She shrugs. “I guess so. I just wish... I wish I knew why he’d done it. Why the money was so important.” Her voice drops. “More important than me.”
I lay my hand on her arm. “I think there’s someone you need to talk to about that.”
We return to the courtyard where I first met Justin. While Derek keeps Gina occupied, I summon Justin and tell him what I’m about to do, make sure he’s okay with that. He is.
I explain to Gina that I’m a psychic, in contact with her brother. She’s far less shocked than one might expect. There’s an accepted place in the human world for people who can speak to ghosts—far more than those who can turn into wolves—and I never risk much by admitting what I can do.
I have Justin prove it’s him—Gina asking a question only he can answer. She didn’t want to bother with that, but it’ll be important later, when the adrenaline rush of tonight passes and she questions what happened.
Once we’ve established he’s really there, I act as interpreter while Derek leaves the courtyard, giving them as much privacy as we can manage.
Justin admits the truth about Gina’s father, and the truth about what he did—panicking and blaming her for the drugs, thinking the lie would give him a chance to fix it.
They say everything they need to say. The love and the anger and the grief and the forgiveness. They spend one last hour together, and then Gina sets him free, tells him she’ll be fine and he needs to go someplace better, trusts hewillgo someplace better, that he deserves it. He does, and he will. I’m certain of that.
That evening we’re back in our apartment, right where we were when this started, on the couch with me curled up on Derek’s lap, both of us sitting in silent contemplation. Gina is safely with one of Sean’s people, who’ll keep her safe while they figure out the next steps to her new life.
“You made the right call listening to this ghost,” Derek says. “He’s found peace, and his sister is safe, thanks to you.”
“Thanks tous,” I say. “Thank you for helping.”
He snorts. “Like I’d just let you do it on your own. I want to help, too, Chloe. You know that. Sure, part of me would rather we holed up in a den I can protect. But that’s not how you’re wired.”
“It’s not how you’re wired, either.”
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe. All I do know is that it’s been killing you to watch Maya and Daniel help others while we bury ourselves in our studies and pretend we don’t have time for anything else. If they have time, we do, too. School comes first, but that doesn’t mean we can’t lend a hand now and then to someone who needs it as badly as we once did. Would that make you feel better?”
I nod. “It would.”
He reaches for his phone. “Then let’s see what Maya has for us.”
I lean over to kiss him. Then we make the call.
TRAIN TO LAST HOPE
by Annie Bellet
A faint breeze rustled the curtains on the windows and brought the sound of the morning train into my kitchen. The air had held anticipation of summer storms all week, like a child holding her breath on a dare and then forgetting why, sending my weathersense onto its last nerve. Baking in the sticky, expectant heat was faint help but it was something to do. I set the pan of blondies to cool as the horn pealed, almost drowning out the creak of my porch steps. The knock came in the stillness after. I took my time going to the door. When you’re a witch living at the final stop before the world of the living crashes into the underworld, unexpected company is rarely a vacuum salesman or someone dropping in for coffee and gossip.
The visitor tipped the brim of her hat back as I stood a frozen breath away behind the screen door.
“Hello, Cassidy. You going to invite me in?” she asked, her voice as smooth and low as I remembered.
I shook my head and found my voice. “Even here we know better than to let Death into our homes.” I couldn’t find a smile in me to soften the words.
The train sounded again, stopping us both from talking for a long moment as we stared at each other. Stared into our pasts, I imagined. Raina was just as tall and lean as ever, but the sword was new to me. When she’d come back a decade before and told me what she’d done, what she’d given up, she’d still had warmth to her. Now she was just hard, her dove-grey eyes changed to an icy inhuman blue that sparked with inner fire. Her glorious hair was hidden beneath the brim of a stained and worn Stetson. Through the dusty screen I couldn’t see her freckles, the constellations on her smooth, light brown skin. It didn’t matter. If I closed my eyes I could still trace them all by heart.
I had a moment to wonder if she saw me the same. There was more grey in my black braids, more me on my hips and thighs in general I supposed. And still the space between us where everything had gone wrong, daughter-shaped and eternally aching.
“I found her trail,” Raina said as the train faded into the distance. “I found it.”
Her trail, but not Mairi, not our daughter. I knew that from the tightness of Raina’s jaw, and from the raw certainty that hadn’t left me since that dream, that final cold dawn when I’d known with every ounce of motherhood and magic in me that my baby was gone from the living. Ten years ago, but staring into Raina’s expectant, even hopeful face, it was like it was ten minutes. Raina had never believed the worst. She’d never stopped searching.
“We can’t do this again,” I said, unable to meet her gaze. I remembered watching the hope die in her pale eyes once before. I wasn’t sure the parts of me left would survive a second time.
“What if you’re wrong, Cass?” Raina said.
I clenched my fists and turned away. It wasn’t that I had given up, something she never understood. It was that I knew. Iknew.
