“Maybe you can now,” she suggested.

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “We’ll see. It’s a bit too early to tell.”

  “How long do the buyers have?”

  “I think until tomorrow night.”

  She nodded. “And again,” she murmured, “just because your brother might not be terribly happy and might have changed the dates, that doesn’t mean that he was willfully trying to sabotage the deal.”

  “No, maybe not,” Gage muttered, “but it’s looking like he didn’t want the deal to go forward.”

  She nodded. “What about your other family?”

  “I have a mother, whom I don’t speak to,” he shared.

  She looked at him. “Is that a good thing?”

  “My brother and I have different fathers. He’s my younger brother and had a father in his life, whereas my mother walked away from my father. So I definitely have some resentment there. I bounced from Father to Mother, back-and-forth. And that was a problem too.” He shrugged. “When I finally got old enough to ditch them both, I did.”

  “And your father?”

  “He’s dead. Long dead. And so is my brother’s father.”

  “Interesting.”

  “That’s where Jonesy came in,” he added, with a half smile.

  “And is he related to your mother?”

  “Yes, so my brother and I share the same mother, and we both are blood relations to Jonesy, and thankfully my mother is off in the Riviera right now.”

  Skylar stared at him.

  “She likes the high lifestyle.”

  “And do you pay for it?”

  He winced. “I do to a certain extent. So does my brother.”

  “And I would suspect that you would like to stop doing that too?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” he agreed.

  “So, if you sell, that won’t change your relationship with your mother, will it?”

  “No, she’ll realize just how much money I have, and it’ll get worse.”

  She frowned. “What about your brother?”

  “Well, I told him that, if he wants to keep paying for her lifestyle, that’s his business, but it’ll stop coming from me, along with the other changes that I’m about to make in my life.”

  “Maybe you could set her up with an allowance or something?”

  He stared down at the food in his hand. “I would just as soon not talk about my mother, if you don’t mind.”

  She nodded and immediately changed the subject. But, in the back of her mind, she wondered about Terrence’s alliance with their mother, then just blurted it out. “How much does your brother love your mother?”

  “I think he loves her just fine. They’ve always been way closer.”

  She nodded. “Sorry. I intended to change the subject, but instead the question that popped out was exactly what you didn’t want to talk about.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, but he put down his burrito.

  She got up and got water for both of them and asked, “So what did you do all day?”

  Then he smiled and launched into a discussion of all the touristy things he’d done around town.

  “See? I like to hear that. It’s good to hear that you were out and enjoying life.”

  “I was,” he agreed, with a smile. “There’s a lot to do here, at least for a couple days.”

  “There is, even at other times of the year too.”

  “You seem to be rushing around, doing all kinds of stuff, including graveyards.”

  She frowned and nodded.

  “Speaking of which, you didn’t do that last night?”

  “No,” she murmured, “but I’ll probably go some more in the next couple days.”

  “So it isn’t every night then?”

  “No. The energy in that one particular graveyard is off right now.”

  “Because of Jonesy?”

  She nodded. “Yes, exactly.”

  “Understood. I’m sorry about that. … Do you ever actively try to contact ghosts?” When she stared off, not answering, he half-apologetically said, “We appear to be hitting all kinds of conversations that we don’t really want to talk about tonight.”

  She shot him a glance and nodded. “It’s all right. In answer to your question, I have actually contacted ghosts. Every once in a while, I’ve been asked to do so.” He studied his own food again. “You want me to try to contact your friend Linden?”

  “And here I figured you’d think I wanted to contact Jonesy.”

  “Probably him too,” she agreed, “but I think it’s your friend who is troubling you the most.”

  He sighed. “It’s definitely something that bothers me, yes.”

  “Understood. I just don’t know that I have any way to contact him.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s involved?”

  “Your friend, well, he’s not very friendly,” she shared.

  “I know he’s got some issues,” he replied carefully.

  “That’s one way to put it.” He frowned and looked at her. She nodded. “Yes, he’s definitely got some issues, and I’m not seeing that he’s terribly warm or welcoming or friendly at this point.”

  “Well, I would hope he is on the other side.”

  “Maybe. It’s not that easy to just contact them, though it typically is easier to do where they died.”

  “Are they always tethered to the location of their death?”

  “They’re tethered to people, places, and things,” she explained. “So our lovely Elena here, she’s tethered to this building. This apartment was hers.” Gage stared at Skylar. She nodded. “Obviously a much older version, but this is where she was kept by her lover.” He winced at that. “I know, but for her it was a normal life. I’m not sure that she would have enjoyed getting older though.”

  “No, I can’t imagine she would have. So, for her, maybe this was an easier way to go, than to actually live the life of somebody who would eventually be discarded.”

  “Though, in her mind, that would never happen,” Skylar added, with a casual flick of her wrist.

  Elena immediately appeared and glared at her.

  “We’re just talking,” Skylar noted.

  I know, Elena replied, but you don’t have to talk like that. And, with that, she disappeared again.

  Skylar turned to see Gage looking at her funny. “Sorry, Elena just popped in to say that she didn’t appreciate the conversation.”

  He smirked. “No, of course not. Still, in her heart of hearts, she believes she would have done just fine.”

  “And you know what? She’s a survivor, so she probably would have done just fine,” Skylar suggested.

  “Got it,” he agreed, “and that we don’t know because everything was so very different back then.”

  “So very different.” Skylar nodded.

  *

  The conversation lulled, and Gage wondered about the certain subjects Skylar seemed to avoid, in particular her midnight jaunts out to the graveyards. He wanted an invitation to go along again, but he also knew that wasn’t likely to be forthcoming. For all that they had found in each other, and as close as they had become within a short time frame, they knew each other well in some ways and not at all in others. And he was afraid that fact would hinder their relationship as well because of whatever was going on right now in the graveyards. He hesitated about asking, and then, when he looked up, she hurriedly stood, as if understanding what he was wrestling with.

  “I’m just going to clean up these dishes,” she offered.

  “Are you heading to bed tonight or do you want to go out for a bit?”

  “No, I think I’d like to go to bed early,” she said casually.

  But that odd note was in her voice again. “Is there any particular time that you do your graveyard walks?”

  “When it feels right,” she replied immediately. When he frowned, she chuckled. “I know. That’s very scientific, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing scientific about any of this,” he grumbled, yet with a gentle smile. “I just wondered if there was any particular impetus to do it from one night to the next.”

  “It depends,” she replied. “A lot is involved, and sometimes there’s more of a push to do certain things than others.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, and it was obvious she wouldn’t expand on this subject. “It would be nice if you trusted me more.”

  “It would be nice if I’d known you longer,” she stated immediately.

  He winced at that. “I guess that’s true, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “It’s hard for me to completely open up about everything in my world just because you’re curious.”

  “There we go on that whole curiosity kick again,” he noted, smiling, as he got up and helped with the dishes.

  “It is what it is,” she said, “and, because it’s all new to you, some of it’s foreign.”

  “It’s all foreign.”

  “Exactly. Some things are easier to explain, and others we should just wait on, until you’re a little more comfortable.”

  “I would really like to be comfortable with all of it,” he stated, giving her a shadowed look.

  “And I get that. I really do. It’s just that I’m not that comfortable with it yet.”

  He nodded. “I guess there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “No, not really.”

  As soon as the dishes were done, she said, “And, if you don’t mind, I’ll just sit here and relax a little bit, then maybe have a bath and go to bed early.”

  “You mean, bed, where you won’t be woken up in the middle of the night?”

  Her gaze shrouded. “I sure hope not.” She studied him intently. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, but then I was feeling fine before,” he noted.

  She hesitated and then added, “Well, if it happens again, we’ll have to make some changes.”

  “Do you really expect it to happen again?”

  “I don’t have any expectations either way, but I hope not and yet”—she smiled—“there’s really no way to know.”

  “I hate that,” he said. “I want answers, and I want answers now.”

  “Which is nice and all,” she agreed, with a cock of her head, “but it doesn’t really help.”

  “No, of course not. The only person to help is somebody who doesn’t need to have the answers.”

  She gave him a gentle smile and an equally gentle response. “You need to understand that—all this emotion, all that need inside you to look for these answers—it has a tendency to push away the answers.”

  At that, he stopped and stared at her.

  She nodded. “You must be very detached or come from love. When you come from that drive or that fear,” she explained, “it works against you, and it becomes something that hurts any and all progress.”

  “I’ve never heard that before.” It was hard medicine to take. He’d been CEO of his own big company—well respected, feared even—and yet now, here he was, the apprentice to an unwilling master. Of course it wasn’t a formal agreement between them. She was generous with her time and information, and he couldn’t fault her for that. The fact that he was looking for so much more was his own problem. He’d always been driven, and looking for answers in this issue wouldn’t be any different because he hadn’t changed. No. He stopped at that thought. “I really have changed, you know?”

  She glanced over at him, as she hung up a dish towel, and nodded. “Yes, you have, and you will probably continue to change for quite a while.”

  “Will it be in a good way?”

  She smiled. “You tell me,” she stated gently, “because it’s all about what you create. Will this be a good change or not?”

  “I feel like, if I go in this direction, I’ll lose everything that I already know.”

  “You will. You’ll lose the friends. You’ll lose the family. You’ll lose the people, the surety that you had in whatever field you were in before. There, you were king. You were the boss. You could make things happen, and, when you snapped your fingers, people jumped and did your bidding,” she said. “This world isn’t like that at all, and you’re not a master. You have to start at the beginning. You must work your way up again in a whole new field.”

  “I was just thinking about that. … It’ll be hard.”

  “But it sounds like you’ve made a decision.”

  “I think the decision was made for me,” he said, with a broken laugh. “I don’t know what’s coming after this, but I know that something is, and I know that it’s a pathway I need to carry on with.”

  “In that case,” she replied, “this adjustment period will be uncomfortable, but you will get there.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “And I know you want me to leave,” he began, “and you know I’m getting there. Honestly, I am, but could you possibly share what you did before this?”

  “For some of us,” she replied, with half a smile, “there wasn’t necessarily any before. I’ve always been like this. But growing up was not easy because I found very little acceptance.”

  He nodded. “I can’t imagine being in school like this.”

  “Most of these abilities start when we’re a young child, and we often block them out, until we’re old enough to understand what’s going on. At that point in time things happen—usually around puberty. In my case I was very active with ghosts when I was younger, and I blocked them out because everybody told me how they didn’t exist. Back then I followed along just to make peace with everybody around me, if nothing else. And I stopped seeing them.”

  “Can you just willfully stop seeing them?”

  She nodded. “Yes. And I did. Until I lost a best friend, somebody I didn’t really want to lose. Before I knew it, she was there, talking to me. Actually she was scolding me.” Skylar laughed. “She was telling me off for having walked away from what I could do all these years. And, by the time I was done with her, she’d walked into the light and was heading on to whatever comes after this and was doing much better.”

  “And do you know what comes after this?” He seemed to be a fountain of questions right now, and he knew he had to work on that, instead of overwhelming her.

  She smiled. “There you go again, looking for all these answers.”

  “Well, if I had a ghost to talk to, then maybe I could get some of the answers without bothering you,” he complained. “But it seems like you’re it for getting answers.”

  “Maybe so,” she agreed gently, “but I’m also tired.”

  “I get it.” He nodded and immediately straightened up and walked toward the door. “I was hoping to spend more time with you tonight, but I can see that you really do need more sleep.”

  “I do, indeed,” she replied, with a smile.

  With that, he turned and walked out.

  Chapter 13

  Skylar needed sleep, but tonight was also the night, and no way she could avoid it. Every time she tried to avoid these sessions, they got way worse and much harder for her to control the next time. Not to mention the ghosts who pounded on the door in her mind, until she could barely deal with the headache they caused. It was easy for people like Stefan and Dr. Maddy to say that Skylar had the control and that she could tell them to butt out of her life, when they wouldn’t cooperate. But, with just so many of them, it took that much more time and energy to even control them.

  And, of course, most people couldn’t even begin to understand this overwhelming ghost problem that Skylar had, particularly not Gage. As much as she would prefer to spend the evening with him, she would have to spend it doing transfers—something that most people never even began to consider. And she wouldn’t have either, except it was something she had fallen into. And now? Well, it was like she was the only one around who could even do it.

  For all she knew, she was the only one to ever do it. And that just made it even so much harder. She wished she had somebody with like skills—even Gage at some point—to work with her to help balance out the energies, as she moved people from one etheric state to another. But, so far, that hadn’t happened. Gage might get there, if this were something that he honestly wanted to pursue.

  It was certainly possible that he could get there; she just didn’t see it happening anytime soon. And right now she needed some sleep. These transfers always happened best between midnight and 3:00 a.m. And, because of the furtiveness of it, she had to do it quietly, without anybody knowing. If she were ever caught doing this, she would be stripped of all credibility and likely even jailed. Not something she wanted to think about.

  How did one explain what she was doing in the middle of the night? There was also a good chance that Jonesy would be there because that was the cemetery she had to work tonight, and that would bring a whole new level of complexity to her problems. Not that it was his fault by any means, but it still didn’t change the fact that he was an energy she would quite possibly have to deal with.

  She’d seen his energy there at the time his body had been found, but it had been faint and nondescript, as if he hadn’t quite figured out how and what to do yet. Which, of course, he hadn’t. How could he? He was new to that world, and, just like Gage had questions here, new to the world over there took a lot longer for people who were stuck. And no doubt Jonesy was stuck.

  As soon as Gage was gone, and Skylar had locked up, she headed back to her bed, where she stretched out for a nap. She called out, “Elena, don’t let me sleep too late.”

  “I’ll let you have a couple hours,” she replied, but a note of worry was in her voice. “I wish you wouldn’t go out and do these transfers.”

  “And yet, if you were one of the ones caught in-between, wouldn’t you like the help?”

  “Sure,” she agreed, “but they can also figure it out themselves.”

  For the first time there was a bit of waspishness to her tone. “Are you worried about me?” Skylar asked curiously.

  “It feels off.”

  Skylar pondered that for a moment and then had to agree. “You’re right. It does.”

  “So you won’t go then, correct?”

  “Oh, I’ll go,” she said. “I have to. You know the lineup is getting pretty bad.”