2 Empath by Edie Claire Page A

would be the point? My knowing about Zane’s accident was as convincing as any of them, and Tara had clearly blocked that out. She wasn’t ready to accept that what I experienced was supernatural, and she might never be. But she still accepted me. For now, I was cool with that.
    “Look guys, I’m just trying baptism by fire, here,” Tara tried to explain. “I want to meet this stuff head on. I don’t believe in ghosts. But if we happen to run into any today, then hey — they’re welcome to prove me wrong.”
    Kylee frowned at her. “Don’t be saying crap like that! If you want to antagonize the spirits, you can do it when I’m not around, thank you very much!”
    Tara rolled her eyes.
    Kylee winked at me over her shoulder.
    I let out a nervous chuckle. If no ghosts happened to present themselves wherever the heck we were going, I was pretty sure Kylee would manufacture some. The fact that doing so would undermine her case for the supernatural wasn’t likely to sway her — messing with Tara’s mind was too much fun.
    “So where are we going?” I asked, trying to sound more upbeat than I felt. I had less than no interest in fake ghost stories. The real ones were disturbing enough.
    Tara shot a playful glance at Kylee. “Guess.”
    “Hmm…” Kylee took the bait. “Well, it can’t be the Plains Hotel. We passed that. And they wouldn’t let us roam around it just for fun, anyway — although Josh and I did sneak down the fire stairs one time, and I swear I saw a woman in a long blue gown—”
    “Heard it already,” Tara interrupted. “Everybody’s heard the ‘murdering ghost bride’ stories. Not buying it. Next?”
    Kylee’s lips pursed. “Fine. But I did see her.” She thought a moment. “We’ve already passed the Atlas Theater and the Knights of Pythias building… Terry Bison Ranch?”
    Tara shook her head. “None of the above. We’re going to Striker Schoolhouse.”
    Kylee squealed with delight. “Oh, that place is so cool at night! I went there with a bunch of guys one time. Dustin was there, and Ryan… who else? Maybe I’ve been twice. I forget where it is, exactly… Oh, my gosh, Dustin was so funny. He hid behind a tombstone, trying to scare me, but then Ryan came up behind him and he got so scared he screamed like a woman — it was hysterical!”
    She went on, but my mind wandered. I gazed out the car window at the endless Wyoming plains, once waving with prairie grass and teeming with buffalo, now chopped up into rectangular fields dotted with the occasional farmhouse and barn. Off in the distance, an oil tank farm loomed. The landscape looked pretty much the same in any direction, for miles around. Some might call it bleak, but thanks to Kylee and Tara, I’d been happy here.
    Since I was now officially being honest with them, you might think I’d mention that even as Kylee spoke of imaginary spooks, we had in fact driven past the shadows of a half-dozen long-dead miners and railroad workers, any number of farmers, and at least a dozen Native Americans. But you would be wrong. Not even Kylee could grasp the sheer volume of “spiritual energy” I was forced to view, even in such a sparsely populated area as this. Facing the full scope of my reality would be overload for them.
    It certainly was for me.
    “You’ve heard about Striker Schoolhouse, haven’t you, Kali?” Tara asked.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “What?” Kylee exclaimed. “Nobody gets through elementary school in Cheyenne without hearing that story!”
    “Kali didn’t go to elementary school in Cheyenne,” Tara pointed out.
    “Oh, right,” Kylee admitted. “Well then, you’re in for a treat!”
    “Wait a minute,” Tara said. “It’s just up ahead. I’ll pull off and then you can tell her.”
    We reached the intersection of two gravel roads, and Tara turned to the left. There, sitting in the midst of countless acres of perfectly flat fields, lay a small, square plot of land covered with mature