Haunted by Linda Winstead Jones

Author:Linda Winstead Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-25T13:13:20.106000+00:00

They didn’t sit on opposite sides of the room this time. Gideon sat beside her on the couch, and they each held a mug steaming with hot coffee. By the light of the living room lamps she couldn’t tell if he was still glowing or not. A part of her wanted to insist that what she thought she’d seen had been her usually dismal imagination running amok, but she couldn’t lie to herself that way.

“You’re telling me that everything my mother told me all my life is true?”

“I can’t say, since I don’t know everything she told you.” Gideon leaned back and propped his bare feet on the coffee table. He’d pulled jeans on, covering the impossibly healed wound on his thigh. Those jeans were all he wore, along with the green boxers and that silver talisman that rested against his chest, hanging there from a black leather cord and as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or the way his dark hair curled by the ears.

“Auras,” she threw out. That was, after all, a bone of contention between her and her mother.

“I don’t see them, but they do exist,” he answered plainly. “It’s another energy thing. In order to see them, you have to be clairsentient.”

“Yours apparently sparkles,” she said grudgingly.

Gideon just gave a half-interested hum that sounded almost bored.

“Ghosts.”

“Those I can attest to without question,” he said, casting a glance her way.

Hope leaned her head back against the leather couch. She’d removed her jacket and her shoes but otherwise was still completely and professionally dressed. What she wouldn’t give to get out of this bra and into something comfortable… .

She should be running for the hills; she should be terrified of what she’d seen and heard here tonight. And here she was worrying instead about the way her bra cut into her shoulders and the flesh beneath her breasts. It was going on four forty-five in the morning, and no woman was meant to wear a bra for twenty-two hours.

“Afterlife?”

“Yes,” Gideon answered almost reverently.

Hope closed her eyes. There had been times when she had convinced herself that life could not possibly go beyond the physical boundaries she could see and touch. It was easier that way, most days. Believing we were here, then, one day, we were gone. No expectations, no disappointments. Listening to Gideon’s simple answers… she believed him, and it felt unexpectedly good. “What’s it like?”

“I don’t know.”

She laughed lightly. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Don’t the ghosts tell you anything?”

“Some things we’re not meant to understand.”

She nodded, oddly accepting. This conversation shouldn’t seem so normal. Shouldn’t she laugh? Or cry? Dance, or close herself away from the world that had just changed forever? Instead, this seemed very, very natural.

“Signs from above,” she said next.

“Be more specific.”

Hope lifted one hand and gestured in a casual way. “You see a rabbit cross the road, in a place where you’ve never seen a rabbit before. Maybe seeing a rabbit at a certain time of the day in a particular place is a sign.

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