“Bullshit. Even to yourself, you can’t admit what’s going on.”
“Of course, they’re his.” Weren’t they? A quake began in her limbs. From the cold, yes, from the cold.
He merely stared.
“He’s feeding them to me.” She sounded lame.
“Remember what you said about Wendy, Tiffany, and Bethany?”
“No.” She told him a lot of things, not all of them truthful.
“You heard their thoughts, felt their feelings ...”
Sort of like possession. “Cameron isn’t possessing me.” At least not that way.
“Maybe Cameron isn’t.”
“No.” The word exploded from her chest.
“Yes.” He voiced the fear lodged in her chest. “It’s Cordelia.”
Chapter Eighteen
Max denied, denied, denied. “That’s not possible.” Of course, it was, she’d acknowledged the memories and emotions as other than her own, but ... “I’m remembering Cameron.”
She closed her eyes. It wasn’t the weather turning her extremities to ice. Not the new snow falling, nor the white already covering the ground. Not the wet of her clothing nor the leaden gray of the sky.
The memories belonged to Cameron. She wanted, needed Witt to believe that, but knew by the look in his eyes he didn’t. She had to convince him. Had to. “The Bergers had a St. Bernard. They even put that silly barrel thing under its chin. And one year, we were tobogganing down their hill, that one.” She pointed through the trees to the big hill that had been the backyard of Cameron’s youth. “And the dog grabbed the hood of my jacket and started to drag me. The zipper dug into my chin, and I was screaming and choking and Cameron was running to get Mom and—”
Cameron was running. She saw it all, his hood flapping, his legs, encased in thick snowpants, pumping up the hill to home.
Ohmygod. Not again. Her body was her own, not some other person’s. Please not again.
Witt took her frozen cheeks in his hands. “A few weeks ago you were the one trying to convince me you were psychic.” He didn’t use the word possessed, but in her mind, it meant the same thing. “Now I have to convince you?”
Why was it so scary? She wanted to screech. “I don’t want to lose myself again.”
“Maybe it’s the only way to find yourself.”
Maybe. Eventually. The truth burrowed deep in her bones, though she still wanted to deny because ... because this odyssey was about answers to the past present and future, as Bud Traynor had said. And Cameron had no future, not with her, not forever.
Finding Cordelia was one step closer to a future without Cameron.
Witt suddenly reached out to stroke her cheek, a long, slow caress. “For a moment, I thought that was the real you lying in your snow angel. I saw a glimmer of hope for us. I thought you made progress. I should have known it wasn’t you at all.”
“It was me.”
He looked at her, his eyes almost colorless in the snowy landscape.
“Some of it was, Witt.”
But some of those feelings hadn’t been hers. She clenched her teeth but knew she couldn’t deny indefinitely. “She’s buried somewhere near here.” The words were a whisper, the knowledge simply there.
Witt heard over the sudden gusts of wind and snow. “Where?”
She pointed past the snow angels they’d made, to the pond Cordelia had skated on as a child. A bird shot to the sky, a black bird, a crow, a buzzard. “Beyond those first trees.” Covered by almost thirty years of growth and frozen, hard-packed earth. “BJ? I don’t know. He’s probably down there, too. They never left town.”
Witt grasped her arm. “Who killed them?”
Frost hardened her marrow. She tasted fresh snow on her numb lips as she licked them. Wishing Witt would hold her hands, warm them, she pulled her arms back into her coat sleeves.
“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to know. Cordelia didn’t want to know. A hole gaped in her chest where her heart should have been. Someone had ripped it out. And while Cameron had failed to remember so many things, try as he might, Cordelia actively refused to see. It was a trick Max had perfected over her own lifetime. If it’s bad, forget it. Now she managed to forget things she didn’t want to. Except the night Cameron died.
“Convenient.” Witt’s harsh breath penetrated her haze.
Max cocked her head. The sensations were odd. Not like the other times she’d been possessed. Cordelia, strangely, felt almost content. At least the feelings surrounding Max were of the contented variety. Weren’t murdered spirits supposed to be all angry and desperate and justice-seeking?
“I just don’t know,” she said again.
Witt wouldn’t let her off so easily. “What about the number? 452, how does it fit?”
She swallowed against the belief that Cordelia’s death was connected to the others. “I don’t feel it.” She shrugged Witt off. One thing was clear, though. Even if this possession felt different than her past experiences, Cordelia was dead. “We have enough to see Evelyn. I know the most important question.”
Who buried Cordelia out in that field?
*