Celeste crosses herself, something I haven’t seen anyone do in a long time. “It’s something we don’t know about, isn’t it? What happened to you, and what you said, is it something supernatural?”

  Now I know why she just crossed herself. In her mind, supernatural means the devil. How can I tell her that sometimes it’s close, but other times it’s me?

  Again, I tread carefully. “Yes, what happened to me was supernatural. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you more. Not yet, anyway. I’ve chosen not to share that about myself. No one would believe me anyway, and my mother would just go through hell again. But when I had that dream, and then saw that article in the paper, I felt like I had to talk to you.”

  “How did you find us?” Celeste says. “Are you psychic?”

  Oh, boy. Here we go again. This time, I see no choice but to imply that I am. “I have certain abilities. I see things others don’t sometimes. Often, actually.” And that’s true about me, totally. No lies told there. “If you’re comfortable telling me, I’d like to know more about what’s going on with Ellie.”

  Celeste and Ted remain silent for a moment, as they exchange glances. Then, Celeste says, “We’ll tell you.”

  CHAPTER 23

  According to her parents, Ellie Kaminski has always been a happy kid, well-adjusted, with what they describe as a “healthy world view.” She has lots of friends, and has remained involved in clubs at school, while playing on the soccer and lacrosse teams. She's a senior in high school, an honors student heading to college next year hoping to study political science. Essentially, the girl they describe is a dream child, an example of near perfection. It’s okay, maybe even as it should be, that Ellie's parents adore her and possibly exaggerate her attributes. Obviously, they love and care about her.

  “Then everything changed,” Ted says. “Literally overnight.”

  I've heard the accounts before, a few of them now, and what Celeste and Ted tell me sounds much the same. In their case, it started when Ted woke up in the middle of the night to hear Ellie talking to someone. At first, he assumed she was on the phone, but then became concerned when he realized the time.

  “It was after three in the morning,” he says. “Who could she possibly be talking to? So I got out of bed and went down the hall. I was almost at her door when I stopped and listened. I know Ellie has studied French and a little bit of Spanish, but that wasn't what I was hearing. I don't know what language it was. Nothing I've heard before, that's for sure. Guttural, I think that’s the word. But not like German. More like...” His words trail off, and he shakes his head. “You know what they say about a chill running down your spine? That's exactly what I felt. Well, that and fear. I just knew something was wrong.”

  Ted reaches for Celeste's hand again, and she squeezes his back in return. With her other hand, she wipes her eyes.

  I take another sip of my water. “What happened next?”

  “Usually, I'd knock on her door,” Ted says. “I mean, she's not a little girl anymore. But that night I didn't. I went in to ask her what was going on, and found her sitting up in bed. Not like she'd just woken up. I mean with her legs crossed on top of the covers, like she'd just been sitting there talking to someone. I still figured she'd be holding her phone, and that the language thing was maybe some sort of a joke, but her phone was still charging on her desk. I asked her if she was okay and she just stared at me.”

  Ted hunches forward and runs a hand through his hair. He locks his eyes on mine. “It was like she didn't even know me. I swear, she had no idea who I was. I just felt it. And then her eyes changed color. I know it sounds crazy, but they sort of glowed this weird silvery color. Just for a second or two, but I swear it happened.”

  From how he says it, I can tell he's used to not being believed. He doesn't have to worry about that with me. I have no doubt that what he says is true.

  “Can I see her room?”

  Celeste and Ted glance at each other.

  “To see if I pick up on anything,” I say.

  They take that to mean psychic impressions, I can tell, and I guess in a way they're close. Either way, it’s as close as they could possibly understand.

  As the three of us walk down the hall, Celeste turns to me. “There was something about Ellie,” she says. “Something we didn't talk about much with other people.”

  “She was psychic,” I say.

  We stop at Ellie’s bedroom door, where Ted and Celeste both stare at me. After a moment, Celeste says, “Yes, a little. At least we wondered if she might be. How did you know?”

  “There seems to be a connection,” I say. “Some of the other kids are too. At least, from what I hear.”

  Celeste and Ted exchange glances. This is the first they’ve heard of it, I can tell. Naturally, they have no idea what to think. They’re not alone on that score.

  Celeste speaks softly, as if she’s afraid of being overheard. “Ellie has a way of knowing things. She’s always been that way.”

  Ted nods and says, “She just calls it intuition, but it always seemed like more to me. One time, she just suddenly knew that her grandmother was in trouble. An hour later, we found out that Celeste’s mother had suffered a stroke. Another time, Ellie predicted that the family who’d just moved in down the street would be gone by summer. Sure enough, the father lost his job, and by June there they were packing things into a truck. How can anyone know things like that? I mean, she never even met them.”

  We step inside Ellie’s room, where Ted flicks on a light. It doesn’t achieve much. It remains mostly dark in there until he crosses the room to throw back the curtains. “It’s always like this now. She keeps it as dark as possible.” He opens the blinds, then points to a fan whirring in the corner, where it sits on the floor angled up and oscillating. “And that too. For some reason, she keeps trying to make it cold in here.”

  I look around the room, which is pretty much what you’d expect to find for a girl Ellie’s age. There’s her bed, a dresser, a desk and a bookcase. A few posters are tacked up, one depicting manga characters, that I bet date back to at least middle school. There are pictures, a couple of trophies, and some certificates of merit hung on the wall. The space seems perfectly normal, but it doesn’t quite feel that way. Not to me. At the same time, I don’t feel the kind of lingering supernatural energy I’ve felt before. Instead, it just feels off somehow, like the feeling you get when you’re in a place where something bad happened. Somehow, you just sense it.

  Celeste breaks my concentration when she says, “Look, Ted.”

  She hunches over Ellie’s desk, which is cluttered with books and notebooks. There’s also a framed photo of Ellie dressed for the prom. She wears a pretty blue dress and holds a bouquet of flowers as she smiles for the camera. Even though I know as much as I do, I’m still not prepared. My heart jumps as I stare at the photo. It’s the same girl I saw in that other place. There’s no doubt about it.

  But it’s Ellie’s laptop which Celeste has just brought back to life, and which she stares at now. From where I stand, I can’t quite make out the specifics of the website left open, but Ted seems to get it right away.

  “That too,” he says, turning to me. “Lately, Ellie has some sort of obsession with alternate dimensions, supposed gaps between this world and others. Crazy stuff like that. She keeps going to all these strange websites. Before, all she cared about was music, boys and school. Suddenly, she keeps—”

  Ted breaks off when the front slams closed. He checks his watch, then nods toward the hall, signaling that we should leave the room. They walk out the door and, on a hunch, I grab my phone. I take a quick picture of Ellie’s photo before following after them. Why I’d need it, I don’t know, but I plan on finding this girl and bringing her back.

  We enter the living room just as the other Ellie throws her backpack onto the sofa and walks toward the kitchen. She doesn’t look around, or acknowledge that she’s not alone.

  “Hi, honey,” Celeste says. “How was school?”

  When the girl keeps walking, Ted says, “Ellie?”

  Ellie, or whoever she is, stops and turns, as if only then becoming aware of us. She completely ignores her parents as she locks her stare on me. “Who are you?”

  I’m tempted to turn toward Celeste and Ted, but I don’t. “My name’s Cassie,” I say. Then, grabbing onto the first thing that comes to mind, I add, “I work for the local women’s shelter.” Whether the lie even makes any sense, I don’t know. It’s just something I come up with on the fly.

  “Cassie is collecting donations,” Celeste says. “We thought maybe we’d try to help.”

  Ellie barely glances at Celeste, before returning her attention to me. “What kind of donations?”

  I shrug. “Clothes, mostly. Money too, if people can afford to help.”

  The girl says nothing after that. She simply stares back at me as if she knows I’m lying. Then, the corner of her mouth lifts in just a hint of a smile. For one brief moment, her eyes flicker from brown to silver, then back again, before she turns and walks away.

  CHAPTER 24

  “Okay, that’s creepy,” Julia says. “What do you think it means?”

  She sits across from me at Percolator, an independently owned coffee shop just a few blocks from the Monroe Park campus. She’s thin and pale, her short hair blonde these days, when for a long time it rotated between blue, purple, red and green. She stares back at me with sky-blue eyes—the same eyes through which I saw the world for a long time. Even after these past few months of having my own body back, it still feels strange to look back at her without it being in a mirror.

  I set my latte down and shake my head. “No idea, but Paul wasn’t lying. It’s not the Vamanec P’yrin. I would have felt it.”

  “But you said you felt something.”

  I glance out the window at the sidewalk, where students stroll down Grace Street on their way to classes. It’s distracting sometimes, seeing the ghosts among them. Today, there’s just one, a guy who only differs slightly in his hairstyle and clothes. My guess is that he didn’t die long ago, maybe ten years or so.

  “Hello?”

  I snap out of it and focus on Julia. “Sorry, I just spaced out for a moment.”

  She lifts an eyebrow, a slight smile playing on her lips. “Do you need to go open the veil for someone?”

  Naturally, Julia can almost always tell if I'm lying. “No, he's gone now. He looked like he was having fun, anyway.”

  “And it's not like he won't be back, right?”

  “More than likely, this same time tomorrow,” I say, since that's the way of most ghosts. They like sticking to their routines.

  Julia raises her cup like we're toasting. “There you go. Job security.”

  As often as I see ghosts now, Julia has always sensed their presence. For her own sanity, she chose long ago to block out seeing them the way I do—as nearly physical manifestations of their past human selves—but, quite often, she can't help receiving their emotional messages. She's way too highly attuned as a psychic to block them out entirely. In fact, there are times when what she “hears” inwardly seems more precise than what I experience with my eyes and ears. She just has a way of tuning into someone’s essence, regardless of whether that person is dead or alive.

  I tap my cup against hers. “To job security. But back to what you were asking about, I did feel something, definitely. At the same time, it was like the signal was weak, almost muted. Or, I don't know, maybe I'm losing my edge.”

  “I doubt it,” Julia says. “If anything, you're probably getting better at picking up on things you might not have noticed before. It can be confusing.”

  Julia should know, given her history. While we never shared her psychic abilities—despite everything, always remaining two distinct personalities—there's no doubt she knows way more about what it’s like as your inner senses continue to develop.

  “How do you think the psychic teenager thing might factor in?”

  “If they are all teenagers,” Julia says. “Like you said before, it could just be that parents are more likely to reach out. But maybe it's a matter of psychics being more susceptible somehow. Kind of like how you and I connected.”

  I look at her deadpan. “You make me sound like a virus.”

  Julia laughs. “Sorry, but you know what I mean. Or maybe it's not so much about getting in at all. Maybe it has something to do with being receptive to something else entirely. Then again, maybe it's just a weird coincidence.”

  I nod, but I doubt it. One thing I've learned about the supernatural world is that most coincidences are attributable to things we don't understand. More often, either something we don't believe in, or plain old just don't know about. But it's that other thing Julia said—about psychics being receptive—that causes me to shudder, although I don't know why.

  “So, hey,” Julia says. “When am I going to see your apartment? I'm starting to think you might be hiding something.”

  She has a point, since it’s been three weeks and, so far, I’ve only alluded to the possibility of her coming over. Mostly, because our schedules just haven't meshed, but I guess there's also the fact that I really have needed some time alone. I also haven’t yet told her that the apartment building is full of witches. It’s kind of understood that we keep that to ourselves. Still, it’s not like Julia doesn’t know I’m a witch, and it could be fun to see how long it takes her to figure things out.

  I shrug. “What about now?”

  Julia checks the time on her phone. “Sure, why not? I have almost two hours before class.”

  My place is only two miles away, so it only takes us a few minutes to get there from the university district. Soon, we’re getting out of the car and climbing the front steps in front of the Cauldron. We’re halfway up when Julia suddenly stops, a pondering look suddenly taking over her features. I know that look well, but is it even possible?

  Apparently, it is, since Julia says, “Okay, this is strange, but I’m picking up on a presence. A big man. Really big. And I know this sounds weird, but he's holding a club. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I cock my head, as if searching my memory. “Huh. Weird. No one comes to mind.”

  We head inside just as Lissette comes out of her apartment. I glance inside just before she closes the door, catching a glimpse of Anna. She’s floating across the room, paddling with her legs and arms as if she's swimming.

  Lissette flashes her brilliant smile as she passes. “Hey, Cassie. Hey, Cassie's friend.”

  “That's Lissette,” I say, as she disappears outside. “I think I might have told you about her.” I have no idea if Julia just saw Anna air-swim through their apartment.

  As we climb the stairs, I suddenly leap to one side, falling in behind Julia. She looks over her shoulder at me, confused. “What just happened?”

  I gesture noncommittally. “Thought I saw a spider.” Julia must have been looking away when the fang-bearing pixie whizzed by my head. I swear, next time I'm going to bat that thing into the wall.

  We reach the landing and start walking down the hall. We're almost at my apartment when Jerome and Bobby come out of theirs, still engaged in conversation.

  “I agree, it's a reliable mix for inducing a state of infatuation,” Jerome says, “but what if you don't just happen to have someone’s hair or nail clippings. That's the problem with so many DNA-based po—” He looks up, and then our way, when Bobby nudges him. “Oh, hey guys. How's it going?”

  “Nice day out there?” Bobby says.

  “Not bad,” I say. “A little breezy.”

  We finally enter my apartment, and I turn to Julia. “That was Jerome and Bobby. I told you about them too, right?”

  “They seem nice.” Julia looks around my dinky living room, which remains cluttered with dirty laundry, forgotten plates and junk mail all addressed to “Resident.” It's amazing how much mail I receive, given that I have no official identity.

  “Wow, this is cute,” Julia says. “I love the light in here. You're lucky. My place is like a cave.”

  “Thanks.” That part is true. My place may be small, but my front window faces southwest, keeping my living room sunny most of the day.

  Julia sticks her head into the kitchen. “Ooh, check out those counters. Are those real?”

  I have to smile, since my mother reacted the same way. My shoebox sized kitchenette has faux-granite counters. “Nope. Totally fake.”

  Julia shrugs. “Well, they're still nice. Mine are from like 1970 or something. Seriously, you have a dishwasher?”

  I gesture at the plates scattered about, most of them used for toast or microwaving the baked items Maggie insists I take home. “I guess I should probably try using it sometime.”

  Julia laughs. “Yeah, you might try breaking that thing in.”

  She goes into the hall to peek into my bedroom. “Looks comfy,” she says, of the mess in there. She comes back into the living room. “Yeah, I like it. So, is anyone living here not a witch?”

  I open my mouth to speak, but then laugh at having been caught off guard. “Well, that part is supposed to be secret.”

  Julia laughs too. “You should probably tell that to the chick floating through the air.”

  “I kind of wondered if you caught that. Sorry, I probably should have told you.”

  Julia shrugs. “It’s cool. I get it. I gather you guys don't invite too many muggles over.”

  I hesitate, not wanting to hurt her feelings. “Well, you're not really a muggle. Not with your powers.”

  Julia grins. “Bingo, dude. Psychics should get honorary membership, don't you think?” She pauses, gazing up at the ceiling for a few moments before refocusing on me. “Wait, is there a ghost here too?”

  I try not to get my hopes up. “Why? What are you getting?”

  If Julia senses the same ghost I’ve seen, then this is definitely a first. Could it be more a matter of being a psychic than a witch?

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19