Read Ghost Layer (The Ghost Seer Series Book 2) for Free Online Page B

see how the teacher-owner handles that.” Zach sounded pleased with the challenge. Again he stretched and Clare looked at the residential mental health facility where his mother lived.
    Even after the hottest August in Colorado, the lawn and bushes were green. Banks of multicolored roses flanked the concrete walk up to the front entrance. The blond-beige brick and red-roofed building with a hint of “Southwest” style was common for institutions built around the turn of the twentieth century.
    “Enzo?” she asked. The ghost Labrador had disappeared from the backseat of the car, and she didn’t know whether he’d traveled with them that way or by supernatural means.
    No ghosts from your time period, Clare! Only Indians who don’t want to talk to you!
Enzo projected.
    “That’s fine with me.”
    “What?” Zach asked.
    She smiled at him. “No ghosts who want to speak with me here.”
    “Sounds good.”
    It was her turn to stretch discreetly. They began to walk up the concrete ramp with metal side rails. “What should I call your mother?”
    “Call her Geneva.”
    “All right.”
    “Uh, something you should know before we go in.”
    Probably a lot of things, issues piled upon issues, that Clare couldn’t even guess. “Yes?”

FOUR

    ZACH SAID, “MY mother and I don’t. . . and nobody on the staff . . . talks about Jim.”
    “I won’t bring up Jim.”
    Zach cleared his throat. “She knows I’m grown but still thinks Jim’s alive . . . and sixteen. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it is. Jim’s always just stepped out of the room, or gone to get her something, flowers or a present maybe.”
    Clare stopped on the wide porch, a couple of yards from the first set of double glass doors. “Should we have gotten her flowers?”
    “I brought some earlier today,” Zach said. “White roses, her favorite.” In an exaggerated gesture, he bent down and sniffed her neck. “Nothing like this perfume you wear. Exotic, sexy.”
    She swept a look at him from under her lashes, then her half smile faded with memory. “It was Great-Aunt Sandra’s. It smelled different on her.” Clare bit her lip and blinked back tears. “The perfume is outrageously expensive, and since the fragrance was discontinued, she stocked up before it was gone. She had five huge unopened bottles of it.”
    Zach turned her face so she looked him in the eye, and a sizzle zipped through her. “You tough and frugal lady,” he teased. “You can’t tell me you don’t miss her. Or that you don’t like the scent yourself. It mixes with your own smell really well.” His brows went up and down and she had to smile.
    Clare let her shoulders sag. “I do miss her.” She swallowed to keep the tears from leaking. “I avoided her. I wanted to live a rational life.” She didn’t like the plaint in her voice, so she removed it. Curling her fingers around his hand, which stroked her cheek, she said, “It’s good that you’re doing this, that you come and visit your mother, no matter what. I wish—” She shook her head, made a gesture of futility. “I regret what I did in the past. You should always keep visiting. It’s the right thing to do, even if it is hard on you, and yes, I can see that it is.”
    He looked away and his hand dropped, but the side of his mouth rose in a half smile. “Fierce lady. I like that.”
    “You haven’t seen anything yet,” she said, though she hadn’t been fierce in her old life, had never let the strain of gypsy blood, of gypsy music, run free in her. But now that the “gift” had come through that blood and destroyed her normal life, she might explore that side of her nature.
    Just before they stepped through the doors, Zach said, “And don’t mention the General, well, she thinks of him as the Colonel. It distresses her. Not as much as trying to convince her that Jim is dead, which will shred her sanity, but if you mention my father, she will expect him to walk through the door and