28. Faith
My second final of the day went a lot less dramatically than the first. No lying, conniving bitch stole my chair before class. And no handsome, distracting dreamboat pulled me into an intimate room for a quick convo afterward. It was completely dull and normal.
Which was the very reason why I’d left Georgia and come to Westport in the first place—I’d been seeking the regular, average life. No more of the sensational dramatics that I’d grown up experiencing. I had sworn to myself I was done with all that. Here, I was going to be dull, generic Faith.
Not the freak.
Just start fresh and new.
But I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t that girl any longer. I was who I was, and if I could hurt Hudson with my mere presence, I needed to know about it. Now.
I went straight home after the final. Going to Robin for assistance had only taken me so far. It was time to get some real answers.
I needed to clock into work by seven, but I had some time to talk to Mirlande first. So when I reached Jezebel’s Nest, I entered through the front of the shop.
She wasn’t at the check-out station, but I could hear her muffled voice from the tarot card reading room. She’d return soon.
No customers were loitering about, so I paused by the cash register and made myself at home, leaning against the counter as I waited.
Unable to help myself, my gaze shifted to the chair. When it began to rock slowly as if it didn’t appreciate my attention, I drew in a long, unpleasant breath.
I was doing this for Hudson, I reminded myself.
Finally, Mirlande appeared from the back with a customer, guiding them toward me with a hand on their back.
As I stepped aside so she could conclude her business, she noticed me at last. She didn’t pause when she saw me, but her expression changed. And not in a good way.
“You didn’t take your orange cake with you this morning,” she said, her voice flat and monotone.
“Uh, yeah…” I shuffled my weight uneasily from one leg to the other. “Sorry about that. I realized I couldn’t carry it to school after all.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her eyebrows arched, sussing out my lie with ease. But she said nothing as she transferred a smile to her customer, starting a pleasant conversation with them as they paid for their session.
But as soon as she handed them their receipt and called a departing wish to them as they started for the exit, her smile faded, and she turned directly to me.
She said nothing for the longest time, and I certainly didn’t know how to broach the subject, so I just stood there, shifting in a useless attempt to get comfortable.
Finally, she said, “You hid from that interesting little trio I had here this morning. You eavesdropped,” she added as if disappointed in me. “Did you know them?”
I cringed and started to wring my hands. “Kind of. I know the boy they were talking about better.”
“Hudson?” she asked without preamble.
When I nodded silently, she began to nod too. “Yes, my pitit fi reminded me that we also knew this Hudson.”
I glanced toward the rocking chair in surprise.
“Truly,” Mirlande murmured with sad acceptance. “He is the reason she left me and went to New Orleans. Her guilt drove her from town.”
Turning back slowly, I squinted in confusion. “I’m sorry; did you say her guilt?”
“She brought his ghost to the surface once before, a handful of years ago. She had no idea he was possessed. Had no idea she could hurt him or herself by being with him.”
My eyes flared, and realization set in.
Yeah, yeah. I know the place, Hudson had openly told me when I’d first asked him if he knew where Jezebel’s Nest was located. Lost my virginity to a girl who worked there once.
Well, hell. Rocking Chair must be the same girl he thought activated Brett’s activity the first time.
I was banging this girl around that time who was all new-agey and shit, so we think maybe she could’ve been a medium too.
Damn. I wondered if he knew she was no longer alive.
“After he cut his wrists and almost died,” Mirlande told me, her gaze on the rocking chair. “We finally figured out what had happened; so I snuck into the hospital and visited his room one night while he slept, and I put his ghost back into remission. But my pitit fi…” She shook her head sadly. “My beloved granddaughter was beside herself over what she’d done to him. She left town within the week.” Heaving out a heavy breath, she admitted, “I never saw her alive again.”
“Wha—what happened to her?” I asked in a hoarse voice.
Mirlande turned her attention to me, looking slightly lost. “She met another possessed person, and this time, she tried to take the ghost from them with full cognition of what she was doing.” Mouth tightening bitterly, she said, “It didn’t work.”
I swallowed and glanced at the rocking chair again. But I couldn’t dwell on her ruined life. It was already too late for her. I wanted to concentrate on Hudson right now. He was still breathing. He could still be saved.
I turned back to Mirlande. “How did you put his ghost back into remission?”
With a scoff, the old woman rolled her watery eyes. “I did that boy no favors by pushing it back further inside him!”
“But until they can find someone or something to take it out of him completely, it’s safer deeper inside him than near the surface, right?”
Mirlande fluttered out an unconcerned hand. “I suppose. But it’s a mere band-aid. It doesn’t fix the core problem. He needs to get the ghost out.”
For now, I’d take a band-aid.
“How did you do it?” I persisted.
She settled a stern look my way. “But, tifi,” she scolded softly. “Don’t you know? You’ve already done it.”
My breath caught. Even though I’d suspected as much, hearing it said aloud was a shock. “How?”
“No,” the shopkeeper answered, shaking her head. “I’ll be telling you no more, child. Not until you’re true to yourself.”
I ground my teeth, tired of hearing that phrase pass her lips. “I don’t even know what that means,” I finally just admitted.
“Oh really?” She arched one eyebrow and then motioned past me. “Describe the person in the rocking chair.”
I didn’t look back, just balled my hands into fists at my side. “No one’s in the chair.”
“Wrong answer,” she said, shaking her head sadly. Then she pressed a fist to the center of her chest. “It hurts my soul to see you trying so hard to hide your gifts, day after day. You can toss your bag into her lap and act like you can’t see her all you want. But I know you can. If you refuse to acknowledge what you are, though, even to me, then I can’t help you.”
“Oh my God. Fine,” I spat, giving in with a shuddered breath. I’d been prepared to do this anyway. “It’s a girl…woman,” I started. “Late teens, early twenties. She’s in ripped blue jeans and a cropped tie-dye top this afternoon. I can tell now that she’s related to you because she has the same shape of face and coloring.”
Mirlande began to smile proudly and nod at me. “And?” she coaxed, not letting me pause there.
“And…” Oh my God, what else did she want from me? I’d admitted I could see the girl in the chair. I could see ghosts. “I don’t know,” I mumbled in irritation. “There’s a fleur-de-lis symbol hanging from a gold chain around her neck. And she won’t look up, won’t acknowledge anyone. Just stares down at her lap and rocks. All she does is sit in that fucking chair.”
Mirlande smiled wide. “Finally,” she praised. “It’s about time you admit you can see the dead.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. It’s great. Now how do I help my friend?”
She clucked her tongue and shook a finger at me. “That boy is no mere friend to you. Did I not just tell you, you had to embrace your true self before I’d agree to help you?”
Helplessness filled me. “I don’t know what else to call him.”
“He is your twin flame, chéri; that’s what you call him.”
My stomach clenched so hard from the term that it began to ache. I wanted to deny what she said, but my throat began to burn every time I tried. Eyelashes going damp, I blinked them a few times before roughly admitting, “Okay, yeah. Maybe he is. I know he’s important to me.” More important than I could remember anyone else being. “It doesn’t seem to matter how well I do or don’t know him. He’s just…important.”
Mirlande nodded solemnly. “Better.”
“So how do I help him?” I rasped from a hoarse voice, feeling raw and exposed. “And why don’t I seem to be drawing his ghost to the surface the same way Oaklynn and your granddaughter did?”
“Because you don’t have the same abilities as them,” Mirlande said calmly.
My brow furrowed. “Yes, I do. All three of us can see ghosts.” I motioned toward Mirlande’s dead granddaughter. “I mean, she could too when she was alive, right?” Glancing toward the rocker, I repeated, “Right?”
I didn’t expect the ghost to answer. Robin was honestly the only ghost who’d ever spoken to me.
So when the girl said, “I have a name, you know,” I blinked, bowled over about the fact that she could actually speak. But then she lifted her face and looked up, and Oaklynn hadn’t been lying. Rocking Chair’s eyes were completely white, with no pupils or irises in them at all.
And even though I’d been expecting them, I reared back, completely freaked. “Oh my God.”
“It’s Fabienne,” she said in her grandmother’s cultured accent. “And you don’t have to be talking about me as if I’m not even here.”
“I—I’m sorry.”
“Fabienne wasn’t like me,” Mirlande explained as she came out from behind the check-out station to join us. Hands clasped, she kept her distance from the rocking chair as she gazed fondly that way. “We were two different sides of the same magnet. One drew the otherworldly beings to her; the other repelled them.” Shifting her attention to me, she nodded in confirmation. “You’re like me, child.”
My mouth dropped open. “So I’m like a ghost…repellent?”
That actually made sense. Every time I’d tried to approach and talk to a ghost back home, they’d only raced off as if scared of me.
“But…” I hooked a thumb toward Fabienne. “Why aren’t we repelling her?”
“You do,” Fabienne assured me. “Your presence is like the constant sensation of nails on a chalkboard. Your very energy grates on my nerves. But…” She shrugged and sent Mirlande a soft smile. “She is my gran and can still talk to me. Where else would I go?” Her white-coated gaze sought me again as she shrugged. “Why do you think I never wander up into your living space?”
“You can go up into my apartment?” A shudder raced across the back of my neck. But yikes. Why had I never considered that possibility before? “Wow. Yeah, thank you for not doing that.”
It would’ve scared the crap out of me if I had woken up one night to her hovering over my bed.
Then I snapped my fingers, remembering something. “Wait. No. This can’t be right. I know another ghost. At the library. And she doesn’t seem to be afraid of me. I mean…” I shrugged. “She doesn’t come too close, but she’ll at least talk to me and stuff.”
Mirlande only lifted a shoulder. “Then she must not be like other ghosts.”
Thinking that through, I began to nod slowly in agreement. If Robin had had Asperger’s Syndrome in life, it made sense that she’d react differently than ghosts who hadn’t had it.
Huh. Interesting.
Things suddenly felt so much clearer to me now. It was as if the last piece of the puzzle to my strange, freaky life had just clicked into place.
I could see ghosts, but they feared me.
Iwas the dark, creepy thing in their closet.
That was actually kind of awesome to realize. But what I liked learning the most…
Glancing between Fabienne and Mirlande, I said, “So I can’t hurt Hudson?”
“You can’t help him,” Mirlande answered before shaking her head, “But no, you can’t hurt him either. Your presence will actually be a soothing balm to him until the ghost is gone.”
My chest filled with relief. “Oh, thank God.” That was all I needed to hear.
“But you should still stay away from the boy until he’s clean,” Mirlande cautioned with a shake of her finger.
I frowned. “What? Why?”
“Just because you can’t hurt him doesn’t mean he can’t hurt you. You may have the opposite powers as my pitit fi, but you use the same energy from inside you to wield it. He could drain you dry.” Her sad gaze strayed to Fabienne. “Just the way her friend in New Orleans drained her to this state.”
I gulped uneasily. “Then how do we help him? How do we get the ghost out?”
Mirlande shrugged helplessly. “We can’t. That would take something greater than all three of us are capable of, I’m afraid.”