Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (23 page)

“Tell her it’s in the acoustic guitar case, the Overton,” Kyle said.

“Kyle!” He looked the same as when I’d last seen him, right down to strumming his guitar. “I’m really glad you’re okay.” It was a stupid thing to say to someone who was dead, but my relief pushed aside logic. “I brought you something. One for you and one for Martin.” I threw the bags right at the side of Lynx’s head because Kyle’s face was at the top of the guitar case.

Lynx flinched. The bags disappeared through the weave.

“Kyle?” Paula gasped from behind me.

Lynx finally wised up to the fact that the guitar was the link holding the weave open. He set it on its end and edged away from it, settling closer to me.

Martin was suddenly there, puffing words at us. “Need. Demon. Name. Didn’t get banished.”

He was wispier than he should have been, maybe because he’d given up the bloodstone. Instead of a chiseled appearance of ghostly stone, his face was a blotch. “Did the demon find Amy?”

Martin shook his head, leaving ghost trails. “Chasing. Us. Daily.”

“Kyle, is that really you?” Paula asked from behind me.

Kyle nodded at his wife, knowing better than to try words. Martin was better at delivering entire sentences, and even he sounded like a record on the wrong speed, warped and cutting to an odd stop before the words were finished.

“Is it really a girl?” Paula stepped next to me.

Kyle nodded again. The music to “My Girl” floated through the weave.

Paula was suddenly sobbing too hard to say more, but Lynx took over the conversation. “Can you force the demon name from Amy?”

Martin shook his head. “Aaaa...crossed back...over.”

“She found a host? The demon will try to follow her,” I shouted. Cold chills ran down my spine.

“Need. Demon...Name.”

Paula put her hand out, reaching for Kyle. The weave snapped shut, a force that shook me right back into my own body. The slam threw me sideways into Lynx. The weave was capricious under the best of circumstances. I should have known better, but had never seen it in action from this side. Lynx held me up until I recovered my balance.

Paula still had her hand out. “Bring him back!”

“Not right now,” I panted out. I grabbed the guitar and set it inside the doorway. “He has this guitar with him. You need to keep it.”

She nodded around her tears.

“And search for the money.”

“Can I move out? How will he find me?”

I pointed. “The guitar. He gave me a guitar pick, but,” I reached up behind my ear. There was nothing there but a slight tingle. I had no way to give it to her.

She yanked tissues from a box on the coffee table. After blowing her nose and wiping her eyes, she hurried back over to hug the guitar case.

We turned to leave, but she called after us. “Wait! Can you...can you tell him I love him?”

“He can hear you. At least most of the time. Do you hear music a lot?”

She hesitated. “Sometimes. When I tried moving the guitars around. I thought the strings were just vibrating.”

“If you hear music, he can probably hear everything you say. You can tell him then.”

“Really?”

“For now. He’s in a place called In Between. I don’t know how long he’ll be there. Neither does he. But while he’s there, you can talk to him. He can’t answer, not most of the time, but he can hear you.”

She sniffled again. “He’ll be able to see the baby?”

I nodded. “Especially then.”

“
My Girl
was the first song he ever played for me.”

I was too tired and scared for Kyle and Martin to smile. “I guess it’s now the first one he played for your little girl too.”

She had a hand on her big, round tummy. “Yeah. Yeah.”

Back in the Mustang, I got the shakes. I gripped the staff resting between us in the front seat. “I’m not leaving this in the car again.” My voice cracked. I’d been afraid if Paula saw it, she’d become alarmed. But I hadn’t had a weapon with me when I died. It had proven to be a costly mistake. “Can you make a staff that resembles a cane, thick on one end and thinner on the top? I don’t need the handle part, but it would probably look more legit with a curved handle or one of those straight out handles that old guys lean on.”

Lynx nodded. “Sure. It would be a good disguise. I can hollow it out too if you want to stash a little extra something in it.”

I started to refuse and then thought better of it. “A small cavity.” Berries would fit in there. Or other bits of life.

As he pulled out into traffic he said, “I didn’t know you could do that Roberto thing, or I’d have brought the bloodstone.”

“I didn’t do it. The guitar was enough, plus Kyle has been waiting for this opportunity. Martin knows how to thin the weave, and with that guitar being a link to Kyle they managed it.”

He drove for a while before asking, “This Amy chick. Can she find you?”

“She doesn’t even know my name. Hell, I don’t even know my name!”

“When we were at ’Trick’s she said you were supposed to be her host, but you refused. But if she had picked you out, maybe she knew who you were. Maybe the two of you knew each other when you were alive.”

I shook my head. “I recognized people I knew even stuck In Between. There just weren’t many to recognize. And if she did know me, it doesn’t matter. I’m not the same person. I don’t know where the other me lived, or who she was. If Amy knows and looks there, she won’t find me.”

He nodded. “That’s a good thing.”

“I wonder who she found to inhabit? She can’t just cross over at will. And the demon was hot on her trail, too. He isn’t going to stop until he finds a way across.”

Lynx had his own questions. “If this demon catches up with Kyle or Martin what does it mean?”

I sliced an imaginary cut across my throat. “Total destruction. Those creatures take everything and anything that is left of a person.”

“This Amy chick. She has a soul?”

The idea caught me off guard. “Maybe not anymore. Could be that she traded part of it to the demon just by calling it. He knew her smell, but that was probably because she drank or injected his blood. If she had been stuck In Between without anyone to hide behind, she’d be toast already. But if she came back here like Martin said, she has to have found someone to accept her.”

“Maybe the same person who has been helping her all along?”

I nodded. “That could be it, but we know that she can’t or won’t stay in that person forever or she wouldn’t have been prepping Tina. Maybe whoever has been helping her is almost used up like Patrick said, or maybe Amy keeps that person in reserve for when she uses up other hosts.”

He thought for a long time. “She told ’Trick that Tina was temporary too.”

I pieced together the little bits we knew. “Tina
had
to be temporary because Tina has no soul. If her accomplice was temporary and Tina was temporary, they were after someone else.” There was only one other person I knew of who might be a candidate. “Right before we grabbed Troy’s ring back, Amy was yelling at someone through the portal saying they couldn’t keep starting over. It was right after I told you to take Espy out of the hospital because I suspected Espy had been given demon’s blood in her IV.” We’d pulled up at the house, but I didn’t leave the car.

“The kid is in a safe place.” His eyes were cat flat, an expression I was beginning to recognize as worry.

“What if Amy found her?”

He shook his head. “The aunt would know, and they’re both in a safe place.”

“Maybe they started over again, but what if they didn’t? If Espy ended up with demon blood from that IV, maybe Amy can smell her like the demon smelled Amy! Lynx, we need to check on them and make sure they stay hidden in case Amy is hunting! We can’t just let them sit there with demon blood. Even if Amy hasn’t found her yet, the demon might!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll have Adriel get her mom to start the wheels turning.” I shook my head frantically, but he kept talking. “You can’t go springing this stuff on the normals. They don’t take it so well. Paula wouldn’t have believed a word we said if Kyle hadn’t shown up.”

“We don’t need to wait. The aunt and Espy know me already. They’ll believe me.”

Lynx cut his eyes to me. “They know you from before you died?”

“No, they’re like Roberto. They talked to me when I was In Between.”

“You sure met a lot of people over there. Place sounds like a McDonald’s with everyone stopping in to eat or use the bathroom on the way through.”

That wasn’t an entirely inaccurate description.

Lynx called Adriel and updated her with the basic details.

After he hung up, he said, “Okay it’s set up. They’ll meet us in a few hours. Adriel needs to create a protection spell first. She’s gonna have to figure something out because she’s short on demon protection spells.” He shook his head. “She’s good, but I don’t think she can come up with enough fire to kill a demon.”

“If she can’t kill the demon, maybe she can hide Espy like Amy was using Troy’s essence to hide from the demon. Can I borrow your cell to call Adriel?”

He handed it to me and said, “Espy is already hiding.”

I hit redial. When White Feather answered, I could hear Adriel muttering in the background. “How do you tear a demon into pieces? Have to keep it from capturing a human, but it would be easier to kill if it was human.”

“Hang on,” White Feather said before handing her the phone.

I started talking without preamble. “When I was In Between, Amy hid from the demon by hiding behind Troy’s essence. His essence is sort of like his soul, but not his whole soul. She borrowed his essence by stealing his ring and his energy.”

Nothing but silence.

“Adriel?” I looked at Lynx desperately, but he just shrugged. “I think we got cut off.”

“No, no, I’m here.” The phone crackled as she breathed out a big sigh. “You’re telling me that all I need to do is hide her behind someone else’s soul?”

“Exactly!”

“Great.”

“So you can you do that?”

Her voice sounded strangled when she answered. “I am guessing it’s a blood spell. I don’t do blood spells.”

“Amy used Troy’s ring, not his blood.”

She was silent for a few moments and then said, “But the way you described it, anything you used In Between was life energy. So that’s similar to blood. Or maybe a soul.” The sound of objects clattering forced me to jerk the phone away from my ear. “Maybe we can hide her behind her aunt. Unless a blood relative is too close a match for a sniffing demon. How would I know? No one tells me these things!”

“I, uhm, guess we’ll see you later?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I hung up. “She doesn’t know if she can hide Espy.”

Lynx finally opened the car door. “We need to enhance your weapons.”

We worked on the staffs until dark. Lynx had some basic tools, including a drill. He was skilled at carving, and the wood responded to him. He worked quickly, producing two canes to supplement my arsenal of straight weapons. “Remember to limp when you use these, but don’t pretend to be an easy mark or you’ll end up having to knock people left and right. Just don’t look as bad-ass as you usually do or no one is going to believe you need a cane.”

I snorted. “Bad-ass? My hair is premature gray, and I’m so thin I still resemble a corpse. That’s bad-ass?”

He gave a last polish to the wood and then let his eyes travel all over me. “You look great. From the very first time I saw your ghost...” He sat perfectly still, as if the vivid memory captivated him. His eyes flashed, him seeing me through cat eyes. “You look great.”

His sincere approval left me speechless, and my heart missed a beat.

He slipped a piece of wood over the point he had been crafting. “If you need a sharp object, just pull this chunk of wood off. It’s tight, but it needs to be that way to stay on.”

Even if I had never slipped sideways and seen the golden energy that glowed around him, I’d have sensed the magic that was Lynx. He had confidence and skill and a cunning that was not just because he was a cat. He was human with a soul that had somehow touched mine. He hadn’t given up on me when I was dead. He didn’t look ready to now, either. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “We can make better weapons, but I’ll need more supplies.”

I scooted my fingers along the staff until they touched his. “No, I mean thanks for...for rescuing me from In Between. For helping Espy. For—”

“You saved me from that zombie. We’re even.” He stood up abruptly. “It’s dark enough now to check out Amy’s place. We won’t have much time before we have to meet Adriel and White Feather at the safe house. And we better hope Adriel comes up with a spell because there ain’t a safer place than where we stashed the kid and her aunt.”

He handed me the cane. As he stepped past, he brushed up against me, a tingling kind of hug that made me want to throw my arms around him and never let go.

Chapter 31

Lynx loaded one short and one long staff in the trunk. There was already a pack filled with supplies and a large jug of water in there, but there was plenty of room for my two weapons. I added a short baton to be on the extra safe side.

Spook hopped in the backseat, so Lynx placed my remaining cane on the floor in the back. I stopped at the juniper tree and filled my pockets with berries. Once in the car, I retrieved the cane and poured some of the berries down the hidden hollow.

Lynx took a roundabout route to our destination. Maybe he thought someone would tail us, or maybe he wanted the Mustang noticed in other areas of town. When we parked, it was behind older, yet modern buildings, none of which looked residential. Some had lights indicating occupants and others were dark.

We walked. There were streetlights showing everyone our route, but Lynx didn’t seem too concerned.

We slinked through at least nine different alleyways, two behind restaurants. When we finally arrived at an apartment complex, we faced the back fence.

“Stay here until I give the all clear.” That fast he was gone, at least half cat, springing over the privacy fence.

I scooted along the boards, letting Spook track Lynx. I remembered to use the cane and limp slightly.