“No one is playing tricks here,” Jackson said quietly.
Clara winced, lowering her head. “So, she’s—real. As in really dead—and really a ghost?” she whispered.
She’d have given her eyeteeth for Alexi to be there. Alexi took all such things in stride; she believed that ghosts had come to help her on the Destiny.
“The thing is,” Thor said, coming to hunch down before her, causing her to meet his eyes, “Amelia apparently thinks you can help her. She appeared before you.”
“You saw her!” she told him. “I know that you saw her!”
Clara hoped he would deny it.
He did not.
“Yes, I saw her because...”
“He saw her because he can see the dead,” Jackson said flatly. “Actually, many people can. Most of them never know it. Some feel a presence. Some actually see things. And some—well, I guess the dead pick and choose who they wish to speak with, just like the living. And the dead are like the living—some can barely appear. Some can learn to shift the air and make noise, even to move small objects, while some cannot. I know you’re aware that Alexi has always quietly had something extra. You know about the Destiny.”
She was surprised when Thor set a hand gently on her knee. “It’s hard to grasp. When you’re older...an adult. I knew very young that I saw things that others didn’t. That I heard things. That dreams could be warnings, the dead entering our subconscious minds. It’s hard. Truly hard. But, once you let yourself accept that while a large majority of the world might think you’re crazy despite the fact that you’re not at all, it gets easier.”
“And you find that you can embrace it—and do a lot of good with it,” Jackson said.
Thor was looking at her earnestly. She looked back at him and shook her head.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why would she come to me? Members of her film crew are here. You all are here...people she could just chat with at will, apparently!”
Thor glanced at Jackson before looking at her and answering. “She might not trust the members of her own crew.”
Clara sat in silence for a minute.
“We need you to be open to her,” Jackson said.
“What?” she asked.
“Amelia may well know her killer,” Thor said.
Clara looked at him. She was amazed that this strong and serious man could be speaking to her about ghosts.
Then again, she’d wanted to believe that he was a stripper/actor and that it was all make-believe.
“So,” she said, slowly and carefully, “you think that this ghost will just walk up to me and tell me who killed her? And then you’ll make an arrest and go to court and convince a jury to convict someone on a ghost’s testimony?”
“No, but if Amelia approached you, she did so for a reason,” Thor replied.
She let that settle in and then she said, “You want me to go back to bed by myself and just wait and see if the ghost shows up—in my dreams? Or, um, in person?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Thor said, the corners of his mouth turning up. He actually had a nice smile. To her surprise, he kept smiling gently as he smoothed a strand of hair back out of her eyes. “We don’t mean to terrify or make anyone miserable. Do you think you could get some rest on the couch here? Either Jackson, Mike or I will be in the office at all times.”
It beat the hell out of lying alone in a shadowy room by herself!
She nodded. “If, uh...if you think I can help,” she murmured.
She didn’t really want to help—no, that wasn’t true. She’d love to help. She just didn’t think that she could.
She didn’t want to see the dead—that was the issue.
But neither did she want to be alone, not now. Not in the Alaska Hut, where she was afraid of the dead—and made very uneasy by the living. As in Marc Kimball.
“I’ll get a pillow and blanket,” Mike said.
“And we need to move back into taking shifts in the spare room,” Jackson told him.
“You go on,” Thor told Jackson, rising to his feet. “Mike got about an hour or so of sleep already. I’ll sit with Miss Avery.” He smiled at Clara. “It will be getting light soon—morning twilight, that’s what we call it.”
“Shadow time,” Mike said. He shrugged. “You know it’s all because of the sun on the horizon. Twilight comes when the sun is rising, and when it sets. It’s right when the ball of the sun slips down past the horizon of wherever you may be in the world.”
She nodded, trying a smile herself. It was weak. “I was anxious to come to Alaska,” she told him. “The pictures I had seen were so beautiful, and friends who have sailed these cruises told me there was nothing like it. I came up here early to see the sights and I stayed awake the first night to marvel at the amount of light there could be in a day.”
“And darkness in winter,” Thor murmured. “But, lucky for us, it is still summer.”
Lucky. Easier to catch a killer in the light? Wasn’t everything easier when one could see clearly?