44 Book Five (2 page)

It had been the third time I had done that. The third time he had told me that he loved me and I wasn’t able to tell him anything back. It wasn’t because I didn’t feel the same way. What I felt when I saw him for the first time in the morning or when we kissed was strong and real. I knew that I loved Ty. But there was something about saying it out loud, something about telling him and declaring it that I had trouble with. It felt impossible.

But when he returned with his arms full of glasses and bottles, he was happy again.

“Well, I still liked your dinner," he said. “I don’t care what you say.”

“Okay. But I’m hoping you will give me another chance. I’m so much better than this. Really, I am.”

“Anytime. Just say the word.”

I watched his bright energy dance around him and then hugged him, putting my head on his chest and listening to his heart, strong and steady.

CHAPTER
2

David came up behind me and whispered in my ear as I handed a customer his change. He was going through a health food phase, saying he needed to find a way to recover faster from all his partying. I could smell the mix of alcohol coming off his skin along with the spinach-celery smoothie on his breath.

“Don’t freak out, Abby Craig,” he said, “but she’s in here again.”

I wasn’t going to freak out. I had promised myself once I had started sleeping better a few months ago that I was going to be more easy about everything. More than most people my age, I had come face to face with the end of the world. I had died and come back to life. I had dealt with the death of my mom and Jesse. I had been kidnapped and my kidnapper had tried to kill me. I knew a little about life and death. Most things were not the end of the world.

“Over there,” he said, his eyes bugging as he shifted them back and forth trying to get me to look in her direction. “The one wearing the pink T-shirt.”

I sighed. There were a few women sitting by themselves in the café wearing T-shirts so I had no idea who he was talking about.

“Oops,” he said. “My bad. Sorry! I’m always forgetting that you can’t see any colors. Okay, the girl sitting by the window with the short dark hair. The one who looks like she got up on the wrong side of the bed, all moody and such.”

I found her. She was probably in her late twenties. She sucked on a straw as she stared out the window. And she did look serious.

“What do you think she wants?” I asked after I rang up another order.

“Don’t know,” David said. “But the lady is determined. She’s been in here three times this week asking for you. You were in the back getting the cups when she came in a few minutes ago, but I already told her you were here and that you’d be out soon.”

“Way to go,” I said.

“What? I should lie?”

He poured some coffee that had just finished brewing and handed it to me.

“I got the counter covered if you want to take a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” I said.

After I had helped stop the school bombing in May, I had been labeled  “Dream Girl” by the press and my story, name, and face had been plastered all over the place. Reporters wanted interviews, strangers wrote asking for help finding a lost loved one, and local parents thanked me with tears in their eyes. The excitement lasted for a few weeks. I finally became old news when Hollywood’s hottest young couple called it quits.

A detective from the Bend Police Department still showed up at Back Street from time to time, always with a few “new”
questions, questions I had already answered dozens of times about how I knew that a student was bringing a bomb to his high school that day. He wasn’t satisfied that it was a psychic vision that had helped stop Devin Cypher from killing hundreds of people.

“David,” I whispered. “Tell me again what you know. What did she say exactly?”

He leaned his back against the pastry case, folded his arms across his chest, and looked up at the ceiling.

“It’s filthy up there,” he said. “I mean, would you look at those cobwebs.”

“David, focus.”

“She asked for Abby,” he said, still looking up and making a face. “That’s it. She first came in Monday. Or maybe it was Tuesday. Anyway it was early afternoon and she made it a point to come up to me to ask if you were working. She walked right past Lyle. Then yesterday, same time, just after noon. Same thing, completely ignored Mike. It’s like she knows we’re friends or something. So that’s when I told her that you are out on the river all day and that she would have to come back after five o’clock to find you. I asked her if she wanted me to give you a message, but she said no, that she wanted to speak with you. That’s it.”

I picked up my coffee.

“Now that I think about it, she does look awfully familiar,” he said. “Maybe I’ve seen her on TV before, like a news show or something. But I don’t know. She doesn’t seem like a reporter to me. Your sister would never be caught dead in those flip flops and cut offs. On or off the job.”

I guess there was one thing I already knew about her. If David was able to see her, the woman by the window wasn’t a ghost.

“Cowboy up,” I said to myself.

“Go get her and remember I’m right here,” David said. “Just holler if you need me.”

“I feel so safe just knowing that.”

“Don’t be snide, Abby Craig.”

She still seemed lost in thought. A deep line formed between her large dark eyes when she noticed me standing over her. She squinted and then nodded without speaking. Her energy was gray and turbulent, crashing all around her.

“Abby Craig,” I said, sitting across from her.

“Paloma Suárez,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly in a weak attempt at a smile.

“David said you were looking for me.”

“Yeah, thanks for coming over. I’m sorry to bother you, but he said you might be able to help.”

“He?” I said, confused.

“David. Didn’t he tell you?”

“No, he just said you’ve come in a few times and asked for me. Anyway, I don’t have much time. I’m on my break.”

The people behind us got up and left and suddenly it was quieter in the café.

She seemed nervous, playing with the paper wrapper from her straw. She didn’t give off the type of vibe I had learned to associate with reporters or cops. I didn’t know what she wanted but her anxiety left me feeling more relaxed. I eased back in my chair and waited.

“So, uh, David, he didn’t get a chance to tell you about my problem?” she said finally.

“No,” I said, glancing back over at him.

He was lingering at the counter, all ears. When he caught me staring at him, he gave me a thumbs up and threw his towel up over his shoulder and looked away.

“
Cabrón
,” she said loudly, her eyes moving from me to him and back again.

“So you told David your problem?”

“Well, I guess I just mentioned it casually. He comes into the club where I work pretty regularly. I was serving him last week and I told him about this, this, uh, situation I was having and he suggested that I talk to you.”

“What kind of situation?” I asked.

She lowered her voice.

“Look, I want you to know I don’t believe in it,” she said. “No offense and all, but I don’t believe in your
brujo
shit, Abby. I stopped going to church a long time ago and I never got around to replacing it with some
gringo
paranormal belief system.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, not knowing what else to say or sure what she was talking about.

What I was sure of, however, was that David had gotten a little too much sauce in him and spilled all over the sides about me. And just when things had started to quiet down. I was also sure that a health food hadn’t been discovered yet that would help him recover from the neck wringing I was going to give him. Of course she looked familiar to David. She was his damn bartender.

“Ever notice how all those shows about ghosts only have white people being haunted?” she said, looking out the window. “Well, I guess I’m here to bring a little balance to things.”

I still didn’t know what she wanted from me.

“I don’t know what else to think, except that I’m going crazy,” she whispered, now looking deep into my eyes. “But I think it’s happening to me. I think I’m… I’m being haunted.”

I didn’t say anything.

“David said he had a good friend who was a ghost hunter. He was supposed to ask if this was okay, me talking to you. But I think he’s blowing me off, acting like he doesn’t even know me. I didn’t know what else to do.”

I wondered if he was too embarrassed over having told her about me or if he really didn’t remember. If he had just blabbed out and then blacked out.

“That’s okay,” I said. “But I still don’t know what you what me to do. Or what I can do.”

Jesse’s words buzzed around my brain about how I needed to protect myself, how I couldn’t help everybody and that there were a million ghosts out there that would want something from me.

“I really don’t know where else to turn, Abby,” she said. “Or who else to ask. None of this makes sense to me. Like I said, I don’t even believe in ghosts. Look, I can pay you. I just need help. I think it’s getting worse. I see him every night now.”

“Who?” I said.

She was looking out the window again.

“What’s that black rock all over the street?” she asked, her voice low and raspy. “When did they do that? Must help with the mud in winter.”

I looked outside. I couldn’t see what she was talking about. The asphalt?

“Who do you see every night, Paloma?” I said.

She looked at me again.

“Huh? Oh, he hangs out at the club. This guy, this spirit or whatever, he just stares at me. At first I thought he was real, I mean, human. You know, just a creep. I tried to have the bouncer throw out his ass. But no one else sees him. Just me.”

It began in her eyes. The terror. They started to dance wildly. And then it swamped her like a canoe in a windstorm. She started shaking, the ice rattling in the clear plastic cup before she could put it down, her voice quivering.

“Sorry,” she said as she looked down and ran her trembling hands through her short hair. “I haven’t been able to sleep in weeks. I know you don’t know me from Adam’s house cat, but this isn’t who I am. I don’t scare easy, but this
pinchependejo
, this thing, it frightens the shit out of me.”

I believed her. I believed that she was really scared. But that wasn’t enough.

We agreed to meet again.

“Thanks,” she said, getting up. “You’re a good person for doing this.”

“I’ll be in touch,” I said.

She started walking to the door, but then stopped and took a few steps back toward me.

“You know, sometimes right after I see him, I don’t feel myself. It’s almost like he’s—”

But she didn’t finish. She just shook her head.

I swallowed hard and watched her go outside. She stopped at the sidewalk and looked down at the street for a long time, stroking her chin. Then she got into her car and drove away.

***

I had trouble sleeping that night.

Paloma Suárez seemed a little out there. I wasn’t ready to buy into everything she was saying. But as I tossed and turned, I started thinking about the ghosts I had seen before. Some needed help. One even helped me. But I had never come in contact with a ghost like she was describing.

Staring up at the ceiling in the dark, I knew that if what this woman was saying was true and if I decided to try and help her, I might be in over my head.

I told myself that I was getting ahead of myself, that I still had a lot of fact finding to do before I crossed that river. After all, I had also felt like Annabelle and Spenser were “haunting” me when I first encountered them. But in the end, they just needed help. Maybe this was the same thing. Or maybe this Paloma Suárez just had a screw loose.

But my mind refused to listen to logic. It raced far ahead like a runaway stagecoach through the long sleepless night.

CHAPTER 3

I got too far under the ball and watched as it sailed high, past the bright lights, and into the dark sky before bouncing out into the desert brush, nowhere near the goal.

I should have done more with it. We had only been down a goal and there were still a few minutes left in the game. The shot could have made the difference. At least I could have rolled it in on target. If I had done that, there was the chance the goalkeeper could have tripped or been hit by lightning.

The keeper took his time retrieving the ball and then kicked it far down field. I didn’t get it back again and the ref blew the whistle and it was official. We didn’t make the playoffs.

“Darn it all,” Tim said.

I was using stronger language in my head.

His glasses were fogged up and sliding down his nose.

“It was a long shot anyway. We don’t really belong in the playoffs,” he said. “We basically suck.”

I went over to the sidelines. Tim was right. It hadn’t been a good season. I had barely practiced all summer and we only had won two games. It would have been a complete fluke to have advanced.

I didn’t say much and grabbed my stuff, heading to the parking lot. I sat in the Jeep, drinking water while texting Kate that I was heading home.

I jumped at the knock on the window.

“Oh, sorry,” Tim said as I rolled it down. “Uh, we’re going out for drinks next week. Just wanted to invite you and let you know.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there.”

“Hey, have a good night. And be careful out there.”

I didn’t know what he meant for a minute, but then remembered that he was just referring to my day job. We had talked a few times about me being a river guide and he told me that going on rivers freaked him out ever since he was a kid and had a bad experience. I didn’t ask him what happened. I didn’t want to start swapping drowning stories. But since finding out what I did during my days, Tim usually said goodbye with a worried expression and a reminder to be careful.

“I will,” I said. “Goodnight.”

It was a dark, moonless night. But down in the city it was bright. Bend had become popular over the last few years, maybe because of all the breweries in town. It was a record year for beer festivals. BrewFest, Fermentation Celebration, and The Little Woody all seemed to keep bringing more and more tourists in.