Sunshine washed between the buildings, illuminating everything but the deepest corners of the alley. And there, in the far right corner, nestled next to a huge green garbage bin, lay Samuel.
Approaching him cautiously, Jules held out the plate of food, hoping to entice him to come toward her. He didn’t. He appeared to be sleeping soundly. Setting the container and one of the coffees down beside him, Jules straightened.
Moira shimmered into being beside her.
Jules turned and faced the spirit. Moira’s aura pulsed white as she glanced from Jules to Samuel and back again.
“Thank you,”
Moira said.
“He went to sleep hungry.”
“Why? I gave him money last night.” Jules projected her thoughts to the ghost. “Did someone steal it?”
Moira smiled.
“No. He used it to buy bread for the shelter. He only accepted a single sandwich as payment.”
Jules glanced down at Samuel’s sleeping form. In repose, beneath the mountain of clothes, he looked angelic despite the thick smudges of dirt on his cheeks.
“Thank you again for taking care of him,”
Moira said, then shimmered out of existence.
“Wait!” Jules called out before remembering she needn’t have spoken.
Moira returned.
“Yes?”
“Do you know a spirit named Aimee-Lynn?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know her.”
Moira shook her head.
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“No, she’s not.” Jules shifted the purse under her arm, then sighed. “But she’s someone who needs my help. At least, I think she does. I’ve seen her several times and she keeps sending me visions. But I don’t know what she wants. When I try to ask she gets really angry and starts shrieking. Most of the time when she comes around, I end up curled into a ball, trying to keep her from ripping my skull apart from the inside out.”
Moira gave her a sad look and shook her head.
“There are a lot of souls out there, lost and searching for a way into the light. She sounds like one of them.”
“Why aren’t you there? In the light, I mean.” Moira’s aura glowed silver, giving Jules pause. “You’re the first spirit I’ve met who seemed totally at peace, but you’re here. I thought that kind of peace only came from passing over?”
The ghost shimmered brighter until the edges of her hair sparkled.
“I’m waiting for Samuel. It won’t be much longer for him now. He has one more important task, then I’ll take him home.”
Jules glanced down again to the sleeping man. He didn’t appear sick, but then neither had her mother. One day she was healthy and playing catch in the backyard; the next she was gone. “He’s going to die?”
A shiver worked through her.
“It’s okay, Jules.”
Moira smiled.
“His time is near and he’s been waiting a very long time for it to happen. Don’t be sad.”
Stunned by the news, Jules couldn’t do more than stand there until Moira’s gentle voice whispered into her mind again.
“I think I see your friend, Aimee-Lynn. She’s at the mouth of the alley.”
Jules turned to see Aimee-Lynn floating above the ground. Her aura pulsed light red then vermilion then crimson around her translucent figure.
Spinning back quickly, she projected, “Thank you,” to Moira, then headed to the end of the alley, which spilled out onto Atlantic Avenue.
“Aimee-Lynn?” Jules said telepathically. “Can you talk to me?”
The ghost gave her a wan, pitiful smile and nodded.
“You know my name?”
“Yes.” Jules mentally winged out the reply. “If you can hear me, then we can just walk and talk like this.”
Aimee-Lynn nodded. Her form appeared more defined than it had before. Today she sported a shiny black corset and loose-fitting blue jeans.
Although still translucent, her figure seemed almost corporeal. The sunshine shone down on Aimee-Lynn’s dirty blonde hair and illuminated her blue gray eyes.
Eyes that held pain and fear and a trace of hope.
The pain-filled eyes tugged at Jules’s heart, but it was the flicker of hope in the ghostly orbs that pulled her in. Jules might crave a normal life, but this poor, lost soul craved something too. And for whatever reason, she thought Jules held the key to her peace.
A slick, oily sensation of being watched went down her spine. She glanced around Atlantic Avenue then back down the alley. Moira was gone and Samuel still slept. The only other two people around, alive or dead, were Jules and Aimee-Lynn.
Still, the feeling persisted. Squeezing the purse tighter under her right arm, she curled her fingers around it. Using her crift, she projected her thoughts. “What do you remember about what happened to you?”
The ghost smiled.
“When I was alive, my name was Aimee-Lynn Masters,”
she answered, then vanished, only to reappear across the street.
“I was going to be a mother. And a wife.”
Aimee-Lynn vanished again, this time reappearing in the same spot where she’d first appeared to Jules.
“Did you live around here?” Jules winged her thoughts.
“No, I’m from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”
Aimee-Lynn paused, as if confused, then added,
“Wait. Yes, I lived here.”
She grimaced.
“How could I forget that? My parents divorced when I was young and my mother came to Tidewater. I moved in with her when I went to college.
“My fiancé and I lived . . . lived . . . I can’t remember that part. But we were going to have a baby. A boy.”
She frowned.
“No one knew about the baby. I wanted to wait until we were married before I announced it. Why did I wait?”
Aimee-Lynn’s aura pulsed to green then blue and back again. She drifted backward, lazily, down the street, like a cloud blowing in the wind. Jules followed her slowly along the cracked sidewalk.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you.” Jules focused on projecting her thoughts. “It was you in the car, right? Someone strangled you?”
The ghost’s aura shifted from green to muddy brown and she stopped drifting.
“Yes. He killed me.”
“Do you remember who did it?”
“The knight,”
Aimee-Lynn said with a curt nod of her head.
“I thought my prince had come to rescue me. But he hadn’t. And the knight killed me.”
Before Jules could ask for a less Arthur-and-the-Round-Table description, Aimee-Lynn’s eyes went wide.
“Jack! Don’t!”
Aimee-Lynn shrieked.
“What are you doing?”
Aimee-Lynn’s panicked voice blared through Jules’s head like a foghorn.
“Stop!”
The final word kept repeating until Jules was nauseous.
“Aimee-Lynn?” She sent out a mental push, but before she could do more than that, something struck her hard in the right shoulder, knocking her off balance.
Jules stumbled forward, even as something behind her tugged at her right arm. Hard gloved fingers dug into her bicep, forcing her to spin around to face her attacker.
“Gimme the purse, bitch!” The man yanked on it.
Acting purely on instinct, Jules threw her cup at her assailant. Her hot coffee splashed into his face. He screamed out in pain, shoving her aside. Jules tumbled to the unforgiving pavement, landing on all fours. The purse smacked to the ground beneath her.
From this vantage point she could see who’d grabbed her. Dressed in a navy-colored hoodie and matching sweatpants, he looked like any other jogger out for a morning run—except for the huge dark stains coating the sleeve of his left arm, the front of his shirt, and the left side of his hoodie.
He shoved back his hood, swiping at his cheek with his hands. His face no longer in shadows, she recognized him but she wasn’t sure from where.
Her startled realization had her on the ground longer than she should have been. She shoved to her feet, snatching up her purse as she went.
But he was faster. He grappled with her for the handbag, shouting, “You’re gonna pay for that!”
“Are you
kidding
me?” Jules screeched, half in shock and half in terror. “Ghosts, visions of women strangled to death, and now I’m getting
mugged
? Take the danged thing! It’s only got twenty bucks in it.”
She released it, but her rant, which really was more of shocked outrage than anything else, gave her attacker pause. The bag clattered to the ground between them.
“What did you say?” he asked in a pronounced lisp.
Recognition slammed into her. This man had been in her shop two days ago. She gaped at him.
He must have realized she could identify him because his face, already red and puffy on one side, contorted with rage. He lunged for her.
She ducked, grabbed her purse from the pavement, and threw it at him. The corner of the bag hit him solidly in the nose and smacked back to the ground.
He threw one hand up to cover his now bloody nose while he dove for her, pulling something from the waistband of his belt. Sunlight glinted off a long, silver object. “I’m gonna make you bleed for that.”
Panic jolted through her and she turned to run. His fingers grappled for purchase at her shoulder, then an icy pain sliced her left arm.
Determined to survive, Jules kicked back with her right foot, aiming for his knee.
Contact!
He released her with another howl of pain. She tripped over her forgotten purse. With a squeal, she lost her balance and fell. Her hands slapped the pavement as her knees crashed against it.
From the corner of her eye she saw something brownish streak past. It took a moment for her brain to process that the flash had been Samuel. Jules sat up and rotated, keeping him in her sights.
Samuel didn’t appear old and decrepit. In fact, he had the fiercest expression on his face she’d ever seen on a living person.
The mugger must not have seen it, because he smirked as Samuel came to a stop in front of him. “You don’t want to mess with me, old man,” he taunted.
“Bring it,” Samuel said in his gravelly voice.
Her attacker raised the six-inch-long serrated knife into the air.
“Watch out!” she called to Samuel, who didn’t seem to hear her.
The mugger aimed for Samuel’s face, but Samuel threw both of his arms up in front of him in an
X
and blocked the attack. Then he swung out his right leg, catching the attacker behind the knees and knocking him backward.
Flat on his back, the attacker appeared to momentarily debate attacking Samuel again. Then he jumped to his feet and ran the other way up Atlantic Avenue.
Samuel gave chase until the mugger darted around the corner on 62nd Street, at which point, a police siren blared somewhere nearby and he turned back toward her.
His shaggy matted hair glinted in the sunshine and a much younger version of the man superimposed itself over his body. Short, closely cropped hair set off his strong, shaven jawline. His piercing blue eyes spoke of pride and honor, and his aura glowed a radiant shade of silver white.
“Jules?” said a deep-timbre voice just as a hand touched her shoulder and she jumped.
A quick glance over her shoulder showed Devon “Call Me Dev” Jones kneeling beside her. His sand-colored eyebrows were drawn together over eyes that held concern and something else. He cocked his head to the side and she swore she heard him mutter, “Even up close you could be twins.”
“What was that?” Jules had trouble focusing because of the biting pain at her elbow from where she must have smacked it on the pavement. She tried to twist to get a look at her elbow, but couldn’t.
“I said, ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’” He nodded to Samuel.
“Oh.” Her head started swimming from the pain in her arm.
Dev produced a first aid kit and hastily dragged on disposable gloves. then bent closer to her. “Sit still, Jules. Did you get a good look at the mugger?”
His question seemed to include both Jules and Samuel.
“I did,” Jules answered without giving Samuel a chance to reply. Not that he appeared readily able to do so. He gasped and wheezed as he limped back toward them. His sudden burst of speed appeared to have cost him more than just the rush of adrenaline.
“Could you identify him if you saw him again?”
“Probably . . . I mean, yes.” Jules blinked at the shakiness in her voice.
“Really?” He sounded impressed. Ripping open a roll of white gauze, he started to wind it around her injured arm and said, “Tell me what you remember.”
“Well, he wore navy blue sweats with a hoodie.” Jules closed her eyes and tried to focus on the memory. “Light brown hair, military cut. White guy around my age, I think. He said, ‘Gimme the purse, bitch.’ Except he spoke with a heavy lisp.”
She shuddered, making her wince in pain as Dev’s fingers glanced over her wound.
“You’re safe now, Jules,” Dev said soothingly, continuing to wrap her arm.
“Wait, he was in the flower shop on Saturday.”
“Are you sure?” Dev arched an eyebrow at her.
“Yeah, I remember because he spoke with a lisp then too. But I guess saying that he’d been in the shop doesn’t really help you much, huh. Sorry.” She nibbled on her bottom lip as a slow radiating pain burned through her left arm with an increasing ferocity. Trying to do anything to blot out the pain she said, “I bet we’ve got a record of his purchase. When I get to the shop, I’ll ask Diana if she remembers his name.”
“Maybe I should talk to her?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, then blew out a frustrated breath. “You’re too old for her. She’s just a kid.”
Dev snorted. “Agreed.” He finished wrapping her arm and checked her fingers for feeling, warmth, and color. “I thought I could talk to Diana while you get checked out at the hospital and give your statement to the police.”
“No hospital. No police. It’s not that bad.” She met his disbelieving expression, then glanced down at her arm. The white bandage already had a spot of red blooming on it. Then her purse caught her eye. She held it up for Dev to see. “Look, it’s just a cheap Prada knockoff. What are the odds the police are going to catch the guy?”
Dev’s brows drew together. “Not good if you won’t file a report.”