“You’ve been there?” That was news to me. The only way I would have missed such a memorable person would be if they’d come in while I’d been in the thick of my relationship with Nate, when he’d convinced me to stop spending so much time at the shop so we could be together. At the time, I’d thought it was romantic and agreed to hire on a local teenager to help. “I’m sorry I missed you.”
They waved it off. “Water under the bridge. But what brings you in here today? I have to say, you seem a little uncomfortable to be here.”
“I convinced him to stop by with me,” Camille said, looping her free arm through mine. “We were hoping to get more information about the different qualities of crystals and what they do.”
“Was there something in particular you were looking for?” they asked, watching me with an odd look in their eyes, like they knew something I didn’t.
“I’d heard that certain things can enhance psychic abilities and help focus them,” I said before Camille would respond. The plan had been to let her take the lead and not mention what I could do, but for some reason, I wanted to tell Ori at least a little of it. Surely someone who ran a spiritual shop like this was used to people coming in asking about becoming psychic?
Some of Ori’s reservation faded and their smile became a bit warmer. “It depends on what, exactly, you’re looking to do, but yes. Are you trying to activate latent abilities or control an existing one?”
“That. The second one,” I nodded and Camille took a step closer for support, with Raina at my back.
“Can I ask what you can do? You are under no obligation to share any information, but it will help me find what will help you best if I at least have a general idea.”
This was it. Telling Donovan had almost been easy, in a way. He’d already been inclined to believe me. Raina and Camille hadn’t doubted me for a second and Will had seen a ghost possess me, so of course he was going to believe. This would be the first time telling someone I didn’t already trust. In a town this small, they’d either laugh at me or tell someone and by tomorrow morning, the gossip mill would be churning out the rumor that Alex Copeland had finally cracked and gone nuts.
Besides that… I’d just met them. Could I truly trust Ori with this? Camille seemed friendly with them and they seemed nice enough, but trusting them enough to talk about this felt big. Did I really have that much choice, though? I couldn’t get any further on my own, I’d proven that, and Ori seemed confident enough. This would be a massive leap of faith, but I needed the answers they might have.
“Everyone’s power is their own and many choose to keep it hidden. I don’t blame you for doing the same,” they said, misinterpreting my silence as a refusal.
“No, it’s not that,” I assured Ori, then paused, replaying their words in my head. “Wait. What do you mean? Are there other people that can see ghosts, too?”
Shit.
“You can see the dead?” Their brows rose in surprise. “I’ve actually never met anyone who can do that. Well, not anyone on this side, anyway. That’s quite unique. I’m sure I can help you, though.”
I didn’t miss how they neatly glossed over my questions. And what did theymeanby ‘not anyone on this side’? What the hell had I just stumbled into? I had so many questions.
“Alex is really private about this, so we’d like to keep this between the four of us,” Camille said, glancing around the shop. Thankfully, we were alone. I really should have checked before spouting my secrets like an idiot.
“Naturally.” Ori leaned forward, resting their elbows on the counter, eyes bright with excitement. “So. Tell me everything.”
Chapter 5
Donovan
Aftertwodaysofworking the Perez case, we’d hit a brick wall. Sitting together in our cramped office, Will and I pored over the notes we had, sparse as they were. For all intents and purposes, Rebecca Perez had walked out her front door and disappeared from the face of the Earth. Not a single person in town had seen her, no trace of her had turned up anywhere despite numerous searches, and her parents hadn’t received any word from her. Eva Perez called almost on the hour, not that I blamed her, and having to tell her we hadn’t made any progress didn’t get any easier.
“We had to have missed something,” Will said, running his hands through his blonde hair, which was already a mess. He pulled a picture of the path between the two houses closer, staring at it. We’d walked that path countless times in the last two days. We’d gone together, separate, with Rebecca’s parents, with Landon and Amelie DeVor, and still hadn’t found a trace of Rebecca. The chief organized the patrol officers into a search yesterday and together, we’d all walked the length of County Road 4 for miles. Still, we’d found nothing, not even a single thing we could trace back to Rebecca Perez.
“She might still be off with that boyfriend,” I pointed out, but the chances of that grew slimmer with every passing hour. We didn’t even have a name for the guy she was dating. Amelie told us he went by Striker and that it was a nickname, but Rebecca had never called him anything else in front of her. Lowery’s Crossing was hardly a hub of gang activity, so we couldn’t trace where the nickname came from. No one had ever seen Striker, so we didn’t even have a description of him or what kind of vehicle he drove.
“The parents say she’s never been gone for more than three days before. That’s tomorrow morning.”
“I know.” I knew the odds and statistics, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up on Rebecca just yet.
“She wasn’t a half-bad student, considering how many classes she’s skipped. Maybe she just wanted a few days off and now that we’re getting into the weekend, she’ll be ready to come back?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I shrugged, but neither of us believed it. He was grasping at straws just like I was. Truth was, we had absolutely nothing to go on and until we either got a tip or found Rebecca, we were completely stuck.
“Parker? Dodd?” The chief knocked on the open door, glancing at the case notes on the desk, then back up at us. “Any news?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. We’d been running down everything we could find and weariness bled into my words. “Nothing but a lot of dead ends.”
She’d been keeping abreast of the case, helping with the search effort, so there wasn’t much need for a long-winded update.
“Go ahead and pack it in for the night. We’ll start fresh in the morning.”
