The Language of Death (A Darcy Sweet Coy Mystery) by K.J. Emrick Page B

straightforward question.  "Come on, Chloe.  Don't give me the same runaround every ghost in creation gives me.  Please?  Tell me who killed you, okay?"
    "North and south," Chloe repeated, saying the words quickly enough that they ran together like northandsouth.  "That's the way I've always understood it."
    "Understood what?" Darcy asked in frustration.
    "North and south.  North and south."
    Darcy desperately tried to think of some other way to ask the question.  There had to be some way to come at this sideways, some way that the ghost would respond to.  "Look, Chloe, I know it wasn't your mom.  I know it wasn't your dad.  I don’t think it was Lorne.  He's a good man, by the way.  I think you two would have been very happy."
    "Magnetism," she said with a nod.  "We had magnetism."
    Was that supposed to be confirmation that Lorne wasn't her killer?  Or some cryptic way of saying he was?
    "All right.   Chloe.  Let's try this.  Can you at least tell me when you died for sure?"
    Chloe drifted, laying down on her back, the mists around her solidifying into a bed with a big, fluffy purple comforter.  An entire room sprung up around it.  Chloe's bedroom, Darcy figured.  Where she died.  On the nightstand, distorted and huge, sat a white porcelain clock with unicorn figurines on either side.  It ticked louder than was realistically possible, like the sound of a hammer striking rock in some bottomless cavern.  The clock read six twenty-seven, a little picture window on its face showing a moon to say it was night.
    Almost six-thirty, but not quite.   The coroner had been pretty accurate with the time of death.
    "Okay, Chloe.  That's good.  That's good.  Now, how did you die?"
    Darcy figured it was a safer question for Chloe than asking who killed her.  Less chance of the answer including cryptic messages.
    The hands of the clock rolled backward, but not far, to ten minutes after six.  Chloe was standing now, at the foot of the bed, raising a glass of dark amber liquid in a toast with a shadowy, indistinct figure.  Then she drank the glass to the bottom.  Beer.  Darcy was sure it was beer.  Yet, there was clearly a white powdery substance all over the bottom of the glass when Chloe had emptied it.  In the vision, the powder sparkled and drifted in the glass like snow.  The drug.  The epilepsy drug.
    "Chloe, don't!" Darcy cried out, but it was already days too late to warn her friend.  This had already happened.  In the past.
    Alcohol and any drug was a bad combination, Darcy knew.  With something as strong as an epilepsy drug the mix would be worse.  Depending on how much of the drug had been slipped into that drink, death was a certainty.
    She watched Chloe laugh at something the shadow figure had said.  Then her eyes went wide and her expression turned to shock.  The figure had told her what was happening.  Chloe knew she'd been poisoned.  Knew she was about to die.
    Before she could do anything about it, she collapsed onto the bed and lay still .
    The clock sped forward again as the shadow figure zipped around Chloe, arranging her on her bed, spilling a single pill onto the nightstand from a bottle, then crushing it partly to powder.  Enough to test but not enough to identify by any markings that might have been on the pill. 
    Darcy tried to strain to see the label on the prescription bottle.  She couldn't, though.  Everything buzzed by too fast.   That wasn't surprising.  Unless Chloe had seen the pill bottle clearly, she wouldn't be able to show it Darcy.
    Then the clock struck six twenty-seven, and the scene went still.  Chloe was dead.
    The shadow figure turned away.  Darcy got the impression that whoever it was, they were satisfied and happy about what they had done.  Try as she might, Darcy couldn't see a face.  It was all just a blur. 
    The mists tore themselves apart silently, and then Chloe's spirit was standing beside Darcy again.  This time, when Darcy turned to