No matter how many times I tried to block the memory from my mind, I couldn’t get rid of it.
Barb Martin—
She of the Ann Taylor clothing and the porcelain skin I had always been so grateful I’d inherited.
The woman who could have kept any one thing when her life was auctioned off to pay Dad’s federal tax bill and had chosen her Marc Jacobs bag.
A person who was kind to small children and animals, who had a great sense of humor and a sweet smile and terrific taste.
My mother tried to kill me.
Over the next thirty-six hours, the scene played over and over again in my imagination and by Sunday night even though my head still throbbed and my stomach was still topsy-turvy and my throat was sore inside and out, I couldn’t help myself, I saw it all again, happening as it had happened back at the bridal fair – in slow motion and colors so vivid, they made my eyes ache.
I thought about how in that one electrifying instant when I realized that my mom wanted me dead, I’d been grateful for the height I’d inherited from my father’s side of the family and how that, at least, gave me the physical advantage over my short, slim mother.
I’m not sure where my chutzpah comes from, maybe my Aunt Charlotte or my Grandma Martin, the women my mother once told me had also chatted it up with ghosts, and who’d passed their questionable Gift down to me.
Wherever it came from, both the fact that I tower over my mother and my tendency to be anything but a shrinking violet came in handy. As soon as my total, complete, and absolute surprise faded into fear and panic, as soon as it hit me that I couldn’t breathe, I reared back and braced my hands against Barb’s arms.
She was surprisingly strong, and as determined as any opponent I’d ever faced.
I struggled to claw her hands away from my neck.
She hung on.
I fought to rip the satin belt away.
She wound it tighter and pulled harder.
Stars burst behind my eyes, and I would have screamed for help if I could have gotten out anything more than a pathetic gurgle.
And through it all, the only thing I could think was that my mother – my slightly crazy, sweet, funny mother – was determined to see me die.
I blacked out, then snapped back to, and found myself staring into Barb’s eyes, and that’s when I was more afraid than ever.
There was no one in there looking back at me.
The next day, the memory still filled me with horror, and I rubbed my hands up and down my arms to try and keep from shivering. It didn’t help. Nothing could erase the memory of my mom’s eyes – there was no sign of a soul in them.
That did it. Now and then. Now, it sent me off on another crying jag. Back at the bridal fair, it officially scared the wits out of me and gave me the extra shot of adrenalin I desperately needed. I gathered my strength, grabbed her around the waist, and did the unthinkable – I lifted my mom out of her size-six sling-back pumps and flung her as far from me as I could.
She landed against that rack of bridal gowns that had shielded what just happened from the crowd, and though she is not a big woman, she was moving at a pretty good clip. The rack went down. So did Mom. By the time our fellow bridal fair attendees realized there was something happening and gathered around, curious and bug-eyed, Barb was on the floor in a pool of silk and lace and I had unwrapped that scrap of satin from around my throat, breathing hard and wondering what the hell had just happened.
My legs were jelly but I managed to stagger over and kneel next to where she lay, her eyes closed and her breathing shallow. Sure, I was the one who’d just pitched her into a display of expensive gowns. Sure, she was the one who’d told me she was sorry but I had to die. But she was my mom.
‘Are you all right?’ I put a hand to her cheek. It was icy. ‘Mom!’ I yelled for someone to call EMS which shouldn’t have been all that hard considering how many people had their phones out and were taking pictures of what they probably figured was either an accident or the result of too many mimosas.
I twined my fingers through Barb’s. ‘Mom, it’s me. Can you hear me?’
‘Pepper?’ Her voice was no more than a whisper, and her eyes fluttered open. There was a spark in them that had been missing just a minute before and, realizing it, I let go a breath that felt like fire in my throat.
‘Mom, are you OK?’
She tried to sit up. No easy thing considering two sales clerks were already flapping around us, clucking about their merchandise, plucking gowns off the floor.
When they tried to pluck the one Barb was on top of, I warned them away with a look and put my arm around her shoulders to help her sit up.
‘What …’ She glanced at the crowd gathered around us and the ruins of the display. ‘What happened?’
My throat hurt bad enough, I didn’t need to add a knot of emotion to it. I swallowed and winced. ‘You don’t remember?’
Someone had the good sense to bring Mom a cup of water, and she sipped carefully. ‘We were looking at the gowns and then …’ Her voice faded. Her eyes clouded. ‘I must have fainted,’ she said. ‘That’s what happened, right? I … I fainted.’
I didn’t have the heart to tell her any different.
The paramedics who showed up were kind and attentive. They didn’t find a thing wrong with Mom and, of course, I turned up my shirt collar to hide any sign of the attack and never breathed a word about how my windpipe was just about crushed. I took Mom home and Dad put her to bed. When I called on Sunday night, that’s where she still was.
‘She says she can’t sleep, that she’s got a really bad headache,’ Dad told me. ‘I’m thinking it’s a migraine, but I’ve already called and gotten her in to see her doctor tomorrow morning just to be sure. You said she just blacked out and landed in the middle of that clothing rack?’
Yeah, it was what I said. But then, it was pretty hard to tell my dad the truth when the truth was so ugly even I still had trouble believing it.
My mother tried to kill me.
The thought settled and I got chilled all the way down to my bones. I told Dad I’d check in again later and realized after I ended the call that it was already later. It was long past dark and I hadn’t bothered to turn on the lamp next to the couch. I did and groaned when the light hit my eyes. I groaned some more when I realized how much groaning made my throat hurt.
I dragged myself into the kitchen and put on water for tea, then took a gander at myself in the bathroom mirror. Forget my messy hair and my red-rimmed eyes! On the outside, my throat looked as bad as it felt on the inside, and I wondered if I had a turtleneck that would cover the band of raw flesh and bruises.
I would have to make up some excuse for my raspy voice and my swollen eyes and my red nose when I went to work the next day, just like I would somehow have to come to grips with what had happened and, in doing so, figure out what I was going to do about it.
My tea made, I took it back to the living room and flopped onto the couch. If I could close my eyes for more than a minute without seeing Barb’s face, red and ugly and dead set on destroying me …
I guess I fell asleep, because I woke up with a start when my phone rang.
It was Quinn.
I didn’t answer.
He’d know instantly that something was wrong – he had those kind of instincts – and I wasn’t ready to tell the story.
I checked the clock, and though I’d slept only thirty minutes, even that little bit of rest had helped some of the horror dissolve from my brain and with it, my inability to think past what had happened.
In that moment, I was reminded of the time I’d told my mom about, when Dan Callahan’s first wife (deader than a doornail and a bitch besides) had possessed me. Could something like that have happened to Mom? All this, of course, made me think about Dan. Back when I first met him, I thought Dan was a medical researcher, but I found out soon enough that the cute, shaggy-haired guy was actually a paranormal researcher who not only believed in my Gift but wanted to find out how it worked. He knew more about the paranormal than any other person – any other living person – than I knew.
That was the moment when I knew exactly what I had to do.
Because there was definitely something weird and spooky going on, and I needed help.
Dan’s help.
When I called into work on Monday morning and told Ella I had the flu, I hardly had to fake it. My nose was stuffy, my voice was gravelly, and since I’d spent most of the night crying off and on, I sounded like hell.
I forced myself to take a shower, to eat something (toast, and it almost didn’t stay down), to get into my car and drive to the hospital where I’d first met Dan after I fell at the cemetery, hit my head on Gus Scarpetti’s mausoleum, and started seeing ghosts.
From the outside, Dan and I looked like old friends, but if we were, my stomach wouldn’t have been fluttering and my knees twitching as I made my way through the maze of hospital hallways to his office. Dan and I, see, might have been on our way to a serious relationship at one time if not for that aforementioned dead wife of his. Oh yes, and his second wife, a woman who’d tried to kill me when I was working a case out in New Mexico.
So much for Dan’s taste in women.
What he lacked in judgment, Dan made up for with his unexpected martial arts skills, an unwavering belief in the paranormal, and maybe – I crossed my fingers – enough experience with the strange and the odd and the unnatural that he could help me figure out what was going on.
I found the office door with Dan Callahan, PhD printed on the sign in front of it and knocked.
There was no answer.
This didn’t stop me, the door wasn’t locked and I stepped inside and—
‘Oh!’ I pulled up short; there was a man in a wheelchair sitting next to Dan’s desk sorting through a pile of papers, and that was unfortunate. Not about the wheelchair, about the fact that I didn’t have a few minutes alone to dig around Dan’s desk and see what he’d been up to in the year or so since I’d last talked to him.
‘I’m looking for Dan Callahan,’ I said.
The man spun his chair around so that he was facing me instead of the desk. He was in his thirties, with the kind of face I bet had tempted many an angel to sin, close-cropped dark hair, eyes the color of strong brandy, a day’s worth of whiskers, and a smile that not only could charm the birds out of the trees, but would have them dancing to his tune.
‘Caleb Beauchamp.’ He stuck out a hand and I shook it and tried to place an accent that dripped Spanish moss and Tabasco sauce. ‘And who did you say you are?’
‘Pepper Martin.’ I didn’t realize our fingers were still entwined until I felt mine burning. I pulled my hand away. ‘I’m looking for Dan, and—’
‘You’re Pepper Martin? Ooohwee!’ He tipped back his head and let out a laugh. ‘You are not what I was expecting.’
Someone had obviously been talking about me, and it was just as obvious who that someone was.
‘If he’s around …’ I glanced around the office. It was small and cluttered with books and files and Dan’s many diplomas lined up on the walls. ‘There’s something I need to talk to him about. It’s really important.’
‘Maybe I can help you.’
Caleb had powerful arms and they were covered with tattoos: a skull, an eagle, a lightning bolt, the words Semper Fi. He was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt that had seen better days. Graduate student, I decided instantly, and I’d bet anything he thought Dan was exactly what I’d thought Dan was when I’d first met him: a scatterbrained scientist who studied peoples’ heads.
‘It’s kind of personal,’ I said, before I realized he was bound to take that completely the wrong way. ‘Well, not exactly personal, not like that. It’s personal in a professional way, and I can’t discuss it with anyone except Dan. I don’t know you and—’
‘It might not be a bad idea,’ he said.
‘You mean for you to find Dan.’
‘I mean for you fixin’ to get to know me.’
The smile I gave him was tight around the edges. ‘If you could find Dan for me, I’d appreciate it.’
That smile of his never wavered. Neither did the very level look he gave me. Or the spark of amusement in those dark eyes of his. He sat perfectly still for one second, two, then excused himself and wheeled around me and toward the door.
‘If you wait, I’ll see if I can find him,’ he said, and Caleb left the office.
Fine by me. It gave me a chance to glance over Dan’s desk at the same time I shook off the discomfort that prickled over my skin for no good reason.
I twitched the thought away, bent my ear to make sure I didn’t hear anyone coming, and did a quick sort through of the papers Caleb had been looking through when I walked in. There wasn’t much of any use: a couple reports written in scientist-ese, a folder that contained someone’s brain scan, a desk calendar that didn’t have anything filled in on any of the dates – nothing for the coming months, nothing since the first of the year.
I had just slapped that date book shut and put it back where I found it when I realized Caleb was sitting in the doorway.
‘Dan wouldn’t mind,’ I said by way of explanation. ‘We’re old friends.’
‘That’s not the way I heard the story.’ He rolled farther into the office. ‘Dan says—’
‘What?’
‘You’re a little defensive, aren’t you?’ His grin was as hot as lava and, no, I don’t know exactly how hot that is and I bet the big brains there around the hospital do, but I don’t much care how much smarter they are than me. ‘Don’t worry. Dan, he’s not the type who kisses and tells.’
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the desk, trading Caleb nonchalant smile for nonchalant smile. ‘That’s a good thing. Because there’s nothing to tell.’
‘He was right about you!’ He checked me out slow and easy, toes to tip of head, then back down again. ‘He told me you were pretty. He forgot to mention the red nose, though.’
I hated myself for it, but I automatically slapped a hand to my nose and cursed myself for not doing a better job with my makeup before I left the house.
‘You have troubles, cher? Something you need to talk about?’
‘Yeah. To Dan. He’s the only one who can help me.’
‘Lucky man.’
‘Can we just get serious for a minute, please? If I was looking for lame pick-up lines, I’d go hang out in one of the downtown bars.’
‘Was it lame?’ Caleb’s face twisted with regret. ‘You’ll have to pardon me, ma’am. I’m a little out of practice.’
‘With any luck, you’ll find an audience that’s a little more appreciative.’
‘Your mouth to God’s ear. Though I will admit, I’m a little partial to redheads. It’s all that fire.’
I shot him a look that would have leveled a lesser man. ‘And all that temper. Not to mention impatience.’
‘Are you in that much of a hurry?’ When he rolled over to the other side of the desk, I had to stand up and turn around to see him. ‘That’s too bad. I was going to suggest lunch.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘On account of the …’ He wiggled one finger in my direction to indicate my raw, red nose. ‘I understand, and it don’ madda. We’ll do lunch another time. Or dinner. I make a mean pot of beans and rice.’
‘I won’t be hungry then, either,’ I told him at the same time a voice inside my head reminded me that if I didn’t do something soon about the strange happenings in my life, I might not be alive whenever then was. ‘I don’t eat much.’
Like he didn’t believe me, he had the nerve to pucker up and wrinkle his forehead and, no matter how cool I tried to play it, I couldn’t help the spurt of annoyance that shot through me.
‘Not criticizing!’ he said, one hand out as if to stop me coming at him (which I wasn’t going to do, but then, he was in a wheelchair and that wouldn’t have been fair). ‘I just gotta say that a woman with a little bit of a shape to her is way more attractive than those skinny little sticks a man sees everywhere. If I offended you’ – he bent from the waist – ‘I beg your pardon.’
I was just about to accept the apology when he added, ‘But I don’t take back what I said, or what I think. Dan might have talked about you, but he forgot to mention that you’re one beautiful woman.’
‘Dan must have better things to think about.’
His laugh filled the office. ‘You think? Some of us around here wonder if he thinks at all. Everyone’s pretty sure he’s the absentminded professor.’
‘He can be.’
‘Still, women find him attractive. Maybe because he is so scatterbrained.’ As if he actually had to think about this, Caleb tipped his head. ‘Do you think scatterbrained is attractive?’
‘I never said I thought Dan was attractive.’
‘Touché.’ His laugh was easy and honest. ‘Other women have. You know he was married a couple times.’
‘You obviously know the story.’
‘His first wife was killed in Chicago. His second wife had an unfortunate accident on a mesa out in New Mexico. She was involved in some sneaky stuff, dealing in stolen antiquities, and I hear nobody suspected her except some tall drink of water with red hair from Cleveland who happened to be out there at the time.’
‘I’m surprised Dan talks about it,’ I said. ‘He’s not exactly the type to open up to people.’
Caleb shrugged those broad shoulders of his. ‘We’re colleagues.’
It was the perfect opening, both for what I wanted and to get me out of a conversation that felt more uncomfortable by the moment. ‘And you told your colleague I was waiting for him?’
‘No.’
When my mouth fell open, he grinned.
‘Dan isn’t here,’ Caleb said. ‘Not right now, anyway. But here …’ He grabbed the top sheet from a notepad on the desk and scrawled something on it.
‘Eight o’clock tonight,’ he said, his smile gone and his expression suddenly stony. ‘Be there.’