“I honestly have no idea,” Charlie answered. “A ghost, maybe? I think I’ve been here, in the lookout, since I died. I don’t know how or why. No one could see or hear me before. Or if they did, it was a passing glance. Not the way Reece can, anyway.”
Tate’s brow furrowed. “Are you a medium?” he asked me.
I shook my head quickly. “Nope. Charlie is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”In more ways than one. “I’m no ghost whisperer.”
“My grandmother is going to have a field day with this…” Tate mumbled lowly before turning back to Charlie. “If no one could see you before besides him, why can I see you now?”
Charlie blushed a bit, but shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure. I have theories.” He fussed with the blanket sprawled next to him. “I think it’s helped me to be seen. Tofeelalive again, even if I’m not. But I’ll probably never know for sure.”
I wanted to hold him, kiss the blush from his cheeks, and tell him I’d do anything and everything to make him feel seen, to feel alive.
Tate dragged a hand down his face. “I don’t even know where to begin asking questions. I still feel like maybe I tripped and fell into a ravine on my way out here, and this is all a hallucination.”
I grimaced, feeling a bit bad for teasing him. “This is really happening. You aren’t lying dead in the woods somewhere. But I sort of thought the same thing had happened to me the first time I saw Charlie, too, so I get it.”
“You’re handling this surprisingly well, actually. Reece screamed like a banshee and nearly chucked himself over the railing.”
I turned to glare at Charlie. “I was startled.And I didn’t chuck myself off, you yelled at me and nearly killed me.”
“What?”Tate asked, eyeing Charlie warily. To be fair, though, he’d looked at him like that the entire time.
“He’s being dramatic,” Charlie answered with an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t try to kill him; I assertively asked him not to close my window. I wasn’t aware he’d actually hear me. Or see me, for that matter. And then I saved his lifebypreventinghim from going over the railing.”
I hid a smile at his put-out expression and opened my mouth to continue, but Tate interrupted. “Can you stop bickering like an old married couple for two seconds?” he begged.
Charlie blushed again.
Tate heaved a sigh before shifting into cop mode. I had to give him credit for rolling with the punches, even when faced with a reality so far out of the norm. “So. Say I believe you really are Charles Randolph, and you really are… dead. It doesn’t make you an innocent man.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Charlie responded angrily. “The same thing that happened to Reece happened to me.”
Tate’s eyes narrowed. “Really? Did you see who, then? Who killed you?”
“I don’t remember,” Charlie answered, a tremble in his voice.
“You don’t remember?” Tate parroted, his tone making it clear he didn’t believe him.
Charlie’s outline flickered, and I reached out and took his hand. He squeezed back before taking a deep breath. “No. I remember seeing a light outside and following it into the woods. I don’t remember anything after that.”
Tate’s gaze was skeptical. “Do you think you could if someone helped you?”
My turn for skepticism. “What do you mean, ‘help him’?”
He sighed. “I was a few years younger than you in school, so you probably don’t know, but my parents were pretty shitty people. They were in and out of jail for a lot of my childhood. Mostly drugs. My grandmother is the one who raised me. She’s… different. Quirky.”
“Okay…” I said, not understanding the connection.
“My whole life, she’s been into stuff like tarot cards and hypnosis, and reading people’s auras. She runs a small business out of her house. She says most of it is just observing people and guessing at what they want to hear. But she’s also talked about other stuff, too. Communicating withthe other side.She wouldn’t even let me stay in the house when those clients came calling—she said she didn’t want my young, open, vulnerable soul to be taken advantage of if something went wrong. I never knew what she meant, but…” he trailed off, glancing at Charlie again warily. “If it’s true you can’t remember what happened to you, maybe she could help.”
“If you were raised by a woman who says she can talk to ghosts, why are you so shaken up by me?” Charlie asked.
Tate shrugged, looking a bit chagrined. “I’ve always believed she believes she can communicate with the dead, and I’ve never had a reason to challenge her on it. But seeing it for myself is different.”
I didn’t like any of this.
First, would Charlie even want to remember? Was the identity of the killer buried somewhere in his subconscious? What would happen to him when he did remember? Would it hurt him?
Suddenly, I couldn’t get the question he asked me the other night out of my head.
