She’ll lie to get what she wants. Her instincts are to force spirits to move on, but she doesn’t understand that some of us need to stay.”
Then Mom disappears and the suddenness causes my lungs to squeeze. I scan the room and it’s empty and that makes me strangely hollow. Footsteps upstairs, and I find the ability to breathe again. She’s not gone, just someplace different.
I undo the locks and open the door. Glory has waist-length, sandy-blond hair that has a wild natural curl. She wears a long, layered, light blue skirt and an off-the-shoulder white blouse. In her hands is the bundle she held up, and in the crook of her arm is a wicker picnic basket.
“Hello, V,” Glory says. “Are you going to let me in?”
Don’t want to, but … “Sure.”
Glory enters and surveys my home with wary eyes. “You skipped our monthly healing session.” She pins me with her gaze. “Twice.”
“Sorry. I’ve been busy.”
“Hmmm.” Glory walks farther into the room, each step more hesitant than the one before. “I’ve been dreaming of you.”
“All good things, right?” My smile feels fake, and I’m betting it looks that way, too.
“No.”
Crap.
She lifts the bundle in her hand. “Do you know what this is?”
Not really. She’s used it around me before when I’ve gone to her home for psychic healings and when she’s cleansed my aura. “Some sort of expensive pot?”
“Sage, and it’s used to rid your body and your home of unwanted negative energy.”
“That sounds good.”
Glory walks toward the turret and there’s a sinking in my gut as she brushes her hand along the pillows of Mom’s favorite spot. She then looks over at the piano. Mom’s piano. Where Mom had been sitting before Glory came to the door. “I remember when I first met you, you used to play the piano all the time. Beautifully if memory serves correctly.”
I did. Mom taught me how to play. The music belonged to me and her. After she died, I stopped.
“I’m curious,” Glory continues, “why in my dreams you’re smudging this house, and when you do it, you’re doing it in fear?”
“Smudging?” I ask innocently.
She waves the stick in the air. “The act of lighting this to rid a house of spirits. Now tell me why I saw what I did in my dreams.”
“I have no idea.”
“An even better question, why did I have an angel visit me this morning telling me that you’ve chosen a very dangerous path? One that will affect your health, your family, and one that includes you messing with the spiritual realm?”
We stare at each other. Me trying to hide my guilt. Her in disapproval.
“Spill,” Glory demands, and my shoulders sag.
“It’s not a big deal. I’m doing my senior thesis paper on whether or not ghosts exist.”
Glory grimaces as the picnic basket slides from the crook of her elbow to her wrist. “And how are you going about this project?”
“I’m going to do some research and”—I twine and untwine my fingers—“I’m going to visit haunted places.”
“And communicate with the spirits there?”
I nod. Glory tsks me like I’m a toddler then walks into the kitchen and sets the basket on the table. “From the moment I met you, I told you to be careful with spirits.”
“Technically”—I hold a finger in the air—“you told me to avoid the first floor, and I do.” At least until recently.
“Because you’re an antenna.” Rare frustration leaks into her tone. “Spirits are naturally drawn to you, and when you start communicating with them you’re inviting them to attach themselves to you. Not all spirits are good ones. Some aren’t spirits at all, but demons. You’re not trained to understand the difference, and what are you going to do when something negative attaches itself to you and you drag it home?”
“I’ll call you?”
“Yes, you will, but you don’t need to drag anything else into this house. Whatever lives on the first floor likes to play games with people. You and your father are protected, I’ve seen to that, but this entity draws in prone people and then it takes advantage of their weaknesses. The last thing you need is more negative energies in this house and possibly creating a situation I can’t control.”
“I don’t think the spirits downstairs are as bad as you think.”
“Because you think it is a child.”
“I know it’s a child.”
“And I’m telling you that there is more than just that child. Something else lurks there, and I don’t understand why you’re choosing to be naïve. You’re too smart for this,