Grave Possession (Wraith 3) (18 page)

Okay, maybe things were awkward after all.

“I need some time to wrap my head around all of this,” I told him. “I’m not blowing you off.”

“I know.” He pulled the cap off his head and his hair stuck up in wild spikes. “Don’t hold back on me though. Not because of what happened between us.”

“I won’t,” I lied. The darkness and the dreams. I did need to tell someone, but I didn’t want to burden Connor. He didn’t need any more demons to fight.

We parted and I found Ava in the campus café. She had her phone out and her fingers flew across the screen. The smile on her face bordered on stupid, but I guess that’s what love does to you.

“Still celebrating your sexual debut?” I asked, sitting across from her

“Yep,” she nodded, placing her phone in her bag. “Can’t you tell? Don’t I have that rosy de-virginized glow?”

I studied her face and I noticed a hint of a glow. “Honestly? Yes.”

She dropped her head into her hands. “Gross. Okay, I’m done. No more gushy stuff.”

“Eh, you’re entitled. At least one of us has a cut-and-dried love life, right?”

She made a pouty face. “No word from Louis?”

“Ugh, no and thank God. I just don’t have time for all that right now.”

Ava glanced at me while organizing her lunch. “You sound sort of… over it?”

“Um, well, not over it really.” My face heated up. I had no intention of telling Ava what was going on with me and Connor when
I
had no idea what was going on with me and Connor. “I’m just busy and obviously he can’t handle me being down here. I’m just ready to move on.”

“Move on to…”

“Stop.”

“Just wondering… you and Connor have been spending a lot of time together.”

I took a bite of sandwich and swallowed before saying, “It’s going to be a lot more, too. We have art history together and some brewing ghost drama.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Study groups. Projects. Late nights. No wonder you’re ready to move on.”

I gave her a steely look.

“Fine. I’ll stop.” She held her hands up in defeat. “But I’m going to say ‘I told you so’ when the time comes.”

Too late, I thought and switched subjects. “I do need to tell you about this thing that happened to me in the bathroom at 4 a.m..”

She tilted her head. “What?”

I explained what happened, including the dream. When I finished I took a deep breath and said, “I may be going crazy. Er. Crazi-er.”

“I think we should go talk to Amber and Lila. See what we can dig up.”

“I guess we should.” I’d learned a lot about domestic violence and abuse over the last couple of years and there was no way I could stand by and not do something. Observation told me Kelsey died from those neck wounds. My gut told me she knew who did it.

“Oh, hey, Tony,” Ava said, looking over my shoulder. I turned and waved.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Ava pushed out the chair and he sat down. “Oh, there’s a girl from my math class. I need to ask her something,” she said, hopping up with a notebook and walking away.

“Nothing much,” I said. “You?”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you since the Christmas party.”

“What about?”

“That palm reading thing. You know your stuff.”

“Not really. Just a party trick.”

“Nah, that was the real deal. Or close to it.”

“My aunt reads palms. Like really reads them.” I shrugged.

“And she taught you?” Tony’s eyes hold mine.

“I’ve watched her enough to play the game. I don’t have any real gift.”

He nodded slowly and seemed to weigh his words. “I know you’ve been to see Nina.”

I picked up my sandwich and took a bite. “Who?” I mumbled over a mouthful of bread.

“Madam Rosemarie.”

“Again, for fun. Ava and I went one day. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, she’s a family friend.”

Huh. “What did she say about me?”

“Nothing. She just mentioned your name and that you went to the art school. The palm reading cinched it.”

I had no idea where he was going with this. How much he knew. I took another bite of my lunch.

“Look, I grew up with this kind of thing, too. That’s all. If you ever want to talk, I’m around.”

I glanced around the café, but no one seemed interested in us. “What kind of ‘thing’ are you talking about?”

“It’s just me and my dad, but he’s always sort of had a sixth sense kind of thing.”

“What? Your dad sees dead people?” I asked in a weird, Haley Joel Osment voice.

“No,” he laughed. “Not like that, but he seems to have a good idea when things are going to happen – where something bad is going to happen. I guess most people would call it having a good instinct.”

“And you?”

“I guess you would call them visions. Everything I paint is something that I’ve seen. I sort of trance out and come back with an idea. But the catch is that everything in the vision is an actual event.”

“Wait, so your paintings predict the future or something?”

He spread his palms flat across the table. “I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I think everything I paint comes from something that has either happened in the past or is going to happen in the future. Just little snapshots in time.” He smiled nervously and I saw the white glint of his teeth. “Basically, they
are
snapshots but with paint.”

“Okay, that’s really amazing,” I said. “Have you ever done anything with it? Is there a purpose behind your gift?”

“What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, yeah, I have my own talent or whatever. I don’t read palms. My aunt does that. And auras. But I…” I trailed off and looked around again, paranoid. The café buzzed with lunchtime activities but no one cared about us. We were like a little island in the middle of the crowd. “You can’t tell. Anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“Well, that sixth sense you mentioned? I have it for real.”

His eyes grew huge. “Dead people?”

“Yep.”

“I help them cross over. Sometimes they get stuck and they need a little help moving on.”

“Wow. That’s pretty cool.”

“Sometimes. Usually it’s a pain in the ass.”

He laughed. “Why would you say that?”

“Stick around long enough and you’ll see,” I assured him. “So, yeah, my job is to help them move on. Do your paintings have a greater purpose?”

“Not that I’ve seen. Not beyond making people happy.” He raised his eyebrow and added, “That and making money.”

“Huh, maybe one day it will become clearer?”

Ava walked back to the table and sat in her seat. She picked up her lemonade. “What did I miss?”

I opened my mouth to tell her, but held back. This was not my information to share. Not now. I would need to let Tony know about Ava’s involvement.

And Connor.

Plastering a weak smile on my face, I offered both Tony and Ava a piece of cookie, wondering when everything got so complicated.

*

The dorm was relatively quiet when Ava and I knocked on Amber’s door that afternoon.

“Come in.”

“Hey,” I said. We’d hung out here some over the last couple of months, watching movies and talking. Amber’s stuff had slowly taken over the empty side, leaving the extra bed to act as a couch. I pointed to the sketch board mounted above her desk. Images of clothing and accessories filled the space. “That’s great.”

“Thanks,” she said, sitting on the chair. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” Ava said. I shrugged noncommittally.

“Saw your ex this afternoon in the studio. He’s looking good.”

Tell me about it, I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t here to girl fight over Connor. Ava, thankfully stepped up and redirected the conversation by pointing to the empty closet. “Amber, we’ve never talked about Kelsey,” she said. “What’s going on with all that?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think happened?” I asked. “Did they tell you anything? Why she left school or when she was murdered?”

Amber shrugged. “I’ve got no idea – maybe she just cracked? That girl on the first floor left after mid-terms. They didn’t give me any details, other than she’d been dead for a while. Ugh.”

“She had a boyfriend here, right?” I pushed. Amber clearly didn’t want to talk about this, but she was our only real connection.

“Yeah, an upperclassman, I think. They fought all the time so I don’t know if they broke up or what. I told all this to the counselors.”

“Right,” I said, trying to think of another question or angle. “It’s all just really scary.”

“It is. I keep finding her stuff here and there. How it got so spread over the room I’ll never know.” She walked over to the desk and fumbled in the drawers. She pulled out a picture of Kelsey and some guy. “That’s him. The boyfriend or whatever.”

I looked at the photo and frowned. “I know him.”

“You do? Wow, maybe they did come up for air occasionally,” she said dismissively.

“Look at this photo, doesn’t he look familiar to you?” I asked, shoving the photo at her. I was pretty sure we’d seen him together.

She looked, narrowing her eyes in thought. “Wait. With Connor right? At lunch that day.”

I stood over her shoulder and stared at the guy in the photo. His shaved head and bushy eyebrows. “Yep. His name is Tom. That’s Connor’s roommate.”

*

I waited on the picnic table outside Connor’s dorm and pulled my hat over my ears. It was freezing out and I would’ve preferred being inside, but I wanted to get a handle on the Tom situation first.

Connor came down the stairs wearing a dark grey hoodie, hands shoved in the pockets. Jeans protected his long legs from the wind and he had on his favorite scuffed black boots. He smiled from across the grassy area and I waved.

“What’s going on?” he said, scooting close.

“I’ve got a bit of information. The ghost? Kelsey? I talked to Amber about her. She disappeared a few weeks into school and it was sort of assumed she dropped out. Which maybe she did, except she’s also dead.”

“Right. You knew most of that though.”

“What I just learned is that she had a boyfriend. One she fought with a lot.” Connor looked at me expectantly. “I saw a photo of her that Amber kept. Her boyfriend is your roommate.”

“Tom?”

“Yep.”

“I never saw him with anyone. No girls have been with him in our room.”

“Well, they were pretty cozy in the photo I saw.”

“What do you think it means?” he asked.

“She had bruises on her neck. She told me to mind my own business. Seemed personal. Domestic.”

Connor’s hands gripped the edge of the table. “You want to go talk to him? He’s up there working on something for class.”

“I think we should.”

On the way to the room, we talked about how to approach him – we’d simply ask some questions and get a feel for things. This would be easier if Kelsey would talk to me. I wasn’t even sure she could – if she even had control over her spirit right now.

Tom sat at his drawing table working on one of his creepy pieces in charcoal. His work was twisted but he had talent. I followed Connor into the room and heard the low, disjointed music playing on the computer. This guy was so weird.

“Hey, man,” Connor said, getting his attention.

He glanced up and said, “Hi,” then went straight back to his work.

Okay, then.

“Have you met Jane?” Connor said, persevering. “She’s a friend from high school.”

“Hi,” I said.

He gave me a brief, uninterested grin. Damn, why was this so hard?

“Listen, we wanted to ask you something about a mutual friend. She lived next door to Jane.”

“Who’s that?” he asked and, for the first time, he said enough for me to hear his English accent.

“Kelsey Bartlett? The girl the police found? She had a picture of the two of you together. I recognized you from being with Connor.”

“Oh right, Kelsey. I can’t believe that happened. We dated a bit – a while back.”

“You know she just kind of left school abruptly. Any idea where she went?”

“Not really. Kelsey and I met at a house party last year. She was still in high school, locally but knew some people at the party. To be honest, we didn’t talk much once she got here. Things were a bit strained between us.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, biting my tongue to hold back the million questions and accusations I had. “You fought a lot?”

“Not exactly.” He balled his hand into a fist and used it to smudge the charcoal. “Why does this matter? She’s gone.”

“Jane’s a worrier,” Connor said.

I rolled my eyes in mock playfulness and said, “Guilty.”