A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) by Sarah Wynde Read Free Book Online

repeated.
    He looked back at her, more intently this time. “You—” he
started and then he stopped. “We need to get you checked out. Let’s do that
first. Dillon’s not going anywhere, right?”
    Akira looked at Dillon and shrugged. She never knew how or
when a ghost would disappear.
    “Yeah, go make sure you’re not hurt,” Dillon said. “I’ll be
fine. And not to be selfish or anything, but it’d suck big-time for me if you
were to die right now.”
    This time Akira didn’t bother to try to hide her wry smile. “That’d
be ironic, wouldn’t it? But I’m not badly hurt, I promise.”
    Zane’s brow quirked, and Akira realized that she’d responded
to words he couldn’t hear. Quickly, she said, “Dillon agrees I should get
looked at.” Argh, she’d slipped already. Despite Zane’s seemingly calm
acceptance of a ghostly nephew, she’d learned that it was better, safer, to be
careful.
    Inside the General Directions building, Zane took her through
an innocuous, unlabeled door behind the reception desk and into a small
security room where a guard was watching multiple monitors. The guard
acknowledged Zane with a laconic nod, but his alert eyes took in everything
about Akira as they passed through the room, and into a hallway that led to an
elevator.
    This was such a strange place. That guard had the lean
musculature and clipped hair of a professional soldier, and the wall of
monitors was as high-tech as any security she’d ever seen. Research labs had
security, of course, but this one was in the middle of nowhere. And it was a
Sunday. Did they really need such precautions? And if so, why?
    But as the elevator door slid open, she stopped worrying
about it. The woman waiting on the other side had to be Zane’s sister: she had
the same dark hair, only hers was long and braided, and the same blue-gray eyes
and fair skin. But where Zane had a look of hidden mischief, Natalya had a look
of hidden depths, as if she had the kind of serenity that would be the calm in
the midst of disaster, the still presence in a panicked emergency room.
    “So Dad was right,” Zane said, by way of greeting.
    Natalya’s eyes widened. “Dillon?” she asked.
    Akira’s eyes widened, too. If she’d known Zane was going to
be so cavalier with her secret, she wouldn’t have told him! Except, of course,
that she’d given it away, she corrected herself. Still, she would have at least
tried to swear him to secrecy before admitting the truth.
    “Yep.” Zane nodded. He looked back at Akira. “Is he here?”
    “I—um—ah,” Akira stammered a little, trying to decide what
she should say, how she should answer, before admitting defeat, and saying, “No.
He’s tied to the car. He can’t get this far away from it.”
    Natalya’s mouth dropped open but only slightly, before she
pulled it closed again and said, “Ghosts are real. And they haunt cars?”
    Akira scowled at Zane, before shrugging reluctantly.
    “And my nephew is a ghost?”
    Akira’s scowl deepened. Damn him for putting her into this
position. She didn’t do this! She didn’t talk to relatives of ghosts. It just
made for messy, uncomfortable scenes when Akira admitted that she didn’t know
why Dillon was a ghost, or how to help him, or really anything at all.
Relatives always expected her to have the answers, as if seeing ghosts came
with some gigantic book of profound insight into the spirit world. It didn’t.
Or if it did, her copy of the book had gotten lost in the mail.
    “And Dad was right?” That final question wasn’t directed at
Akira, but at Zane, who was grinning.
    “We should have known better than to bet against him,” he
acknowledged.
    “That was you,” Natalya said. “I did know better. And I look
forward to Thanksgiving dinner. You’d better start practicing.”
    Maybe Akira was looking confused, because Zane took a moment
to explain as they walked down the hallway. “A couple of years ago, my dad met
a woman who claimed to be a