Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Farah stumbled out, clutching her phone in her hand. She was, as they say, as white as a sheet.

I gritted my nonexistent teeth at the sight of her. Why couldn’t Noah, who’d had such promising empathetic thoughts, have been the first one up and about so I could continue the interviews with him?

Gavin and Wendy had gone still while watching their sister. She couldn’t even walk straight. Actually, she looked drunk, even though I knew she wasn’t.

“He needs help,” she said, pointing back to the pool house. “Noah. Passed out.”

Even though the Edgetts seemed to hate one another most times, both Gavin and Wendy got up. He went to catch Farah before she fell while Wendy ran into the pool house.

On the way, she glared at me, and I offered an okay-it-was-my-fault shrug. She was obviously liking me less and less. I wouldn’t have liked me, either, if I’d accused my favorite brother of murder.

Gavin was trying to get the phone out of Farah’s hand as they walked, but she wasn’t having it. She stopped, pushing away from him, cradling the device.

“I need to call that woman,” she said, slurring. “The amateur ghost chaser. She failed . It’s here again.”

“The spirit?”

Farah nodded emphatically, and a seriously weird laugh came out of her. A frightened trill. But it wasn’t until she followed up with a fully nerve-racked bigger laugh that the willies crept over me. And when there was a rustle in the bushes next to the building and Rum Tum Tugger appeared in all his black-and-white glory, she laughed even louder.

“There’s the cat! Here, Tugger! Are you working with the ghost? Are you two in on this together?”

“Farah… ,” Gavin said.

“It’s still here,” she said again as the cat ducked back into the bushes. “I know who’s been following me through the house. I know who it is. She never left the mansion tonight like we thought, because she’s here for revenge. I saw her.”

“Who?” Gavin asked. He’d collected his emotions fast. Then again, I was pretty sure that’s what he’d done for his family for a while now while raising them, keeping them together.

Farah threw herself against him, burying her face in his neck, her lips against his skin as she grasped his arms… .

My God—why did this remind me of something?

As she clung to him, rubbing against his neck, I knew what was bugging me: Gavin’s last subconscious-revealing dream, when the first little pilot had been caged by the spider and Gavin had rescued her. The girl had kissed her rescuer, clinging to him just like this.

But it was no dream at all when Gavin firmly took hold of Farah’s arms and pulled her off him. “Don’t.”

I was getting real strange vibes off them. Then again, that was nothing new. Wendy even made comments about her odd family. She must’ve meant Farah mostly. Why hadn’t I gone into her head earlier?

Farah was wobbling on her feet as she started to back away from Gavin. Then she started to run.

“Get back here!” he shouted. “Farah!”

When she rounded the corner of the mansion, Gavin cursed.

V. C. Andrews, anyone?

Based purely on instinct, I turned to Scott, who’d taken a premium seat on the diving board.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Stay here and look after Wendy?”

He must’ve known I was thinking that the dark spirit might come back. “You bet, Jen.”

Twyla had gotten my drift, too. “I hope that dark noob does come back. I’m in a mood for some fightin’.”

“Have at it,” I said, then took off after Farah around the corner.

As I flew, I caught a glimpse of the guesthouse at the edge of the property across from the large garage. Constanza was peering around the lace curtain and out the window; she must’ve been hiding in there, unwilling to come out. Maybe she’d even already been on the phone to Eileen the cleaner.

The sound of squealing rubber was only a prelude to the red sports car that exploded out of the garage and onto the driveway. Before Farah could get far, I surged forward and hooked on to the sill of the passenger-side’s open window, then flipped my essence inside, hoping the wind wouldn’t fling me out as we picked up speed.

Where was Farah off to in the middle of the night, and in such a hurry that she hadn’t put on shoes or changed out of her nightgown?

I soon found out when she used one hand to fiddle with a button on her steering wheel and a ringing sound filled the car.

When a voice answered, she didn’t hesitate. “James, please tell me you’re at home.”

Huh? Had seeing Elizabeth and then passing out made Farah horny or something?

“What’s wrong now?” he asked over the car’s speakers.

“She came back for me. Elizabeth. She’s trying to kill me.”

Her fear was so strong that it had me juiced up. It almost overcame the substance of what had just come out of her mouth. Was she saying what I think she was saying?

I’d already judged Gavin wrong—at least when it came to Elizabeth—so I made myself listen to more of what Farah had to spill before I pounced on her for an empathy reading.

“I saw her tonight.” The car screeched around a corner, down a palm-clawed hill. The ocean looked like black ooze next to us. “I told you earlier about that dark ghost that left the house. I thought it was Elizabeth then, and I’m positive it was her now.”

Do tell.

“Farah,” James said. “It’s been years since she died.”

“And you’re still almost the only one I can count on.”

“Almost.” James sounded fully in control here. I tried to put a face to the smooth voice, but I could only come up with a black visage, like one of those interviews where Deep Throat or whatever didn’t want to reveal his identity.

“You have to help me,” Farah said.

“And how would I do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Elizabeth’s haunting the mansion and she can’t get to me anyplace else but there. That’s why I’m driving to your house.”

“O… kay.”

Farah was white-knuckling the steering wheel as she turned onto a street that hugged the beach, toward a stretch of upscale homes.

“I tried to tell Gavin that it was a bad idea to let that first psychic come in and do a séance,” she said. “You don’t play with spirits like that, but he insisted on it.”

“You believe in ghosts?”

“That’s not the point! Why’re you being such an asshole?”

“Because I’m not the one talking like a psycho.”

He didn’t sound like a loving boyfriend at all. More like… menacing.

Farah swallowed. “Just tell me you’re on my side. You owe me that much.”

“Do I?”

“I’ve kept you happy, damn it. You got me, you bought out your boss’s business, and you own a new house. I’ve given you everything you’ve ever asked for within reason.”

“Sometimes a guy also gets more ambitious than he’s ever been, Farah. We’ve talked about this before, and there’s a hell of a lot more you could part with if you cared that much.”

There was something far beyond the normal here. And I hoped Farah would arrive at James’s place soon so I could take a look around in his noggin. Her fear was giving me enough nourishment to sustain me for another round of investigation.

“I’m almost there,” she said, taking another corner at breakneck speed, just like she was afraid James would hang up on her if she didn’t get to him within the next couple of seconds.

As she skidded to a stop at a curb that edged a modern glass-and-wood house with huge windows, then disconnected the phone, I did first things first before I went to James.

To start, I summoned Elizabeth’s orange blossom perfume as Farah killed the engine.