Whispers at Moonrise

banging sound when it hit the wall. Socks flinched. Derek followed her inside.
    “I know your emotions, but I can only guess the reasons for them.”
    She dropped down on the sofa and held Socks in her lap. “Look, I’m in a really bad mood right now, and I suggest you might want to leave.”
    Derek dropped down beside her. He ignored what she said and continued, “For example, I know you’re afraid, but what are you afraid of? Are you frustrated because you’re a witch, or because your two best friends can’t stop biting each other’s heads off? And who are you feeling betrayed by right now? Is it me? Is it about…”
    “No,” she said before he mentioned Ellie and Kylie had to deal with those emotions as well. “It isn’t you.” Or maybe it was a little, she thought, remembering Miranda’s comment about how she’d talked about Derek all the time.
    “Is it about Lucas?” he asked. “You can tell me if it is. I want to help you and if it means listening to your issues with him, I’ll do it.”
    She pulled Socks closer. “It isn’t Lucas.” But then she remembered their meeting last night, when Lucas had admitted to keeping secrets from her.
    A long pause filled the room. Derek leaned in, his shoulder touched hers, and his emotional healing abilities flowed over her like a welcome breath of fresh air. Kylie had no doubt that the touch was on purpose, that he’d meant to help her.
    She stared at Socks, then at Derek, trying to slow down her emotional overload. Trying not to be a bitch.
    “Tell me what you’re afraid of. I want to help.” He stared at her forehead. “Does being a witch scare you?”
    “I’m not a witch,” she said before she could stop herself. Even with his warm calm flowing though her, she felt her frustrations build. Then she recalled Socks’s magical transformation. Had she done that?
    “At least, I don’t think I am. It’s not that I don’t want to be a witch, it’s … Why would my father tell me I was a chameleon if it wasn’t true? I don’t think my grandmother would make that up. And why would Burnett have heard about the species, if they didn’t exist?”
    “Burnett heard about it?” Derek asked.
    She nodded. “Nothing concrete, just read it in some of the reports.” She touched her forehead. What did all this mean? “Is my pattern really showing that I’m a witch?”
    He nodded, as if afraid to disappoint her, then asked, “What’s going on? I woke up this morning after a terrible nightmare. I couldn’t remember it, but the point of it was that you were in trouble. When I was alert enough, I realized that maybe you really were in trouble and I’d just dreamed what I was reading from you. Then I felt all these other emotions from you. Is this about the ghost? Holiday’s ghost?”
    The vision she’d had flashed in her head like a bad movie clip. She closed her eyes, trying to shut it off, and searching for what to say to Derek. Tell him, or not tell him?
    “I had a vision,” she finally said, needing to confide in someone—needing to filter though everything she’d learned from the vision. “There were three bodies in a grave.”
    “Three? So it’s like a serial killer?”
    Socks moved from her lap and tucked his face into the curve of her arm, almost as if he understood what Derek had said. Kylie brushed her hand down his soft black feline fur. Feline. Had she done this? Had she changed him back?
    “I think so.” Kylie bit down on her lip and pushed those questions away to concentrate on something more important. “Holiday, or the one who looks like Holiday, was one of them.” She recalled all the things her gut insisted might be important. “They were buried below some kind of an old cabin.” Her chest tightened. “Seeing Holiday like that was … hard.”
    “I can imagine,” Derek said. “Didn’t you tell me that the visions were like puzzles to help you figure things out?”
    She nodded. “But it wasn’t the one who looked like Holiday that brought me into the vision. It was one of the other girls. I think she wants to be found, so they can leave the makeshift grave. So I’m still not sure if the vision is going to help me. Or maybe it can. I don’t know.” Her chest clutched. “Why can’t they just tell me what they need?”
    “Maybe if you tell me about it, I can help figure it out.”
    She looked at Derek. “How?”
    “I worked for a PI. I sort of know how to dig things up. I’m good at it.”
    Kylie