CHAPTER TWO

No,” I whispered. “I saw . . .” I swallowed. “I saw someone in the car, and when I opened the door, the body fell out. I wasn’t imagining it. I touched it.”

“I’m sure you did. The question is . . .”

He looked around and I moved closer, leaning into the open doorway.

“There’s no blood,” I said. “But the only injury I could see was her eyes. And she was cold, really cold. She hadn’t died recently.”

He nodded. I didn’t see any doubt in his expression, but my heart still pounded, my brain whirring to prove that I hadn’t imagined it. No, that I hadn’t hallucinated it.

“Poppies,” I said. “There are poppies in the rock garden. I saw them right before I found the body.”

I hurried around the garage with Gabriel limping after me.

There were no poppies in the rock garden.

“I took a picture to make sure I wasn’t imagining them,” I said. “There were clearly—”

My photo showed the garden. With rocks. And ivy. And moss. And no poppies.

“They were there,” I said. “I swear—”

“Am I questioning that?”

“No, but—”

“Then stop panicking.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. You found a body, and you called me, and now it’s gone, and you’re panicking because you can’t prove it was there. I don’t doubt you saw something. We’ll figure out what it was.”

—

As I led Gabriel to the sitting room, his gaze flitted around, discreetly checking out the antiques, any one of which would pay the annual rent on my new apartment.

“Yes, this is what I walked away from,” I said. “I know how you feel about that.”

“I said nothing.”

“But you’re thinking something.”

“Only that it’s a very nice house.”

Gabriel knows what it’s like to be poor, having been raised by a drug-addicted pickpocket mother who’d disappeared when he was fifteen, leaving him to survive on his own. A street kid who put himself through law school. So no, he was not impressed by the debutante who walked away from her Kenilworth mansion to work in a diner in Cainsville.

“Did you collect your things?” he asked.

“I did, including my laptop, so you can have your old one back. Don’t worry, though, I’ll pay rent for the full week.”

I smiled, but he only nodded. I walked to the love seat. My dad’s spot, where we used to sit together. As I sank into it, I began to relax.

Gabriel stopped beside my mother’s chair, a spindly antique.

“That is not going to hold you,” I said.

“Does it hold anyone?”

“Barely. Lovely to look at, but hellishly uncomfortable to sit on.”

He surveyed the others. They all seemed made for people about six inches shorter than Gabriel.

I stood. “Take this.”

“No, I—”

“Sit. Put your leg up. You’re supposed to keep it elevated.”

He grumbled but lowered himself onto the love seat and turned sideways to prop up his leg, proving it was hurting more than he’d let on.

I perched on my mother’s chair. “So apparently I hallucinated a dead body.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“Yeah, I think we do. Otherwise, someone left a corpse in my car while I went for a swim and then disposed of it while I was in the house waiting for you. Highly unlikely. The fact that she wore a wig to look like me only seems to seal the matter. It was an omen. A warning.” I paused. “I prefer poppies.”

A faint frown. “If it was indeed an apparition, would it not make more sense that you would see yourself dead in the car?”

“Maybe I see whatever my mind will accept.”

When he didn’t reply, I glanced over. He had his shades off as he stared at the wall, deep in thought. The first time I’d seen Gabriel without his sunglasses, I’d wished he’d put them back on. His eyes were an unnaturally pale blue. Empty eyes, I’d thought. I’d come to see that “empty” wasn’t quite the right word. More like iced over. Still startling, though, that pale blue ringed with dark. I’d been with him many times when he’d removed his shades in front of strangers, and no one else seemed bothered by his eyes. I wondered what they saw. And, if it was different for me, why?

“So you spotted the poppies and then the body,” he said after a moment. “That seems an overload of omens.”

He wasn’t asking. Just working it out for himself. I swore he was more comfortable with my “ability” than I was. His great-aunt Rose was a psychic in Cainsville, and he’d grown up accepting things like the second sight.

“Would it not seem that the poppies were a portent for the body?” he said. “Meaning the body itself was real?”

“I don’t think so. The eyes . . . Well, I told you about the eyes. What I didn’t mention is that I’ve seen that before. Twice in the past few weeks.” I explained and then said, “Both times it was a hallucination. Which seems to prove that this wasn’t real, either, and that I shouldn’t have called you—”

“No,” he said. “That is always the first thing you should do under such circumstances.” He said it as if his clients found corpses in cars all the time. “You came inside to call, and secured the house, correct?”

“Correct,” I said.

“Did you hear any noise from outside?”

I started to shake my head. Then I remembered the hound and pulled out my cell phone, certain I’d see a photo of our empty front gardens. I didn’t.

I passed him my phone. “What do you see?”

He looked at the screen. “A dog.”

I exhaled in relief.

“Is that an omen?” he asked.

“I have no idea. But I saw that exact same dog in Cainsville this morning. I’m sure it was the same one. It’s huge.”

“And very distinctive.” He tapped the phone, frowning. “In Cainsville, you say?” He rose. “We should speak to Rose.”

—

Before we left, I reset the house alarm.

“You need one of those at your apartment,” Gabriel said.

“I have a gun. And a cat.”

He gave me a look.

“I cannot afford a security system, Gabriel. I suppose I could hock some things. I left most of my jewelry upstairs. I could go get it . . .”

“No, you’d be lucky to get a fraction of the value.”

I’m sure Gabriel had enough experience with pawnshops to know, though most of what he would have hocked as a youth wouldn’t have been his to begin with.

“You need a security system,” he said. “One of Don’s men installs excellent units at very reasonable prices.” He meant Don Gallagher, his primary client. Don headed the Satan’s Saints. It was not a heavy metal band.

“Uh-huh. A biker who installs security systems? Does he keep a ‘backup’ copy of the code?”

“Petty larceny is hardly profitable enough for the Saints to bother with—if they involved themselves in criminal activity, which they do not. Any system I buy from them would be both secure and affordable.”

Having survived that fall off the back of a truck without a scratch.

“I still can’t afford—”

“I’ll deduct it from your pay. Now, I seem to recall you saying once that your father had a garage full of cars?”

“Yes . . .”

“You should take one.”

“I’m not—”

“Let’s take a look.”

He limped off, leaving me to follow.