Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(48)

Okay, don’t go falling for him, she warns herself. He’s a player. That’s obvious.

Blue steers through the narrow streets until they reach the entrance gate again. Seeing it for the first time since her arrival, Calla admires the charming arched grillwork LILY DALE ASSEMBLYsign overhead.

Then she notices the one beneath it that reads: LILY DALE ASSEMBLY . . . WORLD’S LARGEST CENTER FOR THE RELIGION OF SPIRITUALISM.

She missed that one, somehow, on the first day. If she had seen it, she would have been a little more prepared for what met her within the gates.

Funny what she’s quickly learned to take in stride. She’s read a lot about spiritualism, visited the Assembly office and museum, and even attended another message circle just yesterday, this time at Forest Temple, a tranquil little outdoor seating area.

Again, she found herself hoping her mother might come through to her, but she was disappointed. This time, it was frustrating to watch one stranger after another get spiritual validation from their lost loved ones through the mediums.

As long as she’s here, in the midst of all these people who seem able to talk to the dead—well, she wants to hear from her mother. All morning, she’s been toying with the idea of going for a private reading. She can’t seem to work up the nerve, though. Not just yet, anyway.

Blue pulls out onto the main road, saying casually, “My house is up around the bend.”

“You don’t live in Lily Dale?”

“Not inside the gate anymore. We moved to this place last year after my dad had it built.”

“This place” turns out to be a neo-Victorian home that is sprawled on a rolling green hill beside the lake. It has cupolas, fishscale shingles, and a gingerbread porch like the houses in the Dale, but it’s five or six times their size. No peeling paint or loose shutters here.

Clearly, the Slaytons are a social notch above Odelia and her neighbors. Remembering the resentment in her grandmother’s voice when she talked about Blue’s father going Hollywood, Calla wonders if she might just be jealous of his high profile, and financial success.

Maybe, but that doesn’t seem like Odelia’s style.

Calla asked Evangeline the other day why none of the mediums appear to be millionaires if they’re psychic. “Don’t they know what the stock market is going to do? Can’t they just, I don’t know, make huge bets in Vegas or something and get rich?”

Evangeline shook her head at that. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Calla, who has heard that line once too often regarding mediumship, wanted to demand in frustration, “Then how the heck does it work?”

But there are some things, she’s beginning to realize, that just can’t be explained about this place and its people and their gifts.

There are some things you probably can’t understand unless you’re one of them.

And despite the strange things that have happened to her here, Calla is beginning to feel as though she might just belong in Lily Dale after all.

Which is too bad, because her time here is running out.

About five miles down Route 60,Aldrich’s ice cream parlor is busy even in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Calla wouldn’t have minded sitting in one of the cozy booths with Blue, but they were all taken, so they sat on stools at the counter. He ordered a Cloud Nine sundae—a brownie buried under ice cream, marshmallow, whipped cream, and fudge. She would have shared it with him, but he didn’t ask her, so she ordered one scoop of cinnamon ice cream.

Now, watching him finish the last crumbs of his vanilla-ice-cream-soaked brownie, Calla finds herself telling him that she isn’t thrilled to be leaving for California soon to start school.

“Yeah? I’d love to do that. Anything other than one more year at Lily Dale High sounds good to me.”

“You go to Lily Dale High?” she asks, surprised. She would have guessed he went to some exclusive school somewhere else.

“For the past two years.”

“Where were you before that?”

“At a private school in Buffalo.” Ah. So she was dead-on. It takes one to know one.

“You didn’t like it?” she asks.

“I loved it. They didn’t like me.” He grins and mimes opening a door and kicking someone out with his foot. “But that’s okay. One more year here, and I’m gone.”

“One more week here, and I’m gone,” she returns. Unlike flirting with Jacy, with Blue it’s second nature.

“Or you could stay.” His bare leg brushes her bare leg under the counter.

She looks up at him and realizes it was no accident. He’s looking at her as if he really, really wants her to stay.

“You mean, live with my grandmother and go to school here?” For some reason, that idea doesn’t seem as ridiculous as it probably should.

“It’s a tiny school. You probably know half the senior class already.”

“I doubt that.” Though he, Jacy, and Evangeline—oh, and Willow—are among them.

“Well, you said you don’t know a soul in California. So you’re ahead of the game here.”

She tilts her head and smiles at him. She can’t help it. “Maybe I’ll think about it.”

“Want to get together tomorrow night for coffee and tell me your decision?”