Dead Living (Spirit Caller Book 5) (3 page)

Now was not the time to tell her about me and Jeremy, so I smiled and said, “When I find out, you’ll be the second person I tell, right after my mother.”

“That mother of yours don’t need to know right away,” Mrs. Saunders said with a big grin. She took another sip of her gin-latte and smacked her lips. “This is some good stuff.”

I went back to my dishes, as Amy and Mrs. Saunders discussed the logistics of moving her. Mrs. Saunders wanted her own bedroom that was big enough for a comfy chair and a tiny television, in case she wasn’t in the mood to be out and around everyone. Then, she wanted a tiny little living room to share with Millie and for them to entertain company.

Mrs. Saunders was in her nineties, and she had a busier social schedule than I did. Mind you, she didn’t act like it.

“Nan,” Amy was saying, “you can use my living room for your company.”

“What company do I ever get?” Mrs. Saunders exclaimed.

“Hey! I’m right here,” I said jokingly.

“You’re not company,” Mrs. Saunders said.

Amy went through a list of the people who dropped by to see Mrs. Saunders during the last week. There were various reasons why none of them could be classed as company. The local priest didn’t count, and neither did the two nuns. Neither did the various members of the local Catholic Church’s “Shut In” program, who visited seniors who weren’t overly mobile.

Oh, and the Pentecostal church’s seniors’ program? Those people didn’t count. Neither did the Anglican church’s “home visits” people. Neither did the United Church’s people, either, though at least they were the nicest because they brought her a slice of cake whenever they came, unlike those Pentecostals who brought her bananas, and the priest who brought her sugar-free cookies.

All of the people in Wisemen’s Cove didn’t count. Neither did most of the people in Swan Hills, Goose Point, Hawke’s Landing, or Tickle Me Cove (don’t ask).

In fact, by my calculation, there was about six people on the entire island who Mrs. Saunders would class as “company.”

I’d have to speak with Dema about setting up supernatural surveillance of Amy’s house. I was getting better at doing wards, too, so I would head down there and do up one. Amy was a Christian, though, so I’d have to be careful to make it seem like me being my usual weird self and not some demon summoning strange shit.

Ah, the joys of interdenominational relationships.

“What’s going to happen to the house?” I asked.

“I guess I’ll sell it,” Mrs. Saunders said. “If anyone wants this ol’ shack.”

“It’s not easy to sell houses in a place like this,” Amy said.

I knew how true that was. I sold my condo in Edmonton for a lot and came here and bought my own house in cash. I’ve been able to live off the balance since, just working here and there whenever my expenses exceeded the allowance I gave myself.

I looked around the old house. It seemed a shame that it might sit vacant for years, until some developer bulldozed the house to make way for a high-priced summer home for some mainlander doctor whose money would cause the housing rates to go sky high and locals wouldn’t be able to afford to live here…

My God. I’d turned into a Newfoundlander.

My head was swarming with emotions and thoughts when I left Mrs. Saunders’s house. I didn’t know exactly how long Mrs. Saunders had lived in her house, but it was for most of her adult life. She had raised all of her children in that house, and had seen her family grow up and move away. Her husband died, and still she remained. She grew frail and elderly, but she stayed there all of these years.

I tried never to think about how old Mrs. Saunders truly was because the dread of knowing what was to come always stung too much. I would mourn that woman like the grandmother figure and the friend she was to me. And I never wanted to think about any of that because it seemed wrong to begin mourning while I still had time left with her.

“The Elder One will eventually pass from this life,” Dema said from behind me only a few steps from Mrs. Saunders’ door.

I didn’t flinch or jump this time. I knew Dema would poke her head up when I needed to be alone with my thoughts the most.

“She has lived a very good life. If she wishes to spend her remaining days surrounded with family, she deserves it.”

“I know that. I can still worry.” I looked over my shoulder and frowned at her. “You understand that, right?”

Dema was unusually grave and it reflected in her clothes. She wore black yoga pants and tall rubber boots. She had on her usual caribou-skin tunic, but it had no embellishments today. Her hair was tied back, but not braided. Her hair, like her clothes, lacked the usual accessories.

“Spirit Caller,” Dema said, and her voice was eerily sombre, “has it not occurred to you that the Elder One might not want you to discover her when she’s departed the world?”

That froze me in my tracks. “What?”

“Though you are a grown woman, you are but a child to her. You will always be a child to her. She does not want to give you the grief of discovering her. Be happy that the burden will no longer be yours, and be willing to support those who have been handed your former burden.”

There are times I forget that Dema is six thousand years old. She is far wiser than I will ever hope to be. And she was right. Damn it all, but she was right. I was being selfish to make this all about me.

“I wish people didn’t have to grow old and die.”

Dema appeared next to me and walked along side. Her outfit changed again. This time, she was wearing caribou-skin trousers and a matching knee-length dress and was barefoot. Her hair wasn’t tied back, but also didn’t move in the gale winds. “It is a waste of energy to wish for something that can never be.”

“It’s my energy. I can do with it as I please.”

“Then you are a very wasteful girl,” were Dema’s parting words.

I started laughing, even as tears trickled down my face. No, I couldn’t control who lived or who died, no more than I could wish away the wind that was giving me a pounding headache. I still gave myself permission to be sad. Mrs. Saunders was my friend, and I looked up to her. I loved helping her maintain her independence. I loved doing her dishes, and listening to her tell me stories about when she was a naughty young woman in the “big city” of St. John’s.

I loved her life advice, which generally boiled down to:
My love, you could be dead tomorrow. Do something.

And it was great advice. I could be dead tomorrow. My life lately was dangerous enough that anything could happen. Even the normal mundane world had more than enough hazards that could suck the life from me. I should do things now, because there might not be a tomorrow.

I looked over my shoulder at Mrs. Saunders’s house. Since moving to this quiet, outport town, I’ve had a tug to do something. I put it off for various reasons, but now…And I think it would make Mrs. Saunders happy. I wonder…

Chapter 3

Decisions Are for Grown Ups

With all of the shock of Mrs. Saunders’s news, I’d completely forgotten to tell her The Big News. Now that I thought about it, I should call my parents and tell them. Mom would love to know her only child had
finally
gotten engaged and, therefore, would be providing Mom with several grandchildren. Oh Ancestors in their graves. It occurred to me that Mom might convince Dad to move here if I ever had kids. To be near the theoretical grandbabies. Then I’d never get to eat poutine and battered shrimp ever again.

Hmm. Should Jeremy tell his parents before I tell my parents? Should we tell them at the same time?

Is there such a thing as announcement protocol? Are we supposed to take loads of photos of my engagement ring and post them to Facebook? Are we supposed to do cheesy engagement photos of us displaying our love in a field of rotting, dead leaves? Am I allowed to just tell people online, or do I have to wait for permission?

The idea of me needing permission made me smile. I’d say that to Jeremy when he got home; that I was waiting for his permission to make the announcement. He’d get a kick out of that.

The entire pregnancy scare was still too new for me to inflict Mom’s grandbaby salvos on my soul.  I decided that I needed to clear my head and enjoy the quiet of my day before announcing anything to anyone, and that definitely included my mother. I made the way across the connecting yard to my house, dodging through the small slit in my woodpile. I’d need to get Johnny Cooper and his boys to bring me a couple loads of wood to cure over the winter, so they’d be good to use in a year. There’s no way I’m going out there to pack wood once the weather turned for the winter.

I smirked at my thoughts. I’d sure turned into a little homesteader since moving out there. Who would have predicted what I really needed was a wood furnace and an old lady to look after? Well, and to be adopted by an old spirit, accept my innate magical talent, and find myself in the middle of a supernatural war. And finding the love of my life who accepted me, supernatural shit and all. And finding a community of normal-ish people who treated me like an equal and not a freak.

But it’s not like I’m making a list.

I grabbed my sketch box, a pillow, and a fuzzy blanket from my living room and headed back outside. I moved the wooden lawn chair Jeremy’s father had made me so that my back was to the wind. I wiggled down enough so that the chair protected the back of my head from the September wind, and then I got to work.

I admit I was worried when I’d cut my hours back from counseling. There was still plenty of part-time work, and I was usually called in to cover emergencies and the like. I’d been offered a position covering the head social worker who was going on maternity leave, but I didn’t want to work full-time for a full year. Not with Jeremy still recovering.

The hospital understood and I helped them find a temporary replacement. They still brought me in on occasion, and various departments of Children’s Services hired me as a consultant, as I called it on the invoice, whenever they needed extra help. Thankfully, there were far fewer incidents of teen suicides in the isolated communities along the Labrador coast over the last half a year. I was thrilled to not be needed; children should never die.

Surprisingly, my art was taking off. Over the latter part of the summer, I’d made a tidy sum, enough for me to consider it a part-time living. The tourists loved my cards and notepads. I also sold a couple of framed paintings a year at a few hundred dollars apiece. My large piece that I painted from my balcony, overlooking the ocean, sold for nearly a thousand dollars! I wasn’t amazing or anything, but I did seascapes well and people liked them.

With that income in hand, I planned to branch out into posters, postcards, and prints. I was determined to have as much as possible made locally, as opposed to shipped in from other countries. It made the price higher, true, but I could also proudly put
Made in Newfoundland
on everything. There was a printer in Corner Brook that could do my prints and posters. A bigger shop in St. John’s said they could do my postcards, as long as I did a minimum order. 

I’d also earned enough money to take two art classes from the university in Corner Brook. I was a few courses short of a minor in art, that’s for sure, and I should probably work on my skills. I could even teach a class now and then to the tourists; a special drop in class at L’Anse aux Meadows that came with the tour packages.

I tucked the fuzzy blanket under my legs and let out a contented sigh. For the first time in my life, it felt like there was an endless road of possibilities in front of me. I don’t need to live my life the way the world expects me to. I can finally be me, whatever and whoever that is. It was a rather nice feeling.

I flipped open the top of my wooden box, also made by Jeremy’s woodworking fiend of a father, and pulled out my sketchbook. It was filled with all of the work that was just for me. I never even showed Jeremy most of the drawings in here, the ones where I drew my feelings and not things. They weren’t
secret
. Just private. He understood.

I flipped through the pages. Jeremy asleep with his leg propped up on the coffee table. Jeremy cooking a huge breakfast, shirtless and content. The nights I couldn’t sleep and did little more than heavy black scratches all over the page until the anxiety and fears had left me too exhausted to stay up.

There were even a couple of Dema that I did as quasi-fashion plates. She’d eavesdropped on those and complained that I made her too lean. Then I’d made her hair wrong. Then I’d put the wrong feather in her hair. Then she declared I was an even poorer artist than Spirit Caller and promptly left.

I snuggled down in the big chair, wiggling and tugging until the blanket was perfectly placed around my bent legs. I rested my head against the pillow behind my head and looked around me. I focused on Mrs. Saunders’s bleeding heart plants. She adored those bushes. I always admired them. They didn’t put up with any shit from the weather. They always bloomed, no matter what. They didn’t care about the wind or the sleet or the rain. They had a mission and by their
planty
ancestors, they were going to do it.

As pencil touched paper, I thought about how to safeguard Mrs. Saunders against the
other.
Her own faith was a powerful shield. Dema tended to warn away anything harmful or stressful that came near the old lady’s property. I also put up a ward around her place, though Dema said it was shoddy and disappointing work for a Spirit Caller.

I breathed in the sense of contentment as I worked. I was still learning how to be comfortable in my own skin, but I felt the wind of contentment more and more these days. It was a glorious feeling.

Damn, though. Her moving away was going to change things for me. And, yes, I know that moving down the road wasn’t Siberia, but it was still not on the other side of my wood pile.

Dema was right. I hate that I even had to think that statement, but there it was. Mrs. Saunders had earned the right to determine her last days. I had fought so hard for her to maintain all of her independence that I hadn’t even considered the stress of living in a big house all alone. It needed maintenance, and sure we’d all help, but she still had to ask and worry about it. If she was living elsewhere, that wouldn’t be her concern. She wouldn’t have to worry about ordering the oil or arranging people to chop her fire wood and stack it.