Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,36

My subconscious was still gnawing on the smashed rear window and the timing of the shade vanishing.

Carson glanced at me. “Lex’s grandmother? Why?”

“There was something weird about the way she disappeared. Remnants can fade over time, or move on or dissipate. They don’t ever just … poof.”

That got me a longer study before he suggested, “Maybe she bailed? Or something happened when you dropped the necklace?”

“Possibly,” I conceded. “Except … kidding aside, I’m pretty good at this. And I’m sure of what I felt. I just don’t know what it means.”

He thought that over while we walked on in silence. Or maybe he was thinking something entirely different. But he was unmistakably contemplative, and I gave myself props for reading that much.

Our goal seemed to be a brightly lit truck stop. I was thinking wishfully about greasy doughnuts and bad coffee when Carson asked, in a tone I couldn’t read at all, “Why do you call them remnants and not ghosts?”

I chewed over how to explain. Psychics and mediums had certain common terminology, but all the ones I knew—in my family and those I’d met working with law enforcement—had their own methods of visualization. It wasn’t exactly an objective experience.

“What most people call ghosts,” I said, “aren’t like you see in movies, a whole person and personality. Most of them are just impressions or traces. Like a snapshot of a particular moment, or a looped recording of an event. Sometimes it’s nothing but an emotional resonance, like when you get a sad or creepy feeling somewhere.”

“But you talked to Mrs. Hardwicke like a real person,” he said, and I could sense that he wasn’t just making casual conversation, and this wasn’t just about Alexis’s grandmother. “You wouldn’t be worried about her if she was just some kind of … psychic looped video.”

“This is the bit that’s hard to explain.” We were almost to the truck stop, and I wanted to get this out while darkness softened cynicism and lowered barriers. “A remnant is just a piece—but it’s a piece of a soul. And a soul can’t be sliced and diced, so the whole is present in the part.”

He stopped, looking bewildered, and his gaze dropped to Saint Gertrude’s medal around my neck. “Is this a Catholic thing?”

“No.” This was a thing I’d sensed in my gut long before I donned my first plaid skirt and oxford shirt. It annoyed me when people slapped a label on something that literally transcended time and space.

“Think of it like DNA. If I cut myself and leave a blood trail, my whole DNA is in each drop, even though it’s only one part of me.”

“So where’s the rest of the soul?” he asked. “Heaven, hell … somewhere in between?”

I get this question a lot, from the desperate, the fearful, the grieving.… I usually get a handle on the reasons people ask. I didn’t have a handle on Carson. I didn’t think my grasp was long enough to reach that deep.

“I don’t know,” I said, which is not something I admit very often. “I do know that most remnants, unless they have a reason to stay, are happy to go.”

That wasn’t entirely true. I thought about the ghost that had started my day—my yesterday, really. But something in the intensity of Carson’s question made it impossible to tell him how complicated it could be.

“What do you mean, a reason to stay?”

I shrugged and started walking again. “Bits of spirit cling to things like fingerprints sometimes. But if we’re talking a cognitive-type shade—well, there’s unfinished business or some traumatic event. Some remnants get stuck in a rut and don’t know the rest of them has moved on. And sometimes someone leaves a piece of themselves behind voluntarily. My uncle Burt, for instance. He’s not leaving my aunt Hyacinth until she kicks off and can come with him.”

“Very sweet,” said Carson, trying for cynicism and not quite making it.

“Lots of ghosts like to pop in now and then to check in on their loved ones, or hang out in their favorite—”

“Haunts?”

I rolled my eyes and gave him that one.

His mood lightened to its usual … whatever it was. I’d been wrong to call it stoicism. That implied a lack of emotion, whereas Carson’s demeanor allowed humor and irritation and a few other things that had distracted me when I should have stayed on task. But I was on to him now.

“Carson,” I said as we reached the edge of the neon island around the truck stop. He