[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel! Page 6

  “It’s fine,” my aunt replied, although her voice sounded strained. “I’m sure you two have a good deal to talk about.”

  Sydney’s expression clouded, but I didn’t give the exchange a chance to go any further, instead slipping out from behind the jewelry counter and saying, “Sounds great. I’m starving — let’s go up to Haunted Hamburger, okay?”

  I took my friend by the arm and steered her back out of the store. Once we were a few paces away, she said, “Oh, my God, Angela, I am so sorry — ”

  “Not here,” I broke in. Not that the patio of the Haunted Hamburger would be much better, but I had to hope that anyone overhearing us there would probably be tourists who had no idea of what was really going on.

  At least she got the hint. “Okay.”

  We walked down the street for a block and then cut up to the next street by using the stairs located at the park. Jerome was like that, built in terraces on the side of Cleopatra Hill, and although you could go the long way around if you didn’t want to take the stairs, why bother?

  The place was crowded, but we were able to get a table out on the patio. Normally the view out over the Verde Valley was enough to distract me for at least a minute or two, but I had more important things on my mind right then.

  “Oh, God, Angela, I had no idea that Perry guy was going to be such a douche! He came pounding on Anthony’s door at, like, eight in the morning, saying he was going to have you arrested for assault or something, and — ”

  “You spent the night at Anthony’s house?” I interrupted.

  Red flared along her cheekbones, underneath the pink blush she was wearing. “Well, I really wasn’t in any shape to drive, and he said I could crash, so I went home with him, and, well, you know how it is.”

  No, I don’t, I thought wearily. All I said, though, was, “So Perry showed up this morning — ”

  “Yes, banging on the door, saying how he’d spent all night in his truck and almost froze to death or something, which is just stupid because it wasn’t even close to freezing last night, and that you’d assaulted him, and please, the guy has to have sixty or seventy pounds on you, so how could you have done that?”

  Since she’d paused to take a breath, I said, “Well, I sort of did, but only because he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  Her blue eyes widened. I didn’t talk much about spells and powers and all that around Sydney, mostly because those exact details were something we witches preferred to keep private, and partly because I didn’t want to scare her off by revealing too much. She thought the whole “McAllister witch” thing was pretty cool, but probably because she didn’t have the whole story. Maybe an eighth of the story, if that.

  “So you, what” — her voice lowered — “put the whammy on him or something?”

  That word made me laugh, despite the situation. “No, I just…called on someone to give me the strength to fight him off. And according to the police, he’s bruised, but that’s about it, so he doesn’t have all that much to complain about, considering…”

  I hesitated, then looked around at the crowded tables to either side. One family was arguing whether to continue up the mountain to the hiking trails and picnic area or to go over to the Tuzigoot Indian ruins, and at another table a mother kept telling her daughter that no, she wasn’t getting soda, so it was milk or nothing. Obviously they weren’t paying any attention to the two girls at the far table having a sotto voce conversation, probably about boys or something equally uninteresting. So I pushed up one sleeve and showed her the band of bruises around my arm, then just as quickly tugged my sleeve back down.

  “Holy shit, Angela, he did that to you?”

  “I told you he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  The conversation was interrupted then by Eileen, the waitress on duty that day, coming out to take our orders. Since I’d been to the Haunted Hamburger hundreds of times, I already knew what I wanted and ordered a barbecue burger and fries, along with an iced tea. Sydney shot me an envious look but still only ordered a charbroiled chicken salad.

  After Eileen had left, Sydney remarked, “It is so not fair. You must have the metabolism of a hummingbird or something.”

  “Or something,” I replied with a shrug. My mother had always looked thin in the few pictures I had seen of her, so maybe that was where I got it from. At least I had something of a chest, despite being thin, although nothing as eye-catching as Sydney’s curvaceous frame.

  “Anyway,” she plowed on, “you said ‘according to the police.’ Did you a file a report on him?”

  “No, he tried to do that to me. But once I showed the officer the bruises Perry left behind, they dropped the whole thing.”

  “You should’ve had him arrested.”

  “What’s the point? I think he learned his lesson, and we’re all about not attracting attention, you know? Bad enough that it went there at all.”

  Her mouth drooped. “I am so, so sorry about that. Anthony seemed like a nice guy. Who knew he’d be friends with such a dickbag? I won’t see him again, if that’s what you want.”

  At once I shook my head. “Why would I want that? Do you like Anthony?”

  “Yes. I mean, I think so. He was super nice to me last night, and he’s, well — ”

  “I don’t need to hear the gory details.” I tried to keep my tone light, but I didn’t know how successful I was. Despite my best efforts to suppress it, a flicker of jealousy licked through me. It was so easy for her. Meet a cute guy, go out, spend the night. No baggage, unless you wanted there to be. I knew there was more to it than that, but seriously, I was kind of tired of feeling like the last virgin in the Verde Valley.

  “Okay,” she said at once. “I just mean that we’ve been friends for a long time, and if it was going to be weird for you — ”

  “It’s fine. You’ve been wanting to go out with Anthony for a while now. I hope it works out. Just don’t ask me to go on a double date with you guys and Perry.”

  She actually laughed at that, and a short time later Eileen reappeared with our food and drinks — apologizing about the wait for the tea, but that things had gotten a little crazy in the kitchen. I assured her it was no problem, and she told us thanks before hurrying back inside to pick up another order.

  For a few minutes both Sydney and I were silent as we plowed into our food. Yes, my aunt had fed me a decent breakfast that morning, but all the stress and nervous energy that followed the police officer’s visit had pretty much burned up any calories it had provided. Even though I felt like inhaling my burger, I tried to keep my chewing to a more or less decorous pace.

  After we both slowed down a bit, Sydney gave a furtive look around and asked, “Is she here?”

  “‘She’ who?” I returned, although I knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “You know. The ghost.”

  There was a reason why the Haunted Hamburger was called that. Many of the buildings in Jerome had their own resident spirits, and the restaurant was no exception. Four ghosts actually haunted the property, two of them tradesmen who’d been killed when the scaffolding they were working on collapsed, one a miner who’d had a heart attack and died there purely by accident. Then there was Edith, the “she” Sydney was asking about. Edith had lived in the flat on the second floor and killed herself when her fiancé confessed to her that he’d been visiting some of the prostitutes down on Hull Avenue. Needless to say, she was not a very happy ghost.

  “Well, this is her home,” I pointed out. “So she’s always here.”

  Sydney shot a furtive glance over one shoulder. “Okay, but is she here here?”

  “She’s not out on the patio waiting to steal one of your croutons, if that’s what you’re asking.” I paused and looked up toward the second story of the building. A pale face glimmered behind one of the windows and disappeared. “I think she’s upstairs, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  A lift of her shoulders in a shiver. “I still don’t know how yo
u can stand seeing them. I mean, doesn’t it freak you out?”

  Good question. I’d started seeing the ghosts soon after my tenth birthday. In fact, at first I hadn’t even realized that the kindly Chinese gentleman I was talking to down in the alley actually was a ghost until my aunt had come outside to put out the trash and asked me who on earth I was speaking to.

  The truth came out then, and that was when Aunt Ruby declared that I was in fact the next prima, and this great talent only proved it. All primas had some kind of talent that tended to manifest itself around that age, although I really didn’t see what good there was in being able to talk to dead people.

  I sort of got the impression that Sydney thought my life must be like that scene out of Ghost where Whoopi Goldberg’s character was surrounded by specters wherever she went. It wasn’t like that at all, though. They approached me if they had something to say — like my first encounter with Mr. Hong outside the English Kitchen. I’d been playing in the street, and he came out to scold me for not being careful, warning me that I could get run over by a car. Over the years I’d interacted with most of them, although some, like Edith here, were quite reclusive.

  Every once in a while I could pry some information out of the spirits if necessary, but most of them, with the exception of Maisie, weren’t all that chatty. Even she hadn’t really approached me until I hit junior high. I think before then she’d thought I was too young to bother speaking with. True, talking to her could be entertaining, and since neither she nor any of the ghosts were gruesome in appearance — they just looked like regular people to me, albeit in wildly outdated clothes — I didn’t see much in them to be afraid of.

  Not everyone had the same opinion of them, of course.

  I popped a french fry in my mouth and chewed it carefully before answering Sydney’s question. “No, it really doesn’t freak me out. They’re just…a different kind of people who live in Jerome, I guess. They can’t hurt anybody. Not really,” I added, since some of them did like to play pranks on both tourists and residents. But slamming doors or stealing hammers didn’t exactly qualify as Exorcist material. No matter how many times I pointed that out to Sydney, though, she never seemed to quite grasp it.

  “If you say so.” But she still looked up at the window, although it was empty now, reflecting nothing but blue sky with a few high, thin clouds.

  “Anyway,” I said, since I thought staring up at Edith’s window was kind of rude, and would probably only result in the ghost moving elsewhere even less to Sydney’s liking, “I think it’s a good thing that the next big event is the dance here in Jerome, since I have a feeling my aunt isn’t going to be too thrilled about me making any solo expeditions to Cottonwood any time soon. You might have to bring the dresses here for me to look at instead of me going to your house, but let’s see how it goes.”

  “No problem. Maybe on Wednesday? I should be able to pick them up by then, and I don’t work on Wednesday.” She worked part-time at a beauty supply store in town.

  “Sounds great,” I replied, and we ate and talked about the dance some more. Sydney didn’t give me any flak about taking orders from Aunt Rachel, even though I was an adult and not some high school kid who could still get grounded. Even though my best friend didn’t completely understand what was at stake, she knew my aunt and liked her, and understood that Aunt Rachel wouldn’t clamp down for no reason. It had been a close call last night.

  Too close.

  I came back from lunch a little before one and took over at the store so my aunt could go get her own lunch. She gave me a piercing look before she left, but I didn’t get the impression that she was still angry with me…more like worried, or even afraid. Afraid of what, I wasn’t sure. After my experience with Perry the night before, I certainly wasn’t eager to go back out and test any boundaries.

  She only stayed away for a half-hour, which was good, since the tourists were definitely out in force that day. Not that I minded; they kept me busy, and when I was busy I didn’t have much time to think. The money was nice, too, of course, although none of us really needed it. Our homes had been paid for long ago, and the family sat on wealth that had been carefully accumulated during the boom years and then invested just as carefully in the leaner times that followed, when the mine was shut down and most of the non-witch population of Jerome moved on to greener pastures. The clan elders watched over the investments and made quiet payments to all the clan’s members. Of course we were free to earn what we liked on top of that — and we did — but basic survival was never a worry.

  As we were locking up, Aunt Rachel said, “I had planned to go over to Tobias’s tonight, but — ”

  “You should go,” I told her. “I’m not going anywhere, believe me. Well, maybe up to Grapes to get a pizza if we’re not having dinner at home, but that’s it. I’ll watch some Netflix or something.”

  Her brow puckered a little at that. She was not a fan of television — we didn’t even own one — but she couldn’t really keep me from streaming videos on my computer. That is, she couldn’t. The connection up here wasn’t always the best. But the weather was clear, so it should be all right. And if not, I had plenty of books to read. Books had been my companions through most of my youth, until I was finally allowed to have a computer when I entered eighth grade.

  “All right,” she said at last. “But I’ll just be down at Tobias’s, so….” She trailed off and gave me an uncertain look, as if she wasn’t quite sure what sort of catastrophe might befall me but wanted to make sure I knew she’d be around to help head it off if necessary.

  “And I’ve got Floyd Barnett on one side and Cousin Rosemary on the other, so unless you know something and I don’t, and Armageddon is set to happen tonight, I really think I’ll be fine.”

  A smile then, albeit a weary one. “You’re right, of course. And you know how to take care of yourself, but after last night — ”

  “I still took care of myself. I just did it in a way that the Cottonwood P.D. didn’t appreciate very much.” And did it while practically blind drunk, I thought, but I knew better than to say anything else.

  “True.” She reached under the counter and pulled out her purse. “You can finish locking up?”

  “Sure thing.” I’d done it many times, but tonight her allowing me to take on the important task of securing the store seemed to take on an extra significance, as if she was trying to show that she still did trust me, despite my foolishness at Main Stage the night before.

  She nodded and headed toward the back of the shop and the rear exit. Tobias’s combination house/studio was at the extreme southern edge of the town, right before the houses petered out and the highway took over, but I knew she’d walk it anyway. Everyone walked in Jerome. Why do anything else when the place was less than half a mile from end to end?

  We’d locked the front door promptly at six, so all that remained was for me to empty the cash register and put the money and credit card receipts in the safe. Twice a week we’d go down the hill to deposit the cash at the Wells Fargo in Cottonwood, but we wouldn’t be doing that again until Monday.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d been left alone in the store at the end of the day, but for some reason a flicker of unease passed over me, a chill, although I knew that, unlike many of Jerome’s buildings, the one that housed both the store and the two-story apartment where Aunt Rachel and I lived was free of any ghosts or spirits. Although the frightening memory had danced in and out of my thoughts several times during the day, I’d never had a real opportunity to mention the dark figure I’d seen in the bend in the road the night before.

  To be perfectly truthful, I’d begun to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. Sydney had once told me a story about her older brother, who was attending Arizona State University, driving home slightly wasted from a party one night and hallucinating a wall stretching across the freeway. The shock had kept him awake and alert the rest of the drive home. Maybe my brain had done the same thing to me, inventing som
eone standing in the road to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel.

  Never mind that I hadn’t felt sleepy at all, charged up as I was from the confrontation with Perry.

  Well, talk it over with Aunt Rachel tomorrow, I told myself. You’re certainly safe here, so don’t worry about it. Just get that money put away so you can go get a pizza before they get too crowded.

  That sounded sensible enough. I gathered up the money bag and stack of receipts, and headed back to the storeroom, which was also where we kept the safe. Even with my own no-nonsense words ringing in my head, I still made sure to flick on the lights in the back of the shop as I went. All right, so I turned them on with a quick impulse from my mind, rather than my finger. There wasn’t anyone around to see what I was doing. Besides, my hands were full. And I did the same thing with the lock to the storeroom door, opening it without a key and letting it swing inward.

  The storeroom wasn’t all that large, maybe ten by fifteen feet, with boxes stacked neatly against the wall and a couple of forlorn mannequins set in one corner. In the winter we’d pull them out when it was time to display the handwoven shawls and cloaks that went over big as holiday presents, but in the meantime they’d been stuck back in here with the rest of the display items we weren’t currently using. Their blank eyes seemed to watch me as I bent down and entered the combination to the safe, then set the money bag and stack of rubber-banded receipts inside.

  So now I was letting a couple of pieces of fiberglass get to me? I shook my head at myself and closed the safe, then straightened up before heading toward the open door. For a second I thought I saw a shadow moving outside in the hallway, and again a shiver traced its way down my spine. Then I realized it had to be someone walking down the sidewalk outside the shop. The sun was just beginning to go down behind Mingus Mountain, and the light was chancy, uncertain.

  You’re being just a bit too jumpy for a girl who talks to ghosts, I chided myself before I exited the storeroom and closed the door behind me. It would lock automatically; we had keys, of course, but Aunt Rachel and I rarely used them — mainly if there were enough customers in the shop that they’d notice something strange if we went in the room without unlocking the door first.