Believing (Lily Dale #2)(22)

“I’m not a police psychic,” Calla cuts in, casting a nervous eye at the closed door to the sunroom where her grandmother does her readings.

“No, I understand that you aren’t officially working with the authorities,” he’s saying as Calla notices that a telltale chill is creeping into the room, “but according to the Dispatch piece, you—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Calla interrupts again, shivering and looking around, “and I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to you about this, so—”

“I just want to ask you a few questions about the Riggs girl and whether you think it might be connected to—”

Her grandmother’s warning not to tell anyone about her role in the Riggs case ringing in her head, Calla says firmly, “I have to go. I’m sorry.”

“—Monday’s disappearance in Erie” is the last thing she hears in the instant before she hangs up the phone.

And there she is.

Kaitlyn.

She’s standing a few feet away from Calla, looking as solid as a living human would and wearing the same pleading expression she had the other day.

“What?” Calla asks, her heart pounding like crazy, her thoughts whirling as she wonders what the reporter was talking about while trying to grasp the fact that a dead girl has materialized in front of her yet again.

“Look, I found your b—” No, that’s too harsh.

Calla takes a deep breath, pushes aside her own frustration and fear to start again. “I found you,” she tells Kaitlyn as gently as she can, “in that park. Your mom has closure now. And I know how horrible this all was for you, but . . .”

I know how horrible this all was for you? her own voice echoes in disdain. Could you be any more understated than that?

The girl is dead, for God’s sake. Murdered.

Suddenly, something else Odelia said flits into Calla’s mind, bringing with it a wisp of dread.

Kaitlyn’s killer is still out there somewhere.

“I’m so sorry,” Calla says desperately, wearily, forcing herself to look into the girl’s troubled eyes, “but I don’t know how else to help you.”

Kaitlyn just stares mournfully at her.

“Please . . . just tell me.” Tell me, or go away and leave me alone because you’re scaring me and I’m feeling weak and strange and I don’t know what to do.

Kaitlyn is still there, but her form is beginning to seem less solid.

She’s trying to stay, but she’s too new at this, Calla realizes, remembering something she read in one of the books she took from Lily Dale’s library. Spirits draw energy from various sources in order to materialize—sometimes from electrical sources, and sometimes from people.

“What do you want from me?” she asks again.

At last, Kaitlyn speaks. “Help her,” she says cryptically.

And then, even as she begins to fade, “Stop him.”





A light, warm rain is falling in Akron, Ohio, tonight. It patters on the rooftop above his rented attic bedroom and pings into the metal gutter. He barely notices the rhythmic noise as he paces. His hands are jammed into the pockets of his jeans, clenched into hard, strong fists. Angry fists.

It was all going so well.

Who would ever suspect him of an abduction and murder that took place well over a hundred miles away? And who could possibly connect him to another disappearance in Erie, Pennsylvania, more than two hours’ drive in the opposite direction?

Who, indeed?

He stops pacing abruptly and snatches the Columbus Dispatch off his desk. It’s folded open to the article that caught him completely off guard when he happened upon it earlier.

He’s read it so many times since that he’s memorized it by now. Memorized, in particular, the sparse details about the girl, including her age and location.

Seventeen years old. Just the right age.

Elizabeth was seventeen—and so was he—when she destroyed him.

They were supposed to go to the prom together. Blindly in love, he worked up all his courage to ask her, the most beautiful girl in the class. She said yes. She was smiling when she said it.

No. She wasn’t smiling. How could he not have realized that she was laughing at him? That it was all a joke? She already had a date to the prom, Jack Bicknell, who—with his lacrosse-team pals—put her up to it.

He showed up at her house that night in a rented blue tux, and there they all were, waiting. Taunting him. Laughing at him.

Even Elizabeth.

He cried. He actually cried, in front of all of them.

That made them laugh even harder.

Even Elizabeth.

He ran away, tried to forget, tried to forgive.

Instead, the gaping wound seemed to grow. Fester.

Graduation. Summer. College—for her, at least.

Eventually, he found her there. Destroyed her in return . . . or so he believed. Until he saw the papers the next day.

Turned out it was her sleeping roommate he stabbed that night in the dorm room. She was blond and beautiful, just like Elizabeth.

Strangely, it didn’t matter when he realized it was the wrong girl. Revenge was still satisfying—even more so, because no one could possibly connect him to her, or to any of the girls who came after her. But mostly because he could do it again and again, saving the real Elizabeth for last.