Lunatic Revenge (26 page)

He smiled.

She stood up.

“Back in a minute,” she said, and headed out the door. It was past time she and French Langdon talked face to face.

“Hey, tough stuff. Heard your boyfriend is coming around. Great news.”

“Were you in school because of Flynn? Because you knew he might be in trouble?”

“So I didn’t look young enough to be there on my own? Dang. That’s gonna bite not being able to do that anymore.”

“You’re the one who pulled us out of the car, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “Right place. Right time.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled again, transforming the stern expression he usually wore. “You’re welcome. Since I saved your life, I don’t suppose I could guilt you into a date or anything like that.”

Tara should have been shocked, but she could tell that teasing was part of his personality.

“No, I don’t suppose you could.”

His smile widened, which pulled his scar into an interesting crease down the side of his face. “You’re too young for me, anyway.”

“You’re way too old for me,” Tara said.

He laughed softly. “Thank goodness we avoided that disaster before it happened.”

Tara grinned. He
was
funny and a little bit charming, but her heart belonged to Flynn.

French held out his hand. “So, let’s just shake on it and go about our business, okay?”

The moment Tara touched his hand she flashed on a boat fire.

“Are you going on vacation?”

He looked a little startled. “Yeah, to the Bahamas
 . . .
do a little deep sea fishing.”

“Don’t get on the boat. It’s going to catch on fire.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you feel about my dad’s bass boat and the family farm pond?”

“Good.”

“Thanks for the heads up, Tara Luna. Since you just saved my life, I think we’re even now, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“Hey, your uncle is looking for you,” he said, and pointed over her shoulder.

Tara turned around and saw Uncle Pat frowning. She smiled and waved, so he’d know not to worry, and when she turned back around, French Langdon was gone.

She looked up and down the hall but he was nowhere in sight. After a moment of disappointment, she let it go. They’d said all they needed to say.

He’d just made goodbye a little easier.

She headed back to the waiting room, confident that their lives were finally getting back on track, and thankful Flynn was going to be around to live it with her.

That night when she went
to bed, the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was the dream-catcher hanging over her bed.

She slept without dreaming, and then just before morning an all-too familiar face popped up in her dream.

The sky was clear—the ground solid, the grass was green beneath her feet. It was a far cry from the limbo they’d been lost in before. Tara felt a breeze upon her skin and turned to face it. It caught the hair hanging down around her shoulders and lifted it from her neck to cool her skin.

She closed her eyes, inhaling the sweet scents of flowers in bloom and when she opened them, Michael O’Mara was standing before her. He seemed a little younger, and less foreboding, but she knew why he’d come.

“You promised to help me talk to Flynn,” he said.

“I know.”

“Are you going to keep your promise?”

“Of course, but there’s something you need to know. There’s a possibility that he will be able to hear you on his own. He came back changed. He can hear people’s thoughts.”

“I know, but only the living. He will not have the connection with the dead that you do.”

“Then I will be your voice.”

“You will tell him the truth, even if it’s something you think might hurt him?”

“I will deliver your message as you give it. When will you come?”

“I will pick the time. All you need to remember is that you have given your word.”

Even though her feet weren’t moving, Tara began to move backward. As she did, O’Mara grew smaller and smaller until he eventually disappeared.

Tara woke up.

She lay without moving, thinking about what O’Mara had said. It didn’t have to mean there was anything bad going to happen again. It just meant that whatever it was he wanted Flynn to know might disappoint him, or hurt him emotionally. There was absolutely no reason to assume it had anything to do with physical danger.

No reason at all.

(Continue reading for excerpts of Sharon’s other Lunatic series books)

My Lunatic Life

Excerpt

Four days later, the dark shadow came back.

It was three minutes after four in the morning when Tara woke up needing to go to the bathroom. She was on her way back to bed when she sensed she was no longer alone. Her heart skipped a beat as the darkness between her and the hallway moved into her room. A normal girl’s first instinct would have been to scream or run away, but Tara was used to spooks. She stomped into her bedroom with her hand in the air.

“Look, Smokey . . . I’m bordering on PMS, so you don’t want to mess with me. State your business or make yourself scarce. And don’t go
through
me again to do it. I’ll tell Henry and Millicent to kick your behind so hard you’ll never be able to put two ectoplasmic molecules together again. Do you read me?”

The shadow shifted then disappeared through the floor.

“That’s better,” Tara muttered, then headed to the dresser, where she’d left her jewelry box. She dug through it until she found her Saint Benedict’s medal, fastened the chain around her neck, and then crawled back into bed. “Like I don’t already have enough to deal with,” she said wearily, then punched her pillow a couple of times before settling back to sleep.

All too soon, the alarm was going off and another strange day was in motion.

The first week at school
sped by without further trouble. At home, Uncle Pat got cable hooked up to the TV and internet to Tara’s laptop. She caught up on episodes of
Glee
and
Gossip Girl.
She was beginning to believe everything was smoothing out. Then week two came, reminding her she was still the new kid in school.

Tara was on her way to first period when she turned a corner in the hall and came up on the cheerleader trio who she now thought of as The Blonde Mafia. Prissy saw Tara, then pointed at her and said something that sent the other two into a fit of giggles.

“You are so lame. You’re almost as funny as your name,” Prissy said, as Tara walked past.

Tara rolled her eyes. “Is that rhyme supposed to pass for white girl rap?”

Prissy’s face flushed angrily as kids standing nearby heard it go down and started laughing, but Tara didn’t hang around for a second stanza. She didn’t have time for their petty crap. She walked about ten feet further down the hall when she heard a shriek and turned just in time to see two hanks of Prissy’s hair suddenly standing straight up on either side of her face like donkey ears.

Millicent!
Tara stifled a grin. “I knew that was gonna happen,” she said, and kept on walking.

Tara’s first-period teacher was at her desk, poking frantically at the screen of her smart phone. She looked up when Tara walked in, nodded distractedly, then returned to what she’d been doing. The air was so thick with distress that Tara immediately sensed what was wrong.

Mrs. Farmer had money troubles.

That was something she understood. She and Uncle Pat rarely had an excess of the green stuff, themselves. And considering that his new job with the city of Stillwater involved reading electric meters, they weren’t going to get rich this year, either.

She slipped into her seat, then took her book out of her backpack, trying to concentrate on something besides the misery Mrs. Farmer was projecting. But for a psychic, it was like trying to ignore the water while going through a car wash. Tara was inundated with wave after wave of her teacher’s thoughts and emotions.

All of a sudden she knew Mrs. Farmer’s husband drank too much. Her mother was a nag. Her sister was married to a doctor, which made her own husband’s problems seem even worse. And suddenly Tara knew something Mrs. Farmer did not.

It wasn’t that Mrs. Farmer couldn’t manage her money.
Someone was stealing it.

The room began to fill with other students, and a few minutes later the bell rang, signaling the beginning of class. Tara felt Mrs. Farmer trying to focus on her job and Tara tried to do the same. English was one of her favorite classes.

“Good morning,” Mrs. Farmer said. “Your assignment over the weekend was to read the poem,
The Female of the Species,
by Rudyard Kipling, then write a one-hundred word paper on it. This morning we’re going to read your papers aloud in class.”

The collective groan that followed her announcement was no surprise. Tara sensed that half the class hadn’t even read the poem and of the ones who had, less than a dozen had completed the assignment. Tara pulled out her notes but had a difficult time focusing. She kept keying in on Mrs. Farmer’s plight.

She knew what needed to be done to help her, but it meant making herself vulnerable.

The hour passed, and when the bell rang students scattered, even as Mrs. Farmer was still giving them their assignment for tomorrow. Tara had argued with herself all through class, when she really hadn’t had an option. If she’d seen someone stealing, she would have told. Knowing it was happening and who was doing it and not telling was the same thing to her. She waited until the last of the students were gone, then headed toward the front of the room, where her teacher was erasing the blackboard.

“Mrs. Farmer, may I speak with you a minute?”

Unaware anyone had lingered behind, Mrs. Farmer whirled around, startled. “Oh, my. You startled me, dear. I didn’t know anyone was still here. You’re Tara, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tara sighed. There was nothing to do but jump in with both feet. “I need to ask you something, and then I need to
tell
you something.”

She could see the confusion on her teacher’s face, but she had to hurry or she’d be late for second period.

“Who’s Carla?” Tara asked.

“Why . . . that’s my babysitter,” Mrs. Farmer said. “She stays at my home during the day and takes care of my twin daughters. They’re only three.”

“Okay . . . I need to tell you that she’s stealing money from you. She’s taking blank checks out of the new pads of checks in the box and forging your signature. That’s why you’re account stays overdrawn.”

Tara could see all the color fade from her teacher’s face. Mrs. Farmer gasped. “How do you know this?”

Tara sighed. “I just do, okay?”