by Sarah Wynde
***
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.”
Meredith paused, as if waiting for more, but when he didn’t say anything else and Akira just looked puzzled, she quirked an eyebrow, and then continued smoothly, “Well, I just dropped by to bring you this, Akira. A little housewarming present, compliments of Maggie down at the bistro. She said to tell you she’s real glad you’ve moved to town.”
“Thank you.” Akira took the tray that Meredith handed her uncertainly. Zane wondered what was in it. Maggie liked cooking weird food; she must be happy to have found an appreciative audience.
“Apparently you’re more interesting than the rest of us,” Meredith said with a laugh.
“I haven’t met Maggie yet?” Akira’s words were half-question, half-statement, and she glanced at Zane. He could see that she was wondering why Maggie would take an interest in her and he smiled to reassure her. Maggie didn’t like being interrupted while she was cooking or they would have introduced her last night. But meeting Maggie was almost beside the point: if you walked in the door of the bistro, she knew what you wanted to eat.
“No?” Meredith raised one shoulder. “That never troubles Maggie. Although if you liked the same food as this one here,” she said, gesturing to Zane, “she probably wouldn’t be bothering to cook for you.”
“Hey, nothing wrong with burgers and fries,” Zane protested mildly. “And I like Maggie’s meatloaf.”
Meredith rolled her eyes. “Maggie told me what it was, but I can’t say as I recall exactly. Aloo-something.”
Akira peeked under the tinfoil. “Aloo gobi. Yum.”
It didn’t sound yum. It sounded spicy.
“Well, you enjoy. Let me know if you need anything, Akira, and I’ll see both of you later.” In a typical whirl, Meredith was gone.
“What did that mean?” Akira asked him immediately, setting the dish down on the kitchen counter.
“What?” he asked, cursing silently. “That Maggie likes to cook weird stuff? What’s in that?” He poked at the dish.
“No, that I work for you.”
Oh, man. She was going to be pissed, he just knew it. He needed to think of a way to phrase his explanation carefully.
“Special affairs? What does that mean?” she continued.
But he hadn’t said anything. He frowned.
“I—what?” Akira grabbed at her hair as if she was going to pull it out. “You’re not serious. But that means that everyone will know that I have a, a, a quirk!”
Zane finally figured it out. “Hush up, Dillon,” he ordered. His ghostly nephew was obviously answering Akira’s questions, and not carefully.
“This is terrible.” Akira glared at him. She looked better when she was mad than when she was worried, he noted. That anxious look was gone, replaced by pink cheeks.
“Maybe not terrible,” he tried. “Just maybe a little, um, inconvenient?”
“The research division is for scientists,” Akira told him, as if he didn’t know. “Special affairs is for psychics. And you run special affairs, and I work for you, which means that every person who knows that is going to know that I’m insane!”
“Or that we all are?” he offered. He really didn’t want to make her any angrier but he was finding it hard not to smile at her scowling face. Maybe she was right that it was dangerous to be known as psychic in the outside world, but this was home, and no one here would think a thing of it. It just was what it was.
“You just don’t get it,” she snapped, gesturing widely with her hands. “Ghosts are dangerous! And—yes, all right, present company excepted—and—no, I’m sorry, Rose.” She turned away
from him. “I didn’t mean to. . . No. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.”
She threw an exasperated look over her shoulder at Zane. Rose? Everyone knew the Harris place was haunted, but that was the first time Zane had ever heard a name for the ghost. He made a mental note of it. He’d try to find out more later.
He could tell from Akira’s posture and silence that she was listening to something he couldn’t hear, but when she finally spoke the words weren’t what he wanted to hear. “I should go home,” she said, voice discouraged. “Back to California.”
“Excuse me, Rose,” Zane said hastily. Stepping forward, he grabbed Akira’s hand, and tugged so she turned to face him again. “One month.”
She just looked at him, dark eyes uncertain.
“One month,” he repeated. “Give us one month. And if you have any problems here because of people believing you’re psychic, we will help you find a job in a place where no one knows anything about you.” Her fingers were cool in his, and he squeezed, trying to impart his own warmth to her.
This was a safe place.
He knew it was.
Now she just had to believe him.
