LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Yes. The coroner listed her time of death as more than an hour before the joggers called 9-1-1.”

      “You’ve read it? You’ve seen the report?”

      “Yes and yes. I’ve scoured over it. I practically have it memorized, much to the TPD’s irritation. Raef, what is it?”

      “There’s nothing here. No psychic Tracing of a death at all. And that is impossible.”

      Lauren opened her mouth, but instead of speaking, a strangled gasp wrenched from her. She swayed, her eyes fluttering, and Raef moved quickly to her side, steadying her by grasping her arm.

      “Easy there. I’ll figure this out and—” His words broke off abruptly as emotions rippled through him. But they weren’t death scene emotions, familiar if numbing in their violence. Instead, joy and warmth and a poignant sense of longing filled him. He tried to throw up his mental barriers, but his traitorous Gift ignored it, leaving him naked and defenseless to the onslaught. Then the air beside Lauren rippled and her twin’s ethereal body manifested.

      “I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t let us down. I remembered you from that article in Oklahoma Today magazine last year.” She grinned impishly. “It said you were the best psychic detective in Oklahoma—that you were like an Old West sheriff. You always got your man.”

      Raef swallowed hard, trying to pull himself together. I can feel her joy! Never before. Never during the twenty-five years his Gift had manifested had he ever felt a positive emotion from any spirit.

      Aubrey laughed and the sound washed through his body like magic, sensitizing his nerves and his skin so that the fine dark hair on his forearms prickled as if she had just run a teasing, caressing hand over them.

      “Ah, come on, Kent, relax. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, still smiling joyously.

      “Raef.” He ground the word out automatically, the usual gruffness of his voice intensified by the force of the emotions filling him. “People call me Raef.”

      “I’m not going to,” Aubrey said. “I like Kent better. Plus, you can’t really call me a person anymore, can you?”

      Raef just stared at her. Had a spirit ever called him anything? No, hell, no, none of them had. He usually just Tracked the negative emotions left by the bad guys. He followed violence and hatred and fear until it led him to a living murderer. Ghosts didn’t have shit to do with him.

      Until this ghost.

      Aubrey’s gaze went from him to sweep around Swan Lake. “It’s beautiful here, don’t you think? The trees are particularly lovely. So wise and strong, like soldiers standing guard.” She turned shimmering blue eyes back to him. “They must take a lot of care.”

      As soon as she’d spoken the words Raef felt it. The slicing pain hit him as Aubrey’s semitransparent body doubled over. Lauren moaned, and her arm trembled violently under his grasp.

      “Kent!” Aubrey gasped. “Help us!”

      She disappeared as Lauren collapsed into his arms.

      4

      “Oh, God,” Lauren groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

      “No. Not here.” Raef slid an arm around her waist and half carried, half dragged her from the dock and through the gate. He’d retraced their path and was almost to the car when Lauren spoke again.

      “Wh-where are we going?”

      “Don’t know. Right now I’m just getting us the hell outta here,” he said, wrenching open the door to the car and guiding her semicarefully into the passenger seat. He hesitated, watching her closely as she sat, face in hands, and trembled. “You still gonna be sick?”

      “Maybe,” she muttered into her hands.

      Yeah, well, me, too, he thought, but instead said, “Try not to be,” then closed her door and hurried around the car, putting it in gear and getting the hell outta there. Silent and on autopilot he drove, turned left on Lewis and was halfway to Fifteenth Street before he realized he was heading for his house. What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m taking a client home? Raef glanced at Lauren. She’d taken her face from her hands. Her arms were wrapped around her, as if she was literally trying to hold herself together. Her face had gone from dead pale to splotchy pink. She was still trembling.

      Suddenly she reminded him of Christina Kambic all those years ago, and he had a terrifying urge to protect her. Shit! Shit! Shit! What’s wrong with me?

      “I’m not going to be sick. At least, not right now,” Lauren said stiffly, definitely misunderstanding his sideways glances.

      “Want me to take you home?” he asked inanely.

      “No.” Lauren made two quick shakes of her head.

      “Your mother’s place?”

      “Hell, no.” She looked straight at him then. “Anywhere but there.”

      He only met her blue-gray eyes for a moment before making his decision. Raef grunted and turned right on Fifteenth, catching the green light and taking a quick left on Columbia, entering the quaint little neighborhood that was hidden between busy Fifteenth Street and kinda dicey Eleventh Street. He drove down a couple side streets, took another left and then pulled into the cobblestone driveway of the 1920s-era brick house he called home.

      Raef turned off the car and looked at Lauren, who was gazing at him, an obvious question mark on her flushed face. He blew out a long, frustrated breath, got out of the car and opened her door for her. “It’s my place,” he explained. “I don’t take clients here.”

      “Yet here I am,” she said as he closed the car door behind her.

      “Yeah, well, that’s just part of a list of don’ts that I’ve broken today.” As they walked together up the curving sidewalk that led to his spacious front porch, he held up his hand and ticked off fingers like an umpire keeping count of strikes. “First, I don’t usually feel as fucking bizarre as I did right before I met you.” He paused when they were standing on the porch and added, “And your dead sister.” Another finger went up. “Then I don’t go to a murder scene—a documented scene of a death—and not pick up death emotions.”

      “Death emotions?” she interrupted.

      He bit back his annoyance and answered her with a sharp nod and a sharper tone of voice while he dug in his pocket for his house key. “Yeah, death emotions. Bad ones. Like fear and panic and agony and hatred. Being able to Track negative emotions is my Gift.”

      “That sucks,” she said.

      He shrugged. “It’s the way it is—the way it’s been since I was nine.”

      “Yeah, don’t take this the wrong way, but a Psy Gift is really pretty weird. I mean, it’s not like anyone can predict it.”

      “You’re telling me?” He snorted, and then opened the door for Lauren and motioned for her to go inside, following her closely, still explaining but also watching how her eyes opened in surprise as she took in the sheen of the hardwoods and his antiques that were comfortable as well as expensive and tasteful. “Which leads to don’t number three.” He put up the last finger. “I don’t feel what I felt when your twin manifested—joy.” Raef paused again and shook his head, remembering. “I even felt her laughter. Her laughter.”

      Lauren’s brow furrowed. “But you’re a psychic. Feeling emotions is what you guys do.”

      “It’s not that simple. No one just gets a blanket ESP stamp, like, Hey, here ya go, buddy, now you’re a psychic so you can read everyone’s minds,” he said sarcastically.

      “Look, you don’t

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