Read Online A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) by Sarah Wynde - Free Book Online Page A

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between a café and a diner. “I told my sister, and she was bound to find out
anyway because of Dillon. And Dave won’t tell anyone.”
    “Natalya’s not—she wasn’t—” Akira didn’t know how to ask the
question politely. She was sure that Natalya wasn’t Dillon’s mother from her
calm reaction to the idea that he was a ghost, but she knew very little about
the Latimer family.
    For a fleeting second, Zane looked grim. “No. Lucas, the
brother I mentioned, is Dillon’s father. He’s not around much, though. My parents
were raising Dillon.”
    “Losing a child is hard, I know. Is that why your dad—” Akira
searched for the words and finally settled on, “—has been looking for a medium?”
It seemed more tactful than saying, “lost his mind and decided that ghosts were
real?” Sure, she knew ghosts were real, but that’s because she could see and
hear them. Why would someone who could do neither decide to chase such a pipe
dream?
    “Dillon and my mom died three days apart,” Zane replied. “Dillon
of a drug overdose, and my mom from a stroke. A couple of years ago, my dad met
the woman who told him that the car was haunted, but she—well, ever since, he’s
been looking for someone who could communicate with their spirits.”
    Akira barely heard the words after overdose. Poor Zane. To
lose both his mother and his nephew in the same week. She’d only ever had her
father, but the emptiness that filled their house in the weeks and months after
his death had been horrible. And his death hadn’t been unexpected: untimely,
yes, but they’d known he’d lost his fight against cancer for weeks before he
died. And an overdose? For a teenager as young as Dillon? How truly sad.
    “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said.
    He looked down at her. In the late afternoon sunlight, his
eyes were bluer, almost the color of the sky behind them, and she could see in
his expression how hard it had been. And then he grinned at her, and said, “Yeah,
it wasn’t a great week,” as he pushed open the door and gestured for her to
precede him inside.
    The restaurant was an eclectic mix of styles: as if someone
with modern taste had taken over an old-style diner without the money or time
to renovate from the ground up. The floor was ugly gray linoleum, and there was
a long plain lunch-style counter in the middle of the room, with an open
kitchen galley beyond it. But small tables were covered with bright linens, and
set with colorful cloth napkins, and a row of private booths along one wall had
wooden tabletops and comfy cloth seating.
    As Akira looked around, noticing the fanciful artwork on the
walls, she realized that the restaurant was crowded, almost every table full,
and that most of the people in it seemed to be looking in her direction. Or was
it Zane they were looking at? She glanced at him.
    “Small town, new face,” he murmured in her ear as he put a
comforting hand on her back and steered her toward a back corner booth, nodding
and greeting people at the tables they passed. “Nothing to worry about.”
    She wasn’t worried, she thought defensively. Or not exactly
worried. She just maybe wished she’d found a brush, a mirror, and a little
make-up back at General Directions. Facing a roomful of curious strangers
looking like you’d recently been in a car accident wasn’t a confidence boost.
    There was a man seated at the booth Zane was headed to, his
back to the restaurant. This must be the eccentric Max Latimer, Akira thought.
As she slid into the booth across from him, he looked up from his book and
smiled at her, and almost involuntarily, Akira smiled back. Dark hair gone gray
at the temples, blue eyes bordered with deeply engraved laugh lines, bushy
brows and a smile that lit up his face—she could see his resemblance to his
children and grandson.
    “You must be the medium,” he said, putting out his hand for
her to shake.
    Akira’s smile disappeared immediately. “I am not a