Entity Mine (24 page)

Chapter 35

Devon watched her stolen body eat, reclining in bed, its arms chained to hooks driven deep into the studs, as Ethan stood over it, his arms folded, face hard with distaste.

A week had passed and he’d taken on a feral look, like a wounded and hunted mountain lion who’d missed far too many meals.

Beth and Matthew had been forced to go home to reassure his family, but she’d listened to the other four discuss Ethan’s state and knew he might be more stable than Kyle, but it wasn’t by much. He wasn’t eating or sleeping. The others, especially Jake and John—Ky wasn’t speaking much these days—were terrified they would lose him.

She shared their worry.

She approached him and stroked his face. She couldn’t feel him beneath her fingers, but she prayed this time he might sense something. “Ethan, I’m here. Please, take care of yourself.”

She’d been trying to communicate with him since that first day with no more luck than she’d had getting back in her body, but she refused to give up.

Every day it was the same. Dream of Ethan. Wake up, try to reach him, try to regain her body. Ethan wasn’t the only one on the brink. She could feel herself weakening, fading. Worse, the light had reappeared each day, and every time the love and peace it exuded was harder to resist.

As Ethan retrieved the step-in’s empty tray, he became aware of Jake watching, one shoulder propped on the doorjamb.

Devon’s stolen face stretched into a flirtatious smile as the step-in caught sight of his younger brother. “Finally a visitor other than the Tin Man here.” She indicated Ethan with a jerk of her shoulder. “Even inmates get some entertainment.”

Jake ignored her. He stalked in and put his arm around Ethan’s rigid shoulder, towing him to the doorway.

When they were in the hallway, Jake leaned in closer. “Ethan, I know you want to kill it after the baby’s born, but think what might happen. You seem relatively stable right now, probably because Devon’s body is still here, but if you kill it . . . Don’t you want your baby to have a father?”

His lion half prowling just below the surface, Ethan knocked his brother’s hand away. “We’ve had this conversation. That-that abomination should not exist and how long can we hold it? Ky said this so-called Ethereal Council, whatever that is, already sentenced it to some prison realm.” Apparently heaven and hell weren’t the only planes of existence accessible to this one. “Do you want it around
your
child?”

He stalked to the top of the spiral stairs. “My kid doesn’t need me anyway. What kind of father would I be? The only good father figure I had threw me away. And that was before. Now . . .” He ran his hand over his scalp, feeling the prickle of his hair in his palm. “If I thought I was losing it before I knew I was a shifter, now I know I am. I feel her everywhere, all around me. She’s gone.” He shook his head and slammed his fist twice into his chest, taking comfort from the pain. “But she’s still here.” He tapped his temple with two fingers. “And here. I even dream about her. It’s driving me mad.”

Devon pasted her hands to her mouth. Dear God. He could sense her. He was dreaming about her.

She glanced at the ceiling. Maybe it was just his grief. As a medium, she’d known survivors to feel their loved ones presence even when they’d moved on. It was a comfort, an illusion.

But God, she wanted to believe it. And they weren’t ordinary people.

Warmth suddenly lit her face. The light was back. Despite her growing weakness, it was less tempting than before, but it sobered her. If she couldn’t find a way back into her body, what did it matter if he could feel her? What good was this connection, if it drove them both insane?

She had to find a way, but how? It wasn’t like she could get advice, she’d tried to leave the apartment, but couldn’t get past Kyle’s door.

That left only books and the Internet, but again, she couldn’t touch anything, let alone manipulate it.

She paused as she drifted through the hallway. The step-in had touched things, though, broken that vase, tried to choke her. It had been a spirit just like her.

There had to be something in Kyle’s office she could use and she was going to find a way or fade away trying.

In seconds, she was in Kyle’s office, racking the spines on his extensive shelves with urgent desperation. She searched for hours, looking for research material, until it got too dark. The most she’d found were books on mythical beasts, and an old encyclopedia, which might have information, if she could open it up. “You’d think a guy with a demon best friend would at least have a book on demons.”

Demons—exorcism. She sucked air through her teeth. She couldn’t push the spirit out herself, but maybe, if the spirit were exorcized, she could re-enter her body. But she couldn’t perform an exorcism. She had to have help. If she and Ethan were sharing dreams, could she control them? Give him a message?

Morning light poured in through the floor to ceiling windows in the living room as Ethan mounted one of Ky’s trendy kitchen stools and dropped his head into his hands, conscious of his brothers’ concerned glances. Well, they should be concerned, it’d been a week and a day since he’d lost Devon and the only thing keeping him eating and off a ledge was the thought of his baby.

Anjali slid him a cup of masala chai, but he shoved it back. “I’d rather have scotch.”

She threw a worried look over her shoulder at her mate and at his nod, went to the bar on the other side of the dining room, crystal tinkling as she grabbed a glass and poured him a measure of amber liquid. The smell of peat filled the air. She set the drink at his elbow. “Jake tells me you’ve been having dreams?”

Spinning the stool around, Jake swung into a seat beside Ethan and rested his arms on the top of the leather back.

Ethan shafted a dark glance at his younger brother. “Call in reinforcements, did you?”

His brother shrugged.

Anjali lifted a curved eyebrow. “You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“You see”—Jake glowered over at him, stabbing a finger in the air to punctuate his words—”That was what they call a rhetorical question. We’re talking about this.”

Now Anjali skewered her mate with a level gaze. “It wasn’t rhetorical. Ethan doesn’t have to explain anything.”

Ethan took a swallow of scotch, feeling the burn, but failing to savor the taste on his tongue as he usually did. Today this wasn’t scotch, it was medicine. Nothing but a way to forget. He downed the glass and held it out to Anjali, hoping to forestall more conversation. “Another?”

Anjali retuned with a second glass, then leaned across the island from the other side like a bartender. “So, those dreams?”

“I thought you said I didn’t have to talk.”

She scrubbed at a variation in the granite countertop with her finger. “You don’t, but it might make you feel better.”

He exploded from the stool. It fell over and hit the hardwood floor with a loud crack. “My mate is dead. I have to coddle a monster to keep my baby alive. A baby who won’t have a mother, and whose father—” he trailed off, unable to finish.

Jake stood. “Whose father, what?”

Whose father will be dead by my own hand or someone else’s.
Jake glared at the ceiling, the words, hanging unspoken in the air, too painful to see the light of day.

Anjali came around the island and put a hand on his arm. “Please, Ethan. Try. For us.” She indicated his brothers with her gaze. “For your baby.”

Before he could explode again, she leaned in. “Whatever his father is, you don’t want the baby to think you just gave up, threw him away.”

The words rocked him back like a blow. Thrown away. Like he had been. He closed his eyes and nodded. No. He couldn’t do that to his son or daughter.

He picked up the stool and set it back in place, holding the back. “Every time I close my eyes, I see Devon. We’re together.”

“That’s good, right?” Jake leaned in.

He closed his eyes. “I don’t want to wake up.”

The silence that met his statement was as heavy as several meters of seawater. His brothers shared a leery glance.

As if he were drowning, Ethan took a large gulp of air. “When I’m awake, I feel her all around me. When I sleep she’s there, but part of me knows it’s not real, that she’s gone. And then . . .” He blew out a long sigh and paced away from the island.

Anjali’s voice trembled a little. “And then?”

He raised a hand in the air as if he could pluck the answer from it. “She tells me something. Something so important. But it’s like my ears are full of water and I can’t hear her. Or sometimes, I know I understand her, but when I wake up I can’t remember her message.”

Anjali tilted her head. “This is all normal. Part of the denial phase.”

“Normal?” Ethan’s hands shot into the air. The sudden dramatic movement startled growls from both his brothers.

“Nothing we are is normal!” He was shouting. Anjali cringed in reaction, but his exhausted mind could no longer hold in the rage seething inside him.

Jake swooped in and grabbed his upper arms, fingers biting into Ethan’s thin, long-sleeved shirt. “Calm down.”

His brother’s words were soothing, but his tone was little more than a snarl and his eyes glowed gold. Behind him, Anjali rubbed her arms as if to warm them and Ky’s jaw bulged as if fangs filled his still human mouth.

His lion high, Ethan threw Jake off. His brother stumbled back a few paces, then whirled to confront him, roaring. The anger and pain rolling through Ethan was too great and he roared back, his lion relishing the idea of release.

A loud bang sounded around the corner in the study.

They froze, their gazes meeting for a split second, then they raced into the adjoining room.

Devon panted and collapsed on the floor as the books gave way and fell over. She’d prayed her efforts to get through to Ethan that night had succeeded, but clearly it’d been too little, and, as she looked at her almost invisible hand, maybe too late.

When tempers had flared she’d solidified a little. Realizing she could use the energy in the air, she’d rushed into the study to make another attempt, but that boost had disappeared as soon as she’d achieved her goal of knocking over the set of encyclopedia.

Though she’d received no signs, somehow, deep inside, she knew the clock was ticking, if she didn’t pull this off now, there wouldn’t be enough of her left to enter her body,
or
go into the light. She shivered. If she couldn’t make them understand, there would be nothing left of her but an echo, she would cease to exist.

But an ember of hope glowed in her chest. The thump of the encyclopedia’s falling had drawn Ethan and the others racing into the room.

Her mate looked around, eyes glowing gold. “Those books were on the shelf. Who could have done this?”

Jake looked at the high ceiling as if peering through the floor. “The step-in?”

Anjali made a disgusted noise. “She’s not going to weaken her hold on that body for all the gold in the universe.” She grimaced and glanced first at the floor and then at Ethan. “Sorry.”

He raked his palms over his close-cropped head. “Fuck it. It’s the truth.”

Jake’s gaze flicked over the staggered pile of books. “You said you feel Devon. Could it have been her?”

Yes! God, yes! Keep talking, Jake!
If she hadn’t been so weak, Devon might have danced around the room.

Ethan looked pole-axed. He didn’t answer his brother. Just turned toward the books and called, “Devon?”

She gathered all the energy she could from the room, draining Kyle’s skypad and all their phones.

“Devon?” Ethan said again.

“I’ve got goosebumps,” Anjali whispered.

Devon focused everything she had and reached for one of the volumes.

Ethan jumped a little when one of the books on the floor slid from the pile. He crouched down to pick it up. He held it out for the others. “It’s the ‘E’” He stared into the air, eyes searching for a shape that wasn’t there. “Devon? Is there something in this book?”

There was a knock on the divider.

His heart hammered. “Is that a ‘yes’?”

A moment later there was a second knock.

He shared a hopeful glance with his brothers and Anjali, then the blood rushing in his ears, he took the volume to the desk and opened it. “I’m going to turn the pages slowly. Knock when I get to what you want.”

Ethan turned page after page, heart-racing, pausing to strain his hearing for a response, every once in a while, looking up at the others to see if they heard something he missed. One quarter of the book passed with no response, then a half, three-quarters. Had he imagined the knocks? Lord knew, he was desperate enough. How was it possible to miss another person so much? His heart literally ached.

He could hear the others’ ragged breathing, but every ounce of his attention focused on listening for a knock.

He turned another page and another. His hand shook. They were nearing the end of the book, but it felt more like the end of his hopes.

A soft knock startled him and he froze, examining the word on the glossy paper in front of him. Hope swelled inside him. This was it. It had to be.

His brothers and Anjali leaned in. “Well?”

He turned the book around, holding the volume up so they could see the title of the article. “Exorcism.”