Chapter 10
My mind slowly detached from a dream in which my wolf was running up a mountain.
Nothing was chasing me, but I needed to reach the top.
The lush green grass cushioned my paws, and the mountain peak was within reach.
Behind me, an unforgiving terrain of sharp rocks, cliffs, and a swampland lay at the base.
My wolf and I had survived the journey and were heading toward someone calling us from the mountaintop.
“Damn,” I muttered, wishing I could fall back asleep and crest that mountain to find out who was calling my wolf.
After a blissful stretch, I released a moan and slowly opened my eyes.
My heart jolted at the sight of Darcy the ghost hovering over my bed.
It’s a lucid dream. I’m not awake. This isn’t real.
Her rainbow-colored hair was extra vibrant, but her features were pinched together in anger.
Stupid dreams, I thought, wishing I could return to the mountain.
She gave me a cross look. “Your name isn’t Ted, is it?”
This ain’t a dream!
I shrieked and sat up, which placed me inside her corporeal form, so I scrambled to the foot of the bed and tumbled onto the floor.
“Please be gone. Please be gone,” I whispered, my eyes closed as I pinched my arm.
I’d heard about people having hallucinations after waking. They called it sleep paralysis, and I prayed that was what I was experiencing.
When I looked up, my heart sank.
Darcy stood facing me with her arms crossed.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“Because you named me, and that means I’m yours.”
“What?”
Was this some new ghost rule I hadn’t heard about? I’d been out of the loop for so long that perhaps they were discovering new ways to torment Gravewalkers.
She deconstructed me with a single glance. “You’re a big fat liar. I know your name isn’t Ted. The autographs on your shelf are all signed to Virgil. Why did you give me a bogus name?”
Sprawled out naked on the floor, I lost all cognitive reasoning.
Darcy crouched and hugged her knees. She offered a sympathetic smile before changing to a dulcet tone.
“That’s okay. Forgiven, forgotten. We all make mistakes.
I was probably a little forward, but I waited in that diner for an hour, just chillin’ and hoping you didn’t have a family emergency. Dude, I worried about you.”
I needed to come up with a tactic to remove her from the premises before she got cozy.
“Darcy, Darcy, Darcy,” she said while I put on my underwear and jeans. “I really like my new name. Can’t get it out of my head! I was so worried I would forget it.”
The longer a person remained an apparition, the more unreliable their memory became. Some had the memory of a goldfish, whereas others got their many past lives mixed up. So that left one burning question.
“How did you know where to find me?”
She jumped off the bed and perused my memorabilia shelf.
“I absolutely adore the name of your town. Storybook. What a clever name!” She ran her ghostly fingers across a collectible vinyl album.
“I waited in the diner for days until a customer mentioned they were going to a club in Storybook. I rode with him and wandered around that street, hoping to bump into you. It wasn’t easy to find this house, but I’m an excellent listener, and someone happened to mention a tall Native man with tattoos on his face.
That’s your friend with all the dildos.”
I ran a brush through my tangled hair while trying to devise a strategy.
Dumping her again isn’t going to work now that she knows the name of my town. Not unless I take a cross-country drive.
This was giving me major PTSD. There were some seriously disturbed specters out there, and the ones who latched on could drive a man to madness.
I once had a ghost who sat by my bed and discussed in detail the various ways he would have me murdered once he found another Gravewalker.
I tried earplugs, but then he entered my dreams and gave me visuals, which was far worse.
Paranoia set in and left me constantly looking over my shoulder. Then came anger and depression.
Some ghosts had money stashed away or friends who owed them favors, so if they found a Gravewalker willing to do business, they could hire a hit man. Most Gravewalkers didn’t get involved in revenge cases, but some would for the right price.
Darcy gripped the straps of her overalls.
“I’m in love with your house. Your family is interesting, and there’re so many books.
Are those real arrowheads on the mantel?
There’s also a cute guy in your garage with a robot arm like the Terminator!
And you have a horsey in the back. I wish I could talk to your friends. They would love me.”
A knock sounded at the door.
I glanced up. “Come in.”
Cleo poked her head in. “Are you okay? I heard a scream.”
“Stepped on a tack.”
She walked in a few steps. “A tack?”
Darcy rushed over to her and swirled her finger around Cleo’s head. “Isn’t she cute with that short hair? I could just eat her up. Gobble, gobble!”
I scratched my scruffy jaw. “It must’ve fallen off a picture.”
“Want me to get Salem? He’s still here.”
Darcy pretended to put her arm around the girl affectionately. “Aw, she cares about what happens to you.”
Was that a veiled threat?
I avoided eye contact. “No, it’s cool. That’ll teach me not to jump out of bed. Did I miss breakfast?”
“Uh-huh. Uncle Bear had to go in early, so we had our choice of leftover sausages from yesterday or cereal. The sausages are gone.”
Darcy sauntered toward me with a jaunty grin. “You snooze, you lose.”
I tossed my brush onto the bed. “No big catastrophe. A bowl of cereal is all I need to start my engine.”
Darcy squinted and leaned in. “Are you ignoring me, Virgil?”
Staring over her, I raised my eyebrows at Cleo.
My hall neighbor frowned. “You’re acting weird. Maybe the tack had rabies on it.”
Darcy erupted in laughter. “I’ll let you know if you start barking like a dog.”
That reminded me of a more important matter: Darcy didn’t know I was half Shifter. My wolf could see apparitions, and he knew they were unnatural. He also knew how much they tormented me. The idea of Darcy harassing my animal put a knot in my stomach.
I needed someone to divert my attention. “Is Krys around?”
Cleo backed up to the open door. “Nope. He left an hour ago. Not sure where. I’ve gotta go take a test. Aunt Robyn’s waiting for me in the library. See ya.”
“See ya, see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya,” Darcy sang. “Where does that come from, and why do I know it?”
The first T-shirt I swiped from my drawer was a vintage mustard-yellow David Bowie shirt. I stuffed my feet into a pair of black slippers, put on a red silk robe, and headed out, pretending that Rainbow Darcy didn’t exist.
“Is this the game you wanna play?” she taunted from behind me. “I could live here forever. And I mean forever. This is my dream home. Is this a pack? I saw a wolf outside. Why do you live with Shifters?”
I jogged down the stairs, and Darcy flew in front of me.
“Stop ignoring me!” she snapped.
I walked through her and headed into the kitchen.
My blue-haired packmate was sitting on the kitchen island, sucking on a lemon.
That was Melody’s craving after a shift.
Usually, she drank a special lemonade Bear always kept on hand, but sometimes she went straight for the fruit.
Her sweatpants and oversized T-shirt implied she had no plans of leaving the house today.
“You’re up late,” she said.
I filled a bowl with Lucky Charms and added milk. “My body needs to recover after yesterday’s heroic play. Too bad nobody got that on video.”
“That was such an awesome touchdown,” she remarked, boosting my ego. “I didn’t think you would catch it with all that rain. And then you fell!” Melody spat a lemon seed into a napkin.
Darcy dipped her nose into my cereal bowl. “Is that all you’re eating? You fleshwalkers make me sick. If I were alive, I’d totally eat a steak for breakfast. A big juicy steak and a side of pudding.”
I leaned against the sink in front of Melody while munching on my sugary cereal.
Melody scraped her upper teeth inside the lemon. “You’re quiet this morning. Not your usual singsong self.”
“Oh, you like to sing?” Darcy stepped between us. “I remember lots of songs but only the same lines over and over. There’s one about being ironic. Do you remember that one? Maybe it’s ironic I can’t remember all the words or who sang it.”
While Darcy butchered the song with her horrendous vocals and fabricated lyrics, I focused on Melody’s account of how the Austin store was doing in comparison to the new location here.
“What do you think?” she asked.
But Darcy was in the middle of belting out the chorus, and I had barely pieced together anything Melody had said.
“Tell me more about those tights you made me wear,” I said. “They held together, so maybe you should go shorter.”
“That’s what I was just talking about. Weren’t you listening?” She slid off the counter and tossed the lemon into the trash. “There’s leftover coffee in the pot. Drink some. Your brain clearly needs the caffeine.”
The beginnings of a migraine were coming on. After rinsing my bowl, I headed out back. Although the rain had stopped, condensation had accumulated on the windows from the humidity.
“Wow, look at this view!” Darcy leaned over the balcony rails with her arms balanced outward.
“I have to be careful. Sometimes I fly right through rails if they’re not thick enough.
This place is so rad.” She faced me, her multicolored eyes as bright as her personality.
“You guys must be loaded. You’re not drug dealers, are you? Drugs are bad. Just say no.”
I flicked a glance at her outfit. Her pink shirt was tight and cropped beneath her overalls. What was her Breed? Sometimes humans lingered behind, but they eventually learned about immortals. Mostly they didn’t care, since they had other concerns… like being dead.