In the Air Tonight by Lori Handeland Read Free Book Online Page A

said.”
    “I meant Raye.” Her father turned and walked away.
    *   *   *
    The night felt warm after the chill that had come over the house. Usually I was the only one who noticed it. But tonight, I thought Bobby Doucet had too.
    He’d rubbed at his neck, twitched his shoulders, glanced over one with a frown. But he hadn’t seen the man who stood right behind him. Only I had. As usual, I was the only one who heard him too.
    “Tell him to look under the floor,” the fellow had said. “Under the floor in the locker.”
    I’d tried to pretend I hadn’t seen, or heard, him. Maybe then he would go away. It didn’t work any better this time than any of the other times I’d tried it.
    “Tell him!” the specter shouted, and I could have sworn my hair ruffled with the force of his icy breath.
    I’d wanted to ask what floor? Which locker? Where? Why? And what locker has a floor that could be looked under? But I didn’t. Instead, I’d gotten out of there.
    “Sheesh.” Jenn caught up. “Why are you always in such a hurry?”
    “I have to work tomorrow.” I got into her car.
    “You do realize it’s not even eleven o’clock.” She climbed behind the wheel.
    I made the mistake of glancing at the house. In an upstairs window stood a man. I could tell right away from the shape of his silhouette that it wasn’t Bobby Doucet. Both the shoulders and the shape of the head were too narrow to be Bobby, or even the spirit that had followed him downstairs. And it wasn’t one of the few I’d encountered when I lived in the place, or even since. I knew each of them by both name and shadow-shape.
    Ghosts attach themselves—some to a place, like Stafford—others to a person, for instance Bobby Doucet—for reasons known only to the ghosts. At least until they tell them to me.
    I peered at the window again. The silhouette was now a woman’s. How many ghosts did this guy have?
    “Homicide detective,” I said.
    “Really?” Jenn threw her car into gear and drove down the dirt road as if she were Danica at Daytona. “From where?”
    “New Orleans.”
    “Why?”
    “I think he was born there.”
    She didn’t bother with the eye roll. I heard it in her voice. “I got that much from the nummy accent—Southern and a little bit more.” She made a purring, revving sound. “I meant why is he here?”
    We still hadn’t gotten to that. And, really, we should have. There’d just been so many other things to get to.
    “I assume it has something to do with the murder.”
    We reached the main road, and Jenn turned toward her place. “Where are you going?”
    She kept her gaze on the road. Despite her need for speed, she was a good driver. “You said you were staying with me.”
    “That was only so I could get out of there without a gun.”
    “It’ll be fun.”
    “Take me home.”
    “No.”
    “I don’t have any clothes for tomorrow.”
    “You can get some in the light of day. Right now it’s too damn dark.”
    “You’re afraid of the dark?”
    “Only when I’m with you.”
    I cast her a quick glance. She never asked me how I knew things, why she sometimes caught me talking to the air. She pretended not to notice. But despite her party girl ’tude and her lighter-than-could-possibly-be-natural hair, she wasn’t a fool.
    “You don’t have to be afraid.”
    Ghosts couldn’t hurt you. They might startle you—make that me. And what they told me could be terrifying. But they were ghosts. Blasts of cold air and sound, no more corporeal than a wisp of smoke.
    I glanced at the bruise on my forearm. Or at least they hadn’t been until today.
    “I know that too,” Jenn said. “You’re still staying with me.” I opened my mouth to protest and she continued, “Unless you want to leap out of a moving car, don’t even bother.”
    My mouth shut. To be honest, I had no interest in staying in my apartment. Even if the meat-cleaver-wielding maniac had been a ghost, and at this point I was pretty sure he was, who