The Awakening: A Sisterhood of Spirits Novel (13 page)

Sunny shuddered slightly. She was grateful she didn’t have Shade’s demons to contend with. “Did you get a message?”

Shade shook her head. “It’s like I’m holding my breath, waiting for something to happen.”

Sunny didn’t know what to say. She was sorry Shade was having these nightmares, but if there was no message, what could she do about it? And why were they here so early to confront her about them? “What did you see?” she finally asked her mother. Sunny was almost certain she didn’t want to know the answer, but her mother’s dreams and intuition weren’t anything to be ignored or shoved aside either. She jumped when her mother’s hand hit the table with a loud smack.

“I
can’t
see. Anything.”

Oh, this is bad, Sunny thought. This is really bad.

*

Jordan stood in the shower and let the cold water run directly on her face, hoping to wash away her nightmare of the previous night. Now that the door to the memory of her mother’s death had been opened, she couldn’t seem to close it. Part of her wanted to curl up in the bottom of the tub and cry her heart out, but Jordan refused to give in to that hurt little girl inside her. She ordered herself to pull it together.

Coffee, strong coffee, that’s what she needed to clear the cobwebs out of her head. Jordan wrapped a towel around her wet body and padded into the kitchen to make some.

She tried to recall what was going through her mind right before she lost her temper. What on earth had possessed her to verbally attack Sunny like that with no provocation? She recalled wanting to kiss her, but when she tried harder to remember how she got from that feeling to the door slamming in her face, her head began to ache.

She saw Sunny’s beautiful face, and then it shifted and morphed into her mother’s dead one.

No!

What she needed even more than coffee was a distraction. For one of the first times in her adult life, Jordan wanted to seek out the company of another human being.

Fifteen minutes later, she kicked Steve’s door with the toe of her boot and held out a steaming mug to him when he answered a minute later.

Steve squinted at her without his glasses, his hair standing up in tufts around his head. Jordan blinked and bit her tongue to keep from laughing when she noticed his Star Wars flannel pants.

“Mmm.” He grunted. “Smells good, gimme.” He stepped aside so she could enter.

“Morning.” Jordan was relieved he wasn’t snippy with her; she absolutely would have been if the situation were reversed.
What’s that say about me?

“You on swing tonight?”

Jordan shook her head. “Day shift.” Now what? She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Steve disappeared to get his glasses, then came back to sit with her at the small table.

“Whatssup? What brings you to my man cave this morning?”

Jordan didn’t know exactly and thought about running. Why was she here again? Her ears filled with that ringing again and she shook her head.

“Are you here to apologize?”

Her head snapped back. “For what?”

“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what happened last night with Sunny, but when she got back to Grandma’s there was steam coming out her ears. What did you do to her?”

Jordan felt her face flush with shame. “Why? What did she say?”

Steve looked at her thoughtfully. “Not a word.”

“Oh.”
Why can’t I remember?
Pain flared again in her temples.

“Well, whatever. They left without doing anything.”

“Ghost hunters,” she said. “Give me a break.” Her voice sounded far away to her own ears and echoed back to her. She caught snatches of her accusations and a small glimpse of the hurt that had passed over Sunny’s face before she left. It was almost like remembering something you did when you were really drunk and regretting it the next day. It made her feel petty and small.

Steve continued to stare at her. “Do you have any other explanations for this, Jordan? These events aren’t hallucinations or punks in the building playing tricks. Do you think so little of me that you think I would automatically jump to conclusions? Are you going to sit there with your closed mind or are you going to try and consider the possibility these things are paranormal and help me find some resolution?”

Jordan wanted to be pissed that he’d called her close-minded, she really did, but there was no animosity in his voice or the way he was looking at her. He looked genuinely curious, and she had nothing to fight him about. It was as if he cared about her. She picked at a piece of something hard stuck to the table, and to her horror, the back of her throat began to burn. “But I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“That makes no difference to them,” he said gently. “It doesn’t make them less real because you think they aren’t there.”

“They’re just out to take your money,” she said and cringed when she heard the childish petulance in her voice.

“Who? The women from S.O.S.? Sunny?” Steve shook his head. “Is that what’s got you so upset? You think they’re swindlers? Jordan, they didn’t charge my grandmother a red penny to be here. She’s terrified, and they want to help her.”

Why did Jordan find that so hard to believe? There had to be an angle to this whole ghost hunting thing. She just hadn’t found it yet.

*

“I can’t see,” her mother’s anguished voice repeated. “I hear crying, but I can’t tell who it is. The spirits are quiet, the crystals are clouded, and the cards won’t tell me anything.”

“Could you excuse us, please?” Sunny asked.

Shade nodded and headed to the war room.

Sunny could feel her mother’s fear. Losing her sixth sense must be like being blind for her. She recalled the Death card she’d turned over last week, and apprehension stung the nerves under her skin. She had been right. Something was coming, it wasn’t good, and worse yet, they weren’t going to be able to prepare for it. She’d had no idea it would affect her mother and Shade too, though, and anger burned away the cobwebs left by strange dreams and uncertainty about the future.

It wasn’t going to do either of them any good to sit and fret over it. Sunny refused to give the fear any of her energy. “We’re just going to have to get through it. There must be a reason we can’t see it.
Spirit
has never let us down before.”

“Except for the day your father died.”

Sunny’s heart clenched, and she thought back to that day. She had been in a lecture at college when she felt her father die. There was no feeling of foreboding, just the certainty that hit her the moment her father was no longer in this reality. She was leaving her class, pulling her phone out of her backpack when it rang. She knew, just knew, he was gone. His passing from a heart attack left a hole in her soul that would never fully heal.

Sunny had gone back to her room and told Shade, who was also her roommate, what happened

The funeral was a blur. Sunny relied on Tiffany and Shade to hold her up through the ordeal. Her mother insisted she go back to her classes and finish school. The only reason Sunny relented was because Tiffany assured her that she would take care of her mother until she got back. It was when they returned to college that she threw herself into Shade’s arms. Sunny had known forever how Shade felt about her, but always kept her at a friendly distance. She adored her and was her best friend. But after her father’s death, Sunny convinced herself that it was romantic. She tried to turn her heartbreak into love.

They’d almost killed each other with the intensity of their relationship. Shade’s dark side threatened to drown Sunny’s light spirit, a clash that left them both exhausted. Sunny’s grades began to slip and she lost weight. The dead that surrounded Shade began to appear to her. She was absorbing the necromancer and seeing people as they looked when they died, a gift she never wanted. She preferred seeing them as they wanted to be seen, shimmery around the edges and in the prime of their life. Her empathy threatened to drown her in an ocean of death.

Sunny’s father came to visit her one evening when Shade was studying at the library, and she burst into tears. She was mad he left, but so happy to see him again. The emotional roller coaster she’d been on was threatening to derail and crash, to leave her broken in the dirt.

“Why did you leave me?”

“It was my time, sweetheart. I’m good over here. I’m watching over your mother and you.”

“But I miss you so much! I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”

“I know, baby girl, I miss you too. But listen. I came here to tell you something important. You have to let her go.”

Sunny was confused. “Who?”

“Shade. She’s not for you.”

“But I love her.” Sunny lifted her chin. “We’re soul mates.”

“Honey, you know that’s not true. You’re hurting her more by staying with her. It’s not fair, and you’re both going to burn to ashes if you don’t leave. Your sight is shifting to the dark side, and if you don’t leave now, it will assimilate you and take your own abilities.”

“I can’t hurt her like that, Daddy. It would break her heart.”

Her father looked sad. “Each day you wait, it will be harder. Look into your heart, Sunny, and do the right thing for yourself and for Shade.”

Sunny cried harder. Now she’d lost her father and her best friend. Sunny felt the static against her cheek and felt her father’s feather kiss. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Daddy. Please come back.” His energy left and Sunny cried for hours.

Later that evening, a boy who had been killed in a horrible car wreck on campus appeared at the end of the bed. He was covered in blood and missing limbs and wanted to talk with her. Sunny realized her father was right. She couldn’t do this anymore. Shade’s necromancy was overpowering her.

When Shade had come back from the library, Sunny did the right thing and essentially ripped out her heart with careful words. If there had been any other way, she would have taken it. She crushed Shade, and she would feel guilty for it for the rest of her life.

That had been seven years ago. Their relationship as friends eventually survived the fractured aftermath of their painful breakup, and soon after they graduated, Shade moved to Bremerton to become part of the paranormal team Sunny’s parents had built.

The sound of her mother stirring her tea brought Sunny back to the present. Why had she gone there? She was so careful to keep that period in her life safely buried. Everyone’s emotions were all over the place lately. “Mom, why don’t you go home and take the day off? We can manage here.”

Her mother looked at her with tearful eyes ringed with dark circles. “I have to be here.”

“No, Mom, you need to take care of yourself. You’re not okay right now.”

She could see that she wanted to argue with her, could sense the reasons why she wouldn’t leave. Finally, she looked resigned. “Okay, but if you need me, please call.” She pulled Sunny into a bear hug. “Be careful, my baby girl. I can’t see what’s coming, and that can’t be a good thing.”

*

In spite of the worry her mother left in her wake, Sunny’s readings went well. By the end of the third one, the kick of energy she’d started the day with was wearing off, and the idea of a nap was sounding better and better. She should get as much rest as she could before returning to Agnes’s apartment complex later in the evening.

Jordan. The name slipped into her consciousness and echoed in her heart before Sunny could stop it. She didn’t want to open herself to the desire. She felt a flutter in the air next to her and saw the woman from her dream in her mind’s eye.

Help her.

Sunny felt the spirit’s overwhelming grief, and it was too much after her busy day. “Please go away.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears before she faded away, leaving Sunny alone again.

The bell rang and Sunny looked up from the front desk. As if summoned by her thoughts, Jordan entered the foyer. It was the first time Sunny had seen her in uniform, and the sight of her sent tingles along her inner thighs. “Can I help you?” she asked sweetly while she mentally ordered her hormones to shut up.

Jordan looked uncomfortable and stiff. “Look,” she said. “I’ve come to apologize. I was out of line.”

“Yes, you were.” Sunny paused. It wasn’t in her nature to hold a grudge, nor did she have a problem admitting when she was wrong. She had behaved badly right along with her. “I’m sorry too. I said some things that I shouldn’t have.”

Jordan’s eyes searched hers, but Sunny couldn’t perceive the question she was trying to ask. Why was she so damn hard to read?

Help her.
The voice whispered in her ear. Sunny pressed her lips together and stubbornly tried to ignore it. She was absolutely
not
going to deliver a psychic message to Jordan.

“I’d like to make it up to you.”

“Oh? What did you have in mind?” Her stomach did a tiny flip of anticipation.

“Dinner?”

“Okay, I’ll have dinner with you.” Jordan was an enigma. Sunny could sense the surface emotions just fine, but the ones that mattered, the true ones inside, were the ones that Sunny couldn’t hear or feel.

“Seven okay?”

“Seven is fine. I have a late afternoon appointment with Agnes, so I’ll meet you at your apartment after that?”

Jordan smiled and Sunny’s breath hitched. She should do that more often; it lit her face.

“Okay.” Jordan walked to the door and paused. “Thank you,” she said, then shut the door softly behind her.

Shade’s heavy steps preceded her entrance into the room. She looked into the corner behind Sunny, tilted her head, and squinted. “Who’s the dead lady?”

“Jordan’s mother.”

*

Sunny turned to Tiffany and held up two dresses for her inspection. “Which one?”

Tiffany considered the choices. “The flowy blue one says witchy and mysterious, the short red one says I’m sexy and I know it. So just who do you want to be with this woman?”

Since Tiffany nearly spat the last word out, Sunny sat beside her. “I like her, Tiff.”