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“Lucien and I had an argument that was overheard,” I said briefly. “It’s all right, though — the police chief doesn’t think I did it. But we need to talk to Athene and find out what she’s hiding.”
“Hmm,” my grandmother said, and frowned. Her eyes closed, showing off her thick eyelashes — lashes I’d also inherited. It was always odd to look at her youthful face and see much of myself in her — the oval face and full mouth, the just slightly longish nose — but at the same time, it was easier to recognize those attributes because I was looking at a face that didn’t seem any older than mine.
Her silence stretched on for a minute, and then another. I held myself still, knowing I didn’t dare interrupt as she was trying to focus, even while I wished I could see something of what she was seeing as she sat there on the etheric plane and reached out with senses no earthly being possessed.
“Athene is still nearby,” she said at length. “I can feel her vibrations not too far from you.”
A relieved breath slipped past my lips. That was something. At least it seemed as if my visions of her escaping town in an Uber and flying back to Los Angeles had been nothing more than worst-case fears.
“Where is she?”
“I can’t say exactly.” Once again, her brows knotted together. “I know it’s someplace close, and yet I can’t see anything clearly. It’s as if a mist surrounds her, hiding her from my sight.”
That sounded to me as if Athene had cast some sort of spell to hide herself from any pursuers. I suppose that made sense, especially if she hadn’t yet been able to come up with a means of getting herself physically away from Globe.
But why would she do such a thing in the first place? Didn’t she know how guilty that made her look?
Maybe it’s because sheisguilty,I thought.She could have gone to ground to get herself some breathing room. Maybe she realized this morning that her medallion was missing, and it was only a matter of time before Calvin or his deputies found it and realized it was a piece of evidence that couldn’t be ignored.
That all sounded sensible enough, and yet I still couldn’t shake the feeling I’d missed something vitally important.
“How close is she?” I asked next, knowing I sounded a bit too desperate. “Like, right down the street? The other side of town? Out at the casino/hotel?”
My grandmother only smiled. “I’m not a GPS device, Selena. I can tell she’s around somewhere not too far away, but that’s the only thing I can sense. You’ll have to do the rest of the work yourself.”
Because I already had plenty of experience with the limitations of otherworldly help, I wasn’t too upset by her comment. And the situation could have been much worse. I could have been trying to track down Athene in my old neighborhood back in West L.A., an area full of apartment buildings and duplexes and hotels, rather than quiet little Globe.
“Well, thanks, Grandma,” I said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
Her head tilted slightly. “How’s the love life?”
“The same,” I replied. Which I supposed was mostly the truth. I’d met someone I found interesting, but I couldn’t tell whether he thought I was equally interesting. We’d certainly not gone on anything remotely resembling a date, unless you counted getting dunked in the river.
Anyway, I didn’t plan to tell my grandmother any of that, partly because there wasn’t much to tell, and partly because I didn’t want to send the conversation along a route where she’d be likely to ask me a lot of questions. Also, it was entirely possible she knew all about Calvin if she’d been taking a peek at my life to see what I was up to. No point in wasting any more time.
A little twinkle in her blue eyes told me she knew I was lying, or at least omitting parts of the truth. But she only said, “Ah, well, maybe it will pick up now that you’re out of Los Angeles. The energy there was never very good for you.”
Now you tell me,I thought, but I let it go. Better to focus on the present, rather than a past that couldn’t be changed.
“We’ll see,” I said lightly. “Thanks, Grandma Ellen.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
She disappeared from the crystal ball, and I reached for the piece of dark green silk I used to cover it when it wasn’t in use.
Afterward, I headed back out to the living room and peeked through the blinds on one of the front windows. As usual, there wasn’t much to see; downtown Globe wasn’t a hotbed of activity on the best of days, and on Sunday afternoon, when almost everything except the movie theater and a couple of restaurants were closed, it might as well have been a ghost town.
Hmm.
Grandma Ellen had said she didn’t sense Lucien on her plane, which might or might not have meant much. Evolved spirits such as hers could see a lot, but they weren’t omniscient.
Still, I couldn’t help being a bit troubled. When a life was violently cut short the way his was, that spirit could remain on the earthly plane, haunting the place wherever they’d met their end.
Was that what I’d felt when I’d walked along the bank of the San Ramon River? Had it been Lucien Dumond’s ghost haunting the isolated spot? When I sensed those ripples of fear and pain, I’d thought they were only psychic echoes from the moment when he’d died…but maybe it had been something much worse.
A shiver inched its way down my spine, although I told myself ghosts were nothing to fear. Encountering one could be disconcerting, but a ghost couldn’t actually hurt you.
Supposedly.
