“And who is this new me? Other than little Miss Home-Builder who travels from town to town like that guy who turns into the Hulk.”

Jessica shrugged, ignoring the stares from a couple of young guys in discount business suits. “I guess you can say I’m a traveling Good Samaritan. What’s the point of having money if you can’t do something nice with it?”

Her phone chimed out the chorus to Metallica’s One. She turned it face down, pushing it aside.

“And what’s the point of avoiding your family?” Angela asked.

“Did they coach you to talk me into coming back?”

Angela rolled her eyes. “Far be it from me to think I could talk you into anything. I love you. We all love you. It makes us nervous, knowing you’re all over the place, on your own.”

“With my track record, I don’t need to be alone to have bad shit go down. In fact, it seems just the opposite. The less around me, the easier things are.”

How could she explain her fear of talking to Eve and succumbing to her desperate request for her to come home? She needed to be out, on her own. Whenever she spoke to Eve, she felt her will dissolve. She wasn’t ready to go back. Not yet.

There was a long silence. Their hot dogs went as cold as their appetites.

“Just talk to Eve, please,” Angela said softly. “That woman is a rock star. She’d do anything for you. You’re getting too old to play the petulant kid.”

Jessica playfully slapped her arm. “Hey, twenty-two isn’t old.”

“For boys, no. For us lady-folk, this is our time to flower.” She made melodramatic hand gestures, pantomiming the blooming of a rose.

That sent them both into hysterics.

“All right, all right. I promise I’ll call her later, after we’re done for the day.” She bent close to her friend, their foreheads touching. “Thank you for coming out here and helping out. I didn’t realize how much I missed you until I saw you get off that plane.”

Angela smirked. “Who am I to turn down an all expenses paid trip to Wisconsin? I mean, what’s next, a cruise to Hoboken?”

They dumped their remaining food, plates and napkins in the trash. While Jessica turned to head back to the construction site, she dialed her voicemail with the speaker phone on as a way to show Angela she was making the effort to get back in the family orbit.

It started with the last message.

“Jessica, honey, it’s Eve. I’m getting tired to talking to myself. I really need you to call me. First, I love you and miss you like crazy. Your going off the grid makes me worry more than usual. I hope you’re having a great time with Angela. Did she tell you the news yet? Another thing—I’ve been getting calls from Eddie. I know you said not to give him your number, so I’ve just been taking messages. He sounds as desperate as I am to talk to you. If you decide to finally call me back, you should give him a ring too. There’s something about the tone in his voice that tells me you two should speak. Here’s the number…”

Chapter Four

Nina D’Arcangela’s eyes snapped open, their golden flecks sparkling with the pulse of kinetic energy that bled from her like lightning in a heat storm. She drew deep, hungry breaths, startling everyone in the room. The screeching of chairs pushing back against the hardwood floor caromed around the bare walls.

“A pen, I need a pen!” Nina shouted, her hands trembling.

Someone, it was impossible to tell who in the dark, pushed a legal pad across the table, another placing a pen in her hand.

She closed her eyes again.

She could feel the weight of held breath around her.

Suddenly, she began to write. Her hand jerked across the page, spelling words she couldn’t see. A dull flare of illumination flashed across her closed lids like a projector’s light seen from the other side of a screen.

There was a gasp, then murmurs of excitement.

Nina felt the burst of power bleed from her, dragging her into the quiet, comforting darkness. Her hand went numb, and in the distance, she thought she heard the pen bounce as it left her nimble fingers.

Jessica’s body was exhausted but her mind wasn’t going to let her shut it down for the night. After lunch, she and Angela double-timed it, sucking in the clean air and warm sun, funneling it into hard work. While she worked, her brain mercifully switched off. It stayed that way all through dinner and at the bar afterward. She was grateful Angela volunteered to be the designated driver. Three hours of telling old stories over bottles of Milwaukee’s Best—when in Rome—then moving on to gin and tonics, had her head in a nice spin.

This is the first time the stick has been removed from your ass in months, she’d said to herself, hand riding the wind outside the passenger window. She had a hard time instructing Angela how to get to the newly constructed hotel, but they finally made it, giggling down the halls, disturbing the peace.

She’d made it a point to book her long-term stay in this particular hotel. It’d had its grand opening just weeks before her arrival. It had been built on an empty lot. New building, new space. No history.

Avoiding history was important, especially when it came to places to lay her head at night. “It’s goddamnfucking crucial,” she’d said to Angela. “You know how dangerous it can get.”

Angela knew.

So did Eve. And Liam.

Fuck, and Eddie.

He of the Psychic Friends Network—No Bullshit Chapter. Pay your money there and you might not like what you hear. If that happened, you were good and screwed because shit was going down whether you liked it or not.

She took a steaming hot shower, changed into a T-shirt and boxer shorts and turned on her laptop. Before she knew what she was doing, her fingers typed fearnone.com.

Nothing. That was good. When she made the decision three years ago to shut down her paranormal website, a repository for stories, photos and videos of EBs—or energy beings (what other people called ghosts or spirits)—she worried that somehow the great and powerful internet gods would snatch bits here and there, dragging them, and her, back into the light of day. Swedey, her European web developer, was damn good at his job. He erased every single trace of the website. It made her feel better to check every now and again.

What does Eddie want with me?

Jessica tugged at her hair, twisting the strands and chewing on the ends. They tasted like the cheap hotel shampoo, a mix of coconut and chemicals.

You were pretty clear that it was best you stayed away from each other.

“I was,” she said aloud, her eyes focused on the laptop’s screen but seeing nothing.

But did he agree with you?

“It doesn’t matter. This is my life. I’ll live it the way I choose. And I chose to get away from him, from everything.”

Because you were afraid.

“That’s one thing I’ve never been, sister.” She snapped the laptop closed and hit the remote to turn the TV on. A truck commercial blared from the tinny speakers.

That’s what you like everyone to think. I know it scared you.

She tried to lose herself in reruns of horrible sitcoms. Twice she got up to get a glass of water, the second time washing a couple of Tylenol down. The fuzzy edges of an early hangover crept across her skull like a mass of determined spiders.

Call them.

This time, the voice in her head wasn’t her own. She bolted upright in bed, tossing a pillow aside.

“Who was that?” she whispered, heart hammering.

In her previous life, seeking EBs day and night, she’d heard many voices, quite a few of them calling to her from beyond the veil of death.

She’d never heard this one before. It was male. Forceful, yet somehow tired. There was a familiar tone, but she couldn’t place it. She tried so hard to hang a name on it, succeeding only in detonating a skull buster of a headache.