Rain of the Ghosts Read online

  Oh, just go for it, she thought. Nothing to lose now. “Do you guys want to go waterskiing tomorrow on my dad’s boat?”

  Rain and Charlie rolled their eyes dismissively. To Miranda, it almost seemed like a move they had practiced for timing. Charlie shook his head, and Miranda bit her lip and looked away. Then Rain spoke.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SNAKES

  Charlie was still shaking his head. “I can’t believe you said yes.” He and Rain were walking the two bikes into his mom’s gated lockup. There was a sign over their heads: ROYAL DOLPHIN RENTALS—BICYCLES, MOPEDS, CANOES. A gray-blue plywood dolphin with a big grin and a golden crown leapt above the words and the rows and rows of bicycles and tandem bikes and bikes that pulled car seats on wheels and giant tricycles with giant baskets and mopeds and neat stacks of canoes and kayaks and surfboards. There were even three Jet Skis and two Jeeps.

  Rain leaned back against the fence as Charlie knelt down to lock the borrowed bikes to their racks. “Why wouldn’t I say yes?” she asked.

  “After the way you interrogated her?”

  “Waterskiing, Charlie. It was a good offer. Besides, if we weren’t a little shallow, we wouldn’t be teenagers.” On cue, Ramon Hernandez cruised by in a beat-up convertible jam-packed with teens. Metal blared from tinny speakers. Laughter and shouting from about eight mouths. Marina Cortez—a tall dark-haired girl who was sitting up on the chassis with her feet down on the backseat—was the only one to even glance toward Rain, before quickly turning away. Rain didn’t feel snubbed, exactly. It was simply the order of things. She and Charlie were about to start eighth grade. High school seniors were not programmed to give them the time of day. Ramon’s convertible, a tremendous symbol of freedom despite its dragging rear bumper, turned a corner. Rain’s gaze lingered wistfully on its absence. Then she looked around the lockup. “Next time, I think we should rent mopeds.”

  Charlie stood up. “Mom’ll love that.”

  Rain smiled and shrugged.

  Charlie stared at the mopeds. “Of course, we do need to cram in the fun before school starts—”

  “And life ends.”

  “And life ends.” He led Rain out and locked the gates behind them. The mist, by this time, had descended in force.

  Rain spoke, casually doomed, “Three more days. The horror. The horror.”

  Charlie looked at Rain. At first her eyes focused on him, smiling. Her eyes always smiled more than her mouth. But gradually they began to lose focus. Or rather, they focused on something he couldn’t see. On something inside her that made her feel sad and small and trapped. When she spoke again, it was barely a whisper: “I better get home.”

  “Uh, sure. I’ll see ya.”

  She was already walking backward down the street. She waved to him. “Bye.” And turned around, jamming her hands into the pockets of her shorts. He watched her until she turned the corner. Then he walked the half block past the lockup to his house and the chewing out he knew his mom was going to give him for taking the bikes without permission.

  By this time, the drums in Rain’s head had quieted, replaced by a sort of slinky piano that kind of gave her the creeps. It was late as she passed from the shoreline neighborhood where the Dauphins lived and into Old Town. Most tourists stayed downtown or by the beach, so Old Town’s “charming” cobblestone streets were not nearly as well lit. It began to drizzle. Rain felt a few drops and then the cold icky of a big drip on her scalp. Pausing beneath a lone wrought-iron streetlamp, she looked up toward the heavens and said, “Terrific.”

  She started out again, picking up speed as it began to rain in earnest. Her sneakers barely made a sound on the cobbles, so it startled her when she realized she could hear footsteps. Heavy footsteps. Clomping on the cobblestones. She didn’t stop, but she looked behind her, back down the dark lane. She didn’t see anyone. But the footsteps kept coming, slow and steady. She mentally reprimanded herself. She knew that sound carried forever in the fog on these stone streets. Her father had told her as much on another scary night—when she was six! The sound of the footsteps was probably coming from three blocks over or from someone heading in the opposite direction or both. She passed under another solitary streetlamp and felt a bit better.

  But if anything, the footsteps were getting louder. Their pace increasing. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw a shadow pass quickly under the lamplight. A big shadow.

  Rain didn’t want to run. She was afraid to run. Afraid that acknowledging the danger would make it real. But as she turned down Rue de Lafitte, her own speed increased involuntarily.

  The rain was coming down even harder now. Maybe she could run. Just to avoid getting soaked. She looked back again. The shadowy figure had turned the corner. The distance between them was decreasing.

  She ran. Turned onto Goodfellow Lane, simultaneous with a silent flash of lightning that heralded a real downpour. In response, the heavy boots of the shadowed man started to run as well, clomping and splashing on the wet stones, gaining on her. She beelined for the only streetlamp on the block.

  She stopped beneath it, needing the light. He was close now. Just beyond the light, the footsteps slowed and stopped. A rumble of thunder jolted her into action. She wheeled on the shadow and yelled defiantly: “Take another step, and I’ll cut you off at the knees!” Her bravado ebbed pathetically. “Or … I’ll scream. My parents are right inside.”

  She still couldn’t see her pursuer clearly. Just a shadow. A very big shadow. Ignoring her warning, it took one deliberate step toward her into the light—which hardly made it any less menacing. The streetlamp revealed a big man, considerably over six feet. He had tanned weathered skin, a spiky blond crewcut and ice blue eyes that accented a permanent scowl. Water dripped down the side of his face. He ignored that too.

  She couldn’t move or make a sound. He looked down on her like she was a bug to be squashed under those clomping boots. Finally, he spoke: “Wasn’t following you, kid.” He had an Australian accent.

  He nodded his head to the left, toward the three-story building illuminated by the street light. Rain glanced quickly at the sign—THE NITAINO INN—as the man continued, “Got a reservation at the Inn here.”

  Rain squeaked out, “You ran after me.”

  “Just trying to get out of the rain.” He sneered at her. “Still trying.” Rain just stared at him. He held up a duffel bag as if to prove he had luggage and was therefore on the level.

  It worked. Immediately, Rain felt mortified. He was a tourist. “Uh, okay then,” she said. “Right this way.” She quickly ran up the four steps to the front door of the Inn and opened it. He followed.

  The lobby of the Nitaino Inn was painted in warm island colors. It was presently deserted, and as she and the man shook the rainwater off, Rain called out, “Mom! We’ve got a guest!”

  Almost magically, Rain’s mother appeared on the landing above them and quickly but gracefully descended the stairs. “Rain, I’m right here.” Translation: Don’t shout!

  “Sorry.” Still a bit freaked, Rain put some distance between herself and the stranger. She slid past the front desk and hesitated at the door to the darkened dining room. She forced herself to meet that cold blue gaze. “And sorry about the mix-up.”

  “I’ll try to survive the shame.”

  Rain’s mom raised an eyebrow in Rain’s direction as she stepped behind the front desk. She opened the register and turned it to face her new guest. “My name’s Iris Cacique. Welcome to the Nitaino Inn, Mister…”

  He picked up a pen and glanced down at the book. Currently, there were five other guests listed:

  Rebecca Sawyer, Hannibal, MO

  Mr. & Mrs. John DeLancy, San Francisco

  Terry Chung and Elizabeth Ellis-Chung, Cambridge, Mass.

  The stranger wrote only one word.

  “Callahan,” he said. “Name’s Callahan.”

  Rain gave him one last look and retreated out of the lobby.

  The Nitaino Inn was a B
ed & Breakfast with a good reputation in the guidebooks. Rain lived there with her parents and grandfather and whatever tourists happened to be staying in the Inn’s six guest rooms. They were rarely full (outside the High Season). Old Town was a popular tourist attraction—during the day. Antique shops, galleries, craftsmen with pushcarts and those oh-so-charming cobblestone streets brought a nice walk-through business in good weather. But parking was problematic, and it was a fair distance to the water. And no fast food or chain stores at all. People walked through Old Town, but they tended not to sleep there. Still, Iris ran a tight, clean ship and served large portions of good food every morning, so although they were rarely full, they were also rarely vacant. Rain had grown up that way. In a house she shared with both family and strangers. Privacy, real privacy, was something she had read about in books. As she passed through the dining room, she wasn’t surprised to see a light on in the kitchen. All she could do was hope it was her father and not a tourist “just grabbing a quick bite.”

  She pushed open the swinging door. A man with long gray hair sat at the kitchen table with his back to her. Immediately, she relaxed. Not a tourist. Not even her dad. Better. “Hey, ’Bastian,” she said, smiling for the first time since she left Charlie at the lockup.

  “Hi, Raindrop.”

  Sebastian Bohique was Rain’s maternal grandfather and just about her favorite person on the planet. He was a month shy of eighty years old but was sitting there eating a very sugary breakfast cereal, the one that came in the shape of hearts, moons, stars, clovers and new blue whales. Rain crossed to the cupboard, opened the wood and glass door and pulled out a bowl. She glanced out the window. It was still pouring. A flash of lightning was followed seconds later by a crack of thunder. The storm-head was getting closer.

  “Rain.” Her father’s voice. She turned toward the doorway to the laundry room. Alonso Cacique stood there with a basketful of white towels. “I’ve got a charter tomorrow. I’ll need you to work the boat with me.”

  Rain’s expression, not to mention her posture, took a nosedive. She threw out her arms (bowl and all). “Dad, I can’t! I’ve got plans with Charlie.”

  “You see Charlie everyday.”

  “We’re going waterskiing! We just got invited tonight!”

  “And the charter came in this afternoon.” He approached her. Calm but firm. “You should have checked with me first.”

  Papa ’Bastian looked up from his cereal. “I’ll cover for her, Alonso.”

  “That’s not your job, ’Bastian.”

  ’Bastian shrugged. “I know. But school starts Monday. Let’s cut her some slack.”

  Rain became a sudden and exaggerated supplicant. “Yes. Slack. Pleeeassse!”

  Alonso shook his head, but his eyes were smiling. “All right. Just this once.”

  Rain leaned over the laundry basket and gave her dad a peck on the cheek. “Thanks, Dad.”

  By now, Alonso was smiling with his mouth as well. “Thank your grandfather.”

  “I will.”

  Still smiling and shaking his head, Alonso did a quick about-face and headed back out the door. Rain stood there, staring at nothing in particular. ’Bastian snuck a glance at her. She looked down at the cereal bowl in her hand as if it were a strange artifact from another world. Then she placed it absently on the counter and sighed deeply.

  “Well, I’m waiting,”’Bastian said.

  Rain’s head turned slowly toward him. “What for?”

  ’Bastian gave her his patented Old Man Twinkle. “My thank you.”

  Rain walked around the table, pulled an empty chair out of the way and kissed him on the forehead. “Sorry. Thanks. You saved me.” She looked down at the empty chair and thought about sitting down. The simplest decision suddenly seemed very hard to make. Or so unimportant that it was impossible to care.

  “So how come you’re not happy?”

  Rain collapsed into the chair. “I’m thirteen years old, and my life is over!” she moaned.

  It seemed to ’Bastian that she was auditioning to be the poster child for teen angst and melodramatic defeat. He nodded solemnly. “I see. And how did you come by this revelation…?”

  “Summer’s over! I can’t pretend anymore. I’m trapped, Papa. Totally trapped.”

  Papa Sebastian leaned his head away, scratching one eyebrow with his pinky so that he wouldn’t have to meet her gaze. “That’s a problem, all right.”

  But she wasn’t fooled. She gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. “Don’t laugh,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like. You’ve been places. To the mainland, to Europe.”

  His whole body tensed up; he responded in clipped tones. “I wasn’t exactly on holiday, young lady.”

  “That’s the point. You did something important with your life. I’m never going to do anything. I’ll never go anywhere. I’ll graduate high school and spend the rest of my life ushering tourists around these same eight islands!” She slumped down dramatically, like a puppet whose strings have been cut, her head buried in her hands on the table.

  Sebastian quickly pushed away an old memory and eyed her wryly. He paused just long enough for her to be sure that he’d received the full effect of her performance. Then he spoke quietly. “Now I don’t believe that, Raindrop. I don’t believe that for a second.”

  She didn’t budge, but he knew she was listening, so he continued: “This is home. And frankly, it’s not a bad place to make a life. So you may come back some day to usher tourists.” He shrugged. “After all, I did. But you’ll get your own chance to decide.”

  Still no movement. “You’ve always been special, Rain. An adventurer. We’d turn our backs for a minute, and you’d be off exploring. Before you could walk, even. And I remember watching you as you grew up. You’d have long conversations with your imaginary friends. You’d fight pirates. Find treasure. Solve mysteries. I knew you were destined for greatness.”

  She refused to lift her head. But at least she spoke—a sarcastic “Right.”

  Sebastian placed a gentle hand on Rain’s head. His gold wristband caught the flash from another burst of lightning and sparkled. “It’s like my abuela used to say … ‘To unlock a door, you need two things: a key and someone who knows how to turn it.’”

  Rain’s arms and the thunder muffled her reply. “I never knew what that meant. And what does it have to do with anything, anyway?”

  He leaned down to whisper in her ear, “You strike me as someone who knows how to turn a key.”

  Sebastian leaned back again, and slowly, tentatively, as if he had been working magic upon her, Rain started to raise her head to meet his warm gray eyes. “Maybe,” she said begrudgingly. “But I’m never gonna get my hands on any key. Not to anyplace I’d want to go.”

  Papa Sebastian considered this for a moment. Rain watched him stare down at the milk in his cereal bowl. Outside, the wind howled, and another lightning bolt lit up the window. The thunder was nearly simultaneous; the storm was right over their heads. In contrast to that fury, the music in her head, which had been silent since she had yelled at Callahan out on the street, played a slow and pretty jazz cornet. Something was going to happen. Abruptly, he pushed the bowl away. “Let’s start here,” he said. He removed the gold band from around his right wrist. “I’ve been meaning to give you this for a while.”

  He held it out to her on the palm of his hand: two gold snakes intertwined, braided almost, clasping each other’s tails in their mouths. Again, the band caught the light. She knew what this meant to him and shook her head. “’Bastian … Your grandmother gave you that.”

  “That’s right. Been in the family for four hundred years.” One of the snakes had two tiny chips of blue stone for eyes. Rain looked from those eyes into ’Bastian’s. His were smiling, and her own started to smile as well. “Always made me feel like I was part of something larger than myself,” he said. “A span of generations and traditions.”

  Rain’s eyes widened. She knew this was a big mome
nt, even if she didn’t quite know why. Maybe for just that reason, she resisted. “It’s not exactly my ticket out of here.”

  But Sebastian would not be swayed. He took hold of her left arm. The thunder growled at them both. “It’s yours now,” he said. Rain swallowed hard as he slipped the band onto her slim wrist. It was too big for her. ’Bastian paused for a moment, tilting his head to consider the problem or maybe just to listen to the storm. Then he slid it up around her biceps, until it was snug. A perfect fit. “You can wear it up here. That’ll look hip.”

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling and unconcerned with how it looked. She felt immensely grateful to the old man; he had a knack for making her feel special, for making her limited world seem limitless. Her eyes were focused on his, so she hardly noticed when he let go of the gold band. If she had, she might have also noticed the blue snake eyes flash for an instant. A mere trick of the light, perhaps, amid multiple lightning strikes and angry thunder.

  His thoughts were focused inward. His heart was full of familial pride, but he also felt suddenly weary. So he was distracted and didn’t notice the other snake, the eyeless snake, momentarily glowing—nor the same soft golden light shining briefly within his granddaughter’s brown eyes.

  Rain felt dizzy. She lowered her head, let out a little moan, and for a second her body reeled; she almost tipped right out of her chair. Sebastian regained focus and reached out to steady her with his hand. “Raindrop, kiddo, you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said and meant it. She raised her eyes again and almost took his breath away. Of course, he always thought his granddaughter was pretty. He was biased; he’d admit it. But she looks positively radiant. He was reminded of his late wife, Iris’ mother. A woman who spent her whole life almost mystically at peace with the world.