Chapter 1
Chapter One
SKYE
Why isn’t my coffee ready yet? I glare at the coffee maker taking its stupid time to drip drip drip my stupid coffee. I have a headache and I need caffeine, dammit. First chance I get, I’m upgrading to a newer, faster machine.
Pfft. Who am I kidding? I’m hardly ever home to use it.
Between loving my work so much I spend extra time there and my busy social life, I can count on my fingers how many times I’ve had coffee at home in the last month.
Even now, if it weren’t for this nagging headache that’s been bugging me all day, I probably would have gone out and spent some time catching up with acquaintances at the coffee place.
I’ve lived here all my life, and I’m an outgoing kind of person. I’m acquainted with everyone.
But until this headache goes away, I’m crappy company, so I just want coffee. What a shitty way to spend my day off.
Buzzzzzz…
I swipe irritably at the air beside my ear and look around for the fly.
I don’t know when it got in, but it’s been dogging me since this morning…
sneakily. I’ve yet to actually see it, but whenever I’m sure it must be gone, it buzzes past my ear.
As soon as I finish my coffee, I’m going on a fly hunt, and the little bastard won’t survive it.
Speaking of coffee… my cup is finally full, and I seize the life-giving elixir and take a grateful sip.
Sighing in pleasure, I plonk into a chair at the tiny table that completes the “kitchen” part of my studio apartment.
“Small” is a generous word to describe the place, but it’s inexpensive, right in the middle of town, and above the bakery, so it always smells good.
Plus, with me being hardly ever home, anything bigger would be a waste of money.
I drink slowly, savoring every drop, but it’s not having any impact on my sore head. Maybe I need sleep? It’s only just creeping up on dinnertime, though. I haven’t gone to bed this early since I was a toddler. Except that one time in Fort Lauderdale, but I’d been up for thirty hours at that point.
Or I could need to eat something. I had lunch, though, so even if I’m hungry—which I’m not, particularly—I shouldn’t be in such desperate need of food that my head is aching like this.
Buzzzzzz.
I turn my head sharply, trying to see the fly as the sound intensifies. It’s not going away this time, and I swat around my head, trying to get the winged pest. Jesus, is it in my ear? It must be. Gross! How do I get it out?
I shake my head firmly, which makes my head throb but does nothing to stop the buzzing. In fact, the buzzing starts in the other ear too. Which… what the fuck? Is there a fly eating its way through my brain?
Or maybe there’s no fly and the buzzing is a side effect of my headache. Not sure if that’s possible, but it seems more likely than a fly eating my brain and buzzing from inside both ears.
I hope so, anyway.
So… get rid of the headache.
Excellent idea, Skye. How?
The snarkiness of my inner consciousness always makes me want to bitch slap myself, so I ignore it. Him. Me. Even if it is a good question. Ibuprofen didn’t help, nor food, water, or coffee.
Meditation, maybe? It could be a stress headache. Not that I have much to be stressed about lately. Just, you know, my unrequited love for one of my best friends, aka the straight guy at work.
Ah, Daniel. Sigh. My inner consciousness swoons at the very thought of him, the little bitch. I push aside the visual of his cheerful, handsome, and completely oblivious face and decide to give meditation a shot.
Ever since Connor, the demon hunter who helped us out with a weird situation at work, told me that I’m a conduit for spirits, I’ve been meditating regularly in an attempt to keep my mental shields strong.
I never want to be possessed by a body-hopping spirit again.
That was not a fun time; zero stars, would not recommend.
Meditating for twenty minutes, morning and evening, is a small price to pay for being able to keep my brain free of invaders.
Closing my eyes, I take a slow, deep breath and let my mind settle into the familiar pattern of meditation. My headache begins to ease instantly, and I want to kick myself for not thinking of this sooner. I coul—
“LISTEN TO ME LISTEN TO ME WHY CAN’T YOU HEAR ME?”
I jerk in shock as the shout fills my ears, jostling the table, and open my eyes just in time to see the remnants of my coffee splatter across the surface. I rescue the cup, which is dangerously close to the edge, and suck in a deep breath.
What the fuck was that?
My headache is back to full force, pounding away, and the buzzing is so loud, I want to scream.
The buzzing.
Holy crap. I’m so stupid.
Connor told me. He told me several times. When my shields are working properly and on full power, any contact from a spirit will be like buzzing in my ears. He used that exact fucking word.
But now what do I do?
I really, really, really don’t want to lower the intensity of my shields.
Con assured me that even at half strength, no spirit would be able to get through, but there are some risks I just don’t want to take.
On the other hand, this particular spirit has been trying to communicate with me all day, and from the tiny bit I heard, it’s getting frustrated.
I might not know a lot about spirits, but I doubt it would put itself through all that just to say “hey.” And anyway, if I listen to it, maybe it’ll fuck off and take this headache with it.
Sighing in defeat, I try to remember what Connor told me about communicating with spirits.
I didn’t listen as well as I should have, what with being convinced I never wanted to talk to another spirit in my life.
It was only a few weeks after the body hopper possessed me, and all I was interested in was a super hard-core shield to keep things out.
Which, hey, I apparently have. Go me.
There’s a particularly loud buzz, and I wince. “Okay, I get it, you want to talk to me. Could you ease off for a second so I can concentrate?” I have no idea if it can hear me, bu— The intensity of the headache lessens, and I take a breath. Guess it can. “Thanks.”
Focusing, I make my shields a tiny bit less like a steel-reinforced concrete wall.
Con said I’d be able to tune them so I could use my abilities through them, without giving anything on the outside a way in.
It’s one of those things that made no sense when he said it, but I’m hoping it’ll fall into place anyway, like the other things he told me did.
I’d be thinking how I didn’t understand what he meant, and then click… it all worked.
And yep… click. Suddenly, I get it.
My shields change slightly, and I nearly fall out of my chair when the image of…
something appears before me. I’m glad I already know it’s a spirit, because otherwise I’d have no idea what to call it.
My eyes see it as a roughly rectangular figure, about my height, but not solid.
At all. Instead, it seems to be made up of white wisps, among which flow tiny golden points of light.
“Hey,” I say weakly. “Uh… can I help you?” How the fuck is this my life?
The lights speed up their movements. “You can hear me now?”
It’s not speaking, exactly, but the words are clear as day. And in English, which is good, since I don’t speak any other languages, and this day has already been frustrating enough for both of us.
“I can. Sorry for the delay. I didn’t realize you were here.”
There’s a pause, and I get the feeling the spirit is reassessing the situation. Maybe wondering if I’m smart enough to help it.
“Nobody could hear me,” it says finally. “I’ve been searching… and I found you. But you couldn’t hear me.”
It takes me a few seconds to work through the disjointed way it’s speaking. “I’m sorry about that. This isn’t something I do often.” Or ever. “I’m listening now.”
“I searched for so long. I feared I’d never find anyone. Where are they all?” The lights speed up, and I get a distinct sense of agitation.
“Where are who?” Does it mean people who can hear and speak to it? Conduits? “Ah, I think there’s a bunch of them in California.” Probably. That’s where the American headquarters of the Collective is, anyway. Stands to reason they’d have conduits there, right?
I really should ask Connor about this.
“California?”
Ah, yeah. How to explain the concept of states to a spirit from the otherworld. Or does it already know what states are but not which direction California is?
Come to think of it, what direction is California?
West, I know that much, but which way is west?
Like if I had to give the spirit directions, which way would I point?
Plus, I’m pretty sure if it went directly west from here, it would end up in northern California…
maybe Oregon. And the Collective compound is outside San Diego, according to Connor.
The spirit interrupts my internal musings. “Can you help me? I’ve searched for so long. My time is limited.”
My mouth goes dry. That doesn’t sound at all creepy and worrying.
“Uh, sure. Maybe. How did you get here, exactly?” It had to have come through a gateway, but the nearest one is at Mannix Estate, where I work, and there’s no way it came through that, not now that we have Gabe, our gatekeeper extraordinaire.
His job is to make sure nothing gets through.
Unless something’s happened to Gabe and the gateway is unguarded again.
“How did you get here?” I demand again, anxiety ratcheting through me.
Has a demon broken through the gateway? Connor and Gabe said it was almost impossible, but it does happen sometimes.
And if that’s the case, they’re both probably dead, along with everyone else on the estate, and there’s a demon on the loose.
I’m about to throw myself at the spirit and scream for it to answer me, but it says, “Through the hidden gate,” and I close my mouth. Unless hidden means something different to it, it can’t be talking about our gateway. I think.
But it might be talking about the unknown, unfound gateway Connor’s been looking for. The one a demon came through fifty years ago but seemingly never existed. “Hidden” is a good word to describe that gateway.
“Where is it? Can you show me?” I look around for my phone. If I show it a map, will it be able to point out the location of the gateway?
The lights slow a little, and I get the feeling it’s confused.
“It is unsafe,” it says, and then there’s a snapping sound, and the lights begin to dissolve, breaking up into tiny sparks.
Alarm surges through me, and it takes me a second to realize it’s not mine, but the spirit’s.
Something’s wrong. “They have found me. Take warning! They plan atrocities.” Its “voice” is fading, cracking, even as the lights fizzle out and the wisps begin to lose their cohesion.
“Who found you? What atrocities?” Fuck! I should have let it talk sooner.
“Take warning! Take warning…” The sound fades away, and so does the presence of the spirit, until there’s nothing left.
What the fuck just happened here?
Shivering—and not with cold—I glance around my apartment. Everything’s the same. I can’t sense any other spirits, and definitely not anything evil. After that one encounter with a demon last year, I’ll never forget how they feel. There isn’t one here.
But it sounds like they might be coming.