Ghost Seer Read Free Page A

your dog now.
Enzo’s tongue lolled as he gave her a too-perky doggie grin.
We should play, too.
    “I don’t believe this.” She sat up, hardening her heart against his large, dark eyes and wagging tail. Hardening her expression. “I don’t believe in you. In any . . . ghosts.” Though something was wrong with her vision, because she’d begun to “see” gray and white and shadowy and transparent images of people. She’d made a doctor’s appointment for extensive testing.
    Now a shadow was “talking” to her in her head.
    That’s all right. I believe in you!
Enzo’s imaginary tongue shot out and swiped at her face . . . and she felt a clammy touch on her cheek. Enough that she reared back and banged her head on the curved wood of her sleigh bed.
    This invasion of the visions right here in her home and her own bedroom was new and unwelcome. Chicago, where her aunt had lived, was one thing. Right here . . . not at all good.
    But you hear me, right? Huh, huh? I looove you, Clare. Always liked when you came. You brought treats. Do you have treats here?
Enzo bounded off her bed, leaving no sign he’d been there, and whisked straight through her closed and solid bedroom door.
    “I’m seeing things,” she said weakly.
    The spectral dog loped back into the room, drool dripping. Again Clare stared. The shiny droplets vanished before they hit her rug. Which was weird.
    The whole thing was weird.
    She’d
turned weird.
    You have no treats
, Enzo said, giving her the big puppy eyes.
    “I have no clue what you eat,” she said,
talking
to an imaginary being—to herself. Despite living alone, she’d never done that. She grabbed a feather pillow and clutched it tight, as if it could be a shield to visions in her own mind.
    Breathing fast, she glanced at the tablet computer propped on her bedside table. She was due in the doctor’s office in two hours. Good. She’d try to determine if something was wrong physically, first.
    Enzo
must
be a figment of her recently shattered, uneasy, and all-too-real-feeling dreams.
    The imaginary dog hopped back up onto her bed, tilted his head, and wrinkled his forehead in mute begging.
    Clare swallowed. She was an accountant, darn it. She loved a logical life . . . but she wasn’t heartless. Even if the thing was only a memory, a figment of her imagination, she couldn’t ignore the big doggie eyes any longer. And touching it would be more proof it didn’t exist. Tentatively she reached out . . .
    But as she slid her hands along the dog and into cold mistiness and shifted under the sheet to keep her legs warm, she recalled the other things she’d seen as the cab had driven her home from the airport the day before, and her heart thumped fast.
    Outlaws and miners and cowboys had sauntered translucently down the streets. One had actually stopped and tipped his hat at her! She’d seen the arrogant strides of the rich founding businessmen, the swaying rolled-hip stroll of past madams. Not to mention horses.
    Now this filmy dog whimpered in bliss, and Clare’s hands got colder and colder, as if she’d plunged them into an ice bath.
    Stroke, stroke, stroke, along Enzo’s side . . . He leaned into her. She should stop, but more than her hands were frozen. The thoughts in her head seemed nothing but icy crystals, she was so cold. He rolled over on his back so she could reach his belly. She felt no solid dog, of course, and energy seemed to drain right out of her.
    Cold hands, cold crawling up her arms so that her teeth might soon chatter.
    Enzo opened his eyes, and for an instant she thought she saw a glint of something
more
than dog, something older, wiser.
    Again she pulled back and tucked her freezing hands into her armpits. “No. You’re not here. You’re definitely not real.”
    It is time for the gift to pass to you, and with the riches comes the gift. You must accept and learn.
The echoey words weren’t doglike, again held an edge of
something
else.
    Clare