Authors: Susan Vaught
Forest let out a breath, then nodded. “Should we go after it? Try to cross it over?”
I studied the dark corner where the smoke was fading away.
Only a little bit left. It was probably a kid. There had been lots of kids here across the years, and I still found them sometimes. Kids liked to hide, even when they were ghosts. Once upon a time, I would have called my hounds and birds, but now Forest would get pissed if I did that. She’d think it was awful to scare a kid, no matter that the kid wasn’t alive anymore.
The muscles in my gut got tight. Thanks to knowing Forest, I kinda thought that was awful now, too. She was making me soft.
“It can wait,” I muttered.
I think she smiled.
We started walking again, and I made sure to keep the shadows pulled around us. I hadn’t always been careful about being seen, but Forest thought that was mean, too—letting sick people get a look at me when other folks might not believe them when they told what they saw. She was probably right.
Darius and Trina were working the ward below us, and Imogene and Addie had the basement. We each had little willow charms in our pockets. The witches had made them, and said they’d get warm if something bad happened.
My gaze slid over to Forest again.
When I first found her, I thought she was just another pretty girl with a touch of Madoc, but she’d proved me wrong right quick. She could see thin spots to the other side better than me, could cross over and come back easier than me, and even make her own thin spots. She was getting good enough that she didn’t lose much time when she did it, either. I kept saying she might
get as strong as Imogene, but Imogene said no. She said Forest would be stronger.
“Levi? You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Getting lost in your head and looking pissed off. We’re patrolling, not skulking.”
“I don’t skulk.”
She laughed at me. I wasn’t sure why.
We walked around a corner to face a unit door, and my skin went prickly. The lights in the old asylum went dim, and right about that time, Forest pointed to a spot way down the hall.
“Look,” she said. “There’s that ghost again.”
About fifteen feet ahead of us, pale silver light danced in the hall. In the middle of the glow, I saw what looked like a little boy. He was skinny, maybe three feet tall, and wore a buckskin suit like Davy Crocket. The curls on his head made him cute as a bug, but behind him, the door to the next ward blinked like an old movie.
I didn’t like it. I backed up a step and grabbed Forest, taking her with me.
The kid watched us, his eyes a little too glowy and white for my comfort.
“What?” Forest pulled away from me as my fingers burned from touching her. Smoke came out of my fingernails, and my gut clenched against the pain of the blisters rising on my palm. That bracelet of hers, it only got stronger with time.
“Why did you hurt yourself? It’s a kid,” she said. “Not a dragon. Just a cute little boy.”
“That’s what it looks like, yeah.” I still didn’t like it. The kid
was brighter than he should have been, given the smoke we saw on the wall a while ago. I suspected he was trying to fool us. Now he was standing between us and the door.
Forest hunkered down beside me to get a better look at the kid. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Don’t talk to him.” I clutched my knife even tighter and reached out for my hounds and birds.
“Are you seeing something I’m not?” Forest asked. “Has he got some kind of glamour?”
“No, but—”
“Then don’t be paranoid.”
I barely heard her. My thoughts whipped through every type of ghost I had run across or read about in Imogene’s records. Something that liked to look like a kid. Something strong enough to trick us. Nothing came to me.
“This might be a shade, back from the other side,” I said to her, as quiet as I could. “Don’t get close to him.”
The boy’s blank eyes glittered at Forest. My hounds started baying, and I caught the distant thunder of wings and honking.
“What are you doing?” Forest sounded mad. “Are you trying to scare him to death?”
“He’s already dead.” I didn’t take my eyes off the boy, not even for a heartbeat, as I pulled my knife and squared my feet in case it came to a fight.
The boy smiled at Forest.
I bared my teeth.
Shadows flickered on the walls around the kid—and they weren’t my shadows. Something ... I felt—
My thoughts clouded, and my elbows got heavy.
Why did I pull my knife on a little boy? He didn’t have empty eyes. He had blue eyes, and pink cheeks, and curly dark hair.
“He looks cold,” Forest murmured. “I wonder if we could find a blanket no one’s using.”
A blanket. Yeah. I should go and get one. The kid was probably freezing. He might need shoes, too. Probably a small size, but I wasn’t sure. Those feet looked pretty big. And they were growing ...
I blinked.
Those feet belonged to a grown man. A man wearing moccasins. And the Davy Crockett buckskin, it wasn’t cute anymore. The pants and shirt had fringe like old Kentucky mountain men wore—the really badass guys who lived off the land and would kill you just as soon as look at you. The boy, now he had long hair and a beard that went all the way to his waist. When he grinned, I saw rotten nubs where his teeth should have been.
He turned solid, not like a ghost at all.
Oh hell.
He was a shade, and a strong one.
Cain and the rest of my hounds exploded through a thin spot and charged across the ceiling, howling and pulling the geese along behind them. The birds arrowed down, forming a ring around the scrawny man.
“Levi?” Forest sounded scared. “Who is that?
What
is that?”
“Get behind me,” I told her through clenched teeth, gripping
the knife as Cain dropped his beagle glamour and put his huge black body between me and the shade.
Forest got up and scrambled back where I told her to go.
“Hey,” I called, and the shade jumped toward me, knocking Cain into the wall. The dog cried out in pain.
The shade swung a tomahawk at my head, laughing like a fool.
“Stay back,” I yelled at him, filling my voice with all the power I had. He didn’t want me, I could tell. He was aiming for Forest—but he wasn’t going to get her.
Cain snarled as he hefted himself off the ground. At his second growl, my hounds and geese jumped all over the shade. The dogs snapped and barked, and the geese flogged his head with their wings so hard he had to raise his bony arms to save his face. Then he started laughing again and grabbing my birds and wringing their necks. Cain darted in and out, snapping at the shade’s legs and ankles, but he landed a kick square in the dog’s face.
“Go!” I shouted to Forest as Cain yelped. My other hounds fell back, keeping a wary distance. “Get through a thin spot and find Imogene!”
I had no idea if she heard me over the noise. The shade threw down bird carcasses and jumped at me again. The tomahawk whistled past my face, missing my nose by a hair. I stabbed out with my knife, but didn’t hit him. Cain growled and grabbed the shade’s elbow in his teeth, turning him long enough for me to catch a breath.
Behind me, Forest started to sing. Then she shrieked. The sound was enough to shatter my skull, and the world started to shake. My skin ripped at my bones, a thousand pains sliced through my soul. I almost dropped my knife on the floor.
The crazy mountain-man shade threw Cain aside, sending him spinning down the long hall on his belly. He swung that tomahawk again, again, getting closer each time as I jumped away. I could smell the stink of his breath. His eyes had gone wide and wild, and I knew. This one killed just to watch people die. He liked hurting people.
He lunged, and this time I swung my knife true. The bone blade caught him in the chest and ripped him throat to waist, spilling his guts all over the tile.
He never stopped laughing as he kept coming at me.
I swung my knife again and got him across the face, blocking his tomahawk swing at the elbow. Blood spurted down his face and mouth, coating his rotten teeth. His eyes went cloudy. Cain launched himself through the air, a flying black ball of fury. The barghest sunk his teeth into the shade’s ruined side, pulling and ripping and shaking his massive head.
From somewhere behind me, Forest shrieked again, and I felt a thin spot rip open and drag against me. The willow charm in my pocket started shaking, then burst into flames, scorching through my jeans and burning my leg. My heart hammered, and I backed away from the staggering, bleeding shade.
He tried to swing his tomahawk again, but fell forward instead. Right when he would have knocked me down, I dodged. He hit the tile, sliding in the ruin of his own insides, and the rest
of him started to fall to pieces. Cain stood over him, snarling and chewing the pieces to even smaller bits.
Forest let out a fresh scream, and this time the whole hospital seemed to shake.
Energy crashed into my back, shoving me forward. I pinwheeled over the smudges of the shade and tipped face-first into my own hounds. My nose and shoulders hit fur, then bashed into the tile. The dogs whimpered as my knife clattered against the wall, then shot out of my grip.
I shoved myself up without stopping to breathe or think, but my head was spinning. I couldn’t get my bearings.
“Forest!” I yelled as I turned and staggered toward the curtain of whirling darkness that had opened in the middle of the hallway.
My heart almost stopped beating when I saw her.
She was on the other side of that curtain, lying in the arms of a mountain man much bigger than the shade I had just brought down. Massive. He loomed over the hallway, his furred and feathered cap throwing shadows in every direction. The guy’s white face was painted with red slashes that looked like bloody handprints. He had Forest clenched against his buckskin-covered chest, but didn’t seem to notice the blisters rising on his hands.
Behind him, in dusky moonlight, I could see a crossroads. There was a pole there, and something on the pole.
It might have been a head.
“Cain!” I yelled, and the barghest scrabbled across the bloody floor, trying to reach the thin spot.
Forest turned her head to me as I lurched toward her, and her
eyes met mine. She looked scared. And mad. And—something else. She was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t read her lips. What did she want me to do? Charge the shade? Grab her? Find my knife and cut the bastard’s face off?
The rest of my hounds followed Cain toward Forest, and the few geese who hadn’t been torn in half flew at the shade’s head. The mountain man let out a growl and dropped Forest. He held out his hands and stared at his smoking fingers, finally realizing he was burned everywhere he’d touched her.
I tried to move faster, but my legs buckled and threw me offbalance. Cain slipped and slid, careening into the rest of the dogs.
The mountain man’s lips curled as he batted geese out of the air. Then he kicked Forest so hard I felt the hurt in my own ribs.
“I’ll kill you!” I shouted as I crawled at him.
Forest didn’t make a sound as she collapsed to the ground. My fists clenched, and I managed to pick up speed. A hundred feet to go. A littler farther, and I’d be there. Cain was right beside me.
Forest gave me a sad look—and this time I knew what she said.
Good-bye.
All of a sudden, I knew what she meant to do.
“No!” I powered toward her, holding on to Cain’s fur for balance as I closed the gap. “Don’t!”
Not fast enough.
Forest let out a shriek so loud and long I thought my brain
would burst. The mountain man’s wild eyes got even wilder. He bellowed back at her. The hospital shook and bucked, and I fell against Cain as dust blew off the walls and ceiling.
I had to get to Forest. I got up and crawled again, even though my insides clenched at that world-ripping sound.
“Forest!” I got my head up to see her one more time, curled into a ball at the mountain man’s feet, eyes closed, mouth open, her scream going on and on and on.
My dogs got their footing and barreled at the thin spot just as the man kicked her so hard her back probably snapped.
Cain moved in front me, dragging me forward as the thin spot shivered once, like a ripple across a pond.
Then it closed with no sound at all, leaving Cain and me alone in the hall.
The world went so still and quiet my eardrums threatened to burst.
Then Cain howled, and I howled and I hurled myself at the space where Forest had been, digging at the empty air. She couldn’t be gone. Not like that. No.
“Forest!” I kept calling, but she didn’t answer.
Voices hollered over Cain’s wild barks. Probably guards or nurses. I had no glamour now. I didn’t care.
I had lost her. I didn’t get to her in time. My eyes slammed shut as I tried to sense a thin spot, here or anywhere close by.
Nothing came to me. I couldn’t even catch a hint of the big spot at the top of the tower.
No. She couldn’t have.
I felt sick and reached out my mind again.
More nothing.
Forest had shut down all the thin spots in the whole hospital.
She had made sure that big bad shade couldn’t come through, but now she was trapped on the other side. I had no way to reach her.
Cold numbness settled in my bones. It took me some time to understand that the voices calling my name were real, that Imogene and Trina were in the hall with me. It took me more time to see that they were waving their hands—and bleeding.
Cain licked my hand, then nipped it, and the flare of pain brought me back to right here and right now. I realized that Imogene had scratches and holes all over her body. Something had been at her—maybe a bunch of somethings. I stumbled over to my bone knife and grabbed it off the floor.
When I turned back to Imogene and Trina, I saw that Trina was burned like she had stuck both arms in a campfire. The skin on her hands was puckered an angry pink, and a gash marked her right cheek. I glanced left and right, looking for Addie and Darius.