I’d developed a mild case of posterior tibial tendinitis on the inside of my right foot, just below the anklebone, and while it wasn’t getting any worse, it wasn’t exactly getting any better. “The same,” I said, laying my head back and relishing the feel of Heath’s strong hands.
“You should ice it after each run,” he told me.
“I have been, except today there wasn’t time.”
“Crazy day, wasn’t it?”
“Insane. On so many levels,” I agreed.
Heath was silent for a moment before he said, “Em?”
“Yeah?”
“What aren’t you telling me about your mom and the Sandman?”
I tensed, but then I sighed and lifted my head up to look at Heath. “I’m not keeping anything from you.”
Heath cocked a skeptical eyebrow and worked his thumbs into the center of my sole. It was so pleasurable that I moaned. “You sure there isn’t something else bothering you?”
“You mean besides the fact that we have an insanely powerful spook able to possess the minds of a dozen people while slamming every door in a ten-thousand-square-foot building, and we have no idea how to shut his ass down or where his portal might be hiding? On top of which we somehow got roped into helping to solve a set of murders forty-five years apart and we have very few leads and even fewer suspects?”
Heath chuckled as he set my right foot back down in the tub. He then lifted the other foot and worked his magic on it. “Yeah, besides all that.”
I looked away from Heath and inhaled deeply. There was a terrible thought currently running rampant in my mind that threatened to cause so much havoc that I didn’t know if I could voice it out loud. But if I held it in, it might still destroy me. “I have this fear . . . ,” I began.
“Of?”
Lifting my foot out of Heath’s hands, I set it down and sat up toward him, taking up both of his hands in mine. I needed to whisper this and look into his eyes, because I didn’t think I’d have the courage otherwise. “I think Mama may have played a part in Everett’s death.”
Heath kept his expression neutral, but he squeezed my hands to reassure me. “The sugar bowl?”
“Yes. Linda confirmed that it likely came from Sarah Porter’s tea set. She and Mama were best friends right up until the third grade. There was some sort of falling-out over that summer, and Mama became best friends with Linda.”
“Was it the same summer that Everett was murdered?”
I nodded. “The timing matches.”
Heath sat back but held on to my hands. “We need to know what happened in that playroom.”
I dropped my gaze. “But what if what happened in that playroom isn’t something I can handle?”
“Hey,” Heath said, sitting forward again. When I kept my gaze averted, he lifted my chin with his finger. “There isn’t anything you can’t handle, babe. Don’t you know that by now? You’re the strongest person I ever met. The most courageous. The most loyal. And . . . ,” he added, leaning in to hover his lips above mine, “the most beautiful.”
A moment later we were intertwined, and soon after that, we were making a wet mess of the bathroom floor.
Later, as he and I were lying in bed, whispering to each other, he said, “Em?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want me to try to reach out to your mom and ask her about Everett?”
Heath asked the question I’d been silently debating for much of that day. And, as much as I thought I might want answers, I didn’t know if I could face what might come directly from my mother. “I don’t know,” I said, because I really didn’t.
“If she was there that day, babe, she could tell us what happened, and assuming Everett didn’t die because of anything she did, she might be able to point to the killer.”
I trailed my finger along Heath’s arm, starting at the top of his shoulder, moving across the bulging muscle of his upper arm along the curl of his biceps and over to the smooth part of his forearm. I loved every beautiful square inch of him and found the tactile connection tonight so comforting. “What if she won’t tell us?” I asked, snaking my finger back up the way it’d come.
“Then she won’t,” he said simply.
My finger stopped its languid stroll. “What if she does and I can’t handle it?”
“Like I said before, you’ll handle it.”
“What if handling it means seeing her differently?” I asked next, barely able to get those words out.
“Would anything she told you affect how much you love her?”
I thought about that for a minute. “No,” I said at last. “Nothing could change how much I love her.”
“Then it’s okay to ask.”
I sighed. “Have I told you how much I love you, Heath?”
A sly grin formed on his lips. “A couple of times, but for me, it never gets old.” I moved in and kissed him, so deeply in love at that moment that I felt he was right. I could handle anything. “Now, how ’bout it?” he asked me when I released him from the kiss. “You wanna reach out to her now?”
I sat up and Heath did too. “Can we light a candle?” There was a white scented candle in the room. I loved the symbolism of a white candle, how it promoted peace and harmony especially during spiritual endeavors.
We found a box of matches next to the candle and lit it; then Heath and I sat cross-legged on the bed, facing each other. I opened my senses wide and felt him do the same.
He quickly adopted a faraway stare and suddenly smiled. “What?” I asked.
“Grampa,” he said. Heath’s grandfather, Sam Whitefeather, was one of my spirit guides, and the second Heath mentioned him, I felt a calm come over me. I adored that old man something fierce. “He’s talking about how we got beat up today,” Heath said. “He says this Sandman spirit is nothing to fuck with.”
I burst out laughing. “He did not say ‘fuck’!”
Heath tried to look serious, but the corners of his mouth were quirking. “Yeah, well, you know a lot of this is left up to interpretation.”
I giggled. “Nice.”
“Anyway, he says the Sandman is really dangerous. He’s superpowerful and he has a vendetta against . . .”
“Against?”
Heath’s faraway focus switched to looking directly at me. “Against you.”
“Well, that was sort of obvious from what happened today at the mental hospital.”
“Yep,” Heath said, his eyes becoming unfocused again. “Now I’m asking him if he would bring your mom forward.”
I waited with my nerves fluttering in my chest, and I watched as Heath’s blank face morphed into a lowered brow. “He says he won’t bring her forward.”
“Why not?”
“The Sandman has gained some power and right now he’s too fixated on her energy. If Gramps brings her into this room, or anywhere around you, it’ll draw him like a magnet. He says she’s doing her best on the other side to keep him guessing where she is, distracted, and away from you, but to do that, she also has to keep her distance from you until this is over.”
My hopes fell. As much as I was afraid of the truth, I so wanted to hear from Mama right now that it almost physically hurt. I needed reassurances that she was close, even if that was the most she could offer me. And then I thought I had a better idea. “Can you ask Sam to bring Everett Sellers forward?”
Heath’s eyes cut to me again. “That’s what I was just asking.”
I tapped my temple. “Great minds . . .”
Heath began to smile, but it quickly faded and his gaze went over my shoulder again. I knew he was listening to what Sam was saying. “He won’t be able to bring Everett forward,” he said.
“Can’t find him?” I guessed.
“No,” said Heath. “Everett didn?
??t make it to the other side. He went another way.” And then Heath made a point of looking down and I let out a breath. “No way!”
But Heath was nodding. “It was Everett’s choice. He turned away from the light and ducked through to the lower realms. That’s all the history Gramps is able to get. He says the records for Everett on his side close with his turning away from the light.”
“Whoa.”
“Says something about Everett, doesn’t it?” Heath said.
“It does,” I agreed, a bit disturbed by the revelation. It was incredibly rare for a child to turn away from the light and head to the lower realms instead. I mean, I could’ve seen Everett remaining grounded, but Sam was telling us that wasn’t what happened. Everett had chosen the dark, evil energy of the lower realm, and that let both Heath and me know that there must have been something dark and perhaps even evil within Everett.
After a moment I worked up my courage a bit more and said, “Ask Sam if he can ask Mama what happened on that day that Everett died.”
Heath adopted that faraway expression again, and I knew by the way he pursed his lips in a frown that we weren’t going to get an answer we liked. “He says she won’t tell him.”
“Then she knows what did happen that day,” I said softly.
“I think she does, Em.”
I fell backward onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. I was starting to feel lost and abandoned by the most precious spirit I’d ever known, and it hurt like hell.
Then Heath said, “Sam says Gilley might turn up a clue tomorrow.”
That got my attention and I sat up again. “Can he see how this will play out?”
The future can be a bit murky to souls on the other side. Sometimes it’s clear as day and they make wonderful fortune-tellers. Other times, the future is riddled with possibilities, and no one way looks clear enough to be able to predict. I had a feeling we were currently wading in waters more murky than clear. “He says he sees answers coming, but they’re from unusual sources. He says he thinks we’ll have everything we need to put the puzzle pieces together, but throughout all of it, we need to be careful of the Sandman.”
“Does he have anything else to tell us that isn’t obvious?” I joked.
“Nah, he’s pretty much sticking to that. Except that he’s pointing to your foot and telling you to take care of that.”
I knew what Sam meant. I’d had this tendinitis issue for a couple of months and I was a bit worried that I might be doing lasting damage to the tendon. I knew what I had to do to fix the issue too, namely, adjust my stride, change my running shoes to ones with more arch support, and soak my foot in an ice bath after every run, but that hurt something awful, and I tended to skip it more than I should. “Got it, Sam,” I said, vowing to take better care of myself.
“He’s pulling back,” Heath told me, and a second later I felt the energy in the room shift, as if someone had closed a window.
After Sam left, Heath and I talked late into the night. I was quite tired but not sleepy and I suspected that it was the same for Heath. I think we finally nodded off around three a.m. and I was in a very deep sleep when I heard the sound of loud knocking. I struggled to come fully awake as the knock sounded again and I half fell, half clambered out of bed to see who was at our bedroom door.
“Who is it?” Heath groused, his face in the pillow. From the sound of his voice I thought what he meant to say was, “Make them go away!”
I grabbed my robe from a chair, threw it on quickly, and opened the door to find Mrs. G. standing there. “Oh, Mary Jane, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but Linda Chadwick is here to see you. Did you want me to offer her some coffee and a piece of Danish while you pull yourself together?”
My eyes were blinking rapidly as I tried to come up to speed. Linda was here? Now? Why? And there were Danishes? “Uh, yes, please, Mrs. G. Thank you. Tell her I’ll be right out.”
She smiled kindly at me and was gone; then I hustled around to my suitcase to fish out a clean pair of jeans. I glanced over at Heath; he and Linda had never met, but I’d told her all about him. I had a fleeting thought to introduce them now, but my sweetheart was already back asleep, snoring softly.
I paused in the bathroom long enough to quickly brush my teeth and comb out my hair. It refused to cooperate without a proper shower, so I settled for sweeping it back into a ponytail.
When I arrived in the kitchen, I saw that the clock on the wall read eight o’clock. No wonder I was tired. “Hi, Linda,” I said shyly.
She was sitting next to Mrs. G., a steaming cup of coffee and a half-eaten, delicious-looking homemade raspberry Danish in front of each lady. “Good morning, Mary Jane,” Linda said, pushing a smile to her lips. Her eyes betrayed her nervousness, however, and I hated that we were in this awkward state with each other.
“Well! I’ll leave the two of you to your visit,” Mrs. G. said, scooting back her chair. “I must get out to water my garden before it gets too hot out.”
Before she left, Mrs. G. poured me a cup of coffee from the carafe in the center of the table and plated me one of her Danishes. My stomach gurgled hungrily. I’d skipped dinner the night before, and wished I’d had a sensible meal instead of that ice-cream cone.
“I went by your daddy’s place this morning,” Linda said, as if yesterday’s outburst had never happened. “He told me you were staying over here with Gilley.”
“Daddy and I get along better if we’re not under the same roof.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me, honey,” she said with a laugh. “I know how your daddy can be.”
From anyone else, that statement would’ve gotten my dander up, but from Linda it wasn’t in the least bit offensive. Daddy could be ornery and hardheaded. “So what brings you by?” I asked as I took a sip of coffee.
Linda had been picking at the edge of her pastry. “I wanted to apologize.”
“Oh?” I said lightly.
Linda rolled her eyes. “Don’t you dare be coy with me, Mary Jane. I invented that sweet little ‘Oh?’ and don’t you forget it.”
I smiled. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
“Yes, well, I really do want to apologize, buttercup. You see, your mention of the . . . of the . . .”
“Sandman?”
Linda shuddered. “Yes, that, well, it just threw me, is all. I had no idea you knew about him.”
“How do you know about him, Linda?” I knew it was bold of me to ask, but I figured the worst she could do was yell at me again, and I thought I was better braced for that reaction this time.
She eyed me in that way that said I was a wicked, mischievous child who ought to know better. “I can’t tell you anything,” she said to me.
I set down my coffee cup. “He’s come back, you know.”
Linda’s back stiffened. “Who?”
“The Sandman.”
She blinked. “That’s impossible.”
“Impossible because Mama somehow managed to banish him to the lower realms?”
Linda’s mouth opened and closed, but she offered me no further insight. “Mary Jane,” she said, wrapping her hand around mine, her face now pinched with concern. “You must swear to me that you won’t try to communicate with this evil spirit. He’s dangerous, baby.”
“It’s too late, Linda,” I said to her. “I’ve already had two encounters with him and he knows I’m DeeDee’s daughter.”
My mother’s best friend put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, please tell me that’s not true!”
“It’s true, Linda,” I said. “You must’ve heard about the incident at the mental hospital yesterday. That was the Sandman, and that’s how I got roughed up enough for you to notice when I showed up at your back door yesterday.”
For several seconds Linda simply stared at me in disbelief, and then I saw her gaze tr
avel to my cheek where the scratches and the bruises were, and even more scratches on my forearms. And suddenly, she was in motion. “I have to go,” she said, pushing back her chair and making haste to grab her purse.
“Linda,” I said, jumping to my feet. “What’s going on? Come on, you have to tell me!”
But she wasn’t having any of it. She practically ran to the door, pausing only to say, “Promise me you won’t go looking for the Sandman,” she said. “Please?”
“I may not have a choice. And if you don’t tell me what you know, Linda, he may have the advantage against me.”
She stared hard at me and I could see the wavering in her eyes, but then she simply shook her head and went out the door, barely pausing as she passed Mrs. G.
“Hey, honey,” I heard Heath say while I watched her drive away. “Everything okay?”
I shut the door and turned to him. “We have to figure out who this Sandman is, and how to shut him down, and we have to do that today, Heath. Today.”
Chapter 12
While I showered, I gave Heath a brief summary of what’d happened with Linda. “She knows something about how your mom is linked to all this,” he said from his place at the sink, where he was shaving.
“She definitely knows something.”
“How do we get her to tell us?”
I turned off the faucet and wrapped myself in a towel. Pulling back the shower curtain, I said, “We don’t. I know Linda, and when she promises to keep a secret, it’s as good as locked up in Fort Knox.”
Heath wiped the remnants of shaving cream from his face and said, “Then what do we do?”
Before I could answer, the bathroom door flew open and Gilley stood there with a big fat Danish in his hand. “Aww, jeez, you two! You’re half-naked! Get a room, would you?”
I glared at Heath. “What’d we say about locking the door?”
“You said to lock it, and I forgot,” he replied sheepishly.