Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (91 page)

David just laughed as he poured himself another.

“I’ll have to get used to them if I’m going to be Detective Slocum. He’s a real man, and this is a real man’s drink right here.”

“Yeah,” Kate said. “A real drunk man.”

I laughed and shook my head.

We were quiet for a little while, watching the show. I was in the chair leaning sideways, my feet up on the arm. Even though I wanted to pull the blanket over me, I thought the better of it with David in the house. His spinster comment was still fresh in my mind.

A nice fire was crackling in the fireplace. Drops of rain were splattering across the window. I tried to focus on the show, but I ended up staring outside into the dark rainy night a while, my thoughts turning to Ty.

And how he was getting back, just about now.

Coming off the airplane. Home again, in Bend.

“So, do you feel ready?” Kate asked, yawning and stretching.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” David said, letting out a rare nervous sigh. “I just worry that I’ll freeze up or something. You know, draw a complete blank while I’m up there.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. I’m excited for you, David. I really, really am.”

“Yeah, yeah, but tell me what you see for my future, Psychic Abby Craig. Do I get the part?”

He rubbed his hands together and looked at me expectantly.

“I wish I could say,” I said. “I mean, I could tell you about the ghost that keeps bothering me, but I’m afraid that’s about it in terms of that kind of thing. Unless you’re dead, I can’t seem to help.”

He sighed.

“Oh well. I wish you’d just see the future instead. That way it would be of some use.”

His words lingered for a moment.

The future.

Suddenly, I was struck by a thought.

Something I hadn’t realized before.

David, drunk on the sofa.

Helping me understand.

Helping me realize exactly what was going on.

CHAPTER 21

I was trying to finalize my menu for Christmas dinner. I had a biscotti recipe in mind for dessert but I wanted to practice making it one more time to cut down on the possibility of a last-minute meltdown. We had made it in cooking class. The chef had told us how Italians like to dip their biscotti in wine, when it was served as a dessert.

I figured I better try the wine as well. I poured a small glass and got down to business.

I took out all the ingredients and put them on the counter in front of me. Flour, salt, sugar, butter. I began mixing everything together. If this batch turned out, I was going to give them to Jesse’s dad. I had already bought a remastered copy of an early ZZ Top album for him and planned to drop them off at his garage after work tomorrow. Now all there was to do was to make the cookies and place them in the snowman tin I had bought.

I mixed the dough, adding cranberries and dark chocolate. When it was all together, I rolled the mixture into a ball and put it in the fridge for half an hour. The wine was a little too sweet but it would probably go well with the biscotti.

I thought about what David had said. How he wished I could see the future.

I had convinced myself that that was exactly what I was seeing in the vision. Something that hadn’t happened yet. It made sense. That’s why Kate and I hadn’t found any information about a body in that alley. Because there was no body. Not yet.

I jumped when the phone rang.

It was Kate.

“Hey, Abby,” she said. “I’ll be here late again.”

“Wow,” I said, pulling myself together. “You’ve really been putting in the hours lately.”

“Well, things are a little weird here. I’ll tell you about it later. But anyway, I wanted to let you know and also ask about what Dr. Krowe said.”

I was supposed to see him earlier, but he had called to cancel our appointment. He gave me a condensed version over the phone of what he had found out.

“He said that it’s possible,” I said. “He found two other cases of people who were color blind and then started dreaming in color first and were eventually able to see colors.”

“Oh, my God, Abby. That sounds like great news.”

“Sure,” I said, leaning on the counter.

“Well, you don’t sound too excited.”

“I don’t know. For one patient it took almost 10 years to fully get there, and for the other one it was 22 years. And neither had lost it in an accident, they were just born that way. My case doesn’t seem to fit into the pattern.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, you never know. Maybe you’ll be a freak in a good way and yours will come back in a year. I still think it might be good news. Stay positive. I’ll see you in the morning.”

After we hung up I had a few more sips of the wine while I waited for the timer to go off. I preheated the oven and watched the temperature rise.

When it was time I sliced the dough like the recipe said.
Biscotti
meant twice baked. So I would bake them again.

I brought them out of the oven after the second go around. I took a bite of one too soon, burning the roof of my mouth. I remembered the wine and dipped the next bite. Better. Much better. In fact it was close to perfection. I would have to pick up a bottle of the wine for Jesse’s dad as well.

My mind wandered as I placed the biscotti in the tin. It had been a few days since Ty had gotten back to Bend and I hadn’t heard from him. I checked the charge on my phone. It was still going strong.

Suddenly my knees went weak. I was struck down by the thought that this was how it was going to be. Ty was back in Bend.

Starting a new life.

Without me.

CHAPTER 22

It was only 10:15, but I was tired. I decided to turn in early.

It didn’t take long before I was back in the alley. It was snowing again. She was dead again, her blood flowing as red as ever.

As my legs dragged me toward her, I tried to pay attention to my surroundings, to every detail.

But all I could see were the bricks and the row of old seats and the snow and the blood. But there was something new, something I hadn’t noticed before. Christmas lights strung over the door of the small wine shop. And something written in large white handwriting on the window. “All bottles of Syrah half off until 12/24.”

Suddenly I could feel the eyes on me again. I looked around, but no one was there.

I walked up to the dying young woman on the ground, her legs and long light hair spread out around her. The familiar church bell rang in the distance. I tried to keep count. One, two, three. I watched as her eyes stared up. Her chest barely moving. I dropped down beside her.

“You’ll be okay,” I said, knowing it was a lie.

No one could lose that much blood and live.

Four. Five. Six.

The eyes were still on me. If it was her killer, I had to be strong. I had to turn and see who it was. I forced myself to look behind me.

And I saw.

It was the ghost, coming toward me. I could feel the cold coming off of her.

At that moment I heard the bells, still ringing one right after the other with barely a pause in between. Too fast, too loud. I lost count. But I felt a strange calmness.

I stood up and looked at the ghost and the body on the ground. And then I understood. I saw the obvious similarities. But for the first time, I saw the differences.

They weren’t the same.

They weren’t the same at all.

“Save her,” the ghost whispered through the snowflakes falling between us.

“Save her.”

***

I couldn’t get back to sleep after that.

While I waited up for Kate in the living room, I turned on the TV. I stopped at an old favorite,
The Third Man
. Harry Lime was smiling slyly over at Holly Martins, trying to decide whether to push his old friend out of the cage as they rode high above Vienna in a Ferris wheel.

When Kate got home just past one, I could tell she had been crying.

She was too upset to pretend everything was all right.

There had been some layoffs at the paper.

“But they didn’t fire you, right?” was all I could say.

She shook her head slowly.

“No,” she said, her voice cracking. “I think I’m safe, for now. But they cut six people, including Tony and Daniel, that photographer who helped us that time. I don’t know why but we didn’t see it coming. It was a real bloodbath.”

I made her some tea, mixing a long sigh of relief with the steam. I couldn’t imagine Kate not working at
The Bugler
. It was more than what she did. It was who she was.

I took the tea out to her in the living room and squeezed her hand.

“It’ll be all right,” I said. “You’ll see. They can’t fire you. You’re their best reporter.”

“Thanks,” she said, blowing in her cup. “But it’s not about that. Who knows, maybe the whole paper will go under. They used to count on the real estate revenue to support it, but with the economy, that’s all dried up.”

I hadn’t ever given that a thought.

“Whatever happens, you’ll be okay,” I said. “I’m not the only survivor in this family.”

She smiled, but looked away.

“Anything new on the ghost front?” she said, her eyes small and streaked with veins.

“Not really,” I said. “You should get to bed.”

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

***

I stared up at the ceiling, thinking about how selfish I’d been. I had sensed something was going on with Kate recently, but I was too consumed with my own little life to ask about her problems.

I decided I would do my best from now on to ease Kate’s burden. I’d hold back on the ghost stuff. I knew she wanted to know, but it was wrong. It was my problem. Kate had the newspaper. I had ghosts. We could talk about our days in the superficial way that normal people do, but that would be all.

I also decided I needed to push Kate out the door. She would resist the idea. But I needed to win this fight. She needed to follow her dream of working for a big city newspaper or a major television network. I was holding her back. She had stayed in Bend all this time because of me. She had been ready to move on, had even gone to New York for an interview, when Nathaniel kidnapped me. But he was dead now. I needed to take care of myself. I would miss her. But it was time for her to get on with her life.

I was still awake when the weak light of dawn peeked in my window.

CHAPTER 23

I still had huge gaping holes regarding what it all meant and what my part in it was supposed to be, but I was finally making progress.

I knew that someone was going to die in that alley. And I knew now that the ghost and the young woman in the vision were two separate people.

They were both about the same age and body type. They both had light-colored hair. And they both had the same gruesome slash across their necks. But there were important differences.

The ghost had thin lips, almost pencil thin, while the dying woman’s were fuller and chapped, leaning more toward an Angelina Jolie look. Their noses were also different. The ghost’s was slightly longer and narrower. Finally, they were dressed differently. The specter always wore a dark track suit. The girl in the snow was wearing black jeans and a dark long-sleeved shirt.

I was almost certain of the location. And I had a few clues regarding the time. It was night. It was snowing. It was around Christmas. The church bells led me to believe it was somewhere between seven and midnight.

I was supposed to save her. But I didn’t know how. In the vision she was beyond saving. She had lost too much blood. What was I supposed to do? Call the paramedics? Sew her back up? Pray for a miracle?

But perhaps most importantly, I didn’t know who I was supposed to save. A young attractive woman in her early 20s with blonde hair. That narrowed it down some but nowhere near enough.

I decided to confirm what I thought I knew. I headed over to Tin Pan Alley. I parked in front of a jewelry store and crossed the street.

My salt and pepper world had gone all gray. It was raining again, the clouds pressing down hard and heavy, the drops forming bubbles. I remembered my mom telling me once that that was a sure sign it was going to keep raining.

It didn’t take long to figure out this was the place. Just like in the vision, the wine shop had Christmas lights over the door. I looked at the window. There it was above the menu. The handwritten sign.

“All bottles of Syrah half off until 12/24.”

I had the location. Tin Pan Alley. Someone was going to die here. Someone was going to die here soon. Unless I could stop it.

I walked down the alley. The row of chairs outside the small theater. A couple of coffee places. An art gallery. Lots of bricks.

I pulled out my camera and took a few shots.

I walked down to the spot where the body would be. Where the police would soon draw a chalk outline if I didn’t stop whatever was going to happen. I tried to keep the rain off the lens and shot a few more photos from different perspectives.

I thought about the bells. There was a Catholic church a few blocks away. That’s where the bells must be coming from. I tried to think. I couldn’t remember ever hearing those bells in real life. Maybe it wasn’t important. Maybe the bells were just there in the vision to give me a vague sense of the time.

Time. I was running out of it.

CHAPTER 24

We walked along the icy path next to the river. He held the familiar worn leather basketball in his hands.

“Your dad says hi,” I said. “We were hoping you’d show up, but...”

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “I couldn’t make it. Tell him sorry. I’m there a lot, you know. He can’t hear or see me, but if he really tries, he would understand. Tell him it’s me who wakes him up when he oversleeps on Monday mornings. Tell him too that he’s drinking too much beer. It’s not good for him.”