Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(33)

Probably, knowing her.

With a sigh, Calla turns away from the old photos. Her gaze falls on the clock.

It’s still flashing 12:00.

I should set it, she thinks—then remembers that she can’t. Not without knowing the correct time, and she doesn’t. Her watch is back in Florida with the other stuff she forgot.

I should have made a list before I packed. Mom would have done that. She wouldn’t have forgotten anything.

All right, so setting the clock can wait.

Now what?

Odelia is downstairs making banana bread. I can go help her, Calla thinks, but quickly vetoes that idea. She isn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

Well, not to her grandmother, anyway. She’d give anything to be able to pick up the phone and call Lisa right now, but she can’t do that with Odelia in earshot.

I can go next door and e-mail her.

But then she’d have to talk to Evangeline again, and she isn’t in the mood—though she really would love to get in touch with Lisa.

Okay. So I can listen to music or read.

She finds herself looking past her iPod and the stack of library books, though, to the jewelry box that once belonged to her mother.

Walking over to it, she can feel her heart beating in anticipation. She reaches out to open the lid, and is surprised when the haunting little melody promptly fills the room.

That’s odd.

It wound all the way down to silence yesterday when she was here with Odelia. How can it play now without somebody having turned the key again?

Maybe Odelia came back in and did that? Then again, she seemed just as surprised yesterday to hear the music playing— and she didn’t seem to find the tune familiar.

Not like I do.

Struck, once again, by the distinct sense that she’s heard this song before, Calla listens intently and tries to figure out where.

As the song winds down, she comes up with nothing at all. Well, maybe she’s mistaken, just like with the picture of Mom’s old boyfr—

She gasps aloud, startled by a glimmer of realization. But it flits into and out of her head before she can catch it.

Something about the song. And the boy in the picture.

What does one have to do with the other, though? Calla bites her lip, trying desperately to grab the elusive thought fragment, but it refuses to land.

Frustrated, she browses idly through the contents of the box: a couple of bead necklaces, fake pearls, several pairs of earrings, some bangles. She examines a little gold angel-shaped pin and a mother-of-pearl ring, trying it on and finding it a perfect fit. She takes it off again, though. It doesn’t feel right to wear jewelry her mother didn’t actually give to her, as she did the emerald bracelet. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday.

She shivers and closes the box, restless.

Gradually, she becomes aware of a faint perfume that seems to waft in the room. Sniffing the air, she notices that it’s decidedly floral . . . and recognizable.

It’s the same thing she smelled out on the porch the other day when she first got here. Some flowers in Odelia’s garden must be so strongly scented that the fragrance drifted in the open window and lingered even after Calla closed it. But why didn’t I notice it till now?

She remembers the sweet aroma of baking banana bread earlier—but not flowers.

She takes another deep breath, and somehow, the floral fragrance seems to be gone. She smells only banana bread now.

Maybe she just imagined the flowers? What other explanation is there?

She didn’t imagine the music-box song, though. There’s something familiar about it.

And about the boy in the picture.

And I have no idea why, Calla thinks, rubbing her temples furiously in frustration.

Then she realizes, with a start, that it seems to be growing colder in the room.

But I just closed the window. And it was stuffy in here, she remembers.

She shivers, hugging herself in the chill, and crosses over to the window again, wondering if a patch of cool, floral-scented air were somehow trapped inside, even as she tells herself that the idea makes no sense whatsoever.

She gives the bottom of the sash an upward tug. It doesn’t budge.

Odelia mentioned that the old windows stick when it’s warm and damp out.

Only, it isn’t warm in here at all now. It’s so not warm, in fact, that Calla is surprised she can’t actually see her breath, which is coming quickly now as panic begins to build inside her.

The air smells like flowers again. Oh, God. She’s starting to hyperventilate.

Don’t freak out. Everything is okay. You’re letting your imagination get carried away.

Only the cold isn’t her imagination.

Nor is the distinct scent of flowers.

Nor, she realizes with a stab of foreboding, is the pale face staring at her from the other side of the second-story windowpane.





NINE

It’s her.

The woman Calla saw in the cemetery. And she appears to be floating in midair just beyond the bedroom window. For a moment, Calla is so shocked—and terrified—that all she can do is stand and stare.

Then a frantic scream erupts from somewhere, and it takes her a moment to realize that it came from her.

Immediately, she hears pounding footsteps on the stairs, and Odelia’s voice calling, “Calla? Are you okay?”

She can’t answer. Before her stunned eyes, the woman’s face just disappeared.