There was a path dead souls were supposed to follow when they left the realm of the living. I always knew where that path was; I could feel it in the same way I knew where the sun would rise each morning. I didn’t like any of the words I’d been given for it. “Heaven” felt too small, “the light” too vague.
Jack wasn’t going there, whatever I called it, not without more help than I could provide. He felt—permanent.
I, on the other hand, felt as though I had been manipulated into doing that to him. I didn’t know why it was important for Jack to be trapped here, neither alive nor quite dead anymore, but I was pretty sure I was following the spider’s script.
“Not a spider.” Elyna corrected herself because she’d heard Jack, not because she’d read my mind.
Jack had been able to make her hear him before this. Sometimes. I was afraid it would take him a lot less effort now.
“Not a spider,” I agreed. “Or not one of the usual ones.”
“You seemed to know something about it,” she said.
Adam looked at me, too. I shrugged and decided I didn’t want to have a conversation while I was sitting on the floor. I got up and noticed there was a wet Mercy-butt spot on the polished surface. I was tired of running around in wet clothes.
“I’ve only seen that spider once before,” I told them. “Yesterday.” I glanced at the clock on the wall in the office and watched the second hand tick past midnight. “Day before yesterday now.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t say anything about a spider.”
“It was at Uncle Mike’s,” I said. “Uncle Mike had a Christmas tree”—outside of a fae-dominated bar I could call a spade a spade and a Christmas tree a Christmas tree—“that had spiders spinning tinsel-like strands. Lots of little golden spiders, and the one silver one. I didn’t tell you about it because it was at Uncle Mike’s.”
“Lots of strange creatures at Uncle Mike’s,” agreed Adam. “You are sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the Soul Taker?”
I shrugged again. Instead of telling Adam that my newly acquired weird senses didn’t think the spider tasted like the Soul Taker or its god, as I might have if we’d been alone, I said, with equal truth, “Uncle Mike hustled me away from the tree. If he thought the spider had something to do with the Soul Taker, he’d have said.”
“And he’d have known,” Adam agreed.
“Uncle Mike?” asked Elyna.
“The fae who runs our local fae bar. He’s someone who knows things,” I told her. Then to Adam I said, “The spider did seem to take an interest in me. Maybe it was because of our recent supernatural spider encounters? Or maybe she was bored and thought I was interesting.”
“So did she follow you here?” Elyna asked. “Or did she hitch a ride? Where did you drive here from?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Surely I’d have felt it, if she had been in the SUV with us. But I couldn’t be certain. I didn’t know which was worse: that I hadn’t been aware of her presence in the confined space, or that she could somehow transport herself to where I was.
Adam answered the other part of the vampire’s question. “The Tri-Cities in Washington State.”
Elyna nodded. “Is she going to attack Jack again?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. I don’t know what she is. Absolutely no idea.”
“What did you do to me?” asked Jack.
I looked at him reluctantly. Even when I hadn’t been looking at him, he’d felt real. Now I could see things I hadn’t noticed before. His blue eyes had a dark gray ring around the pupil. He smelled of something familiar. After a moment, I identified it as ink. There were faint black smudges on his fingers. Ballpoint pens had come into common usage in World War II, I remembered. Before that, it had been all fountain pens.
“Were you a journalist?” I asked.
He frowned at me. “Architect.”
“Architect,” Elyna answered, too.
“What did you do to me?” he asked again.
“What does it feel like I did?” I asked.
He opened his mouth, shut it again. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.” He walked to the window between the reception room and the office and knocked a pen onto the floor. “That was a lot easier.”
“I can’t see you, Jack,” Elyna said. “But I can hear you more clearly.”
She hadn’t heard everything he said, though.
“Will it last?” Jack looked as though the answer mattered to him very much. I could see why it would.
“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Usually I try not to make the ghosts I see stronger than they already are.”
He grinned at me, a charming, boyish expression—but he was still wearing that gun. As soon as I noticed it, I could smell the gun oil.
“I can understand that,” he said. “Encouraging ghosts doesn’t make for restful sleep.” Then he sobered. “If they knew what you can do, they’d never leave you alone.”
“No,” I said. “If they—if you—knew what I can do, you’d all stay far away from me.”
I usually tried not to think about the night in Prague when I’d destroyed all the ghosts, using the power of that destruction for my own purposes. It still made me sick.
He looked at me a moment. “Wow. Okay. I’ll keep it in mind, then.”
Abruptly, there were only three of us in the room.
“He left,” I told the other two, then yawned, one of those jaw-cracking, inescapable yawns. “Is there any chance I could get to sleep sometime before the sun rises?”
Adam held up his purloined key. “Ms. Gray, we should head to bed.”
“Good night, then, Mr. and Mrs. Haupt—” She stopped midword. Frowned. “Hauptman. Tri-Cities, Washington. Werewolf. You’re them. Adam and Mercedes Hauptman.”
“Yes,” Adam agreed.
She whistled softly. “You are the Hauptmans the Lord of Night has taken such interest in.”
“Bonarata,” I said, and watched her flinch just a little. I wondered if she thought he’d appear if I said his name three times.
Maybe he would.
“What did you do to enrage him?” she asked me. “Your husband and pack he wants dead—he offers substantial rewards to the vampire who manages to kill any of them. But you, Ms. Hauptman, you he wants alive. Any vampire who harms you will regret the day they were made. He has made it clear he wants you for himself.”
“Do you intend to try for Bonarata’s reward?” I asked without answering her question. It was a long story, and I didn’t feel like sharing it. It was also the second time I’d said his name out loud.
She smiled. “To the extent of not harming you, yes.” She looked at Adam and shook her head. “I highly doubt Bonarata knows I exist, and I’d love to keep it that way.”
The third time his name had been spoken here tonight, and he hadn’t shown up or called. Maybe that was because my cell phone wasn’t working.
Elyna paused. “In point of fact, I owe you quite a lot. Jack is—” Her voice cracked. “Jack is necessary to me.”
She gave a short nod, as if to herself, then she spoke briskly. “You are looking for your brother. I will help you in any way I can. If you fear that he is lost in the woods, I can help look. The winter holds no fear for me. Vampires can freeze”—her face tightened just a bit, but her voice continued on pleasantly—“but we are rather like goldfish and will thaw without many issues. I am strong and I see very well in the dark. I can also find heat signatures”—her lips quirked up—“rather like a mosquito.”
“Thank you,” I said warily.
“You saved my husband,” she told me. “Without him…” She chose not to finish that sentence.