Believing (3 page)

Other than that, he seems to keep to himself.

But I can be that way, too,
Calla thinks as she pours juice into a glass. She probably has more in common with Jacy than she does with the more confident Blue—who, come to think of it, hasn’t called her since their date. He was supposed to spend last weekend in New York City with his father, the celebrity medium David Slayton, who was doing some television appearances there.

But he must have been back long before now.

Oh, well. It’s not like Calla’s hoping to get hot and heavy with Blue.

Well, maybe she was hoping it a little, after that amazing kiss.

Still . . . a lot has happened since then.

Including a visit from her ex-boyfriend Kevin, who drove up from Tampa and dropped his sister, Lisa—Calla’s best friend—in Lily Dale last weekend. Seeing him again brought it all back: the exhilaration of her first love, and the heartache of being dumped for a college girl.

Kevin stayed only a few hours before heading on to Cornell—and, no doubt, his new girlfriend,Annie.

Monday night, Lisa flew back home to Tampa.

Calla was originally supposed to leave this week, too, headed to California, where she would have been starting school today. Dad, who is a science professor, is there on sabbatical, teaching at a university near Los Angeles.

At this point, he’s still camping out on a friend’s couch in Long Beach. He hasn’t had much luck finding an affordable apartment for the two of them in a good public school district. Money’s been tight without Mom’s salary, and it turned out she didn’t have a life-insurance policy.

Why would she? Who would have ever thought something could happen to Mom? She was so young, so together, so alive, so . . . needed.

Calla forces saliva past a hard lump in her throat and pushes away the painful thought.

Anyway,Dad seemed . . . well, not happy, but maybe a little relieved when Calla asked to stay in Lily Dale for a couple of months and attend school here. That would buy him more time to find them a place to live.

Of course, he doesn’t know about Lily Dale’s spiritual connection. If he did, no way would he have agreed to let Calla stay—or, for that matter, to have come here in the first place.

He can’t find out, no matter what. I have to stay
—
at least until I figure out what’s going on.

Her knees a little wobbly, she sinks into a chair at the table. Sipping her orange juice, Calla makes a face at its wateriness. Back in Florida, it was always freshly squeezed and thick with tangy-sweet pulp.

Florida.

Not
home.

When did she stop thinking of Florida as home?

Is this creaky little cottage in this spooky little town her home now?

No. Not really. But it was Mom’s home for eighteen years, and Calla feels closer to her here than she would anywhere else at this point.

Sure, she’s had occasional flashes of homesickness for Tampa. But she couldn’t stand living in the house where Mom died, and she isn’t anxious to go back . . . maybe not ever.

How can she face going up and down those stairs every day? The bloodstains at their foot were scrubbed away with bleach . . . but the memory of those horrible red splotches on white tile can never be wiped from Calla’s mind.

Calla closes her eyes, remembering her mother’s crumpled body, wearing an elegant charcoal gray suit with round, shiny black buttons. She remembers the unnatural angle of Mom’s neck, the frozen look of horror in her gaping eyes . . .

The official ruling was accidental death. Mom, in a pair of high-heeled black Gucci pumps she often wore, had tripped and fallen down the stairs.

Mom, who had never made a careless mistake in her life . . .

Until she burned the Irish soda bread on Saint Patrick’s Day after the stranger calling himself Tom—who wasn’t a stranger at all—showed up at the door.

The telephone rings abruptly and Calla is lifted, gratefully, from those grim thoughts.

“Can you pick it up?” her grandmother asks, busy at the stove. “It might be your dad, calling to wish you luck on your first day.”

Calla doubts that. It’s barely four a.m. in California.

“Hello?”

“Calla? It’s me!”

“Lisa?” Her friend’s familiar drawl is a welcome sound. “What’s up?”

“You are. And so am I, unfortunately.” Lisa yawns loudly in her ear as Calla steps into the next room with the phone, away from her grandmother’s perked-up ears. Odelia can be pretty nosy. Even nosier than Mom.

“What are you doing calling me this early?”

“Being a good friend. Today’s your first day, right? I thought you might be stressing and I figured I should call and tell you it’s going to go great.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m psychic.”

Calla can just see Lisa’s sly grin. “Well, that makes one of us, because I have no idea what to expect. I wish . . .”

She trails off wistfully.

“I know,” Lisa says somberly. “I wish the same thing. But hang in there. You’ll be okay.”

“You really think so?”

“Yup. It’ll be fun to meet new people. Here I am, stuck with the same old faces we’ve seen since kindergarten.”

Calla wants to tell her she’d trade places in a second, but a wave of homesickness clogs her throat.

They chat for a few more minutes, and she tells Lisa to say hello to all her old friends and teachers.

“I’ll tell them you’ll be back to visit soon,” Lisa promises.

“How am I going to do that?”

“I have a comp airline voucher you can use. They handed them out when my flight was delayed because of the storm the other night.”

“Don’t you want to use it yourself?”

“Nah. If I want to fly up north again, my parents can pay,” Lisa says with a laugh.

Calla smiles, knowing the Wilsons would be more than willing. Kevin always did say they spoil his sister.

Her smile fades when she remembers that Tampa is no longer home, and nothing there is the same. Not without Mom and Dad.

“Thanks for the offer,” Calla tells her, and swallows hard. “For now, I’ve just got to focus on getting through this day.”

“I know. Good luck. Love you.”

“You too.”

She hangs up and returns to the kitchen.

“Good timing. Here you go.” Odelia bustles over to set a heaping plate on the table, along with maple syrup and butter. “Dig in.”

Calla swallows hard. “I . . . I’m not really that hungry.”

“Eat anyway. It’ll calm down those first-day-of-school butterflies in your stomach. Trust me.”

If only the first day of school were the only thing I had to worry about.

With a sigh, Calla reaches for a fork.

The redbrick school building is outside the actual town, beyond the wrought-iron gate with its sign that welcomes people to L
ILY
D
ALE
A
SSEMBLY
. . . W
ORLD’S
L
ARGEST
C
ENTER
FOR THE
R
ELIGION OF
S
PIRITUALISM
.

Evangeline Taggart joins Calla for the ten-minute walk down the winding country road along the lake’s grassy shore. Her younger brother, Mason, lags behind them with a couple of his friends. Calla can see a couple of other kids with backpacks up ahead, also headed toward the school.

As they walk along, Evangeline chatters away as usual. Her hazel eyes dance as she tells Calla about shopping for school clothes yesterday at the Galleria in Buffalo with her aunt, who thought she should start dressing up more for school now that she’s getting older.

“I didn’t listen, in case you didn’t notice,” Evangeline says with a laugh, and gestures at her sneakers and simple long-sleeved blue T-shirt, untucked over her jeans to help camouflage her well-padded hips and thighs. Her slightly frizzy reddish hair is tamed more than usual, though, held back with a silver barrette. And she’s wearing lip gloss.

“So what’s it like not to have to wear a uniform to school for a change?” Evangeline asks.

“I don’t know yet . . . I used to complain about it, but maybe in some ways a uniform was easier. You never have to think about what to wear.”

“Well, if you’re worried, don’t be. You look fine.”

“The thing is, I’m going to run out of stuff to wear in, like, two days,” Calla tells Evangeline. “I didn’t come up here thinking I was going to stay past summer.”

“If you want to go shopping for warmer clothes,” Evangeline tells her, “I’ll go with you. That would be fun. We can go to the mall and you can get some sweaters and a down coat. What do you think?”

“Yeah, that would be good,” Calla murmurs, realizing there’s just one problem with that scenario: she’s broke.

Money wasn’t a problem when Mom was alive. She gave Calla a generous allowance and they often went shopping together. Mom loved to buy clothes for her. Now, even if Calla found her way to a mall, it’s not like she could buy anything. And it’s not like she feels comfortable asking her grandmother for money, or even Dad, for that matter.

Having faced far more traumatic problems these last few months than a wardrobe that’s seriously lacking, she puts the matter out of her head.

At least she looks halfway decent today, and that’s what counts.

She took the time to brush on mascara and rim her hazel eyes with a smudged liner pencil. She worked gel into her long, sun-streaked brown hair before she dried it, to make it look thicker and help keep her bangs out of her face. She’s overdue for a haircut, and the bangs are starting to bug her.

Disturbed as she’s been about what’s been going on around here, she didn’t overlook the fact that she’s going to be seeing— and be seen by—both Blue Slayton and Jacy Bly today.

“Hey, I meant to ask . . . how did your visit go this weekend? With your friend Lisa?”

Hearing the wistful note in Evangeline’s voice, Calla wishes she had thought to invite her over.

Then again, maybe it was better that she didn’t introduce her newest friend to her oldest. They couldn’t be more opposite: honey-blond, overprotected Lisa, with her designer wardrobe and her healthy skepticism for all things Lily Dale–related, and down-to-earth, orphaned Evangeline, with her disdain for fashion and her extracurricular classes in subjects like Crystal Healing and Past-Life Regression.

Oil and water,
Calla thinks, and is glad she kept her two friends apart. At least, this time.

“It was fun,” she tells Evangeline. “But the weekend flew by.”

“You must miss her, huh? How long have you guys been friends?”

“Since kindergarten.”

All at once, the breeze off the lake seems to grow cooler. Goose bumps spring up on Calla’s arms, and she hurriedly slips into her fleece-lined Windbreaker, glad she thought to grab it.

“I’ve known most of the kids in my class since kindergarten, too,” Evangeline is saying, idly kicking a stone along the road. “But my best friend, Amy, moved away last year after her parents split up. The two of us used to do everything together. Now I just kind of hang with whoever’s around.”

“Like me?” Calla flashes a teasing smile.

“Yeah, right. Oh, before I forget to ask . . . do you ever do any babysitting?”

“Sometimes I did, back home. Why?” Calla shivers a little and decides she really is going to need warmer clothes around here.

“This friend of my aunt’s, Paula, just broke her ankle, and she needs help after school for a few weeks with her kids. They’re really cute, two and five. I can’t do it because between my schoolwork and extracurricular stuff and another babysitting job I’ve got, I’m booked. But I told Paula I’d ask you.”

Caught off guard, Calla automatically hedges. “Oh . . . well, I’m not sure . . .”

Then again, what else has she got to do?

And
—
hello
—
you were just worrying about being broke, remember?

Now she’s suddenly got the opportunity to earn some cash.
Anyway, being around cute little kids might be good for you
, she tells herself, realizing she’s feeling oddly—and quite suddenly—gloomy.

“You should do it,” Evangeline is urging. “Paula’s great. You’ll like her a lot. And she pays great. Why don’t I just give her your number so she can call you and talk to you about it?”

“Whatever, go ahead,” Calla agrees, distracted by the plunging temperature and the strange oppression that seems to have drifted into the air.

Then she catches movement out of the corner of her eye and notices, with a start, that she and Evangeline aren’t quite alone.

For a split second, she wonders if the girl with the long blond hair is someone Evangeline knows from school.

Oh. Whoa. There’s a filmy quality about the girl’s slender build.

Is she . . . ?

Yes. She’s an apparition.

It’s happening again, and Calla’s skin tingles as she notes the mounting sensation of thickening in the icy air.

The girl turns her head abruptly to meet her gaze, and Calla recognizes her instantly.

Kaitlyn Riggs.

THREE

The first time Calla glimpsed her a few weeks ago, Kaitlyn Riggs was with her mother, Elaine, who had come to Odelia for a reading.

When she spotted Kaitlyn in Odelia’s kitchen, Calla had no idea the girl wasn’t alive—or that for some reason, Calla alone could see her.

Calla caught sight of her again just last week on a
MISSING
poster and immediately understood the reason behind Elaine Riggs’s repeated missions to Lily Dale.

Her daughter had been abducted from an Ohio shopping mall, and Elaine was desperate to find her.

New to the world of psychic mediums—and even newer to her own spiritual gifts—Calla didn’t immediately understand the clues Kaitlyn’s spirit was conveying to her. When she finally pieced it all together, she called Elaine Riggs and told her that the search should be focused on a specific area of a remote state park.

Monday night, the woman turned up on Odelia’s doorstep to tearfully thank Calla for bringing closure, even if it wasn’t the happy ending she had hoped for.

Her daughter’s strangled body had been found in the exact spot where Calla had redirected the search to.