Ghostsnaps (Knead to Know Book 4) (17 page)

“You don’t have to come,” I said. “But if you do, you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you.”

She blinked several times before taking one step then another until she was next to me. “I’m glad you’re the one who came through my mirror.” She took my arm and together we snuck out to the hallway.

The crowd was facing the great room, watching something with interest as the music blared. Josephine pulled out her oils and climbed up on the table. I stood behind her, watching to make sure no one turned in our direction. I felt it more than anything else. As fast as she opened the mirror passage, she was gone. The haziness in the mirror was already starting to fade by the time I turned around.

Scrambling up onto the table, I jumped through the mirror and into the unknown, with no one on the other side to catch me.

The haze was so thick I couldn’t see anything at all. “Josephine,” I yelled.

My voice echoed back at me, and then there was a scream. It came from every direction at once, then echoed so it sounded like fifty people were screaming. Josephine was lost.

Son of a bitch.

The fog didn’t clear like it had the other times. The music played loudly, making it hard to think, but I kept going. As I moved through the mist, it only grew thicker. “Josephine,” I shouted again. “Listen to my voice. Nothing else is real. Come toward my voice.” As if anyone could follow a sound through an echo like this.

Suddenly a path cleared in front of me, cutting through the fog, stretching all the way toward the mirror in my shop. Boone’s hand stuck through, waiting to seize mine.

“You have no place here,” a man’s voice spoke all around me. “If you leave now, I will release you from my realm. The woman is mine.”

“Let her go. I’ll take her place,” I said.

There was no reply. The impenetrable fog slowly increased again, obscuring the path to my bakery and Boone’s arm once more. I inched forward, feeling in front of me for a wall or anything that could guide me, but there was nothing. Time and space vanished and it was impossible to tell if I had been wandering for ten minutes or ten hours. The channel wouldn’t be open forever. If it closed, we’d both be stuck here possibly forever.

Then there was a click like someone turned on the lights. The fog vanished and I wasn’t in the gray hazy world between mirrors. I was in a vaguely familiar parking garage. I scanned the older model cars, not anything like the cars I had seen in Josephine’s time, but still older than what I was used to. Why did I know this place?

“Are you ready? Do you know what to do?” a voice I would never forget spoke one row over. I walked slowly between vehicles to the other side. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be my father. I hadn’t seen him since…

But there he was, crouched down between cars, holding me by the shoulders an arm’s distance from himself. His hair was slicked back and he had a toothpick between his teeth.

“Tell me the plan, Maggie,” he said.

I stopped swishing the pretty pink skirt of my dress to look at him. “I run behind the car and you hit the trunk.”

“Then what?” he prompted.

“Then…” I bit my lower lip for a moment, then broke out in a somewhat toothless grin. “Then I fall to the ground and cry.”

“Good girl,” he said, kissing my forehead.

My palms itched to stop him, to save that smaller version of myself from the years of heartbreak suffered at the hands of that man, but my feet stayed planted.

“Such a good little soldier,” a voice said behind me. I couldn’t turn my head. My entire body was frozen in place, unable to move. “I’ve been watching you for a while now. You are awfully judgmental for a person with a past like yours. How many people did you help scam, do you think?”

I tried to talk, but no sound came out.

“Yes, I forgot.” The man snapped his fingers and came around to face me. Tall and reed thin, Granville’s hair was black and dense as a shadow. His angular face was sharp, bore a hawkish nose, and bordered on cruel as he leaned closer to me. “Answer the question. How many people did you help your father hurt?”

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You didn’t have a choice,” he mocked as he glanced over at the little girl. “It doesn’t look like you fought him to me. I see a willing accomplice.”

I pressed my lips together. I hadn’t known better. My father was all I had ever known and conning was all he ever taught me. Now I couldn’t stand lying. It ate at me and the guilt never went away.

Granville snapped his fingers again and the scene vanished. We were outside the warehouse in Chicago, dozens and dozens of wendigos surrounding us. My eyes glowed red as I tore through them, bodies flying around me as I moved. I didn’t even look human. My face was slack and lifeless. My eyes burned like embers, and my arms moved so sure and fast they blurred. Even after all the wendigos were dead, I tried to attack Corbin, the vampire who had been helping us. He struggled to hold me back as I kicked and screamed like a feral creature.

“How many did you kill that day, Maggie? Was that not your fault either?”

It was hard to breathe.

“Poor, Maggie, life just happens to her. She doesn’t actually make decisions.” Granville circled me like a shark. “Do you still think you’d like to stay with me? I can spend the rest of eternity feeding off your pain, showing you every time you failed to live up to a relatively low bar of humanity. You have so much in there.” He pointed at my head. “I won’t stop until I dig it all out.”

I couldn’t shake my head, but I didn’t want it.
Please, Lord, let me go.
But I couldn’t leave. Not without…I couldn’t remember her name. The one I went through the mirror to save. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t grasp it. “What do you want?” I managed to say, voice thready and weak.

“I want to be free,” he said. “You can’t help me with that though. Josephine can. The spell worked for her and her alone. But if you refuse to go, well, it’s been a while since I had a diversion quite this damaged. You hide it well. At first glance, I never expected such depth of character.”

Josephine. That was it. The name rang out in my mind. I turned my head toward Granville. “Where is she?”

His eyes narrowed. “Let’s see what else we can find in there.” He snapped his fingers again.

I was in a police station, eleven years old, staring at my father who had been taken into an office with a glass window. It was the last time I’d ever see him again. This time he was sent to prison. And though I knew he deserved it, I felt what the girl in the chair felt: fear, relief, abandonment, and so much sadness.

My dad’s constant barrage of failed promises ran through my mind as I watched him talk to the police officers in the tiny room. He never once looked back at me.
Next time will be different
.
This is the last time you’ll have to help me.
And, my personal favorite,
This is the last time we’ll move, I promise
. “What did he do this time?” Granville purred in my ear. “How did he get caught, Maggie? It wasn’t his fault was it?”

I struggled to turn away. I didn’t want to see anymore. I had enough.

“Whose fault was it that he was caught?”

The woman was nice. She was kind to me. She taught me how to cook, and I loved it because it was the first time in my life I ever felt like I had a family. I couldn’t let him take her life savings…so I told. After years of keeping my mouth shut and pretending that I didn’t see what he was doing, I stopped. My father was arrested and sentenced and I never saw him again. I saved myself that day as much as I saved her.

“Your father died in prison, didn’t he?”

Cancer. He would have died outside of prison just the same. I didn’t visit him. I didn’t forgive him. That was something I had to live with. But out of everything I had done in my life, saving Trish was not one of the things I regretted. In fact, I was making up for my life now. I was helping people. Yes, I killed some demons, but it wasn’t at all the same thing as what my dad did or what Granville was doing. And what was Granville doing? Why was he showing me all this? Why now?

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to stand by dumbly as Granville hurt anyone else. Like my own father, he had to be stopped and I was the only one here to do it. My muscles felt like they would shatter, but I forced my arm up with a scream and grabbed him by the neck. “Where is Josephine?”

Shock filled Granville’s face, quickly followed by fear as the vampire part of me realized that dinner was served. He grabbed and clawed at my hand. “It’s not possible. You can’t move,” he gasped.

I squeezed my fingers tighter, anger fueling me past the tremendous pain in my arm. “Where is she?” I shook him slightly. The muscle popped in my arm, filling me with white-hot pain from wrist to shoulder, but I didn’t let go. Instead I forced my other arm up to help.

“Kill me and she’ll die,” he croaked. His hold loosened on me, allowing my legs to move freely. The fog began to fade.

“Somehow I doubt that,” I told him. “You live here in your little dream world feeding on the memories and pain of those unlucky enough to stumble into your path. Not anymore. Never again.”

There was a gasp to my right. I swung around, keeping my hands firmly locked on Granville’s neck. Josephine was standing up, clutching her throat as she struggled to take in air. She was turning an alarming shade of blue. I loosened my grip on Granville’s neck slightly and stopped psychically pulling his dark spirit from his body. Josephine drew in a deep breath.

“What’s happening?” she gasped.

“Go to the mirror and take the hand,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

She shook her head. “We’ve been here too long, Maggie. We both have to go or you won’t be able to come back.”

Granville smiled, making me want to squeeze harder, but I couldn’t. Not without hurting her. I finally understood what Phoenix had been trying to tell me. There was no justice for people in our world. We made our own or the other person went free. I couldn’t let Granville live to attack us again or to find a new victim, but if I hurt him, I hurt her or had to stay.

I followed Josephine to the mirror, dragging Granville with me. When we arrived, Boone was clearly standing on the other side, his arm extended, patiently waiting for me to take it. “Go,” I told her.

She shook her head. “Not without you.”

“He can’t live,” I told her. “Someone has to stop him and I’m the only one that can do it, but I can’t while you’re here.”

“No, Maggie. You promised you’d be with me. I can’t go to a new world alone.”

I released one hand from Granville’s neck and shoved Josephine through the mirror and into Boone’s awaiting hand. “You don’t have a choice,” I whispered and she was pulled through.

Granville’s hand darted up. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my head back, then he fought me, pulling backwards, yanking me away from the mirror. His other hand made a swing for my throat.

I blocked the blow, caught his fist in my free hand, then tightened the hand I still had around his neck until I drained him completely.

The gray misty room began to shake and crumble around me, absorbing everything in it.

“Maggie!” Boone was half in and half out, waving frantically. “Hurry,” he shouted.

I ran for the opening, the floor disappearing beneath my feet as I went. I wasn’t going to make it to him. I leaped as the last of the floor vanished.

Boone’s hand clasped around mine, jerking me through the mirror. Glass shattered around us as we tumbled to the floor of my bakery.

“You are the craziest person I have ever met,” Boone said. “Do you have a death wish?”

I laughed, forcing my eyes open again, though the well-fed sleepiness was starting to take hold. I was home. I actually made it home.

“Do you know how long I stood there with my arm shoved into a mirror?”

I looked up at him and smiled. “I knew you’d figure it out.” I looked from him to Josephine, who couldn’t stop smiling and laughing, to Izzy to Olivia…wait,
Izzy
. I snapped my gaze back to her and scrambled to my feet. “What are you doing here? What is she doing here?”

Izzy snorted, crossing her arms. “Where else would I be? You went into a mirror, Maggie. I’ve been covering for you ever since—and I’m not going to lie. The baking has suffered. I almost hired help. Had Olivia not stepped in I would have had to.”

I shook my head, not fully comprehending what she was saying. No, no, no. She didn’t know about any of this. Unless… “Someone told you?”

She gave me an odd look. “Told me what? Are you okay? Did you hit your head?”

There was one face I didn’t see in the room. The one person I had been waiting to talk to. “Where’s Phoenix?”

“Okay, we’re all excited that Maggie’s back, but I think she needs a little space,” Olivia said, taking me by the arm and walking me into the kitchen. “Just relax. Take a few deep breaths.”

Something bad had happened. Phoenix would be here if something awful hadn’t happened. His stalker came back to mind. Jinn, like me, could heal from a lot, but they weren’t immortal. I pressed one hand flat against the stainless steel counter top. “Is he dead?” I asked in barely a whisper.

Olivia didn’t say anything.

He couldn’t be dead. That couldn’t be all the time we had together. Pink tears were already rolling down my cheeks. I had waited too long. I had never told him how I felt. We never had a chance, a real chance, because I was too scared to let myself love someone who…who reminded me of my father.

“Maggie.” She laid a consoling hand on my shoulder, only making me cry harder as I fought to stay on my feet.

I couldn’t talk. I wanted to know how it happened, but the words wouldn’t come out, not yet. It made it all too real.

“Maggie,” she said again, more insistently this time. I finally looked up at her through my tears. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Phoenix,” I said.

She shook her head. “Who’s Phoenix?”