Wraith (22 page)

Zane's eyebrows rose. "And?"

"And I fell into a koi pond."

The corners of his mouth twitched. His cheeks
reddened. His whole face began to contort.

"Oh… FINE!" I shouted at him. "Go
ahead and laugh already!"

He did. The laughter exploded from him like a
volcano, and as he rolled on the sand I could not help but laugh along with
him. "You’re terrible!" I accused.

"I’m sorry," he said finally, wiping away
faux tears with a finger. "Really, I am. It’s just… not exactly what I was
expecting to hear. I mean… you’re so graceful, and coordinated, not to mention
brave—"

"Oh, spare me," I snapped. "I know
it’s stupid; you think I don’t? My parents made me take swimming lessons every
summer for years. I was twelve before they gave up. It was
so
humiliating."

"But what was the problem?" he asked
intently, now all ears. "Wouldn’t you even try?"

I sighed. "I was too scared."

"How deep a fish pond was it?"

"A foot and a half," I said sharply.
"Whether or not my life was ever in danger is not the point. The point is,
for a couple seconds, I thought I was drowning, and I’ve never gotten over that
feeling. I can’t put my face in the water. It terrifies me."

He studied me seriously for a moment. "Very
interesting," he concluded. "Particularly for a girl who isn’t afraid
to talk down a crazed football player with a knife. But I think I understand. I
could help you, you know."

I looked at him skeptically. "Many have tried.
All have failed."

He smirked. "Well, they’re not me. I could
teach you to swim." His face lit up. "I could teach you to
surf
."

I laughed. "Can you teach me how to fly, too?
Be serious. It’s hopeless."

His expression sobered. "Under the
circumstances, probably so. It’s not like I could save you if you got into
trouble."

I had a fleeting image of what it would feel like to
be pulled out of the water by Zane’s strong, solid arms, to be held against his
dripping wet chest—

I squelched it.

"Still," he continued, his voice more
hopeful again. "There are things we could do that would be safe." He
considered. "Have you ever been out on a glass-bottom boat?"

"Yes!" I said brightly. "I loved it.
Seeing underwater was the coolest thing… I’ve always wished I could
snorkel."

His eyes gleamed. "You do realize you’re
vacationing in the midst of some of the greatest snorkeling on the
planet?"

"That hardly does me any good if I can’t
swim!" I protested. "Not to mention the whole face-in-the-water
thing. I told you, I’m hopeless. It ain’t happening."

Eyes still gleaming, he stood up and offered me his
hand.

I looked at it quizzically.

"Oh, just fake it," he quipped.

I reached my own hand into empty air, felt a faint
buzz, and pretended to let him help me up.

"Get your car keys," he ordered.
"We’re taking another field trip."

"Come on," Zane cajoled. "That's not
a bad price. And it will make a perfect souvenir."

"It's a kid's toy!" I protested, looking
at the picture on the box of a grinning preschooler.

I glanced around self-consciously, but what was
undoubtedly the least sophisticated retail establishment in Haleiwa was so
crowded with tourists I had little fear of drawing anyone's attention. I took
another look at the picture. The item Zane had so enthusiastically led me to
was an inflatable raft—more like a boogie board in size—with a clear plastic
window. Supposedly you filled the window with water, and then could float on
the raft and see clearly into the ocean below. Smiling child or not, the mere
thought of floating out on the open sea made my blood run cold.

"So what?" Zane argued. "It's perfect
for our purposes. This isn't about ego is it? About being afraid of looking
silly?"

"No!" I protested. "It's about being
afraid of drowning. Or being eaten by a shark, or—"

"Kali," Zane interrupted, holding my gaze
firmly with his own. "You know I wouldn't suggest anything that wasn't
perfectly safe for you. Where we're going is a protected cove. The waves are
cut off by walls of rock and the water is only a few feet deep—it's like a
glorified kiddy pool. But at the same time, it's real ocean—with coral and fish
and plants. You'll love it."

I wavered. "Really?"

In truth, he had already won. I
did
love the
glass-bottom boat ride, and when it came to my safety, bodiless ghost or not, I
trusted him completely.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Kylee and Tara were
driving me crazy. I hadn't said a word about having kissed Matt last night—much
less everything that was going on with Zane, but I could swear they knew
anyway. It was like some kind of weird best-friend telepathy.

"Go ahead and answer," Zane said
patiently. "I know you want to. I can tell it's been ringing all
morning."

My brow furrowed. "How? I've had it on
vibrate."

He shrugged, but his perceptive eyes twinkled at me.
"You get a certain look on your face."

Wondering how transparent I really was, I reached
into my bag. "I told you that Matt would not be on my agenda this morning,
and he's not," I insisted. "But I'll see what everyone else
wants."

I flipped through the texts with haste. There
was
one from Matt, but I didn't open it. The others were from Kylee and Tara.

U R holding out, girl! Talk to me!!! 
L

Tara was usually more subtle. But not today.

Secrecy doesn't suit you, and it's irritating me.
We know you totally kissed this guy. And you'd better start talking. Or else
Miss Scarlett spends the rest of break in your room. WITHOUT a litter box.

I winced. I loved animals as much as anybody, but I
could hardly stand ten minutes at Tara's house with my allergies… having her
cat in my bedroom could kill me. Luckily, she was only kidding.

At least I hoped she was only kidding. I
had
given her my house key so she could feed the gerbils…

U have 2hr, then im calling u. Deal w it!

On this point, Kylee was dead serious. And she would
not be happy when I didn't answer.

I composed a quick message to both, explaining that
I was with someone and would fill them in later. I clicked send and dropped the
phone back in my bag.

"You did answer him, didn't you?" Zane
asked.

I looked at him in surprise. "No. I had a text
from Matt, but I didn't open it. Let's go."

I put the box with the raft in it under my arm and
started toward the register, but stopped when I realized Zane wasn't following.

"You should answer him," he said from a
few feet away.

I stepped back over. "It's fine," I
assured.

"No, it's not," he responded flatly.
"You can't kiss a guy and then ignore his texts. It'll mess with his head.
That's not you."

"No," I agreed quietly. "It's not.
But I promised—"

"Forget that," he interrupted, his tone
uncharacteristically gruff. "You're not screwing up this thing with Matt
because of me. Now text him, dammit. I'll be waiting outside."

In a blur of light, he was gone.

I stood still a moment, watching the spot where he
had stood. Not a thing remained to mark his presence. Not a brush of air as he
passed by, not a whiff of sea breeze and manly deodorant, not a scuff mark on
the dusty store floor.

Nothing.

I pulled the phone back out of my bag and texted
Matt.

"Now, did I lie? Is this place perfect, or
what?"

I looked up into Zane's eager, optimistic, drop-dead
gorgeous face, and couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth. It had been an
awkward ride up from Haleiwa, despite his concerted effort to prove that he was
perfectly okay, and I would do just about anything at this particular moment to
lift his spirits. But shallow or not, scenic or not, the body of wild,
unbridled ocean that loomed mere feet from my person terrified the crap out of
me.

"You said there wouldn't be any waves," I
squeaked, the now-inflated child's raft clutched tightly to my side. I felt
like a moron anyway, wading into the water in a leotard and bike shorts, but I
hadn't packed a swimsuit because I didn't own one. I used to have a one-piece I
wore whenever Kylee put up the giant water slide on the hill behind her house,
but the butt had gotten fuzzy and I had trashed it.

"Waves?" Zane said with disbelief, looking
down at the crystal clear ocean water that lapped lazily against the sandy
beach.

I supposed an unbiased observer could see his point.
The snorkeling cove at Turtle Bay was bordered by the resort itself on one side
and a solid pier of lava rock on the other. Its connection with the ocean,
several hundred yards from the shore, was buffered by multiple layers of rocky
reefs that systematically reduced the incoming waves down to languid sloshes.

The place still scared the crap out of me.

Unaccountably, Zane laughed out loud.

I fixed him with a glare.

"Kali," he continued, chuckling between
words, "You are
so
lucky I'm a ghost."

My eyebrows rose. At least my misery was having a
good effect on his spirits. "How do you figure?"

"Because if I could, I swear I would pick you
up, carry you out in the middle of this gorgeous, God-given paradise, and throw
you in."

"You would not."

His grin was devilish. "Yeah, I would. But I'd
be right there to catch you again."

His dimples were back, in full force. His green eyes
sparkled.

My knees forgot their function.

I steadied myself with a start and turned my gaze
away from him. "I can't do it, Zane."

Any of it. It's too hard.

"One step at a time," he said confidently,
coming to stand close beside me. "For now, let's just sit on the beach,
and you can get used to the feel of the water."

He dropped down on the sand where the water lapped
just high enough to cover his legs. Or at least it would, if he had legs.

I glanced around. There truly wasn't any danger. No
more than a bathtub, anyway. The cove was crowded with tourists—the open water
was dotted liberally with snorkeling swimmers, and more than one toddler with
inflatable arm bands splashed around happily several yards out from shore. The
sea bottom was clearly visible and I could walk out a good twenty feet before
the water even reached my waist.  

"Kali…" Zane cajoled.

"Oh, fine!" I snapped, plopping down
beside him with a splash. "Are you happy now?"

He grinned back. "Ecstatic."

"As long as we're here," I began,
desperate to distract myself from the slightly sick feeling I got as the
coolish water soaked through my clothes, "we can do something
constructive. You promised me you'd talk about yourself later—and it's later.
Now, what have you remembered?"

Zane let out a sigh. But thankfully, he didn't
resist.  "I don't really know where to start."

"Let's start with your mother," I
suggested. The water seeping around my butt was uncomfortably cold, but a
stream of warmer water had encircled my feet, and I wiggled my toes nervously
inside my aqua shoes.

"Her name was Alisha," he said stiffly.
"Alisha Bayne. At least that was her stage name. She had naturally blond
hair—curly, like mine, except that she usually straightened it. Her eyes were
blue. She was beautiful and she was talented, and she lived a kind of a charmed
life… and so did I. For a while."

"Go on," I said mercilessly. The warm
stream had vanished. The sun was behind a cloud. I was cold again, and I
shivered.

Zane made an involuntarily move to circle his arm
around my shoulders—but with a frown, quickly aborted it. "My childhood
was happy enough," he continued. "But everything changed when my
mother turned forty. Her friends had a big party for her; she claimed she never
felt better. But three days later, the soap dropped her contract."

I sucked in a breath. "That's pretty
brutal."

"Acting is a brutal business," he agreed.
"She knew that; the modeling work she used to do on the side had dried up
long before. But I think she always secretly hoped to beat the odds."

He was quiet for a moment, and I decided to press.
"You had money problems?" I prompted. 

He shook his head. "Not then. Not right away.
The child support from my father's estate was generous; we could have lived off
that and done fine. It was more about the blow to her self confidence. She
tried to find other work and couldn't. Money for the extras dried up. Former
"friends" stopped calling. She had a breast cancer scare the same
week there was an electrical fire in our apartment. For a while, it seemed like
everything was going wrong, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She started
feeling desperate."

He leaned back on his elbows. I watched as the water
coursed through him, and realized that I could see sand, even parts of shells,
quite clearly on the other side of his torso. In fact, the only solid part of
him at the moment was his face.

"Zane!" I said sharply, alarmed.

"What?" he answered, springing up. He
looked out at the ocean first, perhaps expecting to see a rogue wave—then
focused his eyes back on me. "What is it?"

His form was solid again. His arms were still iffy
and one leg was gone, but for the most part, he was back to normal. 

"You—" I faltered. "You went all
transparent on me. Cut that out!"

He looked down at himself quizzically. "Really?
I didn't notice." His eyes caught mine. "I don't think I can control
that. Sorry if I scared you."

"You didn't—" I cut myself off again. Who
was I kidding? Seeing him faded away like that
had
scared me. It had
scared me a lot.