Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (17 page)

“It’s who I am, but in this case, I didn’t do much. She wasn’t sick.” She frowned. “She was just missing. It was weird. Like it would be if you were without your magic. Then she reappeared in a surge. All I did was make sure she connected.” She spun on her heel and walked out.

Lynx did not watch her go. He was watching me again.

I forced my eyes open, but that was a mistake. Blinding light cut through my eyeballs straight into my brain. The second I commanded my body, my spirit returned fully to it. The pain felt much like the weave slicing me to pieces. I hoped that hell wasn’t waiting at the other end of the dark tunnel that engulfed me.

Chapter 23

Bits and pieces of arguing drifted through now and then. The gist of it was that Lynx knew the hospital wasn’t safe. There were others who disturbed my darkness, working on my battered body. A stomach plug for food was removed. Some cruel idiot tested my reflexes, including exposing my eyeballs to more light.

I struggled against the invasions until someone offered me food through a straw. Once I discovered it was a chocolate milkshake, I was just plain greedy.

Twice I pushed away from the pain in my body and floated. The first time I watched from within the room, I witnessed the elderly doctor refusing to grant permission to have me moved.

The second time, Lynx was there with Patrick, the male vampire. The vampire encased my feet in fluffy socks and draped the sheet up over my head.

As I watched, Lynx went still, but he stared down at me. “We’re breakin’ you out.”

“Where’s Spook?” I whispered, but my spirit voice was too weak to be heard.

When they started rolling the bed with my body, I grabbed hold of myself and lost my senses again.

In the new location, there were more chocolate milkshakes and way too much vampire. The place was dark, and for hours or days, Patrick or the female vampire, the one I had seen at the blood bank, exercised the body that was me. The female vampire told me her name was Tina, but I had already seen her badge. She told me the day and time and asked me questions that I did not answer.

In the dim room, I could open my eyes. The bed had buttons to adjust it up and down. I began to test my fingers and arms and adjust the bed myself.

Once, when the vampires weren’t around, I sat up, but promptly fell back over. The weakness didn’t stop me, however. Crackers and protein drinks waited on a bedside table. I ate every time I was awake. The crackers hurt my throat, but nothing slowed down my appetite. I began to take tentative steps around the room, most of the time without falling.

The witch showed up with more clothes. I had been watching things from above, roaming the room and flitting just outside of it into a corridor. Spook hadn’t been around since the move. Maybe he went back over, but that didn’t stop the gnawing worry that raged in my guts. What had happened to him? I was on my own here. No money, no friends, no job and no memory of any of those things either.

I followed the witch back into the room. There was no reason to avoid her, but no particular reason to trust her either.

“Time to depart,” she told my prone form softly. “If you’re hunted, this is too close to where you were before. It would be too easy to track you.”

They smuggled me out under cover of darkness. I stayed barely sideways from my body, listening to Adriel rant that I’d be better off with her and White Feather. Lynx didn’t say anything; he just drove the four-door Prius. Spook showed up in the backseat rather suddenly. He pushed his ghost head into the front of the car between Lynx and Adriel.

The cat flinched. The car swerved into the wrong lane, but only briefly.

Adriel paused in her lecturing. She might not see Spook, but from her sudden silence, she sensed him.

“It’s just the dog that came through with her,” Lynx reassured her. He pulled into a drive-through burrito place. After he ordered, he handed Adriel a burrito, and by my count, kept four in the bag.

“What about the dog?” Adriel asked. “Does he need to be fed?”

“He’s a ghost. He never complains.” Lynx pulled back onto the road. “I’ve seen him a couple of times, checking things out.”

“Yeah, there’s an odd flicker there. Not as formed as when he came through with Shadow, but I can see him.”

We finally turned off onto a short dirt road that led to a dark, isolated stucco house.

“You can call me any time,” Adriel said. “Our place is as protected as yours. She’d be safer with us. I can call Mom or Tara to check her out if needed.”

Fear radiated through me. I was at the mercy of these people. I still had no idea who I was, how I got here or where to go next. My memories were flitting pieces at best, the most vivid that of the guy who killed me. But now I wasn’t dead. I still forgot that, especially when I was floating near my body and not in it.

White Feather was there waiting. He did some weird thing with the wind, floating me into the house, down a hall and into a bed. Halfway there I dove into my body, wanting to know what it felt like to fly. It wasn’t much different than drifting around as a spirit, only heavier.

Lynx left a burrito and a milkshake on a table that contained a lamp, a dream catcher and a pouch. The room smelled faintly of herbs.

“You need anything, you call,” Adriel instructed him.

“Yeah, yeah, got it. I have your mom’s number too.”

“Tara will help,” White Feather said.

“He won’t call her, and you know it,” Adriel muttered.

Their voices faded as they left the room for the living room or kitchen.

My eyes popped open, and I reached for the milkshake. Chocolate. My favorite, and a thousand times better than the protein drinks. I nibbled on the burrito, but my stomach threatened to rebel. Too much too fast, and it would be more trouble than it was worth.

Still, I finished half of it. I longed for a hot shower and more food.
Escape.
Only I had nowhere to run. I still didn’t even know my own name.

***

I slept better than the dead. If anyone spied on me, it was a waste of time.

Spook was at the foot of the bed, wagging his tail when I next woke. I slid partway away from my body and let him feel the warmth of my hand. “Spook. How are you?” My voice rasped so badly, he probably only understood his name.

Spook enjoyed the petting, wagging his tail and rolling over for a belly rub. I chatted with him a while before exploring the house in spirit form. No one was about, but I saw a water and food bowl just off the porch outside.

I hurried back to my body, barely remembering anything other than the location of the bathroom and shower. There was a pile of clothes, probably from Adriel, on top of a table near the window.

My first surprise was the mirror. The gaunt face was expected, but my hair was the color of ashes, ranging from almost white to a dark gray. When I had stared down at my own body from In Between, my hair had been blonde with darker streaks. Somehow, the gray had managed to leave its mark on me.

“Too bad.” There were more important things to focus on, like hot water and food. The shower was almost more of a relief than coming back from In Between. I hadn’t needed them there.

After standing under the hot water until it ran cold, I dressed and explored in person. The kitchen was sunny and bright, but the cupboards were nearly bare other than a bag of cat food for the bowl outside, animal crackers, chips and a jar of unopened salsa. The fridge yielded two dozen eggs, some tortillas, an entire shelf of sodas and a single bottle of milk that had soured.

I felt guilty eating without permission, but they had brought me here, and probably not to die since they’d gone to a lot of trouble to keep me alive. I scrambled two eggs, polished them off and then cooked two more. Doing the dishes exhausted the last of my resources.

The next couple of days and nights were no different. Lynx left another burrito and milkshake. The milkshake was half melted by the time I woke up, and the burrito was cold, but I devoured them without hesitation.

The next time he showed up in the doorway with a burrito, I was awake. He stood in the doorway with the bag, barefoot. “Hungry?”

“Most of the time.” My voice was better than my first attempt, but Spook wasn’t much of a conversationalist, so practicing had been limited to a few whispered greetings.

Lynx brought the burrito and milkshake in and set them down. His eyes never left mine. He acted as though he expected me to sprint away.

My own reaction was worried wariness, although I tried harder to hide my discomfort than he did.

“You keep making yourself at home,” he ordered. “Adriel’s been by. You were sleeping. She brought her mom.”

I didn’t remember the visit. I slurped the milkshake. He backed out, leaving the door open.

The next morning, when I floated sideways out of my body to check things out, Lynx was in the kitchen. He must have a job to go to every day because he hadn’t been home before.

He was flipping bacon in a pan. The enticing smell of it was probably what had woken me. My body was little more than bones. I was constantly hungry.

He turned fast, cat eyes flashing. The fork was up and ready to serve as a weapon when he spotted me. “Shit! You died? Crap!”

He sprinted so fast, he actually beat me back to the room where I’d left myself. It didn’t take me long to flash back there and open my eyes.

“I’m fine.”

He was halfway to the bed before I blinked. Without a sound, he stilled, staring at me. “You’re alive?”

Puzzled, I nodded. “Well, sure.”

“But I just saw your ghost.”

Understanding dawned. “Oh, no. That’s not...well, I guess it is, kind of. I can still slide sideways out of my body, pretty much like when I was In Between, only now I’m here, not there.”

His eyes widened. “Wait. You can ghost whenever you want? And you ain’t dead?”

The feat hadn’t impressed me at all, not until that moment. I had existed so long outside my body that when I decided to move around, it had come naturally. “I guess so. And no, I’m not dead.” I flicked my arm with the opposite hand. “No more so than I was before.” I sniffed. “I think the bacon is burning.”

His head started to tilt, and then he was gone that fast, gliding on feet so silent there was no sound when he left, just a swirl of air and absence.

Since I slept in sweatpants and a t-shirt, changing clothes wasn’t necessary. I followed him to the kitchen.

He had saved the bacon by dumping it on a plate. Eggs replaced the bacon in the pan, sizzling fast. “Still hungry?”

“Yeah.” The t-shirt hung on me like a sack. “I think maybe going ghost takes energy too.”

“You just leave your body like that? Empty?”

“I didn’t really think about it. It was a way to get around. Check things out.”

He dumped the eggs on a plate. Then he slid half onto the other plate with the bacon. Finally he put some of the bacon on the first egg plate and handed it to me. “I bought more milk. Chocolate.”

“Thanks. It seems to be my favorite.” I helped myself. The only table was across a small bar off to the side of the kitchen. It was homey, but not fancy.

“You like coffee? Or tea? Adriel makes tea. I don’t have any, but I can get some.”

“This works. I can heat the chocolate milk. I can’t remember what I used to like. The eggs are great. Everything you’ve brought has been great. I’d eat a whole cow if it showed up, I think.”

He nodded as though he understood my hunger. Or maybe he thought I could eat a whole cow based on the way I’d been pigging out.

We dug in, eating hard.

“Can you still feel your body when you’re away from it?” he asked abruptly.

I thought about it. “No, not really.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Being a ghost was dangerous when I was In Between. I couldn’t affect anything happening to my body or my ghost. I don’t think I can here either when I’m ghost. Sometimes Spook stays with my body, but usually he follows me around.”

“Spook is your ghost dog?”

He was really Troy’s dog, but Troy was gone. “I guess he’s mine now.”

Lynx chewed some more. “Ghosting could be a useful talent. But leaving your body unprotected isn’t wise.” He gulped some chocolate milk. “This stuff is good, isn’t it? I usually drink soda.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t roam very far from myself.”

“You think you could get lost?”

“I never have unless you count losing my body while I was In Between. I didn’t know where my body was for the longest time after arriving there. Martin helped me figure it out.” Shy, I dropped my eyes. “And you. You kept calling me back to it until eventually I found it.”

Lynx stopped chewing. He stared without blinking for a few seconds. “I never knew if what I did was helping. I threw you the packet that was linked to mine. Talked to you. But you just laid there. Not dead. But not alive.”

He grabbed his plate and rinsed it at the sink. “If you’re gonna be traveling around like that all the time, you’re gonna need some protection.”

“I could stop doing it, I suppose, but it’s easier to talk to Spook there. Plus things look different when I’m ghost so I learn things.”

“Different? How?”

“The vampires. They aren’t the same creatures when I’m ghost. Patrick is more like a giant beast with wings.”

Lynx nodded. “He’s part bat or something. I know he can fly. Sometimes he’s not there and then he is. Adriel thinks he might be part gargoyle, but one time...” He hesitated.

“One time what?”

“I smelled him when he was in his other form. Reminded me of a bat.”

“Oh. What does a gargoyle smell like?”

He blinked, a slow cat blink that managed to convey amusement. “Probably not like a bat.”

I smiled and slid sideways, but only a little, like when petting Spook. “You always have the ghost of your other self, the cat, around your head.”

He froze. His ears went back, and his eyes shifted. “You sound different.”

I nodded and let go. “I can slide partway.”

“So that’s how you knew...what I am?”

It took a minute to remember seeing him the first time. “Well, that and Martin told me. You have a gold energy line. It’s the same whether you’re cat or not. When you fought that zombie, the energy was the same even after you went cat. After you guys took me out of the hospital, I noticed that when you walked across the ground, there is a white color near your feet. You soak up life or energy and convert it to gold because you’re always that color.”