Chapter 36
“I’m sorry about that,” said Hazel. The apology came out flat, almost nonchalant, and that didn’t surprise her. She felt like she was far outside her body or talking in a dream, which meant her system had reached its outer limits.
You’re sorry?
“Yes,” Hazel said, and walked back into her house.
Albert followed her, making his presence known even though Hazel refused to look behind her.
What the hell was that thing? he demanded as she surveyed her bedroom from the hallway.
The window was a total loss. She could probably tack a blanket up over the hole before she went to bed, which wouldn’t do much about insects but might keep birds from flying in. Sleeping in a room without wards was a terrifying prospect, though.
You summoned it, didn’t you? Albert went on.
Hazel sighed, marched into her room, stuffed her phone into her pocket, and grabbed two blankets and a pillow from the bed. She had been spending a lot of time on the floor lately. This incident really suffered by contrast.
Don’t you care that I’m dead?
“I don’t know. I didn’t. And yes, I do,” said Hazel. She crossed the hallway to the bathroom as Albert yelled complaints from outside her remaining protections. “I didn’t need the hassle.” She didn’t hear his response.
In the bathroom, she spread out one doubled blanket and put the pillow at the end. The result just barely gave her enough room to lie down—she was lucky she was short—but at first she just sat. She’d undress in a moment, stretch out and let weariness do its work.
First, she had one more unpleasant task.
Hazel opened her phone, went to her contacts, and dialed her ex-husband.
* * *
The next time Ligat came to Hazel’s property, he had to hide again.
Policemen infested the yard, which they’d surrounded with yellow tape, and Ligat couldn’t entirely blame them for all their inconvenience.
He couldn’t think the place looked like a slaughterhouse either; slaughterhouses were probably more orderly.
If anything, Hazel’s yard called to mind a few of the stories he’d heard about the Great War—not the sort that came out in mixed company, or before heavy drinking. Men who’d been too near a shell might have looked like the former person scattered around Hazel’s lawn.
Ligat searched for her almost immediately, and relief surged up in his chest when he spotted her standing by the driveway, speaking to a policeman and a person in a suit.
He didn’t try to get a better view, since being in the ethereal only gave him partial camouflage and he had no wish to cause trouble.
From his post in the trees, he could see that Hazel stood upright, with no missing limbs or obvious wounds, and that she was talking calmly.
That was enough to make his muscles unclench.
He also saw the ghostly form hovering at Hazel’s shoulder, which she was ignoring splendidly.
It was only a transparent human shape at Ligat’s distance, with the suggestion of both height and masculinity, but Ligat assumed he was seeing the previous owner of the remains that a uniformed person was putting into plastic bags.
The policeman peered past Hazel to the porch as Ligat watched, shaking his head slowly, and said something about animal control. Hazel nodded. The person in the suit held up a hand to make a point, and the ghost spotted Ligat.
“Are you the Grim Reaper?” the new arrival asked, popping up at his elbow.
“I suppose it’s a reasonable mistake,” said Ligat, after a moment’s confusion. He touched the top of his hood absently. “But no. I have nothing to do with your soul or its final dispensation.”
The ghost sighed. “Well, that figures. I’m Albert Gordon. A journalist.” He stuck out a hand, clearly working from ingrained habits, then quickly retracted it. “What are you?”
“An observer.”
“I knew she was keeping secrets,” said Albert, glaring in Hazel’s direction. “And this is the thanks I get for trying to inform the public.”
The situation hadn’t really sunk in for him. Some ghosts took death that way—some for years. A good layer of fear lay beneath the petty anger in Albert’s speech, but that wasn’t Ligat’s concern. “What happened?”
Albert snorted. “Okay, like I said, I knew she was hiding something. Said she was a medium, went to do a—ha, I guess maybe it was a séance—on a guy who died and then turned out to be a serial killer, then vanished. I figured I could get a story, but go figure, she wouldn’t play ball.
Then this weird Brit comes along and helps chase me off so he can get in her pants. ”
“Frustrating, I’d imagine,” said Ligat, a band of iron around all his emotions.
“Yeah. She probably thought she’d gotten rid of me for good, her and her simp friend, but I figured nobody’s that cagey unless they’ve got a few skeletons in their closet.
So I waited a couple weeks, then I parked over on a turnoff and walked down here at night.
” Albert swallowed. “And then there’s this…
thing. I don’t want to talk about it. I tried to run.
I think I’d maybe gotten twenty feet.” Fear, or the memory of fear, did overpower his anger then, and he fell silent.
“An ugly death. Not one anybody deserves.” It was as close as Ligat would come to offering this unpleasant young man sympathy, but he couldn’t dismiss the basic physical empathy that made him wince at the disarticulated body.
“But she didn’t summon your killer. It would’ve done the same to her if it had the chance. ”
“And if she’d just given me half an hour of her time, I wouldn’t have had to come back.”
Of all the answers Ligat could have given the new ghost, he didn’t think any would have made much of an impression.
He turned his attention back to Hazel and the police instead.
The constable seemed to have finished with their plastic bags, which helped the yard’s appearance somewhat, though the blood remained and so did the flies it had drawn. Hazel was shaking her head.
The policeman frowned. “…not safe out here,” he said, and concern made his voice loud enough for Ligat to hear even from his distance. “Besides, it’s a crime scene.”
“What crime?” asked the man by Hazel.
Ligat gave him a more thorough examination.
He was a tall, rangy sort of chap, with a very sharp, short haircut and a suit far too nice for the dirt and blood around him.
“That’s her lawyer,” said Albert, noticing the direction of Ligat’s gaze.
“She’ll probably get famous off this—go on all the talk shows and yak about how she had to hide in her house from an alien, you know? ”
That sounded more like envy than condemnation to Ligat, but he had no desire to argue the point and miss further developments. He waved a hand dismissively at Albert and took a small step closer as the lawyer continued.
“Neither my client nor I want to cause you problems, Officer,” said the man in the suit. “But as I understand it, the general consensus is that we’re seeing the aftermath of a bear attack. I’m not sure how much more you can learn from the scene itself.”
“We’re not sure about that,” said the policeman, but not very forcefully.
Ligat, who had no mental powers, could read his mind nonetheless: Even a bear probably wouldn’t have done the sort of damage on display, but simple biology if not physics would make a human attacker even less likely, especially one of Hazel’s size.
“As for safety,” said Hazel, “I have a shotgun, and that drove the bear off last night. I don’t intend to take any chances—I’ll stay inside my house until you’ve had a chance to search the area—but I do intend to stay here.”
A bit more back-and-forth followed, but Ligat was never in any doubt of the outcome. Hazel’s will was equal to Perthrux’s attacks and Chapman’s attempts at manipulation. A local policeman wasn’t likely to have much luck, especially since Ligat suspected Hazel hadn’t told him about the prowler.
Sudden suspicion had him turning back to Albert. “Was last night the first time you came out here without her knowledge?”
Either Ligat failed to sound as mild as he’d intended—not particularly surprising, if so—or Albert simply had a bad poker face.
The young man flinched, then offered another defensive shrug.
“I might have done some preliminary investigation. Trying to figure out what she was doing. I owed it to my audience.”
“You weren’t nearly as stealthy as you might have imagined.” At least that meant one less mystery, although Ligat suspected Hazel wouldn’t find it much comfort. God knew he didn’t.
The police, having lost the argument, started getting back into their cars.
Hazel watched them go. Her lawyer watched her.
Ligat couldn’t read the man’s expression, and he had only a superficial understanding of relationships in the twenty-first century, but he thought the lawyer stood a little close for a strictly professional association.
“Bet she’s not just paying him from her bank account,” said Albert helpfully.
Ligat sighed. “I mentioned that I had nothing to do with the fate of your soul, didn’t I?”
“Ye-es?”
“I can change that if you don’t make yourself scarce for a while.”
* * *
“You really should go to a hotel,” said Brandon, frowning at the house.
He probably wouldn’t have approved of it even before the coating of blood, but Hazel admitted it wasn’t looking its best. “I…believe you, that you’re probably safe now, but you’ve been through a pretty traumatic night.
This can’t be a great place to stay—you don’t have a whole window in your bedroom, for God’s sake. ”
“I’m dealing with that.”
“You can’t sleep on the bathroom floor.”
“Most of last night says otherwise. You can drive out and bring me some plywood if you’re really concerned.
” That wasn’t fair. Hazel saw Brandon’s hurt expression and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“No, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re concerned.
It was great of you to come out at short notice.
It’s just…I can’t be around people for a long time, like I said. ”
“Even overnight? This, this vortex thing is that bad?” A vaguely nauseous look had replaced the hurt on his face. Hazel recognized it instantly as deep unease—she’d seen it a lot during their relationship. He pronounced vortex like just saying the word might activate it.
She nodded. “I don’t know that it would go off.
” Unless the demon had found a new and major source of power, the conduit probably wouldn’t actually get any worse, but Hazel didn’t mention that.
Brandon would grasp it like a crab with a stick, and it would take an hour to convince him that probably left too much room for doubt.
“But the consequences are too bad if it does. I’m not going to put anybody else in danger. ”
Brandon had become familiar with a few of Hazel’s qualities, too, in particular the tone that said she’d made up her mind. “Then maybe I should stay with you. I can sleep in the front room.”
“Yes, when I said I wasn’t going to put anybody else in danger, I definitely meant ‘except people I care about.’” Hazel rolled her eyes.
“Really. It’s sweet of you to offer, I really do appreciate it, but first of all, you have a wedding in four months, and second, it would look awful for my lawyer to sleep in my house.
It’s bad enough that we used to be married. ”
Third, she didn’t say, because she did like Brandon, and he had done her a major favor, you’ll just be more collateral damage if the ethereal does cause trouble.
He stared at her for what felt like a while, clearly wanting to argue, just as clearly not finding a path. “Okay,” he said finally. “You know this world. I just…”
“I know,” she said, with years of silent understanding behind it. “And it means a lot.”
“I’ll go and get the plywood for you. At least that might keep the mosquitoes out.”
“You’re an angel,” said Hazel, and meant it.
They hugged, cautious of more than her bruises; it was the light, measured embrace of people who’d once been in love and dreaded bringing back any part of the past or, worse, making each other think they wanted to.
“I’ll be back in an hour, no more,” said Brandon, heading to his rented car. “I’ll pick up some groceries.”
“And bleach, please,” said Hazel. She still had some, but was pretty sure it wasn’t nearly enough to get the job done.
She stood on the bloody porch and watched him drive away, which felt almost like watching Ligat or Bramble vanish back into the ethereal. Brandon felt more like a ghost than either of them, too, for all that Hazel appreciated his help. Time could be a bigger gulf than the border between worlds.