Chapter 3
“Get off me.” I shoved the EMT’s hand aside, and a jolt of pain washed up my arm with the movement.
Hot saliva filled the area under my tongue, bringing with it the burning taste of bile.
I swallowed it.There was no time to throw up, no time to let the pain pass. I had to keep moving. Keep pace with gurney. Keep the thread of magic steady. Something warm and sticky dripped into my eye. I wiped it away with the back of my hand, leaving a fresh streak of red on my forearm—the smear of blood was barely worth noticing compared to the other blood on me, most of which wasn’t mine.
No, not my blood. John’s. From a bullet aimed at me.
“Miss, please,” the EMT hounding me said. He reached for my shoulder. “You need to follow me—”
I shrugged him off. “If I release this charm, we’ll have an artery geyser. Again. Back off.”
“You—”
I wasn’t listening. All my attention was on keeping my fingers in contact with the charm. Thankfully, one of the reporters had been carrying a healing charm. The charm had kept John alive while we waited for the paramedics, but it wasn’t designed to hold an artery intact.
Above my hand, John’s face was pale, damp. Come on. I milked my nearly depleted ring for more energy, boosting the borrowed charm.
Time moved in uneven jerks as I stumbled beside the gurney, away from the Central Precinct steps, toward the street. Then we were at the ambulance, John being lifted inside. I followed, sliding across the metal bench opposite the paramedic. The doors slammed and the ambulance lurched into motion, the screaming siren filling my ears.
As the medic strapped an oxygen mask over John’s face, I siphoned the last drop of magic from my ring.
Then there was nothing else.
Blood bubbled around the edges of the charmed disk.
Damn. “He needs a clotting spell.”
“I thought—” The medic looked at the overloading charm, then grabbed a large adhesive bandage with an OMIH symbol stamped on the front. “On the count of three. One …Two …”
Three.
I jerked my hand away, taking the disk with me. The wound in John’s throat oozed in the second before the medic slapped the charmed bandage in place.
It shouldn’t have oozed. Arteries spray.
A monotonous screeching filled the air. The heart monitor—flatlined.
No.
The medic ripped John’s shirt open, exposing his chest. Then he twisted, grabbing a pair of defibrillator paddles. He pressed them to John’s skin. “Clear.”
John’s body jerked. Blood soaked into the gauzy charm at his throat.
My tongue filled my mouth, too big to swallow around, to breathe around. The monotonous beeping didn’t let up. Please no. I couldn’t watch, couldn’t look away. I grabbed John’s hand. It was damp, clammy.
“Clear!”
The medic knocked my arm aside, then pressed the paddles to John’s chest again.
His torso vaulted a few inches in the air. The beeping broke, erratic sounds echoing in the small space.The electronic beep fell into a steady pattern again.
I let out a breath, and as if on cue, John’s chest also lifted.The oxygen mask over his face fogged. His breath rattled, his chest lifting in shallow lurches, but he was breathing. I looked away.
“That bullet was meant for me.”
“What?” The medic glanced up from where he was adding gauze to the charm on John’s neck.
I shook my head. I wasn’t talking to him. My gaze locked on the dark figure in the farthest corner of the ambulance. Death leaned against the back doors; his corded arms were crossed over the expanse of his chest.
His eyelids hooded his gaze, but I could feel him watching me.
“Don’t do it,” I told him.
Death didn’t move, but the medic leaned over John’s body. He looked from me to Death’s corner—a corner which probably appeared empty to him.
He pulled out a penlight, flashing it in my eyes.
“Ma’am, can you please focus on my finger.”
I did, but for only a moment before my gaze snapped back to Death. “He won’t die,” I said.
“We’re doing everything we can,” the medic said as he examined the gash in my forehead.
I met his eyes then, my hand gripping John’s clammy palm. “He won’t die.”
———
“I tripped. I told you.”
“You want me to believe you just happened to trip out of the way of a bullet?” Officer Hanson tapped his ballpoint pen against his notebook.
I tugged the pale hospital blanket tighter around me.
Several hours ago it had been a heated blanket, but now the charm keeping it warm had given out, and it was an ineffective bit of fabric guarding me from the frigid hospital air. The blanket was doing better than the openbacked gown, though. Shivering did little to improve my already rotten mood, and I forced myself to take a deep breath before answering Officer Hanson.
“I fell. I don’t know any other way to explain that to you.”
“Ms. Craft, you had half the city’s cameras pointed at you when the shot went off. I saw the film. You dove down those steps.”
My head snapped up.“Do you think I’d have this”—I lifted my soft-casted wrist—“and a dozen stitches in my forehead if I ‘dove’ out of the way like you say?”
He leaned forward, towering over me, and tapped the pen to his pad, a staccato of cheap plastic hitting paper.
I wasn’t impressed or intimidated. I was just irritated.
In fact, I’d had enough with his looming.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood.
The muscles in my thighs ached, my back protesting.
But, barefoot, I stood at eye level with Officer Hanson.
“I told you. I. Fell.”
His pen hung in midair a moment before tapping one more harsh note. Then his gaze dropped, and he closed the notebook. “Listen, Alex, we don’t think you had anything to do with it. We’re just trying to figure out what happened. Did you hear the shot? Did you see something? A suspicious car; a shadow on a roof? What made you dive down those stairs?”
“I—” What was I supposed to say: Death pushed me out of the way? That was a little outside a soul collector’s job description. No one would believe it. Hell, I barely did. “I’ve told you everything I remember.”
His lips pursed, but I was saved from his response by the arrival of my attending physician. He stepped around the curtain separating my bed from the rest of the ER and smiled. “Good news, Miss Craft. Your CT scan is clean, so I’m signing off on your release.” He made a note in my chart. “I want you wearing that brace for the next few weeks. Your stitches are dissolvable, so they won’t need to be removed. Just keep the wound clean. Any questions?”
I smiled. “Can you prescribe a ride home?”
I was joking—mostly—but Officer Hanson cleared his throat.“The sheriff thinks the shooting has something to with Amanda Holliday’s trial.The idea of a shade on the witness stand has caused a lot of controversy. The sheriff’s arranged for an officer to see you home and for an escort to the courthouse in the morning.”
“Uh … Thanks?” Could have mentioned that earlier.
You know, while he was grilling me like a suspect. I rubbed my good hand against my shoulder.The scratches still itched, but the doctor had assured me they weren’t serious. I looked up at Hanson. Hopefully he wasn’t my ride.
The doctor returned my chart to the foot of the bed and smiled. “A nurse will be by to check you out shortly. Have a good night, and try not to jump down any more stairs.”
I showed some teeth. “Right.” Does everyone think I dove out of the way of that bullet? I doubted I had the balls to take a bullet for someone else, but if I had known what was about to happen, I sure as hell would have warned John.
The doctor closed the curtain behind him, and I turned back to Hanson, waiting for the grilling to begin again.
He looked as weary as I felt. “If you remember anything, you’ll call the station?”
“First thing,” I promised, and I would. John was my friend. I’d do anything I could to help find who shot him.
Hell, it was in my best interest for the shooter to be behind bars if he’d truly been aiming at me. I’d call if I came up with even the thinnest clue. Not that I’d forgotten anything, but the next time I caught up with Death, I had a bagful of questions for him.
Hanson rubbed his eyes and put the small notepad in his breast pocket. “Go home and get some rest. An officer is waiting for you in the lobby.” His footsteps echoed on the linoleum as he disappeared around the curtain.
“Wait, what about some clothes?” Mine had been confiscated as evidence. I padded across the floor and ripped the curtain aside. “And I want to see John.”
Hanson was nowhere in sight, but I startled a nurse heading my way. Her eyes flew wide, but her smile never slipped as she held out a small pile of fabric. “These will get you home.”
Five minutes later I was dressed in purple polka-dot scrubs that fit like a pillowcase. At least the police had let me keep my boots. The knee-high black leather hid the fact the scrubs hit somewhere between my ankle and calf.
I signed the forms the checkout nurse handed me without reading them. Was this visit going to be expensive?
Of course. Could I afford it? Nope. I scrawled my name by another red X.
“Ms. Craft, I’m sorry, but your insurance is being rejected.”
I sighed. I assumed it would be—I’d stopped paying my insurance premium months ago. The attempt had been worth a shot, though. I took the worthless plastic card from her and dropped it in my purse. “You can bill me, right?”
She gave me even more forms. Once my signature was officially worn-out, I returned her clipboard. Only one more thing to do.
“Can you direct me to John Matthews’s room?”
The nurse’s smile wavered, and my stomach clenched.
No, he couldn’t have … Death wouldn’t have …
He would. That was his job.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Detective John Matthews. The cop I came in with. The one with the throat wound?”
She nodded, but the frown stayed firmly in place.
“He’s out of surgery, but I’m afraid visiting hours are over.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Who gives a rat’s ass about visiting hours?
Apparently my nurse.
“You’re welcome to visit him tomorrow between nine a.m. and six p.m. Now, I believe the officer said your ride was waiting in the lobby.” She pointed at a pair of double doors.
Right. I flashed her a tight smile before turning away.
I’ll find the ICU on my own.
I trudged toward the lobby on numb legs. John was out of surgery. That was a good sign. He’d be okay now.
I bit the inside of my lip and clenched the stiff hem of the scrubs.
Maybe he’d be okay. Only maybe. Death leaving a soul in a body didn’t mean the person stopped dying—I’d witnessed that firsthand.
A shiver ran down my spine as I pushed open the lobby door. A gleaming pair of elevators waited on one wall. What floor was the ICU on? I could probably slip in without anyone noticing. At the very least I’d get to see John’s wife, Maria. I needed to talk to her. To tell her, to explain … what exactly? I dodged a bullet, and it hit your husband instead? Another shiver crawled over my skin, tracing a clammy trail across the back of my neck.
That was more than just drafty hospital air.
I flipped around, expecting Death’s familiar form.
Boy, do I have questions for—
It wasn’t Death.
A ghost stood behind me, his incorporeal form shimmering with unearthly light. A hospital wasn’t a completely unexpected place to find a displaced ghost, all things considered, but I recognized this ghost’s slumped shoulders, his unkempt hair, and his thick-framed glasses. The ghost from the morgue? What the hell is it doing here?
He frowned, his whole face pinching as he noticed me looking at him, though by the intensity of his stare, it was obvious he’d been watching me. Was he following me?
I didn’t have time to find out. He vanished, his presence slipping farther into the land of the dead. While my psyche always gazed across the chasm separating the dead and the living, I’d have had to drop my shields to follow the ghost, and I was so not exposing my unshielded mind in a public place, especially a hospital with hundreds of souls caught on the line between life and death.
“Ms. Craft?”
I startled at the sound of the gruff male voice. Dismissing the ghost, I turned on my heels, searching for the speaker.
Oh no. My karma surely wasn’t that bad.
Detective Andrews pushed off the wall where he’d been leaning. His stride consumed the distance between us, and he smiled, his full lips softening the severe angles of his face. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes. I didn’t bother returning the false-friendly gesture.
“I take it you’re my ride,” I said, attempting a cocky eyebrow lift. The sutured gash over my eye prevented the movement.
I received a grunt in reply as he strolled past me. Oh yeah, this was going to be a fun trip. I really shouldn’t have hoped against Hanson being my ride. I shouldered my purse higher and fell in step behind Andrews. Since when did homicide detectives handle witness protection—or whatever I was considered? I still wanted to see John and Maria, but I got the distinct impression that if I told Detective Andrews to wait in the lobby while I snuck into ICU after hours, he’d haul me out of the hospital in handcuffs.
Detective Andrews’s path bypassed the sliding glass entrance. Where were we going? He can’t seriously be about to interrogate me. Again. I glanced back at the doors. “Aren’t we leaving?”
He didn’t slow down. “The last person who walked through a gauntlet of reporters with you got shot.”
My shoulders lifted in an involuntary cringe, and I forced them back down.Way to rub it in, jerk. He couldn’t have just said we were sneaking around reporters. Oh, no—he had to bring up John. I wrapped my arms around myself, bunching the oversized scrubs.
Andrews pushed open a door leading to a dimly lit corridor. Cinder-block walls lined the hall, and shadows ate away the corners. I hesitated. Years of using gravesight had eroded my night vision, and navigating unfamiliar corridors shrouded in darkness wasn’t high on my to-do list. Unfortunately, the detective continued without pause, and in a matter of steps the gloom swallowed his wide shoulders from sight. I hurried to catch up.
“So, how did you get drafted for escort service?” Not that I really cared, but I needed to fill the space with a sound other than the echo of our footsteps on the cement.
“I asked,” he said without inflection. “This is our door.” He pushed it open.
The door led to a multistory parking garage. A welllit garage, thank goodness. As I stepped out of the corridor and the door swung shut behind me, the muggy air in the garage turned prickly.
A spell.
I skittered sideways, and my already-sore shoulder made impact with a body that hadn’t been there the moment before. Or at least, hadn’t appeared to be there.
Only I would jump into a spell, instead of away from it.
I reeled back.The concealment charm broke, and the petite woman who’d been hiding behind it—and whom I’d bumped into—narrowed her eyes before swiping a hand through her dark hair. It fell around her shoulders without a strand out of place, and she turned on her smile, thrusting a mic in my face.
“Ms. Craft, why do you think you were shot at today?”
I blinked dumbly at Lusa Duncan, the star reporter for Witch Watch. Behind her, her cameraman’s red recording light blinked.
My first thought was to wonder if I’d thanked her for the healing spell she’d given me earlier. She was the reporter who’d had the charm that kept John from bleeding out on the Central Precinct steps. Then I registered what she’d asked, and I scowled. I was about to appear on the most popular news show in Nekros City wearing nasty purple scrubs.
I shot a desperate glance at Detective Andrews. He reholstered his gun and tugged his coat closed over the rig. Then he stepped between Lusa and me, knocking her mic aside.
“No comment,” he said, throwing an arm over my shoulder and turning me to march away from the reporter.
Lusa didn’t give up that easily. Her heels clicked on the concrete, trailing us. “Will you still be raising Amanda Holliday’s shade in the morning?”
“Yes.” No way in hell was I going to let some closedminded gunman scare me into not raising Amanda.
My answer seemed to encourage Lusa to throw more questions. “Do you think the shooting had anything to do with what you learned from Coleman’s body?”
Detective Andrews’s fingers dug into my shoulder. A warning? I forced myself to keep moving, to not glance back. I wasn’t an idiot. Lusa was digging. She had no idea whom I’d raised in the morgue. Only John and Andrews knew for certain that I’d so much as seen Coleman’s body. John was in the ICU, and I had serious doubts Andrews had told anyone yet—especially the press.
Detective Andrews yanked a ring of keys from his pocket and hit a button. A car ahead of us flashed its headlights, chirping as it unlocked. My steps faltered. It gave Lusa a second to catch up, but I couldn’t help it.
The overhead lights reflected off the shiny finish of a red convertible, its top down, the black leather interior spotless.
That was so not police issue.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to gawk. I slid into the passenger seat, the soft leather engulfing me. Andrews climbed into the other side, and the car cranked with the gentlest purr.
“Nice car.” A major understatement.
Andrews threw the convertible in gear, and I trailed a hand over the bright red finish. Probably fresh off the lot—unlike my little hatchback, which had been factory assembled in the same decade witches came out of the broom closet.
The sharp echoes of Lusa’s heels bounced off the cement columns as she rounded the car next to us, her mic extended.“Ms. Craft, did Coleman name his shooter? Do you think he was the same person who shot at you?”
Andrews reversed out of the parking spot in one fluid movement, forcing Lusa to jump back. Her mic hit the pavement, and Andrews switched gears.
The car zoomed forward.
“Call me!” Lusa yelled in our wake. I glanced at the sideview mirror in time to see her toss something.
No way would it reach us.
The small dot of what she threw grew larger in the mirror. It was catching up. The car turned the corner of the garage, and whatever she’d thrown followed a moment later.
I twisted in my seat. A pink origami crane flew over the back bumper and across the open rear seat. Its little triangular wings beat the air at a frantic speed, but Andrews was still accelerating, and the crane began to fall behind. I reached out, snatching it.
As I settled in my seat again the little crane unfolded, turning into a flat rectangle in my palm. In the center of the paper, in glossy black letters, was printed “Lusa Duncan, Witch Watch” and her phone number. A homing paper crane was quite an expensive spell for something as disposable as a business card, but I guess Lusa was used to her quarry running from her. I opened my other senses and scanned the card for additional spells.
Nothing. It was just paper again.The fact that she hadn’t tried to sneak a spy spell into the car, and that she’d helped when John was shot, improved my opinion of her. I dropped the card into my purse.
“I live in the Glen,” I said as we reached the entrance of the parking garage.
Andrews made a left out of the garage without a word. The sky glowed rusty red from the city lights, but in my damaged vision, shadows clawed at the massive skyscrapers dominating downtown Nekros. I crossed my arms over my chest and angled my shoulders away from Andrews.There was only one reason I could think of for him to volunteer to drive me home, and I was not in the mood to answer any more questions.
Not that he cared.
“What did you see when you looked at Coleman’s body?” Andrews asked before we reached the interstate.
Oh no, he did not get to pump me for information after kicking me out of the morgue. I readjusted my weight and stared at the darkness consuming the front window. “Do you know the corner of Chimney Swift and Robin?”
His eyes cut across the seat. “I know where you live. Tell me about Coleman.”
“You want to know about Coleman? Watch the recording.”
Light from a streetlamp trailed along his clenched jaw.
“I’ve seen it. You lost control of one shade and claimed Coleman’s body was enchanted despite the fact that a board-certified sensitive detected no spell. On top of that, you claimed the body might not be a body at all.”
I cringed, but tried to hide it under a shrug. “You’re right. I must be a hack magic eye. Why are you asking a hack questions?”
He slammed on the brakes, and the car jerked to a stop. My seat belt locked, but not before I braced myself on the dash. Pain spread along my casted arm. After the abrupt stop, Andrews rolled the car gently to the shoulder of the road.
We were between streetlamps, and the buildings around us were dark, so I could make out the man beside me only by the soft blue glow of the car’s controls. I swallowed, hard.
Andrews regarded me with narrowed eyes that took on an eerie cast in the limited light. “Either you’re a con artist who’s been enjoying the limelight a little too much, or you found something everyone else missed.”
I met his gaze. Held it. “Should I guess which you’re inclined to believe?”
He frowned but didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched. It filled the space between our seats, turned solid. A vehicle whizzed by, flooding us with its headlights, and I winced. When my vision cleared, Andrews had looked away.
“Let’s try this again.”The leather seat squeaked as he turned. “I’m Detective Falin Andrews, lead investigator on the Coleman case.”
The shadowed outline of his hand appeared between us. Shaking hadn’t gone well the first time we’d tried it.
Still, I took his hand—his gloved hand, but in a car this hot, driving gloves were just another indulgence. His handshake was firm but professional.
“Falin,” I said, since he’d given me his first name.
His fingers flexed around mine. “Alex.” He dropped my hand. “Now, what can you tell me about Coleman’s body?”
“Sorry. One handshake doesn’t admit you to the good graces club.”
“But one phrase said in anger—justified anger that someone was tampering with evidence in my case—is enough to bar me from it?”
I smiled at him. “First impressions suck that way.”
His shoulders rolled back.“You have pertinent information about my case. I could arrest you for obstruction of justice.”
And on to threats.
I sighed and glanced at the digital clock in the dash.
“Late” had come and gone already. I definitely wouldn’t be contacting Casey tonight. I’d have wait to tell her what I’d learned. For now, I just wanted to get home, feed my dog, and post a thread on the Dead Club forum to see if anyone had ever encountered a violent shade like Bethany’s or anything at all like Coleman’s body. Not to mention the fact I needed to recharge my ring before the trial, which was—I did the math quickly—in about seven hours.
Well, might as well get this over with. Suppressing a yawn, I rubbed the aching scratches made by Bethany’s shade. Then, taking a deep breath, I tried to explain the spell I’d seen on the governor’s body, describing as best I could the twisting glyphs and the way my grave magic slid around Coleman. As I spoke, Falin eased back onto the road.
“And you have no idea what the spell does?” he asked.
“I sort of got interrupted.”
He let that pass.“Did Detective Matthews hire you to look at Coleman’s body?”
I bit my bottom lip. Would John get in more or less trouble if raising the governor’s shade had been his idea? I must have deliberated too long because Falin turned toward me.
I stared straight ahead. “Coleman was a favor. The only shade John asked me to raise was Bethany.”
“The ritual victim.”
Ritual? Did he mean like a methodical serial killer, or did he actually mean she was killed by a witch as part of a spell? John hadn’t mentioned any magical connections, but something had seriously damaged Bethany’s shade, so it wasn’t much of a jump. I filed the information away. It might help me figure out how I’d “lost control,” as Andrews put it.
We drove in silence for a while. As the skyscrapers vanished behind us the low hum of magic slowly infiltrated the air around the car. Not active magic, but the feel of the Glen.
The Glen, or Witches Glen, as it was called in some circles, was a clump of suburban sprawl surrounding Magic Quarter. The Quarter not only was the best place to shop for spells and supplies but also included the city’s only private witchcraft prep school, a fae bar, and our local headquarters of the Organization for Magically Inclined Humans.
The convertible hit the bridge crossing the Sionan River, and the thrum of magic intensified. The Sionan River separated downtown Nekros from the Quarter and the Glen beyond. If you went west of the Sionan and weren’t headed out of town, you were either magical or in the market for magic. Whether witches had originally built in the Glen because of the magical resonance, or the hum had grown from decades of magic being worked in a concentrated area, no other place in the city felt the same, and I relaxed as we drew closer.
“Who hired you?” Falin asked as he turned into my neighborhood.
“A client.”
“His name?”
I didn’t answer. Under normal circumstances, I didn’t give out my client information. I definitely wasn’t going to just hand Casey’s name to Andrews. Not only was she family, but if word got out … My father and I might not see eye to eye on, well, anything, but I didn’t walk around intentionally trying to cause scandals for him.
Falin pulled into my driveway, and I swung open the door before the car rolled to a stop. I didn’t make it all the way out.
Falin grabbed my arm, his gloved fingers closing around my wrist.“Who hired you to examine Coleman’s body?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Who knew you were looking at Coleman’s body?”
“Besides you?”
His frown pulled his face down, making the shadows under his cheeks sharper.“Ms. Craft, while I’m sure your charming personality endears you to many people, is there anyone you know who would want to kill you?”
I froze, a chill crawling down my spine. “The sheriff thinks the shooting had something to do with the Holliday trial.”
“That is one possibility. Who is your client? Who knew you were looking at either body today?”
I shrugged his arm away and climbed out of the car.
The list of people who knew I was at the morgue was short: just the cops who’d given me a ride, John, Tommy, Falin, and, of course, Casey—and maybe my father, if she’d told him. No one on the list was likely to fire a gun into a crowd in front of the Central Precinct. The shooting had to be connected to the Holliday trail. Some nut didn’t want a shade to take the stand.
“Thank you for the ride, Detective,” I said, slamming the door behind me.
Unfortunately, slamming my door didn’t keep him from opening his.
He slid out from behind the wheel. “Who hired you? Don’t force me to get a warrant for your client list.”
More threats? Okay, so I had been poking around his case. But, seriously?
I turned, ready to feed him a line of legalese about clients and privacy, but the words died on my tongue as a frigid wind lifted the hair off my neck. The temperature was still pushing the mid-nineties, with no breeze to speak of to cool the night. So, the tickling gust of cold air along my back was way out of place.
I spun around in time to see a shimmering pair of slumped, plaid-covered shoulders and thick glasses before the ghost disappeared. The ghost, the same ghost, from the morgue and then the hospital. Here. In my front yard. I cracked my shields just the slightest bit, so that my grave-sight overlay the world but didn’t replace it. As the patina of decay washed over the yard the grass was simultaneously healthy green and withered brown, but there was no sign of the ghost. He pulled back deep.
Tightening my shields again, I frowned at the spot where the ghost had been. I was vaguely aware that Detective Andrews was speaking, but I waved him off and headed for the stairs to my loft.
“Ms. Craft!”
“Good night, Detective,” I said, all but running up the driveway. I was thankful he didn’t follow me.
I bypassed the front door—I rented the efficiency over the garage, so I had my own entrance. A path of evenly placed stepping-stones veered from the sidewalk, snaking around the side of the house. A spell on the flat stones made the pathway twinkle softly. As I stepped on the first stone the next lit up. The spell had been a birthday gift from my housemates last year when they realized how much damage my grave-sight had done to my night vision. I was more grateful than I let on.
The streetlights failed to reach the side of the house, and, as I hadn’t planned to stay out so late, I hadn’t turned my porch light on, so the glimmering stones were my only source of light. Two steps after rounding the corner of the house, I stopped. I couldn’t have been far from the stairs leading to my loft, but the next stone was only a small sliver of light. I squinted. Something dark enough to absorb the spelled light covered the stone.
The bit of light that escaped illuminated a pair of large paws sporting wickedly long talons.
“I’ve told you about blocking the path,” I said, stepping off my stone.
The path dimmed, leaving me in what my bad eyes perceived as total darkness. I reached out, my hand finding the cool, stone head of our resident gargoyle, Fred, a three-foot, granite, winged cat. It had taken a liking to the spell on the stepping-stones, which was a real nuisance in a time like this. Using the gargoyle as a pivot point, I stepped around the hulking stone body until the path lit under my feet again. The glowing stones led right up to the base of the stairs.
My sore muscles protested the one-story climb, and by the time I reached my door, my body felt like an overstretched rubber band. A sticky sweat made the scrubs cling to my skin as I fumbled my keys into the lock. As I turned the doorknob a chill crawled down my neck. The ghost?
I spun around.
The ghost stood directly behind me, but I caught only a glimmer of his shape before he vanished again. What is going on?
Frowning, I pushed open the door, feeling my wards slide over my skin as I stepped inside. PC, my loyal—and recently very expensive—companion greeted me with a wagging tail and an enthusiastic yip. Hairless Chinese cresteds were pathetic in a cute way on good days, but with one of his forelegs in a bright blue cast, he was downright pitiable. I scooped him up awkwardly, my own brace in the way.
“Sorry I’m so late,” I said as he licked my chin. “But look, we both have a cast now.”
Okay, yeah, that wasn’t really a selling point. I set him down and watched him hobble around. He was moving extremely well for having broken the leg only a week ago. The cast would be off in a couple of days—long before the ER doctor would agree it was time for me to take my brace off. Magically enhanced medicine worked fast.
After watching PC a moment more, I turned back to the door and twisted the bolt lock. My house wards locked down with the bolt, buzzing lightly, and my thoughts circled back to the ghost. I wonder if the wards will keep him out? They weren’t specifically designed to keep out ghosts, though ghosts were mostly willpower and energy, so if he was malicious, they just might bar him. He’d tried to tell me something at the morgue, but now he hid whenever I noticed him. What did he want?
And why the hell am I being haunted?