After Moonrise: Possessed / Haunted

She drew a deep breath. “Then let’s go.” Lauren flipped open the metal cap that held an elaborate keypad for the locking mechanism on the gate. Her hands shook only a little as she pressed the series of buttons that made the gate whir and click, and finally open. Without waiting for him, she strode through it and onto the dock. It was only then that she stopped, hands fisted at her sides, eyes looking at her feet, at the water, at the shore. Everywhere except out at the island.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Raef said.

“Okay. Yes. Okay. I can do this.”

Lauren stepped onto the walkway. Raef stayed close to her, worried that she might pass out and fall into the damn water. That was something neither of them needed. They were halfway to the island when Raef steeled himself and then dropped the barriers he usually kept firmly locked around his mind.

Death, he whispered to himself, come to me.

He braced himself for the influx of terror and anger and hurt and pain that always flooded him so near the site of a death.

And there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The only thing he felt was the brush of the unseasonably warm October breeze and his own confusion.

“Here.” Lauren had reached the island. Raef realized he’d stopped and quickly closed the distance between them. “This is where it happened.” She pointed a shaky hand at the base of the rocky island where it met the water. There were several floating plants that looked to Raef like lily pads, along with some bushy clumps of underwater grasses. “Aubrey was replacing the water lilies, trimming the black bamboo and cleaning the algae from the spirogyra. She stepped down there—” Lauren motioned to a ledgelike edge of the island “—and was working with the plants, half in and half out of the water. The mechanism that powers the pump to the waterfall is under that ledge. The police say she cut the electrical line while she was working with the plants. The pump shorted out, sending an electrical current through the water and killing Aubrey. Technically, that’s what happened. But it was no accident.”

“Are you sure?”

Lauren’s pale cheeks flushed. “I already told you. I am absolutely certain my sister was killed!”

“That’s not what I’m asking. I want to know are you sure that this is where she died.”

“Of course I am.”

“Her death happened here and not at St. John’s?” Raef made an impatient jerk of his chin at the hospital that was directly across the street from Swan Lake.

“Yes. She was dead when the joggers found her. They even came to her funeral. I talked to one of them myself. She was floating facedown in the water right there, tangled in the spirogyra grass.” Lauren’s hand was still a little shaky when she pointed to the spot below them where her sister’s body had been discovered. “There—right there is where they pulled her from the pond.”

Raef didn’t say anything else. He just continued to stare at the water and the odd, curling grass that floated like Medusa’s hair just beneath the surface.

Nothing. He felt nothing.

“Raef, what is it? What’s happening?”

“Your sister couldn’t have died here.”

Lauren frowned at him. “Of course she did. That’s the one part of the police report that was completely accurate.”

“How about the coroner’s report? Are you sure it concurred?”

“Yes. The coroner listed her time of death as more than an hour before the joggers called 9-1-1.”

“You’ve read it? You’ve seen the report?”

“Yes and yes. I’ve scoured over it. I practically have it memorized, much to the TPD’s irritation. Raef, what is it?”

“There’s nothing here. No psychic Tracing of a death at all. And that is impossible.”

Lauren opened her mouth, but instead of speaking, a strangled gasp wrenched from her. She swayed, her eyes fluttering, and Raef moved quickly to her side, steadying her by grasping her arm.

“Easy there. I’ll figure this out and—” His words broke off abruptly as emotions rippled through him. But they weren’t death scene emotions, familiar if numbing in their violence. Instead, joy and warmth and a poignant sense of longing filled him. He tried to throw up his mental barriers, but his traitorous Gift ignored it, leaving him naked and defenseless to the onslaught. Then the air beside Lauren rippled and her twin’s ethereal body manifested.

“I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t let us down. I remembered you from that article in Oklahoma Today magazine last year.” She grinned impishly. “It said you were the best psychic detective in Oklahoma—that you were like an Old West sheriff. You always got your man.”

Raef swallowed hard, trying to pull himself together. I can feel her joy! Never before. Never during the twenty-five years his Gift had manifested had he ever felt a positive emotion from any spirit.

Aubrey laughed and the sound washed through his body like magic, sensitizing his nerves and his skin so that the fine dark hair on his forearms prickled as if she had just run a teasing, caressing hand over them.

“Ah, come on, Kent, relax. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, still smiling joyously.

“Raef.” He ground the word out automatically, the usual gruffness of his voice intensified by the force of the emotions filling him. “People call me Raef.”

“I’m not going to,” Aubrey said. “I like Kent better. Plus, you can’t really call me a person anymore, can you?”

Raef just stared at her. Had a spirit ever called him anything? No, hell, no, none of them had. He usually just Tracked the negative emotions left by the bad guys. He followed violence and hatred and fear until it led him to a living murderer. Ghosts didn’t have shit to do with him.

Until this ghost.

Aubrey’s gaze went from him to sweep around Swan Lake. “It’s beautiful here, don’t you think? The trees are particularly lovely. So wise and strong, like soldiers standing guard.” She turned shimmering blue eyes back to him. “They must take a lot of care.”

As soon as she’d spoken the words Raef felt it. The slicing pain hit him as Aubrey’s semitransparent body doubled over. Lauren moaned, and her arm trembled violently under his grasp.

“Kent!” Aubrey gasped. “Help us!”

She disappeared as Lauren collapsed into his arms.

4

“Oh, God,” Lauren groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“No. Not here.” Raef slid an arm around her waist and half carried, half dragged her from the dock and through the gate. He’d retraced their path and was almost to the car when Lauren spoke again.

“Wh-where are we going?”

“Don’t know. Right now I’m just getting us the hell outta here,” he said, wrenching open the door to the car and guiding her semicarefully into the passenger seat. He hesitated, watching her closely as she sat, face in hands, and trembled. “You still gonna be sick?”

“Maybe,” she muttered into her hands.

Yeah, well, me, too, he thought, but instead said, “Try not to be,” then closed her door and hurried around the car, putting it in gear and getting the hell outta there. Silent and on autopilot he drove, turned left on Lewis and was halfway to Fifteenth Street before he realized he was heading for his house. What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m taking a client home? Raef glanced at Lauren. She’d taken her face from her hands. Her arms were wrapped around her, as if she was literally trying to hold herself together. Her face had gone from dead pale to splotchy pink. She was still trembling.

Suddenly she reminded him of Christina Kambic all those years ago, and he had a terrifying urge to protect her. Shit! Shit! Shit! What’s wrong with me?

“I’m not going to be sick. At least, not right now,” Lauren said stiffly, definitely misunderstanding his sideways glances.

“Want me to take you home?” he asked inanely.

“No.” Lauren made two quick shakes of her head.