The boy fixed Chris’s face with an intense expression—learned from his grandmother. “She disappeared,” he said.
Chris sat up a bit straighter. “What? What do you mean? Who?”
“The woman who got shot,” the boy said.
“After the killers left?”
“No, before. There was a light, all through the alley. It wrapped her up and she disappeared. And then they ran.”
“And you didn’t tell the police this?”
“Would you tell the police this?” the grandmother replied.
“Yes,” Chris said. “I would. They deserve to know everything.”
“They’d never believe it. They’d call his whole testimony into question, and then they’d send him off for counselling and he’d end up in a mental hospital.”
Is that what happened to you? Chris wondered. He suspected the answer was yes. But she did have a point.
Although Lieutenant Jackson had seen enough at this point that, of everyone in the police department, he was probably most likely to accept a story about mysterious lights and disappearing bodies.
“I have always seen it,” the grandmother said, as though she was making some grand announcement, “the other side. And no one has believed me. Now my grandson sees it too. You tell him what else you saw in that alley, Sonny.”
Sonny straightened his skinny shoulders. “Demons.”
Well. That was no great surprise.
“Could you describe any of the men?” Chris asked. “How many were there?”
“Three,” Sonny said. “But it was too dark to see them. And they might have been wearing masks.”
“Did you see a girl?” Chris asked, leaning forward. He set his tepid water on the floor. “About fourteen years old? Blonde? She’s disappeared—the police think maybe the killers took her.”
He shook his head. “Didn’t see anybody like that. But I did see . . .” his voice dropped dramatically.
“Go on, go on,” the grandmother said.
“She’s not dead,” the boy whispered.
Chris felt once again that the world was tipping to its side. Nothing about this visit was what he had expected.
“Who’s not dead?”
“The woman they shot.”
“That’s impossible,” Chris said.
“She was. But when the light came, it brought her back to life.”
He sat back. “Wow.”
The grandmother cackled. He could swear she’d stepped right out of a movie.
“Why are you telling me this?” Chris asked.
“I told you,” the woman said. “I can smell them on you.”
“Who are they?”
He asked, despite knowing the answer.
“The Oneness.”
“I’m not one of them.” He didn’t know why he felt the need to assert that. There was something almost dangerous about this woman.
“I can see that. But they are chasing you down. Haunting you. The Spirit is haunting you. Yes?”
“I . . . I don’t . . .”
She smiled, and something about her whole demeanour calmed. Suddenly Chris felt as though he was in a different place—like the cluttered, dark house had dimmed and been overtaken by another reality. And in this reality, the woman felt much less dangerous and much more like a friend.
“Who are you?” Chris asked.
“I am a witness.”
“And your grandson . . .”
“Also a witness.”
A shiver assailed him, despite the growing sense of safety in the atmosphere. “Not just of the murder.”
“We are witnesses of many things.”
“Can you tell me . . . what I’ve been seeing?” He explained to her about the child, and said, “I thought he must be part of the cloud. The dead.”
She smiled. “The cloud are not dead; they are living, as you should know if you’ve seen them. But you are not correct in what you thought. No, what you are seeing is not of the cloud.”
“A demon?”
“Not that either.”
“What then?” His mind swept the possibilities—everything he’d learned about in the last short while. “An angel?”
“That is a more apt term. Though technically, an angel is one who bears a message. This being has given you no message?”
“He . . . it . . . doesn’t seem to have much to say.”
“Ah. I thought not. What you have seen is another being altogether. We call them Watchers.”
Chris thought that one over. “Fine then. What is it . . . watching?”
“You, evidently.”
“Why?” Chris asked. “I’m not even Oneness.”
“Yet.”
“This is supposed to be my choice.”
“It is your choice.”
“Then why do I feel like something’s trying to force my hand?” He stood up so suddenly that he accidentally knocked his glass of water over. No one moved to clean it up. The grandmother and grandson were both still sitting, looking serenely—if intensely—up at him.
“You aren’t human either, are you?” he said.
She smiled again. “Witnesses.”
He thought about that. “Watchers.”
She didn’t answer.
He turned and blundered his way back out of the house, into the street and the sunlight. His heart was pounding out of his chest. He looked back, at the door hanging slightly ajar and the dark room beyond it.
“Learn anything?” Jackson asked. Chris jumped. He hadn’t seen the lieutenant, who was leaning against the side of the house.
“No,” Chris said.
Not anything he could repeat. Or explain.
And where the hell was Reese?
He just wanted to see her. Talk to her. Make sure she was okay. And maybe find his bearings again.
She had changed his life. If he didn’t love her, he would hate her for it.
Jackson was looking at him skeptically. “Not sure I believe you. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He shook his head slightly. “Just an old lady. And her grandson.”
“Yeah, I’ve met them.”
“They strike you as odd?” Chris asked.
“No more than the usual recluse and her bully-targeted kid.”
“Okay.” Chris turned away from the house, surveying the street, looking up at the sky. He felt overcrowded by the houses and the caution tape and the whole dang city. He wanted to get back home, get out on the water, stand on the cliffs and stretch his soul out over the water.
“You sure they didn’t tell you anything?”
Chris shook his head. “They’re just . . . strange.”
“Uh-huh.” Jackson eyed him again. “You keep it to yourself, then. But I want to know when your girlfriend shows up.”
Chris just nodded.
He wasn’t sure what had just happened.
He had walked two blocks before he really realized that he was running away. He stopped and shook his head. The sky was clouding overhead, and it had grown colder. Likely there was a storm coming. He should have asked them more questions, he realized. The Witnesses. He should have asked them about Bertoller, and if they knew anything about what they had seen—about Julie’s disappearance, the light, the men who had shot her.
The information they had given him hit him like a sack of concrete. He’d been so rattled by their strangeness that he hadn’t really taken it in.
The boy said Julie had died and come back to life, and then disappeared.
So she was still . . . somewhere.
And Miranda hadn’t been taken by the men. Which meant that Chris’s own idea—that she had taken off on her own—was likely to be true. He needed to find her. Yes, he knew the police were looking, and that was good—but Chris had stayed in her home, and been part of tearing her world apart, and anyway, Reese cared about the girl and her mother. So he needed to help find her. A kid like that couldn’t handle life on her own.
Especially not life in a wor
ld full of demons and who knew what else.
He turned to head back to the crime scene. He found Jackson easily.
“Where did you trace her phone call to?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Reese. You said she called from a pay phone up north.”
“Little logging town in the mountains,” Jackson answered. “It’s a three-day drive.”
“When did she call?”
“Yesterday.”
Disappointment coupled with determination filled him. “So she won’t be here today. Can’t make it back that fast. And she might not have gotten word right away.”
“Most likely that’s right,” Jackson said. “No guarantees, though. She might have been headed back this direction already when she called. Why?”
“I want to help look for the kid,” Chris said. “Just don’t want to end up missing Reese.”
“Look, we can find the kid if she’s out there to be found.”
“I think she is,” Chris said. “Don’t think she was kidnapped. I think she ran.”
“Could be. We’ll find her. You don’t need to help.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, I can’t stop you from looking. Just so long’s you call me if you find her.”
“That’s it?” Chris asked. “You’re not going to help me?”
“What do you want me to do, make you a deputy? Look, I’m already in hot water for believing you people and giving you breaks. You want to look for the girl, look. But you’re on your own.”
“Yes, sir,” Chris said. He scanned the street, like it would give him a clue.
And minutes later found himself knocking on the Witnesses’ door again.
Once again it opened immediately, and two seconds later he was sitting on the love seat with another tepid water in his hand. He put it on the floor by the damp spot where the first one had spilled, placing his hands together.
“You said you didn’t see a girl with the men who shot Julie,” Chris said, addressing the boy. “Did you see a girl on her own?”
The grandmother cackled. “Oh, now he’s asking the right questions.”
The boy nodded. “Yes. She was scared. She ran away.”
“When?”
“When the police came.”
“Did she see the shooting and . . . and what happened after that?”
The boy shook his head. His hair was shaggy, like Tyler’s. “Don’t think so.”
“But she must have known something had happened to Julie,” Chris said half to himself. “Or she wouldn’t have run.”
“Maybe she went looking for her,” the boy offered. “If she didn’t see what happened, she might have thought her mother had left.”
It was a thought. But where would she try to go?
Only one place Chris could think of.
He stood. “Thanks. You’ve been really helpful.”
“Chris,” the grandmother said. He looked down, ignoring the fact that she knew his name when he hadn’t given it to her. She shook a long finger at him. “It’s your choice. But don’t wait forever to make it. Choices vanish when they’re left alone too long.”
“Thanks,” he said, though he felt anything but thankful. He paused on his way out the door. “Anything else you didn’t think to mention that you should have?”
They ignored the accusation. “You’re not alone,” the woman told him. “Whether you like it or not.”
Those words were ringing in his ears as he jumped back into his truck and headed out of town.
He had no idea if Miranda would have made it back to the farm. Anything could have happened to her on the way there. But he was pretty sure that’s where she would have tried to go. It was the only home she had, and the only place she would connect with her mother.
Chapter 8
April stood at the kitchen table, leaning over Nick’s shoulder and showing him how to shade in his sketch of a fishing trawler to give it greater depth. She talked as she worked, explaining each stroke.
“See?” she finished. She handed the graphite pencil back and flipped the page in his sketchbook to a drawing of a gull in the air. “Now your turn.”
He started shading slowly, pausing after nearly every stroke to ask a question or receive encouragement. It was a beautiful day outside—sunny and crisp, with a sharply blue sky and calm water in the bay—but Nick had been indoors all morning and into the afternoon, drawing. Mary scolded him, but April interrupted and came to his defence. Yes, it was good for a boy to go outside. But it was good for the soul to draw.
He picked up speed as he gained confidence, and she stayed bent over the back of his chair, watching and commenting now and again until he finished.
“Well done,” she said.
He looked up at her, blue eyes meeting blue eyes. “How about you?” he asked. “What are you drawing?”
She hesitated. Melissa entered the kitchen, a book in one hand and an empty tea cup in the other, which she set in the sink. The pianist paused by the sink and waited for April’s answer.
“Not much,” April said.
“Why?” Nick asked. “Don’t you like to draw every day?”
“Well,” April answered. “I did.”
“Something changed?” Melissa asked.
“You might say that,” April mumbled.
“You need to draw,” Nick said. “It’s important. Remember what you did in the cave.”
“I haven’t forgotten that,” April said quietly.
Melissa regarded her curiously. April tried to laugh. “Okay, I’ll draw something.” She sat down and held her hand out. Nick pushed the sketchbook to her, and April picked up a pencil from Nick’s collection, thought a moment, and sketched a quick caricature of Richard. She handed it back. Nick laughed.
“Happy now?”
“No,” he said, although he was still grinning at the picture. “This isn’t what you draw.”
“I drew it,” she pointed out. She sighed. “You’re right, you’re right. I will draw. I’m just taking a little break, you know? Speaking of which, you should take a break and go outside.”
Nick pouted. “You told Mary to let me draw.”
“And she did. Now you should go outside. It’s a beautiful day. Get.”
With exaggerated irritation, he stood up and started cleaning up his art supplies. She watched and smiled encouragingly at him as he headed upstairs to put them away.
Melissa moved to the table and sat down quietly. “So,” she said, not meeting April’s eyes, “why are you taking a break?”
“What happened in the cave . . .” April said. “Scares me.”
“You nearly died there.”
“Not that. The mural. The painting itself.”
“It was that painting that brought me back to my senses,” Melissa said. “That returned me to the Oneness. Nick’s right. You need to draw.”
April breathed out and looked down at her hands. “That’s just it. That painting has done so much. It said so much. And more . . . it showed things, said things, that haven’t happened yet. I feel responsible for it. And I’m not sure I can handle that responsibility.”
“It was the Spirit that inspired the painting,” Melissa said. “The Spirit’s plan that poured through you. You are not responsible for that.”
“But I am. You’re an artist. You know. You’re not just a tool. You’re a creator. What you create comes from outside of you, maybe, but it goes through you, and you become part of it.”
“A bit like life in the Oneness.”
“I guess so.”
She pushed back, away from the table. “I’m just scared. I can feel something building up inside me—like if I really started to draw or paint again, something would come out that’s like the mural. And that scares me.”
“I understand.” April looked up and met Melissa’s gaze. The pianist smiled. “I really do.”
“So,” April said, a mischievous smile coming to her face, “I haven’t heard you play since you
’ve been here. And we have a piano.”
Melissa blushed. “I haven’t wanted to intrude.”
“Right,” April said. “This is your home. And we’re not actually a bunch of barbarians; I think we’d all love to hear you play.”
“I’ll make you a deal, then,” Melissa said. “You bring a canvas down, and I will play while you paint.”
“Hey now. That’s not fair.”
“I don’t see why not.”
April smiled. “All right then. Deal.”
* * *
When Richard arrived from work, he walked into a house full of music, interspersed with low talking, laughter, and the smell of oil paints. Smiling, he peered into the long living room. Melissa sat at the piano, playing something simple but sweet, while a view of the bay from the top of the cliffs was appearing on April’s canvas.
Without speaking, Richard sat on the leather couch and relaxed, listening with a smile on his face.
“Beautiful,” he said when Melissa finished playing with a flourish. “Both of you.”
Melissa turned on the piano bench and smiled at him, striking him to the heart. He didn’t say any of the thousand things that crowded into his head. Instead, he looked at April’s painting again. The familiar view shone in wet paint—the blue water and sky, both streaked with white, the long, pale grass at the top of the cliffs rimming it. He stood and came closer for a better look at it.
“Stunning,” he said.
“Thank you,” April said, a little shyly. Without the music accompanying it, the painting became the center of the room.
“Oh!” another voice said from the kitchen. Mary rushed in and came close to the painting, examining it. “Gorgeous.”
“And innocent, thankfully,” April said. She didn’t explain what she meant, but Melissa stood and squeezed her arm.
“Oh, you’re not getting up yet,” Richard said. “You can’t be done playing.”
“Well . . .”
“Please?” Mary asked.
Melissa nodded and sat back down. The others arranged themselves around the room, and more drifted in—Shelley, Nick, Alicia, Diane. April sat down at first, but as the music filled the room—this time sweet but sad, deeply melancholy in its beauty—she stood again and went back to her canvas and brushes, adding detail while Melissa played.
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