Free Spooked by Tracy Sharp Page B

more carnations as the supply went down. I chose a couple of pink carnations, and made my way through the crowd to place one carefully on the ever-growing piles in front of each girl’s photograph.
    My throat tightened as I looked from one to the other. How could this be happening? Girls vanishing—seemingly before our eyes. We couldn’t let this continue. Somebody had to do something.
    I had the ability to do something, and at that moment, it seemed so wrong not to use it, even if I were putting myself at risk.
    I bent my head, closed my eyes, reached out my psychic fingers, and began sifting through secrets, opening my mind and clearing it of anything except hearing secrets.
    Blocking all sound, I listened with all my might.
    I learned that old Mrs. Lisky was happy that her husband had died of an aneurysm last spring. I didn’t probe as to why. The reason was not important. But I did sense a fading fear and enormous relief, and finally a sense of peace, all tangling with one another in her heart.
    Moving away from her, I listened harder, imagining myself moving through the crowd. The word whiskey came through, loud and clear, from Mrs. Abrams, my ninth-grade English teacher. She had a drinking problem that nobody knew about, and kept bottles in her desk, her car, and all over her house. The stress of the missing girls was making her problem worse. I heard a flash of a name— Angie —and knew that she’d lost a daughter in infancy as a result of crib death. It was something she couldn’t move past, and I could understand why. I didn’t think I’d be able to either, in the same situation.
    Brianna Hawthorne, a quiet, sweet girl, was forced to have an abortion by her parents last month. I frowned. She hadn’t been dating anyone from our school that I knew about. Perhaps it was a boy from a different school.
    She’d been absent from school for a couple of days. Now I knew why. She secretly wished that she’d be abducted and killed. The guilt over becoming pregnant, and then ending the pregnancy, was terrible for her. I felt sad for her, and promised myself that I’d try to get to know her better.
    I felt longing and lust coming from someone. I saw Eliza’s face flash through my mind, and reached, reached… I turned, looking at faces in the crowd. I searched for the pair of eyes that gazed at Eliza’s picture with a look different from the others.
    And I caught Mr. Tanner’s gaze just as he felt my eyes on him. He looked at me and seemed momentarily startled.
    I lifted my hand and offered a small wave, not knowing what else to do.
    He gave me a little smile and waved back, and then turned and began walking out to the parking lot.
    I moved out of the crowd and watched him walk to his car, probing. But he’d blocked me. Somehow, as if he’d known I were snooping, he’d cut me off from his thoughts.
    Or he’d gotten scared and deliberately began thinking of something else.
    I wasn’t getting anything more from him, even as I watched his car drive out of the lot and onto the street, past the cemetery.
     
    ***
     
    “What did you find out?” Mick asked me.
    People were leaving the vigil, somber and speaking in quiet tones. I spotted Delia accepting a hug from Mrs. Tanner, who often hired Delia to plan parties for her. Mr. and Mrs. Tanner lived in one of the gorgeous houses on the hill. Delia had planned their wedding years ago, and she’d planned every party for her since, which included all of the holidays. Mrs. Tanner came from old money, and so the wedding had been extravagant.
    I watched them for a moment, marveling at how beautiful she was. She was in her mid-twenties, I guess, and her thick, shoulder-length auburn hair fell in shiny waves around her shoulders. She had gorgeous tawny skin and almond eyes, and could easily smoke any girl in our school in terms of beauty. Even the missing Eliza.
    I got a flash from Mrs. Tanner that her husband desperately wanted children, but that she did not, yet, and