by Sonya Clark
Heat flashed through me, made of rage and shame. My parents tried to have Rozella arrested? And I never knew? “What in the ever loving fuck?”
He rubbed his face. “Shit. I thought you knew and just never wanted to talk about it.”
“I never knew. How do you know?”
“She lived out in the county. I was the deputy sent to talk to her. I figured you never wanted to talk about it because there was so much else you never wanted to talk about.”
Rozella died when I was eighteen, right before I graduated high school. I started dating Ray not quite a year after graduation. “When did this happen? I was a legal adult, there was nothing they could have had her charged with.”
“You were sixteen. You were underage. They wanted her arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
“Fucking bullshit!”
Ray grabbed my hands, shushing me. I nearly came across the table at him. “Roxie! Just calm down, we’re in public.”
The empty plates we’d pushed to the side rattled with movement. Ray kept one hand on both on mine, messing with the plates with the other, darting his eyes around the room. At that moment I didn’t care who saw the display of power. It was nothing compared to what I could do, what I wanted to do.
Ray gave me a pleading look. I slowed my breathing, suppressing the wild magic that leaked out of my pores, full of anger. He pushed a tea glass at me. Drinking helped ground the magic and gave me time to calm myself. “Tell me about it. Please.”
“They found out where you were spending so much time. I don’t know it all but first they thought you were dating a black kid.”
“First of all, let’s clear up one thing. You say they but what you really mean is Nadine. And I just bet she went round the bend at the thought of me dating a black guy.”
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t know. I didn’t get involved until they found out about the hoodoo. Nadine came out to the sheriff’s department and tried to file a complaint. Somebody talked her down, I don’t know how. I got sent to talk to Mrs. Kent because I was friends with Sammy.”
Sammy was Rozella’s youngest son. “How’d you know him?”
“We played ball together in high school. All four years, went to State. He’s in Chicago now but we still keep in touch a little bit here and there.”
I remembered then they’d been the same age. “So what happened?”
“Mrs. Kent made me a cup of herbal tea and we talked about gardening.”
“You’re kidding me.” He still had the fingers of one hand laced with mine.
“No. We had us a real nice conversation about working egg shells into your soil as fertilizer. That trick works too, I do it with my tomatoes.”
“Ray Don Travis, stop bullshitting me.” He hated being called by his full name. Hated it. His jaw looked tight enough I expected teeth to start shooting out, little bone missiles indiscriminately taking out unsuspecting diners. Now what I suppressed was a laugh.
Through gritted teeth he said, “I am not bullshitting you. We talked mostly about gardening.”
“What was said about me?”
He looked away. “It was made clear to me that trying to charge her with anything was nonsense and I would do well to go back and tell your momma nothing was going on. You were helping an old woman out with her housework and reading to her since her eyes didn’t work so good anymore but she didn’t want to give up books just yet.”
I snorted, imagining my mother’s face at that. The local paper and TV Guide was about all she read. “So Rozella had you lie? Knowingly lie? And you went along with it?”
“Look, Sammy Kent’s good people and I knew his momma was too, no matter what anybody said about any hoodoo.” He still wouldn’t meet my eyes. Interesting.
Reclaiming my hand, I fished a ponytail holder out of my bag then placed my glasses on the table so I could fix my hair. Ray glared at my innocent little glasses, then turned his grumpy teddy bear glare on me.
“Come on, Radioactive. Tell me what really happened.”
Ray’s cheeks went through about fifteen shades of pink and red in the space of seconds. The unfortunate combination of Ray Don - he’d been named after his grandfathers - had led to him being nicknamed Radioactive when he played football in high school. He was a good player, good enough he probably could have gone further if he’d wanted. Every time he was introduced at a pep rally or scored on the field, a mid-eighties song called Radioactive would blare from the speakers. He hated both the song and the nickname with an equal passion.
“No one calls me that anymore.”
“Why not? It’s cute.”
“Because I hate it,” he hissed. “And I carry a gun.”
“I’m not scared of you or your gun. Tell me what Rozella did to run you off.”
He thinned his lips into a tight line and looked away again. “You remember when we first met?”
“Yeah, you ran me out of a cemetery at night.”
He shook his head. “No, we met before then. Remember when I was the resource officer at the high school for about a month when the regular deputy was out having back surgery?”
I flashed on a memory of him standing in the front lobby of the school, stiff and uncomfortable around kids not much younger than him. And another memory of the way the girls talked about him in the bathroom. “Yeah. Not that we actually met then. I just saw you around the school but we never talked.”
He clammed up again. I kicked him gently under the table. He gave my glasses a pointed look, shaking his head once. He’d never liked me looking at his aura. Not because he had anything to hide, he used to tell me, but because I worked so hard to keep myself at arm’s length. If I wouldn’t reveal myself to him, it wasn’t fair for me to take advantage of my ability and see things about him. That fight had stung worse than others but I’d agreed. Even now, when I no longer needed the glasses as a shield against the riot of color that could swarm the spectrum, I did my best to keep my auric vision averted from him. Taking my glasses off was a tease and nothing more. He didn’t know that, though. I put them back on and said in my most reasonable voice, “Would you please tell me what happened?”
“I never told anybody. Never breathed a word of it to a single soul but somehow she knew. She said I was more in danger of corrupting you than she was.”
“Ray!”
“She scared the hell out of me. Sitting there as calm as you please, sipping her herbal tea and looking like the sweetest little old lady you ever saw.” He lowered his voice, already at a whisper. “At the same time it was like she could see into me. Like she knew…stuff.”
“You were attracted to me when I was in high school?” This was mind-blowing. No wonder he’d carried so much guilt about our age difference. I reached for his hand. “But it’s not like you acted on it while I was still jailbait.”
That was the wrong word to use. Face bright red, Ray grabbed the check and fled the table. I was still collecting my jacket and bag when I heard the screaming from the kitchen. All I could make out in the flurry of Spanish was “el fantasma.”
The ghost.
Chapter 16
I dropped my jacket and bag on the table and ran toward the screaming. Staff poured out of the kitchen. Heat from the ovens should have made the space at least warm if not downright hot, but it was cold instead. The energy in the kitchen rolled and tumbled unevenly as the last member of the staff ran out. She was there somewhere but the auric vision showed me nothing yet despite what I could feel.
“Britney.” I searched for any sign of the ghost. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
A smudge of gray fluttered above an industrial sink full of soapy water and dirty dishes. The hose rattled then flung to the left in a jerky movement. The sprayed turned to face me. I felt the push of energy before water came out, giving me a few seconds to drop out of the line of fire. It rained on my back as I made my way to the prep area, hunched over. A young woman’s laughter sounded, echoing in the larg
e kitchen full of plenty of surfaces for sound to bounce off of. A happy sound, and I almost didn’t mind she was clearly chasing me with the hose, pulling it out as far as it would go and spraying at full pressure. Until the water hitting my jacket and sometimes my skin turned hot, steaming in the cold air.
“Britney!” I raised my head above a steel prep table to search for her. Ice water hit me in the face. I shrieked, shaking it off like a dog after a bath. “You’re not sticking around to play pranks. What do you want?”
The only answer was more laughter and a switch to hot water. Ray called my name. I turned, slipping to my knees on the wet floor, to see him in the doorway. He said, “I got the place evacuated. What do you need?”
Another shower of water rained down, this time cycling from hot to cold to hot again, following me as I scrambled around the corner. “A proton pack and a ghost trap would be handy right now.” With all the noise I doubted he heard my bad joke.
The water pressure intensified into a painful jet, the temperature fluctuations not helping any. Britney’s laughter took a turn for the maniacal, an ugly edge of anger in the sound. Abruptly the water shut off, followed seconds later by the sound of plates breaking. A shard of jagged crockery nicked my shoulder as I stupidly raised up to get a look around.
Good god, I could see her clear as day. Most spirits resembled faded watercolors if they weren’t plain black and white. They tended to shimmer and flicker and generally look like an unrestored old movie that had been kept in the worst possible conditions, then screened on a sheet in the backyard, rippling in the wind and a shoddy sound system making any vocals sound like they came up out of a well. A spirit had to be strong to manifest clearly, in color, powerful enough to move things around in the physical plane.
Britney stood by the sink looking as solid as Ray did in the doorway. Her beauty queen looks had followed her into death, her smile pure mischief as she directed a symphony of smashing plates and pots by waving her hands. Giggling, she smeared food on the walls. It should have come across as bratty but there was a joyousness to her face that made me like her. Still, I couldn’t let it go on.
I stood, calling her name again. She stopped playing, dropping her hands. Silence filled the kitchen as the last bit of breakage settled. The hose came up without her touching it and I steeled myself. Movement to my side alerted me to Ray’s presence but I didn’t have time to warn him what I was about to do. He’d just have to see it for himself and deal with it.
Britney unleashed a torrent of water the hose was not big enough to deliver. Like a water cannon from a fire hose, it was headed straight for me and putting off steam in the cold air. Feet planted, I raised one hand, palm out, and stopped the jet of water with a push of will that sent a slight tremor through me. The water flowed down the invisible wall of energy I’d thrown up, flooding the kitchen but not hitting me or Ray, who stood close enough I could see the shock on his face from the corner of my eye.
I couldn’t worry about him, though. Britney and I needed to talk. I strode toward her, pushing enough will out to turn off the hose and wrest it from her control. “Britney, I can help you but I need to know what you want.”
Her face crumpled, mouth trembling. She ducked her head, long blond hair hiding her expression. I didn’t need to see it to know what was going on with her, I could feel it as surely as if she spoke to me.
A person’s aura was not an endless thing. It extends outward from the body for a few feet, perhaps more with a particularly strong personality. Part of magic is forcing that personal energy even further outward in general waves or directed spikes. Witches always have a larger aura than average people. Crossing the line into another witches’ space was somewhat like a boat drifting from international waters into a country’s sea border. Generally the act was harmless but sometimes it could be seen as an invitation for battle. This time, when I crossed into the ghost’s field of energy, it was a window into a young woman’s heart.
A sorrow like nothing I’d ever experienced or even imagined seeped from deep inside the whirl of energy that was Britney’s ghost. It pulled me under like a strong tide, choking the breath from me. My vision went black, my body rigid with tension. A wordless scream fought its way out but no sound came, just a ripple of dissipating power. A pair of thudding booms looped around each other, one quieter but much faster than the other. Britney struggled, even in her sorrow and her knowledge of the inevitable. She struggled mightily until the last boom dwindled to little more than a whisper and finally stopped.
Sensations of cold and wet hit me at once as I gasped for breath. Ray came into focus slowly. He wiped my face, got my ponytail out of the way. I blinked water from my eyes, not sure if it was tears or what.
We were on the floor next to the sink. As I came back to awareness I realized Ray had pulled me from the dishwater and now held me tight. I realized other things too but I wasn’t ready to talk about them yet.
All I could think was, oh God, Britney. You poor girl.
* * *
Ray brought me a cup of coffee. It smelled awful but I drank it anyway, needing the caffeine. Daniel had done a good job of turning me into a coffee snob but right then I didn’t care. I sat in the back of Ray’s cruiser, huddled with a blanket around my shoulders, hair still wet. Somewhere in the parking lot a couple argued in Spanish, the woman increasingly agitated. A few city police cruisers had arrived, another sheriff’s deputy. Someone from the paper came and went quickly when they found out the disturbance was ghost-related.
Ray climbed in next to me. “Are you willing to give a statement?”
I attempted something meant to be a snicker but it came out more of a wheeze. “You willing to take one?”
He sighed. “I know the city police won’t. They’re too busy trying to keep Hector’s wife from killing him.”
“What’s that all about?”
“He flipped out after seeing the ghost. Admitted to a fling with Britney a couple of years ago.”
“Couple years ago? Not more recent?” I sipped at the coffee. God, it was terrible.
“Nah, he said over two years ago.” Ray eyed me for a long moment. “Why?”
“Just asking.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not good enough. Don’t start holding out on me now. I thought you were dying in there.” He stopped abruptly.
“She wasn’t trying to kill me. Not at all. I think it was the only way she could show me.” Though I would certainly have preferred some other method. Pictograms made of refried beans on the wall, semaphore. Anything.
“That was a hell of a way to show you whatever it was. Are you going to tell me? After the heart attack that damn near gave me, I think I have a right to know.”
“I’ll tell you but not here. And I want a shower first. I’m freezing and I think I have pico de gallo in my hair.”
“You do smell funny. So where to?”
“What, am I getting an escort?”
“I figure you’d refuse a trip to the emergency room but it’s either that or I keep an eye on you. I remember one time you passed out on me after doing magic. I don’t want that to happen again and you hit your head.”
His concern was unnerving but not in a bad way. More unexpected. What I did find disturbing was the thought of him going back to the lake house with me and possibly having to explain Daniel. Anything about Daniel. But I didn’t have any clothes with me and I wasn’t about to take a shower at his house and wear his clothes. “I’ll be fine. We can meet later.”
Ray wanted to argue, I could see it in the pinched look in his face. “Your buddy gonna be home?”
“Most definitely. He doesn’t get out much in the day.” Not without getting crispy.
The screaming got louder. I peered out the window, pretending to ignore Ray’s gaze on me. He said, “Okay, just give me a call when you get there. You start feeling bad, you pull over and call me or Daniel.”
Part of me wanted to insist I would be fine and do a little arguing m
yself but the truth was, I was touched. I knew the difference between a man trying to give me orders and a man showing concern for my welfare. Ray was doing the latter and I thanked him for it.
Daniel was still asleep when I got back to the lake house. Grateful for a little peace and quiet, I took a hot shower and thought things over. I replayed everything I’d felt while caught in that magical nexus or whatever it was with Britney’s ghost, wanting to be sure before I spoke my ideas aloud. Thinking of the coroner’s report and what wasn’t in it, I couldn’t be sure. But at the same time I was sure. I knew what I’d felt. It made me even more determined to have the séance and talk to Britney under controlled circumstances. With the coroner pretty obviously crooked it might be the only way of confirming my suspicion, even if it could never be entered into a court of law. Britney wanted someone to know and she’d chosen me. I intended to honor that.
By the time Daniel entered the kitchen, freshly showered and fully sober, I had coffee in the French press. Blessedly good coffee. I poured him a large cup. “You need to have your blood breakfast now, Bubba. Ray will be here soon.”
“What’s up?” He took the cup, adding milk, sugar, and blood.
I filled him in on what happened, telling him I’d explain the rest when Ray arrived. Daniel had just enough time to finish his coffee and a bag of O positive before that happened. To Daniel’s great delight, Ray brought a six pack of beer to share. I stuck to coffee. Once seated in the living room I got right to the point.
“Britney wanted me to feel what she felt at the end. Not to hurt me but I think to explain the haunting, why she can’t let go.” I looked at Ray. “The coroner, Holt, you need to lean on him. Hard. I think he left something out.”
“What?”
“There were two heartbeats.”
