A Gift of Ghosts

CHAPTER SIX

  Akira argued with Zane for ten minutes, then spent the rest of the car ride fuming.

  How could he not understand what a terrible idea it was to let people know that she saw ghosts? It was dangerous!

  If they didn’t believe in ghosts, they’d think she was crazy.

  If they did believe in ghosts, it would be even worse. She was a scientist, a rational researcher who believed in the laws of logic and the scientific method. Seeing ghosts was a problem. A disability, even. It wasn’t something she wanted people to know about her.

  And she’d tried telling him so, but he’d just brushed off her concerns with an airy, “Dave’s seen weirder, and Nat is weirder. Don’t worry about it.”

  Weirder! His doctor sister? Natalya had seemed as normal as blueberry pie to Akira. And having her perfectly reasonable anxiety dismissed was infuriating.

  Plus, there were the ghosts. Zane didn’t understand the risks, and his easy acceptance of his nephew’s presence didn’t mean that he’d be as ready to believe in the darker side of spirit energy. Hundreds of years of scary stories weren’t all wrong: not all ghosts were like Dillon. But how to tell Zane so without sounding insane? Or would that be more insane?

  As he pulled the car into a parking space on the town’s main street, Zane said cheerfully, “You’re a sulker, aren’t you?”

  A sulker? Akira had never had a sibling, but she recognized the type. He was a button-pusher. “And you’re a younger brother, aren’t you?”

  He laughed as she got out of the car. “I’m serious,” she repeated across the roof, as he walked around to the curbside. “This isn’t something that I want people to know.”

  “It’s not like I’m putting it on CNN,” he said reasonably, as she fell into step beside him. They were headed to the restaurant she’d seen on her first quick visit to the town, the one that looked something like a cross between a café and a diner. “I told my sister, and she was bound to find out anyway because of Dillon. And Dave won’t tell anyone.”

  “Natalya’s not—she wasn’t—” Akira didn’t know how to ask the question politely. She was sure that Natalya wasn’t Dillon’s mother from her calm reaction to the idea that he was a ghost, but she knew very little about the Latimer family.

  For a fleeting second, Zane looked grim. “No. Lucas, the brother I mentioned, is Dillon’s father. He’s not around much, though. My parents were raising Dillon.”

  “Losing a child is hard, I know. Is that why your dad—” Akira searched for the words and finally settled on, “—has been looking for a medium?” It seemed more tactful than saying, “lost his mind and decided that ghosts were real?” Sure, she knew ghosts were real, but that’s because she could see and hear them. Why would someone who could do neither decide to chase such a pipe dream?

  “Dillon and my mom died three days apart,” Zane replied. “Dillon of a drug overdose, and my mom from a stroke. A couple of years ago, my dad met the woman who told him that the car was haunted, but she—well, ever since, he’s been looking for someone who could communicate with their spirits.”

  Akira barely heard the words after overdose. Poor Zane. To lose both his mother and his nephew in the same week. She’d only ever had her father, but the emptiness that filled their house in the weeks and months after his death had been horrible. And his death hadn’t been unexpected: untimely, yes, but they’d known he’d lost his fight against cancer for weeks before he died. And an overdose? For a teenager as young as Dillon? How truly sad.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said.

  He looked down at her. In the late afternoon sunlight, his eyes were bluer, almost the color of the sky behind them, and she could see in his expression how hard it had been. And then he grinned at her, and said, “Yeah, it wasn’t a great week,” as he pushed open the door and gestured for her to precede him inside.

  The restaurant was an eclectic mix of styles: as if someone with modern taste had taken over an old-style diner without the money or time to renovate from the ground up. The floor was ugly gray linoleum, and there was a long plain lunch-style counter in the middle of the room, with an open kitchen galley beyond it. But small tables were covered with bright linens, and set with colorful cloth napkins, and a row of private booths along one wall had wooden tabletops and comfy cloth seating.

  As Akira looked around, noticing the fanciful artwork on the walls, she realized that the restaurant was crowded, almost every table full, and that most of the people in it seemed to be looking in her direction. Or was it Zane they were looking at? She glanced at him.

  “Small town, new face,” he murmured in her ear as he put a comforting hand on her back and steered her toward a back corner booth, nodding and greeting people at the tables they passed. “Nothing to worry about.”

  She wasn’t worried, she thought defensively. Or not exactly worried. She just maybe wished she’d found a brush, a mirror, and a little make-up back at General Directions. Facing a roomful of curious strangers looking like you’d recently been in a car accident wasn’t a confidence boost.

  There was a man seated at the booth Zane was headed to, his back to the restaurant. This must be the eccentric Max Latimer, Akira thought. As she slid into the booth across from him, he looked up from his book and smiled at her, and almost involuntarily, Akira smiled back. Dark hair gone gray at the temples, blue eyes bordered with deeply engraved laugh lines, bushy brows and a smile that lit up his face—she could see his resemblance to his children and grandson.

  “You must be the medium,” he said, putting out his hand for her to shake.

  Akira’s smile disappeared immediately. “I am not a medium,” she said, turning to Zane with a glare as he seated himself on the bench next to her. What had Zane said to his father? Hadn’t she made herself perfectly clear when she told him she could see ghosts? Mediums got messages from invisible spirits. They were spiritualists who believed in some mystical “other side.” They held séances and went into trances!

  “She sees ghosts,” Zane told his father. “Apparently there’s a difference.”

  The sympathy that Akira had felt for him moments earlier evaporated as her annoyance returned. Had he not listened to a word she’d said?

  “Aw, come on,” he said to her, apparently reading her expression. “We had to tell him.”

  “No!” she said. “No, we didn’t. This is not—I don’t—I’m a scientist. A physicist. With, I admit, a slightly unusual—” she paused, searching for the right word.

  “Gift?” Max offered.

  Akira shook her head, rejecting his choice, and finally settled on one of her own. “Quirk. It’s just a quirk. And I don’t want people to know about it.”

  Max and Zane exchanged looks. “Tassamara is a town that attracts people who have quirks,” Max said. “No one here will think anything of it.”

  Akira sighed. It was a weird little town, she had to acknowledge that. But that didn’t mean that seeing ghosts was a socially acceptable skill to have. “I don’t like ghosts,” she said slowly, trying to find the right words to explain how she felt, but before she could continue, Max interrupted her.

  “Miss Malone,” he started, and then smiled and reached across the table, patting the back of her hand comfortingly. “Akira. You leased a car with a ghost in it. You rented a house that’s known to be haunted. You can’t be that afraid of your association with the spirit world.”

  The spirit world? Oh, hell, Akira thought, as she protested, “Every place the realtor showed me was haunted!”

  “The last thing on the list was a nice little modern apartment,” Zane said mildly. “Fifteen miles outside of town, so not exactly convenient, but brand-new and unlikely to have any spectral tenants.”

  “You knew the properties she was going to show me?” Akira asked.

  He shrugged. “Perception tests, remember. We didn’t find you because we were looking for a physicist.”

  “But I am a physicist,” Akira
protested. “Look, seeing ghosts—it’s just some kind of energy. That’s all. It’s not entirely crazy to think that human beings might be more than matter or chemicals. We’re complex systems. Yes, I’ve got this ability, but it’s like being a super-taster or a tetrachromat, just some genetic variation in a sensory faculty. Rare, obviously, but then so are tetrachromats.”

  “Super-taster I know,” Max said. “Picky eaters, but with more taste buds than most people have, so food tastes more intense to them. But what’s a tetrachromat?”

  “Most people have three types of cones in our eyes, each of which responds to a different wavelength of visible lengths. Three cones, so we’re trichromats,” Akira explained. “But some people—women, most likely, because of the two X chromosomes—could have four types of cones. Theoretically, they could see into the ultraviolet, like zebra fish can. An average human being can distinguish about a million shades of color, but a tetrachromat could distinguish about a hundred million shades.”

  Momentarily distracted by the idea, she added thoughtfully, “It’d be hell to get dressed; nothing would ever look like it matched.” Then she shook her head and continued, “It is scientifically possible that I have a sense that allows me to see energy. A type of energy. A type of energy that other people can’t perceive, like seeing into the ultraviolet, only not exactly like that because. . .” She let her words trail off as she saw that Max was smiling gently at her.

  “You hear them too, don’t you?” Zane asked. “How does that work if it’s a visual sense?”

  He was so damn matter-of-fact, thought Akira. There was something profoundly annoying about it. She sighed. “Okay, so it’s a little more than a visual sense. Seeing different wavelengths, plus hearing different frequencies. Or maybe my brain just translates the extra sense into something more comprehensible to me? The point is, it’s not who I am. It’s like being left-handed, or having perfect pitch—just a, a quirk.” She waved a hand dismissively.

  “A quirk that allows you to speak to my grandson,” Max said. “And, I hope, to my wife.”

  Akira wanted to cry. Relatives. Oh, how she hated dealing with the relatives. “Yes,” she said simply, and then shrugged. “Or maybe, I don’t know about your wife. But yes, I can talk to Dillon. And?”

  “What do you mean?” Max asked.

  “What then?” Akira asked in return. “Yes, I can talk to your relatives. So can you, for that matter, but okay, I can maybe actually have a conversation with them. And then what?”

  “Can’t you help them? Help them move on or do whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing?”

  She shook her head. “No. Ghosts—they just are. They’re not a problem to be solved. Well, except sometimes for me. But they’re not a thing that needs fixing, any more than, well, than say, lightning needs fixing. They’re just energy. Leftover energy. “

  Max rubbed his chin. “But why are they still here?”

  Akira exhaled, a quick breath that was almost a laugh. “Ask me about low-temperature collision dynamics. You’d get a better answer.”

  “I’m not actually interested in low-temperature collision dynamics,” Max responded, voice dry.

  Akira’s mouth twisted. It wasn’t a smile. “Nor sonoluminescence, I assume?”

  “I don’t even know what that is,” Max admitted.

  Akira closed her eyes and sighed, inwardly cursing herself. She should have asked more questions. She should have remembered that things that look too good to be true are too good to be true. “I don’t know why ghosts exist,” she said. “For obvious reasons, it’s not a subject that’s easily researched. But I don’t fix them, I don’t make them go away, and—before you ask—I don’t know anything about any white lights.”

  She pressed her lips together. Across the table, Max was silent, his disappointment obvious. “I should go back to California,” Akira realized. “If I had known you were—” She let the sentence end there. She didn’t want to accuse either of them. And yet her disappointment was acute. She had wanted to believe that this would be a place for her, that she had found a new home.

  “Not a chance,” said Zane.

  She glanced at him. Sure, she’d signed a contract, but there was nothing in it about ghosts.

  “I bought you a very nice digital oscilloscope, and I took the money for it out of Smithson’s budget,” Zane continued. “If you don’t show up tomorrow and play with it, he’ll get annoyed, and that’s never fun. Grace will yell at me—it’ll be a whole messy thing.” He grinned at her and it was such a comforting smile that it almost felt like he’d rubbed a consoling hand along her back.

  “Yes,” agreed Max. He too smiled at her, and if his smile was a little more strained, a little more disappointed, it was still a smile. “Regardless of whether you can help me, this is a good place for you. And I’m sure your research will prove interesting.” For a moment, his eyes stilled, and then he added in a tone of mild delight, “Hmm, and profitable, too. That’s nice.”

  “Profitable?” Akira was startled.

  “Not that sono-thing, though, I don’t think. Something else.”

  Akira looked back at Zane. What was his father talking about?

  “Max is psychic,” Zane said. “He can see the future.”

  Psychic.

  Right.

  Were they kidding?

  A small smile was playing around Zane’s lips, but he wasn’t looking at her. He seemed focused on catching the attention of their waitress.

  According to Einstein, past, present, and future were simply a stubbornly persistent illusion. Akira wasn’t a quantum physicist herself, but she knew that they postulated that on an atomic level, the future could be known. If they were right, then theoretically seeing the future could be possible. But still, it sounded highly unlikely to her. Although not really any more unlikely than seeing ghosts.

  Maybe it was time for some basic scientific inquiry. “So, did you know we’d be having this conversation?” She tried not to let any emotion slip into the words, to make them as calm and neutral as she could, but even she could hear the hint of skepticism that slipped out.

  Max’s smile was approving. “No. No, if I could see everything, I’m sure I’d be institutionalized. It would be impossible to function. No, I just sometimes know the outcome of an event before it happens. Rather random events, it seems. There are events I would have given a great deal to have foreseen that were obscured to me.” The sadness in his eyes didn’t match his smile.

  “He’s mostly good with money,” Zane said, turning his attention back to the table.

  “Money?” Akira was startled. That seemed so practical.

  “Things that make money, really,” Max corrected his son. “The money itself was your mother.”

  Akira raised her eyebrows at Max, encouraging him to go on, and he continued. “My wife was the driving force behind General Directions. The company is primarily a holding company. We buy and sell shares of other companies, and sometimes pick up useful patents. As I’m sure you can imagine, foreknowledge is an asset when it comes to dabbling in investments.”

  “Shouldn’t that be illegal?” Akira was fascinated. It had never occurred to her to look for such a pragmatic use for her own quirk. Not that ghosts were likely to be useful when it came to buying stocks, but they could have been helpful in other ways, she supposed. Maybe?

  “Oh, probably,” Max agreed. “But I wouldn’t want to be the politician trying to get the law passed.”

  “Or the lawyer trying to prosecute,” Zane said. “It’s tough to prove. Turns out that knowing the future looks a lot like insider trading from the outside, at least to the SEC, so we’ve had some experience.”

  Max waved his hand, as if brushing away the SEC. “We’ve worked all that out.”

  Akira was still trying to put the pieces together. “If it’s a holding company, why do you have research labs?” she asked. The labs she’d seen on her first tour were impressively well
-stocked and the scanner that Nat had used earlier in the day had to be a multi-million dollar piece of equipment. That didn’t fit the picture of a company that only invested in other companies.

  “I like research,” Max answered, as if that was all that needed to be said.

  “Got to spend the money on something,” Zane murmured to Akira. “Mom always spent it on making more of it, but Dad uses part of the profits for his interests.”

  “We’ve got some fascinating projects underway. Some, of course, explore our, well, quirks, if you will, but we’ve funded some biochemical research that’s quite amazing. And there’s a quantum teleportation project that you might be interested in.” Max sounded eager to share, and Akira heard the words with a surge of curiosity. Quirks?

  “You’re researching psychic phenomena?” she asked, not sure how she felt about that. Academically, of course, it was disastrous. Her one speculative paragraph had led to stern words from her department head, whispers in the staff room, mocking jokes from her colleagues, and a seeming end to her academic career.

  “I hire people with gifts,” Max said. “Or interesting ideas. And then see what they do. Often that means researching the phenomena that affect them directly.”

  Akira didn’t really know much about business, having spent her life in academia, but Max’s tactics sounded risky to her. Maybe he really could see the future: the company might need the advantage just to survive.

  “Ah, finally,” Zane said, as a waitress approached, balancing three plates of food.

  “Here you go.” The teenage waitress had short blonde curls and way too much eye make-up, but she smiled brightly as she placed the plates on the table, one in front of each of them. Akira’s held a cheeseburger, thick and juicy, the lettuce green, the tomato lushly red, and fries that were still sizzling. But she hadn’t ordered a cheeseburger. In fact, she hadn’t ordered anything.

  “What is this?” Zane was looking at his plate with an expression of mild dismay.

  “I dunno. I’ve never seen it before.” The waitress glanced over her shoulder at the open kitchen and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you want me to take it back? Maggie’ll be madder ‘n heck.”

  “I think maybe you got the plates wrong,” Max said to the waitress, not unkindly, as he picked up his fork. His plate held grilled salmon and broccoli, Akira noted.

  “Do you want this?” Zane asked Akira, his doubt obvious.

  Akira looked at Zane’s food: golden rice sprinkled with chunks of cauliflower, carrots, green beans, and potatoes, almonds and raisins. “It’s vegetable biryani,” she said with relief. “And yes, I want it.” As she passed her plate over to Zane and he slid his rice dish along the table to her, she asked Max, “How did you know that?”

  “Know what?” he asked, taking a bite of salmon.

  “Know what I’d want to eat.” Akira was pragmatic about food: she ate what was put in front of her. But when she cooked for herself, she mostly ate vegetarian. Had Max had her investigated? Or was this his foresight in action?

  “Oh, I didn’t,” he replied, as she began to eat. “I ordered three specials when I came in. Maggie decides what they’ll be.”

  “Maggie?”

  “It’s her place,” Max replied. “She took it over six, maybe seven years ago. Used to be a diner—your basic fried eggs and bacon for breakfast, meatloaf and potatoes for dinner. Not a bad place but nothing special. Maggie shook it up a bit.”

  The biryani was terrific, the rice soft, the spice with the perfect level of kick. Akira ate it thoughtfully. Vegetable biryani, in the middle of nowhere, Florida. For that matter, vegetarian food, in the middle of nowhere, Florida. And Max was psychic. And Tassamara was a town of psychics.

  “No menus?” she finally asked.

  “For visitors, yeah,” Zane answered.

  She nodded, taking that in. She was beginning to understand what other people must feel like when she told them she could see ghosts. There was doubt, and then a cautious interest, and then total confusion.

  “So the town. . .”

  “Attracts people with gifts, yes.” Max nodded. “We look for them, too, and find them and bring them here, but some show up on their own.”

  Akira looked around the restaurant. She wondered how many of the people in it were like her. Not that they could see ghosts, of course: Max wouldn’t have been looking for a medium for so long if mediums were easily found. But keepers of secrets that most of the world scoffed at?

  “Vampires? Werewolves? Ectoplasmic blobs?” she finally asked.

  Max looked mystified by the question, but Zane grinned. “No, no, and you’d probably know better on the last. Although I should probably say, not to the best of our knowledge. We’ve never met any.”

  Akira ate another bite of rice. Could this be an elaborate practical joke? “You realize this is a little tough to believe.”

  “Zane’s best at providing proof,” Max replied readily.

  Akira glanced at Zane. He was psychic, too? That was unexpected. “Can you tell me—um—what I’m going to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning?”

  “Yogurt,” he replied without hesitation and then chuckled at the look on her face. “Did I get it right?”

  “Yes,” she replied, but something about the laugh in his eyes was making her feel more defensive than convinced.

  Max shook his head. “You give psychics a bad name, Zane.” He sighed. “That was a cold read. Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know anything about the future.”

  “Rabbit food, California girl, easy guess,” Zane agreed. He was watching Akira and she shifted under his gaze. His laugh, the warmth in his look—that tingle was back and more inappropriate than ever. But she could feel her heart picking up its pace a little, her pulse accelerating.

  “A cold read?” Akira asked, pulling her eyes away from Zane with an effort, and looking at Max.

  “There are a lot more fake psychics in the world than real ones. A cold read is when a pretender makes likely guesses and uses your responses to improve further guesses. Zane’s got a gift but it’s not precognition.”

  “I find things,” Zane told her. “Lost anything recently?”

  “No.” Akira thought for a moment. “But most of my belongings are on a truck somewhere. Can you tell me where it is?”

  He nodded, and held out his hand to her, palm up. She looked at it and raised her eyebrows questioningly. “It’s easier if I’m touching you,” he explained.

  Touching her? That seemed like a bad idea. But Akira placed her hand on his, and as his warm fingers closed around hers, she tried hard to ignore the melting feeling that was starting in her belly. His eyes were closed and she watched him in fascination, wondering what he felt, what was happening inside his head.

  And then his eyelids flickered open and his eyes caught hers, the pupils dark and dilated in the gray-blue, and for just a moment he was leaning toward her—and then, hastily, he dropped her hand and pulled back and said, with a slight rasp to his voice, “Outside Jacksonville. The truck will get here tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? It could be a guess. But she’d find out soon.