Chapter Seventeen - Too Far

"She does, doesn't she?" Kate voiced what she could plainly see in Jaxson's expression. His face was a mask of surprise and pity. A dash of apprehension tightened his features. Kate shivered in the air-conditioned house. She balled her hands into fists, squeezing until her fingernails bit into her palms. Jaxson was at her side in an instant.

She swayed a little as slowly, carefully, he unclenched her fingers. She thought he'd step away from her then, but he didn't. Instead he surprised her by slipping his palm against her own until their fingers were locked tightly together.

A million questions lurked in the shadowy corners of her mind. Right now, only one mattered. "How?" she demanded. "How can you see her?"

"How can she be seen, you mean?"

Kate gulped. "Yes. She's … I thought she was—" She broke off as a wave of dizziness slammed into her.

"Whoa," Jaxson murmured, catching her upper arm in a firm grip and easing her back onto a stool. "Are you good?" he asked. He took a few steps away from her, toward the fridge, but cautiously kept one arm extended in her direction. As if he would catch her if she suddenly fell off the stool. As if he expected her to swoon and take a header into the kitchen floor any second now. Did she look that bad? A glance in the frosted glass, mirrored snowflake picture that hung on the wall straight ahead, opposite the dining room table, showed a pale-faced woman with wild hair and huge eyes. She looked like a woman on the edge. Worse, she felt like one. Bullshit, her inner voice gritted, cutting through the hazy layers of shock and fear and uncertainty that threatened to rip her apart.

"I'm fine," she insisted, cradling her head in her hands and struggling to find a focal point in the middle of the crazy-storm.

A few seconds later, Jaxson pried one of her hands away from her head, pressed an ice-cold can of cola at her, and instructed her to drink.

A bath, she thought numbly, popping the tab on the soda. When this was all over, she was going to take a bath. With bubbles. And maybe a nice glass of wine—no, not wine—but definitely a candle or two, and Chinese takeout. Her stomach rumbled and she was reminded that the only things she'd consumed in recent memory were cheap wine and black coffee. Oh yeah, by the time this day was over, she was definitely going to be sitting in a bathtub, balancing a carton of sweet and sour chicken and a white plastic fork. Tonight, she'd look back on this day and laugh. Maybe. Kate choked back a sob, and Jaxson shoved the can of soda at her again. Obediently, she tipped it to her lips and drank.

"Keep drinking. You're in shock."

"Well, wouldn't you be?" she shot back, then immediately felt guilty. Snapping at him wasn't fair, and she knew it. She caught her lip between her teeth, then abruptly released it. She set the can down on the counter with a tinny thump and twisted to face Jaxson. "Were you?" she wanted to know. "The first time you, you know, saw … one?" I can say it. It's just a word. "A ghost," she finished.

"Who is she, Kate?" he asked instead.

* * *

She was off the stool like a shot, and the next thing he knew, she was pacing the width of the dining room, back and forth. But at least she was up and moving now. Her color was returning, too, since he'd practically forced half a can of Coke down her throat.

He caught the faint hint of peach as she passed within inches of him on her fifth pass across the room. He'd pretty much already figured the dead girl had been a relative of Kate's, and clearly she had her own reasons for not wanting to talk about it. Well, tough. They had bigger problems at the moment. A glance into the kitchen behind him, at the numbers that flashed green on the digital clock above the stove, told him the day was moving on without them. Ten o'clock.

"Kate, honey…"

Abruptly she halted, mid-pace, and her eyes flashed to his before she shook her head. Jaxson wasn't prepared for what she said next.

"Her name was Mira Rathe. And I'm pretty sure my uncle killed her before he hung himself."

"Your uncle?" he said, picking up on one of the more subtle details of her speech. "She wasn't related to you, then?"

"No." Kate sighed. "But it's my fault she's dead." She hung her head for a moment before raising her gaze back to his, as if she was waiting for his reaction—or his judgment. He schooled his face into an impassive mask, careful to give her neither.

"What happened?"

"My uncle was … he was … sick. He was…" She paused, pressing her fingers to her eyelids. "I'm sorry. I've only ever talked about this to my cousin Olivia and my best friend, Lindsey, and the times we've talked about it was…" She shook her head. "It's been years."

Something shifted inside, something … almost warm, at the thought of her trusting him enough to share a piece of herself. He was a little shocked at just how badly he wanted it, wanted her to look at him like she had a moment ago, like she had a secret to tell, like she was scared, like he was some sort of haven from the worst kind of storm. Fuck, he wanted to be. He wanted to—

"My uncle was obsessed with me," she blurted. "I don't know when it started. I mean, I wasn't even aware of it at the time. But my sister and I would visit." Her speech was halting. "He always wanted to spend quality time with me. I was older—the oldest. I was his princess," she said sarcastically.

Jaxson ground his teeth together, but his voice was steady when he asked, "Did he touch you?"

"No. Not the way you mean, anyway. But I think he would have, given enough time. He used to ask me to sit on his lap all the time, and he would play with my hair, and the way he would look at me…" she trailed off with a shudder. "God, he creeped me the hell out. I was a little girl, for God's sake."

"Son of a bitch," Jaxson swore.

"He touched Olivia. Before he started paying attention to me, he hurt my cousin Olivia. She refused to come back to Florida after that, but it was years until she told me, or anyone, what he'd done to her, before we talked about, well, everything."

"Does she look like you?" Jaxson asked, feeling a sick numbness in the pit of his stomach as he waited for her answer.

Kate nodded. "She's blonde. Her eyes are brown, though. And she's taller and has freckles. They're lighter now that she's older, but… Sorry, I guess that doesn't matter. My head is so messed up right now."

"Yeah, I get that, babe."

"Livi and I don't look like twins, but a casual onlooker would probably be able to guess that we're related."

"Kate, what happened to Mira? Why do you think it was your fault?"

She huffed out a breath and wandered over to the dining room window, putting her back to him. "Because I'm sure he went after her because of me," she finally said. "Because she looked like me. She was seventeen. A senior at Crystal Cove high school when she died. When he killed her. The police and the media, they were never able to prove that he did it. But they would have, I think. That's why he killed himself. Because he didn't want to go to jail. Deep down, he was a coward."

"What if he didn't kill her?" Jaxson suggested, wiping a hand across the back of his neck. "What if…"

"What?" Kate glanced at him over her shoulder.

"Nothing. Just thinking out loud."

"He killed her," she said, shoulders hunching up close to her neck. "I was there. Besides my uncle, I was the last person to see Mira Rathe alive. And as if it wasn't bad enough that he went after that girl because she was a dead ringer for me, I could have saved her, and I didn't."

"Kate."

"It's true." She spun away from the window and took a few hesitant steps toward him. "The last summer I ever spent at my aunt's house was when I was eight years old. The same year that Mira went missing. My aunt had left to spend a few days with some relative in Tallahassee. I don't even remember who she went to see, or why, but I remember my uncle graciously offering to watch me." She snorted. "Early one morning, a day or two after my aunt had left, I heard noises coming from the basement. I heard her—Mira—crying."

"Hell."

"I didn't know she wasn't alone. It never occurred to me that my uncle…" She shook her head and wrapped her arms around her midsection. "She was tied up, a-and bleeding. I can still see the blood all over what was left of her shirt. And her face, he'd hit her. She was partially submerged in an old tub. I … I'm pretty sure that's how he killed her, by drowning her in that old tub. He was standing next to her, and his hand was on her shoulder."

"Did they see you?"

Kate nodded. "He told me to go upstairs. And I did. I went upstairs and hid in my bedroom closet for hours, hugging an absurdly large stuffed dog that my aunt had bought me one year for Valentine's Day. And I didn't say a word. Not when he told me, later that night, that bad girls ended up in his special room downstairs. Not when the police started coming around, and not when my uncle did the world a big damn favor and hung himself in the front parlor at the end of the summer. I just … I couldn't speak. It was like my voice was this well that had dried up, and there was just nothing left for months and months."

"Shhh," he soothed, closing the remaining foot or so of distance between them and tucking her close to him. He stroked a hand over her hair and palmed the back of her head, pressing her even closer as he murmured into her hair. "You don't have to say any more. It's okay, it's okay. You're okay…" he whispered over and over again, leaning down until his lips brushed her ear every time he spoke. He felt the shiver that ran through her body and into his, rocked gently back and forth with her and, after several long moments, felt some of the tension in her finally begin to ease.

She pulled away far enough to look up into his face, and the sadness in her eyes twisted his gut.

"But it's not okay, Jaxson. Not really. For years, I've dreamed of Mira. I've thought of her and dreamed of her, and … and she's been there, in the back of my mind. But she's not some buried memory anymore. She's real and she's here—somehow." She cast a nervous look toward the door. "The broken window… She's not just a dream anymore, Jaxson, is she?" Slowly, he shook his head and brushed a wayward lock of hair off her forehead.

"Yeah. I guess I'd already suspected as much." Kate sighed. "Ever since I came back to Florida and moved into that house, I've felt like Gollum and I aren't alone." She worried her lip again. "She's not going to stop, is she?"

Jaxson hesitated, not sure how to answer her question. He hadn't spent much time in Florida—thank God—or in the house next door. But so far the impressions he got from the late Mira Rathe were off-the-charts angry. He didn't think she was interested in going into the light.

"She's a pretty angry spirit," he conceded. "But I don't think she's mad at you."

"Why wouldn't she be?"

"Why would she be?" he countered.

"I let her die, Jaxson. I had the chance to save her, and I ran away and hid. I knew better. I knew how to dial nine-one-one. I don't know why I didn't. I screwed up," she said helplessly. "There's no other way to put it."

"You screwed up?" he demanded incredulously. "What kind of fuck would blame an eight-year-old girl for something like that?"

"Well, apparently Mira."

Jaxson shook his head. "No, she's angry, but not at you."

"How do you—"

He held up a hand. "Don't ask."

"Like hell. You can … hear … her?"

He nodded, half expecting to see the apprehension—fear of him—cloud her eyes, for her to call him a freak. Or worse, to keep silent, but pull away and make up some bullshit excuse because, deep down, she thought he was a freak. But the wary rejection never came. Kate simply continued to stare at him expectantly.

"I can hear her."

"Are there others? Like her?"

"Like her? Dead?" He frowned. "Or in your house?"

Kate broke away and turned a slow circle, glancing warily at the air around them. "Are there a bunch of them, you know, all around us?"

"No."

"Oh God, is there more than one in my house?"

Again, he hesitated, but decided to tell her the truth. "Yes."

"Oh Lord."

"They aren't as vocal as she is. I haven't seen them, not like I've seen her."

Kate took a deep breath. "You know what? I'm not even going to ask," she said, then, "Yes, I am. How on earth is any of this possible? Have you always been able to do this?"

He seriously considered not answering her. "Yes, but I don't know how it's possible," he finally said.

"Does anyone else know what you can do?"

"Just my mother. She sees them, too. She calls it the gift." He snorted.

"Okay, so, so … if Mira's not out to get me, then why now?" she asked when it became clear that he'd said all he was going to, for the moment, anyway, about his gift. "Why is she all of a sudden, here?"

"Who says she hasn't been here all along?"

"I guess. But why is she going all"—Kate waved her arms around—"exorcist, now?"

The sick, niggling feeling was back, and Jaxson cupped a hand around the back of his neck before he straightened to face Kate's inquisitive stare. "Well, I think I might have a theory about that…"

Before he could speak, a loud crash sounded from outside, and the screech of shattering glass carried through the partially open window beside the door.

"What the hell?"