Chapter 17 #2
“Don’t worry.” Richard smirked. “Melba may seem like a soft touch, but she’ll keep him in line one or way or another. With any luck, she might pawn him off to Werach.” With that, Richard floated out the door, and Jamison didn’t hesitate to follow.
“Hey!” Noah called. “What about lunch?”
Jamison slammed the door with a speedy jangle of the bell and jogged to keep up with the spectral man floating down the street. “All right, what’s the in? Do you know a Magicker or someone who can help us?”
“Not a Magicker per se,” Richard said. “But they’ll help you…for a price.”
“Ah, they’re Hexxers, then?” Jamison asked, his stomach sinking.
“Not at all.” Richard was moving so fast, Jamison ran alongside him as they twisted and turned through the small downtown area.
Just when Jamison thought he was going to have to deal with some irredeemable pit stains in his shirt, Richard came to a sudden stop in front of a low stone wall.
He turned to Jamison with a smile that was almost mischievous.
“The people you want to talk to are the ghastly seniors.”
Only then did Jamison realize they’d stopped in front of a graveyard, and there, sitting on white headstones in a rough circle, was a group of six elderly women laughing as they chatted amidst the sea of lush green grass.
They might’ve looked like your average group of senior citizens meeting for whatever cozy hobby they shared, except of course, they were dead.
It was a strange sight, but Jamison’s foreboding curse wasn’t even tingling, though the air did feel at least five degrees cooler here. “Okay, what price exactly are they going to charge me?”
“Your time,” Richard replied.
“Like years of my life?
Richard let out a wry laugh. “Oh, goodness, no. The Hexxers obviously did a number on you. The seniors will simply ask that you come back to read to them or just chat about what’s going on in town.
You may think poorly of me, but all ghosts are natural gossips, and these ladies put the rest of us to shame. ”
Jamison snorted. Of course, the ghosts of all things would put him more at ease than his fellow humans. “I think I can handle that.” He hopped over the wall in one easy lope. The spectral ladies were already giving him curious looks and sideways grins. “Are you going to introduce me?”
Richard floated ahead with a smile that bordered on flirtatious, and suddenly the intro made sense. Richard wasn’t helping him out of the goodness of his heart, he wanted to sit with the popular girls, and Jamison was his ticket in. He had to stifle a snort.
“My beautiful ladies,” Richard called, “while we hate to interrupt your morning conversations, Jamison Kane here has come with a proposition on a somewhat…juicy situation.”
The ladies perked up in an eruption of whispers, and Jamison didn’t miss the name “Kane” thrown around like a hot potato.
But only one of the younger phantoms, a woman maybe in her mid-fifties, in what looked like a nineteenth-century dress with a parasol hooked on her arm, floated forward.
“A pleasure to meet you, Jamison Kane, I’m Mrs. Mary Thompson, but, in the modern way, you may refer to me as Mary if you wish. Now, what have you come to ask us?”
Jamison slid his hands into his pockets, feeling strangely at ease despite talking to a graveyard full of ghosts.
Communing with the dead had definitely not been on his bingo card before today, but apparently, he’d already started to adapt to the PC’s craziness.
Kind of cool really. “I was wondering if you could help me talk to Peter Jowett, and Zach Whitmore too if he’s crossed over?
I’m working with AzRIO on the disappearance of Carly Jowett, and we think their deaths might be related. ”
The women behind Mary swirled in renewed whispers, but Mary betrayed nothing as she lifted her gloved hand for silence. “We are well aware of the disappearances you speak of, but please give us a moment to confer.”
Mary drifted back to the other women, and Jamison’s brows shot up as they swirled together in a whirlpool of gleeful whispers. After only a few seconds, they separated into six distinct figures again, each with a delighted smile on their lips.
Mary floated back out to him, chin high and posture impeccable.
“Both Zach Whitmore and Carly Jowett have not yet crossed over. However, we’re willing to try to call Peter for you if…
” Her gaze flicked up and down his body with a flirtatious scrunch of her nose.
“You’d be willing to come take tea with us once a month and tell us all the AzRIO gossip. ”
“For…the rest of my life?” Jamison asked.
“Oh, don’t be dramatic, we’re not extortionists,” Mary said with a dismissive wave. “How about a year?”
Jamison looked at Richard, trying to suss out whether or not there might be any hidden meaning to this, but Richard only wriggled with his own faint grin.
Jamison checked in with his foreboding sense, but it wasn’t giving off anything either, though he didn’t doubt Richard would insist on also coming along to these meetings. “All right, I agree.”
“Excellent!” Mary soundlessly clapped her translucent hands. “All you must do is stand in our circle and speak to Peter as if he were here with us. We will amplify and direct your message. Richard, if you could assist as well, dear, we could always use the extra spirit.”
“Of course, Mrs. Thompson, I’d be happy to oblige,” Richard said primly, following Mary into the circular, cobblestoned heart of the graveyard.
Jamison took up his place in the center, and the ghosts evenly spaced themselves around him.
Though it was quiet among the headstones, and the sky was perfectly blue in the October sunshine above, the moment had a surreal quality to it, like somewhere in the past five steps, they’d disconnected from the rest of the world.
Nerves bubbling in his belly, Jamison turned to Mary, but she gave him an encouraging smile. “Go ahead, Jamison. Remember, just call his name and talk to him as if he were here.”
“Um, okay.” Jamison took another deep breath and looked up at the window of sky between Florida’s still green trees. “Peter Jowett?”
The spirits began to swirl around him in another silver circle, their combined voices echoing the name. “Peter Jowett.”
The whirl of them rippled through Jamison’s clothes and hair, making him shiver, but he forced himself to continue.
“My name’s Jamison Kane. We went to school together but didn’t know each other that well.
I’m working with Dessa McKinney, and we’re trying to find your sister, Carly.
She’s missing, and we think whoever…uh, turned Alana, might have taken her.
I know you’ve crossed over, and this might be a rude awakening, but I’ll take any info you’ve got. ”
Jamison’s voice trailed off, but the cold, silvery whirl continued around him.
He counted in his head, wondering how long he could wait before they considered it a failure.
He got to twenty seconds, thirty…He reached forty-five and opened his mouth to apologize to Mary for wasting her time when a shadow separated from the circle.
Though he was barely more than a silver-outlined silhouette, much fainter than Richard, Mary, and the rest of the ghosts that hadn’t crossed over, Jamison recognized Peter immediately.
He wore a hoodie and shorts, with the trim haircut, gangly limbs, and all of the seventeen years Jamison had last seen him with.
Still, there was something about him that was off—uncanny even. Like something that shouldn’t be.
“You’re working with Dessa?” Peter asked, his voice almost unbearably soft. “To find Carly?”
“Yes.” Jamison’s hands trembled. For some reason the reality of ghosts hadn’t quite hit him until he saw Peter.
A boy he’d once known—who’d once sat across from him in class—and now seemed frozen in time.
Dead, but right in front of him. His voice shaking, Jamison forced himself to continue.
“The Hexxers said it was related to what happened to you, and Zach is still missing.”
Peter nodded, a strange heaviness to his movements, as if a heavy fatigue weighed on his limbs.
“I’ll tell you what I told Brad McKinney.
The man was neither Were nor Vampire, and he was trying to take all of us, not kill anyone.
He already had Zach unconscious and in his truck when Alana and I found him, but he quickly realized that we would overwhelm him, especially with Dessa on her way.
So, instead, he infected Alana with the venom, and she went mad with the bloodlust.” Jamison winced at the brutal image of a sister killing her brother, but Peter continued, “He wanted our magic, but he spoke of deliveries and quotas in a way that made it clear he was working for someone else.”
“You think he also took Carly for her magic?” Jamison asked.
“If it’s connected to my death then, most likely yes,” Peter said, his image starting to flicker, his face contorting in a million different expressions so quickly Jamison could barely follow it.
Jamison frowned. “Why her? Is there something special about your magic?”
“That’s a closely guarded family secret,” Peter said, something like distrust curling across his face. “The McKinneys will tell you if you must know. But why didn’t Dessa come with you in the first place?”
“I think…” Jamison’s cheeks warmed as he thought about her potential reaction to the suggestion of calling Peter.
How much should he say? Peter probably wouldn’t trust him at all if he thought Jamison had gone behind Dessa’s back.
Which, in a way, maybe he had, now that he thought about it.
But he was only trying to help. “I think she blames herself for what happened, and I think she’s scared you might blame her too. ”
Peter’s shadowy face softened, and in that moment, he looked older than his murder ever allowed him to be.
“Of course I would never blame her. She was and will always be my best friend.” His form flickered again, and a bittersweet smile curved his mouth.
“Tell her when she’s ready, I’ll come when she calls. I’ll be waiting for her.”
With that, Peter disappeared as suddenly as he’d come, and the silver eddies around Jamison slowed to a halt.
The six women all looked at one another with proud, glowing smiles, before Mary tittered into her gloved hand, and the whispers started afresh.
“Did you hear him?”
“Tell her when she’s ready, I’ll come when she calls.”
“Such a tragic romance from the grave!”
“Oh, but he is just the cutest thing.”
“She was and will always be my best friend.”
A jealous twinge pulled taut in Jamison’s chest, and he wiped his damp palms on his pants. With his heart still hammering, he started to move. He needed to get away from this place and process what he’d seen and heard. “Anyway. I suppose I’ll see you ladies next month for tea.”
Mary’s glowing head popped out of their newly re-formed gossip huddle. “Oh yes! Do not forget or I will come haunt you.”
“Right.” Dizzy with everything he’d learned, he turned toward the stone gate of the exit, with Richard reluctantly calling out goodbyes somewhere behind him.
But Jamison had only made it a few steps down the walk before he found himself looking straight into Dessa’s cobalt eyes, the tips of her dark hair now dyed a deep blue to match.
Her appearance was so abrupt that it seemed as if he hadn’t only been visited by the Peter from high school, but now the Dessa from that time as well.
And from the cold fire emanating in her glare, he didn’t need to ask to know she’d witnessed the whole thing.