Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(60)

“Come on in.”

Calla looks around with interest as he leads the way through an ornate first floor full of polished hardwoods, oriental rugs, heavy draperies, old-fashioned wallpaper, plenty of dark woodwork, and elegant antique furniture. It’s as though someone was trying to re-create a grand Victorian home, and the result is a little too stagey and self-conscious for her taste.

Photographs of David Slayton are everywhere, as are awards and plaques—relics of his high-profile career.

“Wait here,” Blue says when they reach the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.”

She settles on a stool at the marble-topped breakfast bar as he hobbles up a back staircase.

She really has to tell him she just wants to be friends. As she tries to figure out exactly how to phrase it in a gentle way, she notices that the house is extraordinarily still.

At Odelia’s, the floorboards creak, the faucets drip, the pipes clang. Here, aside from the steady hum of the built-in refrigerator, which has a fancy wooden front made to look like an oversized cupboard door, it’s quiet.

Quiet . . . but not, Calla realizes, quite as deserted as she thought.

Sensing a presence, she looks around, and out of the corner of her eye, spots not an apparition, but a shadow on the opposite wall. A human shadow, only without a human person to go with it.

This isn’t the first time she’s seen that phenomenon—a shadow ghost, Evangeline called it, when Calla described it to her. She didn’t elaborate, but Calla later looked it up and read various theories: that the disembodied shadows are optical hallucinations or aliens, or—most troubling—demonic.

Apprehension creeps over her. Slowly, she turns her head toward the figure.

She can’t tell if it’s male or female; it’s swathed in some kind of hooded cloak.

A shiver runs down Calla’s spine and she’s relieved to hear Blue making his way back down the stairs.

She turns toward him, then glances back to see that the shadow is gone—at least for now.

“I can get us something to eat. Are you hungry?”

She isn’t; shadow ghosts have a way of killing a person’s appetite, but she finds herself nodding anyway.

“But let me get it. You should get off your foot,” she tells him.

“No big deal. I’m fine. You sit.”

She watches him balance on one crutch as he opens the fridge, and can’t help but wonder what he’s going to come up with. This sterile place is a far cry from her grandmother’s house, where the scent of cooking always hangs in the air and the appliances are well-worn from Odelia’s constant use. Here, there’s not a crumb in sight.

“Where’s your dad?” she asks, keeping an eye out for the shadow.

“I don’t know . . . he’s probably sleeping,” Blue says vaguely.

“It’s early, though.”

“Yeah, but he gets jet lag. What do you want to eat?”

“Oh . . . whatever. I can’t, uh, stay long.” Not if his father’s not even around, and that freaky shadow ghost might still be lurking.

Blue produces a wedge of fancy cheese and some grapes from the fridge, and a box of imported crackers from a cupboard, along with two small bottles of Perrier.

“Cheers.” He clinks his bottle against hers as he leans his crutches against the counter and sits on a stool beside her.

You have to relax, she tells herself.

She smiles at him, noticing that he really is incredibly good-looking. He’s wearing a blue shirt, as usual. She’s noticed that he does that a lot, as if he knows exactly how to bring out the intense shade of his irises. His wardrobe, like the home’s decor, seems just a little too calculating.

She can’t help but compare him to Jacy, who probably doesn’t think twice before pulling on his usual worn jeans and soft T-shirts with faded lettering. He most likely gets his black hair cut at a barber shop, a far cry from Blue’s salon style.

You have to tell Blue about Jacy. Just go ahead and say it. He’ll live.

But she can’t seem to get it out.

“So . . . ,” Blue says, as she tries yet again to come up with the kindest phrasing in her brain, “you’ve been working on math with Willow, then?”

“Yup.”

“Has she . . . uh, said anything to you? About how we used to go out?”

About to pop a grape into her mouth, Calla lowers her hand. “No. She’s never brought it up, actually.”

“That’s so not surprising.” Blue crunches into a cracker.

“Why?”

“She’s pretty private, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” Calla has noticed, and figures she herself might be considered pretty private, so she’s not judging Willow.

“Yeah, but . . . I mean, she was always so quiet.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Calla sees movement.

Turning slightly, she glimpses the shadow darting across the wall.

“I could never get inside her head,” Blue is saying.

“Whose head?”

“Um, Willow’s?” he says, in a questioning tone that’s more polite than a pointed duh would be.

Calla forces herself to look back at him, to focus on the conversation again. It’s not that she isn’t interested, it’s just distracting to have some hooded being flitting around the room.