by Sarah Wynde
Zane stuck his cue back in the rack. He didn’t know what was going on in her head, but she wasn’t playing. The casual game he’d started to finish out their lunch hour had turned into something else for her.
He returned to his desk. He’d get back to work and let her do her thing and eventually she’d break free from whatever thought had caught her and tell him what was happening. He’d seen this before. That time it had been right before she decided to give up on sonoluminescence and start researching spirit energy. It had been a tough decision for her since, despite her interest in the subject, it was essentially the death knell of any academic future.
This time, he thought it probably had something to do with Dillon and his mom. Akira had gone quiet in the car, right after they’d been talking about his two family ghosts. Her silence wasn’t a surprise: they’d been avoiding talking about his mom for months now.
Accepting the existence of ghosts wasn’t a stretch for Zane. Until that terrible week when he’d abruptly come face to face with the ugly reality of death, he hadn’t put a lot of thought into what happened after, but his vague concepts of heaven or reincarnation or even an ending of everything were flexible enough to accommodate the idea of ghosts.
But his mom as a malevolent, murderous spirit? No way.
Just flat-out no.
It wasn’t possible.
He hadn’t wanted that difference of opinion to interfere with his interest in Akira, though. She fascinated him. He’d thought at first that it might be novelty. With her Japanese mother and Californian upbringing, she didn’t look like the girls he’d grown up with.
And then he thought it was the surprise of the unexpected: she didn’t act like the girls he’d grown up with either. When he was eighty years old, he’d still remember the pleasure found in friction turning kinetic energy into heat.
But it was more than either of those things now. She looked so fragile, but she’d stick her stubborn chin out and defend her point of view with vigor. She acted so serious and hard-working, but she was the best pool player he’d ever met, and he much preferred to have her on his team in Halo, rather than on the opposite side. And in bed . . .
Okay, he had to stop thinking about her while watching her play pool, or he’d never get any work done. But he was smiling as he checked his calendar. With any luck, he could clear out his email and they could cut out of here early. He could think of much better things to be doing with their time.
“All right,” she said abruptly, an hour later, straightening, and lightly tapping the butt of her pool cue against the ground. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” he asked, looking over from his computer.
“Visit your mom,” she responded, as if surprised by the question.
“Really?” Zane swiveled in his chair, turning to face her. “I thought you told Dillon no.”
“He can’t go see her on his own. It’s too dangerous.”
Zane leaned back. “Aneurysms? Murder by spirit energy? Remember that conversation?”
“Of course I do.” Akira shrugged and looked away from him, as if something had suddenly become terribly interesting on the other side of the office.
“You said it was dangerous for you before. What’s changed?” Zane asked. She’d refused to go near the house for months. Why now?
“That medium probably had a weak spot in an artery already. The energy raised her blood pressure enough that it burst, but it wouldn’t have killed her if the aneurysm wasn’t already there,” Akira answered.
Zane frowned. That didn’t feel like an answer to the question.
“What if Dillon’s right? What if she’s looking for him?” Akira said.
Zane paused. This was his mom that they were talking about. He didn’t like the idea that she was trapped in their house, unable to communicate with anyone, desperate and even violent. But he liked even less the idea of Akira risking her life.
“I’ll have to go in first,” Akira continued, looking thoughtful. “I’ll calm her down before Dillon comes in.”
“I’m not sure about this,” Zane said. “Maybe we should talk to Nat first. See what she has to say.”
“Dillon will have to wait in the car.” Akira was planning now, strategizing as if she hadn’t heard him.
“Yeah, I don’t think I care about Dillon,” Zane said.
“You should care,” Akira protested. “Dillon’s your nephew.”
“And you’re my lover,” Zane answered her, exasperation in his voice. He wasn’t going to let her distract him. “More dangerous doesn’t mean not dangerous. Is this risky for you?”
Akira blinked at him. Once. Twice. Then she turned and busied herself putting away her pool cue.
“Besides, Dillon’s dead already,” Zane added. As soon as the words left his mouth, he wanted to kick himself. It was true, of course, but it wasn’t what mattered. He’d been trying to work a conversation around to that “L” word—the one he’d never used with another woman—for weeks now and he’d never quite figured out how. He’d just had the perfect opportunity and he’d blown it.
“Which is why it’s more dangerous for him.” Akira turned back, her cheeks lightly pink, her eyes bright. “The energy would rip him apart.”
“Uh, isn’t an aneurysm kind of like a blood vessel being ripped apart?”
Akira wobbled her hand in an equivocal gesture. “We can talk about it in the car.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She’d managed to sidestep the question.
“Is it risky for you?” Zane had asked.
Yes, it was risky for her.
And he really wasn’t going to like what she had to tell him now. They were sitting in the car, this time in the driveway of the Latimer house. It was mid-afternoon, which in Florida, in August, meant that the sky was heavy with storm clouds. In the grey light, the house looked even more dangerous than it had before, a churning mass of energy.
She licked her lips. “All right, this is how it’s going to work,” she told Dillon. He was looking out the window at the house but at her words, he sat back.
“I don’t see anything,” he said, sounding disappointed.
Didn’t see anything? Was he blind? For a moment, she wondered about the difference between her sight and what an actual ghost saw. That would be an interesting line of research if Dillon would cooperate. Maybe they could do some testing in her lab, try to set up some controlled energy experiments.
She was looking for something, anything, to focus on other than what she was about to do, she realized. It was a good plan—just the moment of scientific analysis had made her feel calmer—but getting distracted wasn’t going to make this any easier.
“This is what we’re going to do.” She tried again. “You’re going to wait in the car, Dillon, while Zane and I go in the house. You need to give us at least five minutes. I’m going to be trying to absorb some of the energy, enough of it to calm her down so that you can talk to her.”
“Wait a minute, wait,” Zane said. “Absorb the energy?”
Akira looked at him and forced a smile.
Oh, God, this was a really stupid idea, wasn’t it? But she’d done things like this before. It wasn’t so different, not really, from what she’d done with that angry religious ghost just a couple of years ago. Almost subconsciously, she stretched out her hand, opening and closing the fingers.
It would be better to do it not quite the same way.
“It’ll be okay,” she told them both. “I won’t be trying to take in all the energy, just enough that she calms down and you can talk to her, Dillon. So as you approach the house, go slowly and carefully. You need to think of it as like a whirlpool. If I haven’t managed to break her out of the vortex, you’re going to start feeling pulled. Don’t give in to that pull—back off immediately!”
Dillon’s blue eyes were wide. The intensity in her voice was getting to him, she saw. He wasn’t scared, but he wasn’t quite as eager as he had been just a few minutes ago.
/> “Just wait a couple of minutes and then give it another try.” She looked from Dillon to Zane and back again, and swallowed. Zane wasn’t going to like this, but she had to warn Dillon. “If you start feeling pulled from farther away—like if you’re in the car, and it starts to feel like you’re being tugged?—you need to get away. If that happens, go as far away from the house as you can.”
“That would mean she’s getting stronger?” Dillon asked. Akira let her gaze flicker to Zane. He was frowning.
“Yes, exactly.”
“Why would she get stronger?” Dillon asked, sounding uneasy but fascinated.
She smiled tightly. “The obvious reason.”
If the ghost managed to kill Akira, there’d be a lot more spirit energy in the vortex. Its reach would easily extend to the car, but if they parked too far away, Dillon would be stretching to get to the house.
Without waiting for him to figure it out, she hurried on. “Just remember what I said: wait and then approach slowly. If you feel pulled, run the other way. Okay?” As he nodded, she opened her car door and stepped out.
She took a deep breath as Zane joined her, then started walking, careful steps bringing her closer and closer to the house.
“What’s the obvious reason?” he asked, voice grim.
Oh, dear. If he was bothered by that, he really wasn’t going to like the rest of what she had to say.
“It’s not important,” she said. “There’s something else you need to know. I didn’t want to talk about it around Dillon.” She glanced back at the car. Dillon’s worried face was visible through the window.
Her mouth was dry and her legs had a quiver running down the back of them that meant her body was saying, run, run, run, but she’d made her decision.
And this was it, she realized. This was the conversation that always ended things.
She looked at Zane. His frown was almost a scowl, his eyes gone their grayest in the light. “Ghosts that have lost control pull in energy from the environment. Is there a room or a place in your house that’s colder than it should be?”
Zane nodded. “Dillon’s room. No one uses it, but it stays colder than the rest of the house.”
“So we’ll go there.” Akira stepped up onto the porch. She was trying to think of some way to phrase this part of the story, some way to tell him the truth that would make it palatable for him. But there wasn’t one, and she knew it, so before he could follow her up the porch, she turned. Their eyes were on the same level as she started talking.
“She’ll try to take me over. Possess me,” she said baldly. “That’s what they do. I’ll be trying to absorb her energy and fight her off at the same time. I’m pretty good at it, I’ve done it before.” She glanced over her shoulder at the door. The energy almost made it look as if parts of the house were shifting and melting in her vision, but she knew that was just because of how she saw it. The house itself would be solid.
“Possess you?”
Was it disbelief in his voice? Akira wasn’t sure but she pressed her lips together for a moment and then continued steadily, trying not to remember the sympathy in the voice of the boyfriend in college who had told her she needed psychiatric help.
“The thing is, she’s really strong. It’s going to feel to me like I’m being electrocuted. I can take it for a few minutes, but unless I can bleed off a lot of her power, enough to bring her back to rationality, it probably won’t be in time.”
“In time for what?” His voice held a snap.
“In time for—” Akira paused. “Look, spirit power is like electricity. It’ll cause random electrical activity in my brain. That’s going to cause seizures. I can’t tell you what they’ll look like. If they’re mild, you might not even notice, but they might be more serious.”
“Meaning what?”
“Ah, well, um, convulsions, basically. You know, the full-bore, falling down, jerking and twitching, unconsciousness thing.” She tried to smile again but he didn’t smile back.
“Here’s what matters,” she continued quickly. “Ghosts get stronger from blood, so it’s really important that I don’t bleed. If I start losing blood for any reason, I’ll get weaker, and she’ll get stronger. That would be bad.” Zane was starting to shake his head no, even as she kept going, “But ghosts hate pain. Once they’re dead, they don’t have any physical sensation and they forget what it’s like. If you—if I get hurt, she’s likely to let go of me, at least for a bit.”
Zane’s head motion stilled, and he reached for her, putting a hand on either shoulder. Akira could feel the warmth through the light cotton of her shirt and she tried to let it soothe her, but the tension in her muscles didn’t ease.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, but I don’t like it,” he said.
“Since my dad died, I’ve only done this once. That time, I—” She was opening and closing her hand, she realized, almost convulsively, and with a deliberate effort, she stilled herself. “I took a hammer and I broke my hand.”
His fingers closed around her shoulders, squeezing hard. It wasn’t painful, just tight. “It’s tough to judge how hard to hit,” she said. “My dad . . . my dad. . .” How could she explain this? But she didn’t have to.
“You had convulsions, and your father, instead of taking you to a hospital, beat you until he broke your bones?” Zane interrupted, and this time the emotions in his voice were unmistakable. Shock. Horror. Revulsion.
“I’ve been possessed by ghosts and my father saved my life by hurting me, yes.” Akira wanted to cry, but she tried to keep her voice even. “And broke a few bones along the way, that too,” she added, the admission almost reluctant.
“Akira, that’s insane!”
“I know what it sounds like.” Akira almost laughed, although not with humor. “If I’m not schizophrenic, I’ve got post-traumatic stress. Abused child hallucinates as a defense mechanism, rationalizes the abuse to avoid perceiving herself as a victim, her father as a villain. There’s no such thing as ghosts and I ought to be locked up for my own safety.”
Zane let his hands fall off her shoulders. “Let’s not do this,” he suggested.
Her chin went up. “Look, if you think I’m crazy, no big deal. We walk through your house, nothing bad happens, we walk back out.” She shrugged.
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” His defense sounded automatic, not quite sure. He touched her cheek. “But I don’t—look, have you ever seen a shrink?”
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“Just to be sure?” he continued. “Just to . . . your father beat you. He broke your arms, your ribs, your jaw. Because you had seizures! Anyone would be traumatized by that. There’s nothing wrong with getting help.”
“Any decent psychiatrist would lock me up.” She said the words softly, gently. Her tears were very close to the surface but she held them back by force of will. She would not cry, not now.
“Let’s go back to the office. Let’s talk to Nat. She’s a doctor. Maybe she can help.”
Akira shook her head. She glanced back at the car, at Dillon, who had gotten out and was sitting on the roof, watching them, frowning. “I want to help Dillon,” she said. “He needs this. And I—I love him.” She paused. Then she shook her head and turned toward the door. “Let’s just do it. We’ll walk through the house, you’ll show me Dillon’s room. End of story.”
***
Zane unlocked the door, torn between insisting that they go see Nat and letting Akira have her way.
Could she have fooled him? Could she be delusional? Could the ghosts she saw simply be hallucinations, products of a traumatized mind?
She wouldn’t have deceived him maliciously. There was no way he would believe that. But part of his job as head of GD’s special affairs division was to hire people with psychic abilities, the ones who worked on GD’s special projects. He knew many people with gifts, but he’d also met some incredibly skilled fakes.
Could Akira have an innate, even subconscious, abil
ity to do a cold read that had been good enough to trick him? And the rest of his family?
He led her through the foyer and straight up the stairs to the second floor, his brain churning. He was trying, for the moment, to set aside his horror at the idea that her father, the man who should have been protecting her, had been beating her instead. Beating her because she had seizures!
Back when he’d first learned about the broken bones, he’d sort of assumed that her father had abused her. Natalya had said most of the breaks happened long ago, and even he realized that most abused children are abused by their parents. But every time she’d mentioned her father, it was with such obvious affection and love that he’d stopped thinking about it. Maybe he should have tried harder to learn about her past, but he hated it when she stiffened up. It had been easy, too easy, to let it slide, to not ask painful questions.
Zane was fiercely glad that the man was dead. He wanted more than anything right now to find him and hurt him like he’d hurt Akira. But he needed to let that go, he knew. He wouldn’t know how to help Akira in the here-and-now until he understood what was going on. Did she really have a gift that let her see ghosts or was she insane? In the back of his mind, a thought was pushing at him, fighting to rise to the surface, but he ignored it, trying to focus.
She’d known Dillon’s name. But it wouldn’t have been hard to find that out. Anyone in town might have shared information about the Latimer family on her first visit without thinking anything of it. Rose’s name, though, that would have been harder to learn. Zane had looked it up soon after Akira had moved in, and a teenage girl named Rose Harris had died at that address back in the 1950’s.
But even though the name was right, how could Akira have learned it casually? Or by accident? It seemed almost impossible.
When he’d been reading about ghosts, there’d been an article about people who believed they were possessed. The symptoms fit into the same diagnostic group as people with multiple personalities. “Dissociative identity disorder,” he said aloud.