After Moonrise: Possessed\Haunted (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

“And you know that this psychic serial killer is
draining spirits because your sister told you in there.” Raef pointed to where
Lauren still clenched her fist over her heart.

Her spine stiffened and her chin went up. “Don’t patronize me,
Raef. I know it the same way you know you’re talking to ghosts of the dead
instead of your own overactive imagination, even though no one else can see and
feel what you do.”

“All right.” He nodded his head slowly. “You got me there.” He
stood up and took his keys from his desk drawer. “Then let’s go.”

“Go?”

“To the scene of Aubrey’s accident.”

“You mean to the place she was murdered,” Lauren said
firmly.

“Either way, I need to check it out.” He raised a dark brow at
her when she didn’t move. “You did know that it is my standard procedure to go
to the site of the death, didn’t you?”

“Yes—yes, I knew,” she stuttered. “It’s just that, well, I
haven’t been back there since.”

“Not once? Not even when your sister has been manifesting to
you?”

Lauren shook her head. “No.” The word was a whisper.

“I can take you home first,” he said, walking around his desk
to her. “We can talk afterward and—”

“Would it be better if I come with you?” she interrupted, her
voice sounding firmer. “I mean, for you and the investigation.”

“It probably would be, especially because your situation is so
unique.”

Lauren stood. “Then I’ll go.”

* * *

T
HE
TRIP
FROM
THE
After Moonrise downtown offices to Midtown’s
Swan Lake was short and silent. Not that Raef minded. He was naturally quiet and
never had understood the need most people felt to chatter uncomfortably to fill
a peaceful lull. He also had to ready himself for what would happen when he
visited the site of a death and opened himself to the psychic images left there.
Accident or murder, it wasn’t exactly a walk in the damn park, and it was always
better to take a quiet moment to center himself first.

As he drove down Utica Street, he glanced at Lauren. Her face
was pale and set. She was staring straight ahead. He thought she looked like a
marble sculpture of herself.

“It’s not going to be that bad,” he said, turning right at the
entrance to the lake and parking his car along the curb that ringed the area.
“I’m the psychic, remember?” Raef tried to add some lightness to the moment.

She turned cold blue eyes on him. “She was my sister. My twin.
We’ve been together since we were conceived. Psychic or not, going to the place
where she was killed scares me.”

Before he could even try to come up with something comforting
to say, her gaze moved from his to Swan Lake. She shook her head and gave a
little humorless laugh, saying, “It’s stupid to call this place a lake. It’s
tiny. Except for having water, there’s nothing ‘lake’ about it.”

“They call it Swan Lake because Swan Pond doesn’t sound right,”
he said.

She looked back at him. “I hate this place.”

He nodded. “That’s a normal reaction, Lauren. Your sister died
here—of course you have a strong negative reaction to it.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

He wanted to tell her that the relatives of the dead always
felt like there was more to it than simple death, even if it took their loved
one peacefully, in the middle of the night, during the winter of life. Instead,
he swallowed back the condescension and said, “Are you ready? You can wait here
if you need to.”

“I’m ready, and I’m going with you.”

She sounded one hundred percent sure, but her face was still
unnaturally pale as they walked slowly to the sidewalk that circled the
oblong-shaped body of water. Raef thought that Lauren had been right—the place
was no damn lake, even if it was pretty and well tended. The sidewalk had only a
fourth of a mile circumference, or at least that’s what the helpful signpost
said. It was the same signpost that talked about the different types of
waterfowl that could be found in the area, in particular noting the mated pair
of swans for which the lake had been named.

The sign also asked visitors not to feed the fowl, including
the swans. And it insisted everyone except “authorized personnel” remain outside
the fence that ringed the area.

“The entrance to the dock that takes you to the island is over
there.” Lauren pointed down the sidewalk to their right.

Raef nodded and they continued walking. He glanced around them.
The October morning hadn’t turned cold and cloudy yet, as Channel Six weather
had predicted. Big surprise that they got it wrong. So it was a gorgeous
morning, but an off hour, only just before 10:00 a.m. Too late for morning
walkers and bird-watchers, and too early for those who liked to eat their lunch
at the park. There was only a retired couple sitting on a bench on the opposite
side of the lake, reading a paper together.
Good. Less
gawkers,
he thought, while he followed the line of the sturdy green
fence that ensured park visitors didn’t disturb the waterfowl. A flurry of
honking and splashing pulled his gaze to the lake. One of the swans was bullying
a group of ducks that must have drifted too close to his personal space.

“They’re mean,” Lauren said. “Doesn’t matter how pretty they
are—they’re mean and dirty. And the biggest reason my company has to come out
here so often.”

“You still have the contract to maintain the plants here?”

Lauren nodded, but she looked uncomfortable. “Aubrey wants it
that way. She doesn’t like to let a little thing like her death get in the way
of good business.”

“But you said you hadn’t been here since her death.”

“I haven’t. I have five employees, remember?”

Then Lauren’s use of the present tense about her sister’s
wishes caught up to his thoughts. “So she communicates with you about your
business?”

“She communicates with me about lots of things, just not about
her murder. Actually, I don’t feel right unless she and I are talking. I don’t
feel whole without her....” Lauren’s words trailed off as she came to an awkward
silence. As if just realizing what she’d said, she shook her head and attempted
a smile. “I’m repeating myself, but it’s hard not to. My life isn’t the same
without her.”

Raef started to comment, but Lauren’s humorless laugh silenced
him. “Yeah, I know. It’s normal for me to feel her loss. Normal for things to be
different. Normal to grieve.” She shook her head, looking out at the small lake.
“I’ve heard it all. Not one single person really gets it.”

There didn’t seem to be anything Raef could say to her that
hadn’t been said, obviously to no effect, by others. Plus, maybe Lauren was
right. He’d never heard of a twin manifestation and possession before. Maybe
there were unusual forces at work in this death. Who was he to scoff at the
abnormal? Hell, he lived in Abnormalville; even the other psychics at After
Moonrise kept him at a distance. You don’t have to be a Greek god to know that
if you invite Discord to a party, all hell is gonna break loose.

Shit, his life sucked.

They’d come to a locked gate in the fence, and Lauren stopped.
Just inside the gate there was a small wooden dock and a slim, slatted walkway
that led from it to the island of craggy stone, foliage and a waterfall-like
fountain cascading down one side of it that sat in the middle of this end of the
lake. “There.” Lauren’s voice was pitched low. “It’s out there that it
happened.” The eyes she turned to him were haunted with sadness. “You’ll need to
go out there, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

She drew a deep breath. “Then let’s go.” Lauren flipped open
the metal cap that held an elaborate keypad for the locking mechanism on the
gate. Her hands shook only a little as she pressed the series of buttons that
made the gate whir and click, and finally open. Without waiting for him, she
strode through it and onto the dock. It was only then that she stopped, hands
fisted at her sides, eyes looking at her feet, at the water, at the shore.
Everywhere except out at the island.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Raef said.

“Okay. Yes. Okay. I can do this.”

Lauren stepped onto the walkway. Raef stayed close to her,
worried that she might pass out and fall into the damn water. That was something
neither of them needed. They were halfway to the island when Raef steeled
himself and then dropped the barriers he usually kept firmly locked around his
mind.

Death,
he whispered to himself,
come to me.

He braced himself for the influx of terror and anger and hurt
and pain that always flooded him so near the site of a death.

And there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The only thing he felt was the brush of the unseasonably warm
October breeze and his own confusion.

“Here.” Lauren had reached the island. Raef realized he’d
stopped and quickly closed the distance between them. “This is where it
happened.” She pointed a shaky hand at the base of the rocky island where it met
the water. There were several floating plants that looked to Raef like lily
pads, along with some bushy clumps of underwater grasses. “Aubrey was replacing
the water lilies, trimming the black bamboo and cleaning the algae from the
spirogyra. She stepped down there—” Lauren motioned to a ledgelike edge of the
island “—and was working with the plants, half in and half out of the water. The
mechanism that powers the pump to the waterfall is under that ledge. The police
say she cut the electrical line while she was working with the plants. The pump
shorted out, sending an electrical current through the water and killing Aubrey.
Technically, that’s what happened. But it was no accident.”

“Are you sure?”

Lauren’s pale cheeks flushed. “I already told you. I am
absolutely certain my sister was killed!”

“That’s not what I’m asking. I want to know are you sure that
this is where she died.”

“Of course I am.”

“Her death happened here and not at St. John’s?” Raef made an
impatient jerk of his chin at the hospital that was directly across the street
from Swan Lake.

“Yes. She was dead when the joggers found her. They even came
to her funeral. I talked to one of them myself. She was floating facedown in the
water right there, tangled in the spirogyra grass.” Lauren’s hand was still a
little shaky when she pointed to the spot below them where her sister’s body had
been discovered. “There—right there is where they pulled her from the pond.”

Raef didn’t say anything else. He just continued to stare at
the water and the odd, curling grass that floated like Medusa’s hair just
beneath the surface.

Nothing. He felt nothing.

“Raef, what is it? What’s happening?”

“Your sister couldn’t have died here.”

Lauren frowned at him. “Of course she did. That’s the one part
of the police report that was completely accurate.”

“How about the coroner’s report? Are you sure it
concurred?”

“Yes. The coroner listed her time of death as more than an hour
before the joggers called 9-1-1.”

“You’ve read it? You’ve seen the report?”

“Yes and yes. I’ve scoured over it. I practically have it
memorized, much to the TPD’s irritation. Raef, what is it?”

“There’s nothing here. No psychic Tracing of a death at all.
And that is impossible.”

Lauren opened her mouth, but instead of speaking, a strangled
gasp wrenched from her. She swayed, her eyes fluttering, and Raef moved quickly
to her side, steadying her by grasping her arm.

“Easy there. I’ll figure this out and—” His words broke off
abruptly as emotions rippled through him. But they weren’t death scene emotions,
familiar if numbing in their violence. Instead, joy and warmth and a poignant
sense of longing filled him. He tried to throw up his mental barriers, but his
traitorous Gift ignored it, leaving him naked and defenseless to the onslaught.
Then the air beside Lauren rippled and her twin’s ethereal body manifested.

“I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t
let us down. I remembered you from that article in
Oklahoma
Today
magazine last year.”
She grinned impishly.
“It said you were the best psychic detective in
Oklahoma—that you were like an Old West sheriff. You always got your
man.”

Raef swallowed hard, trying to pull himself together.
I can feel her joy!
Never before. Never during the
twenty-five years his Gift had manifested had he ever felt a positive emotion
from any spirit.

Aubrey laughed and the sound washed through his body like
magic, sensitizing his nerves and his skin so that the fine dark hair on his
forearms prickled as if she had just run a teasing, caressing hand over
them.

“Ah, come on, Kent, relax. You look like
you’ve seen a ghost,”
she said, still smiling joyously.

“Raef.” He ground the word out automatically, the usual
gruffness of his voice intensified by the force of the emotions filling him.
“People call me Raef.”

“I’m not going to,”
Aubrey said.
“I like Kent better. Plus, you can’t really call me a
person anymore, can you?”

Raef just stared at her. Had a spirit ever called him anything?
No, hell, no, none of them had. He usually just Tracked the negative emotions
left by the bad guys. He followed violence and hatred and fear until it led him
to a living murderer. Ghosts didn’t have shit to do with him.

Until
this
ghost.

Aubrey’s gaze went from him to sweep around Swan Lake.
“It’s beautiful here, don’t you think? The trees are
particularly lovely. So wise and strong, like soldiers standing
guard.”
She turned shimmering blue eyes back to him.
“They must take a lot of care.”

As soon as she’d spoken the words Raef felt it. The slicing
pain hit him as Aubrey’s semitransparent body doubled over. Lauren moaned, and
her arm trembled violently under his grasp.