“Yeah, go back to sleep. I promise to call you after the inspection to check in so you don’t worry,” Heather answered.
What in the ever-loving hell was that trip down fantasy lane all about? She could not—would not—be attracted to one of the guys who worked for her. Those kinds of thoughts never entered her mind.
When she closed her eyes, she saw her son’s reflection fading into Jan’s. She would have sworn it was her son. Was this part of the grieving process the counselors had warned her about, the mind tricking her into seeing his face where it wasn’t? The few group therapy sessions she went to had parents talking about seeing their kids all the time out of the corner of their eye—movement in the house that wasn’t there, another child in a crowd, a laugh at the playground that they swore belonged to their lost child.
Heather had searched, but until the truck window she had never had one of those experiences. It made her hate her gifts as a medium. She’d thought about it often—what good was talking to ghosts when she couldn’t find the only one that she wanted to see?
Heather quietly left Vivien’s bedroom, shutting the door behind her. She walked the dark hall toward the living room more by memory than sight.
Seeing Trav had not made things better. She’d been convinced if she could just look at him one last time, she would feel better and that somehow she would know he was all right. Though, now, she realized how stupid that thought had been. There was no getting over something like this.
Heather was so focused on her thoughts that before she realized it, she was in her car and driving home. Her purse sat on the seat next to her. She couldn’t remember if she’d grabbed it or if it had been left in the car when she arrived at Vivien’s. It frightened her to think that she didn’t recall getting in the vehicle or driving through the quiet streets.
Coming to a stop sign, she grabbed her phone out of her purse and voice texted Vivien, “Make sure I locked your front door.” She set her phone down and placed her hands on the wheel, before again grabbing it and adding, “Thanks for everything you do for me.”
Seconds later the phone dinged. Vivien messaged, “Sleeping,” followed by, “I love you too.”
Whenever she’d fallen, Vivien had been there. The one thing she’d learned was that boyfriends and husbands came and went, but friends, true friends, were there forever. Before life had beaten it out of her, she used to be a romantic. She had believed in love and happily ever afters. It made her sad to think that it was one of the things she’d lost with age.
What mattered in life was family, in whatever form that may take. For Heather, of course that included her brother, William, and their obstinately hard-to-get-along-with mother. Vivien was family. So was Lorna. And Troy by extension. Counting the names on one hand made her world seem small.
Realizing she still waited at the stop sign on an empty street, she lifted her foot from the brake and let the car roll forward. The sky had lightened with the first peek of dawn. The color shift was subtle and not enough to stir most of the population. Only one light was on in the dark houses along the street.
Heather frowned. What was she doing on this street? It wasn’t the fastest way to her home.
She slowed the car as she drove past the house with the light. The curtains were open, and a small figure moved in the window. January Edwards? Was this Martin’s house?
She stopped the car and put it into park. The engine ran as she stepped out to look at the window. The child seemed to be having an animated conversation with herself as she sat backward on a couch facing the window. Heather saw the back edge of the furniture along the windowsill.
The ring on her forefinger sent a vibration down her hand, a sure sign that her magic was building. Heather walked around the back of the car, trying to see if anyone else was in the living room with the girl. Jan glanced to her side, talking and laughing and nodding as if a person was next to her. There was no one, no human, no ghost.
Heather stepped onto the lawn, standing in the shadows. She wondered if that is what she’d looked like to other people when she was a kid, talking to herself. Her mother had always told people she had imaginary friends and made uncomfortable excuses for her behavior. Julia Warrick, whom Heather received her supernatural gifts from, was her grandmother on her father’s side. Her mother had enjoyed the power and money that came with the Warrick name, but not what she referred to as the family embarrassment. However, having a mother, who was ashamed of her daughter’s abilities as a medium, would have been better than not having known a mother at all.
Poor Jan Edwards. It must have been hard growing up without a mother, even harder still in the years to come when puberty would rear its ugly hormone-laden head.
Heather rubbed her eyes before turning her attention back to the window. Jan stared at her. Her playful conversation was over, and her expression had become serious. The girl placed her hand on the glass, fingers spread and unmoving. If there had been a ghost, Heather would have seen it. Jan probably had an imaginary friend.
Slowly, Heather lifted her hand to wave before she hurried to get off the lawn and back into her car. The last thing she needed was to explain why she was standing outside one of her electrician’s houses, peeping in the windows at the crack of dawn like a crazy stalker.
What the hell was she doing?
Heather forced herself to concentrate on the road in front of her. She needed to get her shit together. Seriously. She couldn’t allow the world to spin out of control. The thread she hung onto for sanity was strong, but it was only one thread and threads could be cut.
The tingling in her hand grew, and she yanked the ring from her finger and threw it on the passenger side floor. The vibration was still there, but it had lessened with the amplifier gone.
Maybe it was time to jump off this magical path. Grandma Julia’s spirit had told her that the three of them were chosen to help each other heal. Lorna had been able to confront her cheating ex-husband. Forgiving him had been hard, but Lorna had done it. Vivien had been able to say goodbye to her first husband and learned that a person could have more than one soul mate in a lifetime. She was happy dating Troy.
Heather had a different kind of pain. She didn’t have an ex-husband to get over. Ben was a good man. He’d been loyal, a good father, an excellent partner, and a faithful husband. Had things gone differently, Heather knew they would still be married. But things had not gone differently. He’d moved out of town years ago. Now they couldn’t even speak to each other.
Heather had heard that statistically most bereaved parents ended up divorced, but that wasn’t true. The real number was less than ten percent. She thought about that sometimes, wondering if there was a way they could have made it work.
The pain of a mother was much different than the pain of a lover. Children were a part of you. They grew inside your body and took a piece of your soul with them. That ache would never go away. She didn’t want it to. That’s all she had left, that palpable feeling of dread and sadness.
Heather pulled into her driveway. The concrete had been cracked in the corner by a tree root beneath the ground so the car bounced as the tire rolled over it. The gray paint wasn’t a color she’d pick, and it would have taken any one of the crews she used a day to knock out a new look, but she didn’t have the heart to change anything. The attached garage was small and filled with construction supplies so she never parked her car in it.
The plan had been to do a quick remodel and sell the home for a bigger place.
The plan had been to fill that bigger place with more children.
The plan had been…
It didn’t matter.
Heather got out of the car and pushed the door with her hip as she looked for her house key on the keyring. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Once inside, she called out softly, “I’m home.”
Silence answered her, as it always did. She didn’t bother turning on lights as she moved from the living room to the kitchen. Compare
d to Vivien’s, her home was small—three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The master bedroom wasn’t a suite, and one of the bedrooms was her office. There was extra space in the half-finished basement.
At the end of the hall were three doors—to the right was her office, in the middle was the bathroom, and to the left was her son’s room. She touched the door lightly as she moved past it into the bathroom. A tiny smudge of old adhesive had been left over from a truck sticker, but her fingers no longer stuck to it when she touched it. In the beginning, she used to go inside every day and look for him, but she never went into Trav’s bedroom anymore.
Heather stood in the bathroom for a long time, staring at her face in the mirror until the blurring of her eyes caused her features to distort and become unrecognizable. She stopped seeing herself and instead became haunted by the flash of her son’s face in the reflected truck window. It wasn’t like staring at a photograph hanging on her living room wall or watching a video. He’d moved freely as if he’d been sitting in the vehicle.
No. She couldn’t let herself become deluded. It was a trick of the mind. Jan had been sitting in the truck.
Determined to start her day as she did any other, she turned on the shower and undressed. There was plenty that needed to be done, and if she worked her way down that list, she would know what to do with her time. The hours would be filled, and she wouldn’t have to stop and think.
Chapter Four
Warrick Theater felt more like a childhood home than her mother’s house. Heather had spent hours as a child running along the aisles, watching old movies, and hiding in the apartment upstairs. The building was over a hundred years old, and according to the plaque the city had placed on the front of the building, it had been commissioned by local businesswoman and suspected witch Julia Warrick. Some called Heather’s grandmother a witch, and maybe she had been, but Julia had identified as a spiritualist and a medium. She had held séances in the theater, and clients would travel hundreds of miles to speak to their loved ones through her.
Nowadays, though, the business was what one would expect from a historical theater—movies and stage performances. They even managed to book a few indie film auditions.
“Grandma?” Heather called into the empty building. She felt tiny strands of hair tickling her face and tried smoothing them into the bun at the nape of her neck. Luckily meeting a housing inspector at a job site in work clothes wasn’t frowned upon and didn’t require anything fancy. “Are you here?”
The spirit didn’t show herself.
Heather and William had inherited the building, but her brother had sold his half to her. At the time, he didn’t believe in ghosts and thought, much like their mother, that Julia was a con woman. He knew better now. Seeing was believing.
Heather moved past the concession stand in the front lobby toward the curtain hanging over the theater doorway. Julia often manifested near the seats. The Warrick Theater was a small venue compared to the multiplexes. They only had a hundred and four cushioned seats.
Heather told people she wanted to modernize the décor but couldn’t because of the building’s historical status. But, in truth she didn’t push too hard. The gold and burgundy sponge-painted walls, art deco light fixtures, and paneled ceiling might be out of fashion, yet they reminded her of Julia, and of her childhood. This theater was one of the few places she had felt normal as a kid.
When she’d hired Lorna to manage the place, Heather hadn’t expected things to turn out the way they did. Lorna was the best theater manager she’d ever hired. Within a short period of time, she’d had the place booked solid. Sure, they had to cancel some of the shows because Heather, Lorna, and Vivien accidentally summoned a demon to terrorize the theater, which in turn attacked Lorna and put her in the hospital. But they’d taken care of that, and the theater was getting back on schedule.
“Grandma?” Heather called as she walked down the aisle toward the stage. “Are you here?”
“Here, there, nowhere,” Julia’s voice answered, but the ghost did not appear.
Crap.
Heather recognized the tone. When Julia manifested it could be from any part of her timeline. Younger Julia, who’d lived in the 1920s, was one of the more challenging to get answers from. It wasn’t surprising since Julia, as a bootlegger and marijuana grower, had trust issues.
“Grandma, can you show yourself, please?”
“You know I hate it when you call me that.” Julia’s transparent body appeared in a seat. The muffled sound of her voice felt far away.
Heather reached for her hand. She’d flung the ring off that morning in a fit, and it was now somewhere on the floor of her car. When the ring amplified her abilities, it had also made the ghosts easier to hear.
Julia’s leg draped over the arm of her seat, and she swung her foot lightly as if bored. She wore high-waisted trousers and a matching vest over a dress shirt. There was no denying her grandmother had been glamorous during that era. Her short hair had finger waves, and she looked like she belonged in a Gatsby movie.
“But you are my grandma,” Heather reasoned, hoping a sentimental thread would trigger an older version of Julia.
“Can’t you call me by my name?” Julia asked.
Heather felt like she had cotton shoved in her ears, muffling the words.
“Grandma makes me sound old,” the spirit complained.
“Okay, Julia,” Heather said, playing along. “I need your help.”
“What is it, doll?” Julia lifted her fingers, and a cigarette appeared between them. Smoke curled from the tip before disappearing. Most of the time, like now, Heather couldn’t smell the phantom smoke.
Usually ghosts were stuck in one moment of their lives. Those residual hauntings didn’t even know they were dead as they lived moments over and over. Julia was an intelligent haunting, aware of her surroundings. No, she was more than that, she was a super-intelligent haunting. She changed her age and style like the living picked outfits, was aware of her death (not all intelligent hauntings were), and could communicate better than most.
“Are you finally ready to ask about your love life?” Julia asked, appearing put out by the thought. “Do you know how many women come to me for that? I bet it’s the same for you. I say I can talk to the dead, and when they get their chance to ask a question it’s always about a man. Does he love me? Will I meet him? Where is he? Will we be married? Is he handsome?”
Heather opened her mouth to interrupt, but Julia held up a hand and shook her head to stop her.
“Handsome? Can you believe it? That’s what they always care about. Rich and handsome. I think twice in all my life did a woman ask me if he was kind first, instead of like an afterthought. There is beauty in kindness, and in the right heart. That’s all that matters really at the end of things, and in the middle for that matter. A handsome face only matters in the beginning. Who plans a story for its beginning, though? I used to tell them to forget about tall, dark, and handsome and focus on themselves. You can imagine how well that answer goes over half the time. They pretend to nod, but it’s all—”
“Julia, I’m not looking for handsome,” Heather interrupted.
“Too bad, cause you’re getting it. He’s smart too, and kind.” Julia laughed. “With a body like a Greek—”
“I’m not asking about my love life,” Heather broke in.
“You should.” Julia lowered her voice. It was hard enough hearing what she said in her normal tone that the decreased volume forced Heather to lean toward her. A tiny ache started in her temple as she focused on Julia’s words. “Your kitty cat isn’t growing any younger, but the right man can make it purr.”
Heather shot up and back, pulling away. “Ew, Grandma, come on. I don’t want to talk about my dating life.”
“Even if I’ve located a nice man for you?”
“Yes, even if,” Heather dismissed. “I need you to be serious for a moment.”
“Well, out with it,” Julia urged. “I
t’s not like I have an eternity to—actually.” She laughed. “I do have an eternity.”
“Have you seen my son?” Heather could barely get the words out.
The cigarette disappeared from her fingers, and Julia’s features aged by small degrees. Her hairstyle changed but was still shorter. She slid her leg from the arm of the chair and made a move to stand before disappearing. Seconds later, she reappeared in the aisle between Heather and the stage. A long green dress with small yellow flowers had replaced her pantsuit. Her face had aged a few decades.
“I haven’t seen him.” Julia reached her hand forward as if to touch Heather’s cheek. Heather felt a slight chill at the touch but nothing substantial. “Did you see him? Do you have reason to believe he’s here?”
“I thought I did, but…” Heather rubbed her temple. The ache in her head was growing stronger the longer they spoke. She should have never taken off the ring. “Can you look for him? On your side? Is that possible?”
If anyone could find him, it was her grandmother.
Julia closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “I don’t sense him. If you want to look for him, you know what you have to do.”
Julia’s words were becoming harder to hear. Heather nodded. “My mind was playing tricks on me, I guess. I thought I saw him in a reflection, but it doesn’t make sense that he would come now.”
“Maybe your magic was trying to tell you something important, and that was its way of getting your attention.” Julia’s spirit faded, and her voice softened. “You should…”
“Grandma?” Heather turned in a circle, searching for the spirit, but she was gone. “I should what?”
Should séance her son?
No. Heather didn’t want that for him. Séancing him would be a purely selfish act unless she had reason to believe he wasn’t at rest. Trav had been such a good boy. There was no reason for him to be sticking around.
“Grandma?” she called, willing the ghost back. “Julia?”
She received no answer. Why had she taken off the damned ring?
The Fourth Power Page 3
