Chapter 5
“You stupid Web page.” I typed another command, but it was no good. I couldn’t hit the back door into the site. Disgusted, I tabbed over to a new page. I’d been attempting to find the original version of the leaked video for almost two hours, but the file had spread like a virus over the Internet. News stations, blogs, boards, torrents—it was everywhere.
My phone buzzed beside my laptop, and I glanced at the display. The number wasn’t familiar. I hit the button to send it straight to voice mail, which was probably full by now. Every reporter in the nation had apparently found my number. I was surprised I hadn’t heard from Casey yet. With any luck, it would be a couple of more hours before she saw the video. I wanted more information before I talked to her.
PC, who’d been asleep in my lap, lifted his whitecrested head and looked at me, clearly annoyed with my outburst. He stood and circled, but apparently couldn’t get comfortable. His back legs bent as he prepared to launch himself from my lap.
“No, you don’t,” I said, almost absently, as I grabbed him and gently set him down on the floor. His nails clicked and his cast thumped on the hard wood as he moseyed over to check his bowl. His empty bowl—he’d already eaten all the chips I’d snagged from Mac’s.
“Dinner later,” I told him, then turned back to the computer. A chilled wind danced over my exposed shoulders.
That damn ghost.
I’d had about enough of his haunting gig. I flipped around. The ghost stood directly behind me, leaning forward as if he’d been reading my computer screen. My knees brushed his leg as my chair spun, and he jerked back, his eyes flying wide.
I expected him to disappear, to hide deep in the land of the dead as he had a half dozen times in the past twenty-four hours. Right now I was irritated enough to follow him across the chasm.
But he didn’t fade. His gaze flicked from where my knees had brushed him, up to my face. Then his lips shot into silent motion. I shook my head. Oh, so he’s finally ready to talk?
His hand shot out, and grave-cold fingers wrapped around the bones of my wrist.
I yelped, leaping off the barstool. It swayed and crashed forward through the ghost, slamming into my calf as it clattered to the floor.
The ghost’s grip never wavered. He stepped sideways, out of the rungs of the stool. His mouth never stopped moving.
Not that I could hear him.
“Get your hands off me before I exorcise your ghostly ass.” Okay, so I lacked the magic to back up the threat.
But he didn’t know that.
Or maybe he did. His grip tightened, his fingers pressing into my flesh. His lips moved in slow, exaggerated words, and he pointed at me with his free hand.
Right—he wanted me to do something. Well, I wanted him to let go.
I concentrated on my mental shields, focusing on the wall of living vines that enclosed my psyche and separated me from the land of the dead. There were always gaps between the vines, small holes that let me gaze across the chasm and interact with ghosts and soul collectors.
Sealing my shields completely was exhausting and rather like closing my eyes and sticking my fingers in my ears. But it wasn’t impossible.
I visualized the vines slithering tight around each other. In my mind’s eye, dagger-length thorns sprouted from the green tendrils, the red-tipped barbs a clear warning.
The ghost’s fingers slipped through my wrist, leaving grave-chill clinging to my bones. His shimmering form faded to translucent. He frowned, staring at his hand. He reached out again, and again his hand passed through my arm.
I smiled. Judging by the way the ghost backed up, it wasn’t my most welcoming smile. He held up his hands, palms forward, and mouthed something, which could have been anything from “I’m sorry” to “please help.”
One day I had to learn to read lips. But not today.
I crossed my arms over my chest and took a step back.
“Let’s establish some ground rules. First of all, I’m not in the business of helping wandering souls exact final revenge or pass messages from beyond the grave to loved ones. Got it?”
His frown deepened, but he nodded.
“Good. Now, I’m guessing you started following me at the morgue. Do you know something about one of the bodies?”
His lips parted and he nodded vigorously enough that he had to push his shimmering glasses back up his nose.
Okay; I was starting to get somewhere. “Which body?”
His mouth fell into motion, his arms emphasizing what was obviously a lively explanation. I held up a hand to stop the silent rant, and the ghost slumped his shoulders, an inaudible sigh disturbing his shaggy hair.
Right—yes-or-no questions, Alex. Duh. I cleared my throat. “Do you know something about Governor Coleman’s death?”
The ghost cocked his head to the side, as if considering my question. Then he nodded, one slow rise and fall of his head.
Well, that wasn’t the most reassuring or enthusiastic response, but it was better than nothing.
A drop of sweat dripped from my hairline, the moisture carving a line down to my chin. I couldn’t keep my shields locked this tight for long. I nodded to the corner of the room and motioned for the ghost to follow as I made my way to the circle etched in the floor. Residual power buzzed at the edge of the circle, despite the fact the barrier was currently dormant.
“In you go,” I said, pointing at the ghost.
He scowled at the etched line and shoved his balled fists into the front pockets of his baggy jeans.
“Hey, you want to talk to me? You go in the circle. That, or you find some other grave witch to haunt.” I seriously hoped he didn’t take me up on the latter if he honestly knew anything about Coleman, but he’d already learned I was tangible to him, and if I dropped my shields enough to hear him, we’d be very real to each other. I wasn’t risking it if he wasn’t trapped.
His inaudible huff made his shoulders slump farther, but he trudged into the circle. I channeled magic from my ring into the barrier before he could change his mind. As the translucent blue wall materialized between us I smiled and eased back on my shields. My mental vines uncoiled, and I coaxed them into opening more gaps than normal, enough so that while I wasn’t straddling the chasm between the living and the dead the way I was when I raised shades, my psyche was still reaching pretty far across it.
I blinked as my grave-sight turned on, and the decaying world of the dead superimposed itself over my apartment. The purgatory world’s crumbling plaster and weak gray light juxtaposed themselves over my solid beige walls, both real and not. I focused on the ghost.
His hair was a deep chestnut brown, and the frames of his glasses were the thick black plastic that tended to emerge and fade from fashion among sophisticates and emo kids alike. The flannel shirt he wore was almost as drab and colorless now as it had been when I was looking with my shields in place, but the baggy jeans were deep blue.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The ghost frowned at me, and at first I thought he wasn’t going to answer, which would have been ironic considering how he’d been yelling while I couldn’t hear him, but finally he shrugged and said, “Roy Pearson.”
I nodded acknowledgment, but it wasn’t a name I’d ever heard mentioned at the station. Not that there was any reason for me to know about most of the corpses that passed through the morgue. Ghosts were more adaptable than shades, their appearance often reverting to their perception of themselves as opposed to the actual state in which they died, but if Roy was truly a male in his early thirties in decent health—well, decent if he weren’t dead—he’d probably wound up in the morgue by foul play.
It would have been polite to ask about him and how he’d died, but he’d been haunting me, I’d been shot at, and I had a swarm of reporters buzzing around. I wasn’t feeling polite. “So, Roy, what do you know about Coleman’s body? I’m guessing it’s stock, right? Something glamoured or otherwise spelled to look like Coleman?”
“Coleman.” His lips curled back as though he could barely stand the feel of the name passing over his tongue.
“Everyone keeps going on about Governor Coleman.”
He looked at me, his eyes bright behind the glasses.
“You bring justice to the dead, right? Like you did for that little girl.”
I frowned. “Little girl” had to refer to Amanda Holliday.
I’d already told Roy I didn’t get involved in avenging the dead. For one thing, ghosts were sentient, so they had agendas and could lie. For another, they didn’t have a currency.
“Listen; I’d like to help you, but—”
He cut me off. “That body everyone is so worked up about? It’s real, all right. It just doesn’t belong to Coleman. It’s mine.”