Page 61 of Dead to Rites

Probably not as many as most people would think.

“He was,” Jude agreed. “This bookstore belonged to my uncle, and he wanted to retire. So I bought him out with some money I’d saved up, and I kept Marsh & Hollow going. It was a way to still stay close to books and history and the questions I couldn’t ignore without staying inside an institution that no longer had any space for me.”

So that was how he’d come to own the bookstore. He didn’t seem too interested in hustling, so I guessed it earned just enough to keep him going, and he was all right with that.

“I never saw another ghost,” he said. “I’ve been looking for the past five years, but I haven’t seen a single thing.”

I was quiet for a moment. Did I dare…or should I keep my mouth shut?

Then I said in a rush, “I believe you.”

He looked at me, his eyes luminous in the morning light.

“Thank you.”

Another silence fell, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. He’d told me his deepest, darkest secret, and I hadn’t laughed at him or been unbelieving, hadn’t told him he must have been imagining things.

Hazel had said that I needed to be careful about who I trusted, how I needed to keep things to myself. I thought about Father Frank, who couldn’t tell me what he knew, and about how both he and Mack were bound to Copper State Cellars, just as my great-aunt was bound to the house she’d loved so much.

I’d been keeping all of that inside because I’d had to, because I knew there was no way I could confide in anyone, not even Celeste, my dearest and closest friend.

Right then, though, I knew this was the moment. If I were going to tell anyone about what I could do, about what had been happening to me ever since that bee sting, then I needed to do it now.

“Jude,” I said, “I can.”

His brows drew together. “Can what?”

“I can see ghosts,” I told him. He didn’t move, seemed frozen in his chair, so I hurried on, “Great-Aunt Hazel has been in her house this whole time. I’ve been able to see her ever since I came home from the hospital after that bee sting. There’s another ghost at the bar — a guy named Mack Donovan, who was a Prohibition agent who was killed there in 1925. And Father Frank is the third. He’s at the bar now. He hasn’t been able to leave Copper State Cellars since the night he died.”

Through all of this, Jude had just sat there, unmoving. I didn’t know whether his stillness was spurred by utter shock, or because he was trying to formulate a reply and so far had come up empty.

So I continued, mostly because I knew if I stopped the flow of words, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to begin again.

“The ability runs in my family. It only shows up in women, but men can carry it. Hazel had it, and her mother had it. That’s part of the reason why she changed her will after my parents died so I’d be her sole heir. She’d suspected I’d inherited the latent gift. The bee sting triggered it — or at least, my near-death experience triggered it. I don’t think it would have surfaced if that hadn’t happened. But it did, and now I can see them…all of them. They can’t be seen by anyone else, as far as I know, but they’re real, Jude. They’re real.”

Jude was still sitting there, staring at me. I waited, somehow knowing I needed to let him absorb everything I’d just said, that I’d said my piece, and now I had to wait for him to decide what to do with it.

At last, he said, “Has Father Frank said anything?”

Interesting that Jude wanted to focus on the practical aspects of the situation first, that he’d want to know if the ghost of his friend had provided any clues to his mysterious demise.

I shook my head. “He won’t tell me what people have confessed to him. Even after death, he’s still honoring the seal. But he confirmed…in a sort of roundabout way…that someone had been coming to him for the past eight months or so. And he as good as confirmed that it was Meg Lindley.”

Jude was silent again. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, I was surprised to see they were wet with tears.

“I’ve wondered for years if I was crazy,” he said. “If I imagined seeing Maria Ortega’s spirit that day…if I left the priesthood for nothing.”

“You weren’t crazy,” I told him. “And you’re not crazy now.”

He gave a rusty chuckle, then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “That’s good to know.”

Some impulse made me reach across the small table where we sat and place my hand on top of his. He didn’t pull it away.

We both sat like that for a while, my hand covering his, neither of us saying anything. The human contact felt good after spending so much time around ghosts.

But the clock ticking on the wall out in the bookstore reminded me that we couldn’t stay like that forever, that I needed to get to work. Eventually, I got up from my chair, and Jude walked me to the door.

“Come for dinner tonight,” he said.