A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) (27 page)

“Anything could help.” Akira could hear the edge of
desperation in her voice.

“It was almost like I was caught in a storm on the ocean. Not
rain so much, but wind tossing me around and darkness. I was calling for help,
looking for something, anything, to hold onto when suddenly there were lights.
Two of them, one bright blue, the other yellow.”

She frowned, and shook her head, her blue eyes far away. “I
knew the yellow one was Zane, even though it was just a light. I tried to catch
him, but it was impossible, like holding light would be. I couldn’t do it. But
then I grabbed for the blue light, and it was solid. Soft, though.”

Zane’s mom was gesturing with her hands, as if she was trying
to demonstrate how she had tugged on the light. “I could hold it, almost as if
it was a pillow or a blanket. I dug my fingers in, and hung on, and tried to
wrap it around me, and then . . .” Her eyes returned to Akira, and a wry smile
pulled up one corner of her mouth, as she added, a hint of apology in her voice.
“I woke up in your body.”

“A blue light?” Akira looked back at her body. Zane hadn’t
given up, she saw gratefully, and neither had Dillon and Rose. They were
hovering over his shoulder, holding hands, with Rose touching the phone.

“I’ve never used one of these,” Rose was saying. “There aren’t
any buttons. How do I—oh, I see.”

But there was no blue light, nothing for Akira to grab onto.
How much time had already passed? How much longer did she have left before the
lack of oxygen to her brain made it impossible for her to return to her body?

“But I—I mean, my body—it was fine when you were in it,
right? No pain?”

“Oh, I had a terrible headache,” Zane’s mom responded
promptly.

Shit. A ruptured cerebral aneurysm could cause a headache. Blood
would be seeping into her body from the burst blood vessel, hemorrhaging steadily.

No blue light.

A terrible headache.

There was only one possible conclusion: she was dead.

She felt suddenly numb, almost cold. Moving slowly, she sat
down on the bed. “You can stop now, guys,” she said to Dillon and Rose.

“No, no, we’ve almost got it,” Dillon said, eyes bright with
excitement as he glanced at her. “We’ve figured out how to get the letters
working.”

“It doesn’t matter.” It was hard to get the words out. Akira
thought she ought to be shouting, screaming, raging, but she didn’t feel it. It
wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really.

Zane’s mom hadn’t meant to kill her.

Dillon hadn’t understood the danger.

Zane hadn’t even had a chance to save her—except for the
endless moments of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

She’d taken a risk and it hadn’t paid off.

But oh, she wished she’d told Zane she loved him.

She still could, she supposed. If Dillon and Rose could use
the phone, she could have them text her message to Zane. What would she say?
Apologize? Tell him he was the best thing that ever happened to her? Or just a
simple, “I love you. Good-bye.”

Her eyes closed. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t want this. Somewhere,
behind the numbness, a huge reservoir of pain was about to open up and flood
her, Akira knew.

“Don’t give up!” Zane’s mom had been watching her and stepped
forward. “Whatever you’re thinking, you could be wrong.”

If she let go, if she let the despair sweep through her, what
would happen? Would she become the next red vortex ghost in this house, destroying
the others in her grief?

She looked at Dillon. His enthusiasm had dimmed, his eyes
back to their familiar worried expression. She tried to smile at him. “Go
ahead. Send him a text,” she said. She didn’t think it would do any good, but
there was no harm in trying.

But he and Rose didn’t get the chance.

The steady pounding of the rain outside had hidden the sound
of a car pulling into the driveway, but the footsteps clattering up the stairs
were unmistakable.

“Out of the way,” Natalya snapped from the doorway to the
room, Grace and Max right behind her. Natalya was carrying a device made of
white plastic with a carrying handle, colorful buttons, and intricate displays.

Suddenly the already crowded room was overflowing, with ghosts
and people brushing past and through one another. Nat stood directly on top of
Rose, who backed up, almost tripping over Dillon, before she bumped into Zane’s
mom, who was greedily absorbing the sight of her family, eyes roaming from one
to the next, taking in everything, even as Max stepped through her and craned
to see Akira’s body. From her position on the bed, Akira watched, bemused by
the chaos.

“Thank God,” Zane groaned, leaning back.

“You should have called me!” Nat’s voice held fury. “Damn it,
Zane, what were you doing anyway?”

“Not me,” he said. “If I’d known this would happen, I’d have
locked her in my office.”

“She said the house was dangerous,” Max pointed out, as
Natalya efficiently began examining Akira, feeling for a pulse, then pulling
open her shirt.

Oh, God. Akira squeezed her eyes closed. She supposed it was
petty of her to be worried about which bra she was wearing when she was
probably dead, but she really wished she’d chosen a nice discreet white instead
of the black lace with hot pink lining this morning.

“What are you doing here?” Zane asked. “How did you know?”

“I saw it,” Natalya responded.

“But you don’t . . .” Zane started.

“Yes,” she snapped. “I try very hard to ignore my visions,
and you make it very difficult, little brother. This is the second time this
year. Now get out of the way!”

As Zane backed away, Natalya pulled the paddles out of the
box, and Akira realized what she was carrying.

A portable defibrillator.

Hmm. Spirit energy could cause random electrical energy in
her brain that led to seizures: could disorganized electrical impulses also
disrupt a heartbeat? If being hit by the spirit energy was like being hit by
lightning, then maybe it had caused a simple cardiac arrest. In that case, the
problem with her body might not be an aneurysm at all.

“Clear,” Natalya said. There was a hum of electrical charge
in the air as the power built in the battery-operated machine and she placed
the pads on Akira’s skin. And then, zap.

Everything went dark.

Shit, that hurt.

Akira forced her eyelids up.

It was Natalya’s blue eyes that were looking down at her, not
Zane’s, and she felt a momentary stab of disappointment before she realized
that seeing anyone’s eyes from this position was a good sign. Her body hurt
like she’d just run a marathon and then followed it up by sitting for a
six-hour lecture, every muscle stiff and sore, but nothing felt broken. And
although her head didn’t feel good, it wasn’t excruciating.

Licking her lips, she whispered, “Zane?”

Nat sighed and then smiled as she pulled back and let Zane
take her place.

Akira looked up at him, at the worry in his face.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I couldn’t hurt you. It was so
. . . it was too . . .” He shook his head, and Akira could hear the guilt and
despair in his voice.

“I love that you couldn’t do it,” she said, voice husky,
reaching to caress his face, sliding her hand along his cheek, loving the feel
of him. A rush of love poured through her, so intense that the rest of the words
just flowed out with it. “I love you.”

He reached for her, sliding his arm around her neck, lifting
her up, until he could bury his face in her hair. For a few moments, they sat
there like that, his arms wrapped around her, Akira relaxing into the warmth of
his body, and then he pulled back to kiss her, taking her lips with an urgent
ferocity that started Akira’s pulse racing.

Her heart must be working again, she thought fuzzily, as she
kissed him back, the same urgency in her, locking her arms around his neck,
until he let go of her mouth long enough to breathlessly say, “I love you, too,”
before he started kissing her again.

“All right, you two, break it up,” Natalya’s voice was amused
but firm. “We need to make sure there’s no permanent damage. I want to get
Akira to a hospital as quickly as possible.”

“No hospitals.” Akira broke free from Zane to say. That was
the last thing she needed.

“No hospitals,” Zane agreed. “Now that Mom and Dillon are
gone, how about no more ghosts at all? Ever?”

Akira looked over his shoulder. Grace, Natalya, and Max were
standing behind him, smiling with relief, but Dillon, Rose, and Zane’s mom were
right there with them, beaming just as happily.

“Um, yeah,” Akira said. “That might not work.”

Thanksgiving
Day

Akira wasn’t
convinced that deep-frying a turkey counted as a traditional Thanksgiving
dinner. And if she’d left the whole meal to Zane, they’d be eating stuffing
from a box, cranberries from a can, and Mrs. Smith’s frozen pumpkin pie. But as
she gazed out the bedroom window at the men clustered around the propane tank,
she couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips.

This was
their first family dinner in her place (their place, she corrected herself,
with secret delight) and Rose was over the moon with happiness, fluttering from
kitchen to yard and back again, trying to be everywhere at once, almost dancing
with joy.

Akira still
wasn’t quite sure what to think of Rose’s return. After the events of August, Zane’s
mom had stuck around long enough to talk to each of her children and her
husband, conversations facilitated by Akira without the ghostly possession
part. Then she’d gone through the opening or passageway or whatever it was,
eager to explore whatever came next.

Rose and
Dillon, though, were still here: Rose because she liked it, Dillon because Rose
insisted that he’d see his own door when it was time for him to move on.
According to Rose, Henry was back, too, but Akira hadn’t seen any sign of him.
He definitely wasn’t watching Lucas and Zane poking at the turkey, the way Rose
and Dillon were.

Akira had
asked Rose to tell her more about the doors and what was on the other side of
them, but apparently trying to describe any of it was like trying to describe
the cloudy place: the right words didn’t exist. In a moment of surprising
perception, Rose had said that it was like a butterfly trying to tell a
caterpillar about flying. Akira had thought about that, about trying to explain
wind currents and air pressure and velocity to a creature that only knew how to
inch its way along a solid surface, and dropped the subject.

She was
still curious, but she knew she’d learn more eventually.

As Akira
watched, Lucas pulled out his phone. He grinned at it, showed it to Zane, and
then said something to Max. Dillon must have texted him, Akira thought. He’d
been working on communicating via cell phone ever since he and Rose had almost
managed the feat in August and he’d gotten pretty good at it. Not long texts,
not yet, but he could send a few words at a time.

She wondered
what he’d said, but Zane was lifting the bird out of the hot oil, and she
realized that she shouldn’t be standing here daydreaming, not when she still
had jobs to do. The stuffing and sweet potatoes were warming in the oven, the
pumpkin pies cooling on the counter, the cranberry sauce with pecans, dried
apricots and bourbon from Rose’s mother’s recipe already on the set table, but
the potatoes were waiting to be mashed and the dinner rolls weren’t finished
baking.

First,
though, she needed to change her clothes. As she crossed to her closet, she
looked down at the red wine staining the front of her dress with a frown.
Accidents happened, of course, but it had almost seemed as if Natalya had
deliberately knocked over her glass.

She thought
back to Nat’s arrival. She would swear that Nat’s expression showed a flash of
disappointment when she saw Akira at the door. Had Nat been expecting Zane? But
Nat had never been anything but welcoming to Akira, and it wasn’t as if she
could have been surprised to see Akira here: they were having the holiday meal
at her house, after all.

Their house,
she corrected herself again. She glanced down at the ring on her finger. They
hadn’t set a wedding date yet. Or picked a place for the ceremony or made any
decisions about the reception or the honeymoon or even started working on the
guest list. But a late October heat wave had inspired Zane to give her an early
wedding present: the deed to the house and a new air conditioner.

He claimed
that he’d gotten a great deal because the house was haunted. Not that it
mattered, but she didn’t entirely believe him. If it hadn’t bothered the owner
that the house was haunted before, why would it upset him now?

Besides, the
house wasn’t really haunted anymore. Despite Rose’s absolute certainty that
Henry was back, Akira hadn’t seen him, and the boys in the backyard weren’t the
type of ghosts that would disturb anyone. And Rose wasn’t tied to the house
anymore: she could come and go as she pleased. Not that she pleased much.
Guests were an exciting treat to Rose, but she was a homebody at heart,
perfectly happy as long as she had music and television and the occasional
company to talk to.