“And?” I still didn’t understand the direction of this chat. “Are you going to drag me to a luncheon so I can entertain your friends?”
“I don’t have many friends.” Amanda Lee offered a self-aware shrug.
I almost reached out to her, but thought better of it as she went on.
“I’d never fully connected to a spirit before you came along, Jensen. I would pick up energy from others, or I would hear their voices, but they would only give me fragments, pieces of conversation that didn’t always make sense. I also went to my share of death scenes, trying to find someone just like you.”
“A fighter,” I said.
“Yes. But none of them was nearly equipped to do what I’m about to ask you to do.”
I had a bad feeling about this. “Go on.”
Amanda Lee took a deep breath.
I had a real bad feeling.
“A while ago,” she said, “I was approached by one of the only true friends I do have, and he begged for my help.”
“Doing what?”
Amanda Lee’s voice was like a flatline in a quiet room. “Justice for a murder, just as you want justice for yours.”
I could feel myself blipping, like that TV on the fritz.
Justice?
Amanda Lee sat up, rushing on now that she had my complete attention. “I know the person my friend suspects as a killer is guilty—just as guilty as whoever took your life. And, just like your murderer, this one is getting away with it.”
“Why?” It sounded like a disembodied croak.
“Because this man thinks he’s above the law, and I have to agree. I’m sure he covered his tracks damned well.” Amanda Lee’s gray eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them, brimming with her belief.
It was almost like . . . well, like Amanda Lee had had something bad happen to her in the past, and she was identifying with this friend all too well.
My mind spun, and Amanda Lee took advantage of that.
“The victim’s name,” she said, “was Elizabeth Dalton.”
I didn’t want to hear this just as much as I did want to hear it. I turned away from Amanda Lee, gazing down the block, in the direction of Dean’s house. I imagined myself, all happy and joyful and human on the lawn with him again.
And for the first time, I heard in my head something new from the night I’d died.
Stop! Please! Why’re you doing this?
My voice, begging.
My last words?
I didn’t like the thought of having to plead like that. I didn’t like the idea of ever letting someone evil have so much power over me or Elizabeth Dalton or anyone.
Amanda Lee took a photo out of her purse. It showed an older gentleman dressed in a gray suit, his silver hair clipped and neat. He was standing in front of a fountain in Balboa Park, his arm around a much younger woman who beamed, her teeth white against her deep red lipstick, her blond hair in a slicked-back pixie cut.
“My friend Jon tells me that Elizabeth was a good person,” Amanda Lee said. “He left the country after she died, retreating to a cottage outside London, just to forget her. He can’t stand the reminders here.”
“What was she like?”
“She smiled a lot, told funny jokes to cheer up whoever needed cheering . . . But about three years ago, a killer found her. And he stabbed her, once, twice . . . thirteen times. When that wasn’t enough for him, he cut her up in . . .”
As she trailed off, I felt something like a stab, too, and I glanced away from the picture of Amanda Lee’s friend and Elizabeth.
Amanda Lee swallowed. “They found her pieces by some hiking trails near the beach. And when they brought the killer in for questioning, he denied it. He had a weak alibi—said he was working late by himself—but he had all the motivation in the world.”
“Why?”
“Because Elizabeth Dalton had broken off an engagement to him, and he was jealous when she found someone else to love. My friend.”
A crime of passion?
I didn’t want to think about Elizabeth Dalton as the cops had found her, piece by piece. You know why?
Because deep inside, I suspected that’s how they would find my remains one day, if they ever did.
A burning sensation crisped the fringes of my shape, searing into me, and I knew that I was only feeling the unfairness of it all.
Amanda Lee lowered her voice to a whisper, just like the one she’d used on the night she’d rescued me from the time loop in Elfin Forest.
“It isn’t right that the killer goes on without a punishment while Elizabeth’s friends and loved ones suffer.” She shook her head. “People like him should live with the ghosts of what they do. They should literally have the truth scared out of them.”
As she waited for her meaning to seep into every bit of my essence, I thought about the unknown killer in Elfin Forest with blood on his hands.
My blood.
And I had to agree.
2
His name was Gavin Edgett, and the Internet said that he had made a mint creating video games, and I’m not talking Ms. Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, either. From my marathon TV and computer binges, I noticed that a lot of modern game play basically trained a person to mutilate and butcher.
And guess what. Our suspect in Elizabeth Dalton’s murder had gifted society with Blood and Blades about four years ago.
Coincidence?
That was my question of the day, but Amanda Lee sure seemed to have all the answers after we met back at the casita.
“I’ve already done my homework when it comes to Gavin Edgett,” she said, standing by the window and watching dusk fall over her gardens. “But I haven’t gotten what I’ve needed yet. There’s nothing in the gossip columns, or my intuition, or even small talk around the community that’s offered much for a very personal profile on him.”
“Have you played any of his games?”
“As much as I could stomach. And what I saw of them told me enough.”
“That he’s violent.”
“I would say that his dark side is certainly on full display.” She sent a glance to me, her fingers entwined with the lace window curtain. “Perhaps I should leave all the game playing to you.”
I knew she was talking about more than Blood and Blades. She wanted me to mess with Gavin Edgett, affect him as much as Elizabeth Dalton had been affected, all for the sake of her friend Jon in that photo.
Revenge. Justice. She sure looked like the cool mom on the block, but there was some blackness beneath the smiles.
What was it like in Amanda Lee’s mind? If she’d had visions about Gavin Edgett and Elizabeth Dalton—enough of them to persuade her to carry out her friend Jon’s wish—how haunted was she every single day? Did all her visions steer her toward justice because she’d lived them vicariously?
I couldn’t imagine being that sensitive.
Even though I was on board with punishing the guilty, my temper had cooled during the flight back, and I’d started wondering exactly what Amanda Lee had in mind for me to do with this man. Actually, I had no idea what I was even capable of doing with him.
“I’m happy to do all the homework I can,” I said. “It kind of seems to me that we’re moving a little fast here, though.”
“All right. Tell me how we can slow it down.”
“Well, first off, I’d like to see for myself that this guy is guilty before we start the justice part.”
She slid a concerned glance to me. “I get the feeling you don’t want to do this.”
Chased through the trees, caught, yanked toward someone who was pulling me to my death . . .
“Actually, I want to do this very much.” Even if I got the vibe that Amanda Lee had pulled me out of my time loop more to be her pet spirit than to right all my wrongs. “I just think it’d make sense to go about this in a more . . . measured way.”
“Such as . . . ?”
“Such as haunting a confession out of this suspect instead of barging into
him with all guns blazing and exacting vengeance.”
Amanda Lee stared at an oil painting of a serene summer pond, which hung on the wall. For a second, I thought she might be getting some kind of reading. The air even trembled a little, tickling me.
Then she nodded. “Yes, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
That made me feel better. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Amanda Lee’s psychic vibes, but I’d always been a “show me” person, especially after hearing all the platitudes that well-meaning people handed out to me at my parents’ wake. The “things will be fine”s and the “they’re in a better place”s never felt true to me. Nobody could prove that life was going to get better.
In fact, it hadn’t.
Amanda Lee went to the computer, and within a minute, she had conjured a picture of a mansion with red tile roofing and an Italian Renaissance vibe.
“Here’s your first piece of information,” she said. “This is where he’s staying for the time being.”
Yeah, this Gavin guy was rich, but something altogether different struck me about how easy it’d been for Amanda Lee to show me his house.
She raised a slim eyebrow, as if intuiting my discomfort. “There’s no such thing as privacy nowadays.”
Gross. What had the real world come to? Big Brother was definitely in residence.
Amanda Lee was looking at the computer again. “He’s what you might call a ‘free spirit,’ no pun intended. He travels the world with his laptop as his office.”
I had to wrap my head around that. He had freedom—a gift that had been taken away from Elizabeth Dalton. No justice there.
Amanda Lee gestured toward the picture of the mansion. “This is his family’s estate, and he returned to it recently.”
“Is he wrapped up in Mama’s apron strings or something?”
“Hardly.”
She clicked off the mansion picture and to another screen, where an image appeared of a tall man ambling down a beachside street carrying a paper cup of coffee, his other hand fisted at his side, like he was wound up tight.
Something took an unsettling whirl in the center of me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because of the cut of his brown hair—very short, no-nonsense, as if the last thing he wanted to be doing was gelling and styling it in front of a mirror. Maybe it was because of the look the camera had caught in his eyes—almost a bruised, pugilistic way of gazing at the world around him. Or maybe it was because I could just about see him in motion, with a self-assured walk that told everyone around him that he knew just who he was and where he was going.
Even in a frozen-in-time photograph, he still vibrated with life for me, and I couldn’t look away, even if I’d wanted to.
Amanda Lee thinks he cut a woman apart, I thought, putting my head back where it belonged.
“He’s thirty years old,” Amanda Lee said, and for a psychic, she seemed pretty clueless about the palpitating spirit right behind her.
“Born around the time I ate the dust,” I said. “So why’s he at home if he’s old enough to have his own life?”
“He’s the oldest child—the most responsible one. His mom passed on nearly a decade ago, and his father has been on a succession of business trips all over the world for the past four years or so.”
She always called Gavin “he,” as if that somehow put him at a distance from her. “He normally lives in hotel suites and doesn’t call any place but an official base residence across the country home, but I intuited that the younger son, Noah, needs a parental hand lately, and the father’s not at home to provide it.”
Okay. She’d gotten some kind of psychic woo-woo about it. “Why not just hire a nanny?”
“The kids are too old for that—Noah’s seventeen and Wendy’s fifteen. However, his slightly younger sister, Farah, has lived on the property with them since the dad started traveling.” She fiddled with the computer again.
Amanda Lee finally made the screen switch to another picture, and it showed a stunning twentysomething socialite in a gossip column photo, svelte in a white dress, her sable hair long and gleaming over one shoulder, her legs endless.
“I’m sure,” Amanda Lee said, “Farah called him home to provide some male guidance for Noah.”
She must not have had photos of the kids ready, because she didn’t access the computer.
I cozied against a battery pack resting on a cherrywood end table. Amanda Lee had laid it out earlier, and it was available for whenever I needed to pull energy. Every once in a while, the mild distance between me and my death spot got to me, but juicing myself up like this helped.
I went back to asking about the family situation. “Why’re the kids so much younger than Farah and Gavin?”
“Noah and Wendy are adopted. It wasn’t like this in your time, but nowadays, collecting children in need is a status symbol.”
“That’s pretty cynical. Besides, aren’t you a Richie Rich, too?”
“I only live off a relatively modest inheritance and investments, dear. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon gagging me.”
She gave me a wry “Got it, Valley Girl?” look, and I didn’t bother to tell her that my friends and I had made a sport of mocking hard-core mall rats in my time.
“You sure know a lot about the family,” I said. “Have you communicated with Elizabeth Dalton in any way whatsoever? Or did any other spirits leave you partial messages from beyond?”
She slowly shook her head, just as she’d done after we’d first met and I’d quizzed her all about whom she’d contacted from the other side, especially my parents. This past week, she’d tried to get ahold of them, but nothing had happened.
I forged on. “If you haven’t talked to Elizabeth, how do you know all this information about the Edgetts? From visions?”
Amanda Lee’s skin went a little pink, and she started to mess around with the computer again, avoiding my question.
So I gave her a chilly tap on the shoulder.
“Jensen—”
“I know. I’m cold. And I’m sure I can be a lot colder.”
She sighed. “All right. Jon hired a private investigator—another friend of ours—to watch him.”
Obsessed a little? “Elizabeth’s Jon?”
“I told you,” Amanda Lee said. “The killer has ruined lives. Wrongful death tends to do that to people like Jon.”
I couldn’t argue. My own life sure hadn’t been the same after Mom and Dad had gone. And I doubted they would’ve been all that happy about their sweet lil’, former straight-A student dropping out of college to hang out in dark forests with toking friends.
Amanda Lee turned away from the computer to face me. With those gray strands of hair framing her face, she seemed older than usual.
“Are you ready to visit him?” she asked. “To get a feeling for the kind of man you think he might be?”
A murderer?
I nodded, on board, even though I wasn’t going to speed into this whole thing like Amanda Lee had obviously wanted me to. Satisfied, she showed me the Edgetts’ address and the directions.
As full night claimed the sky, I finally took off toward that mansion near La Jolla, grabbing a travel current and speeding through that artery tunnel. I mean, why wait? It’s not like I had a ton of other things to do.
After I tumbled out of the tunnel, I hovered in the air, getting a bead on where I was. The beach, painted by sand and murmuring waves. Since I still had the ability to smell, I took a second to absorb the brine and wood smoke, too.
It was like all those summer nights with Dean.
I brushed off the thought and followed my senses toward the cliffs, where mansions loomed over the shoreline, burning light through their massive windows.
Rising high, then putting on some speed, I sketched over the rooftops, ruffling leaves on palm trees, until I got to the red roof of the Edgett mansion.
These people were rich. The place was made up of two wings, with a lagoon-shaped, rock-edged pool, a pool house, and a
guest cottage. The palms waved, casting moonlit shadows over white walls and villa windows.
I listened, still hovering above the estate, until I picked up the sound of voices. Then I shot down to it, my essence pulsing with . . .
Was it excitement?
I took a spot near a sliding patio door, which was blocked by a screen. I didn’t want to see what it would feel like if I slid through that. Who needed to be grated ghost cheese?
“What did you just say to me?”
It was the voice of a young girl, and when I took a peek inside the mansion, I spied her near a marble kitchen counter, her back to me. But I could still see waist-length, straight black hair and a tiny sparrowlike body dressed in a dark minidress with torn tights and combat boots.
Wendy, the younger sister?
A teenage boy—Noah?—had propped his sneakered feet on the kitchen counter and was leaning back in a tall barstool. A hank of dirty brown hair covered one eye, and his skin was a toasty shade.
He’d been in the process of shrugging her off. “Aw, come on, Wen. I said it was just a spur-of-the-moment get-together.”
“It was a gathering of troglodytes, and you left a mess that the maids had to spend all day picking up. Thanks to you, Gavin’s gonna lock us down.”
“Hey, I helped clean up,” Noah said, and he looked pretty sincere about it.
Wendy shook her head and stalked all the way into the kitchen, toward the fridge.
I floated toward the open window there, getting a better look at her after she shut the appliance’s door and came out with a can that said Red Bull on it. She didn’t look anything like Noah, with his rosy tan skin and big dark eyes. Actually, she seemed Asian—a kind of cool nerd with a pink streak down the side of her hair.
Noah had sat up on his stool, revealing a T-shirt that said RADIOHEAD.
“Wen,” he said as she drank her Red Bull stuff. “I said I’m sorry.”
She took the can away from her lips. “Tell that to the homework I didn’t get finished.”
“Screw homework.”
“So says the guy who once got kicked out of prep school. Dumb-ass.”
Only the Good Die Young Page 3
