by Yvonne Heidt
Jordan stopped and stared. There was someone in her bed. The covers were messy, and a form was clearly outlined under them. She strained her eyes in an attempt to see better until she felt they might pop out of their sockets. She grabbed the flashlight from the nightstand and slid her hand along the long handle until she gripped the widest portion and it became a weapon.
She slowly raised her right arm over her head, ready to beat down the intruder the second there was movement. She hesitated when she saw the long lock of blond hair visible against the contrast of her dark blue sheets. She knew that hair; she’d been fantasizing about it extensively of late. A small white hand peeked out from under the comforter, the nails painted blood red. “Sunny? What are you doing here?”
The fingers on the hand twitched in response, but the body remained still. Jordan set her flashlight down and cautiously peeled back the covers. She moved the curtain of hair hiding the face and screamed.
Terror shot through her nervous system, leaving her body paralyzed and her mouth frozen open.
Her mother’s dead face stared back at her.
Jordan’s eyes shot open and she found herself sitting upright. Sweat dripped down her back, and she felt the drops that fell from her face puddle between her breasts. The bottom sheet was twisted and damp beneath her. Jordan gulped air and tried to stop her teeth from chattering while she swallowed the bile that rose into her mouth. The clock’s red numbers glowed in the room: 3:15. She placed a hand on her forehead, felt the tremors in her fingers. What was happening to her?
Chapter Nine
Sunny looked around in the dark and tried to place the sound that woke her. What time was it? Three fifteen. The witching hour, the time of morning when the veil to the spirit world was the thinnest. The cats still slept soundly beside her. Something felt off to her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Mazie?” she called out in a whisper. “Is that you? We talked about this. You have to let me sleep.” Sunny closed her eyes but didn’t find any trace of Mazie. Just dreaming, she told herself before shifting to find a comfortable position to go back to sleep. Still, she felt uneasy and her chest hurt. Sunny concentrated on her heart chakra, the center of energy where she felt pain, and cleared her mind of stray thoughts. She imagined an emerald green circle, spinning around and around until a perfect fan of green petals turned clockwise and the pain lessened. Her last thought before falling back to sleep was of a slender blond woman standing by the side of the bed. She said two words and then dissipated into smoke.
Help her.
*
In the morning, Sunny doubled her meditation time and took a saltwater bath to clear any lingering negative energy or stray emotions that didn’t belong to her. When she was done, she took her time dressing, choosing a long witchy dress that always made her feel pretty, and chose a silver necklace with a center moonstone. It was her personal favorite for busy days. It helped attract good emotions while protecting her own.
There. That was more like it. She felt more herself than she had for days and smiled at her reflection before leaving the third floor, ready to start her day.
Sunny had three readings this morning, and her clients deserved for her to be in a good, clear space for them.
What about your needs? Sunny caught the sharp edge of the question before it could pierce the blue light of protection she’d just placed around her and turned it away.
Sunny smelled her mother before she found her sitting with Shade in the kitchen. She hadn’t heard either of them come in. While it was her mother’s habit to be here early in the morning, it was never Shade’s. “What’s up?”
“We’ve been talking, and I’m worried about you.” Her mother’s face clearly showed signs of strain, and for the first time since Sunny could remember since her father died, she looked her age. The absence of her charged personality left her a little gray around the edges, as if her internal light were on a dimmer switch.
Sunny’s concern brought her immediately to her mother’s side. “I’m fine, Mom.” The second her hand touched her mother’s shoulder, anxiety ran up her arm to settle in her throat. Sunny stepped back from her mother’s emotion.
“I can’t help it this morning.” She took a sip of the tea she’d already brewed. Sunny could see her carefully weighing her words before speaking. “Shade? Why don’t you go first?”
Shade cleared her throat. “Okay. I was driving by the other night when Jordan was leaving.” She held her hand out. “And before you ask if I stalk much, the answer is no. I’ve been having really weird dreams lately. It makes me feel better to check on you and Tiff before I go home.”
Sunny pulled a chair to the table and sat. She’d better hear what Shade had to say. Her dreams could be prophetic. “What did you see?”
“They started a couple of weeks ago, right after the Barbieri job.”
Right after we met Jordan. Sunny caught the words that weren’t said out loud. Shade’s eyes were clear and full of accusation. “Please continue.”
“I can’t remember all the details, but it always starts with the dark tunnel. I can hear you crying for help somewhere in the darkness. Every time I run toward your screams, the direction shifts. I run and run, and I can’t ever find you.”
“How awful.”
Shade paused and looked at Sunny’s mother, who nodded for her to continue. “Last night’s was the worst. It started just like the other ones, where I was running and searching, but the screaming cut off.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, and I was alone in the tunnel. I could hear large wings flapping in the darkness.”
Sunny shuddered slightly. She was grateful she didn’t have Shade’s demons to contend with. “Did you get a message?”
Shade shook her head. “It’s like I’m holding my breath, waiting for something to happen.”
Sunny didn’t know what to say. She was sorry Shade was having these nightmares, but if there was no message, what could she do about it? And why were they here so early to confront her about them? “What did you see?” she finally asked her mother. Sunny was almost certain she didn’t want to know the answer, but her mother’s dreams and intuition weren’t anything to be ignored or shoved aside either. She jumped when her mother’s hand hit the table with a loud smack.
“I can’t see. Anything.”
Oh, this is bad, Sunny thought. This is really bad.
*
Jordan stood in the shower and let the cold water run directly on her face, hoping to wash away her nightmare of the previous night. Now that the door to the memory of her mother’s death had been opened, she couldn’t seem to close it. Part of her wanted to curl up in the bottom of the tub and cry her heart out, but Jordan refused to give in to that hurt little girl inside her. She ordered herself to pull it together.
Coffee, strong coffee, that’s what she needed to clear the cobwebs out of her head. Jordan wrapped a towel around her wet body and padded into the kitchen to make some.
She tried to recall what was going through her mind right before she lost her temper. What on earth had possessed her to verbally attack Sunny like that with no provocation? She recalled wanting to kiss her, but when she tried harder to remember how she got from that feeling to the door slamming in her face, her head began to ache.
She saw Sunny’s beautiful face, and then it shifted and morphed into her mother’s dead one.
No!
What she needed even more than coffee was a distraction. For one of the first times in her adult life, Jordan wanted to seek out the company of another human being.
Fifteen minutes later, she kicked Steve’s door with the toe of her boot and held out a steaming mug to him when he answered a minute later.
Steve squinted at her without his glasses, his hair standing up in tufts around his head. Jordan blinked and bit her tongue to keep from laughing when she noticed his Star Wars flannel pants.
“Mmm.” He grunted. “Smells good, gimme.” He stepped aside so she could enter.
“Morning.” Jordan was relieved he wasn’t snippy with her; she absolutely would have been if the situation were reversed. What’s that say about me?
“You on swing tonight?”
Jordan shook her head. “Day shift.” Now what? She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Steve disappeared to get his glasses, then came back to sit with her at the small table.
“Whatssup? What brings you to my man cave this morning?”
Jordan didn’t know exactly and thought about running. Why was she here again? Her ears filled with that ringing again and she shook her head.
“Are you here to apologize?”
Her head snapped back. “For what?”
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what happened last night with Sunny, but when she got back to Grandma’s there was steam coming out her ears. What did you do to her?”
Jordan felt her face flush with shame. “Why? What did she say?”
Steve looked at her thoughtfully. “Not a word.”
“Oh.” Why can’t I remember? Pain flared again in her temples.
“Well, whatever. They left without doing anything.”
“Ghost hunters,” she said. “Give me a break.” Her voice sounded far away to her own ears and echoed back to her. She caught snatches of her accusations and a small glimpse of the hurt that had passed over Sunny’s face before she left. It was almost like remembering something you did when you were really drunk and regretting it the next day. It made her feel petty and small.
Steve continued to stare at her. “Do you have any other explanations for this, Jordan? These events aren’t hallucinations or punks in the building playing tricks. Do you think so little of me that you think I would automatically jump to conclusions? Are you going to sit there with your closed mind or are you going to try and consider the possibility these things are paranormal and help me find some resolution?”
Jordan wanted to be pissed that he’d called her close-minded, she really did, but there was no animosity in his voice or the way he was looking at her. He looked genuinely curious, and she had nothing to fight him about. It was as if he cared about her. She picked at a piece of something hard stuck to the table, and to her horror, the back of her throat began to burn. “But I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“That makes no difference to them,” he said gently. “It doesn’t make them less real because you think they aren’t there.”
“They’re just out to take your money,” she said and cringed when she heard the childish petulance in her voice.
“Who? The women from S.O.S.? Sunny?” Steve shook his head. “Is that what’s got you so upset? You think they’re swindlers? Jordan, they didn’t charge my grandmother a red penny to be here. She’s terrified, and they want to help her.”
Why did Jordan find that so hard to believe? There had to be an angle to this whole ghost hunting thing. She just hadn’t found it yet.
*
“I can’t see,” her mother’s anguished voice repeated. “I hear crying, but I can’t tell who it is. The spirits are quiet, the crystals are clouded, and the cards won’t tell me anything.”
“Could you excuse us, please?” Sunny asked.
Shade nodded and headed to the war room.
Sunny could feel her mother’s fear. Losing her sixth sense must be like being blind for her. She recalled the Death card she’d turned over last week, and apprehension stung the nerves under her skin. She had been right. Something was coming, it wasn’t good, and worse yet, they weren’t going to be able to prepare for it. She’d had no idea it would affect her mother and Shade too, though, and anger burned away the cobwebs left by strange dreams and uncertainty about the future.
It wasn’t going to do either of them any good to sit and fret over it. Sunny refused to give the fear any of her energy. “We’re just going to have to get through it. There must be a reason we can’t see it. Spirit has never let us down before.”
“Except for the day your father died.”
Sunny’s heart clenched, and she thought back to that day. She had been in a lecture at college when she felt her father die. There was no feeling of foreboding, just the certainty that hit her the moment her father was no longer in this reality. She was leaving her class, pulling her phone out of her backpack when it rang. She knew, just knew, he was gone. His passing from a heart attack left a hole in her soul that would never fully heal.
Sunny had gone back to her room and told Shade, who was also her roommate, what happened
The funeral was a blur. Sunny relied on Tiffany and Shade to hold her up through the ordeal. Her mother insisted she go back to her classes and finish school. The only reason Sunny relented was because Tiffany assured her that she would take care of her mother until she got back. It was when they returned to college that she threw herself into Shade’s arms. Sunny had known forever how Shade felt about her, but always kept her at a friendly distance. She adored her and was her best friend. But after her father’s death, Sunny convinced herself that it was romantic. She tried to turn her heartbreak into love.
They’d almost killed each other with the intensity of their relationship. Shade’s dark side threatened to drown Sunny’s light spirit, a clash that left them both exhausted. Sunny’s grades began to slip and she lost weight. The dead that surrounded Shade began to appear to her. She was absorbing the necromancer and seeing people as they looked when they died, a gift she never wanted. She preferred seeing them as they wanted to be seen, shimmery around the edges and in the prime of their life. Her empathy threatened to drown her in an ocean of death.
Sunny’s father came to visit her one evening when Shade was studying at the library, and she burst into tears. She was mad he left, but so happy to see him again. The emotional roller coaster she’d been on was threatening to derail and crash, to leave her broken in the dirt.
“Why did you leave me?”
“It was my time, sweetheart. I’m good over here. I’m watching over your mother and you.”
“But I miss you so much! I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”
“I know, baby girl, I miss you too. But listen. I came here to tell you something important. You have to let her go.”
Sunny was confused. “Who?”
“Shade. She’s not for you.”
“But I love her.” Sunny lifted her chin. “We’re soul mates.”
“Honey, you know that’s not true. You’re hurting her more by staying with her. It’s not fair, and you’re both going to burn to ashes if you don’t leave. Your sight is shifting to the dark side, and if you don’t leave now, it will assimilate you and take your own abilities.”
“I can’t hurt her like that, Daddy. It would break her heart.”
Her father looked sad. “Each day you wait, it will be harder. Look into your heart, Sunny, and do the right thing for yourself and for Shade.”
Sunny cried harder. Now she’d lost her father and her best friend. Sunny felt the static against her cheek and felt her father’s feather kiss. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Daddy. Please come back.” His energy left and Sunny cried for hours.
Later that evening, a boy who had been killed in a horrible car wreck on campus appeared at the end of the bed. He was covered in blood and missing limbs and wanted to talk with her. Sunny realized her father was right. She couldn’t do this anymore. Shade’s necromancy was overpowering her.
When Shade had come back from the library, Sunny did the right thing and essentially ripped out her heart with careful words. If there had been any other way, she would have taken it. She crushed Shade, and she would feel guilty for it for the rest of her life.
That had been seven years ago. Their relationship as friends eventually survived the fractured aftermath of their painful breakup, and soon after they graduated, Shade moved to Bremerton to become part of the paranormal team Sunny’s parents had built.
The sound of her mother stirring her tea brought Sunny back to the present. Why had she g
one there? She was so careful to keep that period in her life safely buried. Everyone’s emotions were all over the place lately. “Mom, why don’t you go home and take the day off? We can manage here.”
Her mother looked at her with tearful eyes ringed with dark circles. “I have to be here.”
“No, Mom, you need to take care of yourself. You’re not okay right now.”
She could see that she wanted to argue with her, could sense the reasons why she wouldn’t leave. Finally, she looked resigned. “Okay, but if you need me, please call.” She pulled Sunny into a bear hug. “Be careful, my baby girl. I can’t see what’s coming, and that can’t be a good thing.”
*
In spite of the worry her mother left in her wake, Sunny’s readings went well. By the end of the third one, the kick of energy she’d started the day with was wearing off, and the idea of a nap was sounding better and better. She should get as much rest as she could before returning to Agnes’s apartment complex later in the evening.
Jordan. The name slipped into her consciousness and echoed in her heart before Sunny could stop it. She didn’t want to open herself to the desire. She felt a flutter in the air next to her and saw the woman from her dream in her mind’s eye.
Help her.
Sunny felt the spirit’s overwhelming grief, and it was too much after her busy day. “Please go away.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears before she faded away, leaving Sunny alone again.
The bell rang and Sunny looked up from the front desk. As if summoned by her thoughts, Jordan entered the foyer. It was the first time Sunny had seen her in uniform, and the sight of her sent tingles along her inner thighs. “Can I help you?” she asked sweetly while she mentally ordered her hormones to shut up.
