“Oh no, no, no, this cannot be happening!” Emma cried out. “Poor little toads…eek! Hold on!”
Toads? Huh, I never could tell the difference.
Weird, but that was my last thought before the blur of shrieking brakes, crashing metal, and snapping branches.
Emma’s car flipped over and the entire world went black.
*****
I heard the harsh, grinding creak of a ship’s hul straining against stormy seas just as I felt the vertiginous tilt and rol of the waves beneath me. I considered letting the motion lul me back to sleep, but one thought kept creeping in to ruin my slumber.
I wasn’t on a boat.
With a jolt I tried to leap upright, but up was down and down was up, causing a searing pain to shoot through my shoulder as I dangled from the car safety belt. I needed to get a look around, but turning my head didn’t seem like an easy option. My neck was stiff, like the time I fel asleep with wet hair, and my head was pounding a rhythm that matched the vampire bats fluttering in my stomach.
Come
on Yuki, you can do this.
Reaching up to grab the safety belt, I steadied myself and drew in a deep shuddering breath. It did nothing to calm my racing heartbeat, but the pain in my head momentarily lessened. Forcing my eyes to stay open, I turned them to my right and flinched. A ghostly pale face stared back at me and it took a moment for my sluggish brain to realize that the spectral form was only my reflection. I examined the sickly face suspended in the darkness and knew one thing for sure. I looked like hel .
For a moment I closed my eyes and gathered another steadying breath, remembering to breathe in the way I’d been taught during the numerous yoga classes that Cal had dragged me to over the years. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of why I was hanging upside down from a car safety belt, I pul ed my eyes to the left. A golden amorphous shape hung glowing beside me and I jumped when it moaned.
“Emma?” I asked. My voice was dry and raspy and started a series of painful coughs that nearly made me pass out again.
Emma didn’t answer, but with a rush of memory I knew that it was my friend beside me. Emma’s blond hair cascaded past her face to dangle above the glowing instrument panel. Pale skin, golden hair, and white blouse sleeve were marred only by a dark stream that trickled from her scalp along her arm to drip slowly,
tap tap tap
, off her fingers onto the windshield.
How did this happen? It had to be the curse. I clenched my fist in frustration as my eyes fil ed with tears.
We had known better. Emma with her research and me with my psychic gift to sense the dead; we knew the risks of messing with the curse, but that hadn’t stopped us. Our curiosity had won out over common sense and now we were paying the price.
Son of a dung beetle.
I just hoped we survived long enough to benefit from the lesson learned. Never mess with a curse and never, ever travel on Witchtrot Road after dark.
*****
I tried to stay awake, real y I did, but my vision blurred and my head felt like an overful water bal oon—I just hoped it wouldn’t burst. I blinked my eyes to clear away the haze of blurry fog…and drifted to sleep.
*****
A warm, wet tongue lapped at my face. Confused, I opened my eyes to find myself lying on my back with Cal’s spirit wolf on top of me.
That doesn’t make any sense.
I tried to sit up, but the wolf let out a high pitch whine. I sunk my hand into his fur, something I shouldn’t have been able to do. Cal’s wolf didn’t feel like a vaporous, intangible spirit. In fact, the wet wolf slobber on my face felt pretty darn real. Was I dead? I had been in a car accident. That much I recal ed, but I couldn’t remember much after that.
Looking around I could see the tal , dry grasses of the plain I often visited in my dreams. This was definitely the in-between realms, but I had no idea how I’d ended up here…
and no clue how to get home.
“If…if I’m stuck here, please tel Cal that I love him,” I said, brushing his wolf’s fur with my fingertips. “I wil always love him.”
The wolf whined and nosed my hand, licking my fingers.
I pul ed myself upright, wolf at my side. A glowing pathway appeared at my feet.
“I guess that’s my cue,” I said.
I gave the wolf one last hug and went to step onto the golden path, but the ground started vibrating and earth churned beneath my feet. I fought to remain standing and not fal on my butt, which would be a very ungraceful way to begin my afterlife, when my dung beetle spirit guide burst up and out of the ground. Its arms waved in agitation, flinging clods of dirt in al directions, and the wolf shied away.
“Do not set foot on the Path of Light,” the dung beetle said.
It was obviously an order and I wasn’t about to argue.
Who fights with a seven foot tal beetle?
“Um, okay,” I said.
“You are not supposed to be here, child,” the dung beetle said. “It is not your time!”
With a power I didn’t know she possessed, my spirit guide hit me with a bal of energy that she had been weaving between her hands. The force of the energy bal thrust me out of the in-between realm and back into my body. Unfortunately my body hurt…a lot.
“Ouch,” I groaned.
I was afraid to see how badly I was injured and hoped there wasn’t too much blood. I opened my eyes to see Simon’s face hovering beside me. He looked worried and maybe even a little freaked out.
“Why are you upside down?” I asked, confused.
“You’re the one who’s upside down, love,” Simon said.
Oh, right. I was hanging upside down from my seatbelt. The realization brought with it a wave of vertigo.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.
“Just a moment,” Simon said. “I need to get you down from there.”
Simon’s hands were moving quickly, looking for injuries and assessing the precariousness of the car. His eyes repeatedly flicked past me and I realized he was looking at Emma.
“Emma?” I asked. “Oh God, is she okay?”
“I don’t know,” Simon said. Was that a tear glistening on his cheek? No way, it had to be a bit of moonlight hitting his face. “I can’t wake her up. We need to get you both out of that car and to a hospital.”
“No hospitals,” I said, gritting my teeth.
The pain was everywhere now, like every part of me had whiplash, but there was no way I could go to a hospital.
People died in hospitals. The number of ghosts there was staggering.
“Emma needs a neurologist and maybe a surgeon and
she’s
our medic,” Simon said grimly. “We real y don’t have a choice.”
I tried to look at Emma, but my neck was too stiff to turn my head.
“I’l go, but only for Emma,” I said. “She’l need me to be there when she wakes up.”
“Okay, now that that’s settled, I need to cut the strap that’s holding you in place,” Simon said.
“Is it going to hurt?” I asked.
“Yes,” Simon said.
“Okay,” I said in a smal voice.
Simon pul ed out a knife and sawed through the strap.
He was being as gentle as he could, but I cried out when the knife final y made it through. Simon caught me in his arms and pul ed me out of the car, but his eyes were on Emma the entire time. He carried me to his borrowed car and set me in the front passenger seat. We needed the back seat for Emma.
Simon’s eyes flicked back to the wreckage of Emma’s car.
“Go to her,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” I didn’t feel fine, but I kept that to myself. Simon went to help Emma. She was the one who needed him right now.
I tried not to cry, or pass out, while waiting for Simon to return. Simon would occasional y mutter under his breath and at one point it sounded like he was pleading with either Emma or the car, but she never made a sound. The lack of arguing, the absolute silence from Emma, made my heart break with every passing minute.
Simon approached the car with Emma’s unconscious body in his arms and arranged her as careful y as possible in the back seat. I tried to look at her in the rearview mirror, but the limp form didn’t look like Emma. The ragdol reflection haunted me the entire way to the hospital.
“Cal is going to kil me,” Simon said.
He was driving us to the hospital and taking ful advantage of his werewolf reflexes. Simon ran one hand through his hair and I thought he’d pul it out the way he was tugging on it.
“There was nothing else you could do,” I said. “And I’m okay.”
“You obviously haven’t looked at yourself lately,” Simon said. “You’re turning black and blue.”
I tried to check my reflection in the mirror, while avoiding looking at the crumpled form in the back seat.
Ouch.
I was turning black, blue, and yel ow. My right cheek looked tie-dyed and a lump was forming above my eye.
“Why didn’t you cal an ambulance?” I asked.
“Because I don’t know what’s going on in that place,” Simon said. “If it’s something supernatural, then I’m not going to lead a team of human paramedics there to duke it out with evil spirits. Plus, did you see the size of that road?
They’d never be able to drive fast enough.”
“How did you even know where to find us?” I asked.
“Cal knew you were in trouble,” Simon said. “His wolf spirit told him where to find you.”
“And it’s the ful moon,” I said.
“Yes, love, it’s the ful moon so Cal couldn’t come himself,” Simon said. “He sent me here instead. I’m the only member of our pack who can stay in human form tonight, though if you do anything else stupid I might claim I shifted due to stress and bite you just to teach you a lesson.”
Simon flashed his teeth at me and I shivered.
“Al we did was drive down the road,” I said defensively. “How could we have known it was going to start raining toads?”
“Toads?” Simon asked. “You better start at the beginning.”
Simon continued weaving down treacherous back roads at ful speed while I relayed everything that we had recently learned about the legend of Witchtrot Road and the details of our brief trip there.
“You’re sure that you saw the human form just before the toads started hitting the car?” Simon asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And now that I’m not al freaked out with toads smashing into the windshield, it seems obvious that it was a person and not a ghost that I saw.”
“Why is that?” Simon asked.
“Because there wasn’t any smel ,” I said.
“So a man, or woman, was sneaking around at the exact moment that your car was hit by toads,” Simon said.
“It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But why would anyone go to such lengths to make the legend seem real?”
“I don’t know, love, but I’m going to find out,” Simon said, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel.
Chapter 12
The Goodhealth Hospital emergency room was chaos when we arrived. Apparently a logging truck had slid on a patch of ice causing a multiple car accident nearby.
Ambulances were bringing in the accident victims and hospital staff were ignoring our attempts to get their attention.
Simon snatched an empty gurney with his foot and settled Emma on it gently before barking out orders for me to keep an eye on her.
Like I would do anything else.
He was definitely in a mood—not that I could blame him.
Simon stalked off in search of hospital staff to growl at and I reached out to hold Emma’s hand.
“Hang in there,” I said.
Simon appeared seconds later with a frazzled looking woman holding a clipboard. Her glasses were askew and food was stuck to the corner of her mouth as though she had been pul ed from her dinner break. Knowing Simon, that’s exactly what had happened.
“Another accident victim?” the woman asked, jotting things down on her chart.
“Car accident,” I said.
“She hasn’t regained consciousness,” Simon growled.
“You need to find her a doctor, now.”
The woman blanched and I wondered what kinds of threats Simon had used to get her to abandon her dinner.
He obviously wasn’t using his usual method of flirtation and charm.
“I’l make sure a doctor sees her right away,” the woman said, scurrying away.
“Does it make you feel cool to play the big bad wolf?” I asked. I was glad that he was getting help for Emma, but I was also feeling sensitive to bul ying.
“You’re right,” Simon said, sighing. “That wasn’t fair.
It’s not her fault you two girls are bloody idiots. Shal I go apologize?”
I stiffened at his insult which only caused a painful twinge in my neck and shoulder.
“No, the poor woman is scared enough,” I said. “You don’t need to give her nightmares too.”
“I could work the old Simon charm,” Simon said, flashing a roguish grin.
“Old is right,” I muttered.
“I heard that,” he said.
Which had been the point.
“Let’s just wait for the doctor,” I said.
I hoped that it wasn’t already too late.
*****
“Who puts a waterfal in a hospital lobby?” I asked.
“Board members who care more about appearances than patients,” Simon said. “And who haven’t been drinking coffee for hours waiting for their friend to wake up.” He had a point. The water sounds were making me have to pee. I was also contemplating buying another cup of coffee. The evil lobby designers had placed a Starbucks counter in one corner, with the waterfal in the center, and the smel of coffee and baked goods was making me salivate.
“I wonder how many uninsured patients could have received medical care for the cost of that waterfal ,” I said.
“You sound like Emma,” Simon said sadly.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’l be okay.”
I reached out and awkwardly squeezed his hand.
“I have to use the men’s room,” Simon said, stalking off.
If I wasn’t mistaken, there were tears in his eyes.
Big
softy.
I wondered if I should cal Emma’s parents. What would I say? We were driving out on a scary road for no good reason and the sky unleashed toad rain? If only Cal were here to talk to. He would know what to do.