Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(2)

Oh! Thank goodness.

It’s just Miriam, the nineteenth-century household ghost, drifting past the doorway. Miriam’s husband built this house in 1883 and she spent the rest of her life here . . . and then some. She likes to keep an eye on things, though she’s been known to tamper with lights and electrical appliances, apparently just as a gentle reminder that she hasn’t moved out—or on.

Wait . . . did you just reassure yourself that it was just the household ghost?

Okay, Lily Dale’s definitely rubbing off on her. Next thing she knows, she’ll be exchanging cake recipes with Marie Antoinette.

Around here, you really just never know.

It took her a while to figure out that she herself might be . . . gifted.

Might be? Um, hello, you definitely have a sixth sense and you really need to get used to it.

Yeah. Used to dreams that are more than just dreams. Used to knowing things she couldn’t possibly know and seeing things no one else can see.

Like dead people.

Because lately, she’s been . . . seeing things. People. Out of the corner of her eye, mostly. She’ll think someone is there and turn her head just in time to catch a human figure before it disappears.

Occasionally, she can actually make out whether it’s a man, a woman, a child. Most of the time, the figure is indistinct, although there have been a few who have come through so vividly that she thought at first they were alive.

Apparently, now that Calla’s settled into Lily Dale, the ghosts who populate the earthly plane have decided to start showing themselves to her. Or maybe it’s more that she’s decided, subconsciously, to let herself see them. Either way, the situation is unnerving, compelling . . . and frustrating.

Take Miriam. She’s often flitting around the house, but Calla has yet to get a good look at her. Odelia, Calla’s eccentric grandmother, says she’s shy. She also says that Calla will eventually fine tune her sixth sense and consistently be able to see Miriam—and the others—as clearly as if they were real live people.

At least Miriam sent Calla a message, through Odelia, on her first day here, reassuring Calla that she’s harmless.

And I guess I bought it. After all, now she’s just the household ghost.

But Lisa would never understand that . . . or anything else about Lily Dale.

“Listen, Calla . . . what you’re seeing, with your mother . . . it’s just regular dreams. Right? I mean, it’s not like you’re . . . one of them. Right?” Lisa sounds really, really hopeful.

One of them.

Them, as in Odelia and the rest of the spiritualists here in Lily Dale. When Lisa visited for Labor Day weekend, she wasn’t exactly thrilled to find herself in a town filled with “kooky”—her word—mediums. Which is why Calla didn’t dare mention that she herself had been seeing ghosts.

She definitely doesn’t have to admit to that now, but she does need to tell someone she’s been having these psychic visions about her mother’s death all week. And Lisa is, after all, her best friend—a thousand miles away or not.

“It was a dream,” she tells Lisa, “but it was real, too. It’s kind of hard to exp—”

Startled by a noise behind her, Calla turns, wondering if Miriam is back.

But it’s just Gert.

The kitten is up on all four legs, fixated on something just behind Calla. Her back is arched like that of a Halloween cutout cat, front paws poised as if ready to pounce.

No . . . you just never know.

Afraid to turn to see what, or who, might have come up behind her, Calla is certain that she and Gert are no longer alone in the room. The temperature seems to have dropped by about twenty degrees. Goose bumps ache on her arms beneath the thick sleeves of her hooded sweatshirt.

“Calla?” Lisa prods in her ear. “Are you there?”

“Uh-huh.”

Gert’s unblinking eyes remain focused on the spirit whose energy Calla fully senses now, directly behind her.

She swallows hard, takes a deep breath, and slowly spins around, hoping she’s wrong and that the spot will be empty.

But it isn’t.





TWO

The apparition has popped up a few times here in Lily Dale since Calla first spotted her at Mom’s funeral in Tampa last summer.

As always, she’s dressed in flowing white, with black hair pulled back from her exotic face and dark eyes that aren’t unkind. Just . . . intense. Wafting in the air is the distinct floral scent that usually accompanies her—lilies of the valley.

Jacy Bly, who lives across Melrose Park from Odelia’s house and knows all about these things, said she’s probably Calla’s spirit guide. He, like the locals, believes that everyone has guides, which as far as Calla can tell, are spiritualism’s version of guardian angels.

“Calla?” Lisa is asking in her ear. “Hello-o?”

Aiyana.

The unfamiliar Native American word, which Jacy later told her means “forever flowering,” popped into Calla’s head out of nowhere one day. It’s the spirit guide’s name. Calla’s not sure how she knows that; she just does. She’s as positive about it as she is that Aiyana has been trying to tell her something.

Something about Mom’s death.

That, Calla figured out—with Jacy’s help—is why Aiyana’s presence brings the scent of lilies of the valley, Stephanie’s favorite flower.