Wraith Read online

  For a long moment, neither parent seemed able to speak. The man lifted the struggling child from her mother’s grasp, hugged her tight for a moment, then balanced her lightly against his chest with a strong arm. They stared at me with equal measures of relief and wide-eyed horror while the child, content with a lighter degree of restraint, began absently playing with her father’s chest hair.

  "Is she… hurt?" the mother said finally, her voice a squeak.

  "I don’t think so," I answered flatly.

  "How did she—" the man began, but the woman interrupted him with a stifled cry.

  "I saw her playing with the doorknob earlier," she admitted, her voice choking on every syllable. "But the door was locked. I know it was. She must have woken up early and climbed out of her crib… how she turned the lock I can’t imagine… she just had so much fun playing outside yesterday—" her voice broke off completely, replaced by deep, wracking sobs.

  I began to feel uncomfortable. This was a private moment; I wasn't needed anymore.

  "I’m glad she’s okay," I said awkwardly, stepping back out onto the deck.

  "Wait," the man called. I turned to look at him as he stood, clearly overwhelmed, one arm supporting his daughter, the other around his wife. "We didn’t… I mean… thank you."

  The woman found her voice again. "Thank you," she repeated. "How we can we ever thank you enough?"

  I took a step backward. My legs had begun to tremble, I was drenched to the bone, and my teeth were chattering. I just wanted to go home. "You’re welcome," I said simply. Before they could say any more I turned and hurried down the stairs.

  A sharp stab of pain in my left foot told me I had probably picked up a splinter, but I didn’t care. I continued to race back along the beach and across the yards and asphalt and did not slow my steps until I had reached the deck of the condo.

  Zane kept pace with me, as always, but because he had fallen uncharacteristically silent I almost forgot that he was there. Only when I stopped at last, hand on my own doorknob, did he step around to catch my attention.

  "Are you sure you’re all right?" he asked again. The dawning sky was brighter now, and I could see that his concern was genuine. That knowledge filled me with an unexpected warmth, but not enough, unfortunately, to overcome the bone-chilling cold that now permeated every inch of me.

  "I’ll be fine," I answered, putting as much warmth into my own voice as my frozen body could muster. "I just need a hot shower. And a couple hours more sleep." I opened the door, let myself in, and turned around. "I’ll see you tomorrow, Zane." I attempted a smile. "In someplace other than my bedroom, if you don’t mind."

  He grinned broadly, then nodded. "As you wish."

  He stayed where he was, and I began to close the door. "Goodnight," I mumbled.

  "Sleep tight, Hero," he returned.

  The door clicked shut. I did not look back, but made a beeline for my bedroom. I stumbled through the doorway and collapsed face down on the bed, wet clothes and all.

  Hero, indeed.

  Despite the relative warmth of the room, my skin felt cold and clammy, my every limb was shaking like a jack hammer, and I was pretty sure I was going to be sick.

  Zane should be calling himself the hero. If not for him, I would still be sound asleep, and the little girl would almost certainly have drowned.

  But the next time he needed a lifeguard, he really should pick someone who could swim.

  Chapter 5

  Zane was true to his word. I did not see him the next morning until I took my sesame bagel, fresh pineapple, and hot tea out onto the deck. My father was with me, enjoying his toast and coffee, and Zane kept his distance. I only caught sight of him occasionally, leaning against one of the palm trees or sunning himself on a neighbor’s roof. He waited patiently, not looking in my direction, but studiously scanning the ocean from a variety of angles. I did notice that he managed to stay within earshot as my father described to me, in typical dramatic fashion, some of the lesser known aspects of the attack on Pearl Harbor that he had learned on his tours of the base.

  Unlike me, my father actually did look Hawaiian, taking very little of his appearance from my Minnesota-born grandfather. But because my grandmother Kalia had died when he was a child, leaving him to be raised on the mainland by an Irish Catholic stepmother, he was no more culturally in tune with the locale than I was.

  "Are you sure you don’t want to ride along with your mother and me?" he asked again when his breakfast was finished. "We won’t be at the base all morning. We can drive over to Waikiki after. Or we could take that hike up Diamond Head."

  I searched my mind for a suitable excuse. The hike up Diamond Head sounded good; a day’s worth of killing time at the base did not. Primarily because Hickham wasn’t just any base.

  "No thanks, Dad," I said simply. "I’d really rather just hang out on the beach some more and watch the surfers. I thought maybe I’d check out that tube thing Tara was talking about. We can do Diamond Head another day, can’t we?"

  Zane had moved closer, and was now perched on the deck railing. He had been doing an admirable job of pretending to ignore us so far, but at the words "tube thing" he rolled his eyes with a groan.

  "Sure we can," my father answered, his expression turning thoughtful. "And by the way, I told Keith to let his son know that you’d rather not do Pearl Harbor this afternoon. I told him you’d already seen it."

  I smiled back warmly. My parents might not believe that I saw the shadows any more, but my phobia of battlefields was too intense to be denied. After a few thoroughly embarrassing incidents in my elementary years, they seemed to have accepted that, supernatural visions aside, there was something about disaster sites that affected me deeply. Too deeply to fool around with when the unpleasantness—and speculation as to its cause—could so easily be avoided altogether.

  "Thanks, Dad," I answered.

  He turned to go inside, but looked back over his shoulder with mock sternness. "And it’s the world famous Banzai Pipeline, not ‘that tube thing.’ Show a little respect, will you?"

  I chuckled. He went inside and closed the door.

  "I knew I liked that man," Zane announced from my father’s vacated seat. "It’s about time you stopped dissing the pipe and learned to worship it like everybody else in Oahu." He leaned closer and smiled at me expectantly. "Let’s go surfing."

  A flicker of panic made my stomach twist. Maybe it was the mental image of me on a surfboard. Maybe it was the effect his smile had on my insides. More than likely, it was both.

  For the thousandth time, I reminded myself that he was dead. "I don’t surf," I said flatly.

  "Not yet, maybe. But you will. At least come with me and watch? The waves are looking awesome."

  He looked so eager, so energetic. He was dressed like one of the pros this morning—wearing a skintight, one-piece, midnight blue surf suit. I wondered vaguely how the whole clothes-changing thing worked for a ghost.

  I sighed. Befriending him like he was any other human could not possibly end well for me. Then again, it wasn’t like there were any other hot guys asking me to spend the morning on the beach with them, was it? Last night’s killer wind had faded to a pleasant breeze. The sky was blue. The air was warm.

  Five minutes later, we were strolling down the sand.

  "Guess what?" he said cheerfully, when we passed out of earshot of the few other people visible.

  "What?"

  His green eyes sparkled. "I remembered some things." His face shone with suppressed excitement, causing an effect on me that I can only describe as knee weakening, despite the ripples of translucency—slightly wider than yesterday—that floated periodically across his torso.

  I stopped walking and faced him. "Really? Something about your past, you mean?"

  He nodded. "Last night, after I left your house, I was thinking about your family, and wondering if I was lucky enough to have one like them. And then some things just came to me, like they were never gone at all.
"

  "Like what?"

  He looked away. "Stuff from when I was a little kid. That’s all I’ve got so far. But I know it’s real."

  We walked for a while in silence, then I prodded him for more.

  "So tell me."

  He smiled at me again, but this time the smile was hesitant, almost sad. "My family was definitely not like yours."

  "What difference does that make?" I said quickly. When it came to parental problems, I was a little sensitive to being considered insensitive. My friends from dysfunctional families always seemed to assume that because my parents were happily married, I couldn’t understand. Maybe they were right. But I wanted to try.

  Zane exhaled with a shrug. "I always lived with my mom. I saw my dad every once in a while, but they were never married. It seemed like they barely knew each other."

  I nodded. "Did you have any brothers or sisters?"

  He shook his head. "No. It was always just me and my mom." He turned and looked at me, an uneasy smirk on his face. "Would you believe me if I told you that my mother was sort of famous? That she was a television actress?"

  The breeze ruffled his dark blond curls, which glinted like gold in the strong sunlight. I resisted the urge to cast another casual glance over his almost perfect form, keeping my gaze on his totally perfect eyes instead. At least he came by it honestly.

  "Yeah," I said with a laugh. "I can believe that."

  He smiled with relief. "I can remember watching her on TV, and being really proud of her. She was a beautiful person."

  I was distracted, suddenly, by the sight of another woman, this one not so beautiful, who was already familiar to me. I was interested in what Zane was saying; and when it came to the shadows, my natural inclination was to ignore first and ask questions never. But something about this particular, very old shadow, faint as a wisp of steam, drew my gaze to her involuntarily.

  She was short and relatively stocky, with a squarish head and stringy black hair that hung well below her waist. A dull-colored wrap skirt covered her from just under the breasts to a few inches above the knee, while she clutched a similarly colored shawl around her shoulders. She was pregnant, and heavily so, and appeared young—not much older than me. She stood just as she had the last time I had seen her, watching out to sea, her gaze glued to the horizon, with tears streaming down her cheeks and an occasional wracking sob shaking her small body like a spasm.

  It was not her anguish that drew me. I went to great lengths to avoid any shadow that radiated pain, because I had to. Not only did my inevitable empathy hurt me, too; but it was pointless. Whatever I was seeing had already happened; I couldn’t change it.

  Yet in this woman’s case, I knew what was coming, and it was far from painful. I had watched it unfold a couple times yesterday morning, but I was always too far away to catch the highlight. Perhaps today, I would be luckier.

  "Kali?" Zane’s voice asked me curiously. "Where did you go?" He was waving a hand before my eyes. "Am I boring you?"

  "No!" I said emphatically, embarrassed. "I want to hear all about your mother. I’m sorry." I drew my eyes from the shadow with reluctance and set off down the beach again.

  "Oh, I get it," Zane said brightly, catching up to me. "You were seeing a shadow, weren’t you?" He looked back at the place where I had been staring. "What was it?"

  My stomach did a quick flip-flop. My heartbeat quickened.

  Covering up my rare moments of shadow watching was something I thought I was good at. My parents never seemed to notice; they just thought I spaced out occasionally. Same thing with my friends. Heck, Kylee spaced out twice as much as I did, and no one ever thought she was seeing dead people.

  Zane already knew my secret; but still, talking about it in real time made me uncomfortable. I didn’t share this kind of crap with anybody. It didn’t feel right. I might as well have been standing there in my underwear.

  "Come on, Kali," Zane cajoled, looking somewhat disbelieving. "Don’t go all defensive on me, now! You can’t seriously believe I’m going to think you’re weird?"

  He shook his head at me and laughed out loud. After a long, thoughtful moment, I laughed with him. "Sorry. It’s just that… I don’t talk about it. I did once, and everybody thought I was psychotic, or schizophrenic, or something even worse. So now I pretend."

  His expression turned serious. "How long ago was that?"

  "When I was five."

  His eyes widened. "You live with this… seeing these shadows… every day, and you haven’t talked to anyone about it since you were five?"

  I shrugged. "You get used to it."

  He continued to watch me thoughtfully, his gaze drifting back and forth between me and the shadow of the pregnant Polynesian woman, which to him was an empty stretch of beach. "Tell me about it," he said quietly, his voice dropping to the same dreaded, husky whisper he had manipulated me with so successfully yesterday. "Tell me what you see."

  My jaw clenched. I knew there was no real risk in being honest with him. He was not going to assume I needed psych meds; and even if he did, he couldn’t tell anyone. Still, sharing the shadows seemed so… personal.

  "Please, Kali?"

  Crap.

  Sooner or later, that sexy whisper was going to be the death of me.

  "It’s a woman, okay?" I said before I could think anymore. "She’s very faint. Centuries old, probably. I was watching her yesterday, and I really wanted to see her again…"

  I spilled the whole works. Describing the woman in detail, answering every one of Zane’s fascinated questions. But as the expected point in the drama neared, I found myself impatient with the inquisition, turning my attention instead to the spot up the beach where the other shadow would soon appear.

  "What’s up there?" Zane insisted, following my gaze.

  The second wispy form appeared, walking slowly across invisible sand drifts that bore no relation to the ones present now. I smiled. "The man she thinks is out there," I answered, tossing my head toward the water.

  The man’s steps quickened, though his legs were obviously weak, and his lips moved as he called out to the woman. I could barely hear him… just the faintest quiver of bass vibration floating above the breeze. He was speaking in another language, so I couldn’t have understood him anyway, but his intent was clear. He was shouting to get her attention.

  She turned. I moved a few steps closer, not wanting to miss her expression.

  "What’s happening?" Zane demanded.

  "She sees him," I whispered breathlessly. I couldn’t begin to describe the look of pure, emphatic joy that transformed her features instantly from the depths of sorrow to the height of ecstasy—the whipping flame of energy that sent her pregnant, unwieldy body into flight. I had never seen any woman that pregnant run that fast. Barefoot on the sand, her shawl discarded, she sprinted like an extra wide gazelle, breasts and belly bobbing, covering the distance between them in seconds.

  I ran along beside her, heedless of how ridiculous I looked, to catch the reunion up close. I was not disappointed.

  She threw herself into the man’s arms as if compelled there by a suction as powerful as the sea itself, and he held onto her awkward form as if a force just as great threatened to snatch her. They wanted, needed, to touch each other—every inch of skin not in contact seemed unbearable. They did not kiss in the traditional sense, but rubbed their faces together, cheek to cheek, lip to lip, as if trying to absorb one other, to assimilate their two forms into one delirious, satisfied whole.

  The man’s face was so faint it was difficult to see much detail, but I was certain—whether I could see it or not—that his eyes were tearing. He was no taller than me, with long black hair in a ponytail and no clothes to speak of other than a loin cloth; but for her, he was the perfect fit. I stood there, mesmerized, drinking in the heady joy and warmth that, unaccountably, still radiated from their wispy outlines hundreds of years after the fact—until once again they disappeared together, slowly and gradually, into noth
ingness.

  "You know," Zane prodded good-naturedly, "it’s really rude not to narrate for the blind."

  I forced my mind back to the present. "Sorry. Just got carried away. I love that scene."

  I sighed.

  Despite his professed interest, I figured Zane was only humoring me. But I soon learned that once onto something that intrigued him, the guy was a pit bull. He badgered me mercilessly until I had related every detail of what I had just witnessed, and then some.

  "Do you ever research the things you see?" he asked. "Go online, or into a history book, and try to match up the characters and time frame?"

  My eyebrows lifted. "Are you kidding? Why would I want to do that? I told you—I try my best to ignore them. It’s healthier that way. I only pay attention to the happy ones, because they make me happy. But it doesn’t do them any good."

  His brow furrowed. "But you could be seeing something important. Something that history has wrong, even."

  "What if I am?" I replied defensively. "There’s nothing I can do about it. Nobody would believe me. I’d just wind up in a psych ward. Think about it!"

  "I suppose," he conceded. "But still… to have that ability…"

  My teeth clenched. I knew he wasn’t trying to be critical, but I had worked hard, all my life, to stay sane in my own skin—I did not need the one person to whom I had finally confessed my secret telling me I was handling it wrong.

  "We're supposed to be talking about you, not me," I said firmly, setting off down the beach again. "Now, tell me more about your mother."

  Zane's face lit up again, just as a wide band of transparency settled into the middle of his forehead. "Well, like I said, she was a professional actress," he began, his voice proud. "I can remember watching her in TV commercials. My favorite was one where she had to swing a tennis racket. She wasn’t athletic at all, and she used to moan and groan about how many takes it took to make her look like a pro. There was also a dog food one I liked, where she worked with an Airedale in a cowboy outfit. But her main thing was the soaps. She played one particular character a long time—can’t remember the name. People would recognize her on the street and call out to us. Sometimes they would look at me funny because her baby on the show was a girl, and they didn’t understand that she wasn’t her character. But she loved the attention."