Donn's Legacy, page 17
If any of that was true, I couldn’t figure out why I kept dreaming about this woman I had never met. As I stared at her, puzzling over it, the memory of my conversation with Grey came back to me.
Visitations are very common, she had said. Most people dismiss them as just dreams.
“Holy crap,” I said. “This isn’t a dream.”
Camila’s eyes widened. I felt mine growing larger too.
I hadn’t just said it.
I had heard it.
“This isn’t a dream,” I said again, louder. “This is a visitation.”
She shook her head and tried to say something. I still couldn’t hear her. Frustration clouded her face again. I shuffled my feet along the grass and couldn’t hear the crinkling of the leaves either. But I could hear myself. That alone made me feel a little less like I was about to lose my mind.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
As before, I couldn’t follow what she was trying to tell me. Her lips moved, but it was pointless. I stared at her glumly. Talking to her was as worthless as sending texts to Kit’s phone in France.
“I wish I could hear you,” I said. “I’m guessing you don’t have anybody to complain to about your day, right?”
Her short curls bobbed as she silently chuckled. Then her face lit up. She held up her bony hands, palms toward me and long fingers spread wide. She looked at her hands, then back at me, and gave me an encouraging smile.
“Uh…” I squinted, trying to figure out what she was trying to tell me. “Ten?”
She punched the air and nodded enthusiastically. Then she closed her hands into fists and flashed her ten fingers at me twice.
“Twenty?” I guessed.
I thought she might collapse on the ground with relief. The frustration on her face had vanished, replaced by the tight eyes and pursed lips of determination. Holding my gaze, she slowly raised her arms into an exaggerated shrug.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Um… How?” I guessed. “I don’t know? I don’t care? Confused?”
I rattled off possibilities in rapid fire, but each one was met with another negative. I was already starting to feel discouraged, but Camila kept a smile on her face as she urged me to keep going. I had always hated games like these, but with a partner like Camila cheering me on, maybe it wouldn’t have been so annoying to play party games like charades and twenty questions—
“Questions!” I shouted. “Twenty questions!”
She winced at my volume but clapped soundlessly.
I understood her meaning at once. I couldn’t hear her speak or read her lips, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t communicate. I just had to ask the kinds of questions she could answer in a way I could more easily understand, like a nod or a headshake.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start over. Do you know where we are?”
She answered with a half frown and a half shrug. She pointed at me and then the house before tilting her head to lay it on a pillow made from her hands.
“Yeah, this is my house. And we’re a long way from New Mexico.” I wanted to ask why she had followed me here but had to rephrase it. “Did you come here on purpose?”
She shook her head firmly. Definitely not.
My stomach sank. I had a feeling that, as per usual, I had accidentally brought a spirit home with me. As a professional ghost hunter, I really had to get better about not letting my work follow me home.
“Did I bring you here?”
She nodded.
“With the box?” I guessed.
She nodded again. Her nostrils flared, and anger sparked in her eyes.
I drew back. “Are you mad at me?”
She shook her head and heaved another silent sigh. Whatever she was upset about, it would take more than a yes or no to tell me.
“Is the box yours?” I needed to know where she had gotten it, but one step at a time.
She crossed her arms into an X in front of her face, then drew them downward quickly as she shook her head. It was the most emphatic no yet.
I frowned. “Did you find it?”
After nodding, she shivered and rubbed her arms.
“Are you cold?”
She shook her head and pointed over her shoulder with her thumb.
“Oh, you were cold.”
Camila took a few steps toward the house, then pantomimed seeing something on the ground and reaching to pick it up. She sank to her knees, curled up on her side, and froze there.
The pieces clicked into place in my mind. It was exactly as I had imagined. “The box called to you. You went out into the cold to find it. And…”
I didn’t finish the sentence. It felt too strange to tell someone she had died. Besides, unlike the ghost at the Ace of Cups, I was certain Camila knew exactly what her situation was.
I was right. She nodded sadly.
“Did you see anybody that night?”
She shook her head.
“Nobody at all?” I pressed. “A man with an old-fashioned brimmed hat and glowing red eyes?”
Her face scrunched up as she thought. After a few seconds, she shook her head again.
“What about before that? Did you see any strange men around? Older men?”
She gave that plenty of thought as well but ultimately signaled that she hadn’t.
Despite the heavy subject matter, our strange little game of charades was weirdly fun. I felt myself warming up to the challenge of conversing this way. Wanting to keep the game going as long as I could, I asked something lighter.
“You’re from Georgia, right?” I didn’t mention where I had read that particular piece of information.
Even in the muted colors of a grayscale world, her face lit up when I mentioned her home state. She nodded.
“I’ve never been there. What’s it like?”
She didn’t balk at the open-ended question. She rubbed her hands together and took a moment to strategize. Then, like a swooning damsel, she laid one wrist against her forehead and fanned herself with her other hand.
“Hot?”
She nodded and held up a finger. With a huge smile, she rubbed her stomach and pretended to swallow something.
I grinned back. “But the food is great. That’s enough to get me to go anywhere.”
Despite not being able to hear it, her laughter was contagious. As we stood on the back lawn giggling together, Striker stepped daintily out the cat flap in the kitchen door and sauntered over to us on silent paws. Like the last time Camila visited me, the brown and cream in Striker’s fur had been muted into swirling gray tones. I reached down to scratch her between the ears, and she plopped down on my bare feet. Her silky fur dusted the tops of my toes, but I realized I could feel neither the warmth from her body or the cold from the grass. I could only sense the rumble of her purr.
Dream visitations had their benefits, I supposed. If Kit and I were standing outside in the middle of the night, I would have had to cut our conversation short ages ago to go inside and get a coat and some slippers. Or, more likely, we would both go into the kitchen to chat over steaming cups of hot chocolate and whatever baked goods our housemates had left lying around.
“Do you want to come inside?” I offered. “I know you don’t actually need food anymore in the real world, but this is mostly in my head, right? If I can dream it, you can eat it?”
I expected her to laugh, but her brows drew together, and she pursed her lips. Her sudden unhappiness startled me.
“Sorry. That was probably really rude, huh? I didn’t mean to remind you—”
Camila cut me off with a wave of her hands. She pointed at my head and gestured at the yard. Her eyes flashed. Whatever she was trying to tell me, it was important.
“Um… You don’t want to be in the yard anymore? We can go somewhere else.”
She lifted her eyes to the sky and mouthed something.
“Hey, we were getting pretty good at this,” I reminded her. “Don’t give up now. Let me try again. I can get it.”
The irritation on her face was plain, and I suddenly felt like I was missing something very obvious. I dipped my chin and focused on her face, determined to figure out what she was intent on telling me.
As she had done earlier, she made a pillow out of her hands and rested her head on them with eyes closed.
“Sleeping.”
She straightened up and clapped her hands. Then she made another X with her arms and pulled it apart. A definitive no.
“Not sleeping? Wait… I’m not sleeping?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head, looking strangely apologetic. My stomach dropped. If this wasn’t a dream visitation, I could only think of two possibilities. One: I had died in my sleep, and Camila, for some reason, was here to help me cross over. But this was the second time I had seen her, and death was kind of a one-time deal. That only left scenario number two.
“This is real?”
As Camila nodded, her eyes lightened from a dark gray to a nutty brown. Her skin warmed, and all around her, color flooded back into the world. Primrose House was once again a sunny yellow, and the leaves on the ground took on their familiar fall shades. It was like the entire world was shouting at me, “Yes, dummy, this is real!”
Joy soared through me at the sight of all that color. I turned slowly where I stood, drinking in the intense rainbow around me. It was like standing in a piece of art, and the subtle variations in everything from the blades of grass to the tiny pebbles in the concrete made me want to take up painting.
Then I saw myself in the kitchen window. All of my color had come back too. My brown hair, my pink lips, and the purple in my sweatshirt.
But there was one color that didn’t look right.
Instead of their usual blue, my eyes glowed crimson.
The shock sent me soaring back into wakefulness. Afternoon sunlight flooded my apartment. A shrill beeping pierced the air. Graham was leaning over me and shouting my name, shaking my shoulder with one hand and clutching Striker with the other.
“What is it?” I mumbled blearily. “What’s that sound?”
“Fire!” He pulled me out of bed and handed me a pair of shoes. “Go!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The acrid stench of smoke stung my nose as soon as I stepped out of my apartment. I raced down the stairs as fast as I dared, while Sister Mary Bernadette’s voice screamed in my memory of elementary school fire drills. No running! Get low! Find the closest exit!
It took far too long to reach the ground floor, and all the way down the stairs, my eyes were locked on the black smoke curling around the arched doorway leading into the kitchen. By the time my feet hit the foyer, I was in a full panic. A single thought—escape—propelled me forward, and I made straight for the front door. Striker shot past me, and I glanced toward Graham, grateful beyond words that he had made sure to grab her.
But Graham wasn’t next to me. He wasn’t following me through the front door. As I watched, he ducked into the kitchen.
He had gone straight into the source of the smoke.
“Graham!” I shouted.
I hovered on the porch, unsure whether to continue fleeing onto the lawn or go after him. The shrill beeping of the fire alarm felt like the ticking of a clock that was counting down to disaster.
Counting down to his death.
Just as I was about to throw myself back into the house, he ducked his head through the kitchen doorway.
“It’s okay!” he called. “Come give me a hand.”
In the kitchen, a cookie sheet sat at an angle in the sink. The faucet was on full blast, and two charred black triangles hissed against the cold water.
Graham climbed on top of the table. “Spot me for a second, okay?”
He stretched to his full height and managed to press the fire alarm’s reset button. With the beeping silenced and the smoke being pulled out of the house through the open doors, the fog began to clear from my brain as well. I guarded him with my hands as he climbed down from the table, as if I could catch him if he fell.
He took off his glasses and wiped the sweat from his face with his sweater sleeve. “I won’t pretend that didn’t scare the crap out of me. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Shaken, but fine.” I went to the sink and prodded the triangles. “Ew, this poor pizza.”
“Did you forget to set a timer?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Me? I thought it was you.”
“I could have sworn I heard you down here banging pans around an hour ago. I’ve been cleaning my apartment—I haven’t been cooking.”
“Then it must have been somebody else.”
“Nobody else is home.” Concern clouded his features, and he reached out a hand to feel my forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”
I sank down into a kitchen chair and cradled my head in my hands. Had I come home, put pizza in the oven, and then gone upstairs to climb into bed? I couldn’t remember. I just remembered finally falling asleep, and—
The memory of the red eyes in my reflection sent me bolting back upright. Slowly, I turned to Graham, but the words caught and croaked in my throat.
“What?” he asked. “Are you going to throw up?”
Before I could answer, he slid the kitchen garbage in front of my feet. The stench of a rotting banana peel wafted up my nostrils, and I shoved the can away.
“No, I’m fine. Just listen. I think…” I paused. “I think I just astral projected.”
I walked him through my encounter with Camila Aster—which I now refused to think of as a dream—in as much detail as I could remember. When I told him about my eyes glowing red, he frowned.
“Couldn’t it have just been a dream?” he asked. “You’ve been having nightmares about Horace all month.”
“This was different. It didn’t feel like a dream. Or look like one. Or even sound like one. It didn’t exactly feel real either, but…” I trailed off, unable to organize my thoughts about the experience I had just had while asleep.
I wished it had lasted longer.
I wanted it to happen again.
“Mac.” Graham’s voice was gentle. “Your mom chased astral projection for years. You don’t even know if she ever accomplished it. How likely is it that you would do it without even trying?”
For some reason, his words stung. I wanted to slap them out of the air. Sure, on the surface, they made sense. But my gut rejected them. I knew what I had experienced. Nobody I knew tried to be psychic. They just were. And in my case, I suddenly lost the gift, only to discover it all over again. I hadn’t done any of it on purpose.
Logic didn’t apply to the spiritual realm.
Graham was still trying to talk me down. “How long has it been since you got a good night’s rest? You barely slept in New Mexico, and you’ve looked exhausted since we got back.”
“I know.” I fell silent for a moment and considered his argument. It had been over a week since I’d gotten my preferred nine hours of uninterrupted hibernation. But sleep-deprived or not, I knew I had astral projected. I felt it in my gut. I just had to do it again, while fully rested this time, and then he would believe me. “It’s weird, but something changed during that nap. I feel like I can sleep again. I’m excited to.”
A car door slammed out back. A minute later, Reggie stepped into the kitchen, holding a bag from the deli in his hands. “What stinks?”
“Pizza,” I said, pointing to the charred pan in the sink. “Want some?”
He scrunched up his face. “No, thank you.”
“How’s the writing going?”
“Fine.” Reggie moved for the foyer, then paused. After a moment, he turned and looked at me with a curious expression. “Your name is Mac, right?”
I laughed. Of course he wasn’t sure who I was. To him, I was just the idiot on the third floor, the dunce who couldn’t take a hint and kept asking him about his books.
He didn’t seem fazed by my laughter. He simply looked at me expectantly.
“Yes,” I finally answered. “Mackenzie Clair.”
“Oh, good. I’d like you to sit down with me sometime and tell me about the Franklin cabin.”
My eyes popped. “What?”
“Not today, of course.” He hefted the deli bag. “I’ve got to finish my lunch and get back to work. But sometime soon.”
Without waiting for a reply, Reggie nodded to Graham and hustled into the foyer.
As I stared after him, my shock and irritation grew into suspicion. What did he want to know about the Franklin cabin? And why did he want to know it? That place was deeply, inextricably intertwined with Horace in my mind. He had first appeared to me in the Franklin cabin, and the van with New Mexico plates had been hauling furniture and wood paneling stripped from the cabin when it crashed.
“How does he know about that?” I asked aloud.
Graham shrugged. “Everybody knows about it. Your investigations there are famous, especially around here.”
I didn’t buy it. With my eyes locked on the doorway through which Reggie had just passed, the wheels in my mind turned. If Anson Monroe killed Elizabeth—which I believed was true, despite Wallace’s skepticism—then at some point, he left New Mexico and came to Donn’s Hill. When did he get here?
Could he have come to town with a moving truck the very same day Graham and I left?
“All right, Detective Mac,” Graham said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“What?”
“You had this same look on your face yesterday when Lucy brought up Seattle. I saw your eyes snap right to Fred. You thought he was Horace.” He tilted his head. “Or do you still think so?”
“I did for a second, but I’ve never gotten anything but good vibes from Fred. Reggie, on the other hand…” I ground my teeth together. “Not so much.”
“But we know Horace is Anson Monroe, and we know Anson Monroe was already old when your mom died. Right?”
“Right.”
“Reggie’s only in his fifties. He would have been my age back then.”
