Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) (16 page)

Tandie held on to Eric’s arm. He stood just under six-feet-tall and his arm was pure muscle. If there were intruders upstairs, she had no doubt he’d make it hard for them to get away. He glanced down at her hand, a smile flickering across his lips. “Okay, now you’re going to tell me all of this is explainable, right?”

He turned and stared into her eyes, his face with the perfect lips and intriguing hazel eyes was filled with concern. “No. This is the part where I take you back downstairs and fix something to calm both our nerves.”

“Aren’t you going to check the room?” Tandie pointed at the door.

He hesitated a moment and stared down the hallway. Was he afraid? After speaking with the store owner and listening to what he already knew about the place, she didn’t blame him.

He stalked toward the door and turned the immovable
doorknob. It gave way under his grip as if Tandie had never struggled with it before. The foot
prints in the hallway offered little comfort because she knew that she had seen ghosts; but the physical evidence suggested something else. She hugged her arms and waited. Eric emerged from the room after a few moments. He eased the door closed behind him and walked over to Tandie.

“All clear. Just a window was open. Would you like to have a look?”

Her heart flipped. Something about going in that room made her feel panicked. She shook her head.

“That’s probably how your ‘ghost’ kid got out.” He gave her his rugged-model smile, making her feel like a silly girl instead of an experienced woman. And then she thought about what he said.

“Kid? There were three children, Eric,” she said and glanced at the footprints.

“Then where’s the other two sets of tracks?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Anyway, they were ghosts, Eric. Maybe the other two flew away,” she said. Tandie could tell from the strained look on Eric’s face that he was struggling with his own inner thoughts. 

Feeling flustered and confused, Tandie glanced at the footprints again. They weren’t large tracks, or tiny ones like the youngest girl child would’ve made. They must’ve been the middle boy’s tracks, the one who stood in the shadows so she couldn’t see his face. Her mind swooned from confusion, fear, and embarrassment. An image of the boy from the store flashed through her mind.

“Could the tallest child have been the same boy?”

It was too much for Tandie; and the children made her think of Baby B. Cradling her forehead, she fought her tears. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her looking all puffy from crying.

“Okay. All right, now.” Eric placed his arms around Tandie’s shoulders and led her back toward the stairway. His voice was like honey for the ears and a calming presence surrounded him. What was his past story, his present life?

Sitting back in Chelby Rose’s living room, Tandie’s mind raced. She’d always been able to see psychic images of the past. Had always been able to touch an article of clothing and see flashbacks of the victims in the pictures Gomez brought to her. But up until the accident, she’d never seen a ghost or been visited by spirits inside her dreams.

Grandma Zee told Tandie the family once belonged to a line of powerful medicine women. The ability to communicate with spirits walking along certain times and planes of existence was a gift passed down to at least one female in each generation. Sometimes these women known as path seekers held such a powerful aura that the spirits would personally come to them. That wasn’t always a good thing because sometimes the spirits would get jealous of the path seeker and her ability to use the power in any way she wanted without worrying about the consequences.

Tandie shivered at the thought and pulled the blanket Eric had given her close around her shoulders. September was right around the corner and the nights had already started to get cool. The temperature wasn’t really the problem. She needed something to ease the chill she got from thinking about the path seekers.

Could Tandie be the medicine woman for this generation? It would explain these new visions and definitely shed light on her ghostly visitors. Out of all the house photos Frieda had sent, she chose Chelby Rose as her place to begin anew. Or maybe she didn’t pick this house. Maybe Chelby Rose chose her.

The question remained, though: what did it need for her to do? The answer had something to do with the children she saw tonight. Tandie was sure of it.

“If there are dirt tracks, then the children, or whatever they were, are real. I’m sure I saw three kids.” Tandie wanted to make him agree. If someone else, a calm and collected person such as Eric, would confirm what she saw, then she’d feel less of a need to check into a loony ward.

“Then where did they go?” he asked, speaking in the softest of tones. The kind that feels sorry for the basket case sitting on the couch.

“I’m not sure,” Tandie said, her mind racing through memories of what she had experienced earlier.

He stared at her a long time before he said, “You’re not insane or even headed in that direction. Troubled, overworked, and a good possibility that maybe you’ve taken on a savings-buster of a house; but you’re not a basket case.”

Tandie tipped her head to the side. It was almost as if he had heard her thoughts. But that was impossible.
Right?
He looked so much like her main character: the wild dark hair, the strange hazel eyes, the way his jaw tensed. Who are you? And when did you step out of my dream?
Oh shit
. Her mouth was hanging open. And she was staring too hard. She needed a distraction. “You have your own troubles too. Did they ever figure out what happened to your friend?”

Sighing, he shook his head and wouldn’t look at Tandie for the longest time. She stole another moment to savor his striking features: his caramel brown skin, black hair, the way he sat with his muscles tensed as if he were ready to tackle the next project at any moment. “What’s your story? Why are you here all alone?” Her inner thoughts escaped her lips before she had time to realize what she had done. She held her breath and met his gaze, holding it for the longest time.

Amusement filled his eyes and crept across his heart-shaped mouth.  Such small gestures, but just enough to set Tandie’s heart aflutter. “I should be asking you the same thing. And no, they still haven’t made any progress with finding Virgil’s killer.” He lowered his eyes and sighed. Tandie didn’t need to hear his thoughts to understand what he was feeling.

“You know what’s funny? I promised myself that after I lost my father I’d never cry again. Not even when my mother dies or my brother. In my family, death is a given. I won’t give the Reaper the power to break me down. I have to be strong for my other loved ones. Damn it.” He made a light laugh, shook his head, and blinked a few times. Massaging the back of his neck, he turned away; but not before Tandie caught a glimpse of the tears lining his eyes. 

“Sometimes you have to let them fall. The tears, I mean. Or they’ll pile up, blind you, and keep you from seeing the beauty in things. Tears can be evil if you allow them to be. I don’t care what anyone says,” Tandie said, thinking of Breena and the car accident.

He leaned over and brought two fingers to her lips, tickling them with only the slightest touch. “Is that advice for me? Or for you?”

Time stood still for a moment, freezing all of Tandie’s deepest thoughts, fears, and pains. His hazel eyes were dark and smoldering in the lamp lights. Two exotic jewels staring at Tandie in a way that pulled her inside them as if she were a genie and those sparkling eyes were her master’s bottle.

“You’re like this house. A delicate piece of art, damaged by everything that has happened inside it,” he whispered, reaching out to move her dark auburn hair away from her shoulders.

Heart fluttering in her chest, she couldn’t remember the last time a man made her feel this way. But what if Tandie had attracted a bad spirit without knowing it? If that were the case, then she certainly wasn’t going to put Eric in danger too. She moved her head back a bit, freeing her mind from the lock contained in Eric’s eyes.

“I’ll make us both a good cup of raspberry coffee.” He sighed, stood, and strolled out of the room.

One thing was certain, Chelby Rose had work for her to do. But was it Tandie the psychic it wanted or Tandie the path seeker? And just how did Eric the contractor know that raspberry was her favorite coffee flavor without her telling him so?

14

“The wind here always sounds alive. Like a mangled animal caught in somebody’s trap,” Tandie said. She’d always wanted to say that sentence aloud just to see how it would affect someone.

Eric and Tandie sat together on the couch, listening to the storm outside while drinking their raspberry coffee. The lights flickered and then eventually lost power. Tandie’s heart flipped a couple beats along with them, still recovering from the night’s adventures. The idea of being left alone to spend the night by herself in the woods where people lived ten miles apart it seemed, made her anxious.

Eric made a small laugh. “You sound like Anne Rice.”

“Oh, stop. You’re making me blush. I’d like to believe I’m a writer. That is, if the pages of my book stop disappearing and reappearing.” Tandie regretted revealing the story of the missing pages as soon as the words left her lips.

Eric studied her face and frowned. “Pages of your book have disappeared before? How does that happen on a computer?”

All right, you might as well go on with it. He probably already thinks you’re a loon at this point, anyway. Even if he did just tell you how wonderfully sane you are in the most beautiful way you’ve ever heard from a man.

“I don’t have a laptop, or anything,” she said, watching a frown deepen on his forehead. “What?  I want my writing to feel like I’m truly creating something.”

He held up his hands, and said, “I didn’t say a word. Continue.”

“Anyway, the pages sometimes disappear after I type them, and then they show up in some odd area later on. Want to know the interesting part?”
 

“Why not?” He studied his hands a moment before turning his gaze back to her.

“I thought you took them. At least, I did at first.”

“Why would I take pages out of your book?” Eric asked, giving her an incredulous look.

“I don’t know. Why do you have almost the exact same name as the main character in my novel? I ask myself that every day too.” A faint voice that said: “you’re pushing too hard” echoed inside her mind.

“Some people might call it coincidence, but I don’t believe in that,” he said, frowning. He was in deep thought about something.

“Yeah, I thought so too. That was until the three ghost kids showed up. The lost pages describe a scene I wrote where three people go missing.”

“Let me guess. The victims disappear at the hands of my namesake—your villain guy named Eric?”

“Something like that.”
 

He stood and peered out the window a long moment before he said, “Intriguing.”

Tandie expected to hear him say a lot of things, but intriguing wasn’t one of them. Maybe he truly meant what he said; that he didn’t think she was a loon.

“You know more about what’s happening here than you’re letting on.” Her question came out as a statement. He kept his gaze locked on something outside the window. The tension in his lean body gave him the appearance of a man in a lot of pain,
and Tandie wanted to know why. “That storekeeper in town said the last man that lived here, Pontus Tomlinson, thought he saw the Chelby children running around before he died.”

 
He glanced back at Tandie. A faraway look masked his handsome face until his eyes flickered back to the present. He’d returned from whatever hidden part of his mind he had escaped to. “Virgil told me all about old Pontus and his hallucinations. Again, aren’t you psychic? Wouldn’t you know if you bought a haunted house? I always figured psychics could feel stuff like that.”

The rain drummed down on the roof. She had Mr. Smug, handsome, and super controlled in her palms and she wanted to milk him for information.

“I believe those children used to live here. I’ve seen the grandmother they were running from. Or, at least I think they were running from that woman. I also believe they need my help.”

Eric strolled over to the hurricane lamps and adjusted the light. The small flame inside it responded to a brilliant blaze. “What else did you see?”

“I saw her in a vision, but it faded. Then there was only Ella outside,” Tandie admitted.

Eric stopped fooling with the lamp. He glanced back at Tandie, a sharp expression hardening his dark eyes. “Ella?”

“She’s a little strange and pig-headed, but she’s a good girl, I think,” Tandie said. “Why do you ask?”

“No particular reason,” he said, blinking too much to be considered normal.

“I think you’re lying.”

“Well, you’re the psychic. You tell me if I am.” His voice rose a bit and he stood there with his arms folded. Sighing, he turned around, stalked back to the couch, and sat on the end farthest away from Tandie.

“Okay, truce.” Tandie held her hands up. Weak muscles and a dull headache drained her energy and she wanted to cry for some reason. Plus she was tired of Eric treating her like a carnival act. Especially after he had just said that he didn’t think she was crazy.

The truth was that she didn’t understand her visions. They’d been choppy and unclear ever since the one where she had seen the woman rocking. A person she assumed was the kids’ grandmother because of her age. The returning visions signified a closing point; a truce with a life stolen from her; a sign that she had been blessed to be the mother of a wonderful little girl like Breena. She stared at the picture of her smiling daughter in the picture sitting on her writing desk, and choked back her tears.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be harsh.” Eric softened his tone. He was staring at her.

“I dreamed about my Baby B when I first got here. I think what I’ve been seeing are dead people who used to live in this house before me,” Tandie said. When she worked with the NYPD, she received visions about the dead; but she actually communicated with the little girl tonight, and spoke to her.

“Baby B? Is that what you called your daughter?” Eric asked.

Tandie’s face crumpled. Covering her face, she knew the tears would fall no matter how hard she tried to hold them back; and they did. Eric moved closer to her side of the couch, the place where she woke up almost every morning since arriving in Bolivia. He put one muscled arm across her shoulders and moved her hands away from her face with the other hand. She felt a comfort she’d missed for a long time.

“I’m sorry I asked about your daughter,” Eric whispered, his expression concerned.

Holding back tears, Tandie asked, “Can I ask how you made it to my house so fast? I mean, I’d just hung up on your answering machine.” The question had drifted in her mind since he showed up at her front door. She’d been too relieved to see another living person to bother with the logic of it all.

“I had this feeling that I needed to stop by and check on you.” He studied the floor, avoiding her gaze.

She placed her hand on his cheek and turned his face toward hers. “You know what? I think you’re the psychic one, and that’s why you’re so hard on me.” She gazed deep into his eyes, losing herself inside them. Being in his arms this way felt so right to her. It was as if they’d known each other longer than just a couple of months.

“Trust me. It was a very unique feeling,” he said.

“I do trust you. It could be a mistake, but I feel like I can,” Tandie whispered. The pattering rain fought against the howling wind, as the smoldering light filled the room with shadows, while the heat flying between Tandie and Eric set the scene flawlessly for what was sure to happen next.

Eric leaned over and brushed his lips across Tandie’s. Timid, hesitant, soft. “Do you accept me?” h
e whispered with his eyes closed.

Tandie scoffed playfully. “Do I accept you? What kind of question is that?”

“Do you accept me?” He said with more eagerness in his voice.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Tandie answered, feeling confused. It had been over a year since she’d last been with a man. Her body ached to be touched, her soul longed to be caressed. Eric felt the same way. She could tell.

“Let me help you decide.” He crushed his lips down on hers without any restraint this time. She parted hers, accepting his probing hot tongue and allowed her body to succumb to the fiery sensations coursing through it. His lips traveled down her neck, and he gently nibbled her as he did so. Tingles erupted over Tandie’s body, and her heart raced as if it were in a marathon.

After a moment, he pulled back. His expression was distant as though he was lost in an inner thought.

“What’s wrong?” Tandie whispered, a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“I can’t do this to you.” He looked away.

“I don’t think a gun is pointed at my head.” Tandie felt confused and a bit rejected.

“There are things you don’t understand.” Eric moved away from Tandie’s arms and stood.

Why do all men use that line when they’re doing the “it’s not you, it’s me” thing?
 

“I’m the paranormal expert, remember? I’m pretty sure I can understand anything you want to throw at me,” she said.

Eric hinted at a smile forming on his lips, but still refused to meet Tandie’s gaze.

“Please stay a little while longer. Just until I fall asleep.” Tandie felt anxious about being left alone with the ghost kids, their eerie grandmother’s ghost, and whatever else might be waiting for its turn to pick on her. There was something beyond hunches and visions stirring in Chelby Rose. Tandie could almost feel them waiting behind the old doors upstairs.

“I thought you said I was annoying,” he offered with a slight smile, his face still flushed. Moving back over to Tandie, he sat down and eased his arms around her waist.

“Extremely annoying, but you’re good with scaring away ghosts.”

“I’ll stay. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

Tandie placed her head on Eric’s shoulder. He stroked her hair and massaged her right ear which was a different sensation in and of itself, but it still felt wonderfully sinful all the same. It wasn’t long before she fell asleep.

* * *

In Tandie’s dream she walked along unfamiliar shores, a place called Sunset Beach according to the sign she passed. Breena’s spirit drifted in front of a ship with about four layers of massive box sails and intricate details carved into the wooden hull. It was the same Spanish war ship that she’d seen before.

As in previous dreams, her daughter wasn’t smiling. Her chubby cheeks hung downward, and Tandie longed to reach out and touch them. She held out a hand toward the girl, but Breena’s image faded, teasing Tandie. Instead, her daughter pointed at the words painted on the ship’s hull. Tandie tried to focus on the blurry white letters.

“I can’t see them Baby, B. What do they say?”  But there was no Breena. The scene faded away to whatever place dreams are pulled from.

* * *

Driving through the dark back roads, Eric focused on his racing thoughts. There was no way he would ever believe Tandie Harrison had a thing to do with Virgil’s death.  His thoughts were focused on that kiss: her soft sweet lips, the apple-scented fragrance she wore. In her presence, Eric felt wild and unrestrained; but she also stirred a dead portion of his heart. Something no other woman had ever been able to achieve. So why did Tandie drive him insane this way?