Ghost Sickness by Amber Foxx

Author:Amber Foxx
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery series with women sleuths, psychic mysteries, paranormal mystery series, mystery series, psychic mystery series, psychic mystery
Publisher: Amber Foxx
Published: 2016-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

In the evening at the ceremonial grounds, as the Ga’an and the clowns began their initial silent ritual, Jamie trailed Mae along the front row of the bleachers to join Bernadette and her family. He’d wanted to stay down by the arbor with his parents and Bessie to watch the beginning of the ceremony, but Mae had preferred to be with Bernadette. The relationship book had warned Jamie against arguing about little things. His discomfort around Zak wasn’t exactly a little thing, but he’d fucked up earlier with a trivial fuss. Mae had looked at him funny when he’d had two pieces of pie at lunch. On their way to their cars, he’d accused her of silent nagging. A stupid fight. The look had been because she hadn’t liked the pie. He owed her one less argument.

Most of the Pena-Fatty-Tsilnothos family watched the ceremony in reverent silence. Zak, however, was hunched over his phone texting, and Melody was tending to Dean, who was having a meltdown, while Deanna lay on her back on the bench talking to herself and kicking her legs. Bernadette scooted closer to her oldest niece, making room between herself and Zak. Mae took the spot offered, and Jamie ended up side by side with Zak, who ignored his greeting. Jamie’s toes clenched and wriggled. He couldn’t leave things this way between them.

“Jeezus. Be a fucking adult, will you?” he whispered. “We’re too old for this not-speaking crap.”

Zak stood and walked a few feet away, focused on his text chat. Jamie stifled an exasperated noise.

The line of dancers faced each of the four directions in turn, moving around the fire. At each quadrant’s stop, the clown ran to the end of the line and brought back dirt that he placed on the lead dancer’s foot. Sacred dirt? Jamie had never known what it meant, but he loved the gesture, that handful of earth. It seemed like an act of completion and grounding, and made him imagine taking Zak aside and placing an offering of dirt on his foot. Now can we talk?

Accompanied by a silent row of drummers holding their instruments without playing them, the dancers moved toward the big tipi and did a similar ritual around it but without the blessing of dirt. Facing the tipi in a line, the dancers made soft, eerie hooting noises when they raised their lightning sticks. It usually sent a charge into Jamie, something that woke up an extraordinary energy in him, but he’d been in and out of shadows all day, and the magical sounds felt darkly alarming tonight.

“Shit.” Zak jammed his phone into his pocket, and hurried down the steps from the bleachers with heavy, slamming footfalls. Melody watched but didn’t stir, hugging Dean in her lap. She had finally gotten the little boy to calm down. Jamie caught her eye and raised an eyebrow. She nodded, and Jamie followed Zak.

He caught up with him easily. Zak had stopped for the Ga’an dancers on their fourth approach to the big tipi, out in the modern-world part of the grounds.

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