Ghostsnaps (Knead to Know Book 4) (13 page)

“But you still need my help?”

Once.

“Damn it, Maggie. I don’t know what else to ask you. Give me a hint.”

We needed Boone. I tried to touch the pen, but my fingers went right through it. In fact, I went right through everything except Phoenix. Which meant, I could touch him…that could work. I threaded my fingers through his and pulled his arm out straight. He followed my movement. I tried to push his sleeve up, but my hand went through the material. Damn it.

His eyebrows knitted together as he stared at his arm. I ran my hand down his flesh again and again it disappeared at his sleeve. Finally, he pushed it up on his own. I could have kissed him, but I focused on what I was doing. I wrote the letters with my finger slowly. B.O.O.N.E.

He shook his head. “Do it again, slower. One letter at a time.”

I made a B.

“B,” he said.

And we went through every letter.

“You want me to get the psychic?”

Once.

“Wait here.” He vanished in a cloud of black smoke.

I walked around the kitchen unable to touch anything. The music came back, louder this time. Being here, but not being here, made me miss home a lot. I loved the bakery and my house and…maybe Olivia could help. I was at least part in this world. I prayed and waited for her to show up, my fingers crossed.

The side door opened fifteen minutes later, and Boone and Phoenix came inside.

“Maggie,” Boone said, rushing toward me, but his hands went through me.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

“Can you see her?” Phoenix asked.

“Yes, and she’s talking, but I can’t hear her.”

Son of a bitch!

“Maggie, what can we do?” Boone asked.

Okay, I’d just have to improvise. I motioned for him to follow me, and went back into the café and to the mirror. I pointed at Boone, then at the mirror.

“You want me to touch the mirror?”

I nodded.

He touched the corner. “Now what?”

I shook my head. Damn it. Why hadn’t I learned sign language or anything useful? How was I supposed to mime that I needed him to touch the mirror when I showed up in it on May first? I rubbed my forehead.

“What’s happening?” Phoenix asked.

“She looks frustrated. She’s trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what she wants. She wants me to touch the mirror, but then I don’t know what.”

Phoenix looked as frustrated as I felt. “When she gets back here, I’m breaking that fucking mirror.”

I shook my head, rolling my eyes. But I went back to Phoenix and took his arm. After several moments I was able to write “May 1” on his arm. I pointed at Boone, the mirror, and Phoenix’s arm.

“Touch the mirror on May first?” Boone said.

I nodded. I circled my face and pointed back at the mirror.

“When I see you.”

I grinned, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Where is she?” Phoenix snapped. Boone pointed him in my direction and his eyes narrowed. “You can’t be gone that long. You need to come back now. How do we make that happen?”

I shook my head and shrugged. There wasn’t another way. This was the best I could do.

“She doesn’t know.”

Phoenix looked down at the floor. “Will you keep coming back to visit?”

I took his hand and tapped once.

I made it back by three, head throbbing. My legs shook and the room spun as I tried to lower myself down from the table. Blackness started in on the edge of my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the sensation to pass. I hadn’t felt like this inside the mirror. Hands reached up and took me by the arms, lifting me down to the ground. I held onto Baker’s shoulder for a moment, concentrating on my breathing and allowing the world to right itself. As the darkness receded, I released my grip on him.

“You okay, doll?” He hooked his finger beneath my chin, tilting my head up.

I nodded, though I wasn’t at all sure. I felt horrible.

“Get her some water,” he said to Josephine. “Let’s sit you down.” Taking a hold of my arm he led me toward the office.

Two steps later, my legs went to jelly and refused to support my weight at all. Before I hit the floor, Baker scooped me up and carried me to the chair, gently sitting me down.

“I’m okay. I just need a moment.” I closed my eyes, resting my head against the back. Waves of hunger crashed into me, making my hands shake and my legs bounce. It built and built and built until I actually feared it wouldn’t stop. Hunger had never snuck up on me like this. What the hell was happening? I pried one eye open, then the other.

“I’ve never stayed in that long,” Josephine said, rushing back into the room with a small glass of water. She thrust it toward me, worry thinning her lips. “It makes me dizzy though. It always passes. Maybe you were just inside too long. I should have warned you. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it. I usually take a couple days to fully recover if I go in multiple times in a day.” Josephine urged me to take a drink, kneeling down beside me. “Is there anything else you need? Did you reach your friends?”

I sat the untouched water on the table next to me, before my shaking sloshed it out of the glass, then shoved my hands down beside me, sitting on them so no one would notice my tremor. “Yeah, I think they understand, but they couldn’t hear me. I did the best I could to get the message across.”

“Drink,” Josephine said. “It will help.” She picked up the glass and placed it against my lips.

I didn’t want the water, but I took a drink anyway.

“Did you see anything while you were there? Did you feel anything else with you?” Baker stood in the shadows a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest, watching us carefully. I tried to remember, but nothing came to mind immediately. It was just us. I forced myself to drink the rest of the water as I tried to think of anything weird or unexplainable. “Music,” I said. “I heard music every time I saw Josephine and I heard it again this time, but not when I was close to Phoenix. In fact, every time he shows up, it goes away.”

“I’ve never heard music,” Josephine said. “What sort of music?”

“Jazz. It’s always the same song.”

“What song?” Baker asked, taking a step toward me.

Like I had any idea. I shook my head.

“Is Phoenix a jinni?”

“Yeah. Does that matter?”

Baker sighed. “Demon would be my guess. A jinni is able to sense them so if the demon wants to remain anonymous, it’ll skedaddle until the jinni is gone.”

“Demons,” Josephine said with a hint of a smile. “You’re trying to scare me? Why would a demon be in my mirror?”

Baker rocked back on his heels. “Maybe it was a nuisance and someone trapped it there. Or maybe it stumbled on you through your experiments. Magic comes from somewhere.”

“I’m not magic. I don’t even believe in magic,” she said, shaking her head.

“You don’t have to believe in it. One of two things is happening. Either you are somehow tapping into the demon’s power, which is why you are speaking even though you are unaware of the words you’re mouthing. Or you do have magic and you know good and well what you’re doing to open the pathway. So which is it? You trying to take us for a ride or are you on the level?”

Her eyebrows knitted together. “I swear if I had any answers, I’d give them to you. I don’t know what’s happening. How would I have connected to a demon without knowing it?”

Baker shook his head. “When did all of this start? You said you’ve been doing the experiments for a couple years, right? So when did you start going into the mirror? When did they start working? What happened exactly to change the way you conduct your experiments?”

Josephine stood up and walked around the room. “I did them differently every time. I kept adjusting what I did in hopes of getting results. The current combination, the one that works, came to me in a dream.”

“How? What happened in the dream?” Baker asked, not exactly forcefully, but not exactly nicely either. More than anything he seemed intent on discovering the truth, which I certainly wasn’t going to object to.

She pressed her hand to her forehead. “I don’t know. It was a dream and it happened months ago. I just woke up the next morning with a new idea. That’s when I started using the oils.”

“And I bet that’s also when you started saying the words,” I said softly.

“And when you first started going into the mirror, what did you see or do?”

“I went in and came out in my own attic, but little details made me suspect I was in another time. I’d walk around the house some and note changes—but there was never anything happening and there were never any people, so I was never one hundred percent sure I had succeeded or not. Not until I found Maggie.”

“Where did you get the mirror from?”

“My sister gave it to me as a birthday gift.”

Baker and I glanced at each other.

“She wouldn’t hurt me,” Josephine said impatiently.

Of course she wouldn’t hurt her. She’d just give her a possessed mirror. I shook my head. “Don’t worry about the demon. I can take care of it.” In fact, had I felt stronger I would’ve gone back in immediately to find it. My hunger couldn’t be ignored any longer. I had to eat tonight and what better than a demon?

Baker’s eyebrows shot up. “Demons aren’t anything to blow your nose at.”

“I was made to handle demons. We just need to find it and then you can leave it up to me.”

“Or stop opening the door for it,” Baker said. “You’ve given your friends the message. I wouldn’t go back again until it’s time. Keep in mind we don’t know anything about this demon and from what I’ve seen, you’re not doing so hot against it. Don’t give it an opportunity to attack.”

I pushed forward in the chair, feeling better. “I need to go back at least once more.”

Josephine swallowed hard. “I agree with Baker. I don’t want to encounter a demon, and if that’s what is behind making this passage, obviously it wants us there.”

I bit my lip. They were right, and I knew it, but— “One more time,” I insisted. “I need to warn Phoenix and Holden. What happens if the demon attacks the next time we open the passage? We don’t know that it’s a human who kills Josephine. It could very well be the demon.”

“Not many demons use guns,” Baker said.

“Not many demons live in mirrors,” I countered. “Besides, you’re the one who said it might not have been a gun that I heard—that it could’ve been something else. All we know is that Josephine dies and her body and the murder weapon are never discovered.”

Baker shook his head. “The demon could be feeding on you while you’re in his realm. That’s why you were weak when you came out. It’s getting stronger every time someone goes inside. Even if it does have a gun, if you keep going in, it might not have to use it. We don’t know who is going to kill her. It might actually be the demon. The best thing we can do is be smart and make a plan to protect Josephine.”

Crap. I couldn’t argue with that point. If Baker was right, we couldn’t risk going back inside. It was definitely better to know what to expect than to face an unknown power. Another horrible thought hit me. Was the unbearable dizzy weakness I’d experienced what it felt like to be fed off of? Is that how people felt like when I fed on them? Was I hurting Phoenix and was that why his eyes flamed when I took pulls from him? My cheeks heated at the thought, even as my hunger rumbled relentlessly. I pushed my own problems aside. If our foe was used to feeding on humans like Josephine, I would be like a shot of adrenaline. He might already be stronger than we hoped. And if going in again made it stronger and me weaker, I couldn’t do it. Or at least not before I fed again. “Okay,” I said.

“So it’s settled. No going back in the mirror until the night we send Maggie home,” Josephine said, standing up. We both nodded. “Excellent. Then I suggest we all turn in and get some rest.”

I nodded again. “That sounds good. I’ll walk you out.” I rose to my feet, my legs much steadier than before, but still not perfect. Josephine lingered on the stairs while I stepped outside with Baker.

“You said the angel warned you that you couldn’t change someone’s destiny,” Baker said and I nodded. “Have you considered this might be her destiny? If it’s not a human, it’s a demon—or if it’s not a demon, then what? You can’t save everyone.”

Not everyone, but this one person who was standing right in front of me, who had been put into my path. Surely I could save just her and not ruin the world. “I won’t do anything rash, but if I can save her, I will.”

He nodded. “That’s all I ask. Have a good night, doll.” He turned to leave.

“I need to feed,” I said quietly, catching his arm.

He looked down at my hand on his forearm and I immediately loosened by grip. When my hunger got like this, all of my senses grew skewed. I was inches away from being a raged out vampire, making it hard to judge how tight was too tight. He nodded slowly. “Explain to me what that means.”

“My vampire half has to be kept in check or it takes over. The only way I can do that is to feed on a dark soul. It balances me. I know where I would go in my time to find such people, but I’m not sure now. Where do demons or jinn or other generally unsavory Abyss people hang out?”

He crossed his arms, looking partly puzzled and partly amazed. “How does it work?”

“I touch someone with a dark soul and my body takes over. I draw their essence out of them.”

Baker rubbed a hand over his jaw. “This I gotta see. I can probably rustle you up someone. Wanna go now?”

“Yes, but let me tell Josephine.” I went back inside and explained in the least scary way possible what was going on.

Josephine lifted the necklace she wore her key on over her head and handed it to me with a faintly worried expression. “I’m sorry I got you into all of this. Be careful, Maggie.”

I placed the necklace around my own neck. “I’m not sorry. We’re going to figure out how to save you. It’s just a matter of time.”

She nodded and glanced around the house. “I love it here and I love my life, but now that the end is in sight, I have to wonder if maybe I should have lived differently.”

“What do you mean?”

She ran her hand over the stair railing, sadness filling her eyes. “Jeanette and I have lived quiet lives. I have been intent on my studies and she is dedicated to her volunteer work. Sure we have parties, but…I know she would have liked to get married, but I think she hesitates because she doesn’t want to leave me alone. I have to wonder if my desire to not marry has held her back from the life she wants to live. I don’t know. It’s too late to worry about it now, isn’t it? Perhaps she’ll find what she’s looking for when I’m gone.” She forced a smile. “Good luck.”

My heart squeezed. I couldn’t imagine facing something like this down or the sense of impending doom she must be living with. I wanted to assure her that I’d find a way to save her, but Olivia’s voice kept ringing in my mind. If Josephine was destined to die, there would be nothing I could do about it. I wanted to believe that I could save her and part of me clung to that, but what if my being drawn to the mirror wasn’t about her as much as it was about the demon. Perhaps I was never meant to come back to this decade. Maybe I was just supposed to kill the demon.

I closed the door softly behind me. Baker looked up from the stoop, his hat tilted at a jaunty angle. My spirit couldn’t help but lift when he smiled and offered his arm.

“Let’s see what you can do, Maggie Edwards.”