Ghost Seer (11 page)

Clare shuddered. No. She would
not
be like that. No and no and no. She reached out for her water and it tipped.

Zach caught it and righted it.

He was staring at her. “Clare?”

Enzo was barking. He slipped through the rail and sat beside her with dark more-than-big doggie eyes.

Her mouth was dry. With focus, she got the water—why had they put ice in her drink?—and sipped. Then she summoned up enough calm to meet Zach’s gaze. “I still have work on my aunt’s estate.”

She held on to that thought, hard, and took one steadying breath. “I’m hoping I don’t have to go back to Chicago anymore, and I’ve been working nonstop on it for some time, but I think I only have a few last things to do.”

Even as she spoke, her smart phone played music. She dipped her head. “And that’s notification that a package has been delivered to my house, probably from Sandra’s lawyer.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” He reached out and took her hand.

The simple touch and connection staggered her. A spurt of tears stung behind her eyes as her phone continued its mathematical progression through a Bach concerto that she’d once liked.

Clare shifted her shoulders. “I didn’t understand Aunt Sandra much, and she didn’t understand me . . . but there was love.” Once upon a time, before Clare had been embarrassed by her great-aunt. And Clare could admit to the love, now, aloud to a stranger who was getting under her skin.

“No one would expect you to be related to a psychic medium, Clare,” Zach said gently.

She got what he wasn’t saying. “You checked me out.” All right, she’d been going to Google him, but Zach obviously had a lot more resources than she.

“Mrs. Flinton gave your name to Rickman. He was . . . concerned . . .”

“Since she invited me to tea today after meeting me in public for an hour last night.” Clare nodded.

“Yeah. So Rickman checked you out and sent me his file.” Zach’s bluish gaze held hers. “And I was curious and didn’t resist temptation.” He squeezed her hand and his voice lowered. “I don’t think I’ll be able to resist much temptation when it comes to you, Clare Cermak of Gypsy extraction.”

A fluttering low in her abdomen,
sexual
tingles, rushed through her. She was alive and had a fascinating man interested in her. Enough, for now, to focus on.

The music from her phone cut off.

“Go ahead and check,” Zach said, releasing Clare’s hand far too soon, picking up the second half of his sandwich, and munching some more. Clare could only envy his appetite.

She looked at the tracking app and noted it
was
from Aunt Sandra’s attorney, then frowned at the note he’d attached, her stomach sloshing more with acid than the small amount of soup she’d had.

“What is it?”

For a moment she choked, glanced at him with a half smile. “We keep asking each other that.”

His cheek creased in a long dimple as he smiled, too. “We’re learning each other. What’s up?”

“Aunt Sandra’s attorney said that the package contained videos.”

Zach put down his sandwich. “Was she the type who’d leave a personal video for you?”

Y
ES, YES, YES!
shouted Enzo, up on his feet and running around, barking.
Yes she made a talking picture for you, Clare. Yes she did!
He came over and laid his head on her thigh.

Clare hadn’t needed his input to know. “Yes. And not only for me. He probably shipped one to my brother and his family, maybe individually for him, his wife, and my niece. I don’t know . . .” Another grimace. “I probably have my parents’. They keep on the move.” She looked at Zach. She’d like to stay with him, but . . .

Let’s go see!
Enzo said, then more quietly,
You need to watch yours
.

“Go.” Zach echoed Enzo. “You and I will see each other in about three hours at tea, right?”

“Yes. Thank you for paying for my soup.”

He stared at her half-empty bowl. “Doesn’t look like you ate much of it.”

“I’ll do better at tea,” she replied lightly.

He nodded. “And I’ll tell Mrs. Magee to make something more substantial than cucumber sandwiches.”

Clare blinked. “You know about cucumber sandwiches?”

“Mrs. Flinton reminds me a little of my maternal grandmother.” His expression closed down.

“Ah.” Clare rose and lifted her bag to slide it over her shoulder. She’d already tucked her purse inside. The bag didn’t contain as many books as the last time she’d visited the library.

Zach thrummed his fingers on the table, still looking at her. “Did you do an online search for me, Clare?”

“No.”

His stare was sharp. “Do it.”

She lifted her chin, kept her eyes matched with his. “I’d rather hear your story from you.”

He scowled. “Not a story, facts.”

“Of course.” She softened her voice. “But I’d rather talk to you about whatever you went through. We’re learning each other.” She repeated his words.

Now his gaze pierced her. “Then you’re going to have to open up more, too, Clare.”

She pressed her lips together.

“Yeah, I thought so. See you later.” He picked up the sandwich.

“Later.” But she didn’t like ending on this note, so when she moved around the table, she came close to him and kissed him on his high cheekbone by his temple. “Thank you for the meal.” She followed a racing Enzo out of the restaurant and around the corner, keeping her back straight, her stride smooth. She didn’t look back at Zach, thinking he might have his cop-examination face on.

As she walked the few blocks to a hotel where she could catch a cab, she contemplated what she
hadn’t
told Zach. The lawyer was sending Aunt Sandra’s “journals.” He called them “journals,” but stated she’d called them “experiences and instructions for Clare.”

Like the video, “instructions for Clare on how to deal with her Gift.”

 • • • 

She gave the cabbie a twenty percent tip, her pride stinging a bit from Zach’s “cheapskate” comment and the fact that the taxi sure wouldn’t pick up anyone in her neighborhood at this time of day when people were at work. Not like he would have if he’d driven someone to the airport.

The vehicle had been too cold, as usual.

On her stoop she found two stacked medium-sized boxes. Just how many journals did her aunt have? Blinking away tears, she recalled the loops of Aunt Sandra’s overly elaborate cursive writing that Clare had trouble reading.

Another wearying challenge.

Oh, oh, OH! It smells like Sandra!
Enzo said, and his eyes looked watery, too. As far as Clare knew, dogs didn’t cry.

Grumbling, she picked up the heavy boxes using her legs, not her back, braced them against the house as she opened the screen door and unlocked the front door, then staggered in and set them down near the coffee table. When Enzo joined her, she said, “Maybe you should, ah, pass on, like Sandra.”

No
, he said.

She sank onto the couch, head drooping into her hands. This whole thing wasn’t working well, trying not to talk to him and believe he didn’t exist. But she didn’t
want
him to exist. Didn’t want Sandra’s life.

It was easier to think she was going crazy, though that had her hyperventilating. Now tears did leak out of her eyes, dribbling warmth onto her fingers. After a minute she got up and started water for peppermint tea, then got a box cutter and opened the well-packed carton from the attorney.

The whiff of scent—more than just the perfume Clare had been finishing off—that consisted of Sandra’s lotions, the incense she used during her sessions, wafted around Clare, and she sat down on the floor and wept.

It is sad we are left behind
, Enzo said. For once he didn’t come up and lick her or move into her body, making her even colder, and for that she was grateful.

“You can go on to be with her!” Clare assured him through sniffs, groping for tissues in her bag and blowing her nose.

No. You need me.

But she damn well didn’t want him. Didn’t want this. Even with all the money that came with this, this . . . stuff . . . that was tearing her apart. It had been only five days since she’d left Chicago and started seeing strange things. Not very long in general terms.

Long enough for her to doubt her sanity.

Anger warmed her, and she gulped back lingering tears and took out the inventory sheet. One line engendered dread:
Twelve journals with miscellaneous dates in each volume.
Hell!

Frowning, Clare pulled them out, one by one, all with colorful covers. She picked up one with a fairy dancing on the breeze that she remembered from a childhood visit. It fell open.

On the left hand of the page was a date ten years ago, on the right, about six and a half. Totally random entries, great, how was she supposed to research that! Then a sentence caught her eye:

I think Clare must be my heir. She doesn’t think much of me, but that doesn’t matter. Or perhaps it will be a child of hers or Tucker’s.

God
dammit
! Clare dropped the book, opened the second box, and rooted around for hard copies of whatever Sandra had recorded. Lots of videos, one for each of her parents and them as a couple, one for her brother, her brother’s wife, their little girl, and her brother and sister-in-law as a couple and them as a family. Finally one for her, at the bottom. Why hadn’t the lawyer’s office put it on top?

She readied the video, went back to the sofa, and sat down. Enzo came to her feet, looked up at her, and whined. With a huge sigh, she patted the sofa and he leapt up and settled next to her, not draping himself over her legs, thank goodness.

Clare pressed the play button on the remote.

Sandra, with her orange hair, blue eyelids, pink cheeks, and red lipstick, looked old and sick and scrawny, stabbing Clare with guilt that she’d avoided her great-aunt for so long . . . just saw her on holidays when Clare’s parents were in the States, or when Clare went to her brother and his family’s. Clare had actually been the one who visited Sandra the least once she was an adult—and had been all the more surprised that she’d been named as Sandra’s heir.

Enzo wagged his tail and grinned.
She looks GOOD!

Great-Aunt Sandra wore her favorite silk and cut-velvet scarf-jacket, deep blue with a sequined peacock and long tasseled fringe.

“Dearest Clare.” Sandra smiled, showing perfect and natural teeth. “It’s your weird great-aunt Sandra.” She laughed. “Bet you didn’t know that
I
knew you kids called me that.” She raised her red-brown penciled-on brows, but her eyes remained merry. “All the kids.” She paused and her old, soft face fell into folds. “As those of my generation spoke of my great-uncle Amos as ‘eccentric.’” Shaking her head, she sighed, then looked directly into the camera, with the wealth of her home showing behind her. Clare was suddenly reminded just how fabulous it had been to play in that house. Hide-and-seek had been amazing, and Sandra had been absolutely marvelous in her childhood. Clare swallowed hard.

She wondered if Sandra had ever wanted children, or if her “gift” had prevented her. Was that why Sandra’s house was so large? She’d expected to marry and have children?

Zach came to Clare’s mind. She could see him as a loner, for sure, even though yearning for him, his touch, his lips, his body in bed with her bloomed inside her, made her ache.

Would it be an addition of crazy to complicate her life with an affair with him? Probably.

Could she get emotionally hurt? Oh, yes. But Clare began to think that grabbing whatever she could of life, living it to the fullest, was worth any pain.

“By now you’ve had your gift a while and know that ghosts aren’t a figment of your imagination, and that they aren’t going away.”

Oh, no. No, no,
no
! Clare’s thumb slid over the remote, but
Enzo knocked it from her hand
. A solid object. Her mouth dropped open and she stared, and though he appeared like the dog she’d kept seeing with her peripheral vision, he stood on the couch and his eyes were that otherworldly dark with knowledge that squeezed her lungs empty.

Sandra’s voice jerked Clare’s focus back to the video, where she saw the hazel eyes she’d inherited go steely and the red lips thin. “And, lovey, brace yourself, because I have more bad news and this will come as a real shock for someone as repressed as you are.”

Clare tensed.

“There are great benefits to helping ghosts transition . . . both emotional and financial . . . the universe rewards you.”

Ha, ha, ha. Clare would snort, but the woman had died wealthy . . . and Clare had found out how her parents could afford to globe-trot—from a trust Great-Great-Uncle Amos had set up for his nephews and nieces.

Would she be doomed to being a spinster aunt, too? She really didn’t want to embrace the lifestyle of the eccentric or weird.

“Listen close, lovey. There are great rewards, satisfaction, and fulfillment that come with our gift.”

Maybe for others, but Clare doubted that for herself.

“But there are also costs.”

Oh, yes, the acid coating Clare’s stomach was back.

“And the greatest threat, the greatest cost comes if you don’t accept your destiny, if you ignore the ghosts.”

Cold seeped into the room as the specter of Jack Slade, short and slender, solidified in the doorway to her bedroom, staring at her with an inscrutable gaze. Enzo settled next to her, looking nearly solid.
Listen!
he commanded in that low reverberating tone, glare fixated on her.

Dizziness had her tilting, her mind swimming, and she finally took another breath, drew it deeply.

Listen.
It came like the rumble of the beginnings of a mountain avalanche that would destroy her life.