Wayward Souls Read online

  Lorde decided it was time to get between us and bark her head off.

  “Evil!” the ghost screamed. “Die!” She let out a battle cry and those knitting needles were finally on the move.

  I rocked to the balls of my feet, ready to rush.

  But the ghost was bullet fast. She swung, knitting needles aimed for the center of my chest, a chakra point. She had good instincts and aim. If those needles had any magic in them, I’d be in pain.

  Instead, I jagged to one side, trying not to trip through Lorde who snapped at the ghost, getting nothing but a muzzle of air.

  Lu strode over. “What is it? Who is it?” she demanded. Anger rolled off her in a familiar wave that made me lean toward her, wanting even that emotional connection, if it was all I could have.

  The ghost took another swing. The needles whooshed right through me—

  —and so did the rest of the ghost.

  For a moment, we adhered, stuck in each other’s skin, fully on each other’s plane.

  Every instinct told me to move, to run, to jerk away from that intimate touch, that vulnerable sharing of knowledge. But if I did anything too quickly, I could tear the ghost to shreds, and leave me in all kinds of lasting pain.

  I held very still, claiming this space where our worlds merged, where we merged, grounding myself to the ghost’s realm of existence while staying grounded in my own.

  She must have felt it, the hard focus of my thoughts and intent to support her, keep her vital, to protect her from the stupid thing she’d just done.

  She stopped, reaching for my intent, and that was enough for the connection to complete.

  I knew I had seconds to tell her how she and I were going to get out of this bear trap she’d gotten us into without either of us springing the teeth.

  I also wanted to avoid the download of each other’s lives and memories.

  That had only happened to me once, early on in this not-quite-dead life of mine. I’d rather it never happened again.

  “My name’s Brogan Gauge,” I said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I apologize if I did. My wife is staying in this bedroom, and I wanted to know the locals she might be spending the night with.”

  She hadn’t said anything, but she wasn’t screaming or trying to pull away. So far so good.

  “Since you’re a ghost, and I’m not quite dead, occupying the same space as we are can be a little tricky. If we try to part too quickly, it’s gonna hurt a hell of a lot and neither of us are going to be the better for it.”

  I could feel the moment she understood what I was saying. She knew it was the truth because the windows between our minds and souls were slowly cracking open, and my thoughts were leaking out, easy for her to hear.

  I heard hers, too, though I didn’t want to. I had enough pain and guilt and anger in my long, long life-ish. I didn’t need to be carrying someone else’s along with mine.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  Her thoughts tumbled, faint voices: a woman’s, a man’s, calling her name in a hundred different tones. Most of them happy, most of them good. But a few…a few were rage.

  Family was a complicated thing.

  “Stella,” she said. I was surprised at her soft and lovely voice.

  “Stella,” I repeated as her memories washed by me. If I kept my vision sort of soft focused, I wouldn’t have to see her—

  —playing in the creek, tadpoles tickling her ankles—

  —jumping on the back of a boy with broad shoulders and laughing as he spun her around and around until she was dizzy and clinging—

  —the road, the rain, all the blood—

  —her sister crying at the funeral home—

  —memories.

  I inhaled, exhaled, letting the emotional wave that came with each of those memories wash over me. It wasn’t easy. Emotions had a way of lingering and leaving a stain. I’d wondered if part of why so many ghosts roamed the world was because of those emotions, anchoring them to the world, locking them down, feeling by feeling.

  “So we’re going to be just fine, Stella. We’re both going to be just fine. All we have to do is agree to let go of each other. Best way to think of this is we’re gonna move back one step, holding our arms out, fingers stretched.”

  Truth was, I didn’t know the best way to do this. I’d only gotten stuck with one other ghost and had made it a point to avoid repeating that experience ever since.

  I glanced down at Lorde, who had dropped into a sit and was watching me closely, her head tipping side-to-side with curiosity.

  “Is he okay?” Lu asked, her anger still roiling around her, hot like a fire I wanted to draw up against, wanted to feel on my skin, my fingers, my lips. “Brogan, are you okay?” Her fingers drifted upward, hovering over the pocket watch hanging from that too-heavy chain on her too-delicate neck.

  “No, don’t, Lu. Not now. It’s okay. Don’t waste the minutes.”

  But she had that look on her face, jaw set with determination, eyes narrowed.

  “Tell her no, Lorde. Lorde, tell her I’m okay. Tell her not to touch the watch.”

  Lorde tipped her head, then she yipped and wagged her tail.

  Lu paused. “Yes or no Brogan, and you’d better be pretty damn clear, because I’m about to tap in and kick some ass.”

  Gods. Being dead made for messy communication.

  “I need a favor,” I told Stella. “I need to tell my wife not to try to enter this realm.”

  Stella was startled and curious about that statement, but remained silent.

  “Three…” Lu warned.

  “All I need you to do is trust me. I’m going to reach out and tell her we’re okay. It might sting, but I promise you, it won’t harm you or me. It’s temporary, okay?”

  She nodded, which was weird since our heads were connected and I hadn’t moved mine.

  “Two…”

  “Thank you,” I said. “All right, so just hold real still, Stella. I’m going to stretch my thoughts and focus. Like I said, it will sting a little.”

  “One…”

  I pulled my thoughts, my will, my mind together, and imagined an arrow, a dart, a needle, bright and sharp, piercing through the air, puncturing it with a muted “tock,” opening that tiny space. And into that space, my thoughts, my will, my words burned bright, loud, full of my need, and the lonely want for her I could never hide.

  “I’m okay.”

  Distantly, I heard Stella hiss, the sting of me reaching out across yet another plane burning through us.

  Lu’s breath hitched, her eyes opening, her mouth soft. “Brogan?”

  Lorde yipped again, happy.

  But Lu’s gaze was on me. Right on me. My voice had given her the exact position where I was standing, and she knew. Knew I was there.

  “Hey, baby,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me now. “I love you.”

  She smiled, knowing I could see her. Knowing I was right there. “Hey.” She reached out, and I couldn’t help myself. I took her hand in mine.

  Well, in mine and Stella’s.

  “I got this,” I told her. “We’re good.”

  Lorde got up and sniffed a circle around our feet, then sat, tail wagging.

  “If that ghost is giving you a problem, let me know. I have salt and iron in the duffle, not to mention a few other items.”

  Stella jerked at that, but I soothed her. “She’s joking. Well, she’s not joking. She really has those things in her duffle. But she wouldn’t use them unless I told her to. How’s the sting?”

  Stella refocused on our condition. “Better,” she said.

  “Good. So now that Lu isn’t going to try to get in the middle of this, let’s get us untangled. Ready?”

  “No.”

  Ah, shit.

  “Stella, this isn’t something that I can hold for long. The plane that ghosts exist upon and the one that I travel aren’t aligned exactly. Even if we didn’t want it to, they’re going to pull apart. And when they do tha
t, they pull us apart too.”

  “How long before that happens?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only been in this situation once, and I didn’t wait that long before bailing ship.”

  “I want a favor,” she said.

  “Fair.”

  “I want to talk to my sister.”

  It took me a second to figure out who she was talking about, but then an image, a memory of a much younger Dot, the owner of the house, filled my vision.

  “So, Dot’s your sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “This was the house you grew up in together?”

  “This was my room.” She didn’t sound upset that Dot had remodeled it and was renting it out, but ghosts could be tricky. The ghosts I’d run across had lost big swaths of the things that went into being human. Most of them had dissolved down into just a handful of their strongest emotions, memories, or wants.

  There were exceptions to that rule, but Stella felt like she was on her way to losing some of those things. Losing bits of her personality that she’d naturally built and changed and grown when she was alive.

  “Maybe I can give your sister a message?” I had no idea how I was going to do that, but I’d try. “It isn’t going to be easy. If the living aren’t ready to hear from a ghost, it can be pretty hard on them. Are you sure this message is worth it?”

  “She needs to know. I have to tell her. Let me tell her. She needs to know.” Her emotions were boiling up, hot, heavy lava, smothering out my breathing room.

  “All right. She needs to know. I’ll find a way to get her a message.”

  “No. Not you. Me. Only me. I need to tell her.”

  “That’s….more than I can promise, Stella.”

  Her anger was a hard slap that would have left my nose bleeding if I were flesh and blood.

  “I know things,” she said. “I…I saw your memories. You’re looking for answers.”

  She had my full attention. “Be very clear with me.”

  “I saw your…thoughts? She’s your wife, Lu? And you want to be with her, but she’s a…some kind of monster?”

  “Lu’s no kind of monster.”

  “But she’s not human. Not anymore. Not since that horrible attack—”

  “I was there,” I said. “What does this have to do with talking to your sister?”

  “It was thirty years ago, I think. Time’s hard for me. But a man came through town. Riding the road. He had things to sell.”

  I didn’t see how a carpetbagger fit into this conversation.

  “Magic things,” she said.

  “Lots of people say they have magic things. Most of them are lying.”

  “I know, but this…I know it was magic, Brogan. I saw what it could do.”

  We didn’t have much time. The movement between our planes was starting to change, like the second hand of two clocks ticking away at slightly different rhythms.

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “A journal. Small. Made out of leather and wood and metal and bone. He showed it to me. The man. Then he opened it to a page and called rain right out of the sky.”

  Trick. Lots of easy ways to make that happen without magic.

  She must have been following my thoughts.

  “It was a clear sky, Brogan. I might be dead, but I’m not that gullible.” She dragged the memory out and shook it like snapping a rug.

  And there I was, standing in the parking lot of the Dixie Truck Stop, clear blue sky buttoning down the edge of every horizon I could see.

  The man was short, maybe only four and a half feet at best, and dressed in a tailored, pinstriped suit.

  He didn’t look like a god to me, nor could I tell from her memories if he were some other creature. Stella had assumed he was human, so that’s how she remembered him.

  Assumption went a long way toward monsters—human and otherwise—hiding in plain sight.

  He drew the little book out of his breast pocket. It was the length of his hand and narrow, but even in a ghostly memory that thing shone.

  It was magic. Stella was convinced of it.

  I tried to look past her assumption. The book was a soft, tawny brown, worked with gold threads and bits of stone and metal. The hook was a bone carved into the shape of a bird in full dive, the loop of leather clutched in its talons.

  He did something with the clasp, and the bird’s talons flexed and released the leather.

  A nice bit of hinge work there.

  I couldn’t see the writing on the page, but had the impression the paper was red, which seemed strange. Then the man recited something that sounded like a poem.

  It was not a poem. Or at least it was not a human poem. It was a Faefolk song. Beautiful, haunting, and undeniably magical.

  The sky boiled with clouds, white into gray, into chalkboard black.

  The rain fell.

  Hard, marble-sized droplets poured over the parking lot, the strange man, and the much younger Stella.

  “How much?” the memory of Stella asked. “I can pay. I can pay you anything.”

  The man lifted one thick eyebrow, his eyes gone steely and cruel. “Anything?”

  “Oh, Stella,” I said, knowing what she must have promised. Her life. Maybe her soul. “Is that why you’re here, stuck between the living world and those places beyond?”

  “What are you saying?” she sounded annoyed. “What do you think I traded?” And before I could censor any of my thoughts, which was getting harder and harder by the minute, the second, she barked out a laugh.

  A real, happy laugh.

  “He wanted half a million dollars,” she said, mirth giving her voice a burry warmth. “I wouldn’t have offered my soul to anyone. I’ve read the Bible. I know Satan wears plain clothes.”

  “Well, if that was Satan, he upgraded to a pinstriped suit.”

  “Instead of paying, I stole it.”

  I blinked. Blinked again. “You what?”

  “Stole the magic book.”

  “But…what about what the Bible says?”

  “You think Satan should have a magic book, Brogan? Because I don’t think Satan should have a magic book.”

  “He wasn’t…All right. No, I don’t think Satan should have a magic book, but I don’t think that was Satan.”

  She/we shrugged. “What matters is I have a book. A magic book. You can have it if you let me talk to my sister.”

  I/we lifted a hand and rubbed at my forehead. A headache was starting there, a real banger. I was out of time. Which meant I needed to choose.

  Best choice: tell Stella no, and move on down the road.

  “I’ll scream,” she said casually. “The entire time your wife and you are in this room. I’ll scream. The entire time you are in this town, I’ll follow you around screaming.”

  Oh, good gods.

  Worst choice: find a way for her to talk to her sister and get that magic book.

  Lu could send it up to Mr. Headwaters, the antique dealer who was always on the lookout for magical items.

  Or maybe it had something in it that would help us. Maybe the Faefolk had a spell or a curse or a song that would break our soul problem.

  Maybe it would heal us.

  Maybe it would point us toward the monsters who had done this to us.

  Maybe it would put enough money in the bank account, Lu wouldn’t have to worry about that broken down silver truck and could buy herself a more reliable vehicle.

  Maybe it would just give us an ending.

  All viable routes.

  I puffed out a breath. “All right,” I said. “Fine. You have a deal. I’ll find a way to get a message to your sister—”

  “No, I want to talk to her. You find a way for me to talk to her.”

  “Right. You get to talk to her and in return, you give the book to Lu and me. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  She was buzzing with a tsunami of emotions I didn’t want to surf.

  “Time to step apart,” I said. “Remember ho
w?”

  “Take one step back, my arms out straight, fingers stretched.”

  “That’s it. It will feel a little like trying to pull a tight boot off by the heel.”

  Her main emotion turned into determination.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I set my feet, adding my will to my own here and now and real while Stella took a big breath and held it like she was ready to dive off the cliff into a river way, way down there.

  She stepped back—

  —fire burned through me, hot enough I froze, every inch of me screaming in agony—

  I leaned forward, gently, slowly.

  It wasn’t so much like a boot being pulled off as it was like being skinned alive.

  It was too much. Pain filled all of me. Consciousness was a speck out there, glinting in the distance. I was losing hold, shaking apart.

  Then it was done.

  I fell to my knees, panting, sweat dripping off me like that Fae-born rainstorm. The world swayed and my stomach squirmed.

  I barfed, and even though I didn’t eat, the energy that fueled me came up in a putrid, steaming puddle.

  I hung my head and breathed through my mouth, not wanting to smell my own sick.

  “That wasn’t so bad.” Stella’s voice was more distant, as if she’d stepped into another room, closed all the doors and windows, and was shouting just to be heard through the thick layers. “Just like pulling off a boot—easy.”

  I groaned, because I was pretty sure the boot didn’t think so.

  Chapter Seven

  “Three days, tops.” Sunshine wiped his hands on a clean cloth, leaving greasy streaks behind.

  Lu nodded, her eyes focused on the truck parked in the closest slot in the bay, the hood up and blocks behind its wheels.

  “How much?”

  “We’ll have to figure in time, but just the part for a blown radiator is gonna come in around two hundred. Timing chain’s that at least. Then labor and there’s a few other things I’d recommend we do while we’ve got it.”

  “He’s gonna try to rip you off.” I was leaning on a tool box, facing both of them. That way I could stare over Lu’s shoulder through the window that showed the hall, and just enough of the doorway to the office I could see Jo, working on her laptop.