Authors: Susan Vaught
Levi.
Levi was in Lincoln’s hallways again, and he was hunting.
But he wasn’t hunting me.
I don’t know how I knew that, but I had no question that the dogs weren’t coming in my direction. But if Levi wasn’t after me, then who—
My Sally’s hours are counting down.
Decker Greenway’s words from the night before ran through my mind.
That’s why I risked coming out of the tunnels to see her.
“The haint knows I’m here,” I muttered aloud in imitation of Decker’s deep drawl, and slapped my hand against my forehead.
Miss Sally was dying. She was dying right now, and Decker intended to come here to meet her spirit.
Levi didn’t understand that. He would do his “job,” helping his grandmother or the granny-woman or whatever she was, and chase Decker to the other side, leaving Miss Sally all alone, with nobody to meet her.
“No, no, no!” I ran out of the patient’s room and headed straight for the ward door.
“Forest?” Leslie’s worried voice trailed after me, but I didn’t stop—just yelled something about needing to get a soft drink and go to the bathroom.
This couldn’t happen. It would be a tragedy. I wouldn’t allow it—not without doing everything I could to make Levi see the higher right and wrong in Decker Greenway’s situation.
I ran up the stairs to the main basement level and pounded down the long, long hall that led to the building with the canteen and clothing room. The tile seemed to stretch forever ahead of me. I doubled my speed, but I didn’t seem to be going anywhere. The hallway just got longer, and the air got thick and heavy.
It smelled like pine.
Decker started screaming.
“Levi!” I yelled. “Stop it! You have to stop!”
I held out my right arm, leading with my bracelet as I ran, and the hallway around me shivered and shimmered. My muscles burned from pushing against the air, but I only shoved harder, hunting the hunter, tracking the dogs. My bracelet burned against my skin, each iron bead like a tiny poker, branding me with heat.
I kept pushing and running, running and pushing. It felt like the hospital itself was trying to keep me from getting to Levi—but I was moving. The hall shimmered again, and then the air barrier gave way with a soft pop. I slammed directly into the double doors separating me from the clothing room. Pain ricocheted up my arms and lodged in my elbows and shoulders, but I shoved it out of my mind.
As I finally burst into the hallway, stardust walls and floors and ceilings tied my senses in knots. Shadows of geese streamed around and around the silvery surfaces, screeching and honking and flapping blurry wings. Hounds crashed into my legs, snapping and snarling, but I kicked them away and staggered forward, yelling Levi’s name until my side ached and I couldn’t yell anymore. I saw him standing in front of the open clothing room door, radiating dark fog and holding Decker Greenway in a headlock and dragging him toward what looked like a black hole torn directly into the real world.
“Levi, wait!” I shrieked as the hounds swarmed me again, growling and biting and tearing at my ankles. They took me down like a graceless deer, and I hit the stardust floor so hard my head bounced with a crack. I saw flashing lights. Then all I could see was fur and teeth and blazing red eyes.
I beat at the crazed hounds, smashing my rowan bracelet into jowls and ears and clawing paws. Fur caught fire. Some of the dogs yelped. Blood streamed from my wrists, my arms, my cheeks, my legs, but I kept fighting. It felt like the hounds were three times the size they had been, and shredding the life right out of me. Somebody was screaming again. This time it was me.
All of a sudden the biting stopped, and the biggest dog I’d ever seen was standing over me. Its huge black head dipped until I had to stare into its blazing red eyes, and its fangs gnashed as drool dripped across my face.
I started to shake.
This thing had come to tear out my throat.
“Off!” Levi bellowed. “Cain. Off now!”
The black monster snapped its jaws at my face one more time, then, glaring and growling, it leaped away from me.
The next thing I knew, I was moving, up away from the monster dog and the rest of the howling hounds. Electricity ripped through me as Levi held me to his chest and carried me out of his pack of hunting dogs, squeezing me close, pressing me tighter against him until his clothes caught fire and his skin started to burn.
“Easy now,” he said in a low chant. “Easy. You be easy.” Each time he spoke, my pain lessened—but his had to be awful.
“Put me down,” I said, slurring, barely audible. “I’m killing you. Put me down!”
“I’m sorry, Forest,” he whispered as he eased me to the floor, propping my back against a stardust wall. “I’m so sorry.”
Goose shadows flickered past in a migrating V-shape, honking softly. Levi sat down beside me, tore off some of his black shirt, and wiped blood off my cheeks until the fabric got too hot to handle.
“Easy,” he kept saying, and sometimes he closed his eyes. Black fog drifted from his arms and fingertips, and my pain went away one bite at a time, one inch at a time. He was healing me.
Burned skin showed on his chest, raw and blistering, and I wished he would work some of that healing on himself. If I could have helped him, I would have.
A few dozen feet away from us, Levi’s dogs circled around Decker Greenway, who was huddled against the now closed clothing room door. I got here in time. I grabbed Levi’s forearms, then jerked my hands away when he winced from the shock I gave him.
“Don’t take him now,” I said, my voice nothing but a rasp in the now-quiet hallway. “Not yet. Just wait a few minutes. His Sally is coming.”
Levi’s handsome face went from worried to sad, and the blood-tattoo teardrop in the corner of his eye seemed all too real. “You almost got yourself killed for that?”
“They have to be together,” I told him, my voice stronger now that I could breathe and wasn’t being tortured by a thousand dog bites. I wanted to hold Levi and put my head on his shoulder and beg for Miss Sally and Decker, but I was poison to him. My touch brought Levi nothing but blisters and misery.
“It won’t matter,” he told me, his voice heavy with the same sadness I saw on his face. “When they cross over, they’ll forget or they won’t. Being together won’t make any difference.”
I held his gaze. “It’ll make a difference to them.”
Seconds passed. Then more seconds.
“Grant him asylum,” I said, thinking about the irony of where we were and what I was asking Levi to consider. “Don’t make him cross over until Sally finds him.”
Levi closed his eyes, then opened them. “This really means so much to you?”
“It does.”
“Enough to make a deal with me?”
“Don’t do it,” Decker shouted from next to the door. “That’s a bargain with the devil, girl!”
Hounds growled and snapped, and Decker fell silent as Levi’s dark eyes captured mine. He was sitting so close to me I almost couldn’t stand it. “I won’t hurt you. Can you trust me that much?”
I thought about it, then let out a slow breath. “Yes.”
“Then here’s my bargain. Decker stays and waits, and I help him cross over with Sally. You can watch to be sure I’m true to my word.” Levi paused, gazing at me so intently that I wanted to look away, but also never wanted to look away. Could he mesmerize people and steal their will?
Did I care?
“For your part, you’ll spend a little time with Imogene and do some learning,” he said, “and we’ll see if we can figure out what kind of power you have—because you definitely have some.”
Once more, I thought about his words. Deals like this always had hidden meanings, didn’t they? Traps to snare the idiot who made them, sure that they knew what they were doing.
I didn’t have any clue what I was doing. I freely admitted that. But it didn’t sound like Levi was asking for too much.
“You think I can do whatever Imogene does?” I said. “You think I’m whatever she is?”
Levi nodded. “Somebody knew about that, and tried to hide you. They must have had reasons. Whether they meant you good or evil, we have to figure that out.”
“All right,” I said. “One more condition, and I’ll make your bargain.”
Levi’s brows lifted. He obviously wasn’t used to people negotiating with him, but if I was handing over any part of my will or freedom, it would be on my own terms.
“Get rid of the dogs and the geese,” I said. “I don’t want Miss Sally’s spirit scared out of its wits.”
“Forest—”
I cut him off. “My way, or no deal. You can cross them over without all this.” I waved at the stardust. “Low drama. Got me?”
Levi hesitated. I could tell he was truly worried about something. My safety? His own? But a few seconds later, he lowered his head and yielded with a quiet, “Okay.”
“Then you have a bargain. Do we have to seal it in blood or something?”
He raised his head, his face only an inch from mine, his black eyes bright with amusement. “No. Anybody who breaks a promise to me crumbles to dust on the spot.”
He was kidding.
I knew he was.
Right?
“What did you do, Forest?” Decker Greenway sounded desperate and sad. “You shouldn’t have—”
He stopped talking, turning toward the hall that led to the
geriatric ward. He walked forward a step, heedless of the growling hounds.
My heart stuttered, and tears blurred my vision. There was only one thing that would get Decker’s attention like that, and it was sad and magnificent, wonderful wrapped in awful. I didn’t know whether to cry or shout with joy.
As I stood, the tears won out, followed by fear and shivers and a few hard seconds of talking to myself about being a grown-up and not freaking out.
Levi got to his feet in front of me and held out his hands, and the dogs and geese and stardust went away. The hallway returned to its normal tile and stone, the night lighting offering nothing but a dim yellow glow.
“Doing this your way,” he said without looking at me.
From far above Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital, the bells of Tower Cottage started to ring.
Miss Sally Greenway was coming to find her husband.
She didn’t come at a run.
She didn’t come slowly, either.
Sally Greenway walked down the hallway toward the clothing room like a woman who meant to die on Halloween—like a woman who knew right where she was going.
Her face, the face that had been made of black marble and wrinkles, looked young and smooth and soft. She wore a short-sleeved yellow dress and she was barefoot, with her ebony hair flowing long and natural down her shoulders. She might have lived in the 1920s or the ’30s or the ’60s. She was timeless, and she was free, and she headed straight for Decker.
He started to cry. Then he opened his arms wide and Sally fell against him, wrapping herself around him until every part of her was touching him somewhere.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but he told her she was silly, and that he loved her, and that he was the one who was sorry for getting himself dead trying to break her out of Lincoln, and they
laughed, and the bells rang, and I never wanted them to have to let go of each other.
My fingers drifted to my bracelet, and I squeezed the wood and iron against my skin. Whoever gave me the bracelet—did they love me? Did they give me up to keep me safe?
Would anyone ever care about me like Decker cared about Sally?
Levi kept me about twenty feet away from the couple. Anytime I leaned closer, he held up a hand to stop me.
He kept his voice quiet as he said, “These aren’t ghosts, just so you know. They’re more like spooks. Maybe specters.”
“What?”
Levi’s mouth pressed into a straight line as he watched Sally and Decker. “Imogene’s books up in the tower—she writes down everything she runs into at Lincoln. Got herself a sort of system. She says ghosts, they’re just a sad bit of soul that got lost going to the other side. But up from that, there’s stronger spirits. These two here, they got a touch of Madoc blood, so they’re spooks at least. They can hurt you.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even know where to start asking questions.
“They can’t cross over by themselves,” Levi said. “I have to help them.”
I shook my head. “Leave them alone. Your idea of helping is to hunt them like animals.”
Levi’s smile seemed wry and sad. “I use things every soul’s afraid of, that’s all. It’s too dangerous to leave energy like that loose on this side.”
I wanted to argue with him, but thought better of it. What did I know about spirits? Exactly nada. And he’d kept his bargain with me so far. Decker and Sally were together, and they’d at least have a shot at remembering each other when they crossed.
“Let them hold hands, okay? Let them keep touching each other.” I don’t know why that felt important, but it did.
Levi shrugged. “If it makes you feel better.”
He approached the couple slowly.
They let go of each other and turned to meet him, and heat blasted out of them, whipping past me like a sandstorm and dousing the lights in the hallway. My skin stung all over, and I blinked furiously, trying to clear the sensation of grit in my eyes.
Levi started to radiate black fog. Then he spread his arms and started talking. The bells seemed to ring louder.
“Haint,” Decker said, “you can take us now. I won’t fight you anymore.”
“I’m not a haint,” Levi said.
“You somethin’,” Sally whispered, and I winced at the fear in her voice. “Even death didn’t want you.”
Levi shrugged. “Guess I’m unforgiven, like my grandmother.”
Unforgiven
.
What did that mean?
More energy crashed into me, knocking me against the wall and holding me fast. I could see, but I couldn’t move or speak.
The clothing room door opened behind Decker and Sally, and I saw an endless, swirling black hole. I got dizzy so fast I would have collapsed if I hadn’t been pinned to the wall.
As I stared into the whirling mass of nothingness Levi was urging Sally and Decker to approach, I thought I saw shapes. Trees and hills, big ones, rounded like ancient mountains.