A Haunting Dream (A Missing Pieces Mystery) by Joyce Lavene, Jim Read Free Book Online Page B

friends or anything.”
    “No! I haven’t even seen him since all of that stuff went down with the real estate scandal he was involved in last year.”
    Chuck had almost lost his real estate license in some shady dealings. I’d expected him to leave the area—he was new to Duck—but he’d hung on. It couldn’t have been easy for him—regaining the community’s trust was no small task.
    But other than the fact that his mother had been in real estate too and had lost her award medallion here when he was a kid, I knew nothing about Chuck.
    “That doesn’t seem like much of a connection for him to reach out to you from the grave,” Gramps said.
    “Not even the grave yet,” I reminded him. “In the vision, he wasn’t even dead yet. At least I don’t think so. But it was like he could see me. No one has ever acted like they could see me in a vision. And he said the same thing both times—
Help her
.”
    “Maybe he was talking about his cat,” Gramps suggested. “They took a cat out of his house. People get very attached to their pets.”
    “Maybe. I guess we’ll find out.”
    When I got home, I soaked in a hot bath, but I was too disturbed by the night’s events to really relax. I wasn’t sure if I’d done something different to make my gift behave in this new way or if Chuck himself was the reason for the change. Of course, as with all aspects of the gifts life had given me, there was no guidebook I could consult. No way of knowing what to do next.
    Since Kevin’s arrival in Duck, I’d grown accustomed to talking things like this over with him. He had experience in the FBI dealing with paranormal elements. Ann was a powerful psychic, according to Kevin. Her abilities had increased after she’d been shot during a case. She couldn’t handle what she saw anymore.
    Having Kevin as a confidant, someone with whom I could discuss things that many other people didn’t understand, had been wonderful. He’d experienced so much more than I ever had. When my own abilities had grown, he’d been there for me.
    But now, I didn’t feel like I could just call him or go over and drink coffee with him while we talked. I was going to have to find another way of dealing with what was happening to me.
    That left me with my friend Shayla. Shayla was a true medium who could readily talk to ghosts. She was from New Orleans, where her relatives were witches and other interesting occupations.
    She knew a lot about the spirit world. We’d met because I’d wanted to contact my mother’s ghost and find a way to put things right between us. That hadn’t happened, but my friendship with Shayla had developed as a result of those efforts.
    Sometimes, I was uncomfortable talking to her about my gifts. She freely scoffed at things that I found amazing. I suspected that she’d already seen so many supernatural happenings in her life, she didn’t think mine were all that interesting. She never gave me the warm, fuzzy feeling the way Kevin did. I had to get over that too.
    I finally climbed in bed after midnight. A wind had begun blowing from the Atlantic side of the island. I lay there for a long time listening to it, wondering where it had come from and what other places it had been.
    I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I was dreaming about the burgundy Lincoln again, the one I’d seen Chuck with at Harris Teeter the night he was killed.
    A little girl was sitting on the hood of the car. She had a round face with chubby pink cheeks and big blue eyes. Her brown hair was in curls that looked as though they’d been mussed by the wind I’d heard before I fell asleep.
    “Hello. Who are you?” she asked me.
    This was obviously going to become a habit. It scared me a little when I considered all the places I’d been in my dreams and visions. If everyone could see me, that made it more personal. Maybe more dangerous.
    “I’m Dae,” I said finally, not sure if she could hear me.
    She nodded and smiled. “I’m Betsy Sparks.