Dweller on the Threshold (13 page)

Ghostly hands came around my throat. They shouldn’t have had this much power! I closed my eyes and concentrated on relaxing and trying to breathe. Breaking free of the ghostly paralysis would take everything in me. I’d done it before. When I was a kid. Or I could try to just hold my breath until Fred or Phro returned—

And with that thought, it was gone.

I gasped in air, blinking up at Fred. Absolute fury molded his features, turning him into a stranger. In the place of my mild-mannered, sometimes smart-aleck spirit guide, I saw a man.
A different man.
He went hazy, eyebrows looking darker, bushier, then it was him again, only furious. He turned and heaved something toward the wall. A shadowy hole opened, there was this sucking noise, then the hole quickly closed.

I sat up, chest on fire. Dizziness spun the room in circles twice before it settled. I put a hand on my chest, feeling the spot where that creature had broken a rib. It didn’t feel broken now, though. Just really, really sore.

“Where did it go?” I managed to gasp past my sore throat.

“You don’t want to know,” he said, rubbing his palms on his jeans.

I nodded slowly. “No, guess not.” I rubbed my eyes. “Goddess, that hasn’t happened since I was a kid.”

Phro, who’d just come into the room, looked at the dark, shadowy place still fading into the wall. She frowned. “What hasn’t happened since you were a kid?”

“She was hagged,” Fred said.

She scowled at the wall. “Glad you got rid of it.”

He nodded, his expression drawn. “Didn’t have a choice.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad, you know,” she told him. “It made its choice. Beri comes first.”

“Hey,” I said, still taking deep breaths. It felt as if my lungs had been turned inside out. “I’m still here, ya know.”

Phro came farther into the room and stopped by the end of the bed. “This happened when you were a kid? Before I came along or after?”

I shrugged. “Before and after. But I wasn’t—what do you call it? Hagged? This was different from before. When I was a kid, I never saw that thing sitting on my chest.” I rubbed my throat. The sore areas were going to make one hell of a bruise tomorrow. “What happened to me as a kid was a sleep paralysis thing. Saw a show on it.”

Phro snorted. “Sleep paralysis is the scientist’s way of explaining hagging.” Her eyes narrowed. “How old were you when it started?”

“I don’t know—three or four, I suppose. What exactly is
hagging
?”

Fred cleared his throat. “Just what you saw. A spirit sitting on your chest. Some suck up energy, some press down. But they all make the victim feel as if they can’t move.”

Phro sat on the edge of my bed. “Doing that to anyone is cruel, but to kids? It can kill them. Scare them to death.”

Fred stared at the clear wall. Nothing but two pretty ocean prints there now. “Kills adults, too. Remember that whole SUNDS thing after the Vietnam War?”

“Those people were hagged?” I asked. I’d seen a documentary about the group of people who had moved here after the Vietnam War and began to die in their sleep. Doctors had called it Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome—or SUNDS—since they couldn’t find any reason for the deaths. Quite a few of them had complained about strange happenings in the night.

He shrugged. “That’s the word on the street.”

I groaned. “Do you guys really have a street?” I held up my hand. “Never mind. Don’t want to know that, either. Jeez, aren’t you guys worried that sharing too much info with me is going to screw up my own afterlife?”

“No.” They both said simultaneously.

“Thanks for caring.” I slid my shaky legs off the bed and stood. Waiting a second to make sure I didn’t keel over, I nodded my head toward the door. “I’m going to get something to drink.”

I stumbled into Elsa’s kitchen and poured a glass of milk. It was my comfort thing. That or coffee, and coffee at—I glanced at the clock—two in the morning was never a good idea. Not unless I wanted to—like—clean or something.

I looked at Fred, who stood like a good little boy in the doorway. “So, this
hagging
is actually a spirit sitting on my chest?”

Fred nodded. “A hostile one.”

I needed more sleep. “I’m so sick of angry dead things.”

Phro appeared in the chair next to me, casually eyeballing the state of her nails. She’d painted them a nice shiny black. Probably to go with the piercings. I could see another new piercing through the thin material of her…I don’t know what you’d call this outfit. A pink cat suit maybe? Whatever it was, it was ugly and it did nothing to hide the circular nipple ring pushing through.
Why would a spirit need a nipple ring?

“Can’t really blame them,” Fred said. “Humans especially. From the time they’re born they’re told ‘You’d better do this or you’ll be tortured throughout eternity.’ It’s a wonder any of them ever get up enough to courage to face death and truly cross over.”

“So why did you come back here if you hate it so much?”

He usually blew this question off when I asked. This time he shrugged. “I’m a guide. It’s a choice. It was either that or end up in the library.” He shuddered. “Scholar, I’m not.”

Phro snorted. “That’s no lie.”

I wished I could smack her. “Be nice.”

“What?” She blinked innocently.

“So why do you think this thing
hagged
me? Now?”
 

“Who knows?” Fred asked. “I doubt it was random, though. Too coincidental.”

“It would be my guess that someone or something doesn’t want Beri going any further in this.”

“You think something powerful sicced a hostile spirit on me?”

They both nodded.

“I wish I hadn’t asked that question.” I meant it. I took a long swallow of cold milk, then said to heck with it and got up to make a pot of coffee. I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon. Just the thought of lying in that bed and hearing that sandpaper sliding sound again gave me the heebie-jeebies.

“Do you guys have any idea how frustrating this is? Here you are with all this knowledge of the afterlife yet you have very few answers.” I slammed a filter into the coffee unit and put eight huge tablespoons of bold, black grounds into it. I wanted the extra kick. Who was I kidding? I needed it.

Phro put her feet on the chair across from her. She didn’t often pull energy from the world around her to interact with physical objects here, so I was surprised when she ran her palms over the smooth wood of the table. “We’re just as frustrated as you are.”

I paused next to the sink, coffee pot dangling from one hand. “Yeah, you look it.”

“Looks are deceiving.”

“Really. You know what else is? You’re really a fucking goddess!
Aphrodite?
I thought you were joking. Damn.” I set down the pot before I broke it. “I can’t believe this. You’re some sort of goddess—wait, the Goddess of Love, no less and you can’t just… I don’t know—spread some of the good stuff around or something?”

Fred snorted. “Good stuff?”

I rounded on him, lifted my finger to point. “You shut up. I mean it. You keep disappearing without telling us where and you’re not sharing everything either. I can tell.”

His mouth snapped shut.

“Why am I stuck with two—
two
—spirit guides who can’t guide? You just hang around and do what? What’s your purpose? What—”

Phro broke in. “What’s yours?”

My mouth opened and closed several times. Good question. I was here, in this world, for some reason. I was different for
some reason
.

It was too much.

I was tired, scared for my sister and I was taking it out on my spirit guides. Yeah, it was frustrating that they didn’t have answers, but it wasn’t their fault. I turned and picked up the coffee pot, calmly filled it with water and slowly poured it into the unit.

Then I leaned forward and rested my forehead on a cabinet. Surprisingly, my arm and leg felt better. Seems Blythe’s agrimony had done the trick. Wished it would have helped with this exhaustion. “Right now, all I need to worry about is keeping Elsa safe. That’s it.”

Fred moved until he stood by my shoulder. “I asked for extra help with her. It was the only thing I could think to do.”

“Thanks. Phro, tell me why you looked so scared when you saw Nikolos.” I straightened away from the cabinet and leaned my hip on the counter. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “He’s really old.”

“Funny. He doesn’t look it.”

“He was alive when I still lived on Mount Olympus—a warrior from Crete. Famous.”

“Crete?” I remembered his mention of an island.
No, surely not.
“Phro, that would make him thousands of years old. He didn’t act like a vampire. Doesn’t look like an elf… how could he be that old?” I narrowed my eyes. “That doesn’t explain your fear. I saw it in that hospital, Phro—you were terrified. Why?”

“Nikolos was famous for massacring an entire village.”

That gave me pause. It could explain the mass of trapped souls. Crossing my arms over my stomach, I stared at Phro. “You’re a goddess. I’m fairly sure I remember stories of similar happenings from your people.”

She shot me a glare. “You wanna hear this, don’t insult my ‘people.’”

Again, I wished I could physically do damage to her. “What about this particular massacre got to you? Were they special people?”

“It was bloodthirsty—even from a god’s perspective. But supposedly he killed King Idomeneus of Crete.”

I had to think for a minute. “From
The Iliad
? The one who later disappeared?”

She curled her lip. “Don’t you know that whenever they use the term ’disappeared’ it’s a cover-up?”

“So why would his killing a human king scare you?”

“King Idomeneus wasn’t a human. It was a closely guarded secret. He shouldn’t have been easy to kill because he was a god.”

“Oh.” I swallowed. I turned, got myself a cup of coffee and held it to my face to breathe in the familiar, comforting scent. A human man, even a famed warrior, shouldn’t have been able to take out a god. They were the ultimate in immortals. Vampires, elves, other immortals I’d run across—they could all be killed at some point. Human souls lived on to experience other lives but gods and goddesses never changed. They may have moved into the background, bored by humans—they may have moved on to some other entertainment, but they were still there.

As I took my first sip of the hot, strong brew, someone started pounding on the front door. We all jumped. The noise reverberated throughout the house—completely out of place in the early morning hours.

 
I ran into the front room and heard Blythe’s loud sobs through the door. I threw it open to find her swaying on her feet, her peach dress ripped, more fresh blood on her arms and chest. She hiccoughed and fell over the threshold. I caught her, carried her into the living room and laid her on the couch. “Blythe!” I had to yell over her loud crying. “Hey, why didn’t you go to the hospital? Where are you hurt? Who did this?”

She sobbed. “Fr”—sobbed again—“Frida.”

Shock knocked me back, my ass hitting the coffee table with a sharp thud. “Your spirit guide did this to you?”

“No,” she wailed, crying harder.

She was making too much noise to be in serious danger. I looked her over to find mostly superficial scratches. Looked like she’d fought a rabid cat. “Shhh.” I didn’t know how to calm her so I awkwardly stroked her hair. Anything to get that noise down.

It worked—startled her into sucking in air and choking on it. She sat up, hacking. I patted her back. When she winced I realized it hadn’t exactly been a pat.
Oops.

“Can you tell me what happened now? Where’s Frida?”

“You can’t see her either?”

“I didn’t think you could.”

She shook her head. “I can’t, but now I can’t feel her either. I’m so scared.” Her breath hitched, big eyes so watery they looked like they’d float off her face.

I looked around, not seeing him. I was about to send Fred looking when I picked up on the horrified expressions on both of my guides’ faces. I followed their gaze to find a faint presence next to the door. I slowly got up and walked to the shimmering piece of space. Squinted. Then, I pulled up that part of myself that made me the most different. The part I didn’t yet get. The part that felt and saw so very much more than everyone else. I peeled back this dimension to take a good look at that faint apparition. It was Frida. He looked like he’d been mauled by the rabid cat, only a much bigger version. But he was there. So weak he blinked in and out, but on the ‘in’ parts, he actually seemed in pain.

I swung toward Fred, swallowing the question on my lips when he shook his head.

“Impossible,” he muttered.

I couldn’t help Frida, but I could put some antiseptic on Blythe’s arms. I went into the kitchen where we’d left the first aid kit. At this rate, we’d need a bigger one. I picked up the leftover liquid from the agrimony bath and shrugged before popping it into the microwave. Probably not the best way to warm a spell.

She’d calmed down when I returned, her eyes on the shimmering corner where Frida lay. “It came through the window of my magic shop, Beri. I went to get that book. I think Nikolos will help if he sees the book.”