Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(16)

Odelia was as unapologetic about overeating as she was about her choice of bathroom reading material—or the fact that she reads on the toilet in the first place.

Calla sees herself smile in the mirror as she contemplates her grandmother’s many quirks.

Then her smile fades and she looks long and hard at her reflection and beyond, wondering if she’ll spot anything—or anyone—unusual in the room behind her.

Nope. Nothing at all. And the air temperature seems to be holding steady as well.

Okay. So maybe what happened upstairs was her imagination.

Or maybe the temperature really did drop and she really did see a ghost.

But even if that’s the case, the ghost isn’t here now. Calla’s alone in the room—of that, she’s certain.

Turning away from the mirror, relieved, Calla begins browsing the nearest row of books. Most of them appear to be romance novels, with a couple of new-agey nonfiction titles thrown in. She’s reaching for one of those when she hears something through the screened window at the front of the house.

Footsteps crunch up the path, up the wooden steps, across the porch. The bell rings.

Now what?

Calla walks to the foot of the stairs. She can hear water running up there.

Should she answer the door herself or ignore it?

As she turns toward it, she sees that she has no choice. A figure is standing right there, watching her through the window in the old-fashioned door.

Not a ghostly figure, or one that’s the least bit ominous, thank goodness. It’s a roly-poly middle-aged woman. Probably one of her grandmother’s friends.

Opening the wooden door but leaving the screen door securely latched, Calla smiles expectantly. “Hi.”

“Er . . . hello.” The woman’s expression is a little strained. Her face is drawn, and there’s a telltale red puffiness around her eyes. Calla recognizes it, having seen the same thing in her own reflection often enough these past few weeks. This woman has been crying.

“Is Odelia Lauder in?” she asks in a way that makes it clear she’s not a friend of Calla’s grandmother’s. Nor does she know much about her, Calla assumes, when she goes on to ask, “You—you’re not her, are you?”

“You mean am I Odelia? No! I’m her granddaughter.” Calla notices then that the woman isn’t alone. Someone is hovering in the shadows beside the porch steps, standing right in Odelia’s flower bed, actually. That strikes Calla as odd, and rude. It might not be the most manicured garden, but that doesn’t mean people are welcome to stomp on the blossoms.

“My name is Elaine Riggs,” the woman says, not bothering to introduce her companion, who appears to be a teenage girl, judging by her slight build, slouchy clothing, and long hair. “Is Odelia here? I was wondering if she could do a reading. My friend Joan sent me. She said she’s really good.”

Calla blinks. “Excuse me?”

Now the woman—is she the girl’s mother?—looks equally confused. She takes a few steps back toward the edge of the porch, leans back, and glances up, toward the eaves, as if checking something. The girl she brought with her doesn’t move.

Calla can feel her stare, though she can’t make out her features in the twilight.

The woman gives a little nod, saying, “This is Odelia Lauder’s place . . . she isn’t in, then?”

“No, she’s in . . . she’s just, um. . . busy.” Calla wishes the woman would tell her daughter to get out of the flower bed. Talk about rude.

But she continues to ignore the girl as she asks, “So she isn’t doing readings tonight?”

Doing readings? What on earth is this woman talking about?

“I just drove five hours from Columbus. I probably should have called first, but . . . I guess it was a whim. Joan said Odelia takes walkins . . . and . . .” The woman falters.

Walkins? Is her grandmother a hairdresser or . . . a doctor? If she were, I’d know it, Calla thinks. On the heels of that, she realizes she has no idea what it is, exactly, that her grandmother does for a living. She must support herself somehow. Odds are, though, that she isn’t a hairdresser or a doctor.

The woman is still waiting, the girl still staring silently from the flower bed. Calla shrugs, for lack of anything constructive to say. She isn’t about to admit that she has no idea what her grandmother’s job is. Nor is she about to invite these strangers inside. Something about the girl is giving her the creeps.

“I . . . she’s really busy right now. I don’t know what to say.”

“All right. I’ll come back tomorrow. I can’t drive all the way back alone tonight anyway.” Dejected, the woman turns and heads down the steps.

The girl stays where she is as the woman walks right past her without acknowledging her. Then, after seeming to give a little nod at Calla, she turns and walks away, right through the flowers, not caring that she’s probably trampling the whole bed.

Standing in the screened door, Calla watches them head down the street. The woman glances from house to house like she’s looking for something or someone. The girl walks a few steps behind her. They aren’t interacting. That’s odd. Maybe they had an argument or something. And the woman did say she’d be driving alone. Maybe the girl lives somewhere else.

Speaking of odd . . . what was the woman looking at above the porch? Curious, Calla unlatches the door and steps out into the twilight. She walks over to the edge of the porch, looks up to see what the woman might have been looking at, and finds herself staring at a wooden sign hanging from a bracket on the porch roof. She hadn’t even noticed it earlier.