Chapter Seven

I woke up with a gasp.

My room was quiet aside from the soft snores of Morris at the foot of my bed, but something had disturbed me.

A dream maybe?

Fumbling a hand over my side table, I grabbed my phone and squinted at the time. One a.m. on Wednesday morning. Gross. At least it was summer and I didn’t have to worry about school. Flopping back against my pillows, I closed my eyes. Maybe I could manage to get another few—

Tug, tug, tug.

My eyes flew open as I sat up in shock at the twinge of my power in my chest. That had never happened when I wasn’t trying to Wake someone. Was it normal? Was this another thing Grandma hadn’t had time to teach me?

I lay there, wondering if it would stop on its own.

Tug, tug, tug.

“You know,” I whispered, too sleepy to fall into panic mode yet. “I’m trying this new thing where I just do normal kid stuff and I’ve only been at it for a few days so if—”

Tug, tug, tug.

“Can it at least wait until the sun is up?”

. . . no response.

I took that as a yes. “Awesome,” I muttered before pulling a pillow over my head and willing myself back to sleep.

Six hours later, I was less than rested. I’d kept waking up and fretting over what could be going on. I sat in bed, waiting, not even sure what I was hoping for.

A minute went by.

No tugs.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. Okay. That was good. It was for the best . . . right? Whatever happened during the night was a fluke. Back to normal kid time.

I was stupidly wide awake so I might as well get up. Throwing on some clothes, I headed out of my room to make my way downstairs. I could hear Mom and Alex in the kitchen talking in low voices and flashed back to the last time I walked in on them having a hushed conversation.

Giving my head a shake, I pushed back the tendrils of anxiety. They were probably having a quiet morning. The uninspiring gray sky visible through the window of the front door made hanging out in the kitchen over a cup of tea perfectly understandable. Except—

That last quiet morning was still so clear in my mind.

Slowing down as I reached the bottom steps, I tried to make out what they were saying.

“They have no idea what happened?” Mom asked softly. “But they must have suspicions if they’re calling in extra help.”

I halted completely. This sounded like something.

“That was Marco’s guess,” Alex replied.

Marco was one of Alex’s friends, a paramedic. He always kept Alex up-to-date on what was going on in town so something must have happened last night.

“And they still haven’t identified him?” Mom sighed. “His poor parents.”

TUG, TUG, TUG.

“Whoa,” I grunted as the force of the tugs pulled me forward and I stumbled down the last two steps, nearly tumbling to the floor.

“Kimmy?”

I straightened to see Mom and Alex peering at me from the kitchen table with matching concerned frowns. “You’re up early,” Alex said. “Sleep okay?”

“Not exactly,” I said, dusting myself off before heading through the doorway to join them. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, sweetie.” Mom got up, gathering her dishes from the table and taking them to the sink. “It’s nothing you have to worry about, okay?”

TUG, TUG, TUG.

The power disagreed with that.

“Did someone new come in last night or this morning?” What could be so special about them to cause my power to act out like this?

“Not yet,” Alex said and Mom shot him a pointed look.

“But someone did pass away,” I guessed.

Knots of agitation started to grow in my stomach at the next look they shared. We lived in and ran a funeral home so yeah, we dealt with death on a regular basis, but Mom and Alex—and Grandma—had always kept me away from the harder cases.

The ones where someone didn’t die from old age.

. . . tug, tug, tug.

“What happened?” I asked again, quietly this time.

Alex looked to Mom with a defeated little shrug of his shoulders. “She’s going to find out soon enough,” he said. “Better to hear it from us?”

Mom uncrossed her arms to swipe under her eyes and as I looked closer, I could see how red they were. She came back to the table, taking the seat next to me. “This is an in-house discussion,” she said, using our term for keeping something a secret from the outside world. Usually that something was power-related, though.

“Someone died in the park last night,” Mom said carefully. “They’re not sure what happened or who he is, but they’re investigating.”

“Did someone hurt him?” There had to be more to this for how upset they both were.

“He was found by some high-school students who were in the park for the meteor shower last night and they saw a person running away,” Alex said. He sighed. “So, yes, they are treating it as a suspicious death.” He exchanged another look with Mom. A heavy one.

“What else aren’t you telling me?” I demanded.

She cleared her throat and closed her eyes briefly before continuing. “He’s young,” Mom said. “It sounds like he’s—he was about your age.”

A kid.

My brain stuttered over the thought of it. A kid died and they didn’t know who he was or what happened to him. Possibly murdered. I rubbed at that spot in the center of my chest, the soreness there starting to blend with the ache in my heart for this stranger. A kid. Whatever happened to him, it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t right.

Tug, tug, tug.

Mom wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I know it’s scary to think about and we’re here if you want to talk.”

“Yeah, it’s just—that’s really sad,” I said, shaking my head and focusing back on our conversation. “Do you think I know him?” Basbridge was a small enough town to not be super exciting and yet large enough that not everyone knew everybody. I found myself hoping I didn’t know him, but what if no one did? “What if they can’t identify him?”

“They will.” Mom sounded sure, but how could she be?

What if his case was never solved?

Tug, tug, tug!

She pressed a kiss to the top of my head and gave me a hug. “I have to get some things done in the office before our afternoon visitation. After breakfast, would you mind vacuuming the main viewing room for me?”

I nodded and she gave Alex a quick hug, too, before leaving the room.

Alex finished off his coffee and set the mug in the sink. “I’m going to inventory the prep room,” he said, clasping my shoulder as he passed me on the way to the basement door. “We’re both here, okay?”

“Okay.”

Suddenly, I was alone in the kitchen. I got up with a sigh and poured myself a bowl of cereal. My thoughts kept circling back to the kid as I tried to eat.

What if they never figured out what happened to him? What if they couldn’t find any clues? What if they were never able to find out who he was and he was left alone forever?

I could find out. I dropped my spoon on the table as the thought hit me and it was immediately followed up by a tug, tug, tug from my power.

There was no way that kid’s spark wasn’t still hanging around. He was the definition of unfinished business. I could Wake the boy and get some real answers that would actually help.

I shook my head. Snap out of it, Kimmy. That’s a ridiculous idea. What was I going to do? Break into the hospital morgue?

TUGTUGTUG

“Okay, you don’t get a vote when it’s my butt on the line,” I said, ignoring the ridiculousness of talking to an empty room. “Let me think, please.”

What did Grandma always say?

We don’t intervene. We don’t draw attention. We don’t involve ourselves. Those were the rules. Important rules handed down through generations of Joneses for a reason.

If they didn’t have any answers by the time he arrived at the funeral home—if he even came to ours—I could try Waking him then.

If his spark was still there. And if I could make the power work properly.

That was a lot of ifs.

I wished Grandma was here. She would absolutely tell me not to do it, but at least then I’d have a definite answer instead of thinking myself in circles.

For right now, there was only one thing I could do.

The vacuuming.

Using Grandma’s preferred method of starting from the farthest wall and working my way back to the doors, I swept the machine back and forth. For a while the roar of the vacuum cleaner was enough to drown everything out. My own thoughts. The tugs. They were easier to ignore when I folded them into the rhythm of my movements. Tug, tug, tug. I pushed the machine forward. Tug, tug, tug. I pulled it back.

It was a little supernatural waltz.

I was halfway through the room before my distraction technique started to fail.

You could at least try, a little voice in my brain whispered at me.

Nope. No. I had no business getting involved in a police investigation. This was for the adults to handle.

He’s all alone. You’re carrying on with your chores like this is a normal day and that kid is all alone.

I shook my head and finished up the room at lightning speed. Wrapping the cord around the vacuum, I lugged it out into the hallway to put in back in the supply closet. As soon as I packed it away, the tugs went crazy.

TUGTUGTUG

It was like the power could sense I was only a few feet from the front door and if it pulled hard enough, it could yank me all the way to the hospital where that kid was waiting for me to help him. And somewhere else, his family was waiting, too. Except they didn’t know they were waiting to say goodbye because they didn’t even know what happened to him.

I groaned in frustration, spinning around and nearly running headlong into Tamsin.

We both jumped back in surprise.

“Kimmy!” She held one hand against her chest while she hastily shoved her phone into her back pocket. “You startled me.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to edge my way past her. “Finishing up my chores. They’re the worst, am I right?” I groaned again for emphasis.

Tamsin narrowed her eyes, focusing in on me with an unsettling intensity. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, failing to maintain anything close to a level volume. “Everything is fine and normal!” I ran up the stairs and into my room.

The tugs were quieter now, but still constant. I had to face facts. The power wanted me to act. I wanted to act.

Tug, tug, tug.

And something told me the power would work this time. I clapped my hands together once. Decision made. I had a morgue to break into.

Except I had no idea how to do that.