A Gift of Time (Tassamara)

by Sarah Wynde

  Natalya shivered involuntarily. Jamie sounded old beyond his years, tired beyond endurance. “He beat you,” she said flatly.

  “To get me to tell where they were. And I did.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The bistro was packed with people. Half the town filled the tables, stood in the aisles, held quiet conversations outside the front door. A steady stream of them stopped by Max’s booth, offering their words of concern and support.

  “If there’s anything more I can do…” Meredith, the local realtor, squeezed his hand before moving away. Max’s smile of thanks didn’t touch the worry in his eyes, but he nodded his appreciation. Meredith held a pile of flyers in her hand, featuring photos of Natalya and Kenzi. All of the searchers had copies and she was passing out more. Volunteers would be taking them to the nearest towns and campgrounds.

  “Still nothing?” Grace asked him in the momentary quiet.

  He shook his head, mouth drawn into a grim line. “I don’t sense anything about her future. It’s as if there’s a blank space where my intuition about Nat should be. I don’t like it.”

  She sighed and picked up her cell phone, then set it down again. She tapped the surface restlessly. “Probably shouldn’t call Zane again, huh?”

  This time his smile crinkled the laugh lines around his eyes. “Not unless you want him to hang up on you. You know he said he’d call the moment he felt something.”

  Grace looked away. “I know… it’s just…”

  “I know.” Max turned to speak to another concerned friend.

  “Oh, call him anyway,” Rose suggested from the seat next to Max. “Or not,” she added with a sigh when Grace ignored her.

  Over the decades in which she’d been a ghost, Rose had learned to be patient. Time passed, events happened. There wasn’t much she could do about it one way or another. Ghosts were watchers, trapped in time they could never change.

  Rose had never minded. She liked people, watching them and listening to them and thinking about them, and she loved the stories they told and the music they made and the beauty they created. As far as Rose was concerned, television—especially now when Akira’s magic box would let her see absolutely endless streams of interesting shows—was just as good as life.

  Except she had changed this time, this series of events. The little girl had been safe because of Rose’s choices, because of her actions. And now she wasn’t anymore. Rose hadn’t experienced the emotion she was feeling in so long she almost couldn’t identify it, but it was unhappiness.

  She didn’t like it.

  Her tie to the girl was gone as if it had never existed. It had been since the moment Kenzi crawled out of the darkness and into Natalya and Colin’s company. But Rose had stayed with Kenzi out of curiosity and an affection that came from the hours they’d spent in the woods together. Now she bitterly regretted having left. If she’d been there… well, nothing would have been any different. Rose wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop whatever had happened. But at least she wouldn’t have been left in the same dark as all the other worried people in the diner.

  Akira slid into the booth next to Grace with a weary sigh.

  “You okay?” Grace asked immediately.

  “Tired,” Akira said. “It’s been a long day.”

  Rose pursed her lips thoughtfully. She glanced down at her hands, placed as they were in her lap. Akira didn’t like to be touched by ghosts. Spirit energy coursing through her burned and sizzled. Yet when she’d passed through Akira the previous day, Akira had shivered, but not complained. Rose knew her energy felt different lately.

  “That it has,” Grace agreed. “Any word from Zane?”

  Akira shook her head, eyes rueful. “He’s on a plane already, but the flight is fifteen hours or so, and they’ll have to stop to refuel. He’ll let us know as soon as he senses her.”

  Grace nodded, her smile tired. She had all of that information already, Rose knew. She’d spoken to her brother no more than half an hour ago.

  Across the restaurant, people were responding as Colin strode in. They called out greetings and questions and he lifted a hand to wave them all to silence. “No news,” he reported. “But we need a few more volunteers for the search parties. We particularly need people with access to small boats. If you can help, please report to Deputy Jayne down on MacLarren Road.” A dozen people immediately stood and headed for the door, as an anxious looking young woman entered followed by a teenaged boy.

  Rose frowned at the new entrants. The woman looked familiar, although she couldn’t place her, but the boy looked almost more interesting. Despite the crowd at the bistro, he kept his chin tucked into his neck, his head down, as he crossed to the cash register.

  “Sheriff,” the woman said with relief. “Joyce said you’d be here. Any word?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, Carla.”

  With the name, Rose recognized her—the caseworker from the foster care agency.

  “I have to file a report with the state,” Carla said, sounding apologetic. “Has Kenzi’s information been entered into the National Crime Information Center database?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The sheriff sounded impatient. “We did that immediately.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Carla apologized again. “I know you’re busy. I don’t want to interrupt you. It’s just—well, you know what it’s like. Ever since Rilya Williams, foster care agencies have to be hyper-vigilant about the possibility of children in the system going missing. The schools report absences to us, but…”

  Carla kept talking but Rose had stopped listening. The boy, the one who’d been keeping his face hidden, had lifted his chin at Carla’s words, his expression wide-eyed. Was he shocked or scared? Or both?

  Rose slid through Max and out of the booth, eyes intent on the boy. Akira, who had been talking to Grace about their hike and the find they’d made in the forest, turned to watch her go.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Rose said airily, waving away Akira’s curiosity. But then she paused. She was interested in the boy and wanted to see him from a closer perspective, but she had also wondered whether she might be able to help Akira. Maybe she should check that out. Feeling unusually shy, she said, “Ah, would you mind if I touched you?”

  Akira flinched, her reaction clearly instinctive.

  “Just… like an experiment,” Rose said hastily. “Just… to see.”

  “To see what?” Akira asked. Grace and Max exchanged puzzled but accepting glances.

  “To see if…” Rose started and then, impatiently, she reached out and put a hand on Akira’s shoulder.

  Akira’s eyes widened and her shoulders dropped as the nervous tension that had been keeping her on her feet drained out of her. “Oh, wow,” she breathed.

  “Good?” Rose asked anxiously.

  Akira arched her neck backward, tilting her face to the ceiling. “I think I could run a marathon. Or sleep for a week, I’m not sure which.”

  “But better?” Rose asked, still nervous.

  Akira dropped her head and smiled. “Much, thank you.”

  Rose’s relief was tinged with smugness as she moved away. She’d never deliberately infused someone with her energy before. It had happened inadvertently by the side of the road with Kenzi and one other time, but she’d never done it on purpose.

  Of course, it probably wasn’t a good idea to do it too often. Akira had all sorts of theories about spirit energy and inter-dimensional particle motion—none of which Rose paid the slightest bit of attention to—but Rose did have enough experience with other ghosts to know sometimes they faded away into nothingness. She’d prefer not to have that happen to her.

  The boy was ordering dinner to go. “I’ll take the special, thanks,” he muttered, his head down again.

  Rose slid up next to him, squeezing in without worrying about how she moved through the people nearby. “Well, aren’t you a cutie,” she said to the boy. He reminded her somewhat
of her friend Henry when he was young, with the same dark skin and lanky body. But Henry had had a smile that could light up a room and this boy’s expression was grim. He’d turned his face to her, so she had a chance to study him. But was he turning to her or away from someone else?

  She looked over his shoulder to see who was behind him. Carla still spoke earnestly to the sheriff, who nodded, listening patiently despite the press of people waiting to speak with him.

  Emma, at the cash register, said to the boy, briskly, “That’ll be ten dollars even.” He passed over a crumpled bill without looking at her.

  Rose tipped her head to the side, examining him. He was looking straight through her, of course, but she didn’t think he was looking at anything beyond her. From his expression, she thought he might be listening to the conversation behind him.

  “I’ve talked to everyone who works at the agency and all of them swear they didn’t reveal Dr. Latimer’s address to anyone. It would, of course, have been completely against procedure if they had, but I have faith in our people. If someone had made that mistake, I think, given the gravity of the situation, they’d admit it so you could investigate.” Carla’s hands were clasped in front of her, her tension showing in the lines of tendon.

  “I appreciate your thoroughness, Carla.” The sheriff put a hand on her lower arm, giving her a warm smile, his southern drawl stronger than usual. “I admit, you’ve gotten out ahead of me on this one. You’re absolutely right, though. If Kenzi was the target, the question of how she was found is vital.”

  The boy twitched, his eyes closing for a split second and his shoulders hunching.

  “My, my,” Rose said. “That was an interesting reaction.” She crossed her arms and pursed her lips, before glancing back to the table where Akira sat. Should she mention him to Akira? But she hesitated.

  She’d spent all the years of her brief life in Florida, in the 1940s and 1950s. She didn’t remember the war years, she’d been too young, but she remembered what life was like when she was a teenager. Dozens of black-owned homes were burned and bombed in Florida during those years. One time, over in Groveland, they’d had to call out the National Guard to stop the lynch mobs.

  Accusing a black boy of messing with a white woman and a white girl? Why, that would be a fast way to get him murdered. Times had changed, of course, but in this crowded room of anxious people, Rose didn’t much feel like claiming a black boy was involved in a kidnapping just because of a nervous twitch.

  Of course, she was also a ghost. It wasn’t like anyone was likely to listen to her, anyway. Akira would take her seriously, but Akira hated talking to people about anything ghosts said. She’d do it, but she wouldn’t like it.

  “We do have one possible item of evidence,” Colin was saying to Carla. His eyes scanned the room and he waved over one of his deputies.

  As the man wove his way through the tables, Emma passed a large white shopping bag of food over the counter to the boy. “Here you go.”

  His eyes widened as he felt the weight of the bag and looked at the multiple containers within it. “That’s—um—you sure?”

  Max Latimer, he’d listen, though. Rose liked him. She’d watched him inviting ghosts into the diner one day—not real ghosts, but ghosts he thought might be there—and found it right friendly of him. He didn’t usually realize it, but she often sat next to him while he ate and chatted to him. If she had even the slightest clue as to where his daughter was, she wanted to share it with him. But was this boy really a clue?

  Emma’s smile held a glimmer of mischief. “Maggie is. She decides what goes in a special. Gotta say, though, you’re the first guy my age I’ve ever seen get spinach salad. Maybe she thinks it’ll be like a Popeye thing.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  Rose’s eyes widened. Spinach salad? Could that be for Natalya? Could Maggie be providing this boy with what Natalya wanted to eat without even knowing it? She tried to peek into the bag, to see what else was in there, but he was already closing it up, bundling the bag close to his chest.

  Behind the boy, Colin held out a piece of paper his deputy had handed him to Carla. “Do you recognize this man?”

  She glanced down at it, mouth opening as if to immediately respond, before pausing, her mouth closing. “Well,” she said slowly. “This looks a lot like Jack Thompson, one of our foster parents.” She raised her eyes to Colin’s.

  “You know, like…” Emma bent her arm to show off her bicep to the boy, “super-strength?”

  The boy shot a frantic glance over his shoulder, before grabbing the bag. “Um, thanks,” he blurted out. He retreated through the crowd, backing away until he’d almost reached the door, before turning and bolting through it.

  Emma sighed. “Way to scare off the cute guy, Em,” she muttered to herself, before turning back to the next customer at the register.

  “That little girl was not in our care before Christmas,” Carla was saying to Colin. “We would have known, we would have recognized her, she couldn’t have gone missing. We have procedures…” Her voice was rising, as Colin moved to reassure her.

  “We don’t have any reason to believe he’s involved, ma’am. We’d just like to ask him a few questions, that’s all.”

  Ah, drat. Rose had run out of time to be indecisive about whether to talk to Akira or not. With one last glance at the table where Akira sat, deep in conversation with Max and Grace, she darted out the door after the boy.

  He was already rounding the corner. Rose hurried after him, wishing she’d learned Dillon’s trick with cell phones. The boy moved quickly, not running, but striding along at a brisk pace. Rose had no trouble keeping up with him. If she’d been alive, she would have been complaining and out-of-breath within minutes, but ghosts didn’t get tired.

  “You sure don’t look like a kidnapper,” she told him. “Not that I’ve met many kidnappers, but I do watch a lot of television.”

  He ignored her, of course, but Rose didn’t mind. She followed along, speculating on their destination, his relations, what subjects he liked in school, whether he had a girlfriend, his favorite television shows, if he enjoyed dancing or was one of those boys who just stood still while pretending to move, and anything else that popped into her head, as they wound their way out of town.

  After they’d hiked for at least a mile along one of the main state roads connecting Tassamara to nearby towns, Rose said, “Your dinner must get pretty cold by the time you get home.” She was starting to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. Anything could be happening back in town and she would be missing it. She’d feel a right fool if she got home and Natalya was sitting peacefully with Kenzi, explaining how the whole thing had all been one big misunderstanding. It could happen.

  But when the boy came to a crossroads and ducked into the woods by the side of the road, Rose didn’t hesitate to follow him. She stayed close to him, stepping on his heels unnoticed more than once as he wove his way through the forest. She didn’t understand how he knew where he was going. The moon was high, but under the trees, the shadows were impenetrable.

  Rose thought they were still deep in the trees when she heard a quavering voice, say, “That you, Travis?”

  “Yep.” Her boy’s answer was laconic as he pushed his way through some ferns and Rose realized they’d reached a stream.

  “Did you get the food?” The speaker was a younger boy sitting in the bow of a canoe.

  “You know it.” Her boy, Travis, leaned over and placed the bag of food by the other boy’s feet. “She gave us a lot this time.”

  “Cookies?” The words were hopeful, the boy’s eyes bright as he looked up at Travis, but he made no move to open the bag.

  “Didn’t check yet.” Travis paused, looking down at the boy. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

  The boy dropped his head. “No,” he answered, but his voice was small.

  “You okay, Mike?” Travis sounded surprisingly gentle.

  “Oh, you’re a sweetheart,
you are,” Rose said. She shifted around him so she could see his face, liking the way he talked to the younger boy.

  “Heard a big splash, that’s all. Got scairt.” The last word came out in a mumble.

  “Told you before, you’re way too big for a gator. It’s more scared of you than you are of it.” Travis made no move to get into the boat.

  “You saw that big one. Thirteen foot long, it was! I’d be, like, breakfast. And not a good breakfast, neither. Not bacon and eggs, I’d be like a bowl a’ cold cereal.”

  Travis chuckled. “Well, it didn’t get you,” he said indulgently. “You go ahead and see what we got. If we got cookies, you can have one while we head home. But we gotta get there fast.” On his last words, his voice lost its softness and his tone became grim. The light, now that they weren’t under the trees, was enough that Rose could see his lips shaped into a tight line.

  “A boat ride? Oh, how fun,” Rose said with enthusiasm. As Travis positioned himself in the stern, she leaped lightly into the middle of the boat. The canoe was small and the floor was damp, but Rose sat down, cross-legged and spreading her skirts wide, ready to concentrate on the movement.

  As a ghost, traveling in vehicles didn’t always work out for her. More than once, she’d been left behind as a car started when the vehicle moved through her and away instead of carrying her along. Her friend Dillon never had that problem, but he’d spent most of his ghostly life trapped inside a car. She thought he perhaps had an instinct for it she lacked. In her limited experiments, though, paying close attention to the moment the motion began triggered her energy to stay with the car. She hoped it would work with a boat, too.

  It did.

  “Oh, yay,” Rose said as Travis began paddling. She clapped her hands with delight as the boat moved through the water, gliding smoothly up the stream. She was almost disappointed when they reached a dock a short while later. She’d never gotten to take a moonlit boat ride before.