She turned to stare at him. “I was young when my parents died. Not stupid. I was fifteen! If he knew about this—”

“You do have the gift,” Adam Harrison said, sitting back.

She sighed. “I never saw my parents. If it’s such a gift, I would have seen my parents.”

“Some people go on, some stay. I wish I could explain why.”

“Well, you’d think they might have stayed. Instead, my first experience was with an old pirate!”

He smiled. “Well, was the old pirate helpful?” he asked.

She bit lightly into her lower lip.

What the hell was this man getting at?

“Yes,” she said honestly. “The old pirate probably saved my life.”

“So there, you see?”

“I don’t see anything at all!” Katie exclaimed. “Anita Calabria was also a friend—a dear friend. She never appeared to me.”

“So who does?” he asked quietly.

She had turned up St. Ann, not really paying attention to what she was doing, and then made another turn onto Bourbon Street. They were about to pass the LaLaurie Mansion, one-time home and torture house of Madame LaLaurie and her husband, Doctor LaLaurie. The couple had found infamy by torturing their slaves and performing medical experiments on them. A cook had set fire to the house while chained to a stove, unconcerned with dying if she could only bring an end to the monstrous things going on in the house.

“Rose!” she said, pointing to the house. “Rose, she died as a beautiful young girl. She loves walking down to Royal Street and looking at all the styles at Fifi Mahony’s, a wig shop and hair salon. The wigs are incredibly clever and wonderful. And Rose...”

Her voice trailed. She looked over at Adam Harrison. “My father had this?” she whispered. “He had it, and I have it, and yet...”

“Your parents loved you. They were good people. I don’t have all the answers. I knew your father and mother, and they would have wanted to stay by you, I’m sure. But most of the time, the dead do go on. They were together. I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I see my son, who died when he was a teenager. But... I’m lucky in that. And it wasn’t right away... It took practice, from both of us. I don’t know how any of this works. I just know sometimes it does.”

“So you’re here to solve the murders?”

He smiled and shrugged. “No. I’m a horrible investigator. But I do know how to put the right people together.”

“The right people?” She looked at him warily. He couldn’t mean Dan Oliver. He wasn’t any kind of law enforcement anymore. He was a hack. A private eye!

“I have an agent down here.”

“Ah,” she said, relieved.

“He’s currently trying to connect with the former FDLE agent who worked the case in Orlando, Dan Oliver.”