Authors: Susan Vaught
Like ... me?
You ain’t safe from a haint, no matter where you hide.
Levi’s black eyes blazed, and my whole body twitched like he had singed my skin. “You aren’t dead, but you can see me even when I don’t want you to,” he said. “How?”
This guy—ghost—hallucination—whatever—was unhinged.
The dogs got louder. Closer. I imagined dozens of them charging toward the library, teeth gnashing, rabid for my blood.
“Maybe you’re close to dying.” Levi sounded so arrogant I wanted to punch him. “That’s gotta be it.”
How was I supposed to respond to that? Besides, there were people in the library. If I said anything at all, they wouldn’t see the murderous prince of darkness sitting next to me, they’d see me talking to nothing.
Levi frowned. “You think you might have Madoc blood? Who are your parents? What’s your name?”
My eyes darted around the library. None of the other patrons seemed to be hearing the dogs. My heart seized, and I looked at the clock. Still not 11:00 yet. Time was okay. I was okay—except some freak was threatening my life, my mouth was dry, and I felt dizzy enough to faint.
Levi’s lips quirked into a feral smile. “You can stay quiet if you want, but when you die, I’ll take you to the other side whether you want to go or not.”
The baying of the hounds reached a crescendo. I ground my teeth, sure they’d come busting through the library walls any second. A flicker of shadow across the ceiling caught my attention, and the honks of wild geese added to the dogs, overwhelming everything else in the universe. All my instincts screamed at me to run, but I was in a library. What was he going to do, let his dogs eat me in front of everybody?
My heart beat so hard my chest hurt with each thump, but fear was just fear. I could think through it, and when I did, it usually pissed me off. Anger was a lot safer than being scared. I embraced it, let the heat fill me and chase away my shakes. After a quick glance around to be sure most normal people were far enough away from the tables not to hear a word, I told Levi in a low voice, “I haven’t had a chance to search for ‘other side’ or ‘haint’ or ‘monsters who run with hounds and geese,’ but they’re on my list.”
His smile shifted and his lips parted, like he might be
surprised. The goose shadows moved crazily on the walls and ceiling. I tried not to look at them, but they weren’t honking anymore. The hounds seemed to run right by the library, still baying but moving on, farther and farther away, until the noise eased and I could think more clearly.
Levi’s eyes bored into mine, and his brows pulled together. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”
I heard wonder in those words. I also heard danger. I had changed homes and schools often enough to know that ignorance about situations was a good way to get my ass kicked. I stood just as his long fingers snaked toward my broken watch. When he made contact with my wrist, an electric jolt slammed my teeth together. He grunted with pain and pulled his hand back fast, but not before I saw welts rising along the pads of his fingers.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, too loud for the library.
At the main desk a few rows away, the librarian raised his head and glared in my direction.
Levi glared, too, and the computer in front of me let out an electronic whine. The screen turned blue, some kind of error message appeared, and it shut down with a sickening shriek. This brought the librarian at a gallop, and the little guy pushed past me to punch the tower’s on button two or three times before turning his attention to me. “What did you do? Miss—what did you say your name was?”
I had already grabbed my bag. Time to go.
“You signed a usage agreement,” the librarian called after me as I hit the door. “I have your address, you know!”
I burst outside into the early afternoon sun, and the fall air immediately chilled me as I walked away from the library and Levi as fast as I could. They could look at the computer’s activity log or its software, hardware, or whatever. I didn’t hurt it. They’d figure that out. I couldn’t handle any more problems right this second.
Lincoln was less than a mile from the library. I could make that in twenty minutes, easy. I glanced at my watch, which was still just as broken. A clock in the window of a convenience store said it was noon.
Crap!
I had lost an hour during all that goose-and-dog chaos in the library.
But I wasn’t late to work. Not yet, anyway. I needed to get to the hospital and see this Imogene person my hallucinations kept talking to me about. Maybe she could help some of this make more sense.
I hadn’t gone a block when the sharp tang of pine made my eyes water. Satan put in his appearance, popping out of swirling air near a holly bush and matching me step for step on the side-walk as I made tracks toward Lincoln.
Without looking at Levi, I snarled, “Go away.”
“I scared you.” All the sarcasm and nastiness had left his voice. “I didn’t mean to. No, wait. I did mean to, but I shouldn’t have. I’m—sorry. Please, let me help you figure this out.”
“Go. Away.” I desperately searched for another clock face somewhere to make sure his appearance hadn’t skewed time again and screwed me completely.
He stayed quiet for a few strides, then said, almost gently, “At least tell me your name.”
Oooh. The devil wanted to know my name. In the movies, didn’t that give him all kinds of power? But this wasn’t a movie, and identities were easy to come by, especially since he could just wait a few hours and materialize on the ward when I was wearing my name badge.
“Forest,” I told him. “Now will you go away?”
“You need to come with me and see—”
“Imogene, in Tower Cottage. Yeah. Already heard that. Headed there now.”
Levi stopped talking, but he didn’t go away. New energy seemed to radiate from his black-clad arms and shoulders, wrapping around me like a relaxing blanket. The sensation didn’t give me the shivers. It warmed me and cooled me at the same time, helping me focus. It felt almost protective.
“Stop,” I told him. “Whatever you’re doing. I don’t need your help. I don’t even want you here, okay?”
He stayed quiet. The sensation didn’t go away. He matched my pace all the way to Lincoln, straight up to the big wooden front door of Tower Cottage.
I stood outside the entrance, breathing hard and feeling way weird. I had lived around Never my whole life, as far as I could remember. I had grown up with the bell tower as part of my landscape, but I’d never actually come this close to it. The tower was part of a hospital where everything was confidential, so it wasn’t like they offered tours. Even though I worked at Lincoln, I had
never been inside Tower Cottage before. Direct-care staff had no reason to pull charts or look up old records. I had never seen the dark wooden front door face-on like this, and I had never seen the gleaming brass door knocker. It was formed in the shape of a griffin, with a flowing mane and large, feathered wings. I stepped in for a closer look, then got terrified it would turn to look at me like the man in Miss Sally’s picture.
Before any weirdness could attack, I grabbed the big brass handle and pushed open the door, letting myself in to an impressive entry hall with a white marble floor that had the seal of the State of Kentucky tiled into the center. The walls were red limestone like those in the basement ward where I worked, but these walls were lined with portraits—probably previous facility directors, or “superintendents,” as they used to be called. Four hallways led off the entryway, and I saw stairs in two of them. A clock over one hallway let me know it was 12:30. I had two hours until my shift—assuming nothing went loopy.
Levi must have slipped in behind me, because he got my attention by clearing his throat. He gestured upward and said, “Third floor.”
I glanced where he was pointing and caught my breath.
The cottage didn’t have a ceiling.
It opened straight up toward the tower roof, where a layer of wood painted like sky and clouds blocked my view of the bells. I felt like I was staring up a giant steeple. Balconies overlooked the entryway on all sides, and here and there people were walking. The perspective seemed off, as though the tower reached all the
way to somewhere else. I felt like I could almost see it, like when you squint at shapes way off in the distance. I swayed, exhausted and impressed and dizzy all at the same time.
Levi lurched to catch me, but stopped before making contact. He looked pained at his inability to touch me, but I righted myself without any help from him. The pine scent that clung to him got stronger, and his eyes brightened with ... concern?
I was tired. Probably imagining things.
“This is the oldest building at Lincoln,” Levi said in that soft Southern accent of his. “And the grounds are way older. Old places can mess with your head.”
“The tower’s not normal,” I muttered, glancing at the fake sky again but looking away quickly before I threw up. “It goes places it shouldn’t.”
Levi frowned at me. He stared at the painted clouds. “You can
see
that? Imogene can, but I never see the thin spots, just feel them when I’m close. You can see it? Really?”
Great. Now I was doing something the devil himself couldn’t manage.
Not
okay.
I walked away from him again and headed to one of the stairways, aiming for the third floor and hoping some magical barrier would stop the Prince of Darkness from following me.
Of course I couldn’t be that lucky.
I checked the clocks on each landing, then checked again when I walked onto the third floor with Levi trailing after me like a Goth puppy.
Signs on the wall guided me to various parts of the hospital
records department. By instinct, I picked the arrow reading MAIN and followed the circle around to the right until I got to the suite with the DIRECTOR OF MEDICAL RECORDS plaque on the outside.
The heavy wooden door pushed open easily, and I let it swing shut on Levi as I walked into a room full of bookshelves. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him catch the door easily. It actually stopped when he touched it, which made me stop. My heart thumped once. Twice.
The door ... stopped moving. When he touched it.
My head swam.
Heaviness claimed my legs, my arms, and gravity dragged hard on my shoulders and head. I bent forward, smelling pine and old books and musty air.
He’s solid.
He’s actually real.
Until that second, I thought Levi was like Decker Greenway—some kind of spirit or ghost or hallucination.
Haint.
My knees hit the wooden floor, and I started to fall forward onto my face, but strong hands caught my shoulders. I felt the jolt of contact with Levi, heard him suck in a breath as the pain hit him, and then smelled something burning. His skin?
Oh God.
He eased me to the floor, then pulled his hands off me. His fingers were smoking. His silvery, pale face seemed translucent, and his black eyes gleamed with agony. He grimaced but didn’t make a sound.
“Idiot,” I murmured, visions of large brown volumes filling dozens of shelves swimming through my awareness. My words came out thick because my tongue and lips didn’t want to move. “Why did you touch me when you knew it would hurt you?”
“You were falling.” His voice sounded deeper from the pain. “I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“You chase people with dogs and ghost-geese and scare them to death. Why do you care if I bump my head?”
“My job isn’t that simple, Forest.”
“Chasing terrified men through the halls of an ancient mental hospital is a
job
?” I sounded sarcastic, but what I was really thinking was,
He said my name.
Even though I felt goofy from no sleep and so much shock and confusion, that gave me shivers—and not the bad kind.
“Everybody needs to work, right?” Levi said. “I owe my grandmother a debt I can’t ever pay, so, yeah, it’s what I do.”
I sat up and found myself beside him, face-to-face, my hip almost touching the outside of his knee. He was so close I could feel heat radiating between us, and his dark eyes seemed impossibly large. His tattoos filled my awareness, so perfect and colorful I wondered how I could have ever thought they were creepy.
I was filthy compared to him. Dirty and unwashed and plain. Shame made my cheeks flush, and he lifted a hand, holding his fingertips a hair’s breadth from my cheek.
“Forest,” he whispered. “I like your name.”
From somewhere behind us, a door opened. Moments later, a woman walked into the room, talking to two older men. The two guys shut up in a hurry and eyed me, obviously not seeing Levi.
“You okay?” one of them asked.
I did my best to force a smile. “Yeah, sorry. I just, um, tripped. Didn’t want to get up too fast.”
My attention shifted to the woman. She was pretty, but I couldn’t tell how old she was, or what she actually looked like. One second she seemed to be tall and middle-aged, with blond hair and tanned skin, and the next, she was tiny and old and wrinkled, with the sharpest eyes I had ever seen. I blinked.
Tall and blond again. Wearing a navy pantsuit. She carried herself like somebody who knew a lot, somebody used to giving orders. I could tell the men respected her by the way they glanced at her to see what they should do about me.
“She seems fine,” the lady drawled in a kind voice, but I heard the steel behind each word. “I’ll see to her.”
She barely gave me a glance as she led the men back to her office door, saw them out, and slid a bolt to lock them out—or to lock us in.
I got to my feet, feeling unsteady and off-balance all over again. Levi stood next to me, staying so close his black shirt brushed the sleeve of my blouse.
As the woman turned to face me, she started to glow and shrink. Her pantsuit turned into an old-fashioned dress with an apron, like the ones pioneer women wore. Her hair rippled, then seemed to braid itself into a thick, white rope. Her eyes—her eyes! So gray and bright and intense I could barely stand to look at her. Some kind of power shimmered and rose around her like a fog on a mountainside.