Ghost Flower (20 page)

Madam Cruz’s head started to flop around, and she made indistinct noises, some of them that sounded like words, and some gibberish. “That night… tried to cheat me… bastard.”

Stuart started a slow clap, saying, “She nailed Jay,” and several other people laughed, but Bain ignored them.

“Jay, can you hear me?” Bain was leaning forward with an intensity that was almost comical. “That wasn’t me. I would never cheat you.”

“Did it,” Madam Cruz hissed. She pointed a finger at Bain. “Changed the plan… set me up.”

“Jay, J.J., man, I swear. Listen about that other thing—”

Madam Cruz lunged from her seat, arms extended, and wrapped her hands around Bain’s neck. “Bastard,” she roared. Her eyes were
rolling in their sockets and spit was running out of the corner of her mouth. The mood in the room had shifted abruptly. No one was laughing now, and Stuart had gone pale. “I was there. I kept my mouth shut. But now…” Her hands were squeezing Bain’s throat so hard his face was red and he was gasping, struggling to peel her fingers off. “I never told—”

She was strangling him in front of us before our eyes, and we were all frozen, watching in horror, unable to move.

Except Grant. He leapt to his feet and moved to crouch next to Madam Cruz. He put a hand on her shoulder and one on her arm and said, “It’s okay, Jay.” His voice was friendly but soothing. “You can go now. He knows. He understands. Leave in peace. It’s okay, Jay, leave in peace.”

And as if Grant were some kind of ghost wrangler, Madam Cruz’s hands fell from Bain’s neck, her face relaxed, and her head slumped against her chest. Grant maneuvered her hulk back to her chair. Bain rolled sideways off the stool and lay in a fetal position on the floor.

He was still coughing and spluttering and clutching his neck a moment later when Madam’s eyes opened and she looked around curiously. Our faces must have told her something happened. “Did we have a visitor?” she asked.

“Someone called Bain a bastard and tried to strangle him,” Bridgette said dryly. She studied her fingers. “But we don’t have to go all the way to the afterlife to find people who want—”

“Shut up,” Bain snarled, climbing to his feet. His face was stormy, and his fists were clenched. He turned to where Grant was sitting and towered over him. “Why did you get in the middle of it?”

Grant frowned at him. “Because it looked like you couldn’t breathe.”

“Damn you, Villa, why can’t you ever mind your own business? I can handle myself.”

Grant said, “Sorry. I—I thought I was doing you a favor.”

Bain leaned anxiously toward Madam Cruz. “Can you get him back? I need to ask him something.”

“I—I don’t know,” she said. The strangling grunting creature of a minute earlier was gone, replaced by a friendly-looking lady with watery blue eyes. Some of the kohl had run down her face, and she looked a bit spent. “With the spirits, we are on their time, not them on ours.” She looked around the room. “Welcome to you all,” she said with a cheery smile. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

We all agreed.

“You never know what will happen. Sometimes the spirits arrive without our asking, and sometimes they must be invited. Shall we try again?”

“I’d really like to get Jay back here,” Bain urged.

Madam Cruz smiled up at him placidly. “You’ve made that clear, Mr. Silverton. And we will do what we can.” Her eyes came back to the group. “I ask that you all stand and hold hands.”

We did. I had Bridgette on one side and Grant on the other. He was taller than I’d realized earlier. He smiled down at me as he took my hand. It was warm, and suddenly I was glad he was there.

“Repeat after me,” Madam Cruz said, closing her eyes. “Powers beyond, powers who are near.”

“Powers beyond, powers who are near,” we repeated.

“Please let our loved ones kindly appear.”

“Please let our loved ones kindly appear.”

It was a foolish rhyme, and yet saying, hearing us all say it, gave it a strange kind of resonance.

“Again,” she commanded.

“Powers beyond, powers who are near. Please let our loved ones kindly appear.”

“Again,” she ordered.

“Powers beyond, powers who are near. Please let our loved ones kindly appear.”

“More,” Madam nearly shouted, and we matched her volume, getting louder and louder with each repetition.

“Powers beyond, powers who are near, please let our loved ones kindly appear. Powers beyond, powers who are near, please let our loved ones kindly appear. Powers beyond, powers who are near, please let our loved ones kindly appear.”

“Stop!”

Silence dropped like a trapdoor, sudden, fast, absolute. Madam Cruz’s eyes shot open.

My phone rang.

“A
nswer it,” Madam Cruz commanded.

It said, “UNKNOWN NUMBER.” My hand was shaking as I brought it to my ear. “Hello?”

I heard breathing.

“Hello?” I repeated. “Who’s there?”

A weak, raspy voice said, “Ro-ro.”

My hand began to shake. “What?”

“Ro-ro,” the voice repeated, sounding plaintive over the static.

“Who is this? Who’s there?” I repeated. “Tell me your name right now or I hang up.”

“No!” The sound was plaintive, a wail. “Please don’t… so lonely… I’ve missed you. I… I forgive you, Ro-ro.”

The words froze me. “I’m hanging up,” I said.

“Liza,” the voice said, the whisper urgent. “Who else? It’s Liza, Ro-ro.”

In my mind I saw the girl with her eyes closed, closed forever, in the photo.

In my mind I saw the girl that afternoon in the dressing room,
staring at me in the mirror.

I groped behind me for my stool and sat down, hard.
There are no such things as ghosts
, my mind repeated. “That isn’t possible. You can’t be Liza. Liza is dead.”

“Best friend for…
ever
,” the voice said. “You know. You… saw me. At the mall… in the mirror.”

“No. I imagined that.”

“I was… there… with you… need you…”

The sound trailed away. “Hello?”

There was a whisper like wind brushing over the mouthpiece. I pressed the phone to my ear to hear better. The voice said, “They… must be stopped… before…”

“Before what?”

“Help me… find… the truth. Find the… coat.”

I wasn’t sure about the last word. “Coat?”

“
Be careful
!” The voice became higher pitched and urgent. “I feel… they’re… there. Someone… from that night. Someone… with you…
Now
.”

I looked around the room. Everyone was staring at me. “I don’t understand. What do you want me to do?”

“The coat… If you—”

Bridgette’s hand wrenched the phone from mine. “This isn’t a funny joke,” she shouted. “No one is amused. Leave my family alone or you will be—”

There was a rush of cool air like something leaving the room, and all the candles went out at once, plunging us into complete darkness.

We sat in silence. I couldn’t move. I was freezing, but my heart was racing as though I’d just sprinted a mile.

Bridgette crossed the room, found a light switch, and flipped it on.

It felt like waking up in an unknown bed in bright daylight. Everyone seemed uncomfortable and shifted to avoid one another’s eyes.

Still holding my phone, Bridgette planted herself in front of the medium, who had sunk back into her chair. “Where is your assistant? Where is the person on the other end of this phone? Are they close by? Someone on the catering staff? I will find them and you will pay.”

With her words, the tension in the room dissipated. It was such an obvious, easy stunt, I felt stupid for having been taken in by it. I had the sense that everyone else did too.

Madam Cruz looked at Bridgette with an expression that could have been pity. “I have no assistant. I had nothing to do with that. That—was the spirits.”

“I have a hard time believing the spirits have a calling plan,” Bridgette said. I don’t think I’d ever liked her as much as I did then.

“I cannot help what you believe or don’t believe. Spirits communicate in many ways, whatever is at hand.” Madam Cruz wiped her forehead with her palm, and I realized that she was sweating. She gazed around at all of us intensely. “I have never experienced anything like that before.” She swallowed, and it struck me that she was as disconcerted by what had happened as we were. “Never.”

“I’m sure,” Bridgette said, sounding unconvinced.

But her objections felt hollow in the face of Madam Cruz’s very real agitation. The medium’s eyes went to my face. She leaned toward me at an angle, half in and half out of her seat like she was afraid of approaching too near me. “You have been given a gift,” she said. “That—never before. Perhaps this shows the strength of your love for this girl, or hers for you. Extraordinary. Most extraordinary. Use it wisely.”

Her eyes were regarding me with a mixture of wonder and fear. Bridgette moved in front of her to hand me my phone back. “Use it wisely,” she mimicked.

“Can’t you let it rest?” Bain burst out. “Just because you don’t believe doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t.”

Bridgette’s posture became rigid. She turned slowly toward him. “I’m sorry if I am undercutting your experience of the occult,” she said stiffly. She leaned over my head to whisper to him, “You’d better start hoping ghosts can’t come back and talk. For all our sakes, you’d better hope that.”

Then she turned and headed for the door.

I looked around to see if anyone but me heard what she’d whispered to Bain, but Bridgette’s opening the door had broken the spell of the room. And as the noises from outside filtered in, the taut bond that had seemed to hold us all together vanished. Suddenly, everyone was an unreadable stranger.

This has nothing to do with you
, I told myself, but my heart wouldn’t stop racing.

Coralee breezed through the door headed right for me. “That was amazing. Totally gnarly. You should see your face in the footage.”

“Pass.”

Her head tilted to one side, and she studied me. “You look a little pale.”

“I think I just need a second. I’ll be right back,” I said and threaded my way out of the music room.

I reminded myself that this had nothing to do with me. And even if it did, there was no such thing as a ghost—

You saw me.

—Liza had jumped off a ridge—

Find the coat.

—and there was absolutely no proof—

Find the truth.

—to the contrary.

Please just leave her alone,
her father’s voice screamed into my mind.

Liza was dead. She had committed suicide. This was some kind of prank to scare me—

Someone… there. That night. Someone with you.

—and it was working.

Involuntarily my mind flashed over the guest list from that night, first past the faces of the people there tonight—Jordan, Grant, Bain, Bridgette, Stuart, then what I remembered from photos of Roscoe Kim and Xandra Michaels. They were beautiful, polished, spoiled, perfect. None of them looked like killers.

But any of them could be one.

I forgive you.

There was a powder room between the music room and the main area, but I passed it and ran up the stairs to the second floor. I wanted to be alone, and as far from the others as I could get. I turned into the master suite, crossed several miles of Siberian white carpet, slipped into the master bathroom, and let the solid wood door slide closed.

A strong hand caught it two inches before it hit the wall, and my heart froze. Slowly, the door was pushed back open. Stuart Carlton stepped in, closed the door, and clicked its lock into place.

He leaned back against it and grinned.

S
tuart let his hooded eyes rest on me and whispered, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long.” I stepped away, but he followed and trapped me against the wall.

I pushed against him, hard, but he was stronger than me. “What are you doing?”

Stuart laughed. “This is a re-creation of the party that night, isn’t it? I’m re-creating all of the events.”

I braced my arms against his chest and kept my elbows locked. “I don’t remember what happened that night. Any of it.”

“I’m a little surprised you don’t remember our part,” he said. “But that’s okay, just follow my lead.” He leaned down and nipped at my neck.

“Ouch,” I said, pulling away.

“Very good. That’s what you said that night.”

I felt like a caged animal. No one downstairs would hear me scream up here, and he was between me and the door. My mind raced in panicked circles:
I’m trapped… get him away… I’m trapped.

He seemed to sense my fear and smiled slowly. “That’s just how you looked that night. You were scared then too, weren’t you?”

Breathe,
I told myself.
Think
. “Why don’t you tell me what we did first?” I blurted, trying to buy myself some time. “You know, to, um, get me into the mood.”

I saw his Adam’s apple go up and down as he swallowed hard. “Well, I was leaning against the counter, and I held you pressed up against me. Like this,” he said, gathering me to him.

I struggled to keep as much space between us as I could. “And?” I swallowed.

“I had my hands on your shoulders like this, and I told you to grab a towel to kneel on, so that you could—”

“What I was wearing,” I interrupted, trying to steer the narrative in a different direction.
Distract him
. “Do you remember?”

“Yeah. That’s how it all started. I came in here for obvious reasons, and you were in the bathtub taking a little nap. No water in it, just you, sitting up in that coat you were running around in.” He gazed fondly at the bathtub. “When I came in, you sort of woke up, and I said, ‘Let’s see what you have on underneath that coat.’ And I undid it, and—”

“I was wearing a
coat
?” I repeated. “In June?”

“Yeah. A trench coat. Very sexy. And it wasn’t like you had much on beneath it.” The way he said it made him sound like a panting dog.

I was staring at myself in the mirror over his shoulder. And then something shifted, and I could picture it—