Dark Matter

So we’re a bunch of weirdos….

And her daughter didn’t want any part of it.

“Who can blame you, sweetie?” she said.

She grabbed a dishrag off the counter near the sink and walked back to the spot on the floor she’d avoided earlier. She knelt down to wipe the tiles where there was a circle of muddy water.

Gia hadn’t seen the spirit, but she knew her daughter had. Stella had tried to hide her nervous glance here, but Gia had caught it.

Suddenly, she felt a tingle at the back of her neck. She glanced up at the clock.

It was 7:27 a.m.

Seven.

The image came, unbidden and unwanted: hazel eyes more green than gold, barely tamed chestnut curls and broad shoulders. And his smile. The memory of it brought a warmth that reached all the way to her toes.

She stood, wadding up the dripping rag. “All right, all right. I give.”

She dropped the rag in the sink and wiped her hands before reaching for the phone. She didn’t know why or how Seven was involved, but clearly someone or something wanted her to contact him. Her daughter might not accept who she was but Gia didn’t have that luxury. She was too familiar with her gift to ignore the signs.

Just before breakfast, she’d dialed his number. But she’d panicked, ending the call before he could pick up.

This time, she let it ring.

Stella waited until she was sure her mother couldn’t see her before she dropped her backpack and stopped to catch her breath.

The boy had been standing right there, next to her mother. His clothes were wet and dripping this dirty water on the floor. He was covered in some sort of mud or slime.

He’d looked dead. His lips were blue and there were these dark circles under his eyes. His skin—it was all white and puffy and bloodless. He looked like he’d drowned.

He’d kept those wet, gray eyes right on her, almost daring her to acknowledge him standing in the kitchen. Stella kept thinking that, any minute now, Mom would turn to the stupid ghost and start asking him questions.

Only, she hadn’t.

Mom can’t see him. She really can’t.

More than anything else, that scared the crap out of Stella.

She picked up her backpack and headed for the bus stop. She was in eighth grade, her last year of middle school. Her life was supposed to be about silly things like whether she should start shaving her legs or wearing makeup.

Only she had ghost boy here to remind her that she wasn’t normal. That she never would be.

Right now, he was walking alongside her like they were buddies, dripping water and mud with every step.

Stella whipped around and screamed, “Leave me alone, you freak!”

He didn’t respond. He stood in place, just staring at her.

“Great. Just great. I have psycho ghost attached to me.”

She started walking again, faster this time, but the ghost dogged her every step. Just a couple of months ago, she’d made peace with the fact that sometimes, she had this ability. She’d tried ignoring it, having read somewhere that, if you didn’t use a muscle, it would grow weak. Well, this muscle wasn’t getting any weaker.

She hated it. She didn’t want to see things that weren’t there or have some dead soul hanging around, making her life all about their problems. She had her own stuff to deal with.

Last year, she’d learned a bunch of things…secrets, bad secrets, about the past. Things her mother had hidden from her, trying to protect her.

Some of it wasn’t so bad. Like the fact that Stella had a grandfather, Morgan Tyrell. He was filthy rich and ran a clinic that studied the brain and psychic stuff in San Diego. Morgan was way cool. And she could tell that he liked her. Lots of times, he’d send his limo and she and her mom would end up going someplace amazing for dinner with him. Or she’d spend the weekend at the Institute and he’d let her help with the research and everything.

But the other stuff, the really weird stuff about her past, still freaked her out.

Like the fact that her mother had changed her name, that they were living in hiding. All these years, Morgan had been a few hours away and her mom had been too afraid to contact him, her own father.

And her grandmother was supposed to be this famous psychic archaeologist who got kicked out of Harvard for being just a little too psychic. She’d been obsessed with finding this artifact, the Eye of Athena. It finally killed her. Now she had a cult following with blogs and Web sites that treated her like she was the freaking Dalai Lama or something. All Stella had to do was type in “Estelle Fegaris” and she’d get, like, a bazillion hits.

Then there was her father. Stella had grown up believing he was dead. All along, he’d been the reason she and her mom were hiding. He turned out to be some psycho who’d killed Stella’s grandmother because he’d wanted the crystal—the Eye of Athena. It was supposedly worth a fortune and it was haunted. After he stole it, he went nuts.

The whole time, her mother had been living this double life, acting like everything was cool. Like they were just regular folk and the only things they needed to worry about were her mom’s weird visions.

Only her mother knew the truth. That one day Stella’s dad would end up on their doorstep and try to kill them both. Preparing for just that day—trying to keep Stella safe.

In the end, it happened just like her mother had seen it in her vision. The cops killed her father before he could shoot her mother.

Well, not the cops. Seven, the detective her mom liked so much. He’s the one who’d saved the day.

Yeah, all that stuff from the past was kind of heavy. She didn’t blame Seven for disappearing once he learned the truth about them. She knew he liked her mother—he’d even told her he did. He’d said he cared about them both.

So here was this really cool guy who made Mom happy…he’d even saved her life, like some knight in shining armor. But her mom’s life was complicated. And a guy like Seven, he wouldn’t want anything to do with the ghosts-and-goblins gig. Who could blame him?

Stella walked faster, ignoring ghost boy.

And she was supposed to be okay with it? Embrace her gift? Just give in and accept that she could never be normal? Could never have a normal life with normal friends. Couldn’t have a cool guy like Seven hanging around because people like him wanted normal.

Well, forget it. She wasn’t about to tell her mother about ghost boy, even if he showed up all muddy looking like a zombie, trying to scare her into some stupid reaction. Spirits attached themselves, and the way Stella saw it, if she ignored him long enough, he’d get good and unattached.

Stella kept her head down, ignoring the spirit walking alongside her. She didn’t want any part of the kid and his problems.

Sooner or later, she’d figure a way to get rid of him.

Whatever it took.

6

Jack could hear the ocean inside his head. He loved the beach. Sometimes, when things got really rough with a john, he’d just think about the waves crashing on the sand. Santa Monica pier was the first place he’d gone when he’d gotten off the bus from Indiana. If he closed his eyes, the cars on the freeway even sounded like the waves. He could almost smell the salt in the air.

There were two of them now, a man and a woman.

Funny, but they looked alike—a lot alike, actually, like maybe the guy from last night cloned himself. They were both really tall, way taller than Jack. And they had this pale skin with red, red hair. The girl’s hair was straight and down to her waist; the guy wore his layered so that the ends just brushed his broad shoulders. They had really dark blue eyes, almost black. Even their voices sounded the same.