“They do if they want to sell land,” Loretta countered. “Posts own half the town.”
“You learned that online, didn’t you? The county assessment records are all on the internet these days.”
“The pointis,” Loretta insisted, “they weren’t on their yacht like the lawyers said. The lawyers are lying. Do you think they could be hiding my parents in a cabin in the woods until they hand over all their money?”
“That’s one possibility, I suppose.” So was putting them on a rocket to outer space. Probability and possibility did not necessarily equate. And judging by those shadows... How could she possibly make the kid accept that her parents might be ghosts? Evie’s parenting skills were on a par with her credit record—not so good. “But you gotta understand—I can’t look into your story without making a few phone calls to check things out. What’s the name of your school?”
Loretta picked up her backpack with an expression of disgust. “You can’t call them,” she said flatly. “You can’t callanyone.”
Evie felt an icy shudder of premonition and opened her inner eye to Loretta’s aura. “Why?”
“Because the lawyers are trying to kill me.”
Loretta’s aura flared the clear blue of truth.
Two
That did it.Evie didn’t like prying, but there wasn’t any way she was letting that declaration go unchallenged.
“Lawyers do not—” she started to say to cover the blank look that would appear while she concentrated on the child’s aura. “—oh, my,” she murmured a moment later instead of whatever she’d meant to say. “An Indigo child.”
Evie wondered if all Indigos carried their own ghosts with them. Sad ones. Frightened ones. Weary ghosts who hadn’t learned to communicate. Please, please, don’t let those poor, pleading shadows be the child’s parents.
Evie hadheardabout Indigo children, but she’d never met one. All she knew was that they were supposed to be old souls who were easily identified by their higher than average confidence and sensitivity to the world, occasionally to the point of being disruptive—and disobedient.
Loretta’s aura spilled a spectrum of purples, lavenders, and blues, the colors of communication, clarity, and intuition, currently muddy with half-truths. A child’s aura should be barely visible, but Loretta’s— definitely favored the psychic Malcolm side of the family. Which might explain the ghosts. Malcolm sensitivity was a magnet for trouble.
“An Indigo? Is that an example of a psychic solution?” Loretta asked when Evie didn’t elaborate.
Evie squeezed the bridge of her nose and tried to organize her leapfrogging thoughts. School counselors had urged her mother to give her Ritalin, but sometimes dealing in extra perceptions simply resulted in solving too many puzzles at once. Spacey thinking had its purpose. “If you’re an Indigo child, you should have your own psychic solutions.”
“My parents say there are no such things as psychics, only frauds who are too lazy to earn an honest living.” The statement sounded like a challenge she hoped Evie could refute.
“Those same reliable, trustworthy parents who named a near stranger as your guardian?” Evie wasn’t much on explaining herself to non-believers, and she was just a tad irritable at being taken for a fool. Even the people in town whoknewshe was intuitive often thought she was stupid. Or a bubble off normal. Which was why she got no respect.
But right now, logic ruled. The odds of a stuffy, rich Post leaving their child in the hands of a poor and flaky Malcolm were considerably worse than those of this week’s lottery.
“My parents met Evangeline at one of our family reunions.” Loretta set her chin stubbornly, sticking to her preposterous story.
Indigo children were fighters, Evie remembered, the warriors who carved a path for future Crystal peacemakers—another phenomenon she had yet to meet in Afterthought, where peace meant the Shepherds’ hounds were locked inside the barn for the night.
Family reunion? That had been a decade ago... The Malcolms were a very large family, and she had some difficulty believing any Posts had been there. If she remembered rightly, she’d been busy looking for ghosts at the time and hadn’t paid much attention to the adults. So that statement was pretty much a solid lie.
Focus, Evie. On something like—where the heck were the kid’s parents? With dread, she finally opened the envelope and studied the lawyer jargon on a half dozen legal-sized pages of heavy-duty stationery. If the kid had forged this, she was good.
Psy leaped to the counter and pawed at the envelope before curling up and waiting expectantly.
Ignoring the cat, Evie found her name first and stared at it in disbelief. Not just Evangeline Malcolm, but Evangeline Serena MalcolmCarstairs. Not that anyone acknowledged her long-gone father anymore. Malcolm women favored their maiden names even when married, and definitely when widowed or divorced. The divorce rate was pretty high.
She scanned the document until she located Loretta’s name—Loretta Aurora Post. She didn’t recognize the letterhead from the law firm of Stockton and Stockton out of Savannah, but she didn’t hang out with lawyers, unless credit collectors counted.
“Yo, lady, still with me?” Loretta asked, tapping the counter. “It’s all right there.”
Evie checked the signature—John and Tiffany Post.
Stroking the smirking Siamese, Loretta watched Evie from the corner of her eye. Evie didn’t need to read auras to know the kid was quivering with fear and doubt behind that mask of indifference. Why—and how—had a child that young found her way here?
The thought of losing parents at such a delicate age tugged at Evie’s soft heartstrings, but still, she couldn’t fall for a con this blatant. The mayor would throw them out of town if the agency got written up one more time by journalists poking fun at their woo-woo methods. Throw in a little child endangerment... Turbulence of nuclear proportions.