Have I mentioned I’m haunted by ghosts? It was my one weirdness when I was still vanilla human. My baby sister had been a powerful medium. Whether the last name Graves came from an ancestor with the same talent or was just a dose of irony I don’t know. I do know I’m grateful I wasn’t born with the “gift.” The dead may try to contact me, but it ain’t easy. They can’t use what isn’t there. So only the most powerful spirits can get through—those and the one spirit who attached herself to me on her death … Ivy herself.
She doesn’t manifest often, but it’s generally memorable when she does. If I had the talent, she could use my body to talk to me with my own mouth. I don’t. So she has to do things the hard way. Sometimes it makes her frustrated and I wind up with poltergeist-style behavior. Kids think they have the best temper tantrums, but ghost kids have them beat by a mile. Not what you need when you’re at the wheel.
I pulled onto the nearest side street and up to the curb, my breath fogging the air inside the car, despite the open windows. One of the first manifestations of a spirit is a rapid, drastic temperature drop.
“I know you’re here. It’s all right. Just don’t mess with the Miata, Ivy. You know how much I love this car.” I kept my voice low, using soothing tones. Getting agitated creates a kind of energy that makes the ghost more likely to act out.
The dome light flashed on and off. If it was Ivy, we’d worked out a code over the years. Once was a yes. Twice was no.
“Ivy, is it you?”
Two flashes. No?
Well, shit. Not Ivy, but whoever it was knew the code? Did ghosts talk? I mean, if they cared enough to stay and latch onto someone, there was generally a reason, and they almost always tried to talk to the living, but do they communicate with each other? That I didn’t know. Damn it. I wracked my brain. Ghosts attach to a person or thing that was important to them in their life, someone or something that they consider unfinished business. Until that business gets settled or the body gets cremated, they don’t move on to the afterlife. Trouble was, I never have found out what Ivy wants from me.
True believers almost never ghost, so this was someone I knew who wasn’t a churchgoer. Not many of those in my life, are there?
Um, just about everyone but my gran. But considering the level of violence in my life, there have actually been very few fatalities. Could it be Bob Johnson? The timing was right and he’d been with me once when Ivy had manifested. I couldn’t think why he’d latch onto me, but stranger things had happened. The car was practically a meat locker at this point, and I shivered, my skin crawling with goose bumps.
“Bob, is it you?”
Two flashes. Wrong again. The spirit, whoever it was, was starting to get frustrated. I could feel an electric tension building in the air, enough to make my hair start to frizz.
“Easy. Take it easy. I know you’re trying to communicate. We can work this out.” A thought crossed my mind. It might work—or not, depending on how focused and powerful the ghost was. “See if you can focus the cold to use frost to write on the window.” If it was an older ghost, they should be able to. I pointed to the rounded surface of the windshield. In response, the temperature dropped even further. My teeth started chattering as an arctic blast ruffled my hair to hit the glass with pinpoint precision. I watched in fascinated horror as familiar handwriting took shape and a name appeared.
Vicki.
My heart stopped for a moment and I felt dizzy. No. NO! Dammit, she wasn’t … she couldn’t be …
“Vicki?” My voice was a raw whisper. I stared at the frost on the window, tears freezing on my cheeks, a knot as hard as a rock in my throat. I could barely breathe.
The ghost reacted to my emotions. They always do. The Miata began to rock back and forth, the radio blasting to noisy life, static whining and crackling from the speakers, loud enough to make me cringe. The dome light and headlights were flashing.
I shuddered from the cold. Every breath I took burned going into my lungs. Every exhale was a visible mist in the air inside the car. “Stop. Vicki, you’ve got to stop. Please, you’re hurting me.”
It was as if I hit a switch. All the poltergeist-style activity just stopped. But the cold didn’t diminish. She was still there.
“God, what happened? How? I mean, you were fine!” I picked up the pictures as though she could see them. “See? You were happy.” Hot tears flowed down cheeks that felt chapped with cold. I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t make any sense.
Ever so slowly, I saw writing form in the frost on the window. Letter by letter, until I could read her full message.
Love you.
And then she was gone.
10
It was a long time before I could pull myself together enough to drive. My best friend was dead. The shock was horrible. On top of everything else, it was just too much. She wasn’t dead. I didn’t want to believe … couldn’t believe—
I cried. I screamed. I cried some more. Eventually, I got myself under control enough to restart the car. Now I was definitely speeding, but I needed to get to Birchwoods, find out what the hell was going on. Yeah, I could’ve called. But I wanted to hear this in person. Discretion was beyond the grave there, so I was going to have to fight to get answers. I’d just get stonewalled on the phone and they’d have time to prepare a response … or a security team.
I pulled the car up to the outside gate and ran my card. I went through without problems and stopped before the second gate, rolling down my window. Gerry was on the gate again. He flinched when he saw me, and this time when he ran through the security protocol he did it like he meant it. I passed with flying colors, but that didn’t seem to reassure him much. “Dr. Scott has asked that you go to his office in the main administration building. He needs to speak with you urgently.” Gerry’s voice was its empty, professional best, giving nothing away. I shivered. His attitude wasn’t helping my denial.
My stomach tightened into a knot, making the nausea worse. But I didn’t ask any more questions, just handed back the clipboard along with my driver’s license.
Gerry passed back my license. “Take the left fork of the road; the administration building is in the back.”
“I know.” Duh, I’ve been here how many times?
Gerry stepped back from the car and waved a signal to the gate operator. With the flick of a switch the heavy metal framework barring my way moved smoothly aside. I felt, rather than saw, magical protections I’d never known existed ease in response to the opening of the gate. I drove through and down the long, curving drive that led to the administrative part of the complex. The white brick buildings were gleaming and pristine, like pearls scattered decoratively across the vivid green of the manicured lawns.
I drove slowly. I hated this. Hated it so much. God, it was only yesterday that I’d had the bellhop haul stuff up that hill. What in the hell had happened?
She couldn’t be gone. How many times had I driven up here in the past few years, bringing her news of the outside world? How many afternoons had we walked the path around the little freshwater pond behind the main complex, or fed stale bread to the ducks that congregated there?
I’ve had losses before. My father’s abandonment, my sister’s death, even, in a way, my mother’s retreat into the bottle. You’d think I’d be used to it, that by now I’d have developed a hard shell that would protect me. I suppose that’s exactly how it looks to people who don’t know me. But it’s a lie.
I pulled into one of half a dozen or so parking spaces with neatly printed signs proclaiming VISITOR PARKING and climbed out. The sun was low enough in the sky that the umbrella might not have been necessary, but I used it anyway.
I slammed the car door shut with more force than was really necessary and heard an ominous sound of metal fatigue that normal human muscles couldn’t make happen. Another thing broken. I was broken, Vicki was broken … why not everything else? I hurried up the gentle slope of the handicapped-friendly entrance feeling both like an idiot and like a child who’s been beaten one too many times. When I reached the shade of the small ivy-bedecked porch that protected the entrance, I collapsed the umbrella. The automatic doors whooshed open and I walked in.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Graves.” The receptionist stood as I walked through the door. She had to notice the pallor and fangs but managed to hide her reaction admirably. I could not hide the fact that I was about to burst into tears. She was wearing one of those fitted suits that are tailored to emphasize every curve. It was tomato red and had been hemmed to a length that would show enough leg to be attractive without being improper. Her dark hair had been swept up in a twist. That, coupled with a sweetheart neckline, showed a lot of creamy neck and just a hint of cleavage, the effect emphasized discreetly by a pearl necklace and earrings. “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll let Dr. Scott know you’ve arrived.” She gestured in the general direction of the expensive leather couches that graced the tastefully appointed waiting room.
“Thank you.” My feet sank into the deep golden pile of the carpet as I crossed over to the cushy waiting chairs. There were magazines, of course. The latest copy of People sat on the polished mahogany coffee table. Vicki’s parents were on the cover, under the headline “Hollywood’s Top Power Couples.” I shook my head sadly and reached for US Weekly instead. I’d probably have to see them at the funeral. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Jerks. It made me wonder how they were going to deal with their daughter’s death in a way that didn’t reveal the embarrassing truth about Vicki to the world.
That was cynical of me, and I knew it. But it had been Vicki’s greatest heartbreak—that her parents couldn’t handle who and what she was.
I didn’t read the magazine, not really. If you asked me what was on the page I was staring at, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. But I was in a reception area. Reading magazines is what you do. So I pretended, flipping the pages while my mind was a million miles away. I could feel the stares of the other people in the waiting room but pretended not to notice.
