CHAPTER FOUR
“Wow.” It was more of a low sigh than an exclamation, as Zane shook his head. “Wow.”
Akira waited, chewing on her lower lip.
People reacted differently to learning that she saw ghosts. Scoffing, disbelief, skepticism, she didn’t really mind any of those: a quick, light, “Oh, of course I was kidding,” and the conversation was over. Crazy manic enthusiasm and excitement? That happened sometimes and it was okay. Her best friend from childhood had loved her ghost stories, at least until her parents had talked to Akira’s father. Absently, still watching Zane, Akira rubbed her lower arm.
Best-case scenario was what had happened with Mrs. Sato, her across-the-street neighbor when she was ten. She’d spent months being fussed over and fed home-made cookies with tall glasses of milk, while she provided a voice for the old woman’s dead husband, until the day that Mrs. Sato didn’t answer the door. She’d died in her sleep, and Akira had never seen either Mr. or Mrs. Sato again.
The worst-case scenario, though—that was bad. And it was always the relatives that were the worst. For some people, knowing a loved one was present but out of reach was devastating. Akira had never found the words that could make the loss bearable or the death meaningful.
“Would you mind telling Dillon that if he wasn’t dead, I would kill him for being so stupid?” Zane finally said calmly.
The relief was like a cool breeze on a hot day. Akira had to bite back her smile.
“Ha!” Dillon said from the backseat. “At last I get to answer. Would you tell my uncle that he’s said that every single time he’s driven this car for years? I know already!”
“He can hear you,” Akira replied to Zane.
“Oh.” He glanced at her. “Right.” He shook his head. “Wow,” he repeated.
He looked back at her, more intently this time. “You—” he started and then he stopped. “We need to get you checked out. Let’s do that first. Dillon’s not going anywhere, right?”
Akira looked at Dillon and shrugged. She never knew how or when a ghost would disappear.
“Yeah, go make sure you’re not hurt,” Dillon said. “I’ll be fine. And not to be selfish or anything, but it’d suck big-time for me if you were to die right now.”
This time Akira didn’t bother to try to hide her wry smile. “That’d be ironic, wouldn’t it? But I’m not badly hurt, I promise.”
Zane’s brow quirked, and Akira realized that she’d responded to words he couldn’t hear. Quickly, she said, “Dillon agrees I should get looked at.” Argh, she’d slipped already. Despite Zane’s seemingly calm acceptance of a ghostly nephew, she’d learned that it was better, safer, to be careful.
Inside the General Directions building, Zane took her through an innocuous, unlabeled door behind the reception desk and into a small security room where a guard was watching multiple monitors. The guard acknowledged Zane with a laconic nod, but his alert eyes took in everything about Akira as they passed through the room, and into a hallway that led to an elevator.
This was such a strange place. That guard had the lean musculature and clipped hair of a professional soldier, and the wall of monitors was as high-tech as any security she’d ever seen. Research labs had security, of course, but this one was in the middle of nowhere. And it was a Sunday. Did they really need such precautions? And if so, why?
But as the elevator door slid open, she stopped worrying about it. The woman waiting on the other side had to be Zane’s sister: she had the same dark hair, only hers was long and braided, and the same blue-gray eyes and fair skin. But where Zane had a look of hidden mischief, Natalya had a look of hidden depths, as if she had the kind of serenity that would be the calm in the midst of disaster, the still presence in a panicked emergency room.
“So Dad was right,” Zane said, by way of greeting.
Natalya’s eyes widened. “Dillon?” she asked.
Akira’s eyes widened, too. If she’d known Zane was going to be so cavalier with her secret, she wouldn’t have told him! Except, of course, that she’d given it away, she corrected herself. Still, she would have at least tried to swear him to secrecy before admitting the truth.
“Yep.” Zane nodded. He looked back at Akira. “Is he here?”
“I—um—ah,” Akira stammered a little, trying to decide what she should say, how she should answer, before admitting defeat, and saying, “No. He’s tied to the car. He can’t get this far away from it.”
Natalya’s mouth dropped open but only slightly, before she pulled it closed again and said, “Ghosts are real. And they haunt cars?”
Akira scowled at Zane, before shrugging reluctantly.
“And my nephew is a ghost?”
Akira’s scowl deepened. Damn him for putting her into this position. She didn’t do this! She didn’t talk to relatives of ghosts. It just made for messy, uncomfortable scenes when Akira admitted that she didn’t know why Dillon was a ghost, or how to help him, or really anything at all. Relatives always expected her to have the answers, as if seeing ghosts came with some gigantic book of profound insight into the spirit world. It didn’t. Or if it did, her copy of the book had gotten lost in the mail.
“And Dad was right?” That final question wasn’t directed at Akira, but at Zane, who was grinning.
“We should have known better than to bet against him,” he acknowledged.
“That was you,” Natalya said. “I did know better. And I look forward to Thanksgiving dinner. You’d better start practicing.”
Maybe Akira was looking confused, because Zane took a moment to explain as they walked down the hallway. “A couple of years ago, my dad met a woman who claimed to be a medium. She told him that the car was haunted. He’s been searching for another medium ever since. I bet him a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner that she was lying, but he insisted that she was telling the truth. He’s not usually wrong, so betting against him was probably not one of my better moves.”
As they entered an examining room, Natalya shooed her brother away, sending him to another door further down the hallway. “We’re not really a hospital,” she explained. “I’ve got a medical degree, but I spend most of my time on research. I wouldn’t have agreed to this, but Zane said you didn’t think you were badly injured and our scanner is so much better than anything any local hospital has that if you do have any minor internal bleeding, I’m more likely to find it. We’re using susceptibility weighted imaging, with a 3T high-field system, and the contrast is great for traumatic injuries.” Clucking disapprovingly at the long scrapes on Akira’s arms, Natalya handed her a flowered hospital gown.
Akira was mystified. No one responded to the news that ghosts were real like this. It was as if Natalya had heard the words, accepted them immediately, and moved on just as quickly. Where were the questions? The doubts? The demands for proof?
Natalya must have mistaken her surprise for lack of interest, because she continued with a smile, “Okay, I can see that you don’t really care about my treasure. I’ll skip the tech notes. Just take everything off, especially anything metal, and put the gown on. There’s nothing metal in your body, is there? No pacemaker or artificial joints?”
Akira shook her head no, and Natalya went on. “The scanner is next door, and I’ll be in the screening room on the other side with Zane. Just come through when you’re ready, and lay down on the table. I’ll be in to help you get comfortable.” With that, she disappeared through the door.
Slowly, Akira changed into the gown, folding her clothes neatly and leaving them on the chair. Maybe she had hit her head really hard. Maybe she was dreaming? But no, the scrapes on her arms hurt like hell, in the way that only brush burns and paper cuts could, a stinging pain of raw nerve ends. There was no way she was imagining that.
The table was cold but Akira was so busy thinking that she barely noticed as the machine whirred its way around her. The brief period where she and Zane had talked in the car had only added to her list of questions. She had
been trying to hide her insanity for as long as she could remember, but everyone she’d met in this town seemed to be willing to accept it as matter-of-factly as if she’d told them the sky was blue. What was wrong with them?