A . . . fruit stand?
And who was waiting behind the rows of shining red apples, raspberries, and pomegranates but Gavin himself.
I would’ve laughed at the randomness if I hadn’t known that most things in dreams were symbolic. And over the past few weeks, I’d been putting in a lot of time studying dreams because they’d been so important to solving our cases.
“You’re selling fruit,” I said in a stretched dream voice, as Gavin negligently leaned on the counter behind his wares. I was pretty sure he wasn’t drunk, because I’d been inside the head of someone who was tanked before. The scape usually swayed like an out-of-control ship. Not this time.
“Give the girl a prize,” he said in his own deep dream voice. He sounded jaunty, but definitely not drunk enough to have fallen asleep the second he’d pulled into the garage. His button-down was even crisp and neat, not like a shirt belonging to a guy who’d been slumped at a bar all night.
“You smelled like whiskey outside this dream,” I said, still fishing for information.
“What can I say? I went to a bar, nursed a shot for an hour or two, got some booze spilled on me from a passing waitress. I’m all about good luck today.” This was so surreal, the seconds passing like minutes. “I’ve also been awake for about twenty-four hours, so I was only going to shut my eyes in the car for a second, just before going in the condo, and . . .” He lazily motioned around him.
This happened.
I could buy his explanation, but that brought us to the other strange fact in front of us.
“You’re selling fruit,” I pointed out again.
“It appears I am. Wanna buy some?”
Very cute. But I had a good idea of what this symbolism meant. “I don’t think you want me to do that. Do you know what fruit can mean in a dream, especially red fruit?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Jensen?” His smile was charming, but a little hurt around the blurred edges. Hurt because of Suze?
I’d find out. Meanwhile, I liked hearing him talk. It was comforting, and that’s part of the reason I’d really come to him, right? Because I needed something familiar, and his life force was it, for better or worse.
“Selling fruit,” I said, keeping my distance from him, “can mean that you feel like you’re wasting your time in a fruitless pursuit.”
“Literally?” he laughed, sounding lackadaisical and carefree until it skidded to a stop.
With a dream flicker of passing time, he suddenly picked up an apple, polished it on his shirt, then offered it to me.
For a second, I nearly took it. Took everything that came with it. But . . . Suze.
I shook my head, refusing the apple, and he chuckled, barely hiding the hurt. Neither of us had to say, even in a dream, that I was his fruitless pursuit, and it made my dream heart crack.
After another flicker of time, he bit into the apple, made a face, then leisurely tossed it away. It arced up and through the air before it disappeared.
“Bitter?” I asked.
“Real bitter.”
That means a relationship that’s ended before its time, I thought. And remorse. He was spelling everything out for me without knowing it.
In front of him, the stand started to fade, leaving nothing between us. All the fruit ponderously dropped to the bland floor, spreading out in bursts of juice that painted the ground.
He grinned, deliberately crossing his arms over his chest. Now it was just him, me, and the creeping splatters. But there was a passive sound somewhere nearby that I couldn’t identify yet. Some kind of lethargic crackling.
He talked over it. “Why are you here?”
I answered as simply as I could. “Because you and Suze were fighting. You . . . took a break from each other. Is that true?”
“Yeah.” He raised his chin, looking at me from beneath half-lowered, defensive eyelids. “Who told you that?”
Fake Dean, and he clearly hadn’t been lying, either. “I heard it through the spiritual grapevine.” I paused for a taut, long moment. “Are you all right?”
“I will be. Suze is just . . . Damn, she drives me crazy with her pride. It makes no sense to me that she’d live in that apartment. . . .”
I’d heard all this before, but as he trailed off, I knew there was more. I dreaded the more.
Maybe it was because we were in a dream and it wasn’t real. Maybe it was because he thought we’d both forget it. But he went and said what I didn’t want him to say.
“I can’t forget you.”
I wanted to push my hands over my ears, blocking him out. I wanted to tell him that this wasn’t right, that I should’ve never come here, and a good friend would be at Suze’s right now instead of hanging out in her best friend’s ex’s dreams.
But I was nearly melting with his naked words. They’d been so red with need, desire; the same yearning I’d seen in the pictures he used to draw of me looking like a floating angel of justice.
The slow crackling sound got louder, and when I dream-looked behind me, I found out why.
Two houses were on fire.
When I turned back to Gavin, it was clear that the dream was asking him to go to one of them. But these weren’t just any old houses. Uh-uh. Fire meant passion. And two houses meant Suze and me.
His gaze rested intently on one of them, and I told myself not to turn around again, not to look at whose face might be peering out of the window and asking him to come and submerge himself in the fire with her.
He walked forward, and I held my breath. Then he lengthened his strides, closing the distance between us, even if it seemed to take forever.
Before I knew it, he was touching my face, sending trills of pleasure through my solid body, nearly bringing me to my knees.
A sob caught in my chest, because I’d wanted this ever since I’d first seen him. Taboo need. Unrequited affection. It all came out as I touched him, too, my fingertips against his cheek. Skin and heat, wanting more.
“Jensen,” he whispered, moving his hand to my neck, pressing lightly against my vein to feel how fast my pulse was beating, making me groan low in my chest.
Warmth, affection, everything . . . it all mixed with the guilt.
A voice from one of the houses cut in. Then a loud dinging noise like a phone signaling a text message.
Time flickered again, and the next thing I knew, I was looking behind me, but the person I saw in the window of the first house was the last face I expected.
Dean?
His hand was against the windowpane as flames burned around him, making his hair a burnished blond. His expression was filled with all the longing I felt for Gavin.
“Jensen . . .” Gavin said.
That dinging sound came again, and I closed my eyes, feeling pulled away from him, toward fake Dean, who was laughing quietly now, like he’d always known where I’d end up.
And he was right, because I wasn’t fighting it.
When I heard Suze’s voice calling Gavin from the second house, that sealed the deal. I pulled all the way back from him, not knowing where to go now, as another ding—
Zoom!
I startled out of his psyche, zipping away from him until I stopped my momentum just before my back hit the windshield.
I materialized. He blinked at me, discombobulated, his eyes reddened from exhaustion.
His phone was dinging again.
It looked like he wanted to apologize for something, or maybe take up where the dream had left off. Did he remember any of it?
I wasn’t sure. And I couldn’t move until I was sure . . .
But that phone kept making noise.
He cursed, digging into the passenger’s seat where he’d obviously put the phone, then checked the screen.
He sent me a troubled glance. “Amanda Lee is sending me and Wendy texts.”
Did I want to ask why?
I slumped against the door, feeling pummeled by sexual tension, by questions, by . . . everything. “What do they say?”
He held up his phone, showing me a screen that jumped with static. Still, I could read Amanda Lee’s message.
Is Jensen there?
Then . . .
Send her to my house!
But it was the last message that shocked the hell out of me.
Ruben thinks he found the name of the man who murdered her.
10
I don’t think I’ve ever moved faster in my afterlife.
I figured Gavin would call or text Amanda Lee to see what gave, so after a Talk to you later to him, I wound out of the gaped window, then through the crack on the side of the garage door. From there, I burst into the blush of morning, zapping open my travel tunnel and diving into it.
Soon, I was flaring out to the front of Amanda Lee’s. She was standing on the porch next to Marg and watching all the lookiloo ghosts cluttered around the edges of her property. Twyla must’ve heard my travel tunnel open and close because she streamed toward me from the back of the main house, where there was a garden and a pool.
“You hear the news?” she shouted.
Amanda Lee probably couldn’t hear her, and she interrupted. “I had no idea where you were, so I took a chance on contacting the Edgetts.”
I skipped to the important part. “What’s my killer’s name?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to Ruben now. He’ll tell us everything when we get there.”
As she ducked into her house, probably to get her purse and keys, I noticed some new decorations over her door. There were the lucky horseshoes and cinnamon sticks I’d talked about with Wendy, plus an intricately etched tube and what looked like a rowan branch bound with red thread into a cross.
When Marg saw me trying to figure out the tube thingie, she said, “That’s a mezuzah, from the Kabbalah. There’s parchment in the container with Hebrew verses and a prayer on it. It denies evil and destructive agents.”
“Jewish mysticism, you know?” Twyla said, just like no one was in any kind of hurry. “Amanda Lee put all this stuff above the casita’s door, too. Could be totally working, because we haven’t seen dip from the dark spirit so far.”
This small talk was boring a hole in my brain. “Amanda Lee!” I called.
“Coming!”
She walked quickly and efficiently out the door. It was pretty clear she hadn’t gotten any sleep, because her eyes were reddened as she strode to her Bentley, which she’d already pulled out of her standalone garage.
Her windows were down, so after she swept inside, we ghosts did, too. Then she started the car and rolled up the windows as Twyla and Marg settled in the backseat and I huddled on the front floor with the car battery. I hadn’t realized until now that Gavin’s dream had sapped a little out of me.
“So, Ruben didn’t tell you anything?” I prodded.
Amanda Lee shook her head.
“Just chill, sparky,” Twyla said. “Ruben’s been busy on some stakeout in front of a romantic beach motel in Del Mar. Like, some guy is cheating on his wife, and there’re PI pictures to be taken. That totally still happens in life, can you believe?”
“Talk-talk, blah-blah-blah from the backseat,” I said.
Like Twyla was going to let that go. “Wow. Jen-Jen’s totally on the ghost rag.”
“If I hear you talking about rags one more time . . .”
“Girls.” Amanda Lee had already pulled out of her driveway, onto her affluent Rancho Santa Fe street. Palm trees kissed the clouded pale sky as we drove past gated houses with ritzy homes behind them. “All I know is that Ruben’s research might have truly paid off this time. Ever since I hired him, he’s been in constant contact with law-enforcement friends across the country. They have clubs and forums online that make it easy to exchange information these days.”
“And . . . ?” I asked.
“He’s been researching the areas where blondes who fit your profile disappeared in the eighties, then using his contacts to cross-check that information with any persons of interest who might’ve been interviewed around those locations at that time. A retired deputy near Midland, Texas, e-mailed in response to a query Ruben posted. Back when he was on active duty in the mid-eighties, they had a blonde in her early twenties go missing, and they never found her. She was a neighbor, so he was always bothered by her case and how it went cold.”
“And . . . ?”
Amanda Lee was driving fast, taking a curve with tire-squealing verve. “Ruben didn’t get into details on the phone, and knowing this person of interest’s name isn’t going to matter without the information that comes with it, anyway. Ruben’s on two different cases today, but he’s going to take a break from one of them and meet with us.”
“Crap.” I wanted it all right now.
“So, I suppose,” Amanda Lee said, “that since there’s no more to say about that for the time being, I should let you know what happened after you left the forest.”
Screw the woods.
Amanda Lee didn’t seem to agree. “I tried to read Ms. Landry after you left, while we were wandering the area.”
“You’re talking about 10?” I asked.
“Whatever you want to call her.” Amanda Lee already had us on Del Dios Highway, the road winding toward the beach. “I came up empty when I touched Ms. Landry, as well. But I’ve never gotten much of a reading from her, because Sierra’s life force is so strong that it overwhelms everything around it.”
Twyla pretended to sneeze in the back. “Crush!”
Judging from Amanda Lee’s nonreaction, she didn’t catch that.
“However,” Amanda Lee continued, “I’ve asked Ruben to look into all the members of the hunting team to get better knowledge of them. Sometimes there’s only so much my talents can give.”
“Good idea.” Still, I mentally grumbled. Why did it feel like we were always one step behind on everything?
Silence spun by for a sec until Amanda Lee said, “One more thing. After we meet Ruben, I’d like you to go to that ghost house you told me about a while ago where you first met Twyla and Louis. Where the spirits like to, as you would say, hang out and conjure different music in the air.”
Twyla popped off. “The happy house!”
Yes, the happy house. I hadn’t been there for a while. Too busy. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I had a . . . feeling about it. Truthfully, with every passing moment, it’s nagging at me, and I can’t put my finger on the reason. Not exactly. Perhaps I only need some thinking time . . .”
“Barf—more thinking,” Twyla said.
Both Marg and I shushed her so Amanda Lee could dwell. Maybe she was vibing that the happy house would be a safe place for me to veg, since there were so many ghosts around there, but I didn’t know for sure. No ghost seemed safe right about now.
She dwelled while she drove for about fifteen more minutes, and by the time we pulled into a diner that wasn’t too far from the Del Mar shoreline and within sight of the racetrack, she still hadn’t clarified what her vibe meant.
So I focused on the situation at hand, remembering this particular restaurant because the real Dean and I would stop here every once in a while after an early-morning weekend surfing session—or what he’d call a surf sesh.
The place hadn’t changed all that much. Still the same wonderful, greasy food tracing the air outside of it, still the same vinyl-upholstered booths, and the plastic menus that I could see people holding through the windows.
“Biscuits and gravy,” Marg said as we all got out of the car. “There’s something I’m never going to taste again. It was my favorite breakfast.”
The dark X on her chest seemed to ooze with the sentiment, and Twyla blew out a breath, obviously not i
n the mood for the weepies. When a guy opened the glass door and entered the restaurant, she raced in behind him.
That meant she found Ruben Diaz, a short man with brown skin seated in a corner booth, his back to a window, first. He was downing a mug of coffee, his Padres baseball cap pulled over his forehead just enough to hide his gray hair, a wad of napkins on the table, like he’d been blowing his nose all morning. He was wearing a Padres jersey, too, which wasn’t anything new, seeing as he was an ultimate sports nut.
Around him, surfers and truck drivers and hit-the-road-early tourists mingled, and when Ruben saw Amanda Lee, he waved. It wasn’t tough to pick out the gypsy-skirted, gray-and-red-haired, boho-rich chick in this crowd or anything.
We ghosts knew what to do, since Ruben hadn’t ever been officially told we existed. Twyla and Marg headed toward the ceiling, leaving me a spot to the left of Amanda Lee, near the window.
Ruben had already gestured for the waitress, and she brought a little silver teapot with a tag and string hanging out of it.
“You know just what I need.” Amanda Lee smiled at him, her chunky turquoise necklace clicking as she leaned over and poured the tea into a mug.
“That’s what friends are for,” he said with his slight Spanish accent.
“Speaking of which . . . I notice that your invoices reflect what seems to be a friend discount lately. You don’t have to do that, Ruben. I can afford you.”
“Eh, I’m only reimbursing you for all the chicken soup you’ve been bringing me.”
“Man,” Twyla said from near the ceiling as her petticoats waved. “Too bad Amanda Lee likes girls. They’re pretty sweet together, don’t you think?”
I was ready to pop. “Amanda Lee, can you just move on?”
If she could’ve nudged me to shut up, she would’ve. Instead, Ruben saved my sanity by reaching down and placing a file folder on the table.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you I had a lead before, but I didn’t want to let you know anything until I could talk to my online friend and get the most information possible.”
He slid the file over to Amanda Lee, just as the waitress returned to take their orders: bacon, eggs, sausage, and pancakes for Ruben; waffles with strawberries and whipped cream for the lady.
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