Gypsy Magic - J.R. Rain Page 0,61

her head as she closed her eyes and held up her hands again. “I don’t think… Layla killed him,” she started. “As soon as you said you thought she did, I heard a voice…”

“Saying no?” I interrupted as she nodded. “I heard it too. Can you see Danny yet?”

“No,” she answered.

“Neither can I.”

“Poppy, Danny died of a heart attack,” Marty said.

“I’m not so sure about that,” I answered.

Now I was back to square one. If Layla hadn’t killed him, who had? Was it possible Danny really had just died of a heart attack?

No, that couldn’t be!

No, it wasn’t that simple. The vision of the monster murdering him refused to allow me to believe it.

“I’m getting something else,” Bailey started as she whirled around again. I closed my eyes and tried to listen for Danny’s voice, but I couldn’t hear a thing. “Danny was… murdered, I think,” Bailey finished, and I found myself nodding.

Marty pursed his lips. “Are you sure, Bails? As far as the death certificate is concerned, Danny died of a heart attack.”

“I kept hearing the word ‘murder’,” Bailey responded as she continued to feel the air with her eyes closed. “I think Danny was trying to me he was murdered.”

“By whom?” I asked.

But Bailey shook her head. “Every time he tries to tell me, it’s like he gets… blocked somehow. I can’t make out any of his words.”

“I can’t hear him at all,” I agreed.

Marty shook his head. “The doctors did an autopsy, and Danny’s left anterior descending artery was almost completely blocked. They call that artery the widowmaker for a reason.”

“We know he had a heart attack!” I snapped, a little louder than I intended. “I’m sorry,” I said to Marty and then lowered my voice to a whisper so he and Bailey had to lean in to catch the next words. “But I also know that Danny was murdered… because I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve seen it?” Bailey repeated, opening her eyes as she looked at me.

I nodded. “I’ve been having these dreams… nightmares… about this house and that man for weeks, without understanding what I was really seeing. But, then I realized it wasn’t just a nightmare. It was a vision.” I took a deep breath. “I believe Danny was reaching out to me and sending me this vision of what… happened to him. Only… in my nightmare it was a creature, a monster, that did him in.”

Bailey nodded. “I’m also picking up on something—that Danny’s heart attack was brought on by… someone or something else.”

But, if Layla wasn’t that someone else, who was? Maybe the monster wasn’t an allegory, after all? Maybe the monster was exactly that—a monster? I swallowed hard. I couldn’t make that jump. Not yet. “There’s something evil in this house. And whatever that evil is, I’m pretty sure it killed Danny Clemmons,” I said.

“Poppy,” Marty started, but Bailey shushed him.

“Let her finish!”

I nodded at Bailey. “I don’t believe we’re going to be able to banish Danny’s spirit until his murderer is caught.”

“And we have no way of knowing who the murderer is since there’s a block between Danny and me,” Bailey said. “I could try to channel him?”

“That’s dangerous, Bails,” Marty responded as he looked at her.

“It might be the only way for us to learn who killed him,” I argued. “Especially because I can’t feel or see him at all.”

“Murder would make sense,” Bailey nodded. “Because I feel anger in this room that wouldn’t fit with a heart attack.” She took a deep breath. “If I channeled him, Danny could tell us more about what happened to him and if this monster… or whatever you saw in your vision state… was actually that, a monster.”

“He seemed to know what the thing was in the dreams,” I added.

Marty was looking at me like every marble I possessed had dribbled out of my ears to join the refuse on the floor.

“You can’t be serious, either one of you.”

Bailey was giving me a very solemn look over Marty’s shoulder. Finally, she said: “Poppy is right. If Danny was murdered, we won’t be able to cast his spirit out by ordinary means. “I should try to channel him, but I think I should try it in the kitchen because I feel like his energy is strongest downstairs.”

So we followed Bailey into the kitchen, where Layla was cleaning the dishes. She backed out of the kitchen almost as soon as we entered, leaving her washrag on the bottom rung of a ladder propped off to the