The Spirits of Christmas (4 page)

“You people are insane.” Nora spat the words out, face
flushed.

“Oh, dear,” Rose murmured. “I think maybe it’s a bad idea to
make her mad.”

She passed through Akira to step closer to Nora. Akira
shivered convulsively as Rose’s energy sparkled inside her, but as Rose moved
away, she stared after her, startled. Ghost energy felt like ice usually, a chill
so cold it was painful. Rose felt more like a shot of whiskey, burning its way
through her veins but leaving a soothing buzz in its wake. Whatever it was, it
was unlike any spirit energy that Akira had ever felt before.

“What are you doing, Rose?” Akira asked as the ghost first
touched Nora’s expanded midriff, then wrapped an arm around Nora’s shoulders as
if half-hugging her.

“I’m not sure.” Rose sounded dreamy. She started humming
under her breath. “Calming, I think.”

“Good,” Hannah said unexpectedly. “If the girl’s blood
pressure is too high, getting excited can’t be good for her.”

Nora did look calmer or possibly dizzy. Her eyes were almost
unfocused, as if she were listening to Rose and no longer entirely present.

Zane slipped his phone back into his pocket and shot a
questioning look at Akira. In the distance, Akira could hear a siren. “What’s
going on?” he asked quietly.

“Rose. Some kind of ghostly energy. I think she’s trying to
lower Nora’s blood pressure.” Akira breathed her response, voice barely above a
whisper, not wanting to break into Nora’s reverie.

Zane’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Did you know she could
do that?”

Akira shook her head. This was all new to her. Maybe spirit
energy worked on a spectrum, like electromagnetic radiation? Rose’s new ghostly
energy might be a different frequency than the energy that Akira had
experienced before. Like infrared versus ultraviolet. If only she’d found a way
to measure spirit energy.

But she pushed thoughts of the science away. At the moment,
their first priority was to get medical attention for Nora, and to decide what
to do about the small boy presumably still sound asleep somewhere in the house.
And maybe later Rose would let Akira run some tests.

*****

Where the hell was Rose when she was needed?
Akira
thought irately. She wanted that magic calming potion back. Like, desperately,
like, right now. She wasn’t sure who she wanted it for, though, whether it was for
Toby or herself.

Toby paused.

Akira held her breath.

“I—I—I—” he gasped. “I want my mama!” And then the wails
started again.

 “Spank him,” snapped Hannah. “Shock him out of it.”

“I’m not going to hit him because he’s scared,” Akira hissed
at the ghost. “Why would that make him feel better?”

He was like a siren, like a wind-up toy that went on and on
and then trickled down, and then started up again. Akira found herself
wondering why his throat didn’t hurt. If she cried like that, it would be
painful. Shouldn’t the pain make him stop?

She pressed her back against the wall, appreciating the
solid feel of it behind her. This had to be a nightmare. It had seemed so
logical when Rose accompanied Nora in the ambulance and Zane followed them both
to the hospital.

He’d never met Toby; Nora, who seemed completely dazed by
then, would be happier about leaving Toby with a strange woman than a strange
man; and he could handle Nora’s paperwork with a wave of his GD administrative
wand and/or the platinum credit card in his wallet.

Akira had agreed. But she’d been hoping, despite all logical
evidence to the contrary, that Nora would be home before Toby woke up. A quick
check at the ER, some pills to lower her blood-pressure, and why not?

No such luck, though.

“Fine, if you won’t, I will.” Hannah strode across the room
to where Toby was sitting up in his twin bed, sobbing. “Quit crying or I’ll
give you something to cry about,” she growled.

He looked at her for a silent second as he gulped in a
breath and then the heartbroken sobbing started again.

She raised her arm, lifting it high. “I mean it,” she
threatened.

“Don’t you dare!” Akira raced across the room, interposing
herself between Toby and Hannah and glaring. “If you even try, I will . . . I
will . . . I will exorcise you!”

“Ha,” the old woman snorted. “As if.”

Akira’s glare didn’t change.

A smug smile crept across Hannah’s lips. “Worked, didn’t
it?”

Akira blinked as she realized that behind her, Toby had
fallen silent. Tentatively, she turned. Toby was watching, eyes big, thumb locked
between his lips. “I won’t let her hurt you.”

He pulled his thumb out of his mouth. “She not dere.” He
leaned forward and waved his hand through Hannah, then promptly tucked his
thumb back into his mouth and sat back.

“Oh.” Akira felt stupid. She should have realized. If the
ghosts weren’t quite real to Toby, a hit of their energy wouldn’t sizzle him
like it did her.

“Offer him food,” Hannah said. “Quick, before he remembers he’s
sad.”

Akira opened her mouth to object—if the boy was scared about
losing his mother, food wasn’t going to solve his problem—but then she paused.
Food often did make people feel better. “Are you hungry?”

He nodded, still wary.

Ten minutes later, in the kitchen, Akira pinched the bridge
of her nose. Those were real tears dripping down Toby’s face, real snot coming
out of his nose, but it wasn’t as if she could un-put the spoon in the yogurt.
She’d had no idea that breaking the smooth surface meant that the food would
become inedible.

“I should have warned you,” Hannah said. “He’s one of that kind.
My boy was like that, too. Every little thing needed to be just right.”

“Toby, sweetie, it’s the same,” Akira tried desperately. She
took a bite of the yogurt. “See? Yum.”

“No, no, no,” Hannah groaned as Toby sobbed harder. “That
won’t do it. Offer him ice cream.”

“What?” Akira said, sticking the spoon back in the yogurt. “He
can’t have ice cream for breakfast.”

“Oh, please,” Hannah snapped. “There’s no difference between
ice cream and that crap.”

“Ice cream has more fat, more sugar, less calcium.” Akira
waved the spoon, then took another bite of the yogurt. Toby might not want it,
but she and Henry needed food, too, and it tasted delicious to her.

“So what? Some days you need ice cream.” Hannah nodded
toward Toby. He’d stopped crying for the moment and was again watching them
with big brown eyes.

Akira sighed and took another bite of yogurt. “Ice cream?”
she offered.

A cautious smile lit up Toby’s face. He nodded.

“I can’t believe you fed your kid ice cream for breakfast,”
Akira muttered to Hannah as she watched Toby happily spooning up the last
melted drips of vanilla.

Hannah scowled. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t? But—” Akira nodded toward Toby in protest. She’d
listened to Hannah, thinking the older woman knew what she was talking about.
She felt deceived.

“After Nick was grown and gone, I took in fosters,” Hannah
said. She fell silent for a moment, looking lost in memory, then shook her head
and went on brusquely. “Ice cream for breakfast once in a while doesn’t hurt
them. Kids don’t figure getting it once means they’ll get it all the time and showing
you’re willing to do whatever you can to make a bad day better means a lot. I
wish I’d learned sooner how much little treats matter.”

Akira looked at the old woman. In repose, the harsh lines
woven by time creased her cheeks and pulled her face down, but her eyes weren’t
as mean as Akira had thought they were.

“We haven’t found Nick yet,” Akira said cautiously. “But
Meredith left him a message asking him to call me.”

Hannah shook her head, her eyes on Toby. “He’s never coming
home. He hated it here. Always dreaming. Always working on how to get away.”
The muscles in her face worked for a moment and then she sniffed hard and
brushed a hand across her nose. “But don’t think I’ll let them stay here,” she
said firmly. “I don’t want company.”

While she was wondering what she could say to reconcile
Hannah to Nora and Toby’s presence, Akira’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out
automatically and her lips curled up as she read Zane’s text.
Baby girl.
Five pounds, eight ounces. Doing fine. Home soon.

“We’re going to find him,” she told Hannah. “I don’t know
how, but we will.” They had to. Nora needed a safe place to live. And even if
Hannah couldn’t hit Toby, living with an angry ghost wouldn’t be good for
either him or his brand-new baby sister.

*****

 “So James is really splendid,” Zane said, a red train in
one hand, a blue train in the other. “But Edward is the oldest train?”

“James dinks he is spyendid,” Toby told him patiently. “But
he has to pull de cars, too.”

“Okay.” Zane nodded, adding, as he put the red train down on
the track. “Good work ethic there.”

From her prone position on the hard sofa, hands cradling her
cheek, Akira smiled sleepily. Zane, her sweetheart, her love, her future
husband, was encouraging a work ethic? That was unexpected. Not that Zane was
opposed to work; he just thought it sensible to minimize it when possible.

She let her eyes drift closed. It had been a late night, or
rather a very, very early morning, and if it weren’t for the two ghosts arguing
behind her, she could easily fall asleep to the soothing sounds of Zane and
Toby earnestly discussing the rules of train-dom, of which there were many. But
Rose and Hannah’s debate had too strong a hold on her.

“You’ll like it,” Rose claimed. “It’s not like you think it
is, but it’s nice.”

“You didn’t like it. You ain’t there.”

When Hannah got mad, her southern accent got a lot stronger,
Akira noted, eyes still resolutely closed.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Course it does!”

“I died when I was seventeen. I never left my house after
that. I never grew up. You got married, you had a kid, you did stuff. You
should be ready to spread your wings and learn how to fly now.”

“That’s just stupid,” Hannah scoffed. “You expect me to
believe everyone who dies gets wings, like some kinda angel?”

Rose stamped her foot. “That’s a…a whatdyacallit, a synonym.
A comparison. You don’t need wings over there.”

A metaphor
, Akira thought, but she didn’t say the
words out loud.

Hannah sniffed. “I’m not going and you can’t make me.”

“I don’t want to make you. But you can’t make people’s lives
miserable over here.”

“All they have to do is get out of my house,” Hannah
snapped. She stomped across the room and stood between Zane and Toby.

Akira squeezed her eyes shut. Hannah was so stubborn. Her
moment of softness over breakfast had disappeared after Akira had mentioned
Nick. If anything, the news of Nora’s baby girl had made her more determined
than ever. She wasn’t losing control. Her energy wasn’t spiking the way that of
some ghosts did. But she was pulling in power from the atmosphere, making it
colder around her, and then using that energy for petty acts of malice.

“That’s so weird,” Zane muttered. Akira opened her eyes and
looked across the room to where Zane and Toby sat on the floor next to a complicated
layout of wooden train tracks, Hannah still standing between them.

“Stop dat.” Toby ordered.

“Stop what?” Zane asked, sounding perplexed. He picked up a
brown freight car and turned it over, examining its fastener. “It looks as if
the magnet reversed polarity temporarily. But I don’t know how that’s possible.”

“Not you,” Toby told him. “It’s da mean yady. She is baking
da train.”

“Baking? The mean lady?” Zane asked.

“Hannah,” Akira said, sitting up and swinging her feet
around to the floor. She glared at the old woman who glared back at her.

“Ah.” Zane set the train back down on the track carefully. He
looked at Toby and then at Akira. “Is that why it’s so cold?”

She nodded briefly.

“She does dat,” Toby reported matter-of-factly. He picked up
one of the cars, a green passenger car, and tried to link it to the freight car
before shaking his head.

“Seriously, Hannah?” Rose said, crossing her arms over her
chest. “You’re going to pick on a little boy?”

“I want him out! I want all of you out!” Hannah said. “This
is my home and I don’t want people here.”

“You okay, little man?” Zane asked, putting his hand on
Toby’s arm. “You look cold. You need a sweater?”

“You gave us two weeks to find Nick, Hannah, and our time is
not up yet,” Akira said firmly. “You leave Toby alone.”

Two weeks. She should have bargained for more time. Two
weeks would be the day after Christmas. Maybe Nora would be willing to move out
if she now believed that the house was haunted? But finding a new place to live
and packing for a move over Christmas while taking care of a newborn baby and a
toddler on her own would be miserable, even if she let Akira and Zane help. No,
Akira couldn’t count on that.

She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. Rose was right. Hannah
should move on. This wasn’t life. Unlike Rose, who thoroughly enjoyed her
existence and was endlessly fascinated by the world around her, Hannah seemed
trapped, tied here by regrets and sorrow.

“What’s she saying?” Zane asked, sounding distracted. Akira
glanced at him. He had a strange expression on his face, as if he was listening
to far-off music, his head tilted to one side, his eyes puzzled.

“Can you hear her?” Akira asked, startled. That would be
different.

“No, no.” He shook his head, attention back in the room, and
grinned at her, but the expression didn’t entirely make it to his still
narrowed eyes.

“She wants us to go.”

Zane stood in one smooth, fluid movement. “Let’s go, then.”

“What?” Akira protested. “We can’t take Toby away.”

“Sure we can,” Zane said easily. Whatever had been bothering
him seemed to be gone as if it never was. “Nora and the baby will be in the
hospital overnight. Toby can stay with us, and Hannah can have the house to
herself.”