CHAPTER SEVEN
Akira paced across the porch.
If only she’d gotten here before the movers. But they’d arrived too early. She had only the loosest grasp on Florida geography, but Zane could have been right the evening before, when he’d said her belongings were outside Jacksonville. Either way, the moving company had made good time. She’d gotten the call at the hotel and by the time she arranged for a ride to the house, they were here. Unfortunately, that meant she’d had no chance to introduce herself to the ghosts.
She’d been anxious enough about those introductions. It had seemed so simple when she’d made the decision to rent the house. The turret room, the lovely backyard, Rose’s enthusiasm, Dillon . . . it all added up to a worthwhile risk. But she’d imagined herself starting by calmly sitting down in the kitchen, talking to the ghostly inhabitants, setting some ground rules, establishing a few guidelines for how they could all live together. If the ghosts were typical, they’d have questions for her—questions that she probably couldn’t answer—and maybe a few tasks that they hoped she’d do. As long as no relatives were involved, she didn’t mind running a few ghostly errands.
Instead, she was forced to try to pretend she couldn’t hear Rose’s running commentary as the movers carried her belongings into the house.
“Yes, that goes into this front room.” Akira directed the movers carrying her sofa up the front steps.
“Ooh, those muscles are dreamy.” Rose jumped onto the piece of moving furniture and draped herself over it, eying the young man in a tight t-shirt who was carrying the front end. “You’re just my type. I wonder if you like to dance. I’d love to go dancing with you.” As the movers placed the sofa, Rose slid up the seat to the end, until the man lifting it gave a convulsive shiver.
“Cold in here,” he said to the other mover.
Akira chewed on her lower lip, as Rose sighed, and collapsed back onto the sofa melodramatically, before springing to her feet again and following the movers back outside.
“Now that’s a pretty chair,” Rose said about a floral-patterned wing-back chair the mover was pulling out of the truck. “Awfully old-fashioned, though. I guess you inherited all your furniture. You don’t look like the flowery type, bless your heart. I mean, those clothes. And that lipstick. No, I’m thinking that was your grandma’s chair.”
With an effort, Akira kept from looking down at her clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt seemed like a practical choice to her. And what was wrong with her lipstick?
“Ooh and speaking of dreamy.” Rose clasped both hands together under her chin, and took a deep appreciative breath. Akira followed her gaze and tried not to smile. The black Taurus was parked behind the moving van and Zane was stepping out. Dreamy, huh?
“He can visit us any day,” Rose continued. “Look at that hair. I just want to run my fingers through it.” It was nice hair, Akira agreed inwardly—dark and wavy, with coppery glints in the sunlight.
After exchanging a few words with the movers who were offloading boxes, Zane headed up the walkway. Spotting Akira on the porch, he grinned at her.
Dropping her hands, Rose clutched the porch post. “Oh, and that smile,” she squealed. Akira couldn’t resist finally letting her own smile break free. Back at the Taurus, Dillon hovered uncertainly next to the car door, looking up at her. She nodded and tilted her head, a slight gesture to tell him to come on in.
“Jacksonville yesterday evening,” Zane drawled as he approached. “You convinced?”
“Not exactly,” she answered, stuffing her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and shrugging her shoulders. “Could have been a lucky guess.”
“Huh. A skeptic. Not what I would have expected.”
“Why? Just because—” Akira stumbled to a halt as the movers walked toward them.
“Television in the living room, ma’am?” one of them asked her.
“No, no,” she said hastily. “Put that upstairs, in the bedroom right off the top of the steps. Oh, and hey, bring that flowered chair up there, too, please.”
“Oh, yay, a television in my bedroom! And the chair? But that’s—the bedroom? My bedroom?” Rose was staring at Akira, and Akira couldn’t resist widening her eyes at her.
“Can you see me?” Rose’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Can you hear me?”
Akira looked at Dillon, and raised her eyebrows, trying to signal to him to explain to Rose, but he was staring at Rose, mouth agape. Akira looked back at Rose. Oh. Oops.
“How old was Dillon?” she asked Zane.
“When he—?” Zane started and then answered, “Fifteen. Why?”
Lovely. She’d just thrown a fifteen-year-old boy ghost who’d been alone for years into close proximity with an extremely pretty girl ghost. What a good idea that was. She put her hand up to cover her mouth, and the smile that she couldn’t contain, and shook her head. Zane was looking at her, waiting for a response. Rose was staring at her. Dillon was staring at Rose. And the movers were still moving boxes and furniture into the house.
“Maybe we should all—I mean, maybe we should go into the kitchen?” she said to Zane. “I could maybe make you some tea?”
“Tea?” His tone didn’t conceal his dismay at the idea. “Coffee?” he suggested.
“Green tea is extremely good for you. Polyphenols, antioxidants, lowers your cholesterol—and for a guy whose favorite meal is a cheeseburger and fries, that’s probably a good idea.”
“It also tastes disgusting. Like drinking grass, and not the entertaining kind.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll make you some nice mint tea, then. It’ll taste like gum.”
“Can you see me?” Rose repeated urgently, ignoring the conversation that Zane and Akira were having.
“Um, she can, yes,” Dillon answered, finally finding his voice, while Akira turned and entered the house, Zane and the ghosts falling into step behind her.
She shivered in the hallway when Rose burst through her, calling for Henry. As they stepped into the kitchen, the older ghost was tucking his newspaper under his arm, saying calmly, “Rose, now, honey, slow down, you’re talking so fast I can’t understand a word.”
“She can see me, Henry, she can see me,” Rose burbled. “And look, she brought one of us with her.” She gestured, wide-armed, at Dillon.
“Well, how do you do, son?” Henry reached out to Dillon but his hand passed straight through Dillon’s. “Oh.” He looked surprised, but Dillon was unconcerned, just turning the shake into a casual wave. He’d gotten over his stunned amazement, Akira noticed, and was now bouncing on his toes with excitement.
Akira looked around the kitchen, debating her next move. With the movers in the house and Zane in the room, she shouldn’t talk to the ghosts. Or maybe she should. Maybe it was time to see if Zane was really as nonchalant about the idea as he acted. Then she imagined trying to open her mouth and say hello to the ghosts with him watching, and her heart quailed. She bit her lip uncertainly.
“Aha, a perfect test,” Zane said. He was looking around the kitchen, oblivious to the ghostly conversation. The movers had stacked half a dozen boxes on the floor next to the sink, and Zane crossed to them, walking through Henry without blinking, although Akira winced. Running his hand down the sides of the plain brown boxes, he stopped, crouching, at the bottom. “Always the last one.”
Standing, he shifted the boxes, and then pulled out the one he’d picked. He looked over his shoulder at Akira, and tilted the box, so that she could see the label on top. In her own careful handwriting, it read “Kitchen, Open First.”
“Convinced?” Zane said.
She smiled at him and her moment of uncertainty passed. “You said it yourself; the one you want is always on the bottom.”
He was picking at the tape at the edge of the box, pulling it loose. “And I suppose everyone knows that the first thing you need when you’ve just moved is a way to make hot water taste like dirt?” He grinned up at her, as he pulled the long str
ip of tape off. “If I was the one who’d packed, this box would hold a bottle opener, a six pack of beer, and a way to play music.”
He tucked back the cardboard flaps. On the top of the box lay her iPod speakers, carefully enclosed in bubble wrap.
“Half-right,” Akira said. She took out the speakers and handed them to Zane, and then rummaged in the box for her tea kettle, mugs, and the boxes of tea.
“Music?” asked Rose, peering over Zane’s shoulder. “Does that play music?”
“It does,” Akira answered her, not bothering to explain the part about connecting an iPod to it.
Zane, unwrapping the speakers, glanced at her. Akira took a deep breath. Was she really going to do this? In front of a stranger?
An almost stranger, she corrected herself. An almost stranger who claimed to be psychic. An almost stranger who . . . she paused in her thoughts, before she could go any farther. She wasn’t ready to think about him in detail. Not now, not yet. The warm glow when she looked at him was enough of an answer to her always question, was it safe? Yes. Yes, it was safe.
At least she hoped it was.
“I’m Akira,” she said to Rose and Henry. “And yes, I can see and hear you.”
“But you’re living,” Rose protested.
“My heavens,” said Henry, rocking back a little and looking startled. “I don’t know as we’ve ever met a real medium before.”
Akira sighed. Really? Did she have to keep having this conversation? “I’m not a medium.”
“She just talks to ghosts,” Dillon contributed helpfully. “Not all dead people.”
Zane had paused in his unwrapping, and was holding a speaker in one hand, bubble wrap in the other. She could see him trying to follow her gaze, but not seeing anyone.
“Thank you, Dillon,” Akira’s tone was dry. She supposed she should appreciate his clarification.
“Now, that’s real interesting.” Henry seemed mildly pleased, but Rose was looking dismayed.
Folding her arms across her chest, she stuck her chin in the air. “Well, I’m not going.”
Akira eyed her warily. She didn’t like it when ghosts got emotional. “Going where?”
“Aren’t you going to try to exorcise us?” Rose dropped her arms, defiance melting away, and Akira relaxed.
“Uh, no, I wasn’t planning on it,” she answered. “I wouldn’t know how. Besides, I thought Dillon might like the company.”
“Company!” Rose clapped her hands. “We have company, Henry.”