Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Amanda Lee clearly had this covered, too. “Remember that PI friend I told you about?”

Her only friend? If he was even real. I mean, I’d only heard of him and still had to meet him. That’s when I’d believe he existed.

“I remember,” I said.

“He’s already helping me cover myself with false documents. If anyone should ask about Alicia, I’m confident they’ll be satisfied with what they hear. I’m even using a disposable phone for every contact.”

I was dying to meet this PI, but Amanda Lee was already talking again, just like we were buds.

“Speaking of PI help,” she said, “he’s been doing some research about Mr. Edgett senior, as well.”

I couldn’t help it—she’d hooked me. “What did you find out about the dad?”

“He seems to have holed up somewhere in France. At least, that’s the speculation, and I haven’t intuited whether it’s true or not. That’s another reason I wanted to visit the Edgett mansion—to see if I could pick up any vibes on the family.”

I leaned forward, urging her on.

“I didn’t get a thing from that house, though,” she said. “I’m afraid it will take another trip for me to try again.” She crumpled the cosmetic-smudged tissue in her hand. “But I wish I could stay out of that place. I don’t like being in there, near him.”

Gavin. I didn’t like being near him, either, especially because I kept getting drawn to dark men. Talk about reliving the past. I couldn’t stay away from those murderers, real or imagined, could I?

Awkward silence separated me from Amanda Lee, and it felt like she was searching for something more to say, getting me to “trust” her again.

She cleared her throat, then said, “Have you been able to check into your own killing? Because I focused my scrying on that, too, although I didn’t have any visions. And my PI is still on your case.”

“No time for my business,” I said. “I’m pretty swamped here.”

She inhaled, blew out a breath. “I’m just going to say it. No matter how you feel about me, you need me.”

I shot her a hard look.

“Think about it,” she said. “Since there are no suspects or witnesses to your crime, you can’t empathize or dream-dig in order to solve your case on your own. You need a psychic’s visions and guidance.”

“Maybe I can break into some law enforcement computers to find any suspects they had.” Then I could go from there.

Her sad glance told me that there hadn’t been any strong suspects.

Her voice was soft. “I have a connection with you, whether you like it or not. If anyone is going to envision what happened on that night, it’s me.”

I hoped she wasn’t right. “Listen, I’ve got to get back there in case Gavin falls asleep.”

“Here’s to hoping that the dream-digging works out for you.”

I shrugged, still not willing to be pals.

“Either way,” she said, “I’ll be by the mansion again soon. Ideally tonight. And when I put on my fake séance or whatever I end up doing, just stay silent and follow my cues. Leave all the activity to me, Jensen—we want to save the real haunting for the killer himself. I’ll give him the afternoon to decide if he wants my help and to contact me, but if he doesn’t, I’m calling Farah.”

“You do what you need to do.”

As I began to coast out the window, Amanda Lee stopped me.

“One last thing. Have you thought about what should be done if he refuses to confess? If it looks as if he’s about to get away with murder?”

“No.” I hadn’t gotten that far.

“There are other ways to make him pay.”

I waited, already knowing I wasn’t going to like this.

She gripped the steering wheel. “This other ghost you have contact with… Randy. He already told you about possession.”

I realized what she was suggesting. This woman really was a lean, mean, retribution machine.

“Are you thinking that, if nothing else works out, I should punish Gavin by taking over his body and doing God knows what to it while his consciousness is still working?” I asked.

She kept gripping the wheel.

That’s when the straight-A student in me suddenly remembered where I’d heard the last name that Amanda Lee had used with Gavin. Edmond Dantès was the main character in The Count of Monte Cristo , a man who’d been out for revenge against those who’d ruined his life.

Vengeance , I thought. Not justice. Amanda Lee was never going to want the latter because it wouldn’t satisfy her.

“I feel sorry for you,” I said, not even wanting to explain to her that Randy had told me humans needed to willingly accept a possession and that demons were the ones who took over bodies without permission.

I was so disgusted that I did something awful. I threw out a sound to Amanda Lee.

Elizabeth weeping.

And I didn’t stick around to see the tragic sound of hurt and devastation haunting Amanda Lee as much as it did Gavin.

Immediately afterward, I started beating myself up for the cruel trick I’d pulled on Amanda Lee out of sheer frustration. She wasn’t a bad person, after all—just misguided, unwilling to listen to reason. Bullheaded.

But I was a little like that, too, and I feared we’d be butting heads from here on out, even if we were trying to get to the same goal.

Even so, what good would it do to dwell on her when Gavin was inside the mansion, maybe even falling asleep? I didn’t want to lose any momentum with him, so I headed back there to see if I could prod him even closer to revealing the absolute truth about him and Elizabeth.

If he hadn’t provided the truth already.

But would I be able to do that before Amanda Lee could return? With the empathy option off the table, maybe I should exercise some patience and charge up on some power lines, going back to Gavin in an hour or two to see if he’d fallen asleep then. Or it might be time for some full-on hallucination therapy instead. After all, I’d been able to perform those car accident mirages on Amanda Lee while she’d been blocking my empathy, so why wouldn’t the same technique work on him?

Sorting through my choices, I took a seat on the power lines outside the mansion, where fancy cars wound over the curvy road below me. The early-afternoon sun relaxed in the sky as electricity fed me like it was junk food, giving me a rush.

Just as I was getting way pumped, I felt a change in the lines, a shift in energy, and I looked around to see what was going on.

I startled when I saw Twyla a few yards away, her back propped against the power pole as she lay lengthwise on the wires. Her dark petticoats draped down, and she was winding her long black, straight hair around a finger. The other half of her hair was as light and teased out as ever.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked.

“Just popped in to say hi. I totally guessed where you were, too, because it had to be in, like, one of three places. Your death spot, here, or Amanda Lee’s. And what do you know? I was right and you’re predictable. Bravo, dipstick.”

Whatever. “What’s your cause?”

She fixed her eyelined sight on the red tile-roofed mansion, exhaling. “Okay. Honestly, I was bored. And I thought of how your haunting might be going. And just thinking of you made me more bored. But the whole haunting a murderer thing is actually, like, bitchin’. So I came.”

A hitchhiker ghost. Rad. “I thought you more experienced ghosts pooh-poohed the idea of getting involved with humans.”

“Sweetie, smart ghosts don’t get involved with human problems . We didn’t say anything about not enjoying a good show.”

“Forget it. You’re not going to watch me haunt.”