Dillon wasn’t answering. Grace stared at the screen of her phone, feeling her breath tight in her throat. Was he all right? The last text — Nvm, it’s ok— stayed steady on the screen, no new letters forming. It certainly implied that he was fine, but damn it, why couldn’t he share a few more details?
“Are you okay?” Noah asked.
Grace glanced up to meet his frown. She’d been staring at her phone for too long, she supposed. Long enough that he’d realized something was wrong.
“I’m fine.” She stuffed her phone in the side pocket of her bag. She could try talking to Dillon again but she was reluctant to do so in front of Noah. The guy was a skeptic. He wanted a logical explanation for everything, including Maggie’s ability to know what people wanted to eat before they even walked in the door. He didn’t believe in auras and when she’d hinted at her sister’s gift, he’d practically rolled his eyes at her.
Okay, maybe he hadn’t been quite that bad, but he’d definitely made his distrust clear.
And it was more than doubt, it was distrust. Grace almost wished Lucas were here so that he could read Noah’s mind and tell her what was going through his head. If she was going to fulfill her father’s wishes and hire him, though, she couldn’t afford to scare him off by having conversations with the empty air.
She gave him a bright smile. “Let me just pay.”
Noah nodded and stepped outside.
Grace paused for a moment until she was sure that he was waiting by the door for her, then headed back to the counter.
Maggie came out of the kitchen carrying a bag. She passed the bag to Nat. “Here you go. Irish stew, side salad, soda bread, and a caramel apple crisp. You might want to pick up some vanilla ice cream to go with the dessert.”
“Yum!” Mitchell had been sitting obediently on his stool, but he jumped down and reached for the bag. “I love stew.”
Maggie winked at him as she stepped to the cash register. “Must have been your night.”
At the counter, Kenzi gave a sudden shiver. “Ooh, sizzles,” she chirped. She spun her stool around. “I have sizzles again.”
“Sizzles?” Natalya shot a sharp glance at her daughter. “What kind of sizzles?”
Kenzi was jittering, almost dancing in her seat. “Good sizzles,” the little girl said, sliding off her stool.
Grace put a hand over her phone, feeling its reassuring solidity, the angles under the soft leather of her purse. Were those good sizzles similar to the ones Kenzi had felt at the wedding?
Natalya passed her credit card to Maggie, but both of them were watching Kenzi. The little girl looked around the restaurant, and then, like a homing beacon, headed straight to the booth holding Kaye Mulcahey and Abe Voigt.
Natalya frowned. Grace slipped her phone out of her purse, thumbed it on, found the text messages she’d received from Dillon, and tilted it so Nat could see the screen.
Her sister’s brows raised and then she nodded. “I should have guessed.”
Grace’s answering smile was wry. Natalya could see her own future in as much detail as most people remembered their own pasts, but ghosts threw off her ability. According to one of the mathematicians in GD’s materials-modeling department, ghosts were a random variable introducing chaos into a dynamic system.
Life might be predictable, at least as much as the weather was predictable — not necessarily from moment to moment, but in general strokes — but ghosts were the equivalent of the unstable air in a thunderstorm forming a tornado or the tectonic shifts that created tsunamis. If Natalya was surprised by Kenzi’s behavior, it was because ghosts were influencing the material world in unexpected ways.
“He reacted,” Grace said softly. “He said he had to leave, got up to go.”
“He? Oh.” Natalya shot a quick glance at the door. Grace was tempted to turn and look herself, but if Noah was watching, she didn’t want him to think they were talking about him, even though they so clearly were. “Yes, I suppose that could be.”
“Could he feel it, do you think?” Grace asked. Akira could feel the vortexes. In fact, she’d been killed, albeit temporarily, when she’d encountered one. If the same was true for Noah, he might be in as much danger as Dillon could be.
“Hmmm.” Natalya took her credit card back from Maggie. Her murmur didn’t sound like a yes or a no, just a noncommittal acknowledgement.
Grace held back the sigh that wanted to escape. Why must her family be so frustrating? Was a straight answer really too much to ask for?
She pulled her own credit card out and handed it to Maggie.
“Everything okay?” Maggie asked as she slid the card through the reader.
Grace couldn’t tell from her expression whether the question was a pro forma courtesy or a worried acknowledgement of the shattered lightbulb and her hushed conversation with her sister.
“Lunch was delicious, as always,” she replied. “As for anything else…” She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Maggie shook her head. “I swear this is your father’s fault,” she muttered. “As if a haunted restaurant is nothing. No one wants to be thinking about death while they eat dinner. Not to mention the implications. I don’t want my customers wondering whether my cooking kills people.”
“If it did, they’d die happy,” Grace offered.
Maggie did not smile. “Lima beans. And…” She paused, head tipped to one side, face screwing up with vague disgust. “Cod with cheese sauce? Who would do that?”
“Oh, yuck.” Grace put a hand up in protest. “My college dorm cafeteria. Every Friday. Please, no.”
“Baked, maybe.” Maggie stopped in the act of handing Grace’s credit card back to her, eyes unfocused. “With goat cheese. Chives. Maybe some lemon zest.”
“That sounds delicious,” Natalya said.
“Which would defeat the point.” Maggie pushed Grace’s card the rest of the way in her direction.
“No ghosts, I promise,” Grace said quickly. “Not that I have anything to do with it. Them. Ghosts. I don’t know anything. About anything.” She took her card, lifted her shoulders in a shrug, and offered Maggie a conciliatory smile.
Natalya’s gaze was on Kenzi as the little girl patted Kaye Mulcahey’s hand. “I don’t think you need to worry about losing customers. Not today, anyway.” She glanced back at Maggie and added, “And Dad was miserable when you were angry with him. I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.”
Maggie pursed her lips, but her eyes were amused. “Good.” She nodded toward the bag that Mitchell still held. “Enjoy your dinner.”
“Always.” With a wave, Natalya rounded up the boys, called to Kenzi, and headed for the door.
Grace was about to follow suit, but as she started to say good-bye, Maggie indicated Noah with a tilt of her chin. “And enjoy the rest of your date. He’s quite something.”
“It’s not a date,” Grace said quickly. “He’s not — we’re not — I’m going to hire him. For GD.”
“A scientist?” Maggie’s brows shot up.
“Security, probably. Or Special Affairs.”
Maggie frowned in Noah’s direction. “Special Affairs? Huh.” She gave a snort, followed by a sigh and a glance back in the direction of the broken light bulb. “Ah, well, I guess Max is off the hook, then. He’s like Akira, is he?”
“Something like that,” Grace replied vaguely. Inwardly, though, she winced. Maggie was no gossip, but information flowed through Tassamara like water through a sieve. It was like osmosis: what one person knew, the whole town knew within days. Grace suspected it was an inevitable side-effect of living in a town of psychics, but maybe it was just a small-town thing. Either way, she still had no idea what Noah knew about his situation, if anything. It seemed a bit unfair that in the very near future, the entire town would know more than he did.
She said good-bye and followed her sister to the door. Noah was waiting for her outside. Natalya and the kids had already disappeared down the street.
“Thanks for lunch,” Noah said, unsmiling. His expression was opaque. Grace had no idea what he was thinking.
“Time for your tour of GD?” She intended the words as a statement, definitive and assured, but somehow an interrogative lilt escaped, turning them into a question.
“I don’t think—” he started.
She interrupted him. “You want to meet Akira. You really do.”
“So I’ve heard,” he responded dryly. A corner of his mouth lifted.
He had a really nice mouth, Grace noticed, not for the first time. She smiled back at him. “First step. Visit the company, let me show you around, see how you like the place. It can’t hurt.”
She waited, holding her breath, as he considered. “We don’t bite,” she finally added, a hint of exasperation in her tone. After all, how many job offers came with no questions asked? Plenty of people would be delighted to get this kind of welcome from General Directions.
“No?” he responded with a flash of humor in his eyes.
A flush of heat ran through her veins as she raised a hand in solemn promise. “Never.” She should stop there. She shouldn’t say another word. But his eyes were holding hers, and she had to add, “Not at work, anyway.”
Damn it. She shouldn’t be flirting with him. This was not a date. She was helping her nephew and that was it. But his lightning grin raised her temperature another few degrees as he dipped his head in her direction.
“A tour,” he conceded. “We’ll see how it goes.”