After Moonrise: Possessed / Haunted

“Oh, go ahead and eat. I don’t mind watching. I’m finding out that I kinda like it.”

Aubrey’s giggle washed around them as she materialized and Raef almost choked on a mouthful of eggs.

“Good morning, sis. Morning, Kent.”

“Hey, Aub, you look good. All bright and happy,” Lauren said.

“I had a verrrry interesting night.”

The smile she sent Raef was brilliant and sparkling, and seemed to catch him in a spotlight. He felt it. He actually felt her happiness. It was like an endless Saturday, or having box seats at the World Series, or knowing you’re going to have lots of sex. Lots of really good sex.

“Oh. My. God. You two did it. I don’t know how it’s possible, but you two did it last night,” Lauren said, glaring from Raef to her sister.

“How the hell could you know that? You’re a Norm! You’re not psychic.” Raef threw up his hands in exasperation.

Aubrey giggled some more, causing Raef’s skin to prickle. “She knows because Lauren and I have always been connected. I think you’d call it our own interpersonal psychic link, which means you really do have to stop lumping us with the Norms.”

“Which also means you two did do it last night.”

“What we did was create pleasure, and pleasure is definitely a positive emotion. Right, Kent?” She grinned at Kent.

“Doesn’t feel like it right now,” he mumbled.

“Cheer up. It’s not like she got you pregnant,” Lauren said. Then raised her brow and, sounding so much like her mother that Raef even recognized it, announced, “You didn’t masturbate, did you, Aubrey Lynn Wilcox? You know what I told you about that.” And then Lauren Wilcox dissolved into giggles that included a very unladylike snort.

Aubrey laughed with her sister, full-throated, filling the breakfast nook with joy that washed through Raef. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop it. Raef threw back his head and laughed along with the ghost and her twin sister. Happy, he thought. I’m happy around her—around them. And I haven’t been happy in a very long time.

“That’s right, Kent. Feel it. Feel it with me. Pleasure and humor, joy and happiness. Feel them and keep them close to you, like shields. Because when you stop looking at the forest and find the tree, you’ll only get one piece of the puzzle. He has the rest of the pieces hidden where only you can find them when you follow me. You won’t be able to use your Gift there, but you can use—”

“No, Aubrey! Don’t!” Raef shouted, and came to his feet so fast the chair toppled over behind him. But he was too late. Aubrey’s semitransparent body had already been ripped away.

“Oh, no!” Lauren gagged. Holding her hand over her mouth she staggered to the kitchen sink and puked up eggs and bacon and coffee.

“Here.” Raef handed her a paper towel. “Just breathe.”

She took the paper towel with a hand that trembled and wiped her mouth. Raef went to the fridge and grabbed a can of Sprite, popped the top and held it out for her. “This’ll help. Rinse your mouth and then sip it.”

Lauren didn’t take the can. She just stood at the sink, wiping her mouth over and over again, staring blankly out the kitchen window to Raef’s backyard.

“Lauren?”

She didn’t even blink. He jerked the paper towel from her hands, threw it into the sink and then took her shoulders into his hands, turning her to face him.

“All right. That’s enough. Come back now.”

She stared straight ahead at his collarbone. He hadn’t realized until then how short she was—petite, really. And those sharp blue-gray eyes of hers were still vacant and glazed. Raef gave her shoulders a shake. Not too rough, but hard enough it should bring her attention back to her body. He deepened his voice and took all the emotion out of it. “I said that’s enough. Get back here, Lauren!”

Like throwing a switch, the light came into her eyes. Lauren blinked and looked up at him. “Raef? What—” Her whole body started to tremble and, feeling totally in over his head, he did the only thing he could think to do—he pulled her into a hug.

She buried her head in his chest and shook.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re back. You’re fine,” he said inanely, thinking how small she was—God, would she even weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet?

“It’s getting worse,” she said against his chest.

“Where were you? Where do you go when that happens?” he asked.

She stepped back out of his arms and looked at him in surprise. “Ohmygod, Raef! I never even thought about where I go, just how I feel.” She shook her head and went back to the breakfast table, pushed aside her half-eaten plate and sat heavily. Lauren wrapped her hands around her mug of coffee and took a sip. Raef righted his chair and did the same.

“So, describe it to me,” he said.

She looked over her mug at him. “It’s foggy there. And cold. Ugh, and it’s wet, too.”

“Wet? It’s raining?”

Lauren shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe it’s not really wet, but that place makes me feel like I’m drowning,” she said.

“Could be part of the spiritual draining. That must be how your body and mind are interpreting it.”

“It’s so hard to tell you anything for sure because everything is in black and white, but foggy or blurred, like one of those old silent movies.” Her eyes narrowed contemplatively. “Actually, it’s a lot like a silent movie. Things skip around, like movie frames freezing.”

“Is anyone else there?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation, and then added more slowly, “Aubrey is there, and there are other people, too. But they’re hard to see. They fade in and out. They’re only vague images. I do know they’re in pain. They’re all in pain.” She shook her head again. “I’ve known it all along and just refused to think about it because it’s so, so terrible there. But it has to be where the murderer is keeping his victims’ souls.”

“The Land of the Dead,” Raef said.

“What?”

He snagged the slim book from where Lauren had left it on the kitchen counter. “It’s in here. It’s also what Aubrey’s talking about when she gets ripped back there by him.”

“Bread crumbs. She’s trying to lead us to her with bread crumbs, but they keep getting eaten,” Lauren said.

“Maybe not totally eaten.” He got up, refilled their coffee and brought a legal pad and a pencil back to the table. “So, whenever Aubrey’s emotions change—whenever she tries to talk about her death or her killer—he can sense it and he rips her away from here. Correct?”

“Correct. But it happens so fast that she never really gets to tell us anything.”

“But she tries,” Raef said. “Maybe we should listen better.”

“Okay, well, I’m not going to be very good at that because I feel her pain and I get ripped away with her. Or at least part of me does—that part that’s attached to Aub.”

“I get that. So let me help, or at least help with what I’ve witnessed. The first time Aubrey disappeared was in my office when you hired me and I asked her to tell me about her murder.”

Lauren nodded. “I hired you because she told me to, and that took her a while because she kept getting ripped away. She finally just described you and then said ‘KooKoo Kitty.’ I figured it out from there.”

“KooKoo Kitty? How the hell did you find me from that?”

Lauren smiled. “It’s twin speak. We had a cat when we were twelve. Someone had dumped her on our grandparents’ ranch by one of our guest cabins. She was, of course, pregnant. She was a sweet, friendly little thing, so Mother let us keep her as one of the barn cats, but said we’d have to give away the kittens and get her spayed. We called her Cabin Kitty. Well, she had her kittens and then promptly lost her mind protecting them. She attacked every cat, dog, chicken and even horse at the ranch. We renamed her KooKoo Kitty.”