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

medium,”
she said, turning to Zane with a glare as he seated himself on the bench next
to her. What had Zane said to his father? Hadn’t she made herself perfectly
clear when she told him she could see ghosts? Mediums got messages from
invisible spirits. They were spiritualists who believed in some mystical “other
side.” They held séances and went into trances!
    “She sees ghosts,” Zane told his father. “Apparently there’s
a difference.”
    The sympathy that Akira had felt for him moments earlier
evaporated as her annoyance returned. Had he not listened to a word she’d said?
    “Aw, come on,” he said to her, apparently reading her
expression. “We had to tell him.”
    “No!” she said. “No, we didn’t. This is not—I don’t—I’m a
scientist. A physicist. With, I admit, a slightly unusual—” she paused,
searching for the right word.
    “Gift?” Max offered.
    Akira shook her head, rejecting his choice, and finally
settled on one of her own. “Quirk. It’s just a quirk. And I don’t want people
to know about it.”
    Max and Zane exchanged looks. “Tassamara is a town that
attracts people who have quirks,” Max said. “No one here will think anything of
it.”
    Akira sighed. It was a weird little town, she had to
acknowledge that. But that didn’t mean that seeing ghosts was a socially
acceptable skill to have. “I don’t like ghosts,” she said slowly, trying to
find the right words to explain how she felt, but before she could continue,
Max interrupted her.
    “Miss Malone,” he started, and then smiled and reached across
the table, patting the back of her hand comfortingly. “Akira. You leased a car
with a ghost in it. You rented a house that’s known to be haunted. You can’t be
that afraid of your association with the spirit world.”
    The spirit world? Oh, hell, Akira thought, as she protested, “Every
place the realtor showed me was haunted!”
    “The last thing on the list was a nice little modern
apartment,” Zane said mildly. “Fifteen miles outside of town, so not exactly
convenient, but brand-new and unlikely to have any spectral tenants.”
    “You knew the properties she was going to show me?” Akira
asked.
    He shrugged. “Perception tests, remember. We didn’t find you
because we were looking for a physicist.”
    “But I am a physicist,” Akira protested. “Look, seeing
ghosts—it’s just some kind of energy. That’s all. It’s not entirely crazy to
think that human beings might be more than matter or chemicals. We’re complex
systems. Yes, I’ve got this ability, but it’s like being a super-taster or a tetrachromat,
just some genetic variation in a sensory faculty. Rare, obviously, but then so
are tetrachromats.”
    “Super-taster I know,” Max said. “Picky eaters, but with more
taste buds than most people have, so food tastes more intense to them. But what’s
a tetrachromat?”
    “Most people have three types of cones in our eyes, each of
which responds to a different wavelength of visible lengths. Three cones, so we’re
trichromats,” Akira explained. “But some people—women, most likely, because of
the two X chromosomes—could have four types of cones. Theoretically, they could
see into the ultraviolet, like zebra fish can. An average human being can
distinguish about a million shades of color, but a tetrachromat could
distinguish about a hundred million shades.”
    Momentarily distracted by the idea, she added thoughtfully, “It’d
be hell to get dressed; nothing would ever look like it matched.” Then she
shook her head and continued, “It is scientifically possible that I have a
sense that allows me to see energy. A type of energy. A type of energy that
other people can’t perceive, like seeing into the ultraviolet, only not exactly
like that because. . .” She let her words trail off as she saw that Max was
smiling gently at her.
    “You hear them too, don’t you?” Zane asked. “How does that
work if it’s a visual