A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) (23 page)

“Talk to me,” Zane said. “What’s going on?”

Akira chewed her lower lip. How did she want to explain this?

“Stop that,” Zane said. He leaned forward, dropping her hand,
and sliding his hand up and around the back of her neck. He tugged her to him,
gently, and she went with it, leaning into him as he took her mouth with his
own, his lips and tongue caressing hers.

She felt the warmth rising in her veins, the rush of pleasure
flowing through her. It had been months now, she thought fuzzily, and it was
still the same—his touch, his taste, his smell, they hit all her triggers, more
and more all the time.

He pulled away and she let him go reluctantly. “You’re better
than Xanax.”

He chuckled. “Thanks. I think.” He brushed his lips against
hers again, and then prompted, “So, Dillon?”

“He has this idea that maybe your mom is like Henry, that she’s
trying to find him like Henry tried to find Rose.”

Zane blinked. “Huh.” He looked out into the parking lot
thoughtfully. “That makes sense, actually. And it sounds like her.”

“It sounds like her?” Akira repeated, not sure what he meant.
They hadn’t talked about his mom, not since that first night. She’d been so
sure when he dropped her off at her house that it was over between them that
steering clear of the subject had been almost instinctive. He’d been convinced
that his mom would never hurt anyone; she’d been equally convinced that there
was a dangerous ghost in his house. It seemed like a subject best avoided.

“Determined,” he said. “She was Grace on steroids.”

Akira couldn’t help smiling at the image. Grace ran the
company with a polite southern charm that did nothing to disguise the organized
efficiency of her every movement. Grace on steroids?

“Scary?” she asked.

“Only if you were doing something she didn’t like. But then,
yeah. This one time—well, it’s not important.” Zane was smiling, as if it was a
good memory, but he sobered as he went on. “I could definitely see her staying
to try to find Dillon.” He paused, opened his mouth as if he wanted to say
something, then closed it again.

Akira bit her lip.

Damn it.

She knew what he wanted to say as surely as if she was the
one who could read minds. Daniel and Rob and Henry and Rose had shown her that
ghosts could or maybe should be going somewhere. She didn’t know why Dillon
couldn’t find the way, but if Zane’s mom was refusing to go without Dillon,
then maybe . . .

“Ow. Hell.” The voice from the backseat was disgruntled.
Akira turned and Dillon glared at her. “I will get there,” he said defiantly.

“Did it just get colder?” Zane asked, sounding startled as he
reached to put his hand by the air-conditioner vent.

“Dillon’s back and he’s still mad at me,” Akira reported
matter-of-factly. Dillon crossed his arms over his chest and looked sulky as he
leaned back in the seat and stared out the window.

Akira almost smiled. He would probably be annoyed if she told
him he was cute when he was angry, but he was. His messy dark hair and pout
made him look like a much younger child.

And then her smile faded as she realized that she wasn’t scared
of Dillon. Not in the least. He was angry at her, and she knew that made him
dangerous, but she still wasn’t scared.

Because she loved him. Somehow she had let a fifteen-year-old
boy ghost who worried about everything slip under her defenses and enter her
heart.

And then her eyes slid sideways to his uncle, who was
watching her intently, eyes dark, slightly frowning, and she realized that she
loved him, too.

He wasn’t who she’d ever thought she’d want.

He barely cared about science. He wasn’t serious. He wasn’t
intense. He didn’t want to have deep, philosophical conversations about the
meaning of life and how the universe might work. He’d rather watch baseball,
one of the most boring sports ever invented.

But picnic tables and pool tables. Fire ants and Kindles. He
might not make it obvious, but he paid more attention, noticed more, than
anybody she’d ever met.

And this ghost—she was his mom. What would it be like, to
know your mother was trapped in your house, lost in a ghostly vortex of despair?

Akira sighed. She thought she might
be about to do one of the stupidest things she’d ever done.

If her father was still alive, he’d kill her for this.

***

“Are you trying to kill me?” Zane’s question was
half rhetorical, half laughing. She always beat him at pool, but today she wasn’t
even pretending to give him a chance.

The crack of balls hitting one another, the soft
whoosh of their slides along the green felt, the thumps as they dropped in the
pockets had been the only sounds in Zane’s office for at least twenty minutes.
Akira’s focus was complete. She was pointing out her shots with the cue, not
bothering to call them, as she cleared the table, racked the balls, and cleared
the table again.

It was as if he wasn’t really there.

Or she wasn’t.

“Hmm?” she answered, leaning over the table,
eying the distances between the cue ball and the ten and the side pocket. And
then she made another perfect shot.

Zane stuck his cue back in the rack. He didn’t
know what was going on in her head, but she wasn’t playing. The casual game he’d
started to finish out their lunch hour had turned into something else for her.

He returned to his desk. He’d get back to work
and let her do her thing and eventually she’d break free from whatever thought
had caught her and tell him what was happening. He’d seen this before. That
time it had been right before she decided to give up on sonoluminescence and
start researching spirit energy. It had been a tough decision for her since,
despite her interest in the subject, it was essentially the death knell of any
academic future.

This time, he thought it probably had something
to do with Dillon and his mom. Akira had gone quiet in the car, right after
they’d been talking about his two family ghosts. Her silence wasn’t a surprise:
they’d been avoiding talking about his mom for months now.

Accepting the existence of ghosts wasn’t a
stretch for Zane. Until that terrible week when he’d abruptly come face to face
with the ugly reality of death, he hadn’t put a lot of thought into what happened
after, but his vague concepts of heaven or reincarnation or even an ending of
everything were flexible enough to accommodate the idea of ghosts.

But his mom as a malevolent, murderous spirit? No
way.

Just flat-out no.

It wasn’t possible.

He hadn’t wanted that difference of opinion to
interfere with his interest in Akira, though. She fascinated him. He’d thought
at first that it might be novelty. With her Japanese mother and Californian
upbringing, she didn’t look like the girls he’d grown up with.

And then he thought it was the surprise of the
unexpected: she didn’t act like the girls he’d grown up with either. When he
was eighty years old, he’d still remember the pleasure found in friction
turning kinetic energy into heat.

But it was more than either of those things now.
She looked so fragile, but she’d stick her stubborn chin out and defend her
point of view with vigor. She acted so serious and hard-working, but she was
the best pool player he’d ever met, and he much preferred to have her on his
team in Halo, rather than on the opposite side. And in bed . . .

Okay, he had to stop thinking about her while
watching her play pool, or he’d never get any work done. But he was smiling as
he checked his calendar. With any luck, he could clear out his email and they
could cut out of here early. He could think of much better things to be doing
with their time.

“All right,” she said abruptly, an hour later,
straightening, and lightly tapping the butt of her pool cue against the ground.
“I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” he asked, looking over from his
computer.

“Visit your mom,” she responded, as if surprised
by the question.

“Really?” Zane swiveled in his chair, turning to
face her. “I thought you told Dillon no.”

“He can’t go see her on his own. It’s too
dangerous.”

Zane leaned back. “Aneurysms? Murder by spirit
energy? Remember that conversation?”

“Of course I do.” Akira shrugged and looked away
from him, as if something had suddenly become terribly interesting on the other
side of the office.

“You said it was dangerous for you before. What’s
changed?” Zane asked. She’d refused to go near the house for months. Why now?

“That medium probably had a weak spot in an
artery already. The energy raised her blood pressure enough that it burst, but
it wouldn’t have killed her if the aneurysm wasn’t already there,” Akira
answered.

Zane frowned. That didn’t feel like an answer to
the question.

“What if Dillon’s right? What if she’s looking
for him?” Akira said.

Zane paused. This was his mom that they were
talking about. He didn’t like the idea that she was trapped in their house,
unable to communicate with anyone, desperate and even violent. But he liked
even less the idea of Akira risking her life. 

“I’ll have to go in first,” Akira continued,
looking thoughtful. “I’ll calm her down before Dillon comes in.”

“I’m not sure about this,” Zane said. “Maybe we
should talk to Nat first. See what she has to say.”

“Dillon will have to wait in the car.” Akira was
planning now, strategizing as if she hadn’t heard him.

“Yeah, I don’t think I care about Dillon,” Zane
said.

“You should care,” Akira protested. “Dillon’s
your nephew.”

“And you’re my lover,” Zane answered her,
exasperation in his voice. He wasn’t going to let her distract him. “More
dangerous doesn’t mean not dangerous. Is this risky for you?”

Akira blinked at him. Once. Twice. Then she
turned and busied herself putting away her pool cue.

“Besides, Dillon’s dead already,” Zane added. As
soon as the words left his mouth, he wanted to kick himself. It was true, of
course, but it wasn’t what mattered. He’d been trying to work a conversation
around to that “L” word—the one he’d never used with another woman—for weeks
now and he’d never quite figured out how. He’d just had the perfect opportunity
and he’d blown it.

“Which is why it’s more dangerous for him.” Akira
turned back, her cheeks lightly pink, her eyes bright. “The energy would rip
him apart.”

“Uh, isn’t an aneurysm kind of like a blood
vessel being ripped apart?”

Akira wobbled her hand in an equivocal gesture. “We
can talk about it in the car.”

She’d managed to sidestep the question.

“Is it risky for you?” Zane had asked.

Yes, it was risky for her.

And he really wasn’t going to like what she had to tell him
now. They were sitting in the car, this time in the driveway of the Latimer
house. It was mid-afternoon, which in Florida, in August, meant that the sky
was heavy with storm clouds. In the grey light, the house looked even more
dangerous than it had before, a churning mass of energy.

She licked her lips. “All right, this is how it’s going to
work,” she told Dillon. He was looking out the window at the house but at her
words, he sat back.

“I don’t see anything,” he said, sounding disappointed.

Didn’t see anything? Was he blind? For a moment, she wondered
about the difference between her sight and what an actual ghost saw. That would
be an interesting line of research if Dillon would cooperate. Maybe they could
do some testing in her lab, try to set up some controlled energy experiments.

She was looking for something, anything, to focus on other
than what she was about to do, she realized. It was a good plan—just the moment
of scientific analysis had made her feel calmer—but getting distracted wasn’t
going to make this any easier.

“This is what we’re going to do.” She tried again. “You’re
going to wait in the car, Dillon, while Zane and I go in the house. You need to
give us at least five minutes. I’m going to be trying to absorb some of the
energy, enough of it to calm her down so that you can talk to her.”

“Wait a minute, wait,” Zane said. “Absorb the energy?”

Akira looked at him and forced a smile.

Oh, God, this was a really stupid idea, wasn’t it? But she’d
done things like this before. It wasn’t so different, not really, from what she’d
done with that angry religious ghost just a couple of years ago. Almost
subconsciously, she stretched out her hand, opening and closing the fingers.

It would be better to do it not quite the same way.

“It’ll be okay,” she told them both. “I won’t be trying to
take in all the energy, just enough that she calms down and you can talk to
her, Dillon. So as you approach the house, go slowly and carefully. You need to
think of it as like a whirlpool. If I haven’t managed to break her out of the
vortex, you’re going to start feeling pulled. Don’t give in to that pull—back
off immediately!”