2 Empath (22 page)

I thought about what he said. I thought about it for about two seconds. Then I backed up about five steps, ran forward, and jumped on him.

He caught me against his chest, solid and firm. I surprised him so that he nearly stumbled, but of course he didn’t; he shifted his weight, clutched me tightly, and broke my fall.

He lowered me back down slowly, his breathing rapid. “What was
that?”
he demanded.

I grinned at him, not loosening my own hold in the slightest. “Did it ever occur to you that I might not
want
a guy who can walk through walls? That I might, just possibly, prefer a guy who can keep me from doing a faceplant on the asphalt?”

I watched, my heart thudding pleasantly, as his expression turned slowly into a smile.

“I can do that,” he whispered.

Oh, my.
It was the sexy whisper. The one I had zero control over. He still held me, and I held him, and the insane, ridiculous pull between us was so warmly, wonderfully powerful that this time I felt sure I would drown in it.

He drew in a ragged breath. “Do you feel that, Kali?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I don’t think it’s… normal.”

I chuckled. “I wouldn’t know. But nothing else between us has been, has it?”

He smiled at me. “Good point.”

I was sure he would kiss me. But I was wrong.

“Does it scare you?” he asked.

“No,” I answered easily. “Does it scare you?”

He hesitated. “Oh, yeah.
Bigtime.”

My heart leapt all over again. He had just answered my second question.

“Well then,” I replied with a smile, continuing to hold him.
“Get over it!”

He laughed, his green eyes sparkling. He ran a hand gently up my back. Slowly, his head leaned down toward mine.

A truck horn blasted six feet from our ears.

“Hey lovebirds!” a middle-aged Hawaiian man yelled out the driver’s window. “You moving into that spot, or what?”

We looked up to see an open-bed pickup filled to overflowing with men, boys, and surfboards. The driver was waiting to pull into the spot next to Zane’s car — the only otherwise-empty spot in the public lot. The surfers, to a one, hung over the sides of the bed, leering and grinning at us.

We broke apart laughing.

Chapter 18

Zane spent the rest of the afternoon on the ocean. I spent it on the beach, alternating awkwardly between angst over my dad and joy at watching Zane surf again. Apparently, having even a half-decent swell hit the North Shore at this time of the year was enough to entice every human with a surfboard to flock to the beaches immediately, so all the best breaks were crowded to capacity. Even at the less desirable spot Zane chose to stake out, competition for waves was fierce. In two hours of paddling and drifting he managed to catch fewer than a half-dozen waves, most of those barely surfable. But at last, he got lucky. He ended his run with a beautiful ride on a perfect waist-high wave that he was able to ride nearly all the way back to the beach.

I stood up and applauded wildly. He was nowhere near ready to rip with the pros, true. But it was clear that, as I suspected even when he was a wraith, the guy had natural talent.

He came off the water totally stoked and insisted on buying us a celebratory pair of barbecue plates at Ted’s Bakery (chased down by two amazing pieces of pie), where between forkfuls he went on to deconstruct the entire session in detail. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t understand half of what he was saying. I was enjoying his enjoyment more than I could say.

We were on our way back to my house, and he was bragging to me about how dedicated the surfing community was both to protecting the ocean environment and to improving the lives of poor people near the world’s best breaks, when my phone rang. It was Kylee. I had been waiting for her call all afternoon.

“What did your grandmother say?” I asked as soon as the hellos were over. Kylee had assured me, on my last call, that I shouldn’t assume the worst — that if a loved one were in imminent danger of death, Kalia would have acted more directly to stop it, like Tien did. But we both wanted to hear that from her grandmother.

“Well,” Kylee began, “since Kalia almost certainly never lived in the house you just bought, what she’s attempting isn’t really a “haunting,” but a targeted visible manifestation — which is much more difficult to do.
Ba noi
says that Tien could probably not have appeared to me so far from where she died if it weren’t for all the family around me at the time… a family’s love has incredible strength, and a spirit can tap into that, if their motives are good. Kalia isn’t as far from where she died, but still, appearing so solidly to a stranger like Zane, even for a couple seconds, is a pretty amazing feat. He must be very sensitive, for a newbie.”

“Don’t praise him too much,” I warned, grinning at Zane. “You’re on speakerphone, and his ego is big enough already.”

“Hi, Kylee,” Zane said.

There was a pause. In the background, I knew, Kylee was silently squealing. “Hi, Zane,” she replied. “Anyway, Kali, don’t expect too much from her. She’s bound to be exhausting herself, and you’ll need to help her any way you can.”

“Like how?” I asked.

“Ba noi
says you need to give her options — almost like multiple choice questions. If she can gesture but not talk, you’ve got to give suggestions and then give her an easy way to answer you, like by pointing at something.”

“Check.”

“And if it’s easier for her to appear to Zane, make sure she has enough opportunity to do it. She may find enough strength only intermittently, and you can’t know when that will be.”

I looked at Zane. “I don’t suppose you want to spend another frolicking evening unpacking dusty binders, Christmas decorations, and vinyl records from the seventies?”

He smiled back at me. “Sold. You think this time I can get your dad to tell me about his days at the Academy?”

“Don’t you dare,” I threatened. “Okay, Kylee. We’ll do it. Anything else?”

“Just that…” she hesitated. “Well, she says not to judge Kalia too harshly. You don’t know the whole story, and… well, any kind of negative feelings from you could make it harder for her to appear. You understand what I mean?”

My teeth clenched. I felt falsely accused and guilty at the same time. “I get it,” I answered.

“Kylee,” Zane asked, his voice suddenly sounding odd. “Is it possible for Kalia to appear other places besides the Thompson’s house? Like random places where Kali and I might be?”

“It’s easier with more family around, but sure,” Kylee answered. “Why?”

I slid in my seat as Zane made a sharp swerve onto an exit ramp.

“Because I just saw her on the side of the road,” he answered. “She pointed to the exit. I think she wants to lead us somewhere.”

My pulse sped up. Lead us
where?
“We have to go, Kylee,” I said quickly. “I’ll fill you in later, okay?”
I got the distinct feeling, as Kylee reluctantly said goodbye, that it was not okay. She would have preferred I leave the speakerphone on all day and tote her around like a caged cricket. But I had to focus.

“Have you seen her again?” I asked anxiously.

“No,” Zane answered, straining to scan the crowd at every intersection. We were into the city of Honolulu now. “But she definitely wanted us to go this way. I guess we should just keep going straight, until she shows us otherwise.”

Tense minutes passed. He had to be wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing, but he made no move to turn around. The traffic was terrible.

“Wait,” he said sharply. “There she is!”

I looked out, but naturally I saw nothing.

“It was just for a split second,” Zane explained. “I hope I’m catching everything.” He made a right at the next light. “And there,” he said a few moments later, turning again. We were past Waikiki now, heading toward the cone of the extinct volcano Diamond Head. Zane made a couple more turns, then abruptly pulled off the road and stopped. “Okay, Kali,” he said tightly. “Here we are.”

I looked out the window at the small white-painted office building that rose up on my right, guarding entry to a large, flat field beyond. The field was bathed in well-tended green grass and dotted with floral arrangements.

It was a cemetery.

Oh, no.

“Do you know anyone buried here?” Zane asked.

I nodded grimly. “Kalia is buried here. My parents looked up her grave when we came in March, but I wasn’t with them.” Because they knew I hated cemeteries. Already, I struggled to block the intruding feelings. I could see countless shadows standing about the grounds, and the edges of my mental blind kept stubbornly rolling up on me.
Sadness. So much sadness…

“Are you going to be able to do this?” Zane asked, watching me closely. “Maybe it would be better if I went in alone. Maybe it’s something she can show me—” His gaze moved suddenly upward, out the windshield. He exhaled with a sigh, then turned back to me. “She says no, Kali. Whatever it is, she needs you to see it.”

My stomach cramped. As well as I had been doing with the blocking techniques, a shopping mall was one thing and a cemetery was another. The dozen or so graves at Striker’s Schoolhouse were nothing compared to the hundreds and hundreds in the memorial park ahead… and once I was inside, there would be no running away. The shadows would be everywhere, encircling me. And they would all be in horrible pain. If the experience hadn’t been highly emotional for the people the shadows represented, the shadows wouldn’t be there.

“It could be,” I said slowly, making a lame attempt to sound brave, “that what she’s trying to show us is a shadow.” I swallowed. “A shadow at her own grave. So yes, I have to go.”

You have to, Kali. Now get a grip!

I took a deep “cleansing breath,” as the other empaths in San Jose had recommended. Then I brought down the blind and pulled it tight. “Okay, go ahead and drive in.”

Zane began navigating the car slowly through the park, and although I would have preferred to shut my eyes, I forced myself to stay watchful. In other circumstances, it would have been a beautiful, peaceful place. The stones were all flat to the ground, flowers were everywhere, and the lanes wound through tropical trees, all in the shadow of the towering mound of Diamond Head. If only that was all I could see. But to my eye, the acres were packed full of semi-transparent grief-stricken mourners, each and every one of them radiating bitter anguish.

Blind down. Blind down. Blind down…

“Here?” Zane said aloud, though not to me. “Okay… we’ll do the rest.” He cast a concerned glance in my direction. “Are you still okay?”

No.
Even focusing as hard as I could, the blind couldn’t stop it all. The accumulated weight of grief was too heavy, and I was too inexperienced. But the pain that wracked me from all sides was at least reasonably bearable — as opposed to what I had endured at Pali Lookout. I could do this. I had to do it. “I’m good,” I said unconvincingly.

Zane walked around, opened my car door, and helped me out. “Here,” he said, taking my hand and locking his arm firmly around mine. “Maybe this will help.”

Warmth. Safety. Peace…

“It does,” I said gratefully. “Thanks. Let’s just do this thing, okay?”

We walked around in the vicinity of the car, looking for a relatively new floral arrangement. I thought I remembered my mother saying she had bought silk roses. But it was not the flowers that ultimately attracted my eye to a plot about fifty feet from where we had parked. It was the shadow.

I stopped in my tracks, holding onto Zane’s comforting, solid hand with both of mine. The sadness and grief were everywhere; deep, pervasive, so very painful… but his touch was like a campfire in a snowstorm. “That man,” I said weakly, pointing toward the shadow ahead. “He’s my grandfather.”

I opened myself up, ever so slightly, to perceive the shadow’s presence more fully. Instantly I was hit with a sensation of grief so intense my whole body trembled. Zane dropped my hand and put his arm around my shoulders, hugging me close to his side. Soothing waves of warmth spread through me immediately, and the trembling stopped. “Have you ever seen the shadow of a relative before?” he asked gently.

I shook my head. “I’ve never been this far inside a cemetery before. And I… I couldn’t do it without you here. Thanks.”

He continued to hug my shoulders, rubbing the outside of my arm briskly as if he could feel the chill inside, despite the bright sunshine beaming down on both of us. “Are you able to go closer?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “But I need to try.”

The shadow had disappeared now. But slowly, step by step, I pulled Zane with me toward the spot where it had been standing. I wanted terribly to keep the blind down, but I knew I couldn’t, not if I was going to pick up whatever Kalia wanted me to pick up. I would have to feel and hear the shadows as well as see them. When we reached our destination, a couple feet away from where I had seen my grandfather, I stopped and took another deep breath.

Zane loosened his hold on me. It was only for a second, and probably only because he was shifting positions, but the instant I lost contact with his side, a rush of bitingly cold pain belted me like a blizzard.

“No!” I shouted, pulling him back toward me.

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologized, rubbing my arms again. “This really helps, then?” he asked doubtfully.

I looked up at him with the closest thing to a smile I could manage. “Zane,” I said wryly, “You’re like a freakin’ space heater.”

His eyes twinkled. “I’ve been waiting my entire life to hear a beautiful girl say that to me.”

The joking helped. I looked around.

My grandmother’s flat, rectangular memorial stone lay on the ground before us.
Loving wife and mother. Kalia H. Thompson.
Born in 1935; died in 1956.

“Barely twenty-one,” Zane said sadly, keeping his arm tight about my shoulders. “Your grandfather must have been devastated.” He looked at me closely. “Do you still see him?”