Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(19)

Nonplussed, Calla mutters, “Dead is dead.”

“There is no such thing as ‘dead,’ Calla. People who have departed their physical bodies on this earth are still with us. They never really leave us. If you can believe that, you’ll find a great deal of comfort.”

Calla bows her head and blinks away hot tears, thinking of her mother.

She wants to lash out at her grandmother: Mom’s not still with me, because if she were, I’d feel her.

I can’t feel anything at all. She’s just . . . gone.

Odelia comes over to the bed, sits on the edge of the mattress, and touches Calla’s shoulder. “Listen . . . I know this isn’t easy for you. Any of it. But I do think you’ll find some comfort in Lily Dale, and maybe even get to like it here, if you give it a chance.”

“I’m already giving it a chance, aren’t I? I’m here.”

“Right. You’re here. But you didn’t know about us before you came.”

“Us?” Calla echoes blankly. “What do you mean, us?”

Odelia hesitates. “The thing is . . . I’m not the only medium in town, Calla.”

“You’re not?” she asks slowly.

“No. There are lots of us. Dozens, in fact, now, during the season, so—”

“Dozens?” Calla interrupts, stunned. “How can there be dozens of mediums in a tiny town like this? What kind of crazy coincidence is that?”

“It isn’t a coincidence at all. Lily Dale was founded back in the eighteen hundreds as a center for spiritualism.”

Thud. Calla feels as though she’s been flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.

Finally, she recovers enough to ask, “So, the whole town is . . . haunted?”

Odelia laughs. “I guess you could say that . . . but I wouldn’t.”

“What would you say?”

“That the town is filled with caring, sensitive folks using God-given gifts to help people.”

“Help them how?”

“There are any number of ways. Healing, counseling, communicating with Spirit. Some of us have different areas of expertise.”

“You mean, like doctors have different specialties?”

Odelia looks pleased. “Right. Like that.”

“So, what’s your specialty?” Calla asks, deciding to at least act as though she’s buying into this stuff. Maybe there’s a part of her that does—or, at least, is willing to try.

“Oh, I’m a jack of all trades, you could say.”

“But you can see dead people? Spirits?” she amends. “Talk to them? And get messages?”

Odelia nods. “That’s exactly it. And it’s taken me many years of training to figure out how to interpret those messages from what they show me. Even now, there are times when I don’t get things exactly right.”

“So, you don’t actually hear them speaking?”

“Sometimes I do.”

“What do they sound like?”

“Well, sometimes I just hear my own voice in my head, in their words. But I usually do hear my guides’ voices. And they sound much higher-pitched than a human voice . . . they’re on another wavelength, basically, to put it into layman’s terms.”

“What are guides?”

“Spirit guides. They’re entities that are a permanent part of us all, but they exist on a higher realm. Everyone has them, but not everyone can see them.”

“You mean, they’re like guardian angels?”

Odelia looks pleased by Calla’s question. “In a way, yes.”

“What about my mom? Is she my spirit guide now?”

Odelia hesitates. “She might be. Some who cross over continue to guide their loved ones from the other side. But spirit guides—the kind I’m referring to—aren’t on the earthly plane.”

“How do we know they’re there, then?”

“Oh, they’re there. You can learn to become aware of them through meditation—they’ll become known when you’re receptive to them. Or sometimes, if you need their help but aren’t even aware that you do—or that they exist—they’ll try to get your attention somehow.”

“How? By popping up and saying ‘boo’?”

Odelia ignores her sardonic tone. “They have different means of letting you know they’re there. They can show up physically or let you hear them, or smell—”

Impatient, Calla cuts in. “What about my mom? Can she do that, too?”

“Calla—”

“Can you see her and talk to her?”

“I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

Odelia shrugs, looking reluctant to answer. “Some people come to me after they pass, others don’t. Mediums can’t always see people closely connected to our personal lives. And when I do readings, I tell people there’s no telling who is going to come through to them. It might not be who they’re hoping to get, but it’s always who they’re meant to hear from.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Calla, increasingly irritated, doesn’t wait for a reply. “Are you saying that if you did a reading for me, you might put me through to, like, the old guy from down the street who died when I was a baby, and not to my mom?”