LITMIR.BIZ

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atmosphere while everyone in the room seemed on the verge of freaking out.

      Tamara shook her head and twisted up one palm, her bracelets musically jingling. “Well, I don’t think the bones are Jessie’s, either. Sorry,” she said to Renee. “Jessie was just too much of a force, y’know? She’s not dead. She’s out there. She was…different. Don’t you remember? She knew things.”

      “Here we go with the mumbo-jumbo stuff.” The Third sat back in his chair and Jarrett followed suit. The perfect lieutenant, Becca thought, liking him less and less and feeling the need to run away. She’d never fit into their crowd in high school, and things hadn’t changed. If anything, she was more of a misfit than ever.

      “The last time I had my Tarot read, I swear it was all about Jessie. Remember?” Tamara looked to Renee for verification. “You saw it, too.”

      “You believe in that junk?” The Third looked around at the rest of them for support, as if to say, “What a bunch of idiots.”

      “Oh, learn to have some fun,” Tamara snapped at him.

      “You did that Tarot crap, too?” Jarrett demanded of Renee.

      Hudson’s twin waved off his attack. “I’ve done a lot of things. We all have. It’s been twenty years, for God’s sake. And sometimes everything isn’t black and white, you know, not cut and dried. We did the Tarot thing and Tamara asked questions about Jessie.”

      “So did you,” Tamara reminded her tartly.

      Renee nodded. “It’s kind of what got me going on the Jessie story.”

      “So you’re not a true believer?” Scott lifted a brow.

      “Oh, shut up,” Tamara said to him with a faint smile. “Tell them what you learned, Renee.”

      Renee hesitated, then said, “It was something about how I was about to embark on a quest for knowledge. That someone from my past was reaching out to me. And that I should be warned not to let it take over my life.”

      Becca eyed Hudson’s twin with a wary eye. This, from Renee? The journalist? The girl who always had her facts so straight? What was going on here? What was Renee’s real angle?

      “And so you decided to chase Jessie’s ghost?” The Third looked from her to his friends as if he thought Renee had gone around the bend.

      “Yeah, I guess so,” Renee stated coolly, her dark gaze hard.

      Hudson asked her curiously, “How long have you been on this story?”

      “A while. It’s just weird the bones have turned up now.”

      “A sign?” The Third asked with exaggerated interest.

      Renee said, “Maybe one of us should call that cop. McNally. Mac.”

      “What?” The Third demanded.

      “He knows more about the Jessie case than anyone.”

      “That’s just begging for trouble,” Jarrett snarled as a chorus of denials rose up. Becca had to agree with them, though she said nothing. She noticed Hudson remained quiet, too. McNally wasn’t the enemy, no matter what Evangeline theorized.

      But something had happened to Jessie. Something bad. Something Becca felt she should know. With a chill she vividly recalled every aspect of her vision at the mall: how Jessie had appeared to her, how the ocean had crashed so loudly she couldn’t hear Jessie’s warning, how Jessie’s toes had touched the edge of the cliff above the raging water. She remembered her own heart quivering fear, and the calm, clear way Jessie had stared at her, called to her…

      “Becca?”

      She jumped back to awareness and turned to Renee. “Yeah?”

      “I asked you what you thought.” She regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Do you think the body is Jessie’s?”

      Did she?

      “Of course it’s Jessie,” Glenn answered, reentering the room carrying a tray with four bottles of wine, two red and two white. A waiter followed after him with glasses and began placing them around the table. A waitress carried a tray filled with platters of bite-sized seafood, everything from fried calamari to crab and artichoke dip to crostini topped with smoked salmon, heirloom tomatoes, and sliced mozzarella cheese. Samples of fried razor clams, steamed mussels, and barbecued oysters followed.

      While the waiters placed small plates, glasses, and napkins around the table, Glenn added, “She didn’t run away. Maybe she was planning to, but something stopped her.”

      Tamara eyed the heaping trays of food. “I’m on a tight budget.”

      “It’s on me,” The Third said in a bored tone that suggested he always picked up the check and found it tedious.

      Glenn shook his head as he took his seat. “Compliments of Blue Note.”

      Tamara smiled gratefully.

      “Everything’s free at Blue Note,” Scott murmured, then waved away the remark as if he were just kidding.

      “I’d love to know if those bones belong to Jessie,” Evangeline said, once the waiters had disappeared back through the doors and she was helping herself to the calamari.

      “So the cop didn’t kill her?” Jarrett asked, pretending wide-eyed shock.

      “I don’t know,” Evangeline said with an edge. “None of us do.”

      “She’s alive.” Tamara was sure.

      “Oh, yeah, you would know. Communing with Tarot and the stars and the charts and tea leaves…” Zeke didn’t exactly sneer, but the thought was there. He, too, was loading his small plate, and some of the others were serving themselves.

      “You haven’t changed a bit, either, St. John,” Tamara said, running a hand through her fiery curls, bracelets dancing and singing. “And yes, I communicate any way I can, with the spirits and the dead…” She lowered her voice to a whisper and waved her hands over the table in a circle, pretending to make her eyes roll upward.

      Becca smiled at Tamara’s charade while Scott, Jarrett, and The Third glowered. The whole event seemed bizarre and surreal, enjoying wine and seafood while talking about the gruesome discovery at the school, bones that might be the last remains of Jessie Brentwood. The trays were passed to her, but Becca declined, her appetite nonexistent.

      Renee held up a hand to restore order. “What do you think, Mitch?”

      Mitch, plucking an oyster from the tray, straightened as if he’d been pulled on a string. “About Jessie? I always thought Jessie just left. She’d done it before. Everybody knew it. Maybe she just ran away again.” He plopped the oyster into his mouth.

      “People usually run for a reason,” Hudson said.

      “Like a big-ass fight?” The Third shot back. “What was that fight you two had about again? Jessie got pissed because you were making it with some other girl?”

      “Nice,” Tamara said.

      “Not even close,” Hudson said. The Third’s slings and arrows had never been able to pierce his emotional armor, and Becca was glad to see that still held true.

      Evangeline’s lips tightened. “I wouldn’t put it past her. Running away to make a point. Jessie was sneaky. And mean.”

      Becca couldn’t believe her ears. Evangeline had been one of Jessie’s closest friends. “Jessie was a little secretive, maybe—”

      “You didn’t really know her,” Evangeline cut in. “She had a…a cruel streak, a really dark side.”

      “Oh, yeah, she was Satan,” The Third said in a bored tone.

      “I’m not kidding, okay! There were things about her that were just plain…” Evangeline swallowed hard and looked

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