by Sarah Wynde
“Dave lent me the portable vac, so I’ll just cut out the airbag and clean up some of this powder. It’ll take me maybe ten minutes. Do you want to go inside and sit down?”
“No, I’m good.” Akira finally turned to face Zane, hoping she’d gotten her expression under control. He paused for a moment, looking at her intently, and then continued with his work, running the hand-held vacuum cleaner over the powdered seats and interior of the car. He was frowning, his face thoughtful.
Akira looked back at Dillon, who was hugging himself with delight. She pressed her lips together, trying to stop herself from smiling, but she knew her eyes were giving her away. She glanced at Zane. He was watching her surreptitiously, and looked back at the car as soon as she looked at him, but fortunately, the vacuum cleaner was loud enough that there was no possibility of talking.
Within a few minutes, the car was cleaned to Zane’s satisfaction, and the two of them were driving away. Or rather, the three of them, Dillon in the backseat, still quiet but almost glowing with happiness.
Zane glanced at Akira as they exited the parking lot, more successfully this time. He was driving. “How would you like to play twenty questions?”
“Animal, vegetable, mineral?” she responded, her voice skeptical.
“Maybe question ping-pong would be a better name. I ask you a question, you answer; you ask me a question, I answer.”
Akira considered the idea. She wanted to know more about General Directions, about the eccentric Max Latimer, about Tassamara, but did she want to answer his questions? Zane was bound to ask her about the car and what could she say?
“For example,” he went on. “This car. You obviously like it. But aren’t you curious about it? Where it came from? Who owns it? Why it was the only car available to you on your first visit here?” With that, he had her hooked. He might ask her about the car, but yes, she had questions, too.
“All right. But I get to go first. Why was this the only car available?”
Zane grinned at her. “It was a test. My turn. Why do you want to keep it?”
“A test? But that’s not an answer,” Akira protested.
“Sure it is. Why do you want to keep it?”
“Sentimental reasons. What kind of a test?”
“A test of potential perception. Are you always sentimental about cars you drive once?”
“No.” Potential perception? Akira’s forehead creased with doubt. “Did I pass the test?”
“Oh, with flying colors, I think. You were the only candidate who expressed any reluctance to take the car. That’s why it’s so interesting that you want to keep it now.” Zane paused. The first few rounds of their question ping-pong had been like a speed match, questions and answers flying. He tapped his long fingers on the steering wheel.
Akira frowned and glanced over her shoulder at the back seat. Dillon was leaning forward, looking curious. He opened his mouth as if to say something and she shook her head, very slightly, to tell him no. Carrying on two conversations at once was risky.
“Why were you reluctant to take the car?” Zane finally asked, taking his eyes off the road to watch her answer.
“I—” Akira didn’t want to answer that question. What could she say after all? Maybe it was time to change the subject. “—am just very perceptive, I guess. Why did you offer me a job?”
“My sister, Natalya, the doctor that we’re going to see, she said to hire you.”
“But I didn’t even meet her.”
“That better not be a question. It’s my turn.”
“It’s not a question, it’s a statement. How could she—”
“Now that’s sounding like a question,” Zane interrupted. “It’s still my turn. You have to wait for yours. Didn’t you learn how to take turns in kindergarten?”
“Yes, I did. And you just used your question on that.” Akira’s tone was grumpy, but Zane laughed.
They were driving along the same narrow, winding road that Akira had taken the first time she’d been here. Oak trees draped in Spanish moss lined the sides of the road, making a dappled pattern of sun and shade on the asphalt. To Akira, used to the dry brown hills and open spaces of California, the sense of stillness and enclosed space felt mysterious, yet appealing. It was green and beautiful and wild.
But it was also strange.
She thought carefully before asking her next question. “Why did your father ask me to come here?”
“Ah, that’s a good one. My father has been searching for a medium for a while now. He thought you might be one.”
“A medium? You mean like a person who talks to dead people?” Horrified, Akira leaned toward Zane but then fell back as her seat belt pressed against her darkening bruises. “Ouch. What made him think that?”
“Not your turn,” Zane’s glance was worried. “You’re not going to start coughing blood, are you?”
“No, I’m just bruised. What made your father think I was a medium?”
Zane turned onto the road that led to General Directions, slowing at the guard shack, but only pausing for a quick wave before the guard opened the gate. “My father likes to call himself a serendipidist. He’s very good at putting random pieces of information together, and apparently that article you wrote struck him as intriguing. Intriguing enough to invite you out here.”
“I can’t talk to the dead,” Akira said fiercely. The occasional dead person, okay, but only those who became ghosts. But most people just died. Her mother hadn’t been a ghost. Her father hadn’t been a ghost. Sometimes she still thought that she was insane and her ghosts hallucinations. Maybe she was simply a very competent schizophrenic.
“I’m pretty sure I’m dead. It took me a while to figure it out but it’s the only thing that makes sense,” Dillon spoke from the backseat and Akira glared at him, widening her eyes as if to tell him he was breaking the rules. This was not a time where she could afford to be confused. “Sorry,” he added, falling back against the seat again, and pantomiming pulling a zipper across his lips.
“Hmm.” Zane made a non-committal hum, and Akira gritted her teeth in frustration. “I’m not sure talking to the dead is all that uncommon. Anyone can do that. It’s having the dead talk back that’s unusual.”
Zane pulled into a parking place and stopped the car, turning to face Akira. Very gently, he asked, “Do the dead talk to you, Akira Malone?”
“No! Not—” Akira looked away, not wanting to lie to him, and not wanting to tell him the truth, either, but unable to meet the searching look in his eyes.
“My nephew died in this car,” Zane said.
The words were so random, so unexpected, that Akira’s gaze flew back to his and before she thought, she blurted out, “Dillon’s your nephew?”
Zane just looked at her. In the backseat, Dillon said dryly, “Dead giveaway. Excuse the pun. Tell Uncle Zane I say hi.”
“Yes. My turn again.” Zane’s voice was still gentle. “How do you know my nephew’s name?”
Akira looked away, trying to decide what to do. What had Meredith said? That Tassamara was a town of psychics? Maybe this was a place where it was safe to admit the truth. And maybe she had no choice, anyway, because it was too late not to.
“The dead don’t talk to me,” Akira admitted with reluctance. “Just ghosts. Ghosts talk to me.” She sighed, and then added, mouth twisting, “But I talk back as little as possible.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Wow.” It was more of a low sigh than an exclamation, as Zane shook his head. “Wow.”
Akira waited, chewing on her lower lip.
People reacted differently to learning that she saw ghosts. Scoffing, disbelief, skepticism, she didn’t really mind any of those: a quick, light, “Oh, of course I was kidding,” and the conversation was over. Crazy manic enthusiasm and excitement? That happened sometimes and it was okay. Her best friend from childhood had loved her ghost stories, at least until her parents had talked to Akira’s father. Absently, still watching Zane, Akira rubbed her lower arm.
Best-case scenario was what had happened with Mrs. Sato, her across-the-street neighbor when she was ten. She’d spent months being fussed over and fed home-made cookies with tall glasses of milk, while she provided a voice for the old woman’s dead husband, until the day that Mrs. Sato didn’t answer the door. She’d died in her sleep, and Akira had never seen either Mr. or Mrs. Sato again.
The worst-case scenario, though—that was bad. And it was always the relatives that were the worst. For some people, knowing a loved one was present but out of reach was devastating. Akira had never found the words that could make the loss bearable or the death meaningful.
“Would you mind telling Dillon that if he wasn’t dead, I would kill him for being so stupid?” Zane finally said calmly.
The relief was like a cool breeze on a hot day. Akira had to bite back her smile.
“Ha!” Dillon said from the backseat. “At last I get to answer. Would you tell my uncle that he’s said that every single time he’s driven this car for years? I know already!”
“He can hear you,” Akira replied to Zane.
“Oh.” He glanced at her. “Right.” He shook his head. “Wow,” he repeated.
He looked back at her, more intently this time. “You—” he started and then he stopped. “We need to get you checked out. Let’s do that first. Dillon’s not going anywhere, right?”
Akira looked at Dillon and shrugged. She never knew how or when a ghost would disappear.
“Yeah, go make sure you’re not hurt,” Dillon said. “I’ll be fine. And not to be selfish or anything, but it’d suck big-time for me if you were to die right now.”
This time Akira didn’t bother to try to hide her wry smile. “That’d be ironic, wouldn’t it? But I’m not badly hurt, I promise.”
Zane’s brow quirked, and Akira realized that she’d responded to words he couldn’t hear. Quickly, she said, “Dillon agrees I should get looked at.” Argh, she’d slipped already. Despite Zane’s seemingly calm acceptance of a ghostly nephew, she’d learned that it was better, safer, to be careful.
Inside the General Directions building, Zane took her through an innocuous, unlabeled door behind the reception desk and into a small security room where a guard was watching multiple monitors. The guard acknowledged Zane with a laconic nod, but his alert eyes took in everything about Akira as they passed through the room, and into a hallway that led to an elevator.
This was such a strange place. That guard had the lean musculature and clipped hair of a professional soldier, and the wall of monitors was as high-tech as any security she’d ever seen. Research labs had security, of course, but this one was in the middle of nowhere. And it was a Sunday. Did they really need such precautions? And if so, why?
But as the elevator door slid open, she stopped worrying about it. The woman waiting on the other side had to be Zane’s sister: she had the same dark hair, only hers was long and braided, and the same blue-gray eyes and fair skin. But where Zane had a look of hidden mischief, Natalya had a look of hidden depths, as if she had the kind of serenity that would be the calm in the midst of disaster, the still presence in a panicked emergency room.
“So Dad was right,” Zane said, by way of greeting.
Natalya’s eyes widened. “Dillon?” she asked.
Akira’s eyes widened, too. If she’d known Zane was going to be so cavalier with her secret, she wouldn’t have told him! Except, of course, that she’d given it away, she corrected herself. Still, she would have at least tried to swear him to secrecy before admitting the truth.
“Yep.” Zane nodded. He looked back at Akira. “Is he here?”
“I—um—ah,” Akira stammered a little, trying to decide what she should say, how she should answer, before admitting defeat, and saying, “No. He’s tied to the car. He can’t get this far away from it.”
Natalya’s mouth dropped open but only slightly, before she pulled it closed again and said, “Ghosts are real. And they haunt cars?”
Akira scowled at Zane, before shrugging reluctantly.
“And my nephew is a ghost?”
Akira’s scowl deepened. Damn him for putting her into this position. She didn’t do this! She didn’t talk to relatives of ghosts. It just made for messy, uncomfortable scenes when Akira admitted that she didn’t know why Dillon was a ghost, or how to help him, or really anything at all. Relatives always expected her to have the answers, as if seeing ghosts came with some gigantic book of profound insight into the spirit world. It didn’t. Or if it did, her copy of the book had gotten lost in the mail.
“And Dad was right?” That final question wasn’t directed at Akira, but at Zane, who was grinning.
“We should have known better than to bet against him,” he acknowledged.
“That was you,” Natalya said. “I did know better. And I look forward to Thanksgiving dinner. You’d better start practicing.”
Maybe Akira was looking confused, because Zane took a moment to explain as they walked down the hallway. “A couple of years ago, my dad met a woman who claimed to be a medium. She told him that the car was haunted. He’s been searching for another medium ever since. I bet him a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner that she was lying, but he insisted that she was telling the truth. He’s not usually wrong, so betting against him was probably not one of my better moves.”
As they entered an examining room, Natalya shooed her brother away, sending him to another door further down the hallway. “We’re not really a hospital,” she explained. “I’ve got a medical degree, but I spend most of my time on research. I wouldn’t have agreed to this, but Zane said you didn’t think you were badly injured and our scanner is so much better than anything any local hospital has that if you do have any minor internal bleeding, I’m more likely to find it. We’re using susceptibility weighted imaging, with a 3T high-field system, and the contrast is great for traumatic injuries.” Clucking disapprovingly at the long scrapes on Akira’s arms, Natalya handed her a flowered hospital gown.
Akira was mystified. No one responded to the news that ghosts were real like this. It was as if Natalya had heard the words, accepted them immediately, and moved on just as quickly. Where were the questions? The doubts? The demands for proof?
Natalya must have mistaken her surprise for lack of interest, because she continued with a smile, “Okay, I can see that you don’t really care about my treasure. I’ll skip the tech notes. Just take everything off, especially anything metal, and put the gown on. There’s nothing metal in your body, is there? No pacemaker or artificial joints?”
Akira shook her head no, and Natalya went on. “The scanner is next door, and I’ll be in the screening room on the other side with Zane. Just come through when you’re ready, and lay down on the table. I’ll be in to help you get comfortable.” With that, she disappeared through the door.
Slowly, Akira changed into the gown, folding her clothes neatly and leaving them on the chair. Maybe she had hit her head really hard. Maybe she was dreaming? But no, the scrapes on her arms hurt like hell, in the way that only brush burns and paper cuts could, a stinging pain of raw nerve ends. There was no way she was imagining that.
The table was cold but Akira was so busy thinking that she barely noticed as the machine whirred its way around her. The brief period where she and Zane had talked in the car had only added to her list of questions. She had been trying to hide her insanity for as long as she could remember, but everyone she’d met in this town seemed to be willing to accept it as matter-of-factly as if she’d told them the sky was blue. What was wrong with them?
***
In the screening room, Natalya watched as images appeared on a computer screen, slide after slide showing sections of Akira’s body. Zane, on the other hand, was watching the soles of Akira’s feet through the glass. She had nice feet. Not that he could really see much of them from where he was standing, but they looked nice, narrow and pale.
“Ouch,” Natalya said in a low voice, shaking her head as she stared
at the monitor.
“Is she okay?” Zane asked, promptly turning his attention back to the computer screen. The images were just gray and white shapes: he had no idea what he was seeing and none of it meant anything to him. He could be looking at a picture of a Martian landscape for all he knew.
“Yeah.” Natalya nodded, her lips moving as if she were counting. “She’s fine. Now, anyway.”
“And was she not fine before?” Zane asked. Natalya’s narrowed eye focus on the screen was making him uneasy. He’d seen her scan people more than once, and she didn’t usually pay much attention, just storing the records for cross-referencing later. Of course this scan was different, since she was looking for injuries, but if she wasn’t finding anything, why was she watching so closely?
Not bothering to answer, Natalya typed a few quick keystrokes, and suddenly the screen became recognizably the bones of a hand. “Look at that,” Natalya almost sighed. “What could she have done?”
“Um, no idea?” Zane said, a hint of impatience entering his voice. “What are we looking at?”
“Oh, right.” She glanced at him as if she’d forgotten he was there, and almost reluctantly touched several spots on the screen. “See those light spots? That’s calcification. She’s broken the bones there. Five places, I think, and probably all around the same time, so somehow she really smashed up her hand. But that break pattern—I don’t know how she could have done that.” She stared at her own hand speculatively, as if trying to imagine a way to break the bones in those locations.
“But she’s okay now?” Zane asked, and this time the impatience was real. Was there a problem or not?
“Um, yeah.” Natalya glanced at him again before shifting in her chair, and then typing a few more words so that the screen shifted back to meaningless gray blobs.
“Nat?”
She sighed, and typed again, this time for several sentences. The screen turned into a picture of a skeleton. “Count the light spots.”
Zane glanced. There were a lot of light spots. “What are they?”
