Then, just as quickly as it had come, the moment ended. Janice started talking again, her voice more confident now, as if she had come to terms with the things she had to say.
“I don’t know how Circe manipulated me,” Janice said. “If she has some kind of special power, I could never sense it. When I touched her, I didn’t get anything that wasn’t already apparent. It wasn’t so much what I felt as what I didn’t. With Circe, it always seemed that a piece was missing somehow. Touching her was like seeing everything, but not seeing anything at all. I couldn’t decide if there was something she was hiding, or something she didn’t have.
“Our first lunch was like that. She invited me to her home. At the time, everything seemed so casual. Looking back, it seems the whole afternoon was calculated to put me at ease. Even though I made a lot of money on my third book, the first two had put me into debt. In the end, I barely broke even. Circe knew that. She had what I wanted-a big house, material things-and she knew it. Visiting Circe’s home, enjoying good food served on fine china…it seemed that the world she inhabited was my deepest dream realized.
“I told her that. As I said, I told her everything-all about the stress caused by my gift, and the way the book tour had drained me…all of it.
“And then it was Circe’s turn. She’d just been on the cover Newsweek, and the media attention was pretty intense at the time. She talked about that. And then she told me about her family. Her father and her sister, and the things they believed and the things she didn’t. She said that they were destroying her plans for the church, draining the fortune her father had built in the sixties, and she wanted to be free of them.”
“I guess she got her wish,” I said. “And you helped her do it.”
“Yes, I did. And I would have gone on helping her. After the Newsweek story, the autobiography was the next big step on Circe’s promotional plan. Working on it, I spent more time at Circe’s house than my own. She set up an office for me at her place. Every day I’d talk to Circe, write about her. At night, I dreamed about her. I began to feel that, in a way, I was her.”
“Or the woman she pretended to be.”
“Yes. Her wants became my wants. Her needs were my needs. When I did something for her, I felt that I was doing it for me, too.”
“Right down to chauffeuring a hit man.”
She nodded. “It seems so obvious now. Circe knew what I wanted out of life. The funny thing is, I never knew what she wanted. Not really. She pretended to tell me everything, but even though I felt as if I were living in her skin at times, I never understood the needs behind her actions. I never had a clue. Even after ghosting her autobiography, I really didn’t know Circe Whistler at all.”
I swallowed hard. Janice’s words were hitting too close to home. Once upon a time I’d shared a meal with Circe Whistler, too. I couldn’t help remembering it, and the things we’d done in her father’s bed in the shadow of that meal.
That night Circe Whistler gave me what I wanted.
The next morning she tried to kill me.
The turn came up quick. I nearly missed it. Mud splattered against the wheel wells as I downshifted. The rear end started to drift, but the tires dug in and kept us on the road.
“I feel better,” Janice said. “Thanks for listening.”
I choked back laughter. The grove was coming up soon. I parked the Explorer at the trail head, turned off the lights, and killed the engine.
Bleak shadows waited under the redwood boughs. Fat raindrops dripped from the branches and splattered against the truck cab like hammer strikes.
Janice’s voice was a whisper. “Can I ask you a question?” Sure.
“Are you going to kill me?”
She stared at me, waiting for an answer.
After a minute, she started shaking.
I opened the door and stepped out into the storm.
“Let’s go,” I said.
6
As it turned out, the bodyguard’s coat was overrated.
I stood on the bridge, soaked to the skin. Janice was just as wet-she’d climbed out of the Explorer looking like a model for an L.L. Bean catalog, and now she looked like she belonged in a homeless shelter. Still, she seemed younger somehow-her makeup washed away, her blonde hair plastered to her skull, her delicate hands holding an oversized flashlight that made her seem childish.
Thunder boomed above-an angry bear’s growl.
“This is crazy,” Janice said.
“Maybe,” I said.
She aimed the flashlight at my face, eyeing me like I was a hungry grizzly. I was hungry-hungry for things she could tell me. I had a lot of questions, but now that we were here I wasn’t sure how to go about asking them.
I decided to tell Janice as little as possible. “There’s someone who spends a lot of time here,” I began. “I want you to tell me about her.”
“This is a bridge. God knows how many people have crossed it. You can’t expect me to pick up an impression of just one of them. That’s not why you brought me here, is it?”
I told her that it was.
I explained that doing what I asked was her only chance to stay alive.
And then I told her about the little girl.
Some of my words were lost in thunder, but Janice heard enough. “You’re telling me that the little girl you’re looking for is dead?”
“She’s a ghost.”
“Oh, God.”
“Like I told you before: I see ghosts.”
“I sensed your power when I touched your knife. It was nothing more than a glimpse really, but I saw enough to convince me that you were telling the truth. I would have never believed it before that. I thought you were trying to scare me with all that talk about seeing Natasha Orlovsky’s ghost. You just don’t seem like the type.”
“I’m not. When it comes to the supernatural, I’m a pretty hard sell. There’s not much I believe in, really. But I do believe what I see.”
“I wish I could see the things you’ve seen.”
She sounded as dreamy as a schoolgirl with a crush, and I had to laugh. “Don’t be so sure about that.”
“But you’ve seen behind the veil.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Tell me…” She hesitated. “Tell me what you’ve seen.”
I smiled at her. There we were, standing wet and cold on a bridge in the middle of nowhere, but Janice Ravenwood didn’t mind. Not as long as she had a chance of unlocking an eternal mystery or two. She stared at me, waiting for answers with the eager eyes of an acolyte.
Janice’s flashlight beam burned my retinas.
I reached out and took the flashlight from her hands.
My face was lost in the dark.
I turned the light on Janice.
I saw her clearly, as clearly as I saw the dead.
But that didn’t mean I knew her secrets.
“Please tell me,” she persisted. “Good or bad…I really want to know what it’s like on the other side.”
Her eyes gleamed expectantly. A woman who’d lived for years off of pretty lies, waiting to hear the
