Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(34)

“Calla!” Odelia bursts into the room. “What’s wrong? Did you see a mouse?”

“What? No, I—” Seeing the sudden, knowing look in her grandmother’s eye, Calla clamps her mouth shut. She doesn’t dare tell Odelia that she just saw . . . a ghost?

If she tells her grandmother, she’ll be instantly pegged as one of “them.”

And I can’t handle that now, on top of everything else. It was my imagination.That’s all it was. Just my imagination. It has to be.

“Calla?” Odelia is waiting expectantly.

“Yeah,” she says slowly, backing away from the window. “I did. I saw a mouse.”

“Where?”

“Right there,” she points vaguely.

“Out the window?” Odelia sounds dubious.

She doesn’t believe me. I have to make her believe me. I can’t let her know what really happened.

“No, it was here in the room . . . on, uh, the windowsill.” She shudders. “I hate mice.” That much, at least, is true.

“I’ve had a problem with mice before, but not at this time of year. Where did it go?”

“I don’t know. . . . I screamed and she disappeared.”

“She?” Odelia looks amused.

“I mean he. Or it.”

Calm down, Calla warns herself, before you blab everything to her, and she gets you a shingle of your own to hang over her porch.

Somewhere in the back of her shell-shocked mind, though, she knows her grandmother’s reaction should be the least of her worries if she really has started seeing dead people.

What does it mean? Is she a medium? A psychic?

It’s not women’s intuition at all, is it? It’s . . . what did Evangeline say?

Clairvoyance. That’s it. The mere word brings mental images of creepy, vacant-eyed prophets you see in horror movies.

Okay, you’re blowing this whole thing way out of proportion, she tells herself.

“You know,” Odelia is saying, “my friend Andy mentioned the other day that his cat had just had kittens, and he asked if I wanted one.”

Blowing what out of proportion? Some creepy woman floating in midair, then disappearing? How can you blow that out of proportion? It’s—huge. That’s what it is. Huge. And scary.

It was definitely cold in here, too, and there was an intense floral scent just before she saw the woman. For no apparent reason. The window was closed. And what about the music box? And the clock?

“I said no . . . but maybe I should reconsider,” Odelia muses. “What do you think?”

“Hmm?” Calla asks absently, her thoughts skittering as wildly about her head as her heart is in her ribcage.

“The cat . . . to catch the mice. Should we get one?”

We? Calla shrugs, carefully avoiding both Odelia’s gaze and the window, afraid of what she might see in either. Gone is her eagerness to feel like a part of her grandmother’s household, and her mother’s hometown.

There is no longer a we, as far as she’s concerned. She’s out of here. No way is she staying in Lily Dale till September. Being here among the spiritualists—and the spirit world—seems to have opened some kind of . . . of . . . personal paranormal portal.

No, she’s leaving, definitely . . . just as soon as she figures out where she can possibly go.

“I’ll take two scoops of cookies-and-cream in a sugar cone,” Calla tells the girl at the snack window at the outdoor café, located beneath a large gazebo. Beyond its perimeter, a soft summer rain is falling.

Calla looks at Evangeline. “What are you having? My treat.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve got it.”

“Let me treat you,” Calla insists. “After all, I dragged you out in the rain.” When she glanced out Odelia’s living room window and spotted Evangeline reading a book on her front porch a little while ago, her spirits soared. She’d spent a lonely morning watching TV and moping around. By lunchtime, she was not only homesick, she was stir-crazy.

“It’s not like I had anything better to do,” Evangeline replies with a smile. “I’ll have one scoop of chocolate, even though I shouldn’t. I’m on a diet. But I guess if this is all I eat for lunch, it isn’t so bad.”

“You’re always on a diet, Evangeline.” The girl behind the counter hands Calla her cone.

“Yeah, only I never lose weight. Gee, I wonder why? Think it’s because I’m a regular here?” Evangeline shakes her head ruefully. “Oh, hey, Calla, this is Lena. She’s a year behind me in school. Lena, Calla.”

“Odelia’s granddaughter, right? From down south?”

“Word’s out already about the new girl in town, huh?” Evangeline asks as Lena begins scooping ice cream from the cardboard tub of chocolate.

“Yeah, Willow said something about it when she was down here this morning.”

Willow? Calla can’t help but wonder who that is, and why she’s talking about her.

“Yeah, I’ll just bet she did.” Evangeline smirks.

“Who’s—” Calla begins, but her question is cut short by Lena.

“Look who’s here,” the girl mutters.

Calla turns to see Blue Slayton sauntering up to the window, hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts.