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“Next plane?”
Jane nodded, clearly trying to choose her words carefully. “He died here at the shop. I found his body a few hours later. His spirit was already haunting the shop. He said that he was far too interested in what was happening here on earth to move on just yet. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that part of ‘what was happening’ was his dating my aunt Jettie, who was also a ghost.”
I wouldn’t quibble with a vampire about the existence of ghosts. It seemed like a doomed argument. And Nana Fee had all but told me she would come back to haunt me if I didn’t accept her task. I sincerely hoped that she’d run out of postmortem steam with her otherworldly reminders and had moved on to the next plane.
“Wait, ghosts can date?”
“Apparently,” Jane said. “The pair of them stuck around for almost a year. Until they both decided that it was time for them to move on. They couldn’t define it, and I don’t want to try to explain it, but wherever that is, we aren’t supposed to be able to contact them.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
“We aren’t ‘supposed’ to be able to contact them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t. I haven’t tried yet because I wanted to respect their wishes. But I figured between a vampire mind-reader and a witch, we might have enough mojo to make a connection for an emergency call.”
I grimaced, thinking of my surreal chat with Mr. Wainwright in the panda dream. If that was the sort of conversation I could expect, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make that call. Of course, it might be different, since, ostensibly, we would be speaking to Mr. Wainwright and not my imagination’s version of him. I hoped it would be different. I didn’t think my imagination was being very kind to him.
Then again, Ouija boards weren’t something my family toyed with. We respected the life cycle. While it was often devastating, death was as much of the process as life, so it didn’t make sense to bother a spirit after the person had moved on. For Nana Fee’s sake, I hoped she’d moved on. I didn’t like the thought of her hovering around semirural Kentucky just in case I needed her. “So, what, we’re going to break out a Ouija board and leave him a voice mail?”
Jane shook her head vehemently. “No, no Ouija boards. The channel is too wide open. You don’t know whom you’re inviting into your emotional space. Plus, every scary story that ever started with a Ouija board ended in bloody, grisly death. Or getting in touch with Jim Morrison.”
“Does this conversation seem circular to you?” I asked Andrea. She shushed me.
“I think we need this.” Jane held up an oddly shaped hunk of red plastic.
Andrea tilted her head. “Is that a—”
“A twenty-sided die from my parents’ Scattergories game, yes,” Jane said. “I figured we would ask questions while we roll the dice. We would have just as good a chance of getting a message spelled out this way, maybe without the spooky ironic death messages.”
“How is this different from a Ouija board?” I asked.
“Well, we’re not going to keep our hands in constant, sustained contact with this. Less chance of the wrong spirits getting a connection.”
“You just pulled that explanation out of your bum, didn’t you?”
“It’s a total rationalization,” she admitted. “But it’s all I can think of.”
“I’m leaving before one of us gets possessed by the spirit of an evil prom queen,” Andrea said, turning on her heel toward the door. Jane and I caught her through the elbows and dragged her back. Jane flipped the sign on the door to “Closed,” which made sense. I would hate to walk into a bookstore and find the staff trying to commune with the dead.
As we sat around one of the coffee tables, prepping the “board,” Jane turned off the lights and lit a few candles for the right ambience. Gabriel shared a commiserating look with me. “I’m only here because Jane thought it would be strange to leave a seat open at a four-person séance table. Which only goes to show that some of the etiquette lessons her grandma tried to hammer into her skull took root.”
“Bite your tongue,” Jane warned him.
“And I would like to go on record as saying this is a stupid idea and will only lead to trouble,” Andrea said.
“Noted,” Jane said, handing her a notebook. “Now, you take down the messages. You have the neatest handwriting.”
Andrea grumbled, “Yes, because penmanship is going to make a huge difference when we accidentally contact that demon from The Exorcist.”
Jane ignored her. “OK, Nola, have you ever done any meditation or visualization exercises?”
“No.”
“Oh, good.” She sighed. “They’re for hippies. What we’re going to do is close our eyes and clear our minds.”
Andrea rolled her eyes but complied with Jane’s instructions. I exhaled slowly through my nose. I tried to picture myself standing in a bright, white room, empty of people, colors, and sound. But I kept thinking about Jed, about my grandmother, about the Elements.
Jane cleared her throat. “Clear your head, Nola.”
“I am,” I whispered.
