The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson #12)(54)

I couldn’t help but grin. “I think it was because you knew before I even said anything that the house was haunted.”

“What?” She scoffed lightly. “No. Why—? How would I know such a thing?”

“I believe you’re sensitive to the supernatural realm. And if I’m right, the supernatural realm is just as sensitive to you.”

She tensed, and a line formed between her brows. “What does that mean?”

“Is your son also sensitive?”

After chewing on her lip a moment, she caved. “Yes. More than I am.”

“But not your daughter?”

“No. It tends to run in my family. My daughter was my husband’s. He passed away a couple of years ago.”

“I’m so sorry, Chanel.”

“We’re doing okay, though. Better.”

“I’m glad.”

“What did you mean, the supernatural realm is just as sensitive to me?”

The last thing I wanted to do was frighten her, but she deserved to know. “I’m going to be honest, Chanel. I investigate, well, all kinds of anomalies. Even those with a supernatural spin.”

“Okay,” she said, growing leery.

“There have been three murders and an attack, and they look, as crazy as this will sound, to have a supernatural element to them. I could be wrong, of course,” I added when she started to ease away from me.

Even the sensitive had a difficult time with my level of supernatural phenomena.

“But, sadly, I don’t think so. I don’t know if proximity has anything to do with what’s going on or if there have been victims with the same type of wounds in other cities, but I need you to leave for a few days. Get out of town with your children. Especially Charlie.”

Alarm stopped her in her tracks. “What are you saying? We’re in danger?”

“I don’t know. This is an educated guess at best.”

“So, if we can see them, they can see us?”

I nodded, then turned to the other woman sitting at the table, the one I had yet to acknowledge, Mrs. Blomme. “What do you think, hon?”

She frowned. She’d been excited to see me when I first came in, but my message worried her.

“Can you see your great-granddaughter?”

She shook her head. “Not a bit. I’ve tried, too. I can see Chanel talk to her, but she just isn’t there.”

“I was worried about that. And that puts paid to it,” I said, quoting Jane Austen. I turned back to Chanel. “Do you have anywhere you can go?”

Chanel, lost in my conversation with her grandmother, snapped back to me. “What? Well, yes, I suppose. I have a brother in south Texas. Will that be far enough?”

“I hope so. It’s certainly worth the effort. I’ll let you know the minute I get this straightened out.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Mrs. Blomme said.

“Chanel, I know you can see your grandmother, or see her essence. But can you communicate with her?”

Chanel shook her head. “I can’t, but I think Charlie can.”

“That little darling and his gravy boat,” Mrs. Blomme said, slapping her knee in delight. “He’s such a doll. I have a beautiful family, Mrs. Davidson.”

“Yes, you do. Can you keep an eye on them for me? Come and get me the minute something seems amiss?”

She straightened and saluted. “Absolutely.”

“You know how to find me?”

She cackled. “You’re a little hard to miss.”

“Thank you.”

I left the Blomme-slash-Newell family to see what Cookie had discovered about our girl, Judianna Ayers, the woman Hector Felix took a straight razor to. But first, once inside Misery, I summoned Angel.

“Hola, chica,” he said, gesturing with a nod from my passenger’s seat.

I shifted toward him, planting my knee on the console. “Hey, sweet pea.”

He cringed at my term of endearment.

I ignored him. “I have a question for you.”

He let out a long sigh and raked a hand down his face. “Yes, you can see me naked, but this is the last time.”

“Angel.”

“I mean it. There’s only so much a man can take.”

I coughed to cover my soft burst of laughter. He hated the fact that I didn’t think of him as a man. Just because he was technically older than I was didn’t mean I thought of him that way. He’d died at thirteen and still looked thirteen.

“Are you going to insist on making out again?” he continued.

I reached over and ran my fingers over the peach fuzz on his chin. “In your dreams, sweetness.”

He caught my hand and raised it to his cool lips. If we hadn’t been hit with a heat wave by the name of Rey’azikeen the Erratic, he would have held it longer. Instead, he lowered it and asked, “What’s up?”

“Are there some departed who can’t see humans? I mean, you can see anyone. And I remember the case with the three lawyers, Sussman, Ellery and Barber. They could see humans, too. But—”

“They’d just died,” he said, interrupting.

“What?”

“The lawyers. They’d just died.”

I shook my head, trying to understand, to think back to my cases and all the departed I’d worked with over the years. I’d started working with my dad, helping him solve crimes, when I was five years old, and in all that time, I’d never noticed the fact that some could see into the Earthly plane and some could not.