Chapter Thirteen
I saw the ghost the second I stepped into Barb’s house. He sat in a flowered armchair, staring intently at the TV like he could will it to turn itself on and start playing his favorite show.
He didn’t acknowledge us at all.
Barb stood still for a moment, leaning on her cane, staring in his direction.
“Barb,” I said. “Can you see him?”
“No,” she replied. “But I can feel him there.” She looked away from the chair. “Can you see him? He’s really here, then?”
I nodded. “He’s in the chair looking at the TV.”
That was the moment Edgar seemed to realize we knew he was there, that he was being seen. He was in front of me immediately, his eyes bulging and his lips moving, but no sounds came from his mouth.
I couldn’t hear him.
“Barb,” I said. “I can’t hear him when he speaks.”
For years, I could see ghosts but couldn’t hear them, and I wondered if Anika’s siphoning was interfering with my ability to hear some of them. Not all, because I’d picked up voices from spirits after the attack, even if I hadn’t spoken to them directly.
She nodded, her hand to her chest, as though until that very moment she hadn’t believed I’d really be able to see him. “Edgar was mute,” she told me. “He could never speak.”
The ghost began disappearing and then reappearing rapidly, blinking in and out as his emotions got the better of him. Finally, he appeared by Barb’s side, his arms around her, his head on her shoulder, and softness in his eyes as he stared at her.
He held her like he meant to hold her forever, and I understood exactly what he was trying to tell me. Why he hadn’t crossed over.
I sighed. “He doesn’t want to leave you,” I told her. “He hasn’t crossed because he believes he needs to stay here and take care of you. He’s been making all that racket because he was trying to find a way to show you that he was still with you.”
“Oh,” she said, putting trembling fingers to her mouth as she blinked back tears.
But Edgar wasn’t happy with me. I wasn’t interpreting things exactly, though I knew I was close.
He frowned at me, signed a word, and pointed at me, then at Barbara.
I nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll tell her.”
He touched the middle finger of one hand to his forehead, the other to his chest, then moved them away. I mimicked the movement.
Barb frowned. “Sick? He’s saying he’s…sick?”
Edgar shook his head, then pointed at Barb, his face sad.
“He’s saying you’re sick,” I told her. “You need to go to the doctor.”
It took a while, but by the end, Edgar had informed her that he was going to wait for her, there in that house, until she died. He wanted her to cross into the afterlife with him, but not until it was her time to go. And he didn’t feel that now was her time.
He promised to be a quiet presence in the home if she would allow him to stay. If she told him to go, he would go.
“It’s your choice,” I told her. “He’ll understand if you want him to cross over now. But he’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes, if you want him to wait.”
Once again, Edgar wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her cheek, then did what he’d been doing since he’d died. He waited.
And Barb’s smile lit up her face. “We’ve been together since we were teenagers,” she told me, her tears spilling over. “We promised each other on the day we got married that we’d stay together forever.” She closed her eyes. “I feel him. He has his arms around me, hasn’t he?”
“Yes,” I murmured.
“Stay, Edgar,” she whispered. “And when I leave this old body, we’ll go into the beautiful spirit world together. Or,” she added, wiping her eyes and smiling, “we might decide to stay right here and haunt whoever moves in when I’m gone.”
I didn’t have to hear his voice to know Edgar was laughing. But as I turned to leave, he had one more thing to say.
Barb snorted when I gave her the signs. “He wants me to leave the TV on.”
She hugged both me and Joe before we left, insisting we let her know if there was ever anything she could do for either of us.
“Make sure you get to the doctor,” Joe told her. “Get yourself taken care of.”
She smiled. “Maybe I will,” she said, then shrugged. “Maybe I will.”
“She’s not going to the doctor,” Joe said, as we got into my car. “Is she?”
“I don’t know.” Then, because we needed something more bloody and less emotional, I drove us deeper into Jakeston. There was always something going on in the city. Besides, I needed to talk to the vampire master.
“Where are we heading?” Joe asked, settling himself more comfortably against the seat.
“To find Bastien,” I told him. “He needs to know about Voss.” So did Jared. I called his cell phone and left a message when he didn’t answer. I told him only that Voss had some sneaky magic we’d need to be prepared for. We’d discuss it in detail when I saw him later.
I hadn’t decided if I’d tell anyone that Anika insisted she’d felt a demon inside me.
Joe and I avoided the subject entirely and focused on the city.
Jakeston never really slept. It simply changed. During the day, it was busy and noisy and filled with people working, rushing, living. During the night, it belonged to the monsters. Some of them were human.
Most of them were not.
I parked along the street in front of Scarlett’s, one of the clubs that belonged to the vampires. To the master, Bastien Martel.
Down the street from Scarlett’s was Mason’s, a biker bar full of supernaturals.
There was a tunnel that led from Scarlett’s to Mason’s, and I knew that because I’d once dragged the detective through those tunnels while fighting—with Bastien—the two trolls who’d been created by Frederick Axton and posted there.
Fun times.
Joe and I stood side by side in front of my car, getting a feel for the night, the noises, and the people who hurried down the sidewalk, drove down the street, and lurked in the shadows.
The city was full of lights at night, as though they might push back the danger Jakeston was known for. They did not.
“It feels different,” I murmured.
Joe frowned. “Different how?”
“Expectant,” I said, finally. “It’s waiting for something.”
He shrugged. “Maybe you’re just projecting.”
Maybe I was.
Vampires were usually restrained, shadowy, and so still, sometimes, that a human would have trouble seeing them.
Maybe because he was rather new at vampiring, Joe was none of that.
He practically vibrated with energy. “Let me kill Voss,” he said.
“When we find him, let me have him. I can make it quick and he won’t have a chance to fuck with you again.
I don’t care how much magic he has. I’ll rip off his head before he can lift a hand. ”
I glowered. “Do you think I won’t be able to tear his fucking head off, Joe? Just because I’ve lost my magic?”
“Dammit, Kaity,” he growled. “Don’t ever start thinking I doubt you. It’s just…well, hell. I can’t eat. I have to take my pleasures where I can get them.”
I was still laughing when the master appeared abruptly in front of me, so seamless and dark it was like he was part of the night.
Joe would have known he was there before he appeared, of course. Just as I felt my alpha when he was near, Joe would feel the vampire who’d made him.
Ordinarily, Bastien would have kept Joe near him. He would have been the one to control him, teach him, master him.
But he knew Joe belonged with me. He’d turned Joe for me. And though he never said so, he was glad that one of his vampires had my back.
I’d saved Bastien’s life more than once. I’d given him back his precious Farrow when one of the council’s people was torturing her.
And the county master would do anything for me.
Bastien reached out to touch my arm, and I didn’t jerk away from him. We both knew I no longer hated him.
“Kait,” he said, and there was a tenderness in his eyes that I didn’t want to look at too hard. “Come inside. We can talk. Are you hungry?”
He knew one of the best ways to build a wolf’s strength after a fight was by feeding her. “I could eat,” I said, walking between him and Joe to the club.
There was a long line of people waiting to get inside, and not one of them yelled when we didn’t join them. Not even the humans would dare yell at Bastien. They might not know what he was, but they would sense his danger.
Noise and light spilled out onto the sidewalk when the huge bouncers opened the door for us. As usual, it took me a few seconds to adjust to the place once I walked in.
It was just so very loud and discordant. The strident voices of too many desperate people, thumps of soul-battering bass, music that made my ears hurt, and the overwhelming scents of blood and sweat and pain.
I felt no joy inside Scarlett’s.
And maybe that was just me.
After all, it was an insanely popular club. But I knew what lived beneath it, and I still felt the lingering horror that had existed when Frederick Axton had ruled the city.
Bastien led us to one of the private, quieter rooms, and though I didn’t see him give the order, we’d barely sat down before a man—human—rushed in balancing a huge tray.
When I took off the silver domes, I found half a roast chicken, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and what appeared to be five pounds of chocolate cake.
“Damn, Bastien,” I said. “This is a lot. Even for me.”
“I like to watch you eat,” he murmured, and though he didn’t quite smile, there was a distinct twinkle in his eye.
“So that really never goes away,” Joe said mournfully.
Bastien lifted an eyebrow. “I told you it does. My appetites have nothing to do with the food.”
I would have glared at him but I was too busy eating.
After my attack, my appetite had diminished.
Somehow, it had sneaked back in and was apparently bigger than ever.
I didn’t care that Bastien watched with something distinctly hot in his eyes, or that Joe watched with regret that he wasn’t the one devouring the chicken.
Finally, I shoved the empty tray away and leaned back in my chair with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Coffee?” Bastien asked.
“I’m too full for coffee,” I told him, patting my belly.
“It’s good to see you smile,” he said as the same man returned to remove the tray.
I got up to pace, needing to work off some of the energy the food had given me. I got to the point of my visit. “The siphoner who took my power called me. She said Voss has magic. He’s powerful, but not nearly as powerful as I…as I was.” I let the pain of that loss shiver over me, there and gone.
Something changed in his face. Not fear, but anger. “If he wants to take what doesn’t belong to him and cause chaos in my city, I’ll end his life. Quickly, if that’s what you want.” He smiled. “Or slowly, if you’d prefer it.”
“I just want him gone,” I told him. “Fast or slow depends on what he does to me and mine before we can stop him.”
He gave me a nod but didn’t say anything. I knew that if Bastien decided the wolf alpha needed to die, fast or slow depended on how pissed off the master was.
“Let the hunt begin,” Joe said, already striding to the door. “Let’s go, boss. We need to find this bastard before dawn. I’m not going to sleep while the city is wrecked and leave you out there fighting without me.”
I grinned and followed him to the door. “You’re a good man, Joe Patrick.”
I felt Bastien at my back, his body surprisingly warm for a vampire, all the way through the club. I paused at the door. “How’s Farrow?”
For a second, pain lit his gaze. “She is surviving.” Then he softened. “She will be okay, Kait. Because of you.”
I surprised him—and myself, a little—by taking his hand. I squeezed it, holding on for a few seconds before letting go. I said nothing. Vampires had a hard fucking life, and it made me sick to think that someday, Joe would face the kind of horrors that would inevitably change him into darkness.