“I meant . . .” I pause. “We’re not heading for my house. That’s not where Nolan is.”
“You sure you want to go straight to Nolan looking like this? Don’t you want to, I don’t know,” Ashley continues like she’s ticking items off a list: “Shower, put on some makeup, maybe some clothes that you haven’t been wearing for this many hours in a row?”
Somewhere Nolan is struggling. Nolan is fighting. Nolan is bleeding. I shake my head.
“Okay then, where to?”
I purse my lips, but it’s too hard to concentrate with the coffee shop staring me in the face. “Pull over for a sec,” I say. I close my eyes as she shifts the car into park. In my visions I saw Helena dragging Nolan down a pinecone-littered street. I saw him sitting in a pretty plush chair. Light pink, with little flowers embroidered into it.
And then, as though I’m adjusting the lens on my camera, everything snaps into focus.
“Can that really be where she took him?” I ask out loud.
“Can where really be where who took who?”
I take a deep breath and direct Ashley to number three Pinecone Drive.
“This is where Nolan is holed up with some girl?” Ashley asks. The headlights from her car are bright enough that even in the thick Ridgemont darkness, she can make out the Victorian-styled wedding cake of a house where Victoria Wilde lived. Where her daughter, Anna, died. “Not exactly my idea of a romantic rendezvous.”
“Not mine either,” I agree, but my voice is shaking. On the other side of the house’s front door a woman who wants me dead is holding the boy I love prisoner. Sweat pools at the nape of my neck, the moisture curling what’s left of my hair.
I unlock my door, but I haven’t even stepped outside when I feel a presence.
“Anna! What are you doing here?”
“Who are you talking to?” Ashley rolls down her window and searches the empty space around her little hybrid.
I don’t answer; instead, I get out of the car. I’m cold, but for the first time in months it’s not only because a spirit is near. I’m cold because it is cold. I take a deep breath, savoring the familiar Ridgemont chill. There are patches of snow on the ground, and I can see my breath. The clouds hang thick, so low that it feels like I could reach my arms up and touch them.
“Please let me help you move on,” I beg. “You can’t stay here.” And it will give me strength. Strength I desperately need right about now.
Ashley sticks her head out her window. “Seriously, who are you talking to?”
Again, I don’t answer. I lean back against the car. It’s been almost three months since I exorcised the water demon, setting her spirit free.
“You know what happens to a spirit who lingers too long,” I say, even though Ashley thinks I’m speaking to the air. If anyone knows what’s at stake when a dark spirit manifests, it’s Anna. But her certainty fills the air around me: she doesn’t believe she’s at risk. Her life flashes before my eyes: learning to ride a two-wheeler, baking cookies beside her father, hugging her mother when she was home from one of her long business trips, clutching the stuffed owl that matches the one in my duffle bag.
Anna had a happy life before the demon showed up. Her joy fills the air around me, charging it like electricity.
She’s trying to make me feel better. To make me feel stronger, even if she won’t let me help her move on.
“More proof that my father was wrong about my empathy making me weak,” I mutter. It’s the first time I’ve referred to him as my father like that, out loud. It surprises me how easily the words just slipped out. Why would I say those words for the first time now?
I shake my head, and the images of Anna’s life disintegrate. I turn around to face Ashley. “You should go.” My voice isn’t trembling anymore.
“Go?” she echoes incredulously. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you alone like this.”
“Like what?”
“Sunshine, you’re standing out there talking to yourself in the dark. I know you want to see Nolan, but maybe you should get some rest or something first. Let me take you home.”
“I told you, I don’t have that kind of time.”
“If the boy loves you, she’s not going to be able to take him away in a matter of hours.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No,” Ashley agrees. “I don’t understand. I’m worried about you. This isn’t like you. None of this! Believe me, no one was more excited to see you so worked up over a boy, but I have a hunch that whatever this is, it has just as much to do with whatever happened back there with your birth father as it does with Nolan.”