Wherever She Goes (Psychic Seasons ReGina Welling (electric book reader .txt) 📖

“Anyone could have left this, you can’t be sure it was Logan?”

“Trust me, his aura is all over it.” Amethyst handed the coin to Kat who turned it over and over in her hand before closing her fist around it. The principle of getting perceptions off an item was not that different from reading cards or rune stones. She tuned into the coin and by extension into the energy Logan had poured into it.

As the images came, faintly at first, she began to speak, “He carried this in his pocket for a long time.” She ignored Zack’s raised eyebrow. He had dragged her here so why was he acting skeptical?

“He was six—maybe seven—living with someone older, a man, a grandfather or foster care provider. The man was nice to him, it was the only time he ever felt safe, loved. The man never screamed at him, never hit or pinched with hard fingers, never left him to wake up alone or hungry or scared. He wanted to stay there forever.”

Kat’s eyes fluttered closed as she saw scene after scene unfolding in her head. The older man with kind eyes grinning at the tow-headed boy who clumsily hammered a small nail into the roof of a birdhouse. The two of them paddling an aluminum canoe through perfectly still water, fishing poles and a creel at their feet. Gentle hands teaching the boy how to tie his shoes.

“It was a perfect day. They went to a small theme park somewhere in the mountains. He fed the reindeer, rode the carousel. Ate popcorn and cotton candy. And he laughed—they laughed.”

Tears streamed down her face.

“Such joy, his little heart was full. But, it didn’t last. Something happened. The bad man came back.”

Zack started to ask a question but she held up a hand to stop him.

“They hurt him—his parents. Used him as a pawn between them.”

None of this was surprising to Zack; there were records, once he’d known where to look, of Logan’s abusive childhood. Records that made him feel sorry for the child living in such painful circumstances but he could not let sympathy cloud the facts of the case. Plenty of people used their abusive history as a springboard for doing good, Logan had chosen the opposite route.

When the spirit made itself known to Kat, Amethyst saw the aura but nothing more, Zack saw nothing but felt a stir in the air; a breeze no stronger than a sigh.

“He’s here,” Kat breathed, then opening her eyes, focused them on that nothing and began a one-sided conversation. It gave Zack the heebie jeebies which surprised him after having met Estelle and Julius.

He’d faced off against a thug holding a gun and not felt as uncomfortable as he did right now. Half of him wanted to ask who was here, the other wouldn’t utter that question on pain of death.

“His name is Bert, he was Logan’s grandfather. Mother’s side, I think.”

No way had she pulled that out of thin air. He remembered the name, Bertrand Goddard.

“Bert says he took the boy in for a few months. Logan came to him hungry and covered in bruises. It took several weeks before he felt safe enough to stop hoarding food in his room. Longer still before he stopped flinching at every loud noise.”

Zack watched the play of emotions across Kat’s face as she relayed Bert’s message.

“He’s sorry for what Logan has become, sorry he didn’t fight hard enough to hold on to the boy when his father came back around. Thornton laid it on thick, said he had changed his ways and was ready to provide a better home for his son. Bert was taken in like so many others and Logan paid the price.”

More images scrolled though Kat’s head. She saw Bert watching as Logan twisted in the seat to watch, one hand on the window glass, tears of utter sadness as the one person who had ever shown him true love and kindness stood waving. Two hearts had been broken that day and neither had ever recovered.

“Use the coin,” Bert’s final words to Kat echoed back as he began to fade away. “It’s his touchstone.”

Compassion for the boy Logan had once been and for the grandfather who had tried his best went to war with Kat’s need to see the man pay for the things he had done.

Justice won.

_,.-'~'-.,_

Burned.

Logan pulled the red baseball cap down to hide his face as he strolled casually past the storage unit. Somehow the cop from that podunk little town had tracked him here. Everything in the unit was burned. Even the—he tried not to think about the loss of the one item he had carried with him all these years. It was gone now, along with everything else.

With Billy pulled back for the time being, there was enough Logan left to mourn the loss of an item so important he had carried it with him for twenty years. The last remnants of the little boy were not strong enough to influence regret in the grown man for the things he had done, but then, he had stopped lamenting the loss of his innocence a long, long time ago.

The boy who left his grandfather’s house that day had shattered to leave his soul in pieces behind the car like a trail of breadcrumbs he would never follow home.

Those days of safety, the last of his childhood, would go from being cherished memories to being the impetus for a belief that he deserved everything, whether he had earned it or not. Someone had done the earning and that was a good enough excuse for taking whatever he could and never counting the cost.

After all, Logan had been trained by the best. Even in his tender youth, he knew Thornton was piling it on thick with his story of how he had changed, how he had a safe place to live, and money for food.

None of it was true and the little boy could not understand how his grandfather had been