The Departed

able to pick up much from him and she was glad of that. But right then, she could feel so much misery inside him, it almost swamped her. She suspected it was because her shields were just about decimated, thanks to whatever had hit her earlier, leaving her more vulnerable.
    She wanted to go to him, but she wasn’t sure she could handle the pain in him just yet.
    “I take it whatever made this place stop being your home—that was something money couldn’t fix.”
    Taylor closed his eyes. “Yeah.” Then he blew out a harsh breath and shot her a narrow glance. “But I don’t want to get into this. We’ve got other problems on our hands. The boy. And whatever it was you felt out in the meadow.”
    * * *
     
    AS Dez lowered her gaze to stare at the glass of whiskey, Taylor stared at her. She was still off—her color ashen, her hands shaking. Every once in a while, a shudder would wrack her body and he’d glimpse something in her eyes that just about tore his heart out.
    Whatever it was, he couldn’t protect her from it, either.
    “What happened out there, Dez?” he asked softly.
    She shot him a look through her lashes. “I…” Her voice trailed off and she sighed, leaning back into the cushions of the couch. “I’ve been aware of something ever since Tristan moved on. A ghost. Old. Faint. Her presence…she feels young.”
    Taylor tensed. His heart slammed against his ribs. Casually, he leaned back against the windowsill. “She?”
    “I think.” She gave him a strained smile. “And I can’t even be sure that’s who I touched today. I do know today was a girl.” She lifted the glass to her lips but her hands were shaking so hard, the whiskey was splashing out.
    Taylor went to her. Dread curled through him, flooding every last inch of him. Not Anna, not Anna, not Anna… Automatically he started to slip a hand into his pocket, only to realize the necklace wasn’t there. Fuck.
    Dez’s hands were shaking. Focusing on that, he covered her hands with his, steadied them as she sipped, and then he pulled the glass away. “What happened?”
    She looked at him, her eyes all but black with horror. “He called her his angel.”
    Tears burned in her eyes and her voice broke. “His pretty and perfect angel…his one and only.” A harsh sob left her, and for a moment she was quiet as she struggled to get herself under control. She took a deep breath, then a second. When she looked back at him, her eyes glittered with rage, with hurt, with horror. “I can’t see either of them, not yet. She’s too fractured and I was lost inside her. I’ll try again—I have to. She’s a very big part of why I can’t leave yet. I just feel like I’m still supposed to be here. Although why she’s pulling at me like this, I don’t know. I’ve never connected with any of my ghosts like this.”
    She took a deep, shaky breath and rested her head back against the couch. “I hope I never do again.”
    Taylor felt like he was going to snap. He wanted to rage—wanted to scream. Instead, he took a sip of the whiskey he’d poured for himself. Cool. Be cool. He didn’t know if this was anything connected to him at all.
    Like hell —
    No. He might not have any documented gifts, but his gut rarely steered him wrong. And everything inside him screamed a warning. This was Anna. After all these years… Anna .
    And, coward that he was, he wanted to force Dez to leave. Not just the house, but the entire fucking town. Keep her the hell away from here, so maybe she couldn’t ever establish the deeper connection she needed to solve this one. Then he looked at her, her dark, soft eyes locked on his eyes, and he felt his heart all but shatter.
    What if that deeper connection came from him ? Things had gotten weird for Dez from the get-go here. She’d had an odder, deeper connection almost from the time she’d stepped foot inside the town. No, he didn’t have any connection to Ivy, to the boys who’d hurt her. But he had one to this town that went deep—very deep. And Dez had a connection to him. Psychics worked on a different wavelength than others. Sometimes those connections defied logic. He’d seen it happen more than once.
    Was he the reason all of this was happening now?
    Swearing, he turned away, slamming his glass down on the mantel. Whiskey splashed out but he barely noticed. He gripped the icy marble in his hands. Blood roared in his ears, and grief, pain, tore through him. Anna —
    The misery he’d seen in