by Sarah Wynde
“It’s not your birthday, silly,” said Michael, trailing behind them. Or maybe that was Mitchell. Grace wasn’t quite sure which twin was which.
“Sprinkles look like mouse turds. You want your cupcakes to have mouse turds on them?” Mitchell — or possibly Michael — sounded disgusted.
“I don’t want those sprinkles, I want the pretty sprinkles. Rainbow sprinkles,” Kenzi replied.
“Chocolate tastes better, though,” one of the boys objected. “Chocolate cupcakes are the best.”
“No chocolate. Yellow cupcakes. That’s what I want. And rainbows.”
“But—” the other boy started, but Kenzi interrupted him when she spotted Grace.
“Aunt Grace, Aunt Grace!” Kenzi dashed over to the booth. Grace was already sliding out, ready to catch her hug. The little girl wrapped her arms around Grace’s torso, pressing against her. The boys followed more slowly.
“Hey, Grace,” said Mitchell. Grace identified him easily now. Mitchell was always the first to approach, always the first to speak.
“Hi, Grace,” Michael said, hanging back behind his brother.
“Hey, guys.” Grace stroked a hand down Kenzi’s hair. “How’s it going?”
“It’s Friday. We don’t have to go to school for two whole days.” Mitchell held two fingers up in emphasis.
“I love school now,” Kenzi said, releasing Grace. “My teacher is nice. And we had cupcakes today, because it was Talia’s birthday, and I get to have cupcakes on my birthday, too.”
“I heard,” Grace said. “Sounds like you’ve got big plans. Maybe you can bake them with your mom. Then you get to decorate them yourself.”
“That would be good. Not with my mama, though, because she’s in heaven now, but with Mom.”
“Exactly.” Grace cupped Kenzi’s cheek for a quick second.
The little girl’s eyes flickered to Noah and she gave him an open smile. “Hello. Are you friends with my Aunt Grace?”
“This is Noah Blake,” Grace answered before Noah had a chance to. “He’s going to come work with us.”
“For the comp’ny,” Kenzi said with a nod. “‘Cept not like people visiting, like a place you go to learn things when you’re too grown-up to go to school anymore. What are you going to learn?”
Noah opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again and said, “I guess I don’t know yet.”
“Mom has a big machine.” Mitchell spread his arms wide. “It takes pictures, so she can see what’s inside people. That’s what she learns about.”
“Grandpa Max says he learns something new every day,” Michael offered.
“Grandpa Max is funny,” Kenzi said. “He says things that don’t make any sense, but not like my other grandpa. Good things. And he tells good stories.”
Grace chuckled as her eyes met those of her sister.
“A nice summary of our father if I’ve ever heard one,” Natalya murmured as she joined them.
“He bought all of us bikes. Two bikes.” Kenzi held her two fingers up to show Noah. “One to have at his house and one for our house. Travis and Jamie, too. He said they were good for the ‘vironment but mostly he likes going fast.”
“We all have to wear helmets, though,” Michael volunteered. “All of us. Even Jamie and Jamie says he’s too old and shouldn’t have to.”
“Jamie was persuaded by the pictures of bike accidents that I showed him.” Natalya put a hand on each boy’s back. “Maybe too persuaded. He’s being very cautious now.” She smiled at Noah. “Hello. It’s nice to see you again.”
He dipped his chin in wordless acknowledgement.
“We didn’t really have a chance for introductions the other day. I’m Natalya Latimer and these are my kids, Kenzi, Mitchell, Michael.” She nodded at each kid in turn.
Grace was pleased to see that she’d gotten the twins’ names right.
“And Travis and Jamie. They’re her kids, too. She’s ‘dopting us. All of us,” Kenzi piped in. “But they’re not here yet. They’re still at school.”
“We’re picking them up and then heading over to your place for dinner, Grace. Dad’s decided that all the kids need to learn how to change a bike tire.”
Knowing their father, that meant that at least one of the kids would need that skill in the future.
“I’m not feeding you, am I?” Grace asked.
Grace was as capable as her father of dumping a box of spaghetti in a pot of boiling water and opening a jar of sauce, but Natalya had a thing about the children eating actual vegetables for dinner and it was the end of the week. The fridge would be pretty bare.
Natalya tilted her head toward the cash register. “Maggie’s taking care of that. But there’ll be enough for you if you’d like to join us. Both of you,” she added, with a nod directed toward Noah.
“I’m set, thanks.” Noah indicated his plate.
“Offer’s open if you’re hungry again in a few hours,” Natalya replied. She let her hands drop from the twins’ backs and gestured toward the counter. “Maggie’s going to give you guys an after-school snack until it’s time to pick up your brothers. I think Emma said something about chocolate chip cookies.”
“Yum.” Grace wasn’t sure which boy said it, but they both bolted for the counter.
“Gotta work on the manners,” Natalya said under her breath, but she let the boys go, giving a rueful shrug.
Kenzi paused to say, “Bye, Aunt Grace, see you later. Bye, Mr. Blake,” before she darted after the twins.
Natalya turned back to Noah. “I don’t know what you’ve learned about me, Mr. Blake, but I’m a radiologist.”
She paused.
It was an expectant pause. And then it turned into a waiting pause, like the kind a teacher leaves when she’s expecting a student to admit that he hasn’t done the homework.
Grace frowned. It felt like Natalya was deliberately making Noah uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure whether to interject and take him off the hook — were they playing good cop, bad cop? — or wait and see where Nat was going.
“I heard something like that,” Noah finally admitted, sounding reluctant.
“I thought you might have.” Natalya’s voice held amused approval, like he’d given her the right answer. “My imaging equipment is top-of-the-line. The best in the state of Florida, truly cutting-edge. If you ever want a look at your brain, I’d be happy to scan it for you. I can either explain the resulting image set to you directly or send it to another radiologist for interpretation. And if you want a witness, someone who can confirm that you’re seeing your own results, I’m happy to oblige. I’m available anytime.”
She glanced back at the counter, and corrected herself with a chuckle. “Almost anytime. Still getting used to the five kids thing. It’s not like having a cat, that’s for sure.” She gave Noah a warm smile, then fluttered her fingers in farewell to both of them and strolled away.
Grace sat down again. Noah was motionless, sitting so still he might have been frozen.
“Okay, that was odd,” she said to him. “Are you, do you…” She couldn’t think how to phrase her question tactfully, so she went with blunt. “Are you worried about your brain? Do you think you have a tumor or something?”
He looked back at her. For a long moment, their eyes met. He wasn’t smiling.
Grace felt the same frisson of attraction she’d had the first time he’d smiled at her, but deeper, stronger. She wanted to help him. She wanted to tell him everything would be okay. But mostly, she wanted to lean across the table and kiss him. Instead she held his gaze until his eyes dropped and he picked up his burger.
“Or something,” he said and took a bite. He couldn’t have conveyed his Keep Out message more clearly without posting No Trespassing signs. But then he finished chewing and nodded toward her sister. “What does she think is wrong with me?”
14
Dillon
“I think he is possessed by a jinn,” Misam insisted.
“Maybe he’s a n
ecromancer. Or a warlock. He’s stealing our souls so he can use them to power his evil magic.” Sophia shot a sulky glare in Noah’s direction.
Dillon had to bite the inside of his cheeks to keep from laughing.
“Noah is not possessed. And he doesn’t have evil magic.” Joe folded his arms across his chest, his hands curling into fists. He didn’t sit but stood, wide-legged, at the end of the table. At his insistence, the ghosts were gathering at a booth at the far end of the bistro from Noah and Grace, far enough away from Noah that he wouldn’t hear them.
Dillon thought Joe’s efforts were pointless. The faders were congregating at the booth, too, but slowly. Many of them were still drifting around. Noah might not be listening to their conversation, but if he could hear ghosts, he’d be hearing other ghostly voices, too: the woman calling for Carly, the guy worried about driving too fast, the kid with the peanut allergy, all the random phrases the wisps whispered and cried and sang.
“There’s no such thing as jinn. Or magic,” Joe continued, voice firm.
“I bet you didn’t use to believe in ghosts, either,” Sophia said bitterly. “Back when you were alive.”
Joe opened his mouth as if to retort, then closed it again.
“It doesn’t matter why Noah’s caught us,” Dillon said, sliding into the booth next to Sophia as Misam clambered up and over his mom, perching on the back of the bench, his feet on the seat. “We need to decide what to do. If Noah leaves Tassamara tomorrow and Rose hasn’t found us yet, she won’t be able to show us a door and we’ll never escape.”
“How come he didn’t capture her, too?” Sophia demanded. “Why didn’t she get pulled along with the rest of us?”
Dillon lifted a shoulder. “I told you she was special. She went through a doorway and came back. It made her… different.” Rose wouldn’t like it if he told the others what Akira thought about what had happened to her, but even she couldn’t deny that coming back had given her unexpected abilities.
“A doorway like the one you want us to go through,” Nadira said with a frown. “I am still not sure about this plan.”
“Let’s worry about that later, when we find one,” Dillon said. He’d been trying to reassure Nadira for weeks, ever since he first met the other ghosts. Eventually they’d have to convince her, he knew, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. “Right now we have to decide what to do about Noah. If he can hear us, shouldn’t we tell him who we are? What we are?”
“No,” Joe and Nadira said in unison.
“We cannot know how he will react,” Nadira said.
“Badly,” said Joe. “That’s how he’ll react. Badly. We don’t tell him.”
“I think we should kill him,” Sophia said unexpectedly.
“Sophia!” Nadira protested, eyes widening with shock.
“Oh dear, oh dear.” Mona raised a hand, sketching the sign of the cross on her chest hurriedly.
“You heard him,” Sophia defended herself. “He wouldn’t care. He thinks it’d be easier to be dead.” She snorted. “Boy, I bet he’d be surprised.”
“We are not killing Noah.” Joe’s tone was even, but Dillon could hear the annoyance under his words.
“We could, I bet.” Sophia pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Maybe we could electrocute him. Like in the shower or something. Do that energy surge thing to the water. Maybe he’d fry.”
“Sophia!” Nadira snapped. She reached up to put her hands over Misam’s ears. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Stop, Mama.” Misam pushed her hands away. Earnestly, he said, “I do not think we should kill Noah, Sophia. We might get sent to hell.”
“We’re in hell,” Sophia muttered, but she slumped down against the bench and fell silent.
One of the wisps floated across the table. Dillon could hear it complaining. “You promised. You promised we’d go.”
“You know, even if Noah was possessed by a jinn, that’s probably not the problem,” Dillon said.
“Why do you think not?” Nadira sounded surprised.
“The jinn would have had to take him over in Iraq, right? We don’t have jinn here.” Dillon didn’t think he believed in jinn. But Nadira and Misam did and he didn’t think Joe should rule out the possibility with such vehemence. Necromancers, on the other hand… well, he was pretty sure Sophia hadn’t been serious. He nodded toward the wisp. “You said this didn’t start until you came back to the States.”
“That’s right,” Joe said. He relaxed his hostile stance. “He had us, but this stuff—” He waved his hand around at the shades and floating balls of light. “—this stuff didn’t start happening until we came home.”
“We’d met other ghosts, but Mona was the first to join us,” Nadira added.
The cleaning woman was standing on an empty chair, dusting a hanging light fixture, but she glanced in their direction at the sound of her name.
“What was different about her?” Dillon asked. They’d talked about the other ghosts before, but they’d never gone into detail about how they’d wound up together.
Nadira snorted and Joe laughed.
“That place!” Nadira drew her scarf across her face, then dropped it as she added, “Any decent woman would have wished to leave.”
Joe’s grin was wide as he explained, “The guys from AlecCorp took Noah out when he first started with them. To a strip club. Nadira was madder ‘n a wet hen.”
He added appreciatively, “I’d never heard some of those words before.”
“Pfft.” Nadira’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “It was disgusting.”
“I liked it,” Misam said with a cheeky smile. “I liked the ladies’ sparkly clothes.”
“It wasn’t a dive, but it was no Vegas joint,” Joe said. “We think Mona might have been there since before it became a club.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Mona stepped off the chair. “That floor. It will never come clean. My husband will be here soon. It has to be spotless. I have to try harder.” She dropped onto her knees, a bristle brush in her hand instead of the feather duster she’d been holding, and began scrubbing. “Carbolic soap, that’s what I need.”
“Poor Mona was trying to clean the floors.” Nadira shook her head.
“Mama made all the lights pop,” Misam said. “Pop, pop, pop. All of them! It was very dark.”
Nadira patted Misam’s leg. “I’m sorry, love. I know you didn’t like it.”
“They had to shut down and when we left, Mona came with us,” Joe said. “She was the first.”
“Had she been trapped there?” Dillon asked. Mona’s long skirt and blouse were drab and shapeless. They could have been from any part of the early twentieth century, but he thought her hairstyle, rolled back and off her face, might have been from around the second World War.
“Yes, she’d been there many years,” Nadira said. “Decades spent cleaning a den of iniquity, poor girl.” Nadira leaned across the table and added in a whisper, “She says she doesn’t remember her death but I think her husband might have killed her there. Sometimes the things she says…”
“She’s still worrying about him.” Sophia took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Even dying didn’t let her escape. It’s so sad.”
“Cut it out, Sophia.” Dillon poked her. “Mona’s fine.”
Sophia’s lower lip quivered, but she didn’t say anything more.
“So if she’d been trapped, how did she leave with you?” Dillon asked the others.
“Nadira helped her. I think Mona wanted to come with us.” Joe looked back at Nadira. “Right?”
She nodded. “I pulled her out of there.” Her voice held a hint of triumphant pleasure. “She didn’t want to be in that sinful place any more than I did, so I took her by the hand and didn’t let go when Noah finally left.”
“Chaupi was next.” Joe gestured toward the older man. Chaupi had gone into the kitchen and was investigating the pots on the stove and peering over Maggie’s shoulder as she flipped a burger on the grill. “We
found him in the kitchen of a take-out Chinese place.”
“Why did he come with you?” Dillon asked.
The other ghosts exchanged glances. Joe was the first to shrug. “He just did.”
“Do you remember how upset Mona was, Mama?” Misam kicked his feet against the back of the bench.
“When you took her away from the strip club?” Dillon asked in surprise.
“No, no, she was happy to leave there,” Nadira replied. “It was with Chaupi, at the Chinese place. The kitchen had bugs. Big ugly brown things, scurrying on the walls.”
“Roaches,” Joe interjected. “Way gross. A couple bugs ain’t gonna hurt anybody, but that place had a problem.”
“Interesting,” Dillon said. Had Chaupi hated the place where he was trapped? Maybe the ghosts wanting to leave had something to do with why they’d been attracted to the others.
Of course, that hadn’t worked for Dillon. He’d still been stuck with his car after meeting Rose and Henry. He’d wanted to escape, but until his grandma’s spirit had ripped him free, he’d only managed to extend his reach a few hundred feet.
“I don’t know when the first glow ball showed up,” Joe continued. “I don’t think I even noticed them at first. They’re like the bugs, one or two’s no big deal, but once you start to get a lot of them, they’re a pain.”
“And then the singing lady,” Misam said.
As if prompted, she wandered by the table where they sat. As always, her eyes were unfocused or perhaps focused on something none of them could see, as she crooned her low, melancholy melody. “All through the night.”
“We picked her up at this training Noah went to in Virginia. She was wandering around the grounds,” Joe said.
“Virginia was nice. That place was fun,” Misam said.
Nadira opened her hands. “Fun, I don’t know, but pleasant enough.”
“Pleasant enough.” Sophia snorted. She folded her arms across her chest, wrapping her hands around to her shoulders as if she were hugging herself.
“You weren’t with us yet, Sophia. It was back in autumn, when the leaves were just changing color,” Misam told her.
