by Edie Claire
Kylee shook her head again. “Not that I saw. I didn’t see any ghosts around him until we got inside the courtyard. Then there was that half-naked woman with all the tattoos—”
“Yeah,” Zane said absently. “I saw her, too.”
“Half-naked woman?” I asked, irked.
“But if the clothes can cause the visions to happen without any ghosts around, what does that even mean?” Zane continued.
Kylee cast a glance ahead of us at Tara and Makani, who were deeply immersed in discussion over some old farming tools. She nibbled on her lower lip. “I think it means whatever the ‘energy’ is with this guy, it’s very strong. It radiates out from him. It sticks to his belongings. Things that are special to him seem to get a stronger dose of it.”
“But what is it?” I begged, hating the quaver in my own voice. “I refuse to believe there’s anything bad or angry or dark about Makani! He’s a nice guy! A perfectly ordinary nice guy!”
Zane threw me a look of disbelief.
“Aside from the incredible surfing talent thing, of course!” I corrected impatiently. “Kylee, there just has to be something else going on here. What about the nasty ghosts? What is their problem?”
“Minions?” she suggested weakly.
“No! I’m not buying it,” I said stubbornly. “Makani wouldn’t do that.”
Kylee pursed her lips at me. “You’ve known the guy for all of what? Six hours? And for what it’s worth, you cannot see the expression on the face of that goon behind you!”
Like a fool, I turned around. All I saw were two middle-aged tourist women and the shadow of a preschooler heading for the railing. “Did you ever think that maybe they’re all just frustrated?” I asked, facing Kylee again. “Makani doesn’t seem to be aware of them himself! Maybe he’s not.”
“But how could that be?” Zane argued. “All I did was touch his hand, and I—” He cut himself off. “Wait. Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“What is? Spill it, Svenson!” I ordered.
“The drowning scene,” he answered. “It happened to me when Makani shook my hand. At least it started to. It was playing out exactly like it did when you and I were touching the boardshorts, but when he dropped my hand, it stopped again. And this time, it was all me. No ghosts. And you were standing beside me, but you weren’t touching me. Not at first.”
“I wasn’t? Are you sure?”
He smirked. “Kali, I always notice when you’re touching me.”
I smiled.
“But that means…” Kylee murmured, thinking to herself out loud. “That means it can’t be an imprint!”
Zane and I both reluctantly turned to look at her. It had been nice to get distracted for three seconds. “Why not?” I asked.
“Because Zane doesn’t have that ability!” she insisted.
Tara and Makani moved up to the third floor balcony. We followed at a safe distance, making a pretense of staring at the exhibits and reading the signs. “He can’t pick up imprints of the past any more than you can see ghosts or do remote viewing,” Kylee continued. “This drowning business must be something else altogether!”
In a display case ahead, I spied an amazing cape covered with colorful bird feathers. If only we weren’t so hopelessly distracted, both Zane and I would enjoy these exhibits, and I made a mental note for us to come back another day and do the museum justice. That outing was sure to be a whole lot more fun than this one.
“Kali, you have to lift your blind and get a feel for what’s going on here,” Kylee insisted. “You’ll be perfectly all right. If you ask him nicely, Zane might even hold your hand.”
I frowned at her. She was acting like there was no real risk in ‘feelings,’ but she didn’t understand. I looked out over the balcony railing at the living people below, and at the faint and the not-so-faint looping shadows from the past. I tried to imagine the ghosts that Zane and Kylee saw superimposed on top of them all, and a shudder passed up my spine.
“Kali,” Kylee said softly. “There’s something about Makani that’s drawing these spirits to him. And they’re not happy spirits. I don’t know what their problem is, but I know they’re with him. They haven’t been the least bit friendly to us, and both Makani and his stuff have pretty much caused psychological attacks directly on us. I don’t want to say he’s a bad guy, because he certainly doesn’t act like it… but we’ve got to get real here!”
“Kylee’s right,” Zane chimed in miserably. “I can’t believe it either, but if you sense anything really scary around this guy, we should get Tara away from him.”
“I don’t believe—” I started to argue. But I gave up. There was nothing even remotely sinister about Makani himself. I knew that in my bones, but I couldn’t explain how I knew. And I had no excuse for not being willing to prove it to them. Especially not with Tara’s wellbeing on the line. Forget the whole surfing prodigy thing — any guy who loved museums was a hero in her eyes. I hadn’t seen the girl’s face glow so much since the time we made the olive oil facials.
“Fine,” I agreed, folding my arms across my chest and leaning against a koa-wood column. Zane immediately snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me into his side instead, which made me so warmly, wonderfully comfortable I almost forgot what I was supposed to be doing.
Almost. I breathed out slowly and focused on Makani and Tara. They both had their heads down, reading the text under a picture of a Hawaiian queen. “Where are the ghosts?” I whispered to Zane.
He looked around and shook his head. “All over. They move. Just tell us what you feel.”
I decided to close my eyes. I leaned into Zane just a tiny bit more, then began to roll up my blind. Slowly, inch by inch. Platinum… disperse.
First, I got what you would expect. Curiosity, awe. Perhaps even a wee bit of boredom. The feelings of living strangers were the strongest, while those of the shadows were often tough to distinguish in a crowd. Fear would be coming from the shadow parents of the climbing children, no doubt. Perhaps even from a few of the smarter shadow tots. The other shadows could be feeling anything.
Excitement. Enjoyment. Sadness. Fascination. Regret. Appreciation.
How could I ever tease out the feelings of ghosts I couldn’t see from all the background noise?
“It’s gibberish,” I muttered to Zane and Kylee. “There’s too much going on.”
“Let’s go closer,” Kylee suggested. “There are three ghosts around them right now.”
“Good idea,” Zane agreed.
I opened my eyes, and we closed the distance between our group and the couple. Zane and I were about six feet away from Makani when I stopped short and clutched his hand.
Grief. Anguish. Sadness. Love. Confusion. Helplessness. Despair. Fear.
None of the emotions were new ones. I had felt them all around Makani at some point or other already. But now, suddenly, they were intense, heavy, soggy. They weighed me down as if I were underwater. But I was not, my eyes were seeing the room ahead quite clearly, it was only the emotion that dragged me down. Down to the depths of hopelessness. “Oh,” I said without meaning to, my breath leaving my lungs with a whoosh. I staggered backward several paces.
Zane moved with me. “What?” he begged.
Kylee appeared at my other side. “Kali? What is it?”
I shook my head. Makani and Tara hadn’t noticed us. They were reading something together now. They were smiling at each other.
Love. How had that gotten in there? The emotion hadn’t come from either of them. No matter how cute they looked together, they had only known each other a matter of hours. There were no living people in the immediate area. Not even any shadows close by.
“The gh…” I stammered. “Ghosts. Where were they just then?”
Kylee huffed. “They practically sailed through us, my dear. Some of them have no respect for personal space.”
Very slowly, my brain began to process it all.
“The ghosts,” I whispered, as if I could ke
ep the specters from hearing me. “They’re not hostile. There’s nothing evil about them. They’re just… upset.”
“Upset about what?” Zane asked.
My eyes focused on Makani. “About him.”
Love.
Motherly love.
“Don’t you see?” I whispered more emphatically. “They’re not minions! We were closer to the truth when we were joking about the stupid boardshorts! They’re just people, or they were people, and in their own ways they’re trying to protect him.”
“Protect him from what?” Zane asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I can’t read their thoughts. They’re confused. I don’t think they even know themselves. What they’re feeling is a horrible sense of gloom and doom, and they’re sad because they care about him. Makani, he…” I wasn’t even sure how to phrase it. “He seems to be really special to a whole awful lot of dead people.”
Zane cracked a sad smile. “Everybody loves Makani.”
“Oh, no,” Kylee said breathlessly, her dark eyes boring into mine. “The drowning vision.”
I felt a knot twist up in my gut.
“It’s not an imprint of the past, is it?” she whispered. “And it’s nobody’s memory, either. Your blind didn’t work on it because it’s not associated with anyone’s feelings! In fact, the first time you felt it at the dryer, your blind probably helped you feel it because it shielded everything else and helped you focus on what was right in front of you.”
“The boardshorts?” Zane said skeptically.
“A personal item important to Makani,” Kylee corrected. “It carried enough of his energy that someone as sensitive as Kali could pick it up from a touch. You’re not quite as sensitive, Zane, but you could do the same thing when you were touching both the boardshorts and Kali. And when you were touching Makani himself, you didn’t need her at all.”
Zane’s eyes widened. “Are you saying something different is happening here?”
Kylee nodded. “It’s a different ability. And this time I believe both of you have it.”
“What?” I demanded.
“Precognition,” she answered. “Seeing an event in the future.”
“Hey, guys!” Makani said happily, walking over to us. “You have to see the 'ahu'ula with us: the feather cape of Kamehameha. There’s a great story I want to tell you about it.” Kylee immediately plastered on a smile and stepped towards Tara, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t seem to move. I looked into Makani’s kind, dark eyes and could see that he was genuinely, incredibly excited to tell us all about the cape. I felt an unbelievable urge to cry.
“Come on,” he said, touching me lightly on the arm. “It won’t bite you.”
Swirls of blue. Sparks of pain. My head, throbbing. Blood in the water, seeping. The light above, only darkness below. Going down, now. Far, far down…
“Kali, you’re all right!” Zane whispered urgently, shaking me gently out of my stupor as Makani whirled away again. “Walk with me!”
I put one foot in front of the other and, assisted greatly by Zane, managed to cross the minimal distance to where the others stood, admiring the amazing cape of yellow feathers.
The famous surfer began to tell his story.
My eyes teared up.
“Zane,” I whispered into his ear, my voice a barely audible, strangled whimper. “Makani’s going to die!”
Chapter 19
Zane and I sat on a bench outside on the garden lawn. I’d tried to fake it, but I wasn’t that good an actress. Makani hadn’t gotten three lines into his story before he noticed how upset I was, and I’d been forced to plead momentary sickness and make a run for it. Zane had an excuse to follow me, but since I hadn’t needed two nursemaids, we’d had to leave Kylee to her own acting skills.
I really did feel sick. “Precognition,” I muttered miserably as my head lay on Zane’s shoulder. “What does that even mean? No one can know the future for sure. It’s always changeable, to an extent. Isn’t that what you always hear, anyway?”
“I have no idea how any of this works,” Zane replied, stroking my hair gently. “I only know what I saw. And what I felt. If I was seeing the future through his eyes, then he’s going to get a pain in his head, and he’s going to feel like he can’t move, and he’s going to sink.”
I shuddered. “Don’t forget the blood. Did you see it?”
“Yes.” He stopped stroking my hair and hugged my shoulders. “It’s hard to tell what happened, exactly. Maybe something hit him. Maybe he had a stroke or a seizure of some kind and cut himself. A head wound could bleed a lot.” He straightened up and turned to look at me. “How did it end for you?”
I swallowed uncomfortably. “It got interrupted at different times. But the first time was the longest. Everything went black, but I was still conscious, because I could feel myself sinking deeper. That’s the last thing I can remember.”
Zane’s green eyes swam with angst. “How deep were you then? Do you have any idea? It did look like ocean to you, didn’t it? Not a pool?”
“It was definitely ocean.” I could see the movement of the layers, the frothiness of the surface water, the deeper murk. How deep was I? “I’m not good at judging distance,” I admitted, trying to remember the sight of the slowly shrinking circle of light above me. “But I’d say at least ten feet, when I closed my eyes.”
Zane closed his eyes a moment, then settled back on the bench again. “That’s not good,” he murmured. “I don’t suppose you… saw anyone else? Any sign of anyone coming for you?”
I didn’t care for the question. I liked my answer even less.
“No.”
“There you are!” Kylee rushed up and sat down on the pavement in front of our bench. She lowered her head onto her arms a moment as if she, too, was feeling sick. “I got ahead and then told them I was going to run and check out the melting lava in the science center while they caught up,” she explained. Her dark eyes bore into mine with an anguished look. “Oh, Kali, what are we going to do?”
Before I could respond, my phone sounded with a text from Tara. She was checking to see if I was all right. “I’m going to tell her that I’m better and we’ll be back in in a minute,” I said as I texted back. “We can’t hide out here much longer, not when it was so nice of Makani to buy tickets for all—” My voice choked up.
“We can’t know for sure what’s actually going to happen,” Zane said stubbornly. “We have no way of knowing if the scene in the ocean is something that will happen or something that might happen. Why should we assume the worst?”
I nodded my head in agreement, but I didn’t feel nearly as optimistic as Zane was trying to sound. The sadness and grief I had felt around Makani was there for a reason.
Kylee shrieked and rose with a whirl.
She startled me so much I almost jumped into Zane’s lap, and probably would have if she hadn’t beat me to it. For the second time in an hour I felt an urge to strangle one of my best friends, only to snuff the feeling just as quickly when I saw the look on her face.
“What does she want?” Kylee squealed, backing up into Zane’s chest as if she were being cornered. Both she and Zane stared straight ahead at a point in space not two feet from us.
I watched in both horror and fascination as the expressions on their faces changed from surprise to distress, to confusion, and then finally to sympathy. Kylee slid away from Zane and back onto the ground, her dark eyes practically teary. “But we don’t know what to do,” she said softly, still staring ahead at nothing — although it was a lower point of nothing. “What can we do?”
Then finally, their gazes looked different directions. They each let out a breath.
“That was intense,” Zane said roughly, running a hand through his curls.
I looked from one to the other. “Talk. Now.”
“It was the old woman ghost,” Kylee said quietly. “The one who came with Makani to your house.”
“Mother love,” I mumbled.
<
br /> “What?” Kylee asked.
“She’s very fond of him,” I explained. “I could feel her before.”
Kylee nodded. “I thought she was being… aggressive towards us. At first. But she wasn’t. She’s just desperate.” She and Zane exchanged a pained glance. Then Kylee looked back at me. “She went down on her knees, Kali. She was asking for our help. She was begging us.”
I began to feel sick all over again. “But what can we do?” I cried, repeating the same question Kylee had asked the ghost. “What does she expect from us?”
Zane shot a look at Kylee. “Doesn’t the fact that she’s even asking us for help mean that there’s a chance for him? That this precognition stuff isn’t a sure thing?”
I felt a spark of hope. “That’s right! However ghosts know things, however they know that he’s in danger, they must also know that there’s a chance the future isn’t written in stone!”
Kylee’s face brightened a little. “That does make sense. Maybe we can do something. I need to call my ba noi.” She got up from the pavement and smacked the dirt from her shorts. “One thing’s for sure. Our top priority will be keeping our boy out of the ocean.”
Zane’s jaw dropped. He looked up at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Kylee,” he said heavily. “The guy is a professional surfer. He’s in the ocean every day. It’s his job!”
Kylee blinked back at him a second, but the determination in her eyes didn’t waver. “Yeah. That will make it harder.”
It will be impossible, I thought dismally.
Kylee pulled out her phone. “I actually do want to see that lava melt,” she admitted. “I’ll call while I’m walking over there.”
“We should go back in now,” I suggested to Zane. “I want to catch them before they’re finished with the third floor.”
“They’re only about halfway around it now,” Zane reported, looking idly across the lawn. “They seem to be talking a lot and taking their time.”
Kylee and I looked at each other, then stared at him. When he didn’t respond, I bumped my shoulder against his.
“What?” he asked.
