Messenger for the Dead
CHAPTER TWO
I felt stupid sitting there like a child waiting for my sister to come and pick me up.
Mum would have been ashamed of me.
That Monday, I'd told my teacher that I felt sick because I needed to get out of class. I shouldn't have lied but I just couldn't help it. I'd had enough of school.
Mum would have been disgusted.
The nurse had regarded me like a disease. The old white woman, a human, had plonked me down on a hospital style bed, taken my temperature and then shuffled away to phone my emergency contact; Susie.
Susie was the second oldest in our family.
The nurses' office was cold. It had this funny smell which wasn't disinfectant and that was creepy because your mind came up with all sorts of weird explanations for it.
The only other time I'd been in the nurse's office was when I was four years old. It was my first day of Nursery School in Rainbow Heights, North London and the moment mum had said goodbye I felt awful. I felt like someone had come running up to me and stabbed me in the chest, repeatedly.
It was that bad.
When I was disconnected from mum, in that small prison they called a nursery, it was so sudden, so intense, that I'd collapsed. I'd woken up in the nurse's office, half-delirious, with the nurse having a panic attack because her training didn't cover real patients.
My family had never prepared me for how the Link could react. Not one of my family members had bothered to tell me how sensitive our connection was.
The Link was almost like an inbuilt 999 call which my family and I shared. I could sense my sister's emotions, I could also tell if they were in trouble and needed me.
It worked both ways. I'd raised the panic alarm and mum had come running, ready to destroy anything hurting her baby.
I watched my feet dangling over the edge of the fake hospital bed.
I couldn't have stayed in that classroom any longer. For weeks now, they'd been rumours going around about George's death. Somehow, in other words thanks to Bobbi, everyone knew about the reading.
Several times I'd heard the word 'voodoo' and 'witch' walking down the corridors of the All Girls School in Tulse Hill, Southeast London.
I could feel what the other girls were staying about me in my head, 'she's weird', 'did she even know George?', 'has she fallen out with Bobbi?', 'Bobbi can't even look at her'.
I'd always stood out from the rest of the girls but it was just more difficult now that George was dead and I'd done a reading on her. As far as I was concerned, no-one just went to sleep and died.
Teenagers notice the differences between species much quicker than adults do. My classmates clocked that I was different a long time ago. It wasn't the fact that I was black because let's face it, this was London. I was different because I felt different, I acted differently from them, and I never apologised for it.
Recently, the other girls had taken pity on me because of mum and dad.
But pity only lasts as long as a thread before its cut. You can only pretend to be human for so long before your muscles tire, your mouth slacks and the only thing left to do is be yourself.
I wasn't human, no matter how much I pretended to be, and George's death had something to do with the reading.
So what now?
I sat there, on that bed, sitting facing this mirror that didn't really fit in with the rest of the room; it was big enough to reflect my face and it showed me how horrible I must have looked to my classmates. Bobbi always said that I was pretty and wanted my dark eyes and heart shaped face, but I saw only puffy eyes and dry lips; I looked like I hadn't slept for days but I'd been sleeping just fine. I was just dreaming too much and it was making me exhausted.
When the news about George had spread through our small Secondary School on the hill-Bobbi and I had signed a silent contract not to talk to each other for a while. I could tell that Bobbi didn't think I had anything to do with George's death but the human was suspicious of me; I'd done a reading on Bobbi and that reading had scared her.
Now that I had no one to talk to, I couldn't explain to anyone that I thought George's death was suspicious.
As I'd left that classroom I'd blocked Bobbi out. She was in the corner of the room, copying notes from another girl who probably didn't have the right answers. I didn't want to know what Bobbi was thinking.
That would hurt.
It was ironic because I could hear a ticking clock somewhere and that sounded like an omen. There were coincidences, but I didn't believe in them, and I didn't believe that George's death was completely unrelated to me either.
The last day of term was fast approaching so I was lucky. I didn't have to see Bobbi again I didn't have to see any of my classmates again until exams.
The exam period was like a dark cloak; it descended on the city, instilling fear in all sixteen year olds who were caught in its net. My classmates would be too busy worrying about exams to remember about my weirdness on that day.
George was dead.
I knew I had to put that at the back of my mind until I could deal with it later and then... I would have to deal with it right? How could I not? Who else was going to?
"Pete! Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
I jumped like I'd been caught doing something bad.
Susie burst through the door. The building was obviously on fire because her head was going from side to side, looking for danger. If I didn't know any better I would have thought she was ready to throw a lightning bolt, like an X-Men.
Susie didn't play.
I'd forgotten about her. I'd forgotten about my own sister.
Through the Link I should have protected Susie from the thoughts that'd been racing around my body. It's possible for me to shield my emotions from my sisters if I don't want to raise the panic alarm. It's difficult, but I'd been doing that a lot lately. That's what I should have done the moment I'd chosen to get out of that classroom.
The nurse thought Susie was pretty, but she also thought that Susie was being dramatic. Susie morphed the nurses' frame with her own tall slender one; blocking her out was Susie's way of saying, you're not important I don't need to speak to you right now, but I'll let you know when you're needed.
Susie was dressed in a casual top and jeans with a leather jacket; looking stunning as always. At eighteen Susie was definitely the middle child the balance in the family. She was beautiful and that was no exaggeration. Susie was a combination between mum and dad and grandparents I'd never met and never would meet because we had no contact with our relatives in Africa.
It was kind of funny in a way; my first instinct had been to protect my eldest sister Elizabeth and not Susie.
Susie and I were closer. When I blocked Susie out, it was a fate worse than death.
She hated it.
"Are you hurt? Are you in pain?" Susie wanted to know.
My sister nearly stamped her foot as she said that. She had swung the door so hard that the handle bounced off the wall and nearly came back in on her.
In one smooth movement she held the door and positioned her body in such a way that the nurse didn't dare to come out.
Her natural beauty was graceful and it was fluid.
Susie had earned a modelling contract at the age of thirteen but she got bored with the travelling and champagne lifestyle. Susie wasn't interested in being pretty. I didn't really know what Susie was interested in but it wasn't advertising pimple cream. She'd now started her A-Level exams at college and she was using a part-time job on Oxford Street as an excuse not to be at home.
"Answer me!" Susie demanded.
Susie often got mistaken for being much younger than she was. Mum said that was a black thing and not an unnatural thing. Her eyes bore into me but I never held answers on my face, I wasn't human.
"I don't feel well." It was the only thing I could think of.
Really small kids can get away with saying 'I'm sick' and then their parents switch to being all lovely and concerned.
It also stops them from being smacked.
Susie just narrowed her eyes even more and I thought is she going to hit me? Is she going to hit me in front of a stranger?
"You're unwell?" Susie screwed up her face. She was not impressed.
This was normal. This over-reaction when it came to anything related to me. If I wanted to live, I dared not tell my sisters about George, about the reading.
For now, I was better off dealing with it on my own.
"Really unwell." I clarified. "I need to go home."
Susie leaned her whole body away from me and straightened up. The nurse still cowered.
Susie's mouth softened and I felt only a slither of her muscles start to relax. Susie was an Empath. I'd looked it up on the internet once wondering why, out of all of us, she was more sensitive to the Link than any of us.
Susie had control over her thread on the Link. She toyed with it and I knew when she was doing it because it was almost like we shared the same lines of it. Sometimes, I felt her testing it out, seeing how far it stretched.
For me personally, I didn't think it was a good thing to be so connected like that. Now that our parents were no longer there, there was a gap, a huge ditch of emotion that Susie could easily fall into if she wasn't careful.
I'd never asked her about being an Empath and something told me that she wouldn't appreciate me asking either.
Especially not that day.
"Unwell?"
She was definitely questioning me, but I felt like she was using the word as code for something else. In the past, Petra being unwell was Petra sensing something or having bad dreams.
So I repeated it just for good measure.
"Yes Susie, I'm unwell."
"I think it's a bit of a shock for all the girls you see" that was the nurse. "When a classmate dies like that it's terrible..."
Susie crumpled. She strode towards me and she would have, for the first time in a long time, put her arms around me but something in my eyes must have stopped her. She faltered and the arms stayed where they were. Her mouth opened, but she said nothing.
I took advantage.
"Can I go home now please? I don't want to be here anymore."
Quick as a flash Susie took control. Little sister was grieving and little sister had to be spirited away.
There was suddenly a flurry of activity. Susie retrieved my school bag which I hadn't even noticed was in the room. She signed some release forms in another room so the school wasn't liable for anything that happened to me, now that I was in her custody.
Everyone was in class so the corridors were empty as we hurried through the old building and Susie led the way comfortably.
Susie had once attended the same school and I felt across the Link that she didn't like being back.
I wondered why.
Outside the front entrance Susie's car was haphazardly parked at the school gate. The vehicle had been a bone of contention for our parents who felt she could just as easily have used the car service that Elizabeth and I used on a daily basis.
For Susie, the red mini, not a standard size and could fit four passengers, represented freedom. She could roam about London and do what she pleased without mum and dad pinpointing her location.
I was jealous.
Next to the Mini however was a black traffic warden, a human, who didn't look impressed with either the Mini or the parking. He was looking the vehicle up and down, deciding on where best to place the fine, once written out.
Susie hurried me through the student entrance, next to the gate, and was flashing the warden a smile.
That must have been a Jedi mind trick because the warden nodded at her and then decided to walk away.
I was shaking my head at my sister's powers of persuasion, squeezing into the front of the Cooper.
Would Susie buckle me in too?
London gets confused sometimes.
When it goes from one season to the next it's not always a smooth transition.
It was summer in London but autumn felt like it was fast approaching. The sky was still overcast, left over from the morning fog, and you needed a thick jacket when you went out.
My head was leaning on the passenger glass window of the Mini counting the sights as we zoomed by. The heater was on low.
Maybe I wasn't feigning sickness because I was tired, mentally tired and George was pushing on my thoughts trying to get in. I had no idea if I could reach out to her spirit and 'talk' to her and even planning that far ahead was scaring me.
I received messages in my dreams and I sometimes passed those messages on; that was it. The Internet was my only way of finding people, and then I had to use my instincts to check if I had the right person. I used a fake email account which I had to check every week.
Sometimes, the people I needed to reach out to would delete my messages, sometimes they wanted to know more, intrigued. I never gave them more because that was asking for trouble.
Trying to connect to a specific soul, like Bobbi, would be new ground for me. I didn't know if I wanted to dig up that ground.
I folded my arms across my chest.
We passed the middle class suburb of West Dulwich at high speed. I thought an unmarked police car would chase us down and throw all sorts of penalties our way, but there were no sirens. Susie didn't respect the authorities; she thought our taxes were going to waste but a lot of rich people thought that.
My own background was just as confusing as the weather.
Mum and dad had immigrated to London in the seventies. As far as I knew, they had come from a village near sub-Saharan Africa. It was a country like so many under British rule, until the 1930s. I didn't know which country we came from. It was all part of the mystery surrounding my family.
When I was younger, I made up all sorts of stories like...mum and dad fled their village because they were in love but their parents, who from different tribes of course, disapproved. Or, dad had worked for the government as a secret agent and now we were under some sort of witness protection programme. Mum had smiled at that and said I had stolen the former tale from Romeo and Juliet. Then she'd put me to bed.
But that's all mum did. Smile. She never confirmed nor denied. She never elaborated or gave me what I was looking for which was answers. Why was I psychic? Why did I get messages in my dreams? Why couldn't I see spirits when I was awake?
I respected dad for being more open; yes, we were different, yes other species existed and no, you can't involve yourself with them.
What didn't make sense however was why I'd always got singled out? Literally, the rules were different when it came to me. Petra, don't do this, Petra, don't do that. Petra, why are you breathing?
Susie looked at me. I didn't twitch; I just felt those eyes and I didn't bother to respond. I realised that my sister wasn't going to give up until she found out what was wrong with me.
Home was home, and home was lovely, but home was also a prison. We lived in a three-storey house in Brockley, Southeast London. It was a big Victorian building that was listed and resembled every other house on Guardian Road. Listed meant that any renovations which mum and dad wanted to do to the house, had to be approved by the British Heritage Council.
Susie told me a story once. She said that the house belonged to a coven of witches who set up a Women's Refugee. According to Susie, the witches kept their finances in order through illegal gambling and bootlegging. They lost the house when the authorities found out and then the building had to go back under the control of the council.
In that house I was constantly monitored. If I didn't wake up on time, someone came to check on me. If I didn't finish a meal I was made to convince my sisters that I wasn't ill. If I talked about messages from the other side I was put on lockdown and made to remove it from my head.
Maybe I'd done something really awful in my past and my parents were trying to protect me from it. Maybe I'd said something when I was really young that'd triggered alarm bells and sent the shutters down. It was more than possible that my parents had removed the memory and made Susie and Elizabeth swear a blood oath to suppress it. Did I have a right to know what I had done? Of course...and if I was right about my theory would it ever be revealed? Who knew?
The Mini Cooper slowed up as we reached Forest Hill. Forest Hill had been a working class suburb in the eighties but now because of its houses and local amenities the middle classes were moving back in. There was a central roundabout which always confused the buses and taxis that tried to navigate it. It didn't help that every two seconds the traffic light turned red.
Susie sighed as the car in front of us as refused to go at the right time. Susie wanted to run her hands through her hair but it was pulled into a loose bun.
"I've got to tell Elizabeth about today." She said to me suddenly.
I nodded my head.
Susie had her eyes on the car in front of her and occasionally used her mirrors to check what was going on around us.
"Have you got a headache? Do you want some aspirin?" She asked.
Translation, don't keep blocking me out, I will get you in the end.
"I haven't got a headache." I told her.
Translation, I don't want to keep lying to you, but I will, if you keep pushing it.
"What do you want for lunch later?"
Translation, if you don't eat something, we're going to have problems.
"I'm not bothered. I'm not fussed." I replied.
"I have a friend at the house so just be nice and say hi to her when you get in please."
That made me stop. There was someone at the house? Someone who wasn't family?Where I couldn't do a double take, I took my head off the window and sank into my seat. If I was frowning I didn't realise, but Susie picked up on it.
Susie never brought her friend's home. I didn't even think she had friends. My family may not be human, but we were in a separate category altogether, unsociable. It was normal to socialise. It was normal to build up a network of friends and then involve them in your family life and okay I wasn't the poster child for that but I'd certainly tried, I'd definitely tried with Bobbi. I have a friend at the house so just be nice and say hi to her when you get in please.
That was odd in itself.
First of all, I had manners, Susie knew I had manners and why she was even questioning me, I didn't know. Secondly, why was she leaving this person alone and un-chaperoned? That meant they had more rights than me, and I wasn't happy with that.
"Okay." I simply said. That made Susie twitch. Good. If my sister was going to be undercover with me then I was going to be undercover with her. She'd been braced for questions now she had to relax when she didn't want to.
The traffic moved on.
What did I know about this friend of Susie's? I shook my head at myself. Scratch that, what did I know about George? George was far more important than Susie's mystery friend.
In the English school system you grew up with the same kids you entered the building with. In All Girls Schools that group is small. George, Bobbi and I had been together since we were eleven.
George and Bobbi had fallen in and out of their friendship. I had only really known Bobbi in the last year of school. Both girls were popular. In an All Girls Schools it's hard to gain popularity with the constant bitching and backstabbing but they'd both achieved it. Bobbi was liked because she was sociable, girls wanted to be George because she was pretty.
It was odd to think I would never see George again. Death is so sudden and it doesn't always leave a trail of energy in the air. George's energy had moved over to the Land of the Dead and I could only access it if she allowed me to.
I knew nothing about the way George had died only that it was 'tragic' because she went to bed one night and never woke up. That could easily have been a tragic accident and that didn't automatically mean that her boyfriend, her lover, had killed her...
...Nicholas that was his name.
Nicholas had felt wrong and wrong was my way of saying that he hadn't felt human. Humans have a very definite signature; it lies dormant and it's consistent with the way they live their lives. This energy can shift but it can't change.
Nicholas however was on a different level. That wouldn't have mattered much had it not been for the fact that it was steeped in negativity and made me want to cut all contact.
He was a demon, he had to be. And what did I know about demons? Not a lot, but anyone who'd felt like Nicholas had to be from that part of the unnatural world.
And then there was George herself. George hadn't felt entirely human and I wondered why it'd taken the reading to discover that. I was usually good at detecting a human and someone who was 'other'. George probably hadn't known she was sensitive to the other world because she hadn't appeared to recognise me as a real psychic.
George's energy had been lying just above the human signature. George was the kind of human that felt spirits around her, but probably rationalised it because her brain didn't want to accept the truth.
Why hadn't I felt that from her before? Was I getting worse at this whole psychic business? I doubted it. I bet the drugs George was taking, whatever they were, blocked her energy output. They certainly numbed her to what Nicholas was.
Nicholas.
I filed him under dangerous and then put him down on my list of priorities.
With home fast approaching, it was time for Susie's mystery friend.
Susie did an awkward parallel park. That's how she greeted our house.
I thought she was going to help me out the car, and scramble me up the stairs Secret Service style. But she didn't. She came around to the passenger side and held it open for me, calmly.
Catching the wrong end of the breeze, I hugged my school blazer tightly around me. I didn't have a watch on but it was still early in Southeast London. The day hadn't fully woken up. There was a corner shop at the end of the street where people were still buying their morning paper or travel tickets. They looked pre-occupied, pre-occupied, but free.
I loved our street. It was cosy and historic with its Victorian buildings and friendly atmosphere. The neighbours pretty much stayed the same, but I didn't mind that so much.
I pushed the gate open trying not to think about the spare key. Susie and I both trotted up the stairs and then she took over, turning her key in the blue, heavy oak door and then holding it open for me.
Susie's eyes were on me all the time.
I felt around for the new energy, it was faint, but it was there. The house was what I liked to call sensitive. It took on the energy of the people who lived it in. The energy upstairs was female and she was on the first floor of the house in my favourite part; the first floor living room. The place I'd done the reading.
My eyes swept around taking in the place like a potential house buyer in mum and dad's original business; mum had been the interior decorator; dad had bought and sold the properties she worked on.
Dad had analysed the market so well he'd become Britain's first successful, black, property developer. Dad hated that title. I hadn't known why.
I observed our family home. With all the dark wood of the panelling that ran through the ground floor it was still light and airy and inviting. There was a dark oak staircase on the right which was original and the centre piece of the building. On the left was the ground floor sitting room which we never went into because it was not as homely as the one on the first floor.
Next to that was dad's office. Elizabeth had locked it and we never went in there now, not even to use his computer or take down a book from the shelves. Without dad being there, it felt wrong. The house keeper, Magda, kept it from going mouldy and becoming a museum piece. I think she missed my parents too.
Dad's office was connected to the large ground floor kitchen. It was directly in front of us and again, we rarely used it.
While Susie checked the mail which was on a side table by the door, and next to the coat rail, I thought about the garden beyond the kitchen. I thought about how mum had kept it half -jungle, half accessible through a whole year of graft and working with a skilled landscape gardener.
I didn't go in the garden anymore.
On automatic, I started climbing the stairs and Susie followed me, ripping open envelopes. The kind of mail we got were requests for money because people still thought mum and dad were alive and they'd handled all that directly. It freaked me out. Strangers could so easily get our home address, but I suppose that was no different to me looking people up on the Internet and giving them a message from the Land of the Dead.
Mum had decorated along the stairs with these different sized, black and white pictures of my sisters and I as babies. Mum preferred photographs to paintings; she said they captured energy better. The biggest photographs had all three of us together; we were usually fighting or looking sombre, no happy ones.
When you reached the landing, the first floor living room was on the right. On the opposite side was Susie and Elizabeth's bedrooms, they shared a bathroom. Continue up the stairs onto the second floor was my bedroom, another bathroom and then mum and dad's room, which was en suite. The attic had never been renovated because dad's plans to convert it had been rejected.
I walked into the living room and put my school bag by the door. Warm; that's how I would describe the heart of the home. There was no window but you never felt like the room was underground.
Mum had carefully chosen a coffee coloured three piece suit that was the main furniture of the room and stood relatively in the middle. I tried forgetting that George had once sat on that couch.
We rarely put anything on the coffee table in the centre, and made sure that the plants Mum had put in each corner of the room were kept alive. There was a small bookshelf in the far left of the room and no television. Mum and dad had restricted televisions because they said it wasn't part of our culture to be glued to them. Somehow I was the only one who'd never ended up with a television in my bedroom.
The living room was connected to a kitchen where we sat and had our main meals; it was large, completely modern and with a huge window looking out to part of the garden.
The energy, the new energy that I'd never come across before, was in there.
"We're back." Said Susie.
Susie was still on the mail as she went around me and into the kitchen. Whoever she was speaking to was out of the sight of the door but the conversation between the two of them was loud and clear.
"Is everything okay?" The voice was soft and youngish, the woman was also Scottish.
"I don't know. Petra's had some bad news..."
"Oh no...Is there anything I can do?"
"Come out and say hi, I'll put the kettle on and finish this. Petra, do you want tea?"
Tea? I wasn't allowed tea. Was this Susie trying to be nice? Probably. Was I suspicious of it? Yes. Did I care? No.
"Sure." I said.
Where Susie had disappeared, the other energy appeared. The woman was pretty. I decided that she was pretty not because she was blonde haired and blue eyed, she was pretty because her face was soft, her eyes were kind and she had good energy...it wasn't a human signature.
Susie's friend was unnatural.
With new energies I usually labelled them as human or unnatural. This energy was above a human signature but I didn't think she was dangerous. She certainly wasn't a threat, not the way Nicholas felt anyway.
I said she was young, but she looked older than Susie, maybe mid-twenties? I wasn't good with age. The woman was tall and covered her frame with a blue blazer, a white top and blue jeans. Her feet were bare and her toenails were painted a pearl colour. Her perfume reminded me of a flower I never knew the name of; it masked a natural scent which was mostly soap and shower gel.
The woman came towards me; her hand outstretched. She showed perfect white teeth and dimples in both cheeks. I think teeth say a lot about a person. If you don't look after them, I start to question other areas of your hygiene. I turned fully to give her my attention and I shook her hand.
"Nice to meet you Petra." She said. "Sue has told me so much about you."
Sue? I tried not raising my eyebrows.
Susie hated being called Sue. I wondered how this one could get away with calling her that. Susie was short for Susannah. Elizabeth had a thing about people shortening their names in other words, she didn't like it. I didn't mind when Susie called me Pete because it sounded nice.
And what exactly had Sue told this stranger about me anyway?
"Nice to meet you too. I'm sorry, Susie didn't tell me your name." I said to her.
"Xanthe" she said. "Spelt with an X. My parents were hippies. I thought you might like some brownies so I started making them. You're not one of those girls that's fussy about what they eat are you?"
"No...but...I don't really eat junk food."
She leaned her body forward as if she was going to impart some sort of wisdom. "Lucky for you this is better than junk food. They're delicious I promise. Should we sit?"
Did she just ask me to sit down on my own couch? I wanted to frown and do a double take but that would have looked rude.
I watched Xanthe as she moved. Xanthe was entirely at home in our living room and that told me that she was either one of those people that instantly felt comfortable in a new environment or that she'd been here before...funny how her energy left no imprint if that was the case.
Xanthe flopped down on the single couch closest to the kitchen and I took the double one. I felt a bit awkward in my school uniform as I wanted to be just as relaxed as Xanthe was. But I had to remind myself, someone I knew was dead and it wasn't the time to slow down and relax.
What were my instincts telling me about Xanthe? Well, it was important to her that I liked her but she wasn't fake. Xanthe felt that it would please Susie if we got on and Susie meant a lot to her.
The smile was still plastered on Xanthe's face as she went on. "I hear you're starting your GCSE exams? I hated exams at school, too much pressure and I hate pressure it's too dramatic. I suppose that's why I got a job at sixteen. Do you have a lot of exams?"
"Twelve subjects"
"Jesus." She whistled. Boys whistled, like the boys who shouldn't have been in the house. "It's unnatural to spread your brain over so many subjects. Can you even name them all?"
I paused for thought. "English Language and Literature, Maths, Triple Science, Religious Studies, Latin, French, History, Spanish and Drama." By the time I'd rattled through them all, I'd taken off my shoes.
"Which is your favourite?"
I thought about that for a moment. "Religious studies; there's a lot of arguing in those classes; the rest of the time its kind boring."
Xanthe shook her head. "Religion has never been my thing. I like mythology though; I like all those stories about Gods and half-human beasts." Then Xanthe switched gears. "Sue says you go to a good school. I wish I'd have gone to a good school. I'm sorry you're not feeling well. I'm sorry about your friend. How long had you known her?"
I was so surprised at the sudden turn in conversation. Xanthe wasn't probing it was just in her nature to ask questions when she wanted answers. "We all grew up together, from year seven."
"What's year seven?" Xanthe was genuinely confused.
"First year of secondary school." I explained. "You all start at the age of eleven or twelve, depending on your birthday."
Xanthe shook her head. "They called it something else when I was little. Nasty business to lose someone, especially when you're young. When did she die?"
"A few months ago."
"A few months ago?" That was Susie from the kitchen. "Why didn't you say anything?"
I shrugged. "I don't know" I told Susie.
"How did she die?" That was Xanthe.
I hesitated as if she'd asked me, why did you do a reading when you weren't supposed to? "She died in her sleep."
"Died in her sleep? Of what?" That was Susie from the kitchen again.
"I don't know" I said again.
"Sounds like you don't believe that." Xanthe wasn't asking me, she was telling me. "People don't really die in their sleep if you know what I mean."
Yes, I do know what you mean I thought instead I asked her.
"What do you do for a living? If you don't mind me asking?"
"I was a shop keeper for the longest because there wasn't much work in the village I grew up in. So I moved to Edinburgh when I was eighteen and that's when I trained as a private detective."
My eyes widened. Here I was with a death on my hands and life had presented me with a private detective. This was why I didn't believe in coincidences.
"I've never met a private detective before." I admitted. "Are female ones rare?"
Xanthe shrugged slim shoulders. "I don't suppose there are that many here. There are a lot of them in America but I suppose America has everything. Will you get a summer job?"
Xanthe's mind worked fast. Me? Work? She wasn't serious. Elizabeth and Susie would never let me out of their sights, long enough. The thought had never occurred to me either since Elizabeth had suggested an internship at the family business. There she could keep an eye on me and persuade me to fall in love with bricks and mortar the way mum and dad had; highly unlikely.
I didn't know what I was going to do with my summer but work was far from my mind. I had to get through exams. I had to ignore Bobbi. I had to deal with George's death.
I shook my head at Xanthe. "Probably not." I told her. "Do you have a license for your job?"
She blinked. I watched her shift position in her seat and decide on something before answering me. I couldn't detect lies as easily as I would have liked, but I could detect a change of vibration in her voice. I felt-Xanthe didn't want to lie to me but she didn't want to give me the truth either. Weird.
"You...have to have a license in this country yes. I have a license, but a lot of what I do is...not recognised by the law. If you see what I mean."
"Like cash in hand?"
She laughed. It was a nice laugh, not throaty like the way George had laughed on my couch. It was clear and warm like Xanthe meant it. "Cash in hand. I like that. Yes, I do a lot of cash in hand jobs."
"So it can be dangerous?"
"Oh yes." She nodded her blonde head with honesty. "You never know what's coming around the corner and that's why I wanted Sue..."
"Petra do you want milk and sugar in your tea?" That was Susie. Good timing since my head was buzzing with what? You wanted Susie to do what? What did my sister have to do with the dangerous business of being a P.I? Susie worked in an expensive clothes shop on Oxford Street. That's where Susie worked.
"Yes please."
"Yes what?"
"Yes to milk and sugar please."
Mum drank her tea like that. She used to have at least ten cups a day. Mum was addicted to tea, and dad told me that's why he didn't want me getting into the habit of it.
Addictions were the pitfalls of humans.
"You met Susie through work?" I started.
"Yes."
That was a blunt yes, no room to manoeuvre.
"Petra" that was Susie again.
"Yes?"
"Why don't you get out of your uniform? I'll keep the tea warm for you don't worry."
That was an order. "Okay." I said reluctantly. "Excuse me" I said to Xanthe.
Xanthe smiled.
I got up from the couch and retrieved my shoes, annoyed that Susie had cut me short. Xanthe's eyes were on me as I exited the living room. I wondered what her gift was.
I wondered whether she knew, we were just like her.
I don't need to be psychic to know when I'm being talked about.
Even with my bedroom door shut, and Susie and Xanthe talking in hushed voices, their vibrations were on the same level.
My bedroom was one of the largest in the house. I loved the way it was always flooded with light and faced the street so I knew what the day was going to be like. The window was the focal point and I used to sit on the window ledge and read story books until it got dark. Facing the window then, I tugged myself out of my uniform and dropped pieces on the bed which stood between us.
The bed and window were the most impressive features of the room. Tacking pictures to the wall of random film stars was not my thing. The walls were a mute off white colour and the only thing which hung was a mirror which faced out from the bed. I liked antique furniture, the bed was antique, the large wardrobe to the right of me was even older, and so too was the desk and chair in the corner which housed my laptop.
Putting my school uniform in the wash basket in my cupboard, I decided to change into jeans and a t-shirt and then settled down at my desk. I flipped open the red laptop that was a thirteenth birthday present from mum. The machine's engine started up and it whirred to life going through its checking procedures. As I pulled my hair into a neater ponytail, I had to remind myself to clear the history once I was done searching the Internet. I wouldn't put it past either of my sisters to check my search history and then cross-examine me about it afterwards.
They'd done it before.
When the screen came alive, I typed in Georgina Harmond-White and Death in the same sentence. I should have done this earlier but I wasn't expecting to get anything concrete. If George's death had been ruled as natural then what were the chances of me finding a newspaper article that said 'Teenager dies in suspicious circumstances. Police holding her boyfriend as prime suspect'.
And wouldn't you know it? There wasn't anything like that. Instead I had snippets from social networking sites which blessed George's life and expressed how sad it was that she'd died at a young age. There was the odd comment about her taking drugs 'just say no man, why didn't she understand?' someone had even done a rap about it, but there was no mention of Nicholas.
For a moment I was sad that George's life hadn't made more of an impact. It was sad that she and I had spent the last four years of our school life together and yet, we were strangers. I killed the laptop knowing exactly what I was trying to avoid.
To connect with George in the spirit world was sending alarm bells ringing through my head. Spirits came to me in my dreams and that's it. I'd always assumed that I wasn't strong enough to connect with ghosts in my waking life, and that's why they came to me when my defences were down. Sometimes I remembered the conversations I had with them, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I didn't even know I was speaking to a spirit until I woke up and realised that it wasn't a normal dream.
Spirits came to me, I didn't go to them. To try and summon George well, what did that even look like? Was there some sort of incantation I had to do? Could I look it up on the internet?
It was times like this that I resented the way my family had conducted themselves. I should have been able to go to them and ask for help like 'I need to contact a ghost, what's the best way of doing that?' and then Susie would have been like 'no problem, it's dead easy what you have to do is...' But that in itself was a dream.
When it came to the Land of the Dead my family shut down.
But for all I knew George might have been resting peacefully. What was I hoping? That she would tell me that Nicholas had killed her and I was her only hope in bringing him to justice? I didn't think it worked that way.
Nicholas wasn't human so perhaps I needed to find out what he was before I went rooting around in George's murder.
Unnatural things came in many different shapes and forms. Demons were the most common. They were the ones humans knew about but rarely thought they actually existed. I had read up on species like vampires and witches, I just didn't know what elements of their stories were true.
Also, perhaps I needed to come at this from Nicholas's point of view. I had touched his energy signature and it had scared me. Touching it through George meant that I could find it again if I wanted to. If Nicholas had done something to cause George's death, then maybe I could see it through his eyes and then what? I told myself.
"Petra! Your tea's getting cold!" Susie shouted up.
"Coming!" I shouted back.
Either way; whether I tapped into George's energy or threw myself a curve ball and connected with Nicholas, I was on dangerous ground.
Unnatural things fed on people like me.
Nicholas would be no exception.
Page 13 of 13
