by Cate Lawley
Hillary had heard so many stories about Brad over the years, she’d felt like she knew him. But he’d been her Gramps’ imaginary friend, and she’d always thought of him as a reflection of the best parts of her grandpa—not an actual person. Weird to think of him in terms of short dark hair, well-defined arms, and charming dimple. Yep. Super weird.
She sighed. “I know he is. We’ll do our best for him. I promise.” But Gramps was her priority.
The scrawled list took up about a page. It was full of miscellaneous bits and pieces of information. At first nothing jumped out at Hillary. But maybe—she scanned the list for the umpteenth time—just maybe Brad’s knowledge of a local high school’s mascot meant he attended the high school here.
Hopefully, Brad and Gramps would brainstorm a little more successfully when they weren’t under so much pressure. She’d been whiskeyed up and ready to go home when they’d drafted this list earlier. She sat down at her computer and started to sift through the sparse facts on the sheet.
Two hours later, after trawling through so many internet sites her click finger had started to ache, Hillary thought she’d found something. She scrolled through the article one more time. Search for Stephen Bradley Sherwood, twenty-five-year-old missing man, suspended.
The authorities called off the search after three days when they discovered the date of his disappearance was the first anniversary of his girlfriend’s death in a tragic car accident. Suicide was suspected, but no body was found. The article didn’t contain a picture and only a few additional details. He’d gone missing from his mother’s home in Austin, but he been living in Minnesota for several months prior to his death.
Hillary double-checked the date of the article. Two thousand and nine. Seven years ago, and a few months before Walter ran into Brad lurking on his lawn. The right age, the right time frame. The name? That was weird, since he said he couldn’t remember his name. She’d have to ask Walter how they’d landed on Brad.
It wasn’t much, but Stephen Sherwood was the closest she’d come to even a remote fit of the available facts. She needed a picture. A photo would definitively prove or disprove Sherwood as Brad’s real identity.
A picture of Stephen Sherwood just became her priority number one. A twinge in her back inched toward more of an ache. Maybe priority number two. She stood up and did a series of stretches. Before she could sit down, her stomach reminded her she’d had too much booze and not enough food. By the time she’d fed herself and settled back in front of her computer, she had an instant message from Mary Margaret. Confirmation from three different people that an aura means alive in some sense of the word.
Hillary sent a video chat invite, and Mary Margaret popped up on her screen.
“Hey. What else did you find?”
Mary Margaret tucked a few strands of silver hair behind her ear. “A general consensus that if you’ve got an aura, you’re alive. But apparently the undead also have an aura—a very distinctive one.”
“Please tell me Brad isn’t among the undead. I’m not even sure what undead means, but it sounds almost as permanent as dead.” Hillary tipped her laptop screen back, so she could lean back in her chair and not disappear.
“The undead angle is highly unlikely. One of my contacts has seen the aura of an undead. She said it was unmistakably different, and I couldn’t miss it.”
“So, according to your people, Brad’s neither dead nor undead, which leaves…?”
Mary Margaret frowned. “Alive but invisible?”
“No. He’s physically less substantial. It’s like his edges are fuzzy. I should have poked him when I had the chance. Since I didn’t, I’d guess he was kind of like a ghost, but a little firmer. He can touch things and people, I’m sure. I saw him touch Gramps on the arm.” Something niggled at Hillary’s memory. “Oh—Gramps said buttons—remote controls, the mouse for a computer—were hard for him. So maybe he can’t move things? I don’t know. The point is, he’s not just invisible.”
“We’re stumped. My network isn’t really set up for this kind of support, though. We talk more about how to best help our clients than anything else. How to help families with grief, break bad news, that kind of thing. A few of us have happened upon unusual events or people in the course of our work, but that’s the extent of our knowledge.” Mary Margaret frowned then said, “Have you considered an expert? Someone like a paranormal investigator?”
“No. After Madame Celeste I’ve become more discriminating. Not only did she fail to spot Brad and tell me my cheating ex was The One, she gave me fashion advice. Bad fashion advice. I’m leery of hiring anyone in the business without a recommendation now. Maybe you could ask your friends for a referral?”
“I’ll see if my network has a recommendation. Even if they’re not local, a good investigator should be able to make a local referral, right?”
“Maybe. I hope so, because our resident evil witch appears and disappears on her own schedule. Speaking of the evil queen, I might have a look at those glasses again—with gloves and tongs—just in case there’s a clue I missed.” Hillary copied the article link she’d found earlier and pasted it into a message to Mary Margaret. “Check this out. I’m looking for a picture to confirm or deny if this is our guy.”
After scanning the article, Mary Margaret said, “Well, if it is him, he has a mother who never had the chance to properly bury her son. Not knowing has to be torture for her.”
Hillary ended the chat on that depressing note, and decided she’d deal with what to tell Brad’s family when—or even if—that opportunity arose. She had enough problems; she didn’t need to borrow any more worry. And right now, her eyes and her back needed a break. She rolled her chair away from her computer desk—
“What did you find?” a vaguely familiar male voice asked.
“Aaaagh!” Hillary fell in a tumble of arms and legs at the foot of her desk. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.” Her funny bone throbbed and tears pricked at her eyes.
Brad stood about ten feet away, looking apologetic. “I tried to knock.” He demonstrated by rapping his knuckles against the wall. While his hand appeared to make contact, no sound resulted.
“How are you even here? Aren’t you tethered to the house?” Hillary eyed him suspiciously while she rubbed her elbow. Then she remembered: he wasn’t a ghost and he’d wandered up onto her grandpa’s lawn. “Never mind.”
“No, that’s actually an interesting question.”
”Let me stop you there. Just give me a minute, okay?” Annoyance colored her words, and she felt a little bad about it. It wasn’t his fault she was klutzy. Or that the chair rolled out from under her. Or—and this was the big one—that she felt terrible about possibly exorcising him into the ether.
Wounded dignity abandoned, she scrambled up on her hands and knees and then stood up. After checking that all of her moving parts still worked, she said, “Why don’t you have a seat and we can talk about what we’ve found so far.”
He looked at the closest spare chair several feet away. “Maybe you could…you know…”
“Ah. Sorry.” She scooted the chair closer to her computer, then dropped back down into her computer chair. “Do you get tired?”
“Not like before. I fade away, and when I’ve recharged I come back. Scared the heck out of Walter the first few times it happened.”
“But you don’t need to sleep or rest in the normal sense?”
“No. I walked here. It took a while, but I’m not tired. It is nice to sit down though.”
Hillary stared at him. “Weird.”
“Thanks. I’m aware.” He dropped down into the seat next to her, leaning forward and looking at the computer.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just—”
“Weird. I get it.” Brad turned to her, his face serious and his eyes intent. “I know you’re doing your best for Walter, and I’m completely on board with anything that keeps him in his house and happy. He’s my best friend; of course, I want that. But I�
�d like to keep up to date with everything you find. This is also my life, or my afterlife, we’re talking about.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Should I?” The question wasn’t snide. He was seriously asking her if he could trust her not to send him to oblivion.
She bit her lip. “Probably not. I’m sorry. Gramps will come first every time.”
“Just consider that it may not have to be one or the other.” He looked back at the screen, leaving her to stare at a well-defined jaw line and a once-broken nose.
Brad was hot. She’d thought it when she’d first seen him in her grandpa’s kitchen, but in all the drama of ghosts and such, she’d sort of forgotten. Great. No one was a bigger pushover for a hot guy. She shoved her hair behind her ears and turned back to the computer screen.
“Right. What do you think about the name Stephen Bradley Sherwood?” As soon as the name left her lips, all hell broke loose.
Chapter 8
“Stephen Bradley,” brought a chill down his spine. But then Hillary said “Sherwood” and his gut started to burn. He’d never felt pain, not in his insubstantial, ghostlike form. The chill happened occasionally, he suspected when a remnant of his old life triggered a sense of recognition. But pain? He’d never felt pain.
“Oh, no. No. You don’t look so good.” Hillary had gone pale.
“Don’t feel great.”
“You’re all covered in black spots, like holes. And what’s with the wind?” Her long dark hair wrapped around her face. “Are you okay?”
But she already knew the answer. She looked and sounded terrified.
His gut wrenched again, burning like cold fire and spreading. He felt like someone was turning him inside out. And then it stopped. No wind, no pain, no Hillary. In fact, he was in a completely different place. A shop?
“Oh, good. Nice to see you still in one piece.” A woman with flyaway blond hair bundled up atop her head stood to his right, inspecting him.
“Where am I? And who are you? How can you see me?”
“I was little Grace’s godmother.” A soft smile tipped up the corners of her mouth, wistful and sad. She held a hand out and her tone turned brisk. “You can call me Glenda.”
“Grace?” he shook his head, but the familiar chill crawled up his spine. Belatedly, he accepted her hand. “Nice to meet you.” The polite words escaped without thought.
“Your girlfriend. Killed in a terrible accident, not your fault.” She tipped her head as if reconsidering her words. “Not any more so than any other young and inexperienced driver.”
“Are you saying I killed my girlfriend?” Brad wasn’t sure he wanted to remember his former life, if she was implying he’d been at fault.
Glenda frowned. “Pay attention. I said an accident. An awful, tragic accident, and we all miss Grace terribly.”
“But, if you’re Grace’s godmother, did you do this to me?”
“No, no, not me. I hold no ill will toward you. Listen boy, there isn’t much time. You’ve been cursed. Curses are petty, small magicks: excessive dandruff, pimples, a burning sensation in the nether regions. Typically, quickly worked and then later easily broken. But this, this curse is so much more. A full year in the making, and fueled by the anger and grief of a bereaved parent. And now to find a memory charm with a killing curse attached. I never suspected such deviousness. Even more powerful than I’d realized, with more layers—” Glenda’s hand sliced through the air. “Calm yourself. I’ve diffused the killing curse you triggered.”
Brad closed his gaping mouth but he continued to stare at her in confusion. That he’d triggered? “I really don’t understand.”
Glenda removed her reading glasses and gave him a look of pure exasperation. “It’s a simple equation. You’ve been cursed. Grace was a witch. Her mother is a witch. She cursed you. You must break the curse yourself. I would break it, but the spiteful—“ She composed herself. “A terribly grief-struck woman who is in a great deal of pain has made that impossible.” Her eyes drifted to a point beyond Brad’s shoulder. “Why she won’t see reason, even after all of these years—” Glenda pressed her lips together tightly.
“What do I do?”
Glenda’s gaze sharpened and returned to Brad. Speaking quickly, she said, “Listen carefully. You must break what remains of the curse yourself. You must forgive—”
But Brad missed whatever he “must” do, because he disappeared to that quiet place that had no name. The place where he recharged.
When he awoke from his forced slumber, he found himself in Hillary’s home again. He usually returned, at ever-changing intervals, to the same location he’d been pulled from. So he wasn’t certain why he’d landed here and not Glenda’s shop, but he was glad. He had more questions for the witch, but he had the feeling that the time she’d given him had been on the sly—stolen somehow—and returning would be dangerous to them both.
Standing in Hillary’s living room, he couldn’t help but be reminded of that moment when he’d been yanked by his guts, when his whole body felt like it was being turned inside out. Time had passed for everyone else in the world, but for him that had been mere minutes ago.
Instead of dying—if he’d understood Glenda correctly, the intended result—he’d landed alive though still cursed in an antique shop. But he’d shaken Glenda’s hand. Brad looked down at his cursed hand, no more substantial than he remembered. He had shaken her hand. He remembered that her grasp had been firm, but not tight. Her skin smooth, warm, and dry. Substantial, real. How was that possible?
He looked around for some sign of the date and the time. He usually reappeared in less than twelve hours, but every once in a while it was longer. It was disorienting at the best of times, and now with so much at stake, it frustrated him like never before.
He spotted Hillary’s laptop, still on the table and turned on but in sleep mode. Something had happened to him earlier; he had been able to touch. Maybe he still could. The laptop sat invitingly on Hillary’s desk, tempting him to try. Carefully, he reached out and swiped the touch pad. Nothing. He tried again. The screen stayed stubbornly blank. He sat down in her chair and swiped his whole hand across the pad. The screen jumped to life. No different than his usual attempts to interact with objects. He seemed to lack substance but still be able to impact the physical world around him on a very limited basis. Then why had Glenda’s hand felt so real, so substantial, in his own?
The conundrum of his changing physicality kept him distracted for several seconds before he finally noticed the date. Three days. He’d been gone three days. So long. Walter would be worried sick. And it was the middle of the night, so everyone was asleep. He had two choices: Hillary or Walter. Hillary was here; Walter was about an hour and a half by foot. Looked like he was staying at Hillary’s.
Interestingly enough, Brad found that while his body didn’t tire, his mind placed limitations on him. His concentration would waver though he wouldn’t become physically tired. He’d been able to run an eight- or nine-minute mile before he’d become a ghost. No clue how he knew that, but he did. And about eight minutes was what he could do now—except over much greater distances. It was a small piece of information, but one he should probably add to the list of miscellaneous Brad factoids that he and Walter had come up with.
Brad poked around the notes on her desk as best he could. He found a few unrelated scribbles and then he saw it: a name on a pad of paper. Stephen Bradley Sherwood. He flinched. But nothing happened. No burning pain. And he certainly didn’t transport elsewhere. But there was no doubt; this name—his name—had been the trigger for that unpleasant event. Glenda had called his amnesia a memory charm. So the real evil witch—not Glenda, even though Hillary took great pleasure in calling her one—had not intended him to live through the recovery of his memories.
But Glenda had done something to make sure he’d lived. Thank goodness. He could only imagine how painful his death would have been if what he’d experienced in Hillary’s living room
had been a preview.
He saw Hillary a split second before she spoke. Dressed in a tank and tiny shorts, she walked into the living room from back of the house, probably her bedroom given her rumpled and make-up-less state. “Hey.”
As dark as it was, it was hard to gauge her reaction to his presence in her house. He had been found weirdly lurking yet again. He was starting to feel kinda pervy. “I was just looking at your notes.”
“We’ve been worried.” She walked closer, and that’s when he saw the red-rimmed eyes and gaunt face.
Hillary always had a polish, whether she wore jeans and a tank, a sundress, or a flirty vintage frock with sexy heels. Now, fresh-faced and sleep rumpled, she looked younger, vulnerable, and a little raw. Not how he’d have previously described Walter’s sassy grandkid. The look didn’t suit her.
“You don’t look so good.” Brad’s reflex response hung between them for a split second too long before she replied. He was an idiot. That’s what happens after seven years with only one man to talk to. The filter goes away.
“Well, you look a heck of a lot better than the last time I saw you, with all those holes and everything. What happened?” She walked over to the sofa and plopped down on it, extending her legs out onto the cushions.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I landed in some antique shop.”
Hillary closed her eyes and let her head drop back on the armrest. Her dark hair spilled down the sofa. The simple act of shaking Glenda’s hand had reminded him what it felt like to touch another person. Suddenly, he wanted to run his hands through that mass of dark curls. He wanted to touch the strands he suspected were silky and smooth. He wanted to touch a pretty girl’s hair, or pick up a remote control, or type on a laptop. Anything. Something. Just to touch again. He’d given up on that hope long ago–but now that the desire had returned, it was an awful ache.
“Hey. Ghost boy. Snap out of it.”
Brad looked up from his hands. “Yeah, sorry.” He sat down on the armchair across from the sofa. The seating arrangement created a comfortable environment for conversation, and it made him wonder if Hillary had a lot of company. “Antique shop, right. So, you say my name, I start to feel like someone is holding my Voodoo doll self over an icy fire.“ Even in the dim light, he could see her disbelieving expression. ”Hey, I didn’t say it made any sense. And why the weird look when I mentioned Voodoo? You’re the one who’s into psychics.”
