Wraith Page 2

  "I take offense at that, you know."

  I sprang up so quickly my thighs banged under the iron patio table and lifted it off its feet. The voice had come from directly behind me, but I didn’t need to whirl around to know that it was his.

  "Are you saying I’m not hot?" he asked innocently, flashing another grin. "Or that I’m not a guy? I could take offense at either."

  I forced my breathing to slow. I reached around behind me, grabbed another patio chair, and lowered myself into it before my knees could buckle.

  "You can’t be here," I said weakly. "It’s not possible. You’re supposed to stay at the beach."

  "Really?" he answered, sitting down in the chair I had just left. Strangely, it looked as though he was fitting into its contours, even though his body had no weight to support. Could he think himself into a particular appearance?

  "Perhaps you’d better teach me the rules, then," he continued. "Because I’ve been all up and down the North Shore. Never been inside Foodland before, though."

  "That was you!" I said accusingly.

  He smirked.

  My heart raced. I felt slightly nauseous.

  "Listen," I began, my voice unsteady. I had no idea what I was about to say. I only knew that a gazillion red lights were flashing in my brain, warning me, begging me, reminding me how huge a threat he posed.

  I took a breath and started talking, my voice a mere squeak. "I don’t know why I can see you, but I do know that I shouldn’t see you. I can’t deal with a talking shadow that follows me around. It's too… weird. And believe me, I know weird. So please, no offense or anything, but will you do me a huge favor and just go away?"

  He leaned towards me. In the slanting sunlight of late afternoon, his green eyes had a cast like a cool lagoon. His lashes were long and perfectly curled—way too pretty to belong to a guy. His blond curls looked dry now, and he had somehow changed into a new pair of board shirts and a tight swim shirt that molded perfectly over the muscles of his torso.

  "You have mango in your teeth," he responded.

  I turned my head away with a groan. Was he trying to torture me?

  "Look—" he began, his tone placating. "Do you realize I don’t even know your name? Why don’t we start this over again?" He reached out a hand towards me as if to shake, but realized the error and jerked it back. "Hi there. My name is Zane. And yours?"

  I turned to face him again, fairly certain I’d taken care of the mango. Either way, I could hardly feel more mortified than I already did. The alarm bells in my head still sounded, but their dire warnings refused to gel with what either my eyes were seeing or my ears were hearing. How could any… being that was so friendly and so beautiful be dangerous? "Kali," I answered flatly, spelling it out for him. I always did that, otherwise people spelled it "Collie," and I preferred not to be confused with a dog.

  He smiled.

  My heart skipped uncomfortably. I really wished he would stop that.

  "That’s a beautiful name. It sounds… Hawaiian."

  There was a hesitancy in his voice, and the unspoken question touched me. He was trying to be sensitive, of all things. Because aside from having a dark complexion, I didn’t look in the least bit Polynesian. My gray-blue eyes were far too light, my hair too curly, my nose too long. "It is," I admitted. "Kali is just a nickname. I was named ‘Kalia’ after my grandmother. I’m one-quarter Hawaiian, though you’d never know it from the hair and the giant schnoz. For those, I can thank the Greeks on my mother’s side."

  "Giant schnoz?" he repeated wonderingly. "You’d better watch that self-esteem. You have a beautiful nose. Among other things."

  My cheeks flared red once more. How exactly had I gotten derailed from telling him to go away and never talk to me again?

  "Zane’s a nickname, too," he continued. He started to say something else, but stopped, the merriment in his eyes being replaced by frustration. "It’s short for something. Zachary, I think. But I don’t seem to know a whole lot about myself."

  My brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

  He looked away from me, his eyes searching in the direction of the ocean. Following his gaze, I became aware, suddenly, of the sound of the waves crashing in the distance. They could be heard all the time at the condo, but after a while, just like traffic noise, they blended into the background of one’s brain. I preferred to keep on hearing them.

  "I told you earlier," he said quietly. "I don’t seem to know anything except the beach. It’s like I’ve been here forever, but that can’t be right. I know I have a past, I can sense that I still remember things—but somehow, it’s like I can’t get to those memories anymore."

  He sighed with exasperation. "I know I must be dead. I get that. But why can’t I remember living? And why am I here?"

  I swallowed. The warning lights pulsed at strobe speed now. Already, whether he meant it to happen or not, he was drawing me back into the very darkness I feared. And I wasn’t at all sure I could fight him. I was the worst sucker in the world when it came to people asking for help—Kylee and Tara teased me about it all the time. I was a hopeless bleeding heart.

  But I couldn’t help him, even if I wanted to. Even if the mere thought of trying didn’t scare the crap out of me.

  "I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any of your questions," I said gently. "I don’t know anything about it, except what I’ve already told you. This isn’t some hobby that I enjoy. I don’t want to see shadows; I try not to even think about them. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane."

  He studied me for a moment, silently. Then he leaned forward, holding my gaze. "But you can talk to me," he insisted. "Don’t you understand how much that means? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be ignored, day in and day out, by every other human being in sight… to be invisible?"

  The warning lights sputtered; the clanging bells muted. My resolve was crumbling.

  "There has to be some reason, Kali," he continued, showing no mercy. "Some reason why I found you, and that you can see me when no one else can. You have to help me."

  I waited for it. I was not disappointed.

  His voice dropped to a husky whisper. "Please, Kali."

  I hung my head in my hands. I didn’t answer him then. I was too busy composing another text to Kylee in my head. One I knew I could never actually send.

  Just agreed to help totally hot dead guy walk into light. What’s new with you?

  Chapter 3

  I picked at my fruit salad, nervously banging my fork against the rim of my plate. My father was telling us about his day on the base, barely able to contain his enthusiasm about the new techno-gadgets and people he would soon be working with. Mitch Thompson was the definition of a glass-half-full kind of guy—spending the first half of his life training to become a fighter pilot and the second half convincing himself that it was actually a good thing that he could no longer meet the medical requirements, because flying was for the young and his technical skills were needed more on the ground anyway. My mother was laughing at his description of himself skipping around the base like a kid; we both knew that odds were, it was literally true.

  "So Kali, Babe, what were you up to today?"

  The fork dropped from my hand with a clatter. Not at my dad’s unexpected question, but because somewhere between "Kali" and "Babe," the nearly perfectly solid figure of Zane had inserted itself in the empty chair across the table from my mother.

  "Umm…" I responded mindlessly, my stupid cheeks flaring red again. "Not much. I just hung out on the beach, soaked up some sun."

  "Did you meet anybody?"

  Zane smirked at me, raising his eyebrows.

  I forced my eyes back to my father. "No. I didn’t see anybody my age. There were more surfers out today, though."

  My father clapped his hands in delight. "Fabulous. I’ve got to get out there myself sometime this week."

  "Over my dead body," my mother declared in a deadpan. "You promised. Lessons first. And down in Waikiki, not up here."
>
  My father pretended disappointment. "Those wimpy little waves aren’t any fun."

  My mother smiled. "Precisely."

  "And you remember what you promised?" he said slyly, leaning toward her.

  "Unfortunately, yes," she responded.

  My father winked at me. "After decades of begging and pleading, your mother’s finally going to come surf with me, Kali. Make sure you have that video camera rolling!"

  My mother rose from the table with her empty plate and headed toward the kitchen, smacking my father on the shoulder as she went. He laughed and dug back into his dinner.

  I allowed myself a glance at Zane. He wasn’t looking at me; he seemed totally amused by my parents. The Thompsons, who were older than the parents of most kids my age, often had that effect on people. They had married young and wanted children, but had trouble conceiving; my miraculous appearance in my mom’s late thirties had really thrown them. Perhaps it was having a kid so late, perhaps it was something in the water—but my parents had always appeared blissfully unaware of their status as boring old married people. They had been together for over thirty years, but still acted like a couple of honeymooners.

  I was used to that dynamic, of course. But Zane was looking at them as though they were a zoo exhibit.

  "Oh, and I almost forgot," my father continued, catching me staring at an empty chair. "Got a surprise for you. I was talking to a couple of the officers about you—asking about high schools and such. One of them has a son who’s also a junior, said he’d be real happy to show you around. We set it up for tomorrow afternoon. How’s that for service?"

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I would like a tour guide, of course, but a blind rendezvous set up by parents had about as much chance of being fun as skating barefoot on asphalt. The guy had probably not even been asked if he wanted to do it.

  "Well, what do you say?" my father pressed. "Did I do good, or what?"

  I could feel Zane’s eyes on me, but didn’t dare glance his way. My father was looking extraordinarily pleased with himself, and for more than the obvious reason. It was his considered opinion, ever since I hit sixteen, that I spent way too much time with my girlfriends and needed to get out and date more.

  I said my parents weren’t normal.

  "Sounds great, Dad," I forced out, attempting to hide my face in my plate. Mercifully, my cell phone chose that moment to vibrate in my pocket, and I dug it out like a lifeline. It was from Tara. I didn’t need the phone to tell me so; Tara was the only person on the planet under thirty who always texted in complete sentences.

  What do you mean you haven’t seen any hot guys yet? The serious surfers will be on the Banzai Pipeline at the south edge of ‘Ehukai Beach. You don’t have to get wet to watch them!

  I rolled my eyes with a smile. I had no idea what pipeline she was talking about, or even what beach. When we found out I was coming to Oahu, Tara had done more research than I had. She was the undisputed queen of information; what she didn’t know, she could always find out. She had promised to keep me informed of everything I needed to make the most of my time while I was out here, and for someone sitting in a double-wide trailer in the middle of Wyoming, she was doing a pretty good job so far.

  I only wished I could ask her about dead people.

  "Kali," my mother reproached as she returned with dessert, "No texting at the table."

  "Sorry," I said lamely, setting the phone down beside me. "It was from Tara. She was telling me that all the serious surfers would be at ‘Ehukai Beach, wherever that is."

  Zane sat up straight in his chair. "Are you kidding me? Where do you think you were all afternoon?"

  My father spoke to me at the same time, creating a dizzying effect. "She means the pipe, of course. It’s just down the beach. I told you that."

  Zane threw my father an approving look. "What he said."

  "Kali," my mother said simultaneously, "would you like some chocolate haupia pie?"

  "I was surfing the pipe all morning!" Zane insisted. "Didn’t you see me?"

  "What’s haupia?" my dad asked.

  "Coconut cream," my mother answered. "And yes, I know it’s rich, but we’re on vacation, and I’m not too fat for my swimsuit yet. Kali?"

  "If you were looking for guys your age," Zane continued, talking over my mother, "you should have noticed me. You really don’t think I’m hot?"

  "Yes, you are," I blurted, "it looks delicious."

  My mother stopped cutting the pie and stared at me. My father stopped eating his fruit salad and stared at me.

  Zane himself looked startled for a second. Then he fell back into his chair in a paroxysm of laughter.

  My mind spun. What the heck had I just said?

  "What I meant—" I spoke up quickly, then faltered. It was an explanation I had no idea how to finish. I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but I was pretty sure I had just simultaneously called my mother fat and propositioned a dead guy.

  "I mean you’re entitled to a little treat," I said with blessed inspiration, keeping my gaze firmly on my mother. "We all are. After all, like you said, we’re on vacation!"

  I helped myself to a heaping portion of the pie and buried my scarlet face as deeply in it as possible. My parents’ conversation turned studiously to the weather.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Zane doubled over in his chair, still laughing hysterically.

  If he wasn’t already dead, I would have killed him.

  ***

  I stepped out of the shower, threw my hair up in a towel, and dried off. It felt good to get rid of the sand. It also felt good to have a little privacy.

  Zane had disappeared from the table shortly after dessert, and had not had the decency to reappear the entire time I had waited for him alone on the deck afterwards. Perhaps that was because he knew why I was waiting for him.

  I slipped on my most comfortable sleep shirt, brushed my teeth, and stepped out into the hall. Whatever had happened at dinner tonight, I was never doing it again. Either he agreed to my rules or I would simply ignore him, just as I did all the other, considerably less annoying dead people I saw every day. I could do it. And I would do it. Period.

  I opened the door of my smallish corner bedroom and walked in, enjoying the omnipresent sound of breaking waves that floated in through the open windows. The condo was a modest two bedroom on one level, nothing fancy. But it had come cheap for the week, thanks to my father’s connections; and it was superbly located in a cluster of houses within a stone’s throw of Sunset Beach. I had slept with the window open every night, enjoying the sea breezes that rolled in constantly through the slats of the wooden shutters.

  I shut the door behind me, and without thinking—and in a move I did not choose to psychoanalyze—clicked the lock. The condo wasn’t very old; from the eighties, maybe, which was good. When it came to hotels and motels, the newer the better, because the shadows were fewer. Some buildings replaced older ones, of course, but the rooms never lined up perfectly, and shadows that floated randomly through walls and ceilings had long since ceased to draw my attention. I had once slept like a baby in a hotel room in Atlanta where three bikers packing pistols had played poker all night long. I could only take them so seriously when their feet dangled in the air above the toilet and their heads were on another floor.

  I grabbed my book off the nightstand and hopped into bed with a smile. Ocean breeze, crashing waves, soft mattress, and a good book. What more could I ask for?

  I was well into a second chapter when I noticed his ankle. He was sitting across the foot of my bed, his back propped up against the wall, his legs actually overlapping mine on top of the covers. He had the gall to flash me a smile.

  "I was wondering when you’d notice," he said cheerfully.

  My teeth clenched. I wanted to jump out of the bed, but that would hardly accomplish anything. At least here, I was under the covers.

  "You are NOT allowed in my room," I growled.

  "Why not?" h
e asked innocently.

  "Because you’re a guy!"

  "Under ordinary circumstances, maybe," he argued. "But as you so painfully keep reminding me, I don’t count as a guy."

  I took in a deep breath. He had a point. Sort of. But I was not going to let him call the shots. He was the one asking for help, here. Either we played by my rules, or we didn’t play at all.

  "What do you want?" I barked.

  He looked back at me for a long moment. I didn’t know whether it was calculated or not, but his eyes had an amazing capacity to mesmerize me. It was as if, when he chose to, he could throw open some inner window that showed pure, raw emotion. The kind most people—like me—tried hard to hide.

  "I’m sorry about what happened at dinner," he said softly, his expression radiating regret. "I shouldn’t have put you in that position—having to pretend in front of your parents. I won’t do it again. I promise."

  I stared back into his genuine, troubled face and felt the anger quickly drain out of me, replaced by an unexplainable need to apologize to him. Luckily, I squelched it. I would not be taken advantage of, no matter how gorgeous his eyes were... or how nonthreatening he looked in the soft cotton tee and sweats he had mysteriously changed into.

  "We have to set some rules," I squeaked, forcing my eyes back to his face.

  "No problem," he said quickly, smiling at me.

  I looked away again. Where the heck was I supposed to look with a guy like him sitting on the end of my bed? Conversation was a whole lot easier when I was mad at him.

  "First off," I began, "you cannot surprise me by popping up all over the place. Particularly in my bedroom!"

  He nodded. "I’m assuming the shower’s okay, then?"

  Perfect. Now I was mad at him.

  My eyes narrowed. "If I so much as see one half-transparent toe of yours anywhere NEAR any bathroom or bedroom I ever go in, I will NEVER talk to you again. EVER. Got it?"

  He considered. "Fair enough. Except for the part about the bedroom. I mean, it is the perfect place to talk privately, isn’t it? At least when you’re fully clothed. What if we consider it ‘by invitation only?’"