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“But it wasn’t, was it?”
She shook her head. “I’ve had it all my life. I just didn’t remember.”
“You’ve spent the better part of your life holding yourself back. You’ve pushed your abilities down until they all but disappeared. A brush with death cracked the façade you had created. Now, it’s time to shatter it.”
Cassie could barely breathe. “I’m afraid.”
“I won’t tell you not to be. You know better than most that we should be wary of what stalks us in the dark.” For the first time since they met, Sabine looked older than her years. “But you can’t fight what you can’t see, Cassie. You have to look. Even when you’re afraid. Especially when you’re afraid.”
Cassie tore her gaze away from Sabine’s eyes. She barely knew this woman, but there was a truth in her words that rang bright. Whoever Sabine Delacroix was, she knew more about Cassie than Cassie knew about herself.
When she turned to look at the surrounding spirits, it was like she was seeing them for the first time. Their outlines, once blurred, were now crisp. They were in high definition. She could feel what they wanted. Like a thousand voices talking at once. Her knees buckled, bu
t Jason’s muscular arms were there in an instant.
“Don’t push them away, Cassie.” Sabine took a step closer, and Cassie felt her legs straighten. “Acknowledge them and move on. They don’t have any power over you. You’re so much stronger than they are.”
Cassie couldn’t speak. She wouldn’t know what to say if she tried. The spirits drew closer. Jason looked between the two women with a slack jaw, but Cassie barely noticed him. Barely felt his hands on her shoulders. Through the haze of the graveyard’s ghostly inhabitants, Cassie caught sight of someone who didn’t belong.
On the other side of the invisible veil that kept her world separate from the next, a man stood etched in shadow. He was nothing more than a tall figure with broad shoulders, and yet he felt familiar. She could see the slant of his nose and the curve of his lips, but the truth of him was just out of reach.
Before she could ask him who he was or why he wasn’t like the others, Sabine took a step back. The moment, which had occurred between one breath and the next, was over. The man had disappeared, and Cassie stood there, feeling lost at sea once more.
Sabine took her hand. It was warm and soft. “Our inner demons feed off our fear. They lose their hold over us when we choose to stand and fight. You can either run from all of this”—she gestured around the graveyard with her free hand—“or you can embrace it. The first option hasn’t worked out so well for you. Maybe it’s time to try the second.”
Cassie nodded her head, but she didn’t know what to say. Jason’s voice broke the silence. “Anyone want to fill me in on what just happened?”
“Cassie got a new perspective on life.” There was a smile in Sabine’s voice. “Now it’s up to her to decide how she wants to move forward.”
“There was a man hidden in shadow.” Cassie swallowed. She didn’t want to say his name out loud. It would only make it more difficult later when she proved her theory untrue. “It could’ve been—I thought I might know him. Why did he look like that?”
Sabine shrugged. “I don’t see them like you do. But if he was shadowed, there’s a reason. Either he’s holding himself back from crossing through the veil, or someone else is.”
Jason looked more apprehensive than scared, but Cassie hated it all the same. Still, his voice was gentle. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. She didn’t feel all that different. But she couldn’t stop thinking about what Sabine had told her. For years, Cassie had witnessed the dead through a crackling television set distorted by static. And for a few moments, she’d seen that other world with perfect clarity. There was so much noise and pain and desolation that it had nearly brought her to her knees. But she had felt something beyond the fear.
Hope.
Sabine frowned. “Your grandmother never taught you how to spot a psychic? I’m disappointed.”
Jason clenched his jaw. Propriety kept him from talking back to Sabine. He turned to Cassie instead. His eyes didn’t betray his thoughts. “Is that true?”
What was the point in denying it? “Yes.”
Jason bobbed his head up and down for a few seconds and stuck his hands deep into his jacket pockets. When he met her gaze again, his eyes were somber. For a fraction of a second, Cassie worried he’d walk away. Instead, he squared his shoulders.
“Then there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
11
Jason pulled into the driveway of a pale-yellow house and parked behind at least half a dozen other cars. Each one was as different as the next, from a brand-new Ford pickup truck to a shiny BMW to a rusted-out burgundy Honda Civic.
The house was much bigger than the bungalow Cassie called home, and every inch of it looked like sheer perfection, from the rainbow assortment of wind chimes along the porch and the elaborately decorated front door to pitch-black shutters and an iron balcony around the second story. The streetlamps cast a cozy glow over the house’s façade.
Jason twisted in his seat to look at her. “There are a lot of people inside, but you already met half of them at the bar last night.”
“When you said you wanted me to meet someone, I didn’t think you meant your entire family.”
