Rain of the Ghosts (8 page)

She stood in the center of the room, more confident than ever that he had taken the armband. And then she heard the footsteps.

The
clomping
of heavy boots on the stairs. She remembered that sound all too well from the night he had arrived. The night ’Bastian had died. She glanced around the wreck of the room. No way she gets it back together in the next six seconds. Or less. The footsteps stopped right outside the door.

Out in the corridor, Callahan didn’t have the courtesy to fumble for his key. He took it out in one smooth motion and slipped it into the lock. His huge hand turned the knob.

Rain had time to think,
I am so dead …
before the door began to slide open.

It only took a glimpse for Callahan to know the room had been compromised. He swung the door open the rest of the way, ready to do battle with … No one. The room was a shambles. But no one was there. He cursed himself for being complacent.
Backwater island. Backwater Inn. But no excuse.
His eyes played toward the half-open bathroom door. As smoothly as he had slid out his key, he slid out a large jackknife from his boot. He snapped it open, shiny and sharp. Slowly and silently, he walked past the curtained French doors and approached the bathroom.

Fortunately, Rain was out on the balcony, or rather, hanging off it from the wrought-iron balcony rail. She figured it was a pretty good hiding place. Even if he looked out the French doors, even if he stepped through them onto the balcony, barely her hands would be visible in the moonlight.

She glanced down. A one-story drop into the Inn’s back garden. Could she jump? She wasn’t sure there was another option, since she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she could pull herself back up even if she wanted to—and it might not matter since
he
might not leave the room again ’til morning, and she knew she couldn’t hang there all night.

But she could hang a bit longer. Maybe he’d rush out of the room to complain to her parents, and she could climb back up and slip out and across the hall to her own room while he was gone. Her parents would be very upset. They might even call the police. Maybe the police would find the armband. And then she thought,
Maybe it’s out here!
She peered in the dim light around the balcony. He could have taped the thing anywhere—even beneath the balcony itself. She strained her eyes searching for some indication of its presence.…

Then two huge hands reached down and grabbed her small ones, yanking her bodily upward in one impressive motion. Before she knew what was happening her arms were sore and her feet had touched down on the terrace. Before she could react to that, Callahan had pulled her back through the French doors and into his room.

When he saw it was the girl and no threat, the knife had gone back into his boot. But he wouldn’t let go of her and tightened his grip until her hands felt like they were being crushed. He half-leaned down, half-reeled her in, until his face was nose-to-nose with hers; she could feel his hot breath, see every furious line etched on his countenance. “Made a mistake, girlie! No one messes with Callahan!”

Still she would not back down: “Well, no one steals from me! Give me back my armband!” Callahan didn’t react, which was telling, she thought.
No confusion; he knows I’m on to him!

Alonso, who had come up the stairs to check on his wayward child, found the door to the guest room wide open. He could hear the shouting. He appeared in the doorway, already asking, “What is going—” But he didn’t finish that sentence. He saw the big man, saw Rain and immediately rushed in. “Take your hands off my daughter!” Ready for a fight, he separated Rain and the stranger.

Callahan sized up his new opposition in less than a second. Alonso Cacique was shorter, but still easily six feet tall. His frame was slim but well-muscled. (Sixteen years on a boat’ll do that.) Plus he was a bear fighting to protect his cub. Still Callahan knew he could take the innkeeper. And just for the temporary satisfaction of acting, of doing, of feeling his knuckles striking the other man’s jawbone, Callahan was on the verge of throwing that first punch. But he managed to strangle the impulse. Instead, he took a step back to reduce the temptation and swept his hand out to indicate the condition of his room. “Look what she did here!” he shouted. “She was rifling through my gear!”

“He stole Papa’s armband! I saw him leaving my room!”

Callahan scowled at her with contempt. “You find it?”

Rain looked away.

“’Course not,” Callahan continued. He then turned out all his pockets and patted himself down for her benefit. “’Cause I don’t have it.”

Alonso glanced up at Callahan’s smirking face and strangled his own impulse to do something manly. Then he looked around the demolished room.
The guy’s a jerk. But …
He turned to his daughter and with just the appropriate amount of disappointment in his voice, said, “Rain, I think you’d better apologize.”

Rain stood there. She didn’t move or speak for a long time. She wasn’t looking at anything. Just building up steam. Finally: “NO! He took it! I know he did!”

She bolted out of the room. From where the men stood, they heard her bedroom door open and quickly slam shut. A very tired Alonso turned to face Callahan. He sighed. “I’m sorry about that. It’s her grandfather. She’s taken it pretty hard. And it hasn’t helped that she lost something he gave her.”

“No excuse,” Callahan growled.

“Perhaps under the circumstances, I should arrange accommodations for you elsewhere.”

Callahan suddenly looked insecure. His tongue ran over his lower lip nervously and his eyes twitched back and forth. When he responded, it was with a new conciliatory tone. Deferential, even. “Don’t get carried away. Checking out tomorrow night anyhow. Can make allowances. Grieving kid. Tough break.” He heard himself rambling and swallowed to get a grip on his big mouth. “Think I’ll stay put,” he said with finality.

Rain heard it all. The backpedaling. The nervousness. The determination to stay. All of it. She pressed against the inside of her bedroom door. The same door she had immediately cracked open after intentionally slamming it shut for effect. (Being known as the family Drama Queen had its advantages.) She listened as her father offered to clean up the mess and heard Callahan decline.

And she knew. He was connected to all of it. The armband. ’Bastian’s death. The Dark Man. The Eight. She had no idea how it all fit together. But she knew Callahan was in the middle of it.

And she was almost right.

CHAPTER TEN

IN BLACK AND WHITE

That night there were no ghosts, no Eight, no Dark Man. Just the conviction that Callahan was responsible for it all. Having someone to blame was a great relief. Rain slept soundly.

Then it was Sunday morning. One more day before school started. It was almost unimaginable that she should be expected to return to class after all that had happened. She looked out the window. Hazy. She took a shower and tried to summon up a song to play in her head. An instrument even. But nothing would stick. Everything was gray, inside and out. She took her time getting dressed, took even longer to dry, brush and braid her hair into its long, thick, black rope. She had a pretty good idea of what was waiting for her downstairs and was in no hurry to face it.

Eventually, though …

She entered the kitchen, wearing her standard uniform of shorts, t-shirt, deck shoes and no socks, and was surprised to see her father preparing breakfast. That wasn’t how labor was divided at the Nitaino. He silently watched her hesitant approach. Then he put down his spatula and held out a hand. “The key.”

“I won’t use it again. There’s no point. He’s hidden the armband somewhere else.”

Alonso frowned. That wasn’t the answer he was looking for. His hand didn’t move. “I’m not going to argue with you, Rain. Give me the key.”

She took out her key chain and started to remove the master. Her voice slipped into a whine: “Great. How am I supposed to do my Sunday chores without it?”

Alonso shoved the key in his pocket and spoke quietly as he fished around in it. “No chores for you today. Make sure you have everything you need for school tomorrow. Paper, notebooks. Pencils. Here.” He handed her a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m not expecting change.”

She stared at him with mouth agape.
This is my punishment? No chores and free money?

He saw her reaction. “It’s been a difficult few days, Rain. Make sure you have your supplies. Then you can have the afternoon.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

She turned to go, turned back. “Where’s Mom?”

“Upstairs. In ’Bastian’s room.”

Rain flinched. “What’s she doing up there?”

He shrugged.

Rain nodded absently and left the kitchen. A heartbeat later, she poked her head back in and stared at him.

“What?” he said.

“Don’t ever die, okay?”

“Okay, baby.”

“Promise.”

“Sure.”

“Good.”

She left again. He listened to her light footsteps dancing up the back stairs. Then he picked up the spatula.

Rain peeked into her grandfather’s bedroom. Her mother was sitting on the bed surrounded by a half-dozen open cardboard boxes. Piles of clothes and old photographs were scattered everywhere.

Rain hesitated at the threshold, another threshold. But this one she didn’t want to cross.
He’s not here anymore.

Iris idly unfolded a shirt from one pile and refolded it atop another. After a bit, she felt her daughter’s eyes. She lifted her head and smiled wistfully. “I’m just sorting through his things. I don’t know what to do with this room.”

Rain winced. “Can’t we leave it as is?”

“I’m not sure he’d like that. I just don’t know.”

Rain considered that.
What would he want? A museum? A pit stop for still more tourists?

“Can I have his room?”

Iris looked up again. Momentarily, Rain wondered who had spoken, who would make such an audacious request. It took seconds before she realized she had done it. Did she really want to live up here?
Would he approve?

Her mother seemed to be considering the same things. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “We can discuss it.” Which meant
not now
.

Rain looked around from the doorway, craning her neck into the far corners, looking for some sign that she was welcome. Nothing spoke to her, but eventually she began to feel silly standing out in the hall. She stumbled in. Her mother had resumed her redistributions and took no notice. Rain tried to affect nonchalance as she wandered about the room.
It’s bigger than mine
. The thought left her feeling immediately guilty. She didn’t want to want it that way.
It’s not across the hall from Callahan.
Another thought unbidden. Her face tightened.
No. I’ll stay across from him. He’s not getting away with this.
Whatever
this
was.

Rain paused to look down at ’Bastian’s old Spanish desk. An antique map of the Ghost Keys was unrolled flat on the dark wood and held in place by two paperweights: a steel-cased compass and her grandfather’s homemade astrolabe. He had tried to teach her to use both when she was nine. She had mastered the compass easily enough, but the astrolabe was beyond her then. Now she didn’t remember what it was even for.
A good paperweight though.

She studied the map. It suddenly struck her that the islands were correctly labeled: “The Ghost Keys” and not “The Prospero Keys.”
A local made this map,
she thought. She found the legend and a date, “Summer, 1799.”
A very old local.

Rain crossed to the bed and peeked inside an open box. A faded embroidered pillow lay on top. “What’s this?” she asked and pulled it out.

Her mother paused to look. She gently took the pillow from Rain. It had been white once with irises neatly stitched into the cotton fabric. Now the white had yellowed and there was a brown water stain across the back. “Your Grandma Rose made this. When I was little I wouldn’t go to sleep without it.” Iris shook her head in something like amazement. “I had no idea Dad kept this.”

“He was very sentimental.”

“I suppose. I never thought of him that way. To me, he was this dashing rake. Like a pirate in an old movie.”

Rain tilted her head and gave her mother an incredulous look.

Iris tilted her head right back. “I know. That sounds silly to you. But you only knew him as a very old man. He was so handsome, Rain. He wasn’t young when he had me, but even when I was your age all my friends still had big crushes on him. Ask Charlie’s mom.”

Now Rain looked ill. “Mrs. Dauphin had a crush on Papa?”

Rain’s mother considered this for a moment and soon her expression mirrored Rain’s. “Yeah, I thought it was creepy too.”

Rain felt a desperate need to change the subject. She took another look inside the box, reached in and pulled out a glass-framed black and white photograph that had long ago begun to brown with age. She glanced at it. Men in front of an old airplane. She started to put it down on the bed, to reach deeper into the box. Then she froze.

Terrified, she slowly turned her head to look at the picture again. It was like seeing a ghost, and for Rain that wasn’t just an expression. Men in front of an old airplane. Familiar men. The Eight. And standing in the center of the crowd: the Dark Man. To be sure, she silently counted the heads. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten? She counted again. And a third time. It wasn’t the Eight plus One Dark Man. It was the Eight plus One Dark Man plus one more.…

She studied each face carefully to see if she could find the extra body. The ghost who hadn’t yet appeared. It wasn’t hard. All the faces were young. Barely men at all. All looked familiar, but on closer inspection, she realized that the second man from the right in the lower row was sitting in a wheelchair. His forehead was bandaged. He wore a bomber jacket like the others, but it seemed to her that he was wearing his over pajamas and a robe. She studied the others. The Eight. The Dark Man. And now there was a tenth.
The Injured Party.
The phrase entered her head unbidden; she wasn’t exactly sure what it meant or whether it applied. Maybe she had heard it on TV. But that was his name now. The Injured Party.