A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) (4 page)

Now she’d taken an even bigger risk by leasing the car. But
bringing him here, to this house, might be good for him. He’d have at least two
other ghosts to talk to, maybe more if the faders in the backyard weren’t too
far gone. It wouldn’t be like life, of course, and every time she drove to work
he’d have to come with her, but he’d have company.

Decision made, she turned back to Meredith. “I’ll take it.”

“You—? Okay. I’ll arrange for the paperwork.” Meredith looked
a little surprised, although pleased, but her reaction was nothing compared to
that of Rose who screamed with joy, and rushed away, yelling, “Henry, Henry,
she’s moving in.”

“My office is on Millard. Why don’t we go down there and you
can take a look at the town while I get the lease together?”

“That sounds good.” Akira looked around the turret room and
smiled. Okay, her reasoning was logical. Scientifically sound. But she could also
admit to herself that living in a turret would be a childhood dream come true.

On Millard Street, Akira strolled while Meredith drew up the
paperwork, finally returning and sitting on a bench outside the realtor’s
office. The main street had a block with the usual shops: a gas station, with
convenience store attached, a grocery store with a row of parking out front,
even a small hardware store. A restaurant that hovered somewhere between being
a café and a diner sat next to a small bookstore, an antique shop, and a store
that looked as if it sold nothing but crystals.

She hadn’t kept walking because the shops seemed to end and
the buildings mostly became houses or small office fronts, lawyers and
accountants, and perhaps the occasional doctor or dentist. It all seemed very
typical. But there was something off about it. It was like a tourist town, but
smaller, dustier, not as brightly colored or as artificially friendly. How did
the town survive?

“My, what a beautiful aura you have, my dear.” Akira
automatically glanced in the direction of the voice, but then looked away,
hoping the ghost wouldn’t think anything of her response. A small woman—smaller
even than Akira herself—dressed in a flowered muumuu had stopped and was
staring at Akira. “It’s lovely. Why, that blue is almost iridescent. I don’t
know that I’ve ever seen such a shade before. Do you have an unusual gift,
child?”

“Hello, Mrs. Swanson.” Meredith had opened the door to the
realtor’s office and Akira stood, surprised. So the little woman wasn’t a
ghost?

“Hello, Meredith, dear. How’s your mother doing? I’ve been
meaning to stop by.”

“Oh, she’d be delighted to see you. She’s been a little
better lately, but she always likes to hear what’s going on in town.”

“Have you noticed your friend’s aura? It’s really quite
remarkable.” The little woman reached out as if to stroke Akira, but instead
patted the air near her arm. Akira shifted, uncomfortable, but not wanting to be
too obvious about her retreat. She threw a desperate look at Meredith but the
realtor was smiling.

“What does it tell you?”

“Why, I’m not even sure. I was just asking her if she had a
gift. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an aura like this before.”

“This is Akira Malone. Akira, Mrs. Swanson, one of the
long-time residents of Tassamara. She owns a small business a few blocks down.
Akira’s a new scientist with GD, Mrs. Swanson. I’ve just been showing her
houses, and she’s rented the old Harris place.”

“A scientist? Well, that just seems wrong. But it’s a
pleasure to meet you, child.” The woman reached out and took Akira’s hand in
both of her own, clasping it in an almost handshake, while gazing at the air
around Akira’s head.

“I, um, likewise, I’m sure,” Akira mumbled, trying to retrieve
her hand and succeeding.

“Akira needs to come in and sign her lease now, Mrs. Swanson,
so we’ll see you later.” Meredith waved and Akira nodded a good-bye as she
entered the realtor’s office.

“Is she—was that—what does she do?” Akira asked. Was there a
polite way to find out if Mrs. Swanson always accosted strangers on the street?

Meredith walked around to the other side of her desk and took
her seat. “She’s an aura reader, of course.”

“A what?”

“She reads auras.” Meredith said the words matter-of-factly.

Akira looked out the window at the departing back of the tiny
woman and then at Meredith. “Are you serious?” Akira asked, as she sat in the
chair in front of Meredith’s desk.

Meredith looked surprised. “Of course. We’re no Cassadaga,
but Tassamara is a town of psychics. That does make us a bit unusual.”

“A town of what?”

“Psychics. Cassadaga, of course, is famous for their
spiritualists. We’re much more private here.” She leaned forward, lowering her
voice, and added, as if confidentially, “I think we have more of the truly
gifted here, too, but I shouldn’t really judge.”

Akira’s face felt frozen. Meredith pushed the lease across
the desk to Akira and dropped the keys on top of it, smiling.

For a moment, Akira paused. What had she gotten herself into?
But, biting her lip, she picked up a pen and signed the lease, then scooped up
the keys.

This town might be crazy.

But then, she might be crazy, too.

The black car was empty. Akira was surprised by the stab of
disappointment she felt. Ghosts disappeared, she knew that. She had never known
what exactly happened to them, but one day they’d be there, the next they were
gone.

As a physicist, she’d theorized, although—with the exception
of that one academic-career-destroying paragraph in the
Energy Review
Quarterly
—only privately, never publicly. Were the spirits just a form of
energy? Did it dissipate slowly for some, the faders, and burn out quickly for
others? Or did it change? The first law of thermodynamics said that energy
could neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed, so did spirit energy
become some other form of energy? And if so, what?

But at the moment, the only important question was that she’d
just leased an old black Taurus for no real reason, and did she want to keep
it? She glanced back at the small airport building. She’d picked up the keys at
the desk, and dropped off the keys to her rental car, as Grace had told her to
do. She supposed she could go back in and say that she’d changed her mind, but
that might be just as hard to explain as wanting the car in the first place
could have been. She might as well just keep it.

She slid behind the wheel and adjusted the seat, and then the
mirrors. Whoever had driven it out here had been a lot taller than she was. Set
to go, she slid the key in the ignition, backed out of the parking space, and
started to drive away.

The scream was piercing in its intensity, terrifying in its
volume.

Akira slammed on the brakes, throwing the car into a skid. A
flash of white, a loud bang, and suddenly the car was filling with smoke.

The next thing she was aware of was the feel of a strong,
warm hand on her back as she tried hard to cough out her lungs to the sound of
a teenage boy’s voice saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over
again.

“Just relax and try to breathe.” That was an older, but also
familiar male voice. Akira looked up. For a moment, she didn’t recognize the
face—it was too unexpected. But the dark hair, the blue-gray eyes—finally the
pieces fell into place and she realized it was Zane Latimer, her erstwhile
interviewer. “I’m calling an ambulance,” he continued.

Frantically, Akira started shaking her head, while also
trying to wave off Dillon’s apologies. Through coughs, she gasped out, “No
ambulance. No.”

“Uh, yes, ambulance, yes,” said Zane. “You were unconscious.
I had to pull you out of the car because of the dust from the airbag. God knows
what damage I might have done.”

Through the coughing, through the pain that she was just
starting to feel, Akira had room to feel a little burst of fear. Ambulances led
to hospitals, and hospitals were bad. Very bad.

She was sitting on the gravel of the parking lot, she
realized. Zane was crouched next to her, his hand on her back, and she was
leaning against his legs. Dillon was on her other side. He’d stopped
apologizing when she spoke, but he had his fist pressed against his mouth, his
face frantic with worry.

She tried to smile at him, but it probably looked more like a
grimace. It hurt to breathe. She thought that was just from the coughing,
although she could tell that she would be bruised from the seat belt. And her
arms hurt, too—long marks along the inside of her wrists were almost like brush
burns, scraped and raw from the airbag’s impact.

“I’ll be okay.” The words sounded strangled but she got them
out.

“You were unconscious,” Zane repeated. “I’m no doctor, but I
know enough to know that unconscious is bad. You need to get looked at.”

“I’m fine,” Akira insisted. “It was just the airbag. I wasn’t
going very fast. What did I hit?” She tried to stand, pushing herself up with
one hand. Zane slid his arm under her elbow and helped her to her feet, rising
with a smooth, unconscious grace that she couldn’t match.

“Looks like a parking post. You didn’t do much damage, only
dented the fender. It’s too bad about the airbags, though. Cleaning up after a
blown airbag is expensive. And it’s an old car, and not worth much. The
insurance company will probably want to total it.”

“Total it?” Akira looked at Zane in dismay.

Standing by the car, Dillon’s eyes went wide, and he put a
possessive hand on the hood. “What will happen to me?”

Akira started shaking her head, “No, no, there’s no need to
call the insurance company. I’ll get it repaired.”

Zane’s eyes narrowed. “You seem determined to keep this car.”

Akira paused. She glanced at Dillon, and bit her lip, then
looked away. What could she say? She coughed gently a few times, a delaying
tactic as she tried to think things through. Should she let the car get
totaled? Taken away to some junkyard? Stripped for parts, and then crushed?
What would happen to Dillon?

If her father were here . . . but he wasn’t. He’d been dead
for three years.

Chin set stubbornly, she said, “I am, yes. I’ll get the car
fixed.”

“Tell you what,” Zane offered. “You let me take you to the
hospital and have a doctor take a look at you, and I’ll see about getting the
car repaired.”

Akira shook her head again. “No hospitals. I don’t—I don’t do
hospitals.”

“How can you not do hospitals? You’re hurt. You could have
internal injuries, a concussion, brain damage for all I know.”

“I’m fine.” The wince as she touched her chest probably didn’t
help convince him, but she did think she was fine, just bruised.

“I’m your boss. I could order you to go to the hospital,” Zane
suggested, exasperated.

Akira just looked at him. Obeying orders to go to the
hospital was not in her job description. It was a vague job description, but if
it entailed hospital visits, she was not going to be sticking around, contract
or no contract. And while he might technically be her boss she was going to
have a hard time thinking of him that way. Even in the formal interview
setting, he had a casual air about him that said he’d rather be having fun than
working, and today, in his blue jeans and t-shirt, he wasn’t a convincing
authority figure.

“Yeah, I didn’t think that would work.” Zane scratched his
head. “What about this—my sister is a doctor and GD has a medical lab with all
the latest scanners. Will you let her take a look at you?”

Akira thought about it, and then nodded. Medical care wasn’t
the problem. She just didn’t like hospitals.

“All right.” He took her chin between two fingers and tilted
her head up. She met his gaze, surprised to feel a tingle of warmth touching
her cheeks. What was he doing? Her lips parted slightly, almost involuntarily,
as she realized how attractive he was. She hadn’t thought of him that way, but
standing so close to him, with his arms almost around her, his eyes intent on
hers, she couldn’t help but notice. “Your pupils are both the same size. That’s
about the only thing I know how to look for.”

She pulled away. “I don’t have a concussion.”

“I’m going to call Nat and get her to meet us at GD. Will you
wait here?”

Akira’s confusion must have shown.

“I drove this car here,” he said, nodding toward the black
Taurus. “I was going to have a flying lesson, so my ride home won’t be ready
for a while. I’ll see if I can clean this up enough to be drivable. Or at least
enough to get us to GD.”

“Oh, you know, if you have something to do, I’ll be okay—”
Akira started.

“Nice try.” He brushed a finger along her cheekbone. “Wait
here,” he ordered. “I’ll be right back.”

Akira leaned back against the hood of the car. As Zane strode
away, Dillon spoke, “I’m so sorry. I was working on stretching. I was in the
hangar. But when the car started moving, it really hurt. I didn’t realize what
was happening.”