Page 8 of Sour Layer

Chapter 5

“What makes you think that I have any abilities?” I asked.

“Save it,” she said, dismissing me and walking out of the room.

I followed like she was the candy man hoarding all the sweets.

“You’re an outsider, Ms. Bennett. The locals aren’t going to trust you until someone vouches for you, so if you’re really worried about that girl whose picture is on your phone, then you’ll show me what it is you can do.”

“You personally know the Bennetts if you know they have special…talents.”

She grabbed a coat off of a rack by the door and tossed me a spare one. “Put that on and come with me.”

She hauled a shovel from the closet, and I followed the woman out the door. The brisk breeze stabbed my face like pointy icicles. We walked for four blocks down Main Street. People shopping in the stores paused and stared out the windows at us.

When she led me out of the suburban-style neighborhood and into the woods behind them, I slowed my step. I wasn’t dying here. If I were, I’d sense it, right? “You aren’t going to kill me and bury my body, are you?”

“That depends on your intentions,” she said as she shoved through a clearing and stopped.

I paused next to her. There was an outcrop of tombstones just inside an iron gate with a stone angel standing guard. A sign on the gate stated that trespassers would be shot. A small white chapel crowded against the cast iron fence bordering the plots. The icy wind whistled through the pine boughs surrounding the chapel.

“You are going to kill me,” I whispered.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The gate made an eerie creak when she opened it and walked inside. She was a woman on a mission. She knew exactly where she was going as if she’d walked this path plenty in her life. She stopped at a headstone that was covered in snow. Using her shovel, she moved the snow and dirt out of the way, revealing a name I was starting to know well.

Maxine Bennett.

“So, her name really was Maxine,” I whispered and dropped to my knees, running my finger through the grooves that spelled her name. “For the longest time my family thought Max was a man. Until we found a family picture.”

“She was as stubborn as one,” Dorothy said.

“How did she die?” I asked.

The tombstone was blank other than her name and dates. No listing saying she was a mother, friend, wife, nothing that would indicate if her part of the line had run out with her.

“A tragic accident up on the hill,” Dorothy answered. “So, tell me, Ms. Bennett, what is your ability?”

I rested my hand on the stone and lowered my head, saying a little prayer that she rests in peace before I rose. “With a touch I know when people are going to die.”

Her gaze dropped to my hands. “Who the hell would want to know when they’re going to die?”

“I don’t go around using it much,” I said. “Although it has come in handy a time or two. When I’m in town, I work part-time for a second chance agency that helps women fleeing domestic abuse. I can tell if their exes are going to kill them.”

“How many have you saved?” she asked.

“Twenty to date,” I said, swallowing hard and trying not to dwell on the memories of the ones I hadn’t touched. The ones I could have saved with a single touch.

“And when you aren’t in town, what else is it that you do?”

“I do consultations.”

“So, you extort money from these poor people that want to know when they’re going to die?”

“Not quite,” I answered. “I work with forensic teams and police departments helping them figure out their homicides, and I’ve been known to help my best friend a time or two with her archeology digs. I would never tell a living soul how they were going to die.”

Except for my sister. Growing up, it was hard to live in a house with them and not occasionally bump into one of them. I only wished I’d spoken up to my mom and dad before they took Talia. I’d been so young. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. That was my cross to bear. I was the reason my family was dead. When the Feds had approached my sister months ago with a picture that looked like an age-progressed image of my deceased sister, I knew we needed to figure out her identity. I wasn’t going to be the reason behind this Talia look-alike dying.

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