LITMIR.BIZ

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the end, she rose to her feet and stepped away from the bed. “All right, sweetie.”

      Out in the hall, Gia felt torn between her desire to run back into Stella’s room or allow her daughter to set the pace for her revelations.

      She knew Stella was lying. The question was why?

      She froze at the entrance to the living room, her hand on the light switch, trying to shake off her fears. That look Stella had given the empty stool…there’d been a presence there. A presence Gia couldn’t see.

      Gia Moon, psychic artist and mother to one very precocious teenager, hadn’t seen a damn thing.

      She hit the light switch. The floor lamp glowed to life, spotlighting the Scrabble tiles scattered across the Navajo rug under the coffee table and the oak floor boards beyond.

      The living room showcased her eclectic tastes. The top of the coffee table, a mosaic of broken pieces of china, served as a foil to the green papier-mâché leaves sprouting from the arms of the burgundy cloth sofa. The leaves crept up the wall behind as if some wayward philodendron had managed to take root and thrive in the darkened room.

      Opposite the sofa stood a love seat covered in Mexican serape cloth. There was quite a bit of religious art—a hand-painted crucifix with the bleeding heart, a Greek icon of the virgin, a statue of the elephant-headed Ganesha, the wise and gentle Hindu god known for removing obstacles.

      But to Gia’s eye, the focus as always was on her daughter. There were drawings, from stick figures to watercolors, matted and framed like great works of art. And photographs, each documenting cherished moments, snapshots of the tiny miracle that was Stella.

      On her hands and knees, Gia picked up the lettered tiles and tossed them back into their box. She told herself she’d talk to Stella first thing in the morning. She’d learned the dangers of keeping secrets and she’d remind her daughter of just that. Gia suspected she knew what was bothering her daughter—Stella was just the right age. Gia needed to convince her that whatever changes Stella faced, they’d face them together.

      That’s what she’d been thinking—tomorrow, I’ll lay down the law, no secrets—when she stopped herself in the act of scooping up the game pieces.

      On the rug under the coffee table she saw five tiles from the Scrabble set. The game pieces formed a perfect half circle. She stared, realizing the letters spelled a word.

      Seven. Just like the number.

      Gia frowned. She reached for the S.

      As her hand reached for the tiles, a static charge like the snap of a rubber band shocked her fingers. She sat back on her heels, stunned.

      Seven.

      “Don’t,” she told herself, grabbing the Scrabble pieces in a sweep of her hand and throwing them into the game box with the others.

      Back in her room, she dropped onto the bed and stared at the phone on the nightstand. The last two months, the desire to call him had been a dull ache inside her. Like a toothache, she’d learned to ignore the pain—part and parcel of a past that had trained her well to deal with regrets.

      But now, that desire burned in her chest. She rubbed her hand, recalling the shock of static electricity.

      She glanced at the clock: 3:17 a.m.

      When she’d first heard Stella screaming, she’d checked the hour, as well. The time had been 3:07.

      Seven, Seven, Seven.

      She shut her eyes. “No,” she said out loud.

      She shoved aside the covers and massaged her pillow into a ball before settling in. She told herself her gift didn’t work like that, cute little signs that could easily be mistaken for coincidence. That’s how the heart worked; it looked for meaning where there was none.

      She’d had a scare tonight. Of course, she’d think of the man who had once saved her life.

      Gia woke up three more times that night. Each and every time—by coincidence—the digital clock showed the number seven.

      

      When the door shut behind her mother, Stella threw back her bedcovers and sat up in bed.

      “Go away,” she hissed at the boy sitting on the vanity stool.

      She recognized him from her dream. She’d seen him so clearly during that horrible nightmare that waking up had been this weird business: the image in her head seemed to crash into her dimly lit bedroom.

      The whole thing reminded her of one of those overhead projection sheets her geometry teacher sometimes flashed on the wall. You had to stare at it awhile before anything made sense.

      The dream had been a bad one, like nothing she’d ever had before. The kid sitting on the vanity: she was pretty sure that, in her dream, someone was torturing him.

      She could still remember the cold bite of the handcuffs on her wrist. She’d even caught the scent of shadow-man’s cologne as he’d bent over the boy.

      When the guy stuck the needle in the boy’s neck, she’d felt that, too.

      The pain of that needle, she’d felt it as if it were happening to her. Not the boy, but her. That’s why she’d woken up screaming, bringing her mother running.

      Only now, the kid—she guessed he was about her age, tall, maybe as tall as five feet eleven, with gray eyes and dark blond hair—was sitting on her vanity stool, the nightlight shining at his feet. To Stella, he looked completely real, the living breathing version of the boy in her dream.

      Of course, she knew he wasn’t really there. He couldn’t be. No live kid was sitting in her room, creepy eyes watching her.

      He was a ghost.

      And Mom hadn’t seen him.

      Mom—the lady who talked to ghosts, who painted portraits in order to pass along messages to loved ones left behind—hadn’t even known he was there.

      In Stella’s life, it was Mom who did the woo-woo thing. Her mother had these dreams. Visions. A lot of times, the awful stuff her mother saw came true.

      “Go away!” she said, louder this time.

      The ghost just stared back at her.

      She told herself she wasn’t like her mother. Sure, she’d get a weird vibe every once in a while, mostly about her mother’s paintings. But the really scary stuff, like waking up in the middle of the night and seeing someone who wasn’t there, that was Mom’s gig.

      “Please,” she whispered. “I can’t help you. Just leave me alone, okay?”

      Stella slipped back under the covers, tucking the sheets and quilt under her chin, using them like a protective shield. She concentrated on a giant sunflower painted on the wall across from her, part of a mural her mother had painted in Stella’s room, turning it into a kind of English garden. She tried to forget that awful basement and the sound of the boy’s screams.

      When looking at the flower didn’t work, she squeezed her eyes shut. What did people do to fall asleep? Count sheep?

      Suddenly, she felt a cold touch on her neck. She opened her eyes.

      The kid, he was right there, standing next to the bed.

      “Get out!” she said.

      She pulled the covers over her head, breathing hard. How many times had her mom told Stella how to banish a bad spirit? Why hadn’t she paid attention?

      Get a grip, Stella! She tried to even her breathing, telling herself that if she’d had anything to do with bringing him here—some weakness a loose spirit might glom onto—she should have the strength to make him disappear.

      After a few minutes, she lifted the sheet, scared of what she’d find.

      He was gone.

      She let out the breath she’d

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