Page 12 of Christmas Spirits

“Laurence…” I mumbled. “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“That’s a lot of money,” I said. We hadn’t even been able to get Zach’s Christmas gifts yet. With everything going on with the shop, I just hadn’t had the time.

“This is your life we’re talking about, Kay. The money doesn’t matter. I’d pay anything to protect you.”

His voice shook a bit at the end, and I knew why. During the fiasco with Xaver, he’d felt powerless. Hopeless when trying to save me. When the protection spells he’d put on the apartment had failed, he’d taken it personally.

I meant, he did have a point. If I was being sensible, the money wouldn’t matter if I was gone. Or anything else around me that I cared about, for that matter.

“I’ll do more overtime at the hospital if I have to,” he added.

Again, it was a sweet gesture, but an unrealistic one. Laurence worked in maintenance at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and his hours were long and unpredictable as it was. With studying for his sorcerer leveling test, I’d never see him.

“And when do you expect to sleep?” I asked him. “You work like a dog as it is.”

“Look who’s talking,” he teased.

That made me clamp my mouth shut. He had me there. I was probably the worst person to be preaching to him about working too hard and not sleeping.

Laurence took my hand and stepped closer to me. His dark brown eyes captured mine, and his expression turned grave. “Kay, listen to me. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

He glanced down, and when I followed his gaze, I realized that he was staring at the carrier where Zach was still snuggled under blankets and napping. I heard the meaning of his words loud and clear. Our run-in with Xaver had changed both of us—he’d possessed Laurence to trick me, after all—but out of something so terrible, we’d gotten our little Zachary.

And with this new bump in the road, we’d come out the other side. We would. Together.

“The money doesn’t matter to me. You do,” he went on and used our linked hands to pull me against him. Wrapping his arms around me, he leaned down and pressed his lips against mine with a sweet kiss.

How many nights had he held me just like this to calm me whenever my anxiety reached a new high or when the long nights with Zach caught up with me? Laying my head on his shoulder, feeling his arms holding me firmly, and inhaling the clean scent of his body wash seemed to be the only way to comfort me. Even now, I could feel my muscles loosening and the pain in my chest easing.

“So?” Arianna’s voice jolted me back to the present. Laurence and I stepped back to find her waving her cellphone at us from the other side of the counter. “Am I calling Rhys or…?”

“Yes, call him,” I said, certain this time. Although the thought of dropping that much money in one sitting was a bit sickening to think about, it had to be done.

As Arianna went to hit the redial button, I asked, “But what are we supposed to do in the mean time? Two days…that’s a long time to just sit around and wait.”

She held the phone to her ear. “Are there any other Mediums you know that may be able to give you some insight on what you can do? Maybe with a way of blocking a dark spirit from draining your energy? At least temporarily?”

“No.” The word was out of my mouth, but it was a lie. I did know another Medium actually. I just didn’t know what help she could give…

I sighed. I guess I didn’t have a choice at this point, did I? I needed help.

“Actually, I do know someone,” I said. Gosh, how long had it been since I’d visited her? A year? Maybe it was two.

Arianna threw me the thumbs up, and when murmurs came from the other end of the phone—Rhys picking up—she said in the receiving end, “Hey, Rhys, it’s me again. Arianna. Yeah, as I thought, they’re in. See you in two days.” Then, she clicked the end button and stared at us, determination in her heavily makeup-lined eyes. “Let’s get this party started.”

As I closed the car door and looked at the single-floor cement building, my stomach churned and bile pushed its way up my esophagus. Too lost in the heightened feelings of uncertainty, trepidation, and embarrassment spinning through me, I hadn’t heard Laurence get out of the car or walk to my side. Like me, he stared at the sign along the top of the entry’s overhang.

Dayton Mental Wellness Center & Residential Living Facility.

I cringed, imagining what he was thinking now that my secret was out. There was a reason I never talked about my mother to anyone, even to him. My grandmother had to raise me and my siblings because my mother—as my grandmother explained it—couldn’t handle the responsibility of what being a Medium entailed. She went on to say that communicating with the dead was not a gift for the weak, otherwise it could make an unstable person finally crack. And that was exactly what had happened to my mother.

Since my gift arose young, Grandmother Abigail started teaching me right away. I had always assumed it was to prevent me from ending up like my mom. And there was always that fear—even now—that one day, I wouldn’t be able to handle it either and end up here in a bed right next to hers.

When I got old enough, I started visiting her by myself, but it didn’t take long to see what my grandmother was talking about. If she wasn’t fully sedated, she was either babbling nonsense about seeing spirits even I couldn’t see—phantoms of her mind—or thrashing violently, unable to control herself.

If you could imagine, it was hard seeing my mother that way, and so, the visits became further and far in between. The weeks turned to months, which turned to years… I saw her less and less, and it became easier to keep my mother a separate and secret that way.

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