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.”
Striker’s ears pointed toward him, and she tilted her head. The sound of her purring filled the room.
I stared at her. Unlike me, who had to leave my body to walk the astral plane, Striker seemed to move through it and the real world simultaneously. She had seen Horace last night. Had she been able to see through his disguise? Would she know if this man standing in front of us was the same person who had backhanded her while trying to kill me?
She would. I knew it. And if he was standing in front of us now, her claws would be paw-deep in his face.
“She wants the paper.” I relaxed into the deep couch and propped my head on my fist. “It’s this thing she does. She wants you to crumple it into a little ball so she can chase it around.”
“Oh.” Reggie glanced at the typewriter and winced. “Well, she can’t have that one, but I’ve got a few in my wastebasket.”
He retrieved a crumpled ball of paper from the garbage can under his desk and hesitantly threw it out his open apartment door. Striker bolted after it, and I heard her quick feet scampering down the hallway as she knocked the ball around. He sat back down with us and finished pouring the coffee, but his hands shook as he passed the mugs around.
“Are you afraid of cats?” I asked.
“A bit. There’s something otherworldly about them. I know it’s not their fault, but I always feel like they’re looking through me. Judging me.”
“They are,” I confirmed. “At least, Striker is. But she seems to like you. She also thinks every apartment in this house belongs to her, so if you leave your door open, you might find her sleeping on your bed.”
“It’s the best,” Kit said. “It’s like having a cat, but Mac deals with all the gross stuff like litter boxes and vet visits.”
“From what I hear, you’re quite capable of dealing with a number of things,” he told me. “I’d still love to hear about your experiences with the poltergeist at the Franklin cabin.”
I tilted my head. “Okay, but first I need you to explain a few things. Why have you been so rude to me?”
“Rude?” He blinked a few times. “I’ve been rude?”
“Well… yeah. I mean, you acted like I wouldn’t want to read your books, but you write about psychic phenomena, right? And I’m a psychic.”
A divot formed between his eyebrows. “Well, I didn’t know you were psychic when we met. My books are fairly niche; most people genuinely aren’t interested. And now that I know you’re a medium—”
“She also astral projects,” Kit put in.
“Really?” Reggie leaned forward eagerly. “So which is it? Flying ointments or raw power?”
I frowned. “Well, I didn’t use one of those ointments. So… power, I guess?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not sure?”
Kit elbowed me. “Everything this one does is unconscious. We took her to the Grimshaw Library earlier this year, and she saw a ghost without even trying.”
“Hold on.” Reggie retrieved a black Moleskine notebook from one of the shelves. “Do you mind if I take some notes? Unlocking the Third Eye was more focused on the showy side of psychic phenomena, the things skeptics might call parlor tricks. The book I’m writing now is specifically about psychic mediums, which is why I decided to move here for a while. I’ve got a baseline knowledge of astral theory, but I’d love it if you could confirm a few things for me.”
Compared to our prior exchanges, Reggie was practically babbling. His face was flushed and excited, and I felt terrible bursting his bubble with the truth.
“You probably know more than I do,” I said. “Kit’s right. I’m sort of just bumbling through all this psychic stuff.”
“Oh.” He hesitated, pen in hand. Then he shrugged and scribbled something down. “You still have the practical experience I lack. Would you mind telling me what it was like?”
I wanted to go back in time and shake past Mackenzie for letting her bitterness about Kit’s departure so instantly color her perceptions of Reggie. His gruff manner hadn’t helped matters, but if I’d been willing to put in the effort, I could have had this conversation with him a week before. It would have been nice to be believed by someone in my own house instead of having to drive all the way to Gabrielle’s prison just to have someone take me seriously.
But then, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see her, so I couldn’t hate on my past self too much.
As Reggie filled his Moleskine with notes, I recounted my four visits to the astral plane so far. Kit pursed her lips, and her hand twitched toward her pocket a few times. I was sure she was dying to get this on tape, but I was glad there were no cameras on me now. This wasn’t for show. This was for my sanity.
I went into as much detail as I could remember, and walking through each experience one after another helped me take a step back from them. It was easier to put aside my grief and fear, and I was able to examine my experiences through a more scientific lens.
“There’s so much about it all that doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Like, why was I only able to astral project while I was sleeping in my own bed? And it feels like I have this huge gap in my abilities. One day, I can suddenly astral project. A few days after that, I don’t have enough power to channel a spirit who’s sitting ten feet away from me. A week later, I can astral project and channel a spirit all in the same night. That’s weird, right?”
He tapped his pen on the end of his nose. “You mentioned you woke up from your first astral experience holding a wooden box, correct? Had that ever happened before?”
My heart stopped. No, that hadn’t happened before. I hadn’t had Camila’s box with me before. I hadn’t had Camila with me before.
And every time I’d done something extraordinary since then, she had been nearby.
Weeks before, Yuri had told me the reason people looted places like the Franklin cabin was because they believed they could borrow the spiritual energy of haunted objects to enhance their own powers. Yuri dismissed the theory out of hand, and I had done the same, so the truth behind the sudden increase in my own abilities never even occurred to me.
I had been using Camila’s energy to power myself up.
The next epiphany to hit knocked the breath out of my lungs. Camila was gone. I had let her go, and because of that choice, I would never astral project again.
I hated how much that filled me with regret. I felt dirty. Using a spirit like that… it felt evil. But I would still miss it. How messed up was that?
The next few realizations slammed into me in quick succession, and they would have toppled me over if I hadn’t already been sitting down. What I’d been doing wasn’t unique. Borrowing spiritual energy to astral project?
That was Horace’s entire game.
Did the spiritual energy eventually run out? Was that why he needed so many of them? He wasn’t content to travel around to places that were already haunted to capture lingering spirits, though clearly, he did that too. He was too efficient for that. Why hunt down ghosts when he could make them?
Horace was powerful. I had known that even when I’d thought he was a ghost. But now I knew his power didn’t come from inside him. He stole it, along with his victim’s lives.
Most importantly of all: like I had accidentally done with Camila, he needed to keep his spiritual batteries close. Any time he did anything psychically strenuous—like, say, astral projecting—they’d be nearby. The lives he had stolen, the people he had murdered, the souls he kept from moving on to the next life… they were still out there with him.
Somewhere out there was the place Horace laid his head to sleep.
That’s where I would find the spirits he trapped.
That’s where I would find my mother.