Donn's Legacy, page 25
I pushed myself back up into a sitting position, arms shaking. “You too, huh? That really took it out of me.”
My stomach growled, but I didn’t feel right taking care of my own needs until Camila was free.
“Do you have any gasoline?” I asked Graham.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Yuri didn’t seem to mind at all that I called him in the middle of the night to demand, citing zero tangible evidence, that he stop ScreamTV from airing Stephen’s featurette. He promised to do everything he could as soon as their offices opened.
“You’re sure we’re not too late?” I asked.
“Positive,” he assured me. “I will call you back in the morning and let you know how it goes.”
Now, as the first light of day painted the sky a rosy gold, Graham and I stood in the same place I always met Camila in my dreams: halfway down the walk from Primrose House to the garage. Her jewelry box rested on the pavement in a small metal pan and was covered with a thin layer of charcoal lighter fluid. The latter had been Graham’s idea; he assured me it would burn just as well as gasoline without taking off anyone’s eyebrows.
“Ready?” he asked.
I turned the box of kitchen matches over in my hands a few times. I was sure this would work; just the month before, I had seen what happened when one of Horace’s jewelry boxes burned. The spirit inside had been released, and it quickly faded from the living world, passing through the veil to whatever awaited it beyond.
Camila could do that too. All she needed was a little help from me.
But was I ready?
Could I do it?
The other ghosts I’d banished had been strangers to me. I hadn’t known them. I hadn’t laughed with them. I couldn’t call them friends. This was different in every possible way.
Tears stung my eyes as I stared down at the prison containing Camila’s spirit. Logically, I knew what I had to do. But my heart ached, raw from a year of loss and pain and far too many goodbyes.
At least in those cases, the final decision had been left up to fate, not to me. Now, as I stood above my friend, the choice was literally in my hands.
What if I kept her here? a tiny voice inside me asked. Just for a while?
The thought sickened me, but I found myself considering the idea nonetheless. How terrible of an existence was it, really, being anchored to the astral plane? Was it painful? Could she find enough happiness to make it worthwhile?
Then I saw Horace’s face again, the way his lips twisted into a gruesome grin while he curled his hands around my neck. I heard the echo of his voice as he mused about coming back to fetch me into one of his little boxes. I shivered. I wouldn’t choose that existence for myself.
Bottom line: Camila wanted to be free. She had made her wishes abundantly clear, and letting her go was the only way I could protect her from being scooped up by Horace and added to his twisted collection. Who knew how many spirits he had managed to trap over the years? A hard lump worked its way up my throat as I counted the few victims I could name. Elizabeth Monk. Anson Monroe.
Evelyn Clair.
If he had succeeded tonight, my name would be on that list. He would have trapped me forever, just like the others, and gotten Camila in the bargain.
Bile flooded my mouth. Before I could change my mind, I struck a match and tossed it onto the jewelry box.
Then another.
And another.
The lighter fluid ignited with a sudden burst of yellow flame. The box charred at the edges, and as it burned, Camila’s energy tickled my cheek, like fingertips stroking down my skin. I raised my hand to touch hers but found nothing there.
A sob escaped my throat. Was this it? After everything we had gone through together, she was disappearing, just like that?
The box crackled against the cold as it burned. I took a step forward. It couldn’t be too late. I wasn’t ready. I needed more time to say goodbye.
Graham touched my arm. I stopped moving. I felt, rather than saw, her spirit rising toward the dawn.
Then I felt nothing.
She was gone.
A sudden sorrow welled up inside of me, and as I stared at the horizon, my breath came in shuddering gasps. I had been wrong before: death wasn’t a one-time deal. Not for everyone.
Camila Aster had died once in the New Mexico desert and again in the backyard at Primrose House.
And for that second death, I mourned alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was with a subdued energy that I made breakfast that morning. Graham offered to cook, but I was convinced having something to do with my hands would help prevent any more tears from falling.
It didn’t.
My movements felt pointless as I stirred the vegetable hash. My eyes couldn’t focus on what my hands were doing. I couldn’t see anything in the real world in front of me. I only saw Camila’s spirit rising toward the sky, away from the material plane.
Away from me.
It had been the right decision. I knew that. There was no question. It would have been completely selfish to keep her around—in a partial state of being—just because I enjoyed her company. As her friend, the best thing I could do was make sure she could truly move on to a world without pain.
But that didn’t stop my heart from breaking.
I blinked back the tears and wiped my nose with the end of my sleeve. “Stop being ridiculous,” I muttered to myself as I spooned the veggies onto a pair of plates. “She was dead before you even met her.”
I tried to focus on the one scrap of good news I’d gotten so far that day. Yuri had been able to stop Stephen’s featurette from airing by telling the network there was a legal issue with some of the footage, and we needed more time to make sure we weren’t violating any trademark laws. Fear of a costly lawsuit helped ensure that Stephen’s episode wouldn’t be seen by anybody anytime soon. That bought me more time to work on the Horace problem, and tomorrow Deputy Wallace would be able to call someone in New Mexico and find out who owned Horace’s house.
Tomorrow, we’d have a real lead.
A gust of wind nearly knocked the plates out of my hands as I carried the food out to Graham’s garage. The Pixies were singing about mountains on Mars, but the music was turned down low. Graham stood with his back to his workbench, arms folded and wearing his bad-news face as he talked to a sullen-looking Kit.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Reggie signed a lease on your apartment all the way through the spring.”
“What about the butler’s pantry?” she asked.
“Some friends of mine are staying there another few days—”
“And then it’ll be free?” she interrupted.
He shook his head. “No, once they’re gone, I’ve already got another renter lined up to take the space.”
I handed him a plate and offered the second one to Kit. She looked at it, hesitated, then picked up the fork.
“What’s going on?” I asked as she ate.
“Kit wants to move back in.” Graham looked pained. “There’s just no room.”
“What?” I stared at her. “You don’t want to live in LA anymore?”
“It’s not like that,” she said around a mouthful of hash. She swallowed and continued. “I was just talking to Amari about our production schedule, and there are big chunks throughout the year where we’re not filming. And when we are working, it’s not like we commute from home to an office every day. We’re on location. The show pays for our hotels and stuff, so I convinced Amari we should just live in Donn’s Hill whenever we’re not traveling.”
The tears I had just worked so hard to contain spilled down my face again. I threw my arms around her. “Seriously? This is the best news ever. I’m so happy.”
She pushed me away gently. “Well, it would be awesome news—if we had somewhere to stay.”
“There are those new apartments by the gas station,” Graham suggested.
Kit made a face. “Ew. So some big company can be my landlord? No thanks.”
I shrugged. “I heard they’re really nice. There’s a pool and everything.”
“Or…” A sly grin curled at the corners of her mouth. “You two could do what I’ve been telling you to do all freaking year and just move in together.”
It wasn’t the first time she had suggested this. Ever since Graham and I started dating, Kit had been teasing me about giving up my turret room and moving into his place. On paper, it made sense; his apartment was much bigger than my little studio, I would save money on rent, and we basically lived together already anyway.
But my apartment was special to me. It was the first place I had ever really, truly lived on my own. I had gone from living with my dad to crowded college dormitories, then to a string of apartments with a terrible boyfriend. In spite of its small size, that third-floor room had given me the space I needed to work through a lifetime of baggage. It was where Striker had made it clear that she was adopting me. I never thought I would leave it.
Until now.
This morning, the thought of sleeping in the room where Horace tried to choke me to death held zero appeal.
As casually as I could manage, I glanced at Graham. We had never seriously talked about consolidating apartments. Going from two separate units in the same building felt like less of a gargantuan relationship change than most couples had to deal with at this stage, but it still felt like something that warranted a serious discussion. I didn’t want to pressure him into it if it wasn’t something he was ready for.
Graham’s entire face was aglow. He looked like someone had just handed him a magic wand that solved every problem in the world, and he couldn’t wait to start using it.
“What do you think?” he asked. “There’s a lot more room for bookshelves in my living room, or we could turn my spare bedroom—I mean, our spare bedroom—into a library or an office.”
A heavy weight lifted off my shoulders. I pulled him in for a kiss. “I’ll move in today.”
“I thought you were kidding,” Kit said as she tossed clothes out of my wardrobe and onto my bed an hour later.
“Well, I’m not. You can move in tonight if you want.” I dragged my laundry basket over to the turret so I could empty my bookshelves into it. I had been so excited to fill these when I first got here, and now I couldn’t wait to drag all my books down to the second floor. It took all my willpower not to get out my laptop and start shopping for new floor-to-ceiling shelves to put in Graham’s spare bedroom.
The act of packing was exhilarating. It gave me a sense of freedom and purpose. And knowing I was only carrying things down one flight of stairs erased any of the typical anxiety that accompanied boxing everything up. Striker also didn’t appear to have any qualms about moving; she had immediately curled up in the exact center of Graham’s bed as though she knew it belonged to her now.
“I’ll sleep here tonight for sure.” Kit put her hands on her hips and surveyed the space. “The light in here is great. I’ll have to ask Amari to ship out my easel.”
“What a wonderfully bohemian life you’ll be living,” I teased. “Traveling the world and spending your off weeks here in the heartland, painting soup cans.”
“Or I could moonlight like most good Donn’s Hill residents do.”
“Hey, is that a dig? Some of us are pretty satisfied with our one job.”
“Some people are happy being bored, I guess,” she said with a theatrical sigh. “I don’t know how you manage to fill your time on days you’re not working with my dad.”
“Um…” I gestured at the pile of books around me, some of which had actually made it into the laundry basket without me thumbing through them to find my favorite scenes. “I read. You could try it sometime.”
“Why read when I could be doing what I love, with the people I love, no matter where I am?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly, like there was some hidden meaning there I was supposed to understand.
“I don’t get it.”
“When I’m out there, I’ll do Hidden Truths. When I’m home, I’ll work on Soul Searchers. Don’t pretend you don’t need my help. I know you haven’t booked any new investigations since Dad promoted you.”
I pursed my lips. Her words, while true, still hit me in a soft spot. For whatever reason, I wasn’t getting any responses from my inquiries about filming various places. As much as I hoped it was because everyone was so busy preparing for Thanksgiving that they were ignoring their inboxes, part of me suspected I wasn’t very good at communicating why they should let us shoot our show on their property for free.
“Or I could run the cameras,” she suggested. “I did it before we hired Mark, and I’ve only gotten better since.”
Dump Noah, the king of skepticism, and hire Kit? Now that was tempting. “Would your dad fire somebody just to get you back, though?”
“That wouldn’t be the only reason. Noah’s crap. Did you see the settings he’s using? It’s like he doesn’t even know what he’s doing. There’s only so much you can do in the editing room. Stephen’s episode is going to look terrible.”
Her arguments brought a smile to my face. The teeny, tiny spiteful spot at the core of my being wanted to rub her face in the fact that she had totally bailed on us not one month before. Her arguments for coming back reeked of desperation, and it wouldn’t take much needling to really bother her.
But beneath the hurt of saying goodbye, I understood why she did it. Who could resist working their dream job side by side with their dream partner? And I had missed her enough that there was no way I could suppress my elation that she was coming back, even if it was only part time.
“Count me in,” I told her. “But you have to be the one to get your dad on board. Now you grab those hangers, and I’ll get these shirts.”
Together, we ferried my clothes down the stairs and into Graham’s closet. Reggie’s typewriter clacked and pinged nonstop as we passed Kit’s old apartment.
She grinned at the sound and tipped her head toward the door. “I should hate that dude for swooping in and snatching up my lease, but this way I get the coolest unit in the house, and you and Graham can canoodle together properly.”
I lowered my voice to be sure Reggie wouldn’t be able to hear me. “You’ll hate him anyway, soon enough. Just brace yourself for some insults and talk to him for five minutes.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yup.”
She carried another load of my clothes down to Graham’s, and I tried to get serious about packing my books. There weren’t many, but each one triggered a slew of memories, especially the little stack I had crammed into my small nonfiction section. When Kit came back, she settled onto the floor beside me and started piling classic novels into the hamper as I flipped through a semi-recently acquired textbook.
“Remember this?” I held it up for her approval. “Haunting Hypothesis: The Application of the Scientific Method to Modern Paranormal Investigative Techniques.”
She chuckled and reached for it. “Oh, yes. Dad made you read this, right?”
“Yeah. I swear, if a poltergeist hadn’t shown up that same day, this book would have bored me right out of being a paranormal investigator.”
“Do you want to keep it, or should we just chuck it?”
I stared at her. “Did you seriously just suggest throwing a book in the garbage? Heresy.”
She held up her hands in defeat, and the outdated text made its way into the hamper. I pulled another one of Yuri’s recommended books off the shelf. It was one of a few that Haunting Hypothesis frightened me away from reading, lest I accidentally bore myself to death, and I had forgotten it existed as soon as I shelved it. According to the inside flap, Unlocking the Third Eye covered everything the reader needed to know about psychic powers, abilities which the author claimed to be a “first-person witness” to and “the world’s foremost living expert” about.
His name and photograph, printed beneath the book’s description, sent me rocketing to my feet.
“What’s wrong?” Kit asked, voice sharp with alarm.
I handed her the book and tapped the author’s name at the bottom: Reginald Albertson. “This is the guy who’s living in your apartment.”
Kit followed me as I marched down the stairs to the second floor. The typewriter fell silent when I knocked, and I heard a short, irritated grunt. A moment later, Reggie yanked open his door a few inches, just enough to expose his round, florid face.
“Yes?” he growled.
I held Unlocking the Third Eye the way a vampire hunter might wield a large cross. “Did you write this?”
His small eyes widened farther than I thought possible, and his jaw fell slack. He looked from the book to me and back again. The silence verged on uncomfortable when he finally asked, “Did you read it?”
His question brought the awkwardness of the moment into full bloom, and I felt my cheeks redden.
“Well… no,” I admitted.
“She forgot she had it,” Kit piped in helpfully from behind me.
To my surprise, Reggie chuckled. He pulled the door open and gestured for us to enter. “Come on in. I’ve got some coffee brewing.”
He had taken a much different direction decorating the small apartment than Kit had done before him. Her focal point had been the pair of enormous monitors where she edited Soul Searchers. His was a simple white desk, atop which sat his typewriter and several stacks of paper of varying heights. A pair of microfiber love seats faced each other over a marble-topped coffee table by the window, and the other two walls held tall shelves that were packed with books.
I still wasn’t completely sure Reggie didn’t like to spend his evenings murdering psychics, so I left the door open. Kit flopped onto one of the love seats, and I sat beside her gingerly. Reggie joined us a moment later with a wooden tray holding his French press and three mugs. He was midpour when Striker hopped up onto his desk on quiet paws and began sniffing the sheet of paper in his typewriter with interest.
Reggie’s voice was cautious as he greeted her. “Hello, kitty cat.”
