Chapter 35
The salt line surrounding the house is buried in sealed plastic tubing, twelve inches deep, circling the entire property. We refill it weekly and replace the contents every six months. So far, no entity has crossed that line.
I stay up until one in the morning reading, cross-legged on my bed with books spread open all around me. The Jim Beam should’ve put me to sleep by now, but the fear thrumming under my skin is enough to keep me awake until I find what I’m looking for:
One of the most consistent physiological markers of post-possession in a host involves changes to eye pigmentation.
When subjected to prolonged periods of possession, the host invariably develops a distinctive white or gray ring at the edge of the iris, similar in appearance to corneal arcus senilis.
This limbal ring inversion occurs when ectoplasm has caused cellular damage to melanin-producing cells in the iris.
The degree of hypopigmentation correlates with possession duration: all subjects possessed longer than six months exhibited this characteristic, with hypopigmentation persisting indefinitely, even after successful entity extraction.
Unlike the conversational tone Donny uses in the field guide, Benji writes like a textbook. If I were worth anything in science, maybe I’d understand half of what he talks about, but Benji could say ghosts are made from vaporized crystals from the planet Prion, and I’d believe him.
This paper was at the bottom of my reading list. As soon as I reached this, I would’ve made the connection between the eye coloration and Nico, since his eyes are the most beautiful ones I’ve ever seen and have been imprinted in my brain.
Donny wanted me to find out. Probably after I’d learnt enough to understand Nico’s situation. I would’ve reached it in a few weeks.
Believe me when I tell you who I am, or else you’ll find out when I’m killing you.
He was so convincing when he said it. There was nothing behind his eyes.
But.
But.
I chew on my thumbnail, staring at the diagrams in the article Nico might have drawn. A row of eyes with limbal ring inversions of increasing severity stares back at me. The very last one, the most extreme, matches Nico’s.
Billy may not be planning any great manipulation, but if he was telling the truth about their late-night chats, Nico isn’t always there just to interview him.
I don’t understand why Donny would allow Nico to communicate unsupervised with his abuser.
Even if I had the opportunity to do that with Stanley Daniels, it would destroy me.
A deafening alarm splits the air.
My hands clap over my ears, but it does almost nothing to block out the urgent swooping horn. It’s at least double the volume of the team meeting alarm, which is saying something.
Doors slam. I set a very startled Bob on the ground and throw my door open, nearly colliding with Griffin, who’s stumbling out of his room, eyes bleary.
“What’s happening?” I yell over the alarm.
“Perimeter breach,” Griffin says, waving for me to follow him.
My stomach plummets. I rush after him, and Bob follows me down the hall.
I’m close to panic when I reach Zoey’s room, where everyone else is gathered. DJ and Benji stand closest to the door, and Nico’s on Zoey’s other side. I can only see his profile.
Zoey rubs her eyes with one hand, booting up her computer with frantic shakes of her mouse. She’s got pillow creases on her cheek, but she’s typing so fast she looks like she’s been awake for hours.
“The alarm’s coming from the garage,” Zoey says. “Someone’s at Donny’s.”
Multiple windows pop up on her screen, cycling through different camera angles until one locks on the garage, all dark and grainy.
A huge man barrels through Donny’s front door, then takes off across the lawn toward the trees, a limp body slung over his shoulder. Donny’s white hair is unmistakable.
Nico and Griffin race for the door before anyone can say anything. I’m frozen in place, watching the cameras as they burst out of the house, sprinting across the yard toward the driveway.
Zoey pulls up the perimeter feed. “There’s no way he can get out,” she says. “The gate is closed.”
The guy’s at the gate now. He waves his hand in front of the motion sensor, and the gate opens.
“He’s not possessed,” Benji says. “No possessed individual can cross the salt line.”
“It’s not Morrow?” Zoey gapes at the screen. “Who else would break in here, then?”
The man runs through the open gate and ducks into the woods. I wince when a large branch clips him across the head, but it doesn’t slow his pace. He disappears into the trees. By the time Nico and Griffin reach the spot, there’s no one there.
Zoey scrubs backward through the timeline, checking every camera angle.
“The alarm should have gone off if anyone tried to get through the fence,” she says. “Why did it trigger at Donny’s apartment?”
“Because he was already inside,” I say.
All heads turn to me.
“I thought I was seeing things, but I saw a man standing in the woods this afternoon,” I say. “Nico checked the perimeter and didn’t find anything.”
Zoey swears, and DJ covers her mouth with both hands. Nico and Donny must not have told them about the figure. They probably thought there was no need to worry the others, since it turned out to be nothing.
“Could it be someone else from one of our old cases?” DJ asks. “Unrelated to Morrow?”
“That would be fucking random,” Zoey grumbles.
Nico and Griffin charge back inside, and I can hear them climbing the stairs as I flip through everything I’ve read, my brain scrambling for an answer, until I straighten.
“What if that was Morrow, but he wasn’t possessing the man?” I ask. “Ghosts can put people into a trance. It’s what happened to me when I went to the containment room to talk to Billy. Could a ghost do that across salt lines?”
“Only the most powerful ones can do that,” Nico says, coming back into the room. “Morrow’s nothing if not powerful.”
He’s standing next to me, eyes glued to Zoey’s screens. I freeze when I notice a bruise darkening his cheek, all red and ugly in the monitor light.
“What happened to your face?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says.
He steps around me back to the other side of Zoey, his face a mask of controlled fury that’s somehow more terrifying than if he were yelling.
“Why Donny?” DJ asks. “If the Game Master was after Eden and Griffin, why not grab them?”
“Cut off the head, and the body follows,” I say. “It would’ve been too hard for one person to break in here and take both of us, but he can control us by taking Donny.”
“Morrow likes to play games,” Nico confirms. “He knows we’re going to come after Donny. He’s setting a trap.”
Morrow didn’t waste any time. It was only five days ago that Griffin and I cornered him in the apartment, and Morrow has already figured out (a) ghost hunters exist, (b) Donny is leading us, (c) how to get through our defenses, and (d) that we all care enough about Donny to come after him.
“I know he had an above-average IQ, but he has to be really smart to have figured us out so quickly,” I say.
Nico nods, as if he’s thinking the same thing.
“Zo, can you track the GPS on his watch?” Nico asks.
“On it.” Zoey pulls up new windows.
“I’m hoping he wouldn’t have thought to turn off the GPS,” Nico says, glancing at me, like he’s explaining it for me. “He’s smart, but he was also alive before modern technology. He might not know.”
Please let him be right. Please let Donny’s watch still be transmitting.
“I got a signal,” Zoey says.
Nico moves so fast he’s practically a blur, appearing behind Zoey’s chair to peer at her screen. “Where is he?”
“On the highway,” Zoey says. “Heading toward Pittsburgh.”
“Could the Game Master have left the watch on purpose?” I ask. “As part of the trap?”
Nico pauses, and I wonder if he’s thinking about Radke and his clumsy interest in modern technology, because I am, too. “There’s no way to know. If it is a trap, we still have to walk into it, so we’ll go in assuming it is.” Nico spins his finger, addressing the team. “Gear up. We move out in ten.”
“Should I come?” I ask. “My last field mission didn’t go well, and since he’s hunting me, it’s probably a bad idea for Griffin and me to both go.”
“I second that,” Griffin says.
Nico is still. I can almost see the gears moving in his head.
“What if the Game Master wants you to stay home, get us all out of the house so he can come in and get you?” DJ asks.
Nico nods. Slowly. “We stay together,” he says.
“Or Eden could stay with Zoey, and I come,” Griffin says, and I bristle at the idea of being left behind. “She’s barely started her training. She shouldn’t be in the field. I can’t afford to be paired with her when I should be focused on Donny.”
“Good thing she won’t be paired with you then.” Nico pushes past him. “She’ll be with me.”
A numbing feeling comes over me, like I’ve been dipped in a jar of Novocain and I’m watching this happen to somebody else.
Griffin steps in front of Nico. “Are you insane?”
“I need her to sense the energy,” Nico says, his voice maddeningly calm. “To lead us to Morrow.”
“She’s not ready,” Griffin says.
Nico fixes Griffin with a glare I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. “As I remember it, Eden was the one who saved you in Mathis’s apartment. So she’s more ready than you are.”
Oh shit.
Griffin flexes his hand, and the light from the monitors catches on the discoloration on his knuckles.
Nico steps around Griffin and thunders down the stairs. DJ and Benji run after him, but Griffin stands still.
“Griffin,” I say, grabbing his shoulder. “Did you punch Nico?”
For a second, I think he’s going to deny it, but then his shoulders sag. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because of what he said to you yesterday,” Griffin exclaims. “Why the hell do you think?”
Zoey widens her eyes like she thinks she shouldn’t be here for this conversation.