Chapter Fifteen
Ethan
He was being ridiculous.
Ethan knew he was being ridiculous, but the acknowledgment wasn’t enough to compel him into the kitchen that morning, even though his stomach grumbled and his head throbbed. In fact every inch of his body felt tired from a restless night—only the latest in a string of restless nights such that he’d started to wonder how long a person could go with chronic sleep disruption before it started to drive them around the bend? But that line of questioning only brought him back to the present, hovering in the hallway still in his pajamas and trying to talk himself into crossing the threshold.
His feet seemed glued to the hardwood, and as he stood there silently, ears straining, he could hear her humming to herself and it was enough to turn his stomach, to keep him rooted in place. Enough to make him shudder in revulsion when she murmured his name, coaxing him to join her in the next room.
“Dude, you look like you’re going to throw up again.”
Ethan squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block out the incessant ghosts that circled him.
“Fuck,” he hissed. Ethan ran up the stairs and started throwing on clothes.
Out the window the sky was thick and dark with rain clouds that pounded the city with a steady wash until water puddled and ran in fast rivulets down the sidewalks, headed to the nearest storm drain. The trees were barren of leaves except for the Evergreens, which broke the edge of the Seattle skyline at ragged intervals with their spiky drab green branches.
He dressed accordingly, pulling on jeans and a long sleeve shirt, and then a heavy sweater on over that, all of it smelling strongly like Pat. Ethan dipped his nose into the sweater’s crew neck collar and breathed in that comforting musk, something fresh and green and wild like the deep woods. How had he never noticed the wolf smelled like winter? He didn’t have rain boots, just his worn pair of converse, dirty and a little worse for wear all things considered, but his feet didn’t fit in any of Pat’s shoes so he’d have to make do.
“Are you going to run off again?”
Ethan glared at Adam Sloan’s ghost.
“I want coffee.”
“What’s wrong with the kitchen?”
“Why do you care?” he asked, skirting around the ghost and hurrying down the stairs, keys and wallet in hand. The door slammed behind him, but Adam had followed him outside. In the light of day he appeared especially washed out, like a faded Kodak picture. The cold didn’t effect the dead man and he had no trouble keeping pace with Ethan as he hurried the couple of blocks to the nearest Pete’s coffee, head bowed against the wind and rain.
“Shouldn’t you be haunting Patrick?” he demanded.
“Probably. But he can’t see me.”
“So, what, you thought you’d start following me?”
“Why not?”
“But why at all?” Ethan stopped at a crosswalk to wait for the light to change and looked at Adam. “I mean I know I’m real great and all—”
“Brilliant conversationalist,” Adam interjected.
“—but I don’t get what you want. I already told you I don’t know Grace all that—”
“I’m a ghost.”
“Obviously.” The light turned. He hurried across the street, water soaking through both shoes.
“I’m not the mage here, but even I know that only happens when you’ve got unfinished business.”
Ethan shot him a disbelieving look. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No?”
“You watch too many movies, Sloan.”
“What? Hey, what does that mean?”
Ethan stepped to the side to let two women in business suits exit the coffee shop, ignoring the ghost until he had a cup of coffee in one hand and a cinnamon chip scone in the other. The tables in the cafe were crowded with patrons at this time of the morning, a sea of people working on laptops or clusters of two to four engaged in gratingly bright chatter. It wasn’t the sort of place he wanted to have a conversation with a ghost, and judging by the anxious look on Adam’s face, it didn’t look like his particular ghost was going to do him the courtesy of disappearing again. With a sigh, Ethan left the warmth of the shop and stepped back out into the rain. He walked more slowly this time, alternating bites and sips as the rain whipped his lank hair around his face.
“Don’t ignore me,” Adam said.
“I don’t know a lot about ghosts. But I do know that all that Hollywood shit about unfinished business is just shit. A compelling plot device. Sometimes you’re just a ghost. Sometimes you’re just a poor shmuck who got stuck in limbo, watching the rest of the world turn. I’m not saying you don’t have something left undone from your life, I mean who gets everything done that they want done before their death? Especially someone as young as you were.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “I’m not that much younger than you, old man.”
“But sometimes it’s just a freak thing. Or because you’re angry and you don’t want to…”
“What?”
Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a death expert.”
“Well, I don’t care about the rest of those reasons. I know I have unfinished business.”
“Your crush on Pat’s sister? Really?”
“No!”
The ghost darted in front of Ethan, forcing him to stop in the middle of the sidewalk or pass right through him. His morning had been extra enough without adding spectral emersion to it.
“I have to figure out who killed me. I have to finish my investigation.”
Ethan squeezed his eyes closed and sighed. “Of course you do.”
“It was important. I can remember that much.”
But there was something about the ghost’s words that pricked Ethan’s memory. What kind of coincidence could it be that he started seeing Adam shortly after Pat began a new investigation? More importantly, what was the coincidence he started seeing Adam Sloan after Pat started having nightmares about him?
No coincidence at all, Ethan suspected.
He’d spent months living in very small quarters with no one but Pat, and in that entire time the wolf had been a regular sleeper, not prone to restlessness or nightmares, meaning that his recent unrest had to have been triggered by something. And while Ethan had demons of his own, there was no reason for them to effect Pat in the same way. He’d only met Ali twice and one of those times had been the night Ethan killed—
But if something at work had brought memories of Adam back to the surface of Pat’s mind, that might explain a lot. Ethan didn’t know enough about werewolf soulbonds to know what kind of bleed through there might be between them, but he’d experienced first hand the way their emotions fed off each other, amplifying fights as well as other, more carnal feelings. It wasn’t inconceivable that there might be some crossover with their distress as well.
And Ali’s presence might have made him more open to perceiving Adam.
“Earth to Ethan, you awake in there?”
“Stop it,” he groused, swatting impotently at the ghost’s hand. “I thought you said you didn’t remember how you died?”
“I don’t. But I’m not blind or deaf. Not most of the time. Pat’s said stuff. I know it wasn’t some freak accident. Come on, Ethan, help me.”
He knew he was going to give in and agree, but that didn’t mean he had to be… oh, who was he kidding. What was he going to do, go back to sulking in Pat’s townhouse and trying to make his body one with the couch? As tempting as that may have been a week ago, now that Ali had taken to popping up in every room, crawling into beds with him, and haunting his waking and sleeping hours so that even Lailana’s tea didn’t help, the townhouse didn’t feel like the refuge it had before. What would be the harm in investigating the events surrounding Adam’s death? If he could help the ghost pass on, maybe he could figure out away to exorcise his own demons.
“Fine,” he mumbled, shoving the last of his scone into his mouth and ignoring the ghost’s exuberant response.
Maybe it was the giving in that did it, Ethan agreeing to help Adam with his ghostly problem, but so far the apparition had stuck around without disappearing for longer than he ever had before. He’d dogged Ethan’s steps back to the house, asking what they were going to do first and chattering in a bright drone that slid through one ear and out the other while Ethan was focused on his own thoughts. And then he’d settled into the Audi’s passenger seat, finally falling quiet as they pulled into traffic and headed east.
“Where are we going?” Adam asked as they crossed over the Fremont bridge.
Ethan wasn’t thrilled about this part. “My place.” But he supposed it was past time he went back to his apartment, especially considering the ghosts weren’t going to leave him alone either way. He parked around the corner and went upstairs. The lock on his door stuck briefly and he had to put his shoulder to it to get it open, but inside everything was just the way he remembered, messy and lived in—shoes kicked off next to the door, the pieces of his nicest suit still littering the floor where it had been torn off him after Janssen’s funeral, junk mail on the counter, and he didn’t want to think about what the inside of the fridge looked like—only now a thick layer of dust coated every surface.
“Wow, you really don’t like to clean, do you?” Adam asked, drifting through the living-slash-kitchen area.
Ethan scowled. He dug through the hall closet for a duffle bag and then started gathering all of this magical supplies. He wasn’t sure what all he’d need before he was rid of the ghost so he took it all, better that then have to come back. Books, candles, baggies and sachets of herbs, all of it went into the duffle. He grabbed a box of sandwich bags and packed up his collection of chalk and incense. When he was done, he sent a look around the bedroom, lingering on the closet. With a sigh, he dug out another empty gym bag and filled it with clothes, clean underwear, and socks. He had to shift half the stuff hanging in his closet to find his winter coat and a pair of waterproof hiking boots. He kicked off his soaking converse and the wet socks underneath; the feeling of relief that came with dry socks and warm boots was staggering.
“Your kitchen is disgusting,” Adam said, wandering into the bedroom.
“No shit.”
“If you’re living with Pat, why leave it like this? It’s a nice place, you could probably sublet—”
“I don’t need real estate advice from a ghost,” Ethan snapped.
“Chill, dude. Is that everything?” he asked, jerking his chin at the two bags.
“Yeah. Come on.”
Ethan locked up the apartment, poured his overflowing mailbox into the top of one of his bags, and drove them back across town to the townhouse. A quick check of the downstairs revealed no dead women waiting for him, and when Ethan turned to Adam he found the ghost no where to be found.
“Adam?”
Nothing.
He checked the time on his phone. By Ethan’s reckoning, he’d managed to stay visible for just over two hours.
First things first, he carried his clothes to the laundry room and started a load, in part to get rid of the musty smell they’d gathered from being locked up in his closet since summer, and secondly because he liked the smell of Pat’s laundry detergent, it reminded him of…well, it wasn’t a constant reminder of his own laundry, if nothing else.
After that, he made himself a sandwich—ham and cheese with a little mustard because they needed to go grocery shopping—and started a pot of coffee brewing, eating while he waited. He carried his coffee into the living room and unpacked his magic supplies, sorting and grouping everything so that he had an idea what he owned, then he organized the books. There was probably more on ghosts and manifestations in his mother’s collection, but the task of sorting through those when he still hadn’t decided what he wanted to do with them…
“Ugh.”
One step at a time, he thought, tearing the second half of his sandwich into ragged, unappetizing bites.
He curled up on the couch and started reading.