Witching Time (The Wild Hunt #14) - Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,22
of some kind. I couldn’t seem to communicate with her. Have you ever noticed anything out here before? Any unusual activities or…things you saw?”
Dray’s expression shifted and I could tell he wanted to talk about something, but seemed reluctant to.
“If there was anything, you’d be wise to tell me. I can’t help if I don’t know what I’m dealing with.”
He ducked his head. “All right, I’ll tell you. But please don’t tell my mom I said anything. She got mad at me when I told her and said I was just imagining things.”
That was never a good start to a conversation. “All right, why don’t you help me find two pumpkins to replace the ones you sold, and you can tell me while we’re looking.”
He nodded. As we headed down another row of the pumpkin patch, he hesitantly began to speak. “I was out here a few months ago, making certain the sprinklers were working and pinching off some of the excess blossoms. You have to thin them for the pumpkins to grow larger.”
“Right,” I said. I hadn’t known that, but I didn’t want to segue into a conversation on gardening. “What time of day was it?”
“Early morning, before school. I work two hours a day before school and two hours after school for my mom. It’s the way I make spending money. I’m saving up for a car.” He gave me a crooked smile. “I want to buy an old car to fix up. You know, real old, like those old Pontiacs they used to have way back in the 1960s.”
I coughed. Having been born in 1900, the 1960s didn’t seem that far away to me. But then again, I wasn’t a teenager, either. Everything before 2001 was old to them. “Okay, you were out here in the early morning. Was the sun up?”
He shrugged. “Not quite. It was probably about five-thirty, so maybe. But it was still cool and there was still dew on the plants. Anyway, I was out here and I thought I heard…well…I thought I heard someone whispering to me. I heard my name, and then I heard, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ It scared me shitless because there wasn’t anybody else out here. Even my sister was still asleep.”
I frowned. “Did it sound male or female? The voice.”
“Like a man, actually. I remember getting really creeped out. But then I decided I was hearing things, so I ignored it. At that point, it called me again and the second time, I knew it wasn’t my imagination.” He shivered, glancing around warily. “I was right over there,” he said, pointing to another part of the patch.
“So what did you do?” I didn’t like spirits that tried to lure people off into some secluded area. It usually went hand in hand with trying to charm or possess someone.
“I ran all the way back to the house. When I told Mom, she got mad and told me I was imagining things and she didn’t want to hear that sort of bullshit again. She said that I should know better. Then she ordered me to get back to work and sent me back out to finish the job.” He sounded angry and I didn’t blame him. It sucked when nobody believed you, when you knew what you had heard or seen.
“I’m sorry that happened. Did anything else ever happen?”
He nodded. “Yeah, and boy, did I get pissed. I was out here a couple weeks later, this time making sure there weren’t any slugs eating away at the plants, and to set up netting so the deer and squirrels couldn’t get in. I was over near the hill,” he said, pointing to a slope that led up to a higher part of the farm. “I got the feeling I was being watched. I tried to tell Mom but she got mad again, so I just dealt with it on my own. I couldn’t shake the feeling and so I started coming out here armed with a pitchfork. There were a couple other times I felt like I was being watched, but until tonight, I’ve never seen anything like that mist.”
“Thanks for telling me, Dray. For what it’s worth, I believe you.” I stopped, pointing at a pumpkin that had the perfect shape for me to carve into a flying saucer. “I’ll take that one, too. Tell me, why do you think your mother doesn’t like you talking about these incidents? She’s pagan, so we know she believes in the supernatural.”