The Spirits of Christmas (3 page)

*****

Akira stared at where the ceiling fan should be. She
couldn’t see it in the darkness but she knew it was there.

It’s a natural process, she told herself. Women have been
managing for thousands of years. She’d said that to Zane so blithely just a few
days ago. But that had been about her body making the baby. Sure, it was a
miracle, but it was an ineluctable miracle—her body would take care of the
details without her.

Raising a child, on the other hand, was a process consisting
of innumerable daily decision points. Decision points that she had no idea how
to make.

It was stupid to be scared. There was no point. Like it or
not—and she did like it, very much, or at least she had just a few short days
ago—the baby was on his way.

The thought was terrifying.

“Rose, Rose.” Akira lifted her head. Had she heard someone
calling Rose’s name? The sound was like a whispered hiss, at the very edge of
her hearing. She listened, but it didn’t happen again. She rolled over, burying
her face in her pillow.

She shouldn’t be lying awake worrying about her
not-so-theoretical future child; she should be worrying about Toby and Nora.
Finding Hannah’s son hadn’t proven as easy as Akira had expected. Zane’s gift
worked best when he could touch an object that was connected to the person or
thing that he was trying to find. Akira suspected it was some form of quantum
entanglement. Unfortunately, he couldn’t touch a ghost.

And Akira was very afraid that she’d screwed up. Maybe big
time. Asking Meredith about the owner of the house had seemed like a logical
next step. The realtor had to know how to get in touch with him, right? But
Meredith had been surprised to hear that anyone was living there.

The owner had had the house remodeled, planning to live in
it himself. Apparently, he’d then changed his mind and posted it for rent over
a year ago. Meredith had never managed to find a tenant.

“Ever since the real estate crash, Florida’s got more houses
than people. Even in Tassamara, some are always empty,” she’d told Akira. “And
there’s something about that one. People just don’t like it. It’s a sweet
little house, great light, top-of-the-line appliances. Seriously, I’d love to
have that double oven in my kitchen. But I’ve shown it a dozen times and…” Her
voice trailed off and her eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t even go inside.”

Akira’d shrugged, feeling awkward. News traveled and most people
in Tassamara knew she saw ghosts. Still, she didn’t like to talk about them. The
absolute last thing she wanted was for her life to turn into an on-going
episode of some ghost-hunting reality television show.

“Huh,” Meredith said thoughtfully. She tapped a pencil on
her desk. “But I haven’t heard anything from the owner about taking it off the
market. Let me get in touch with him and get back to you.”

“Can’t you just give me his contact info?” Akira asked.

Meredith’s answer came after a long pause. “You’re about to
marry the source of 70% of my business,” she said. “I will if you insist. But I’d
rather not. Respecting people’s privacy—everyone’s privacy—is important to me.”
She waited.

Akira had gotten the message. It wasn’t a threat, not
really. But keeping secrets was a two way street.

 “I’ll ask him to contact you as soon as he can,” Meredith
added, more gently.

Akira had had to accept that. But what if the owner hadn’t
given permission for Nora to be there? Akira rolled over, snuggling closer to
Zane.

He was asleep, damn him.

No, not damn him. She loved him. She did. She adored so much
about him, including his calm certainty that everything would work out fine.
She just wished some of that calm would rub off on it. She draped her arm over
his chest and pulled herself closer.

“Mmm?” he murmured a question.

“Love you,” she whispered, feeling the undercurrent of
desperate nerves in her own voice. What kind of mom would she be? She felt
tears prickling the back of her eyes and furiously blinked them back. This was
crazy. She was crazy.

“Hey.” He shifted under her arm, turning to face her. The
room was dark, but he reached a hand up, tracing it along her arm and shoulder
until he reached her face. “Are you freaking out again?”

“Kind of,” she admitted in a tiny voice.

“Do you want the science lecture?”

“Uh-huh.” She sniffled.

“Pregnancy causes hormone production to increase,” Zane
dutifully started. “Estrogen, progesterone, and human chorionic…”

“Gonadotropin,” she prompted.

“Right, that one,” he agreed, sliding his hand from her face
down and around to her back so that his arm was around her. “All of them affect
emotion. They’re making a nice, safe, nurturing place for Henry to grow, but
the side effects are rough on you. It’s just chemistry, babe.”

Akira’s eyes still prickled but her lips curled up nonetheless.
All her life, science had been a refuge to her. People make no sense? That’s
okay, because science does. Having Zane help her retreat into scientific
analysis when she felt bad was… the tears spilled over.

“Hey,” he protested, pulling her closer so that she was
pressed against him. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go.”

“No, I’m happy,” she said through her tears. “That was—you are—I
don’t know how I got so lucky. I—” She took a few deep shaky breaths, trying to
hold back the full-fledged bawl that was impending.

“Akira.” Rose’s voice came from right behind Akira’s
shoulder. “I need you.”

Akira rolled away from Zane, startled. “Rose!” she
protested. “Our bedroom is supposed to be private, remember? We talked about
this.”

In the darkness, Rose stood above her, glowing. Not pink or
red or the colors of upset ghost that Akira had seen before, but a steady gold
light, shining like a halo outlining the teenage girl’s image.

Akira quit complaining. “Wow.”

“I need you,” Rose said again.

 “Tell me.”

“Hannah’s here. She says something is wrong with Nora.”

Akira was out of bed almost before Rose finished her
sentence. “Come on,” she told Zane. “We have to go.”

“Do I get to find out where?” he asked, voice dry, but he
was already sitting up, reaching for the lamp on the bedside table.

As he flipped the switch, light chasing away the shadows,
Akira smiled at him. In a mood swing that was already starting to feel almost
normal, she felt completely, serenely, intensely happy. Worrying about
something she could immediately do something about was much better than
worrying about a future that she couldn’t control. And as long as Zane was with
her, everything would be fine.

*****

“Should we ring the doorbell?” she asked tentatively. Hannah
and Rose had disappeared into the house, but she and Zane weren’t ghosts and
couldn’t walk through walls.

“As opposed to what exactly? It’s 2AM.”

“Good point.” The porch was dark, but Akira felt around
where she remembered the doorbell to be. She found it and pushed hard, then
waited, tapping one foot anxiously. “If she doesn’t answer the door, what do we
do? Call for help? Break a window? Keep ringing and hope someone wakes up?” she
asked, throwing out possibilities as fast as she could think of them.

Zane reached around her and put his hand on the door, then
mumbled something grumpy under his breath, opened the screen door, and tried
again. “Oh, clever,” he said with approval, holding the screen door open with
his shoulder. “She must be tall.”

“Um, yeah.” Akira watched, bemused, as Zane reached up to
the porch light, high on the wall. He unscrewed the top, a bronzed steel square
that sat firmly on glass walls, as if he were going to change the unlit bulb
inside, and lifted it off carefully. A key was taped to the interior.

“How did you…” Akira started in wonder, before shaking her
head and falling silent.

“Locks and keys, they’re connected.” Zane started to pick at
the tape before pausing, cocking his head to one side. “Sounds as if we don’t
need it.”

The light came on first. Akira forced a smile at the tiny
circle in the door as Zane returned the top of the light to its base, leaving
the key in place. She hoped Nora wouldn’t walk away in disgust.

Rose popped out through the wall. Akira blinked hard, two,
three times. Rose’s glow was even more intense than it had been. She was
lighting up the darkness like a solar flare.

“She’s sick,” Rose said hurriedly. “I don’t understand
what’s wrong, but she’s pulling energy out of me like a vampire. She needs a
doctor. Or a hospital. Or something.”

 “She’s pulling what?” Akira asked. She took a nervous step
away from Rose. Spirit energy, even unusually pretty spirit energy, made her
uneasy.

The door flew open. “What are you doing here?” Nora glared.

Zane’s hand dropped onto Akira’s shoulder, a comforting
weight, as she stared at Nora. “You got fat.”

Nora closed her eyes. “It’s the middle of the night. Why are
you at my door?”

“Hannah said—” Akira started, before stopping. “No, you’re
fat.”

“I’m pregnant. Pregnant women gain weight,” Nora snapped.
But Akira ignored her. Nora had been rotund with pregnancy before, but more
like a balloon halfway up a stick than a comfortably maternal cushion. Now,
though, even her face was puffy and swollen.

“She’s sick,” Rose whispered into Akira’s ear. “Really
sick.”

Akira nudged Zane with her elbow. “Call an ambulance.”

Nora stared at her. “Are you insane? Are you—oh, that’s a
stupid question. You think you see ghosts. You are crazy. You need help. Go
away.”

She started to slam the door, but Akira stuck her hand out
and caught it, pushing against the wood and stepping forward and into the
house. “What happened before?”

Nora pulled herself up, but the hand draped across her mound
of belly was more revealing. The brown fingers looked like fat sausages. “I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She passed out,” Hannah reported, hovering behind Nora.
Akira glanced at her. The old woman had never looked anything but hostile, but
her scowl now held concern, not just annoyance. “It looked like some kind of a
fit. She twitched and shook.”

“Hannah says you fainted,” Akira reported. “And maybe had a
seizure?”

Behind her, she could hear Zane on the phone, giving the
address of the house.

“What the—” For a moment, Nora looked almost afraid. Then
she lifted her chin high and said poisonously, “I have no idea what’s wrong
with you. But I am not some gullible idiot. I don’t know why you want to scare
me away, but if you’ve got cameras on this house, you might as well stop
recording. You’re not going to see anything interesting.”

“Mm-hmm.” Akira ignored her. She was trying desperately to
remember what it meant that Nora was so much fatter than she had been. She’d
been reading books about pregnancy. She knew she’d seen something about rapid
weight gain.

“Ooh,” Rose squeaked. “That’s so weird.” Akira glanced at
her. Rose had her arm outstretched toward Nora’s belly and warm yellow light
was flowing from her open hand toward the woman’s midsection.

“I don’t remember.” Akira bit her lip, chewing on it
uncertainly. She ought to know this. But she was almost more worried about what
was happening with Rose. Should she be dragging the ghostly teenager away from
Nora somehow? Or yelling at Nora to get away? Ghostly energy could be
dangerous.

But the glow didn’t look threatening. And this was Rose. She
tried to remember what Dillon had told her about his other dimensional
experience. Rose had managed to withstand the energy storm so maybe her energy
was somehow different, either on another frequency or composed of different
particles?

“Preeclampsia,” Zane said from behind her. “High blood
pressure.”

“Yes.” Akira’s hands met, in a triumphant clap, before she
clasped her fingers together nervously, as if in prayer. “You need to go to a
hospital, right away,” she told Nora.

She was no longer worried about Rose’s energy. The ghost
girl had brought Akira back from the dead and had helped Dillon when he was
lost in another dimension. Akira refused to believe that anything Rose would do
could harm Nora and her baby. And although she didn’t know what was happening
with Rose’s spirit energy, in the physical world she knew that Nora needed
help.

For the first time, Nora looked more vulnerable than angry.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you do,” Akira answered her. “You’re not stupid. You
know something’s wrong. If Hannah can tell that you’re in trouble, you must
know you are, too.”

Nora paused. One hand rose to pull her light cotton robe
closed at the throat. “I can’t leave Toby.”

Akira froze. Oh, dear. Oh…dear. “His father?” she asked
tentatively. Nora had said nothing about a partner or husband when they first
met, but she’d assumed there must be a man somewhere.

“Not available.” Nora pursed her mouth. “The baby’s not due
until January. I’ll call my doctor in the morning.”

Akira glanced at Zane, uncertain.

“Nope.” Calmly, as if he barged his way into strangers’
houses every day, he urged Akira forward a few more steps and stepped into the
house behind her. “Zane Latimer.” He introduced himself to Nora easily, holding
out a hand for her to shake. “Do you have a bag packed for the hospital?”

“I—” Nora fell back a few steps automatically and then drew
herself up. She was just an inch or so shorter than Zane, Akira noted,
impressed. It must be nice to go through life able to reach the top shelf. “If
you don’t leave, I’m calling the police.”

“You do that,” he said agreeably. “I’m not sure who’s on
night duty this week. Maybe Tim? But I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. Job
gets boring, after all. You want my phone?” He pulled his phone back out of his
pocket and held it up as if he’d pass it to her if she nodded.