Page 30 of Broken Moon

“A dream about a child?” Iasked.

“Yes. Usually, I write mydreams into a sort of internal dream notebook, then lock them up in a filecabinet where they won’t bother me. But sometimes, like with you, I payattention because I know…” She shook her head. “I know there’s something I cando. That it’s close. Sometimes I have trouble separating what might be atelling dream from a dream I have because I’ve seen something on TV…do you knowwhat I mean?”

“Just tell me about the dream,Lucille.”

“There was a child. A littleboy, maybe five or six years old. I didn’t see him, but I felt the urgency ofhis circumstances. And the one thing that I did see—the only thing, really, isthe date September seventeenth.” She stopped and looked at me expectantly, butshe wasn’t the one who had my attention, really.

Jim was going nuts. Seriouslynuts. Blinking in and out, screaming silently, whirling through the room—andthen he stopped with a disorienting abruptness right in front of my laptop,which was sitting on the countertop. He pointed.

“Okay,” I said. “That date, thechild…this is why he’s here.” I glanced at her. “When did you have this dream?”

“Just now,” she told me,“before you came home. It was what woke me up.”

“Could you have had it becausehe was in the house? In your room?”

She shuddered, paled a little,then nodded. “I suppose I could have.”

I strode to my computer. “Thatdate will be when the boy was kidnapped, I have no doubt. Let’s find out who heis.” I quickly keyed in“September 17 Jakeston kidnapping”and waited tosee what would come up.

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered.“Of course. This is Mayor Hedrick’s little boy, Noah. This just happened a coupleof weeks ago.”

“Oh my God,” she said, her handover her heart. “How do we find him?”

“That’s why it’s good to seeghosts,” I told her grimly, my stare on the dead man. “He’s going to show mewhere the child is.”

“Kait,” Lucy called, as Iwalked across the floor. She tossed me my jacket when I glanced back. “It’sfreezing out there.”

The spirit walked to thekitchen door, calm now, and held out his hand.Come with me.

I shrugged on my coat, grabbedmy cellphone off the table, and then took the hand that only I could see. Thishad never happened before. I wasn’t sure if I was getting stronger, I just knewlife was about to change—for the mayor, the little boy, and the kidnapper.

For me. Certainly, for me.

God please,I prayed.Don’tlet me be too late.

With the spirit of the dead manleading me on, I went to see if I could help save a little boy’s life.

ChapterFifteen

Snow had begun falling onceagain, and the city, for once, was quiet. I cranked up the heater, waitingimpatiently for the car to warm as I drove slowly down residential street afterstreet, going where the spirit pointed.

The always present pain of myhobbled shift was almost comforting, if only for the fact that it was sofamiliar. It also gave me something to concentrate on so I wouldn’t fall topieces at the thought of a child in the hands of a monster.

“Who are you?” I asked the manbeside me. “How do you know about this child? And what killed you? Are yourelated to the mayor? Obviously this child is why you’re still here instead ofcrossing over into whatever afterlife awaits you. So who are you?”

I couldn’t remember being soanxious, so nervous. I was practically jumping out of my skin, and I wishedmore than ever that I could shift. I felt the importance of what was happening,and it was overwhelming.

I could feel the dead man’ssorrow. It wafted from him, wrapping around my heart and bringing tears to myeyes. He put his hands over his face, then looked at me, and there was not onlysorrow and pain in his eyes. There was also guilt.

“You had something to do withhis kidnapping,” I realized. Sudden rage rose up to swallow my anxiety, and Iwelcomed it. “You need to atone.”

He nodded.

“Fuck you,” I snarled. I didn’tspeak to him again, just followed wherever he pointed, until finally, he let meknow we’d arrived.

I parked the car at the side ofthe street but left the engine running so I could feel the heat. I was neverthis cold. Maybe it had something to do with the proximity of the dead, butthat cold slid through my body like a thousand icicles.

Jim had led me to a part of thecity known casually as “the ‘ville,” short for Clarksville. It was anunpleasant neighborhood but not a terribly dangerous one. It boasted its ownpost office but little else, other than a couple of pizza joints and a gasstation. As long as I’d lived in Jakeston, I’d been to Clarksville exactlyonce.