by Sarah Wynde
The room held half a dozen people and one very upset ghost. Akira dropped her eyes to the ground on an intake of breath. Shit. The ghost was kneeling by a blonde woman who was sitting at the edge of a plush recliner, her face buried in her hands as if she was too tired, too overwhelmed to hold her head up. He had the flickering, flaring edges of passion, as if his form couldn’t contain his energy.
But it was only tinted a pale red, Akira reassured herself, stealing another glance. Barely pink. That meant that his consciousness, such as it was, was still in control. But murder-suicide? And of a child? It might not matter that the ghost was able to control himself if he didn’t choose to. She could feel her heart beating faster, a pulse pounding in her neck.
No one here knew anything, she realized. No one would be able to help her if the ghost attacked. Abruptly, and for the first time in years, she longed for her father.
A warm hand slid into hers, and squeezed. “Okay?” Zane asked, tone quiet so that only she could hear, eyes intent on her face. She tried to smile at him, but she couldn’t quite manage it. He didn’t understand, she knew. It wasn’t just the ghost: if he knew there was a ghost here, he would think of Dillon or Rose, and not see the problem. But ghost energy was like other energy—and a shock from an electric outlet didn’t compare to getting hit by lightning, a fire in a fireplace was nothing like a burning house.
“I’ll try to make this quick, but—” He looked in the direction of the blonde woman and even though Akira didn’t want to take any chance of the ghost seeing her, she followed his gaze. The woman had lifted her head and the tear stains tracking down her face, the red eyes, the exhaustion were all obvious, even from across the room.
Akira bit her lip. The woman had lost a child. Zane was her chance of finding him, or at least finding answers. He shouldn’t make it quick, he should take as long as he needed to be sure. She pressed her lips together, but said steadily, “I’ll be fine. Take your time.” She hoped her words were true.
He let go of her hand, stroking up her back and resting his hand on her neck for just a second or two, then nodding at her and moving away, crossing the room to where Lucas was standing, almost on top of the ghost.
Akira turned away. A sliding glass door led to a patio, and she crossed to it, not really looking, trying to think through her options if the ghost discovered her. A quick escape? But if he hadn’t died here, he probably wasn’t tied here. She wouldn’t be able to get away from him so easily.
She rested her hand on the door pull anyway, feeling the comfort of the cool metal under her hand. There were plenty of people in the room, she reminded herself, and no reason for the ghost to single her out. As long as she didn’t pay attention to him, he wouldn’t pay attention to her. It would be okay, really it would.
And then her eyes narrowed. Oh, dear. She glanced back at Zane. The blonde had stood and was shaking hands with him, an uncertain hope on her face. Akira bit her lip and looked back out into the yard. And then, with a sigh, she flipped open the lock on the door and stepped outside. She tried to feel resolute, but really, she was mostly just hoping she didn’t wind up regretting what she was about to do.
***
Lucas introduced Zane to the mother, but Zane promptly forgot her name. He didn’t want to remember. He just wanted to get through this and get out of here.
Lost kid cases could be amazing. Once, he’d located a toddler, who’d wandered away from home, in a drainage ditch almost two miles away. Another time, he’d found a kidnapped girl, alive and well and scared out of her wits, in the trunk of a car. Those were fun.
Mostly, though, lost kid cases sucked. Big-time. Sure, it was nice to show up and be a hero, but it didn’t usually work that way. Even custody cases, where the child was almost always alive and well, sometimes left him feeling queasy. He’d helped find and return a little girl to a dad with sole custody once and the desperation in the mom’s eyes kept him awake at night for months afterwards.
And this time, he already knew. The absolute flat nothing he felt when he touched the photo of the beautiful blond toddler meant the boy was dead. When he touched a photo of a living person, he almost always got something—oh, maybe not something very clear—but something. A sense of distance, if the person was far away; a sense of light and color and surroundings, if the person was nearer; an absolute knowledge of place if the person was close by. Touching something that belonged to the person improved his range, touching hair or blood or something with DNA improved it further. In this case, though, it would make no difference and the hope on the mother’s face was almost painful.
Really, insurance cases were just so much better. Why couldn’t he just find some missing jewels? A nice painting? Hardly anybody ever cried about stolen goods.
“Let’s sit down on the couch,” Zane suggested to the blonde. “Before we start, I need you to know that I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you.”
“Your brother’s said that already.” The woman nodded and tried to muster a smile. “But I’ll try anything.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them back. Zane tried to hide his wince. Damn it. If Lucas had just brought her to the airport, he could have been done with this and out of here already.
As they sat down, he continued, trying to be soothing without sounding hopeful. “What I’ll do is hold your hand for a while and see if I feel anything. With objects, I have a better range when I’m touching the person who owns the object, and that sometimes helps with missing family members, too.”
“If he can’t find Daniel,” Lucas interjected. “He’ll try to find Rob, the car, their clothes, anything we can think of that Rob might have with him.”
‘Oh, fuck you,’ Zane thought furiously at his brother, ‘I told you the boy is dead. I don’t do dead bodies!’
Lucas shrugged at him and Zane knew he’d heard. Lucas’s range wasn’t great, but at this distance, he could read anything Zane thought if Zane put a little force behind it. ‘We’re just going to disappoint her,’ Zane added.
“We know you need closure, Diane,” Lucas continued, and although ostensibly his words were directed to the mother, his eyes were on Zane’s.
“I know there’s not much hope.” Diane’s words were soft. “But not knowing? Never knowing? It’ll kill me. I would never have thought I’d turn to a psychic for help, but I’m desperate.”
Zane tried not to sigh, to smile reassuringly. “You know there are a lot of fake psychics in the world, right?”
“I’m desperate,” she repeated. “Anything you can do.”
Great. She was going to turn into one of those people who poured their life savings into charlatans if he didn’t find something, he just knew it.
He glared at Lucas again. ‘You owe me for this.’ Lucas nodded and he knew he’d gotten his message across, as he took Diane’s hand and tried to focus on finding.
***
“I can’t really push you, sweetie.”
“Wanna go high,” demanded the little boy, his lower lip pouting.
Akira sighed and looked back at the house. She hoped no one was looking. Grabbing the metal chains that held the swing, she pulled it back, up and up, as high as she could reach, and then let it go. He chortled with delight as the swing fell and rose, fell and rose again.
“Again, again,” he begged, and Akira obeyed, a reluctant smile curving her lips.
“Is this where you died, honey?” she asked, trying to make the question casual. She didn’t want to upset him again. The storm of ghost tears that she’d precipitated the first time she’d asked still stained his face.
“Mama said no,” he answered sadly. “No swing, too little.” At the highest height of the swing, with a squeal of glee, he pushed himself off, and fell, tumbling through the air. Akira couldn’t resist the gasp of horror and the instinctive grab, but it was hopeless. Even if he’d been flesh-and-blood, she couldn’t have caught him. For a moment, a bare second, he was a crumpled shadow on the ground, and then he bounced bac
k up again.
This was where he’d died, she realized. And it wasn’t a murder-suicide but an accident-suicide.
“Can you help him?”
At the sound of the voice behind her, Akira whirled. It was the ghost from the house, edges still quivering and flashing. She took two steps backward.
“No, please,” said the ghost, reaching out a hand to her, but not moving forward. “I know you can see him. See us. I don’t mean to scare you. But please help him.”
Akira swallowed. “Help him how?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“I can’t get close to him,” the ghost told her. “Something starts to happen when I do. I think it hurts him?”
Akira nodded. This she knew. “Your energy is too strong. You suck in power from your surroundings and when you get near another ghost, you—well, rip him apart, basically.” She took another step backward, not feeling inclined to mention what he could do to her.
“But why?” he asked, voice despairing, energy level flickering a little higher. “I didn’t start this way.”
Oh, dear. Should she try to run? “Despair, grief, anger,” she answered. “The more upset you get, the more energy you pull in. At a certain point, it works like an overdose of neurotransmitters might in a living human.”
“Which means what?”
Akira took a deep breath. Should she be telling him this? Was she going to make it worse? But something about his looks—the lanky build, the shaggy hair, the deep brown eyes, the wire-rimmed glasses, the pale skin—said intellectual to her. “There’s a theory that psychosis is caused by excess dopamine. The energy does something like that.”
“I’m going to lose my mind?” He sounded horrified.
“If you don’t calm down, um, yes.”
“How can I calm down?” His energy jumped a little higher, the pink deepening. “I’m a ghost!”
Akira’s heart was starting to pound in her ears. She took another step away, glancing behind her to check for obstacles. “If you don’t, you’ll destroy your son,” she pointed out, hoping that she was right about the accident. If he had murdered his son once, a second time might not seem like an obstacle.
“Dada?” The little ghost boy wandered forward, and his father hastily shifted away. The boy plopped down on the ground, and started to weep. Akira crouched next to him, wanting to console him, not sure how.
“Calm, calm,” the father repeated. Akira could see him taking deep breaths and for a moment, she wondered what breathing felt like when you were a ghost. But his red edges pulled back a little, the aura around him diminishing. “Can you help him?”
What was he asking her to do? Akira wondered. Set up a ghost orphanage? She imagined, briefly, bringing the swing set back to Florida and putting it up in her back yard. The little ghost boy could join the bigger boys. Maybe they’d have fun together. But then she tried to envision explaining to the tearful woman inside why she wanted the swing set and shook her head. That was never going to work. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I never expected this to happen,” the father said. “I thought dead was dead. The heart stops beating, the brain shuts off, life is over.”
Akira eyed him warily. He didn’t seem upset about the discovery, not really. Not like the religious ghost she’d met once who was very, very angry about not being in heaven. Akira stretched her hand, opening and closing the fingers. Sometimes those bones still ached.
“But this can’t happen to everyone. I’ve looked for others. I went to the cemetery, the hospital.”
“Hospitals usually have a few spirits hanging around.” Akira was trying to be cautious, watching the light around the ghost for any hint that he was losing control. But he seemed to be calming and he was being careful, too, staying several feet away from her and the little boy.
“Yes,” he agreed. “But one disappeared while I was talking to him. And another asked me if I saw a door, and then faded away. So there has to be somewhere else, not just here. And some way to get there.”
Akira frowned. A door? She’d interacted with a lot of ghosts and they did disappear. When she was young, she thought they went somewhere, but her father had scoffed at that. They were just energy, he insisted, energy changing forms. “How did you talk to them?” she asked. The flaring around his edges would be dangerous for any other ghosts in his vicinity: how had he gotten close enough?
“This didn’t start until I found Daniel and realized what I’d done,” the ghost answered her, a look of pain crossing his face as he looked down at the boy, still sitting on the ground. Akira nodded. That was why she avoided certain subjects with ghosts. Even seemingly calm spirits could get dangerous if they got too upset.
“And I’ve been trying so hard to get someone inside to listen to me, but they just won’t.”
Akira stood. The boy was no longer weeping, just playing with the grass, trying to make blades move to no avail. “They can’t see you or hear you.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Why can you?”
Akira lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Just lucky, I guess.” She tried to keep the words light.
“Not so lucky if you’re scared of me,” the ghost answered. “I won’t hurt you. Not on purpose, anyway.”
Hmm, Akira thought. He was perceptive for a ghost. Or maybe a hint of her true feelings had slipped out. But she could see that his edges had started to solidify. He was calming down.
“I thought maybe we were trapped here until there was a service. You know, a funeral. But they’ll never find our bodies.”
Akira knew that wasn’t right. She was quite sure that Dillon had had a proper funeral, as had plenty of the ghosts she’d known in the past. A funeral wasn’t a magic ticket to another world. But she glanced at the house, thinking of the woman inside. She didn’t want to lie to this ghost, but maybe she didn’t need to tell him the whole truth, either.
“Do you want me to tell them where your bodies are?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.
***
A relative. Damn it. She was about to talk to a relative.
These things just never ended well.
Akira stood in the doorway, trying to decide what to say, how to approach the subject. Oh, by the way, your ex-husband was just careless, not malicious? He didn’t actually murder your kid, just hid the body? No, that wasn’t the right starting place.
Zane and the blonde woman were sitting on the couch, Zane holding both of the woman’s hands in his. Although she knew there was nothing romantic or sexual in the touch, Akira felt a slight prickle of annoyance. Not that there was anything serious between her and Zane, but still, somewhere less than twelve hours ago, those hands had been touching her in very intimate places. Seeing them touching another woman just felt wrong.
Lucas was standing next to Zane, watching his brother. Two men stood a few steps behind him, also watching intently. FBI agents, Akira wondered? They could be, she supposed. They fit her stereotypical image of FBI agents, with unflattering suits, boring ties, and short hair. Farther away, where the family room met the kitchen, another cluster of people stood gathered around a table, some with heads down over a map, some talking in quiet voices.
So many people, she thought. Hell. Could she really do this? Before she had a chance to decide, a shock—as if she’d just been doused with ice water—ran through her. She shuddered convulsively and gasped, feeling the energy pouring into her veins, jolting its way along her spine. The adult ghost appeared inside the room, no longer pink-tinged.
“Don’t do that,” she hissed at him. Ugh, it hurt. She shivered again, blinking back tears of pain.
“You could feel me?” he asked, surprised, as the people closest to the door, including Zane, all looked in Akira’s direction.
“Of course I can,” she started to say irritably, but before more than the second word slipped through her lips, she noticed the people looking at her and pressed her lips together, looking up and away and at anything but them.
Before she had time to do more than take another breath, Zane was standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. “You okay?” he asked. She looked up at him. His face was serious and she could see the worry in his eyes.
She had told him nothing about ghosts, she realized. Nothing at all. All he knew was that she didn’t want people to know she could see them, and that she didn’t like having her ability. And yet he was still worried about her, still quick to jump up from what he was doing to make sure that nothing was wrong. She nodded at him and tried to smile.
“They’re both ghosts,” she whispered to him. “And both here.”
His eyes widened just slightly and he glanced over his shoulder at the woman sitting on the couch and then quickly back at Akira. “What do you want to do?” he asked her in a hushed voice.
She shrugged uncertainly, feeling helpless. “Did you tell Lucas? About Dillon?” Grace and Nat and Max and Zane had all spent some time sitting in the car after Akira had confirmed that it was, in fact, haunted and that Dillon could hear them, but only Zane regularly visited. Akira didn’t know whether that was because Zane had warned the others off or whether it was too painful for them. The idea of a ghost could be comforting, but it was also an ever-present reminder of loss. She understood if it was easiest for the Latimers to let Dillon be, trusting that he was okay in her company.
She paused, because Zane was shaking his head no. “We decided to wait until he was home for a visit.”
“So, does he know about me?” she whispered. “My, um, quirk, I mean?”
Zane shook his head no again. But he didn’t have a chance to say anything further, because Lucas was abruptly speaking, his voice carrying across the room, “Folks, we need some privacy for a while. Please clear the room. Jane, why don’t you set up in the front? Mark, maybe you could take a couple of people on a lunch run?” Quickly, efficiently, almost ruthlessly, and within the space of sixty seconds, everyone except Lucas, Diane, Zane, Akira—and the ghost—was out of earshot.