Only the Good Die Young

2

His name was Gavin Edgett, and the Internet said that he had made a mint creating video games, and I’m not talking Ms. Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, either. From my marathon TV and computer binges, I noticed that a lot of modern game play basically trained a person to mutilate and butcher.

And guess what. Our suspect in Elizabeth Dalton’s murder had gifted society with Blood and Blades about four years ago.

Coincidence?

That was my question of the day, but Amanda Lee sure seemed to have all the answers after we met back at the casita.

“I’ve already done my homework when it comes to Gavin Edgett,” she said, standing by the window and watching dusk fall over her gardens. “But I haven’t gotten what I’ve needed yet. There’s nothing in the gossip columns, or my intuition, or even small talk around the community that’s offered much for a very personal profile on him.”

“Have you played any of his games?”

“As much as I could stomach. And what I saw of them told me enough.”

“That he’s violent.”

“I would say that his dark side is certainly on full display.” She sent a glance to me, her fingers entwined with the lace window curtain. “Perhaps I should leave all the game playing to you.”

I knew she was talking about more than Blood and Blades. She wanted me to mess with Gavin Edgett, affect him as much as Elizabeth Dalton had been affected, all for the sake of her friend Jon in that photo.

Revenge. Justice. She sure looked like the cool mom on the block, but there was some blackness beneath the smiles.

What was it like in Amanda Lee’s mind? If she’d had visions about Gavin Edgett and Elizabeth Dalton—enough of them to persuade her to carry out her friend Jon’s wish—how haunted was she every single day? Did all her visions steer her toward justice because she’d lived them vicariously?

I couldn’t imagine being that sensitive.

Even though I was on board with punishing the guilty, my temper had cooled during the flight back, and I’d started wondering exactly what Amanda Lee had in mind for me to do with this man. Actually, I had no idea what I was even capable of doing with him.

“I’m happy to do all the homework I can,” I said. “It kind of seems to me that we’re moving a little fast here, though.”

“All right. Tell me how we can slow it down.”

“Well, first off, I’d like to see for myself that this guy is guilty before we start the justice part.”

She slid a concerned glance to me. “I get the feeling you don’t want to do this.”

Chased through the trees, caught, yanked toward someone who was pulling me to my death…

“Actually, I want to do this very much.” Even if I got the vibe that Amanda Lee had pulled me out of my time loop more to be her pet spirit than to right all my wrongs. “I just think it’d make sense to go about this in a more… measured way.”

“Such as… ?”

“Such as haunting a confession out of this suspect instead of barging into him with all guns blazing and exacting vengeance.”

Amanda Lee stared at an oil painting of a serene summer pond, which hung on the wall. For a second, I thought she might be getting some kind of reading. The air even trembled a little, tickling me.

Then she nodded. “Yes, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

That made me feel better. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Amanda Lee’s psychic vibes, but I’d always been a “show me” person, especially after hearing all the platitudes that well-meaning people handed out to me at my parents’ wake. The “things will be fine”s and the “they’re in a better place”s never felt true to me. Nobody could prove that life was going to get better.

In fact, it hadn’t.

Amanda Lee went to the computer, and within a minute, she had conjured a picture of a mansion with red tile roofing and an Italian Renaissance vibe.

“Here’s your first piece of information,” she said. “This is where he’s staying for the time being.”

Yeah, this Gavin guy was rich, but something altogether different struck me about how easy it’d been for Amanda Lee to show me his house.

She raised a slim eyebrow, as if intuiting my discomfort. “There’s no such thing as privacy nowadays.”

Gross. What had the real world come to? Big Brother was definitely in residence.

Amanda Lee was looking at the computer again. “He’s what you might call a ‘free spirit,’ no pun intended. He travels the world with his laptop as his office.”

I had to wrap my head around that. He had freedom—a gift that had been taken away from Elizabeth Dalton. No justice there.

Amanda Lee gestured toward the picture of the mansion. “This is his family’s estate, and he returned to it recently.”

“Is he wrapped up in Mama’s apron strings or something?”

“Hardly.”

She clicked off the mansion picture and to another screen, where an image appeared of a tall man ambling down a beachside street carrying a paper cup of coffee, his other hand fisted at his side, like he was wound up tight.

Something took an unsettling whirl in the center of me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because of the cut of his brown hair—very short, no-nonsense, as if the last thing he wanted to be doing was gelling and styling it in front of a mirror. Maybe it was because of the look the camera had caught in his eyes—almost a bruised, pugilistic way of gazing at the world around him. Or maybe it was because I could just about see him in motion, with a self-assured walk that told everyone around him that he knew just who he was and where he was going.

Even in a frozen-in-time photograph, he still vibrated with life for me, and I couldn’t look away, even if I’d wanted to.

Amanda Lee thinks he cut a woman apart, I thought, putting my head back where it belonged.

“He’s thirty years old,” Amanda Lee said, and for a psychic, she seemed pretty clueless about the palpitating spirit right behind her.

“Born around the time I ate the dust,” I said. “So why’s he at home if he’s old enough to have his own life?”

“He’s the oldest child—the most responsible one. His mom passed on nearly a decade ago, and his father has been on a succession of business trips all over the world for the past four years or so.”

She always called Gavin “he,” as if that somehow put him at a distance from her. “He normally lives in hotel suites and doesn’t call any place but an official base residence across the country home, but I intuited that the younger son, Noah, needs a parental hand lately, and the father’s not at home to provide it.”

Okay. She’d gotten some kind of psychic woo-woo about it. “Why not just hire a nanny?”

“The kids are too old for that—Noah’s seventeen and Wendy’s fifteen. However, his slightly younger sister, Farah, has lived on the property with them since the dad started traveling.” She fiddled with the computer again.

Amanda Lee finally made the screen switch to another picture, and it showed a stunning twentysomething socialite in a gossip column photo, svelte in a white dress, her sable hair long and gleaming over one shoulder, her legs endless.

“I’m sure,” Amanda Lee said, “Farah called him home to provide some male guidance for Noah.”

She must not have had photos of the kids ready, because she didn’t access the computer.

I cozied against a battery pack resting on a cherrywood end table. Amanda Lee had laid it out earlier, and it was available for whenever I needed to pull energy. Every once in a while, the mild distance between me and my death spot got to me, but juicing myself up like this helped.

I went back to asking about the family situation. “Why’re the kids so much younger than Farah and Gavin?”

“Noah and Wendy are adopted. It wasn’t like this in your time, but nowadays, collecting children in need is a status symbol.”

“That’s pretty cynical. Besides, aren’t you a Richie Rich, too?”

“I only live off a relatively modest inheritance and investments, dear. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon gagging me.”

She gave me a wry “Got it, Valley Girl?” look, and I didn’t bother to tell her that my friends and I had made a sport of mocking hard-core mall rats in my time.

“You sure know a lot about the family,” I said. “Have you communicated with Elizabeth Dalton in any way whatsoever? Or did any other spirits leave you partial messages from beyond?”

She slowly shook her head, just as she’d done after we’d first met and I’d quizzed her all about whom she’d contacted from the other side, especially my parents. This past week, she’d tried to get ahold of them, but nothing had happened.

I forged on. “If you haven’t talked to Elizabeth, how do you know all this information about the Edgetts? From visions?”

Amanda Lee’s skin went a little pink, and she started to mess around with the computer again, avoiding my question.

So I gave her a chilly tap on the shoulder.

“Jensen—”

“I know. I’m cold. And I’m sure I can be a lot colder.”

She sighed. “All right. Jon hired a private investigator—another friend of ours—to watch him.”

Obsessed a little? “Elizabeth’s Jon?”

“I told you,” Amanda Lee said. “The killer has ruined lives. Wrongful death tends to do that to people like Jon.”

I couldn’t argue. My own life sure hadn’t been the same after Mom and Dad had gone. And I doubted they would’ve been all that happy about their sweet lil’, former straight-A student dropping out of college to hang out in dark forests with toking friends.

Amanda Lee turned away from the computer to face me. With those gray strands of hair framing her face, she seemed older than usual.

“Are you ready to visit him?” she asked. “To get a feeling for the kind of man you think he might be?”

A murderer?

I nodded, on board, even though I wasn’t going to speed into this whole thing like Amanda Lee had obviously wanted me to. Satisfied, she showed me the Edgetts’ address and the directions.

As full night claimed the sky, I finally took off toward that mansion near La Jolla, grabbing a travel current and speeding through that artery tunnel. I mean, why wait? It’s not like I had a ton of other things to do.

After I tumbled out of the tunnel, I hovered in the air, getting a bead on where I was. The beach, painted by sand and murmuring waves. Since I still had the ability to smell, I took a second to absorb the brine and wood smoke, too.

It was like all those summer nights with Dean.

I brushed off the thought and followed my senses toward the cliffs, where mansions loomed over the shoreline, burning light through their massive windows.

Rising high, then putting on some speed, I sketched over the rooftops, ruffling leaves on palm trees, until I got to the red roof of the Edgett mansion.

These people were rich. The place was made up of two wings, with a lagoon-shaped, rock-edged pool, a pool house, and a guest cottage. The palms waved, casting moonlit shadows over white walls and villa windows.

I listened, still hovering above the estate, until I picked up the sound of voices. Then I shot down to it, my essence pulsing with…

Was it excitement?

I took a spot near a sliding patio door, which was blocked by a screen. I didn’t want to see what it would feel like if I slid through that. Who needed to be grated ghost cheese?

“What did you just say to me?”

It was the voice of a young girl, and when I took a peek inside the mansion, I spied her near a marble kitchen counter, her back to me. But I could still see waist-length, straight black hair and a tiny sparrowlike body dressed in a dark minidress with torn tights and combat boots.

Wendy, the younger sister?

A teenage boy—Noah?—had propped his sneakered feet on the kitchen counter and was leaning back in a tall barstool. A hank of dirty brown hair covered one eye, and his skin was a toasty shade.

He’d been in the process of shrugging her off. “Aw, come on, Wen. I said it was just a spur-of-the-moment get-together.”

“It was a gathering of troglodytes, and you left a mess that the maids had to spend all day picking up. Thanks to you, Gavin’s gonna lock us down.”

“Hey, I helped clean up,” Noah said, and he looked pretty sincere about it.

Wendy shook her head and stalked all the way into the kitchen, toward the fridge.

I floated toward the open window there, getting a better look at her after she shut the appliance’s door and came out with a can that said Red Bull on it. She didn’t look anything like Noah, with his rosy tan skin and big dark eyes. Actually, she seemed Asian—a kind of cool nerd with a pink streak down the side of her hair.

Noah had sat up on his stool, revealing a T-shirt that said RADIOHEAD.

“Wen,” he said as she drank her Red Bull stuff. “I said I’m sorry.”

She took the can away from her lips. “Tell that to the homework I didn’t get finished.”

“Screw homework.”

“So says the guy who once got kicked out of prep school. Dumb-ass.”

Nearby me, I heard a strange, whining kitty sound. Sure enough, it’d come from a black-and-white cat that shot off into the bushes at my presence. I wasn’t positive it’d even seen me, but it was a sensitive little cuss.

Someone else walked into the massive kitchen, high-heeled shoes tapping on the marble floor.

“What is it with you two now?” Her voice was cultured. It actually reminded me of Princess Leia during her less “Han Solo, you really suck” moments.

“It’s the party again,” Noah said.

Wendy gave one of those loud, disgusted sounds that teens did so well. Once, I’d been excellent at them, too.

“Yeah, it was no biggie,” she said, “especially when your friends were pounding on my door and calling for ‘the geek’ to come out and play.”

The high-heeled woman walked into my view. If I weren’t a spirit who’d already resigned herself to being eternally unstylish—seeing as I couldn’t seem to find a way to change the long-sleeved blue shirt over the white tank and jeans I’d died in—I would’ve immediately been envious of Farah.

With a thick mass of smooth brunette hair spilling over her shoulder in a stylish braid, with her long legs and champagne-stem waist and her red designer cocktail dress, she belonged on the cover of a fashion mag with Christie Brinkley. She was obviously on her way to a social function, probably a charity event where she’d raise millions with just a sultry wink and smile.

I watched as she languidly rested against the marble counter, composed, even in the middle of a teenage war zone. Impressive.

But could Sex Bomb do this?

I tested out my ghost skills for the first time on the Edgetts, letting out a soft moan, just to see if they could hear me—but mostly to see if I’d be able to use this skill to invisibly mess with people. I had to know what I could do and when I should do it for when Gavin showed up.

Wendy did hear, and she tilted her head, wrinkling her eyebrows as she paused in drinking that Bull junk. She peered toward me.

Could she see me?

When she didn’t glance away, I thought she could. But then she went back to drinking, her forehead furrowed as she flipped off Noah and left the kitchen.

Farah shook her finger at Noah in a halfhearted scold. “Gavin’s on his way home. Maybe you shouldn’t take advantage of his business trips like that.”

“You’re not sticking up for me?”

“Sure.” She ruffled his hair. “All for one and one for all, right, Noah? I’ll always be by your side.”

When she kissed him on the head, a long look passed between them, and Noah glanced away.

“You’re gonna crush my good times,” he said, like he was trying to lighten up.

“That’s what sisters are for.”

“Sisters. Can’t live with ’em…”

“Can’t send some of them back to China,” she said, strolling past him and tweaking his cheek.

He watched her pass, but I didn’t see anything beyond that, because I smelled her perfume, and it made me back away from the window.

God, it was like roses. My mom used to keep those in our living room when I was a kid—

A door slammed from inside, and I went back to the sliding screen. Was it… ?

Yes. The man I’d been looking for.

Gavin Edgett.

He appeared in the kitchen, dressed in an untucked white shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. Sparks burned in me. If he’d seemed alive in that picture on the computer, the feeling was multiplied now.

Clipped brown hair, wide shoulders… chest… arms… He came off as strong and taciturn, not like a rich guy at all, but more like one who liked to sit in bars and watch football games. Yet he also had kind of a bookish vibe, like he always had something on his mind.

Still, it was his life force that filled me most of all, just like a heartbeat. He just seemed so vivid next to everyone else, and it wasn’t a good feeling.

Murderer, I kept telling myself. A killer, just like my own?

Farah was right behind him, taking baby steps on her pumps and holding a clutch bag in her hand. “Gavin, come on… .”

But he was focused on Noah, who’d slipped off his stool and pushed back his rebel hair.

Gavin tossed his sunglasses on the counter. “I’m gone less than twenty-four hours and you manage not only to piss off the neighbors but to lie to me about studying for that history test. Didn’t we have a deal after you were expelled from your last school?”

“I haven’t cheated since then,” Noah said in a much less confident tone than before. “Besides, I just invited a few friends over, and someone posted it on Facebook.”

Gavin wasn’t hearing any of that, though, and I wasn’t, either. I was just watching… feeling.

It started out as a shiver, deep in the belly, and it spread outward, tingling.

But spirits couldn’t get turned on. Could they?

And why would I, out of all the spirits in the world, be drawn to this could-be killer?

Maybe it was just because I hadn’t seen Gavin up close in that picture of him, but I was fixated on his eyes. They were a pale blue, surrounded by thick lashes… .

Gavin was still talking, low and level, using the type of tone parents usually used when you’d pushed them too far.

“You think this is your own private palace?” he asked Noah. “You think it’s yours to dirty up with your friends?”

A wave of emotion from Noah crept into me and… Good God, I could feel his fear. It was like pure energy, working its way into me, taking the place of the strength that was leaking out of me bit by bit because I wasn’t close to my death spot.

Noah sputtered. “I—”

“I asked you a question,” Gavin said with such an edge that his voice sounded serrated.

A picture came to me, whipped up by imagination: Gavin angry. Gavin stalking Elizabeth Dalton…

Farah placed a hand on Gavin’s shoulder, then ran it down his arm. “Maybe we should shelve this for now.”

Gavin shrugged away from her touch, giving her a look that I couldn’t decipher.

She backed off, glancing away, retreating to the edge of the kitchen.

But I wanted to know what was driving Gavin right now, what was filling his head. So I started to flow into the screen door, thinking that maybe I could pass through if I just tried hard enough.

Nope.

I gasped at the pain of the screen separating my essence. Gasped so loud that everyone in the room turned toward me.

Rushing all the way back to the other side of the screen, I felt my essence being sucked back together.

I felt… exposed.

Could they see me now? Were any of them sensitive like Amanda Lee?

Gavin slowly walked toward the patio door and, emboldened, I came toward it.

All that was separating us was that screen, and I could smell him—the scent of soap and skin, shockingly human. He was bigger than I’d thought, broader and taller, his face all rough-hewn angles. The warmth from his body hushed against me, but that’s where it stopped—just outside, around my edges, as if my invisible outline was the only smart part of me and wouldn’t allow him to burrow any further.

But… that life force of his.

Without thinking, I raised my hand, putting it near the screen.

He paused, raising his hand, too, and I could’ve sworn he knew I was there.

His blue eyes widened; then…

Then he shivered, stepping back, and I just stood there, like he’d cut me.

But that was how I should’ve been feeling, right? Repulsed by this possible killer. And I was just now realizing it again.

As he went back to the kitchen, laying into Noah, I didn’t move. My energy seemed lower than before, but I think it was because I felt like nothing.

I would recover, but I just needed a minute.

Just a minute.

I took a little bit more than that, actually. I floated outside that patio door for I don’t know how many minutes. Enough time for everyone to leave the kitchen. Enough time for the numbness of being ignored to skulk away. Enough time so that I needed to start figuring out a way to get inside the mansion, where I’d be able to tail Gavin and collect information on him.

But then, just as I was about to move around the side of the mansion, I heard something behind me.

A whisper.

“Jenny.”

I looked behind me at the pool, not seeing anything except for the play of wind over the blue-lit water.

Then I heard it again, this time from near the guesthouse.

“Over here, Jenny.”

I rose high into the air, like I couldn’t control myself. That voice…

It sounded just like Dean’s used to.

I listened for it to carry on the wind another time.

One second. One minute.

Two minutes.

The voice didn’t come again, and I started to get back to business.

But then my old boyfriend stepped out from around the pool house.

Dean?

I almost dissipated. Was I only seeing what I wanted to see, like all those people who’d witnessed Elvis?

This wasn’t the older man I’d watched earlier today, tossing a football back and forth with his son.

This was the beautiful guy who’d looked down on me one night on the beach, years and years ago as we’d sat on a blanket under the stars, as the moon had made his straight blond, chin-length hair so light that it almost glowed. This was the boy with the whiskey brown eyes that had looked at me with such affection.

And those eyes were seeing me now.

Actually seeing me, when I’d believed no one but Amanda Lee could.

He smiled that crooked smile that had won me over the first time he leveled it on me.

What the hell was happening?

“Why’re you so surprised?” he asked. “I told you when I drove off to Columbia that I’d come back for you someday so we could be together.”

“Dean?”

He held up a hand. “You gonna get outta here with me or what?”

Before I could think straight, I nodded, barely, unsurely, because I still wanted this, wanted the past, wanted him—

Out of nowhere, a whoosh of sparking air blew me back, and I lost my balance, tumbling near the ground, rolling in the air and righting myself again near the pool.

By the time I regained my equilibrium, he was gone.

I turned around and around, looking for him. He’d completely disappeared. Why? What had—

He popped in front of me, taking me into his arms.

“Then let’s go,” he whispered, dragging me into an electric current and plunging me into absolute darkness.