Jon paced the floor of the hotel room from the door to the beds and back again. “So he’s here. Now.”
Darcy rolled her eyes and raked her fingers into her hair. She sat on the bed they had slept in, still in her pajamas. “Yes. Jeff’s ghost is here.”
“Well, get rid of him.”
She stared at Jon. She knew that he was frustrated, and so was she, but she did not appreciate the tone in his voice. “It’s not like he’s a dog. I can’t just tell him to heel or something. Spirits need to know that any left over business they had is done. Their worry and their anxiety about things that happened during life is what holds them here. Jeff won’t be going anywhere until we figure out what’s bothering him.”
Jon stopped his pacing and grabbed up his t-shirt and pulled it on. He sighed heavily as he did. “Great. So we have to be his therapist. Can’t you just ask him what’s wrong?”
From the corner of her eye she saw Jeff standing in exactly the same spot he had been standing in twenty minutes ago when she’d woken Jon up and told him what was going on. It had sparked an argument between Jon and her that was still going on.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she explained for the third time. “Spirits, well, they don’t speak the same language anymore. Sort of. If you ask a ghost a direct question, you’ll get an answer that might seem totally unrelated. The answer will be cryptic and hard to understand. That’s because the ghost is answering the meaning behind the question, not the question itself.”
He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “I don’t get it.”
Darcy blew out a breath. It had taken years for her Aunt Millie to explain all this to her, even though Darcy had been using her gift from a young age. How could she condense it into five minutes for Jon?
“Okay, look at it this way.” She tucked her feet under her on the bed and used her hands to emphasize what she was saying. “If you ask me if it’s raining outside right now, my answer would be no, because it’s a bright and sunny day.”
Jon looked out the window at the cloudless sky, then turned back to her with a nod. “Okay, I get that.”
“Good. Now. Ask that same question to a spirit of someone who has died. They might give you an answer like, their mother’s favorite color was red.”
The frown returned to Jon’s face. “And you’ve lost me again.”
“That’s because you don’t understand the ways that ghosts use to communicate. To the spirit, that might be the right answer because their mother walked them to school every day when it rained wearing red rain boots and carrying a red umbrella.”
She saw a little bit of understanding in his eyes. “So, the spirit in your example was talking about their mother when you asked about rain because that’s what rain reminded them of.”
She clapped her hands for him. “Yes. Exactly.”
“So, when Jeff was telling you to beware of the crow earlier, it might have nothing to do with a bird.”
“It might not, and then again it might. Now you understand a little bit more.”
“Not really,” he grumped.
Standing beside her suddenly, Jeff snickered. “Not very bright, is he?”
“Shut up,” she said to him.
“What?” Jon asked. “I was just saying—”
“No, not you,” Darcy said, angry at herself for getting stuck as the go-between for her boyfriend and her ex-husband. “Listen, I told you what Jeff said last night in my dream. Marla knew why she was killed. And it sounded like Jeff might have had something to do with it.”
The lights in the room dimmed, then brightened again.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jon said as he went back to pacing. He hadn’t gone five steps before he stopped again and turned to her. “You know, a group of crows is called a murder. A murder of crows. Maybe Jeff was trying to warn you that Marla was going to be murdered?”
Darcy thought about it. Not a lot of people knew the proper name for a group of crows. “No, I don’t think Jeff would have been smart enough to know that.”
Jeff scowled at her and his lips moved angrily like he was trying to shout at her, but this time no sound came out. The lights dimmed and flickered in time to every silent word.
“Well, it’s true,” Darcy said to Jeff. She was reminded, again, why she had divorced him. This was what it had been like between them, in the end. Him snapping and going off over every little thing she said, and her always on the defensive. Marriage had been a lot harder than either of them had realized it was going to be.
She caught herself on that thought and tried not to look Jon in the eyes. Sure, marriage was hard. That did not mean she wouldn’t marry Jon. When the time was right.
“Okay,” Jon said, calming his voice. He moved over to her, putting his hands gently on her shoulders. He didn’t realize how close he was to Jeff’s specter. “Okay. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t like the idea of Jeff’s spirit being with us in the room but I understand it isn’t your fault. Let’s just figure out if there really is any connection between Jeff and Marla. Then we can decide if that’s why Jeff is trying to reach you, or however you say that.”
Great idea, Darcy thought to herself, but how would she manage that? She had barely known Marla, and as far as she knew Jeff hadn’t known her any better. But then, what had he meant when he’d said Marla had died because he’d done bad things?
“Was there anything they did together in town?” Jon asked. “Belong to the same community groups or attend the same church, maybe?”
She snorted. “Jeff wasn’t one for church.”
The lights dimmed, but then slowly came back up. He knew she was right.
She racked her brain and thought back but all she could remember was seeing Jeff talk to Marla at a couple of parties back in Misty Hollow, long before his death. He’d called Marla mysterious, or something.
Of course, there was the way Marla had called Darcy a bookworm, echoing the same hurtful insults Jeff had used against Darcy. She’d thought it was odd at the time but now she had to wonder if there wasn’t something more to it.
Could Jeff and Marla have known each other? Could there be a connection there?
There was one way to find out.
“Darcy?” Jon was saying to her. “What is it?”
“Jon, we’re going to need some candles.”
From a nearby convenience store Jon bought six tall, thin purple candles. They weren’t the special thick candles made of beeswax that she liked to use for her communications, but it wasn’t like she could be choosy. She didn’t exactly have a travel kit for this kind of thing. It also didn’t really matter what shape or size or even what color the candles were. They were just markers for the energies she had to call on.
If she wanted to reach Marla’s spirit, then she was going to have to focus.
They had decided to try this in the bathroom, because the floor in there was covered in linoleum. The rest of the hotel room had carpeting. Candle wax was murder to get out of carpets and Darcy didn’t want to be stuck paying for damaging her room. She cringed at her unintentional use of the word “murder,” even if it was just in her own head.
She arranged the candles in a circle with Jon’s help and then sat down in the center of that circle, the toilet at her back and the shower beside her. This could possibly qualify as the strangest place she’d ever done this. She definitely hadn’t planned on this.
Usually she liked to have Smudge help her out. Her cat liked to keep her company by curling into her lap while she called forth to the other side. But of course Smudge wasn’t here, so she’d have to make do.
In her hand she grasped the little item she had found in Marla’s bag. A coin or medallion about the size of her palm, made from copper, and embossed with a four-leaf clover on the one side. Obviously it was some kind of good luck charm, and judging by the wear against the pattern Marla had held it a lot. It obviously had sentimental value to her. That was important when doing what she was about to try.
Jon was in the bathroom with her but he stood in the corner by the door, keeping quiet, there only for moral support. He knew from experience she needed him to be quiet for this.
Jeff was here, too, standing inside the shower like that was something normal ghosts did.
Darcy did her best to ignore them both, and shut her eyes as she drew in slow, calming breaths. In her mind she imagined rolling fog, a mist that covered the blank landscape of her thoughts, churning and coiling. Into that mist she sent some of her own life energy, calling out to the spirit of Marla Benson.
From inside the trance there was never any way to know how much time had passed. In the past, she had broken out of some after only a few minutes, and then there had been ones where she’d sat cross legged like this for hours on end. Everything seemed to happen all at once in this self-induced state.
Marla’s ghost was reluctant to come forth. If she knew why she had died, she apparently wasn’t eager to share that information. Calling out to Marla for the third time, Darcy saw the mists collect and shape themselves into the form of a woman with shoulder-length red hair and a pretty face with freckles. Marla, wearing the same black dress Darcy had seen her in the night she was killed.
“You’re nothing but a bookworm,” Marla said to her, a sneer on her face.
A sneer that reminded her of how Jeff used to look at her when their marriage was falling apart.
She had meant to contact Marla to ask a long list of questions. Questions about who killed her, how she was killed, all of that. Instead, something else pushed itself to the front of the list.
“Marla…did you and Jeff know each other?”
The woman’s ghost smiled at her again in that same way. “Stick in the mud.”
The mists shifted again, and Darcy was looking at a scene in a dark room, a bedroom, where two people were making passionate love under the sheets. Even knowing this must be a vision of something from Marla’s past, that it had already happened, Darcy felt embarrassed.
She had been an unseen visitor in dozens of moments just like this, thanks to her gift. Spirits revealed information in ways other than direct communication, just like she’d explained to Jon. Showing memories from their lives was one of the more common ways.
The two people on the bed turned so she could see them better in a shaft of slanting moonlight. Marla was the woman, her eyes open and seeming to stare directly at Darcy in a challenge.
Darcy bit her lip and waited to see where the vision would take her. Hopefully, Marla had some reason for showing her this other than trying to embarrass her.
In the vision, Marla sat up, kissing the chest of the man with her. He held his hands in her hair, encouraging her, pulling her into him, and then turned his face toward Darcy.
She gasped. It was Jeff.
She pulled back from the vision just as fast as she could, barely keeping her connection to Marla but refusing to see anything more of that…that…horrible image. As the last of it broke apart, she recognized the room. It made her sick. Her bedroom. Her own bedroom.
Marla and Jeff had been together when they were still alive. Worse, they had been together before Darcy had kicked Jeff out of the house.
A flood of emotions welled up inside of her and she nearly lost her hold on Marla’s spirit. How dare he! How dare he…suddenly the whole end of their marriage came into better focus. The way Jeff had treated her, the smug attitude that said he was getting something over on her. This was it.
Or was there more?
In the dark and swirling mists of her mind, Marla’s spirit stood there smirking at her. Darcy collected herself. The past was past. She had to let it go. Even if she had only just found out, Jeff was dead now, their marriage only a memory. She shouldn’t dwell on it. Marriage had obviously been the wrong choice for her, and that was all there was to it.
She focused herself again through breathing techniques that her great aunt had shown her. Then she made herself meet Marla’s stare. Even if the woman’s ghost was doing everything she could to get out of this, Darcy had to hold on to her a little longer. She had something important still to ask her.
“Marla. Who killed you?”
She shook her head sadly. Then she pointed to Darcy’s hands. “Beware the crow.”
With that, she twisted sideways in Darcy’s mind and slipped away.
Darcy came up from her trance more quickly than she was used to. Marla had practically thrust her out, apparently thinking that her message was delivered, and that was that.
“You could have been a little clearer,” Darcy mumbled, rubbing a hand over her face. She felt sweaty strands of hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. Her back and legs hurt from sitting on the bathroom floor. How long had she been here?
Looking up, she saw Jon smiling at her reassuringly. “Welcome back,” he said to her. “Learn anything useful?”
She nodded, not really sure how to explain it. Then she became very suddenly aware of Jeff standing there, too, hovering over Jon’s shoulder. She glared at him square in his translucent face. He pursed his lips and nodded. Obviously, he knew what she had just seen.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her, again.
“Sorry isn’t good enough,” she snapped, reaching out to Jon to have him help her up.
“Excuse me?” Jon asked her.
“Not you, Jon,” she steadied herself on her feet, the feeling returning to her numb backside. “I was talking to Jeff.”
“How are you talking to…oh. He’s still here, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He keeps telling me that he’s sorry, and I don’t want to hear it.”
Jeff’s specter moved back, fading through the bathroom wall and away.
“What are you sorry for, Jeff? Huh?” Jon said angrily, turning around the room. “What did you do?”
“Uh, he’s gone now,” she told him.
“Oh. Well, what is he sorry for?” Jon asked her this time. “Besides the obvious, I mean. What did you see in your vision?”
Reluctantly, she told him everything. Marla using the same insults that Jeff used to use, then seeing them together in their bedroom.
“Well,” Jon said after a moment, “I guess we’ll need to burn that mattress when we get home.”
She couldn’t agree more. “I can’t believe I ever married him. If I had it to do all over again, I never would have married him.”
Jon looked at her in a funny way. She realized he was thinking about what that meant for them and she knew she should reassure him that nothing would ever change her feelings about him, but the shock of what Jeff had done to her was still too fresh. She knew she would never want to get married again.
Rather than say that to him and make it worse, she went back to talking about her vision. “I asked Marla who killed her. She said the same thing that Jeff had said to me. She said to beware the crow, and then she pointed to my hands…”
Darcy looked down at her hands, realizing the coin that she had taken from Marla’s bag was still in her left palm. A good luck piece with a four-leaf clover on this one side.
She turned it over in her hand. On the reverse side was a depiction of a crow.