CHAPTER THREE
The black car was empty. Akira was surprised by the stab of disappointment she felt. Ghosts disappeared, she knew that. She had never known what exactly happened to them, but one day they’d be there, the next they were gone.
As a physicist, she’d theorized, although—with the exception of that one academic-career-destroying paragraph in the Energy Review Quarterly—only privately, never publicly. Were the spirits just a form of energy? Did it dissipate slowly for some, the faders, and burn out quickly for others? Or did it change? The first law of thermodynamics said that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed, so did spirit energy become some other form of energy? And if so, what?
But at the moment, the only important question was that she’d just leased an old black Taurus for no real reason, and did she want to keep it? She glanced back at the small airport building. She’d picked up the keys at the desk, and dropped off the keys to her rental car, as Grace had told her to do. She supposed she could go back in and say that she’d changed her mind, but that might be just as hard to explain as wanting the car in the first place could have been. She might as well just keep it.
She slid behind the wheel and adjusted the seat, and then the mirrors. Whoever had driven it out here had been a lot taller than she was. Set to go, she slid the key in the ignition, backed out of the parking space, and started to drive away.
The scream was piercing in its intensity, terrifying in its volume.
Akira slammed on the brakes, throwing the car into a skid. A flash of white, a loud bang, and suddenly the car was filling with smoke.
The next thing she was aware of was the feel of a strong, warm hand on her back as she tried hard to cough out her lungs to the sound of a teenage boy’s voice saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again.
“Just relax and try to breathe.” That was an older, but also familiar male voice. Akira looked up. For a moment, she didn’t recognize the face—it was too unexpected. But the dark hair, the blue-gray eyes—finally the pieces fell into place and she realized it was Zane Latimer, her erstwhile interviewer. “I’m calling an ambulance,” he continued.
Frantically, Akira started shaking her head, while also trying to wave off Dillon’s apologies. Through coughs, she gasped out, “No ambulance. No.”
“Uh, yes, ambulance, yes,” said Zane. “You were unconscious. I had to pull you out of the car because of the dust from the airbag. God knows what damage I might have done.”
Through the coughing, through the pain that she was just starting to feel, Akira had room to feel a little burst of fear. Ambulances led to hospitals, and hospitals were bad. Very bad.
She was sitting on the gravel of the parking lot, she realized. Zane was crouched next to her, his hand on her back, and she was leaning against his legs. Dillon was on her other side. He’d stopped apologizing when she spoke, but he had his fist pressed against his mouth, his face frantic with worry.
She tried to smile at him, but it probably looked more like a grimace. It hurt to breathe. She thought that was just from the coughing, although she could tell that she would be bruised from the seat belt. And her arms hurt, too—long marks along the inside of her wrists were almost like brush burns, scraped and raw from the airbag’s impact.
“I’ll be okay.” The words sounded strangled but she got them out.
“You were unconscious,” Zane repeated. “I’m no doctor, but I know enough to know that unconscious is bad. You need to get looked at.”
“I’m fine,” Akira insisted. “It was just the airbag. I wasn’t going very fast. What did I hit?” She tried to stand, pushing herself up with one hand. Zane slid his arm under her elbow and helped her to her feet, rising with a smooth, unconscious grace that she couldn’t match.
“Looks like a parking post. You didn’t do much damage, only dented the fender. It’s too bad about the airbags, though. Cleaning up after a blown airbag is expensive. And it’s an old car, and not worth much. The insurance company will probably want to total it.”
“Total it?” Akira looked at Zane in dismay.
Standing by the car, Dillon’s eyes went wide, and he put a possessive hand on the hood. “What will happen to me?”
Akira started shaking her head, “No, no, there’s no need to call the insurance company. I’ll get it repaired.”
Zane’s eyes narrowed. “You seem determined to keep this car.”
Akira paused. She glanced at Dillon, and bit her lip, then looked away. What could she say? She coughed gently a few times, a delaying tactic as she tried to think things through. Should she let the car get totaled? Taken away to some junkyard? Stripped for parts, and then crushed? What would happen to Dillon?
If her father were here . . . but he wasn’t. He’d been dead for three years.
Chin set stubbornly, she said, “I am, yes. I’ll get the car fixed.”
“Tell you what,” Zane offered. “You let me take you to the hospital and have a doctor take a look at you, and I’ll see about getting the car repaired.”
Akira shook her head again. “No hospitals. I don’t—I don’t do hospitals.”
“How can you not do hospitals? You’re hurt. You could have internal injuries, a concussion, brain damage for all I know.”
“I’m fine.” The wince as she touched her chest probably didn’t help convince him, but she did think she was fine, just bruised.
“I’m your boss. I could order you to go to the hospital,” Zane suggested, exasperated.
Akira just looked at him. Obeying orders to go to the hospital was not in her job description. It was a vague job description, but if it entailed hospital visits, she was not going to be sticking around, contract or no contract. And while he might technically be her boss she was going to have a hard time thinking of him that way. Even in the formal interview setting, he had a casual air about him that said he’d rather be having fun than working, and today, in his blue jeans and t-shirt, he wasn’t a convincing authority figure.
“Yeah, I didn’t think that would work.” Zane scratched his head. “What about this—my sister is a doctor and GD has a medical lab with all the latest scanners. Will you let her take a look at you?”
Akira thought about it, and then nodded. Medical care wasn’t the problem. She just didn’t like hospitals.
“All right.” He took her chin between two fingers and tilted her head up. She met his gaze, surprised to feel a tingle of warmth touching her cheeks. What was he doing? Her lips parted slightly, almost involuntarily, as she realized how attractive he was. She hadn’t thought of him that way, but standing so close to him, with his arms almost around her, his eyes intent on hers, she couldn’t help but notice. “Your pupils are both the same size. That’s about the only thing I know how to look for.”
She pulled away. “I don’t have a concussion.”
“I’m going to call Nat and get her to meet us at GD. Will you wait here?”
Akira’s confusion must have shown.
“I drove this car here,” he said, nodding toward the black Taurus. “I was going to have a flying lesson, so my ride home won’t be ready for a while. I’ll see if I can clean this up enough to be drivable. Or at least enough to get us to GD.”
“Oh, you know, if you have something to do, I’ll be okay—” Akira started.
“Nice try.” He brushed a finger along her cheekbone. “Wait here,” he ordered. “I’ll be right back.”
Akira leaned back against the hood of the car. As Zane strode away, Dillon spoke, “I’m so sorry. I was working on stretching. I was in the hangar. But when the car started moving, it really hurt. I didn’t realize what was happening.”
“It’s okay,” Akira spoke quietly, watching for anyone who might be looking at them. “I’m sorry I messed up your car.”
“What do you think would happen to me if the car got totaled?” asked Dillon, his tone fascinated yet uncertain.
“I think you’d be li
ving in a junkyard,” Akira answered. “I never have figured out how and why ghosts are tied to places, though. And with a car—well, I don’t know. It might depend what you’re really tied to. If it’s the cushions or the spark plugs or the lights—maybe you’d move on with a part of the car?”
“Wow, that’s a whacked idea. That’d be really strange. Stranger even than being a ghost in the first place.”
“Kind of, yeah. Good thing you don’t have to worry about it.”
“It might be handy, though.” Now that Dillon didn’t have to be afraid, either for her or for himself, he was getting cheerful. “Just think, if I was tied to a spark plug, you could put it someplace cooler. Like maybe an arcade or something. Or a movie theater. I wouldn’t mind haunting a movie theater.”
Akira grinned at him. “Well, maybe we can experiment. But I think I’ve found us someplace to live that you’re going to like.”
“Someplace to live?” Dillon’s face stilled. “Are you—” He stopped and Akira could see in his expression all of the loneliness and misery he’d been feeling, alone, trapped in a car, no one to talk to, for months or maybe years. Just the possibility of change had him frozen with doubt. She felt a wave of sympathy for him. She knew what it was like to be lonely, to not have anyone to talk to.
“I’ve leased the car, so you’ll be staying with me.” Akira tried not to get involved with the ghosts she saw. But Dillon was different. Maybe she couldn’t find him a white light or fix whatever had made him a ghost in the first place, but she could make sure that his car was someplace nicer than a parking lot. “We’re going to have to have some ground rules, though.”
“No more parking lot?”
“No.” Akira shook her head, but she couldn’t help smiling at the look on his face. “And like I said, I think you’re going to like the place I found for us to live. If you’ve been able to stretch enough to get into the hangar here, you’ll definitely be able to get into the house. You might even be able to reach the town’s main street, which could be fun, although what a weird little place that is. But—oh, hey, first rule.” She turned so that she was facing away from the quickly approaching Zane. “Don’t ever talk to me when people are around. Never, okay? It gets too confusing for me,” she whispered.
“Okay, I won’t. But thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the coolest person ever. You are the best. You—” Dillon put his hand over his mouth, as if to stop himself from talking.
Akira tried hard to stop smiling and look as if she was inspecting the car but Dillon’s expression was so joyful that it was tough not to respond to it.
“Still feeling okay?” Zane asked from behind her.
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, not looking at him.
“Dave lent me the portable vac, so I’ll just cut out the airbag and clean up some of this powder. It’ll take me maybe ten minutes. Do you want to go inside and sit down?”
“No, I’m good.” Akira finally turned to face Zane, hoping she’d gotten her expression under control. He paused for a moment, looking at her intently, and then continued with his work, running the hand-held vacuum cleaner over the powdered seats and interior of the car. He was frowning, his face thoughtful.
Akira looked back at Dillon, who was hugging himself with delight. She pressed her lips together, trying to stop herself from smiling, but she knew her eyes were giving her away. She glanced at Zane. He was watching her surreptitiously, and looked back at the car as soon as she looked at him, but fortunately, the vacuum cleaner was loud enough that there was no possibility of talking.
Within a few minutes, the car was cleaned to Zane’s satisfaction, and the two of them were driving away. Or rather, the three of them, Dillon in the backseat, still quiet but almost glowing with happiness.
Zane glanced at Akira as they exited the parking lot, more successfully this time. He was driving. “How would you like to play twenty questions?”
“Animal, vegetable, mineral?” she responded, her voice skeptical.
“Maybe question ping-pong would be a better name. I ask you a question, you answer; you ask me a question, I answer.”
Akira considered the idea. She wanted to know more about General Directions, about the eccentric Max Latimer, about Tassamara, but did she want to answer his questions? Zane was bound to ask her about the car and what could she say?
“For example,” he went on. “This car. You obviously like it. But aren’t you curious about it? Where it came from? Who owns it? Why it was the only car available to you on your first visit here?” With that, he had her hooked. He might ask her about the car, but yes, she had questions, too.
“All right. But I get to go first. Why was this the only car available?”
Zane grinned at her. “It was a test. My turn. Why do you want to keep it?”
“A test? But that’s not an answer,” Akira protested.
“Sure it is. Why do you want to keep it?”
“Sentimental reasons. What kind of a test?”
“A test of potential perception. Are you always sentimental about cars you drive once?”
“No.” Potential perception? Akira’s forehead creased with doubt. “Did I pass the test?”
“Oh, with flying colors, I think. You were the only candidate who expressed any reluctance to take the car. That’s why it’s so interesting that you want to keep it now.” Zane paused. The first few rounds of their question ping-pong had been like a speed match, questions and answers flying. He tapped his long fingers on the steering wheel.
Akira frowned and glanced over her shoulder at the back seat. Dillon was leaning forward, looking curious. He opened his mouth as if to say something and she shook her head, very slightly, to tell him no. Carrying on two conversations at once was risky.
“Why were you reluctant to take the car?” Zane finally asked, taking his eyes off the road to watch her answer.
“I—” Akira didn’t want to answer that question. What could she say after all? Maybe it was time to change the subject. “—am just very perceptive, I guess. Why did you offer me a job?”
“My sister, Natalya, the doctor that we’re going to see, she said to hire you.”
“But I didn’t even meet her.”
“That better not be a question. It’s my turn.”
“It’s not a question, it’s a statement. How could she—”
“Now that’s sounding like a question,” Zane interrupted. “It’s still my turn. You have to wait for yours. Didn’t you learn how to take turns in kindergarten?”
“Yes, I did. And you just used your question on that.” Akira’s tone was grumpy, but Zane laughed.
They were driving along the same narrow, winding road that Akira had taken the first time she’d been here. Oak trees draped in Spanish moss lined the sides of the road, making a dappled pattern of sun and shade on the asphalt. To Akira, used to the dry brown hills and open spaces of California, the sense of stillness and enclosed space felt mysterious, yet appealing. It was green and beautiful and wild.
But it was also strange.
She thought carefully before asking her next question. “Why did your father ask me to come here?”
“Ah, that’s a good one. My father has been searching for a medium for a while now. He thought you might be one.”
“A medium? You mean like a person who talks to dead people?” Horrified, Akira leaned toward Zane but then fell back as her seat belt pressed against her darkening bruises. “Ouch. What made him think that?”
“Not your turn,” Zane’s glance was worried. “You’re not going to start coughing blood, are you?”
“No, I’m just bruised. What made your father think I was a medium?”
Zane turned onto the road that led to General Directions, slowing at the guard shack, but only pausing for a quick wave before the guard opened the gate. “My father likes to call himself a serendipidist. He’s very good at putting random pieces of information together, and apparently that article you wro
te struck him as intriguing. Intriguing enough to invite you out here.”
“I can’t talk to the dead,” Akira said fiercely. The occasional dead person, okay, but only those who became ghosts. But most people just died. Her mother hadn’t been a ghost. Her father hadn’t been a ghost. Sometimes she still thought that she was insane and her ghosts hallucinations. Maybe she was simply a very competent schizophrenic.
“I’m pretty sure I’m dead. It took me a while to figure it out but it’s the only thing that makes sense,” Dillon spoke from the backseat and Akira glared at him, widening her eyes as if to tell him he was breaking the rules. This was not a time where she could afford to be confused. “Sorry,” he added, falling back against the seat again, and pantomiming pulling a zipper across his lips.
“Hmm.” Zane made a non-committal hum, and Akira gritted her teeth in frustration. “I’m not sure talking to the dead is all that uncommon. Anyone can do that. It’s having the dead talk back that’s unusual.”
Zane pulled into a parking place and stopped the car, turning to face Akira. Very gently, he asked, “Do the dead talk to you, Akira Malone?”
“No! Not—” Akira looked away, not wanting to lie to him, and not wanting to tell him the truth, either, but unable to meet the searching look in his eyes.
“My nephew died in this car,” Zane said.
The words were so random, so unexpected, that Akira’s gaze flew back to his and before she thought, she blurted out, “Dillon’s your nephew?”
Zane just looked at her. In the backseat, Dillon said dryly, “Dead giveaway. Excuse the pun. Tell Uncle Zane I say hi.”
“Yes. My turn again.” Zane’s voice was still gentle. “How do you know my nephew’s name?”
Akira looked away, trying to decide what to do. What had Meredith said? That Tassamara was a town of psychics? Maybe this was a place where it was safe to admit the truth. And maybe she had no choice, anyway, because it was too late not to.
“The dead don’t talk to me,” Akira admitted with reluctance. “Just ghosts. Ghosts talk to me.” She sighed, and then added, mouth twisting, “But I talk back as little as possible.”