Chapter 29
When Ligat stepped out of the ethereal and into Hazel’s yard, she was sitting on her front steps, looking out across the sprouting lawn with her chin in her cupped hands.
The breeze ruffled her short, dark hair and the sleeves of the sea-green blouse she was wearing, and the spectral dog was lying with its head in her lap.
The dryad awoke and rustled, but Hazel seemed to catch sight of either its movement or Ligat’s. “It’s fine,” she called wearily, straightening up and raising one of her hands in a signal to the dryad. “Don’t bother with him.”
“I’m almost insulted,” said Ligat. He crossed the yard, no longer trying to hide and only taking care to avoid the growing plants.
“I’m almost sorry,” Hazel replied, and the dry rejoinder reassured Ligat in a way he either couldn’t recognize or didn’t want to let himself understand. “Do you want to bother lurking around, or should I just print out an update for you?”
He stopped at the base of the steps, not quite certain where to go. “Not going to try to chase me off?”
Hazel barely shrugged. “It seems like a waste of effort. Either you’ll come back, or your master will send another spy. There’s a certain advantage in knowing who I’m dealing with.”
The dog rose, stretched, and started cautiously down the steps toward Ligat, pausing every so often to sniff the air. Its phantom ears flapped with the movement, and a small smile appeared on Hazel’s face as she watched it.
“I’m the only one of its servants who can carry out this task,” Ligat said, choosing his words as carefully as the dog approached him.
No power stopped his tongue or lashed out at him as he went on.
“Demons and the dead can’t stay long enough or reliably enough.
Mortals are subject to all of your constraints. ”
Hazel peered up at him, surprised. “Why would you tell me that?”
“Perhaps I’d rather be here than about my other duties.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”
As Ligat held still, the dog crossed the last few feet toward him. It sniffed the ground nearby, then the hem of Ligat’s robe, and then cocked its head and whined. Its feathered tail, previously tucked tightly between its legs, rose a little and waved uncertainly back and forth.
“Nobody,” he told it, “is quite sure what to make of me.”
The tail wagged a little more at his voice.
“It’s okay, Casper,” Hazel said, softer than Ligat had heard her speak before. “He’s…”
A friend didn’t seem appropriate, Ligat knew, and not going to hurt you would probably have seemed overconfident. It made sense. It still smarted, absurdly, which he chose to ignore. “Casper?” The name sounded vaguely familiar.
Hazel’s smile this time was slightly embarrassed. “The friendly ghost.”
“Ah.” He’d certainly heard that or seen it—somewhere. The past was a maelstrom of words and images, only a few of them distinct. “Accurate.”
“He’s the friendliest I’ve ever met, anyhow.”
“Dogs have an advantage.” Casper was staring up at him. Accepting a certain loss of dignity, Ligat kneeled on one knee and offered an open palm to the pup. He’d gotten along well with animals once.
Instead of the warm breath he remembered, the cold mist he’d come to expect from ghosts brushed over his fingers, followed by a phantom tongue. Casper wagged his tail again, and Ligat scratched him gently under the chin. “Good boy,” he said absently. “Is he yours?”
“He came with the house. Sort of.” Hazel leaned back on her hands, studying either Ligat or the dog, or both. “You might as well have a seat. I’m not young enough to keep craning my neck up when I talk to you.”
Ligat sat down, careful to leave a good amount of distance between them.
Absurd, that, since he’d had her pinned against a wall not too long ago, feeling her climax ripple around his erection, and the memory hadn’t left him for more than a few hours at a time since.
It was probably still best not to presume.
Nonetheless, he couldn’t help noticing the way Hazel’s position thrust her breasts forward, pressing them against the thin fabric of her blouse. He ignored his stirring cock and deliberately kept his eyes on her face, but that was all the restraint he could manage.
Hazel’s eyes darkened, and Ligat suspected she knew where his mind had gone.
No unearthly powers needed there. He felt about as obvious as the average schoolboy.
The lady didn’t seem to take offense, though.
She sat up and turned toward him, casual and conversational on the surface of it, but she didn’t speak at first—she parted her lips as though she was going to, but then just traced her tongue slowly across the lower one.
Ligat nearly groaned aloud.
The air between them filled with impending energy, as though a thunderstorm were about to break. Hazel leaned forward—
—and then stopped herself. Awareness flashed across her face, followed by exasperation. “No. No, I’m not going to start using sex as a coping mechanism.” She let out a long, deliberate breath, then gave Ligat a wry smile. “Sorry.”
“Quite all right,” he said, achingly hard but being a gentleman, dammit. “Although I am glad to be of service, if you change your mind.”
That seemed to catch Hazel off guard. She peered at Ligat for a second, a concentration that was more curiosity than thwarted lust, and then shook herself just as he was preparing to field uncomfortable questions. “I’ll put you in my contacts. Under Incredibly Bad Idea.”
“I’ve been called much worse.”
“I bet. Although,” she said, and again he felt the close assessment of a woman used to evaluating strange situations, “and this does not in any way mean I’m in your debt, I think I have to thank you.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” he said, with as much of a mocking bow as he could manage while seated. “Well. Not all.”
She snickered. “No. But not just for the sex. Your friend Chapman was here earlier.”
* * *
Ligat’s eyes flamed. The gloved hand that had been resting on his knee closed into a fist, leather flexing against the force of it. He spoke with nearly perfect calm, though, just an edge that could have outdone any Ginsu knife. “Was he?”
“Mm-hmm.” She was too old to believe that he was getting angry out of any real concern for her, even as his burning gaze traveled up and down the length of her body, and she knew he was looking for injuries.
Chapman had gone behind Ligat’s master’s back.
This was a territory issue. Ligat’s reaction still made her feel embarrassingly warm.
“I didn’t think he was on official business. ”
“If so, P—”
Hazel didn’t think Ligat stopped himself, not entirely. He didn’t close his mouth on the word. It just stopped, and his lips actually moved for a second longer, like he was an extra in a kaiju movie. She just barely caught a disappointed look before he moved on.
“If so,” he repeated, “my master didn’t see fit to tell me about it. He hurt you?”
He was staring at Hazel’s bruised knuckles, and that edge in his voice would have been great on a scalpel. Hazel flexed her fingers instead of shivering. “Indirectly. I can criticize him for a lot, but I don’t think having a hard jaw is his fault.”
Ligat allowed himself a smile. “I should have guessed.”
“Just to check, I’m not—” It was her turn to stop, though it was of her own will, because dealing with the Gospel According to Romero wasn’t a helpful way to frame the question with Ligat. “His…condition isn’t contagious, is it?”
He blinked at her. Up close, she noticed that he had dark eyelashes, more spiky than a normal person’s would have been. “I can’t imagine why it would be.”
“That’s reasonably reassuring.”
“I endeavor to give satisfaction.” Satisfaction was a perfectly innocent word and shouldn’t have called up memories that made Hazel want to squeeze her thighs together, and a more disciplined person wouldn’t have had to remind herself of that. “What happened?”
She told him, as briefly as she could without leaving out important details, and Ligat listened with almost no visible reaction. “So,” she wound up, “if you hadn’t warned me about Chapman’s goals, I’d probably be having a worse day now.”
“You’d have taken his advice?” Ligat asked, as little feeling in his voice as he’d shown on his face.
“I can’t say for sure. Death’s a big step, even for a good cause, and I’d like to say I’d have been innately skeptical of whatever the walking corpse of a serial killer told me.
On the other hand, I’d also like to think I’d have been willing to sacrifice myself to keep a rift from opening.
” Hazel ran a hand through her hair, then rubbed the back of her neck.
“I’d have been more shaken up, I do know that. ”
“Reasonably. I’m surprised—well, no, I’m not,” he said, with another of his reluctant smiles. “But anybody else would be, even knowing Chapman’s real aim.”
“Most people, maybe. Most people don’t even know the ethereal exists. I have enough experience to cope, sort of.” She made a face. “And no idea what I was thinking mouthing off to him like that at the beginning—I’ve always been able to stick to diplomacy before.”
“You’ve usually met the dead on your own ground before,” said Ligat quietly. “Haven’t you?”
Hazel thought it over while Casper curled up at their feet and magpies called out in the forest. “I’ve usually gone to sites,” she said, “but…yeah, I’ve chosen to go, I’ve known what I was getting into, and it’s been on my own schedule as much as the times of the hauntings allow.”
“And afterward, you’ve gone back to your own home.”
She nodded, frowning at him. “How do you know all this?”
“I know mediums,” he said. At first Hazel thought that would be the end, and then Ligat looked away with a diffident expression she almost recognized from elsewhere.
“And I know, somewhat, how it feels to see the bars of your cage shrinking. How strong the urge to talk back to your enemy can be when it’s the only power you’re sure of having. ”
Hazel’s first instinct was denial—not because he was wrong or because she was ashamed to recognize the feeling he described, but because the moment of recognition was much more intimate than the moment when he’d pushed his cock inside her.
The relief of knowing she wasn’t alone warred with the discomfort of feeling seen.
Hazel decided to deflect the whole issue.
“Could you just appear in my house like he did?”
“Not in the areas you warded,” said Ligat, catching up with the sudden turn in the conversation. “But yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was trying not to let you see me.”
“And hiding in another room would be less obvious than lurking outside my window?”
Ligat spread his hands. “It seemed that way at the time.”
It probably had, Hazel thought, studying his face.
And it might have been wishful thinking on her part to wonder if Ligat had, consciously or not, avoided noticing how easy it would have been to appear in the hallway and watch from the shadows as she went to bed or even to teleport in when she’d gone to the bathroom and then hide in her closet.
Even if that had been the case, his motive might not have been ethical.
He might just not have wanted to spend hours hiding.
As opposed to hours outside?
Suggestive, she thought, but inconclusive. “Why are you working for this demon, anyhow?”
He went impassive again—mostly. Hazel was getting to know his face alarmingly well.
She could see the way his eyes flickered at the question and the way his hands, clasped between his knees, tightened on each other.
“The story would take a while,” he said.
“I made a bargain. It turned out to be unwise.”
“A bargain like Chapman’s?” Hazel braced herself, trying to be ready to spring up and run without making that obvious.
Ligat’s upper lip curled. “No.”
The sudden, fierce disgust reassured Hazel. Ligat could lie, true, but it’d be hard to fake that reaction.
“I was stupid,” said Ligat, and now the disgust was as much for himself as for Chapman. “I was inexcusably thoughtless, I was the definition of hubris—but I didn’t kill so much as a chicken until after I’d made my pact.”
“And then—” Hazel began slowly.
“Yes. Not so often—it has better-suited servants for most types of killing—but yes.” He held her gaze, and Hazel didn’t know whether he was daring her or himself to look away. “And ‘not often’ adds up over a century.”
He’d guessed the wrong question, but it seemed crass to correct him now.
They both sat still, eyes locked, and the air heated between them again. As Hazel watched, feeling halfway hypnotized, Ligat reached out and took her chin between his thumb and finger. “Does that upset you?” he asked, his grip tightening almost to the point of pain.
Hazel still could have pulled loose or batted his hand away.
It was Ligat’s low voice that kept her where she was, and the need for an answer she saw in his eyes.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “I’m not happy about it, but I also wasn’t born yesterday.
You serve a demon. I didn’t think it had you typing and filing. ”
She tried to sound matter-of-fact. She wished she could feel that way, especially since they’d been talking about murder, but the subject didn’t matter.
Ligat’s hold on her face mattered. His intensity, the desire she knew went past just getting an answer, that mattered.
Hazel felt it surge into her from his gaze and his fingertips, a nearly electric current that ran down her face and over her body to pool between her legs.
“Those were never my talents,” said Ligat, voice low and rich. “But neither was violence.”
“No?” Hazel barely breathed the word. “You must have a bunch of others.”
He smiled very slowly. “I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I agreed. And I haven’t had a chance to practice many of them in a long time.”
A switch flipped. Maybe it had already done that when she’d learned Ligat hadn’t signed on to the demon’s service the way Chapman had, but either some part of their conversation had pulled a lever in Hazel’s brain or she was just too tired for good intentions.
She stopped caring which. “Come inside,” she said.