Kitchen, Open First.”
“Convinced?” Zane said.
She smiled at him and her moment of uncertainty passed. “You said it yourself; the one you want is always on the bottom.”
He was picking at the tape at the edge of the box, pulling it loose. “And I suppose everyone knows that the first thing you need when you’ve just moved is a way to make hot water taste like dirt?” He grinned up at her, as he pulled the long strip of tape off. “If I was the one who’d packed, this box would hold a bottle opener, a six pack of beer, and a way to play music.”
He tucked back the cardboard flaps. On the top of the box lay her iPod speakers, carefully enclosed in bubble wrap.
“Half-right,” Akira said. She took out the speakers and handed them to Zane, and then rummaged in the box for her tea kettle, mugs, and the boxes of tea.
“Music?” asked Rose, peering over Zane’s shoulder. “Does that play music?”
“It does,” Akira answered her, not bothering to explain the part about connecting an iPod to it.
Zane, unwrapping the speakers, glanced at her. Akira took a deep breath. Was she really going to do this? In front of a stranger?
An almost stranger, she corrected herself. An almost stranger who claimed to be psychic. An almost stranger who . . . she paused in her thoughts, before she could go any farther. She wasn’t ready to think about him in detail. Not now, not yet. The warm glow when she looked at him was enough of an answer to her always question, was it safe? Yes. Yes, it was safe.
At least she hoped it was.
“I’m Akira,” she said to Rose and Henry. “And yes, I can see and hear you.”
“But you’re living,” Rose protested.
“My heavens,” said Henry, rocking back a little and looking startled. “I don’t know as we’ve ever met a real medium before.”
Akira sighed. Really? Did she have to keep having this conversation? “I’m not a medium.”
“She just talks to ghosts,” Dillon contributed helpfully. “Not all dead people.”
Zane had paused in his unwrapping, and was holding a speaker in one hand, bubble wrap in the other. She could see him trying to follow her gaze, but not seeing anyone.
“Thank you, Dillon,” Akira’s tone was dry. She supposed she should appreciate his clarification.
“Now, that’s real interesting.” Henry seemed mildly pleased, but Rose was looking dismayed.
Folding her arms across her chest, she stuck her chin in the air. “Well, I’m not going.”
Akira eyed her warily. She didn’t like it when ghosts got emotional. “Going where?”
“Aren’t you going to try to exorcise us?” Rose dropped her arms, defiance melting away, and Akira relaxed.
“Uh, no, I wasn’t planning on it,” she answered. “I wouldn’t know how. Besides, I thought Dillon might like the company.”
“Company!” Rose clapped her hands. “We have company, Henry.”
***
Zane watched Akira talking to empty space, and wondered what it was like for her. What did they look like, the ghosts? Were they translucent white shapes? Were they shadows? She’d talked about them being energy: did they look like beings made of energy or did they look human?
Did they look dead? Ugh, that was a creepy thought.
He’d seen Dillon at the hospital. He’d looked gray and cold, the color drained from his lips and skin. Did he look like that now? If he did, Zane was just as glad he couldn’t see him. It was strange enough to think that he was in the room, but that time hadn’t changed him, that he’d stayed frozen at the moment of his death.
Zane could barely remember what Dillon was like when he died. When he thought about him, he remembered all the stages: the baby Dillon, wide-eyed and peaceful; the toddler Dillon, finally getting real hair after months of wispy feathery strands; the six-year-old Dillon, driving cars up and down the dirt in the garden for endless hours; the nine-year-old Dillon, pontificating about the perfect strategy in some complicated card game. All those Dillons, all those many Dillons, had already been gone the night the fifteen year-old tried to jump start a psychic gift with an overdose of supposedly hallucinogenic drugs.
The idiot.
He returned to unwrapping the speakers, still listening to Akira’s one-sided conversation, but trying not to react. He’d seen her wary glance at him. He knew she was uneasy, and he could guess that trust wasn’t something she gave lightly. He wanted to be careful.
From their conversation in the car yesterday—maybe it could even be called an argument—he knew that keeping her ability secret was important to her. He didn’t really understand why. His mom had always insisted that they keep their gifts private, but she saw them as a competitive business advantage, more akin to the formula for Coca-Cola than skeletons in the closet. It wasn’t danger that she worried about. But Akira had made it clear that she thought letting people know she could see ghosts was dangerous.
Maybe she was right. Damn, but he wanted to know about those broken bones. Still, from the way she’d responded yesterday, he wasn’t going to get answers any time soon.
And he wasn’t going to push. He’d never met anyone who’d been abused before, not that he knew of. Of course, he didn’t know for sure that he had now, not really. Still, he knew that he didn’t want to do anything that would hurt her. Not
now, not ever.
And that meant not showing how absolutely, truly strange it was to be standing here listening to her converse with invisible people.
The doorbell rang, and he put down the speakers. “Want me to get that?”
But Meredith wasn’t waiting for a reply. “Hello?” she called out from the front door. “You here, Akira?”
“In the kitchen,” Zane answered.
Akira looked anxious, her dark eyes worried. “I didn’t have time to talk about this,” she said, hurriedly. “But please don’t—” and then, as Meredith walked into the kitchen carrying a tin-foil wrapped tray, she fell silent.
Please don’t? Hmm, what did she not want him to do?
“Akira, hello, good to see your movers found the place. And Zane, hi, haven’t seen you in ages.” The currently red-headed real estate agent greeted them cheerfully.
“Hey, Mer.” Zane stepped forward and dropped a kiss on her upturned cheek. “How’s your mom?”
“Oh, good days and bad, you know how it goes,” Meredith replied. “Your dad dropped by for a visit last week, filled her in on all the latest gossip. Did you hear that the youngest Terrell kid got into Yale?”
“Yep.” Zane waited for it.
“She’s the only one in that family with the brains God gave a squirrel.” Meredith sniffed. Zane rubbed his chin to hide his smile. Meredith always had been one to hold a grudge.
But then Meredith frowned. “But what are you doing here, Zane?” she asked. She looked from him to Akira and back again, and Zane could see the moment that she realized that Akira wasn’t just a scientist. “Does Akira work for you?” she asked, with a hint of smugness in her smile as if she’d known all along.
Oops.
Lying would be useless: gossip traveled in Tassamara at slightly faster than light speed and if Smithson hadn’t already been complaining to anyone who would listen that Zane was usurping his prerogatives, Zane didn’t know the man. So Zane shrugged, and said, “Yep.”