My heart still beat a little faster than it should as I picked my way over the stony ground. I’d brought my pendulum with me, although it remained in my jeans pocket for the moment, since I already knew where I was going. Shoved in another pocket were a couple of chunks of black tourmaline, my go-to for protecting myself from bad energy. Its presence might keep Lucien’s spirit away entirely, but I had to hope that his desire to be heard would overcome the stones’ repelling properties.
In life, he’d certainly liked the sound of his own voice.
After a few minutes of picking my way along the rock-strewn riverbank, I came to the small sandy beach where I was almost positive Lucien had been murdered. The same footprints marred the sand, although blurrier now, as if the breezes of the past few days had begun to erase all those traces of human activity.
It was very quiet, with even the sound of the river flowing over its stones somehow muted. I’d worked up something of a sweat during my mini-hike to get here, but I still was cold, a chill inching its way down my spine.
No matter how beautiful the place was, I couldn’t quite forget that a man had died in this very spot.
I reached in my pocket with my free hand and touched one of the black tourmalines. It didn’t feel hot, which reassured me a little. If it had already gone to work repelling whatever negative energies lurked in my immediate surroundings, it would have been warm to the touch, if not downright scorching.
All right, then. A few days had passed, and so it was possible that Lucien’s spirit had come to terms with its untimely demise and had decided to move on, to jump back on the wheel of life and be spun into a new existence…with any luck, one where he might learn a bit more about how not to be an utter jerk.
But I wasn’t here to ponder what karma had in store for him. No, I just needed to find out if he was still around, and, if so, whether he could give me any useful information.
I wasn’t a medium; my only real experience speaking with the dead had been communicating with the ghost of my Grandma Ellen during our sessions with a crystal ball. Despite that lack, I figured I was a little bit ahead of the general population when it came to dealing with spirits, if for no other reason than I at least believed such a thing was possible.
In the same pocket as my pendulum rested my favorite piece of quartz, a beautiful little point with just the faintest veiling within. Like the much larger chunk of quartz I’d told Fiona about, this piece also resonated with me on a very deep level, allowing me to both focus within and at the same time allow my consciousness to open up to higher entities.
Or, in this case, Lucien Dumond.
I set my water bottle down on a large, flat rock nearby, then took out the piece of quartz and wrapped both my hands around it. The energy from the stone shimmered along my nerve endings, letting me know I was open to all vibrations.
“Lucien?” I said aloud. Not too loud, though. A spirit was everywhere; no need to shout.
An odd little breeze caught at the end of my hair, still confined to its scrunchie. In fact, it felt almost like a tug.
I forced myself to remain motionless. I’d been in places before where spirits were active, and so this wasn’t exactly my first rodeo. Then again, none of those spirits had been the ghosts of people I actually knew.
“Are you there?”
Again that tug, this time forceful enough that I couldn’t help wincing.
“Okay, good,” I said, trying to sound calm and reassuring. “Can you speak?”
The wind whispered past my face. “Selena….”
I’d always liked my name, even though the only reason my mother had picked it out for me was because she’d thought I’d be a Cancer — aka Moon Child, the sign whose ruling planet was the moon — since my projected arrival was supposed to be on June thirtieth. But I’d jumped the gun and come nine days early, and had turned out to be a Gemini instead. Since she didn’t have a backup name, she’d stuck with Selena.
Anyway, I’d liked having a pretty, unusual name. Hearing it whispered on the wind like that, however, was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“I’m here to help,” I said. “Can you tell me what happened to you?”
The same rage and fear I’d felt earlier returned, only tenfold. I shuddered and almost lost my balance. Damn it, even as a spirit, he was strong.
“Something terrible, I know.” As I spoke, I tried to keep my voice calm, persuasive. “We all want to find justice for you, Lucien. We need to know who did this to you.”
This time, the wind that blew past me was so fierce, it pulled the scrunchie from my hair and sent it spinning into the water. The loosened strands whipped around my face, bringing tears to my eyes. I blinked, doing my best to focus on the now-blurred scene in front of me.
“Vile,” a voice whispered.
Lucien’s voice.
“Yes, it was vile,” I said. “But I need to know who did this to you.”
A tree branch broke off with a sharp crack and fell to the ground. I winced, even though the bough had landed a few yards away from me and didn’t present any immediate danger.
“Sheeeeee….” the voice said. Now it sounded like a low rumble, much deeper than Lucien’s voice when he’d still been alive. It reverberated in my eardrums, and I shook my head, even though that didn’t do much to clear the painful throbbing.
“I don’t understand,” I said, even as I began to wonder whether this had been such a great idea after all. I could tell he was trying to communicate, but it just wasn’t getting through.
“Vile!” the voice shouted, almost in my ear.
“Yes, I got that the first time,” I snapped, although I knew that losing my temper wasn’t the best way to deal with the situation. So much could be lost in translation when spirits were trying to reach through the veil and communicate. This wasn’t the same as having a cozy chat with my grandmother’s ghost through the medium of a crystal ball. No, this was facing the raw power of an angry, vengeful spirit, one that couldn’t quite form the necessary words to give me the answers I needed.
Still, I had to try.
Then Lucien said, “Huge,” and I only frowned again.
“What’s huge?” I asked. “Was there some kind of conspiracy going on? Was more than one person involved in your death?”
“HUGE!” the spirit bellowed again, and I clapped my hands over my ears. That last blast had been so loud, I felt as though I was back in high school and standing too close to the speakers at one of my school dances.
Not helping, I thought grimly. However, the additional decibels seemed to tell me that I might be on the right track. There had been an additional level of intensity in that last reply, as though I’d struck a nerve.
My phone chose that inopportune time to start ringing. At once, the wild wind whistling across the little beach died away. Although he’d never manifested physically, and therefore I couldn’t see for sure that Lucien was gone, I somehow knew he’d disappeared.
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath. I pushed my hair out of my face and pulled the phone out of my pocket so I could look at the screen.
Calvin.
Under other circumstances, I would have been happy to have him calling me out of the blue. Right then, however, I was more irritated than anything else.