Chapter 26 #2
Griffin is pinned against the living room ceiling. His arms and legs are spread wide, and Morrow hovers below him. Morrow has taken on a more solid form than before. His translucent hands are buried wrist-deep in Griffin’s chest cavity, and I can see them moving inside him.
The duffel bag lies on its side. I snatch it up, dumping the entire contents at my feet.
I shove a pair of goggles onto my face. The elastic snaps against the back of my head. The world turns green.
The ceiling’s too tall for me to reach with the crowbar. I pull out the shotgun. It’s heavier than I expected, the weight of it solid and real.
I grab a handful of rounds and jam them into my pocket, then crack the shotgun open the way Dad taught me. Two shells stare back at me, packed tight with white granules.
Salt rounds. I can work with that.
Except—I glance up at Griffin, still pinned to the ceiling with Morrow’s hands buried in his chest. If I shoot now, the salt spray will hit him, too. Salt rounds can kill a person if shot at close range.
Morrow hasn’t noticed me yet. He’s too focused on Griffin, whose face is now purple. The veins in Griffin’s neck are bulging, and though his lips form words, no sound comes out.
I have to do something. I have to do something right now or Griffin is going to die, and it’ll be my fault for standing here like an idiot trying to figure out the perfect plan when there is no perfect plan.
I plant my feet, bringing the shotgun up to my shoulder. The stock is cold against my cheek. Morrow and Griffin are too close. But then Morrow lowers his legs, and I get a clear shot.
I pull the trigger.
The recoil slams into my shoulder hard enough to spin me halfway around. In the small apartment, the sound is deafening, my ears ringing so loud I can’t hear anything else.
The ghost’s lower body explodes into a spray of oily smoke.
Griffin lets out a strangled cry and drops from the ceiling, hitting the floor face-down with a wet thud that makes bile rise in my throat.
“Griffin!” So much fear pours into me, it’s like all the air got sucked out of the room.
I stagger across the apartment, crashing onto my knees next to him. I drop the shotgun and grip his shoulder, trying to roll him onto his back, but he’s so heavy.
Gritting my teeth, I push him all the way over until he’s staring up at the ceiling. The salt ripped through his pant leg. I’m relieved when my fingers brush over his prosthetic.
I’m feeling under his jaw for his pulse when a sound behind me makes me jam up.
I glance over my shoulder. The smoke is reforming, pulling itself back together like it’s being sucked through an invisible straw.
Morrow hovers three feet off the ground, and now that he’s not actively murdering Griffin, I can see him clearly for the first time.
He has silver gray hair combed to the side in that way older men do when they’re trying to hide a bald spot, and deep-set eyes that look like someone carved two holes into a skull with a melon baller.
He looks exactly the same as he did in his mugshot, only made of shifting smoke.
I drop my eyes to his chest and reload the shotgun. “Stay back.”
Morrow laughs, the sound sliding directly into my head. “Or what? You’ll make more noise?”
My mental stage is only half up when he flies at me.
I aim at his head and pull the trigger, but the shot goes wide, punching a hole through the drywall to his left.
He hits me with the force of a freight train.
Cold crashes into me, so intense it burns, and I’m airborne until I slam into the wall.
I slide into a sitting position, wind knocked out of me, death-gripping the shotgun because it’s all I have.
Morrow hovers right above me, close enough that the cold radiating off him makes me feel like I stepped into a freezer. I swing the barrel of the shotgun up through his torso, but the metal passes through the smoke. Right. Not iron.
The crowbar’s on the floor, probably ten feet away. If I can get to it—
I lurch forward, but Morrow crashes down on me, pinning me against the wall. My scream dies in my throat as his hands clamp around my face, translucent fingers pressing into my cheeks.
I try to twist away, but it’s like being held down by concrete that’s somehow also intangible. His fingers sink deeper, pushing through the outer layer of my face like I’m made of Jell-O.
“Aren’t you a spirited one?” Morrow says.
I try to bite down, try to do anything, but my jaw won’t cooperate. My muscles have turned to ice under his grip, refusing every command my brain screams at them.
His thumbs press against my lips, forcing my mouth open.
“You may think you’d do anything for him,” he says. “But you’ll break so beautifully under the right circumstances.”
The ectoplasm is already leaking down the back of my throat, thick and oily and wrong. I gag. More pours in. My vision blurs, the edges of the room going soft and dark, tunneling down to just Morrow’s face hovering inches from mine.
I close my eyes even though I’m still wearing goggles because no way is this asshole going to get inside my head, and spit the ectoplasm at him.
“Fuck,” I grit out, through the slime running down my chin. “You.”
A door slams open somewhere outside Mathis’s apartment. The grip on my face loosens.
“You and I will be seeing each other again,” Morrow sneers. “Very soon.”
His hands rip out of my face so fast it feels like he’s taking parts of me with him. When I open my eyes, he’s gone.