Dweller on the Threshold (2 page)

I took a deep breath and held it as I looked left, then right. Couldn’t find the ghost. “People in comas still have their spirit guides. Trapped, but there. I don’t see how I can help.”

“I have this gut feeling. I can’t explain it better than that. You’re the way you are for a reason. We may not know what it is yet, but I can’t believe you’re happy not using your gifts. Think of all the bad guys you could be snagging—remember how much you loved that? I can’t believe you spend so much time in your swampy glass bubble.”

“It’s not a glass bubble,” I mumbled. “I collect shrimp for aquariums for the extra cash. Everyone has to pay the rent.”

“Save the sermon, Bergdis.”

I winced, trying not to get angry. “Don’t call me that.”

Elsa groaned right into the phone. “It’s your name! You can’t forget it just like you’ve forgotten what you are!”

“Oh really?” Spotting the ghost, I kept the binoculars trained on him, balanced the phone on my shoulder for a sec, and smoothed the other hand down my T-shirt to try and get off some of the mud and goo. “What the hell am I? You seem to know everything. Let me in on it because it isn’t only the two of us who’d like to know.” I patted the black hat on my head even though she couldn’t see the gesture.

The hat covered hair that wasn’t easy to hide, in daylight or dark. Copper colored with thin white stripes, my hair looked as if a dream colorist had painted it with magic. It literally glowed—reflected sun and moon. The white fanned out from the top of my head like a niveous crown. No colorist touched it. I’d tried that once. At twelve, my hair had started to change on its own, to grow fast and strong. When the stripes arrived, I’d panicked and—desperate to fit in—sneaked out to have it cut short and colored a nice, deep brown. What happened the next day killed anything my last set of foster parents had felt for me. Elsa’s mother and father had taken one look at my hair—which had grown right back into its usual length and color overnight—and my butt had been back at the children’s home by six p.m. It wasn’t the only thing about me that had scared them, but it had been the last.

No amount of begging on Elsa’s part had worked to change their minds. Within the next few months, puberty changed me so much no one wanted me—not even the people who ran the home.

“Listen,” Elsa pleaded. “You and I both know there are things out there. Things most people don’t see or
want
to see.” She paused and sucked in a deep breath. “I know you’re still doing some of the work, Beri—still looking for the monsters. I know it hasn’t been that long since the last run. I know you’re on one right now.”

Shit, I lost the ghost.
I frantically searched the night to try and pick it up again. “How do you know that?” I whispered.

 
“I know the reasons, sis. You
can’t
stop looking.”

She was right. Someone or something out there had the answers I needed.

“Hey,” she continued. “It’s only because of you that I see the things I do. If you had never come to live with us, my eyes would be just as closed as most people’s. We were thrown together for a reason. I know it. You’ve got to help me now. Something out there is—I don’t know—stealing souls or something.”

“Stealing souls?”

“I think so. I don’t know how to explain it. You have to come see one of the victims yourself.”

“And you’re not asking me to stay.”

Her hesitation was telling this time. I could easily picture her sheepish grin. “I can’t promise I won’t try to talk you into it. You’re out there collecting bugs when you could be catching the bad guys. When you could live closer to me.”

“I still catch the bad guys sometimes.”
Okay, so yeah, it was a small source of guilt.
“And they’re shrimp, not bugs.”

 
“Whatever.”

“I’m good at it.” She knew about me and nature. About how the creatures came to me—some in particular. Bees, for instance…and a couple of other less-welcome kinds, like snakes.

“You’re good at a lot of things,” she argued. “But right now, I need you.”

I sighed. “I’ll come into town. Tomorrow.”

“Good.” She paused. “I know what I’m asking of you. And I’m sorry.”

 
Elsa couldn’t truly understand what she was asking. If she did she would have never called.

Every hair on my body suddenly stood.

“I have to go.” I didn’t wait for her response, just shut off the phone and slid it into the dry front pocket of my jeans. Moving back to a crouch, I winced when my knee cracked and resisted the urge to massage my ankles. They burned—rubbed raw from my boots despite the layers of thick socks, which were too soaked to do much good.

A shiver ripped down my back as the air around me changed—grew suddenly colder, smellier. I wrinkled my nose. “You are one stinky bastard.” There was a flash of movement
way
closer than I expected and I didn’t lower my binoculars fast enough. They slammed into my eyes.

My head whipped back and I lost my balance, butt once again on the ground. Stars winked behind my closed eyelids, but what I felt was worse. This ghost was strong. Stronger than even I had guessed. Its power clung to my skin like rotting fish guts—smelled like them, too.

In that instant, the stink was chased away by the familiar heavy and cloying scent of pineapple. I had more company.

“Slow on your feet tonight, Bergdis Hildegun O’Dell?”

I still couldn’t see, but I could sure feel—especially when the marauding phantom slammed into me again, this time knocking me onto my back. Frigid water seized every available piece of cloth. The ghost made another low, rumbling growl—this sounding more like a chuckle.

Great. A furious, killer haunt with a sense of humor.

I felt it swoop back off and guessed it had gone to the place it had probably died so it could recharge.

Wiping water out of my eyes, I sat up and met the gaze of a being who’d been my constant companion—
or albatross
—since I was nine years old. The moonlight reflected off the long, ridiculous sleeves of her white evening gown. Yeah, evening gown. The physical elements of this dimension couldn’t touch her, so the water didn’t hamper the extended, billowy skirt. One amused brown eye shone from between three-foot strands of slithery black hair.

I shot her a glare before whipping my attention back to the night visitor fuming over the water.

“You need a good magician, or maybe a priest to get rid of this thing, Bergdis,” Phro drawled in a slow, sultry voice laced with molasses-thick humor.

She knew I hated that name. I’d insisted on the shortened version forever. People tripped over the real deal, and who could blame them? It was a mouthful. Bergdis meant
spirit protection
. My parents, whoever they had been, must have been sadists. If not, they couldn’t have known what tagging me with that name would do. The spirits took it literally. They were always there. Everywhere. Barely hidden behind the dimensional veil between this world and the next. All I had to do was peel at the layers—just a little—and I’d see them.

My middle name meant warrior. And, as if the strangest name ever wasn’t enough of a burden to carry, my physical stature didn’t exactly blend me in, either. At a little over six feet tall, I towered over most other women and could out-lift most bodybuilders. Add the glowing hair, the light amber eyes and I was a verified walking, talking freak. A freak with spirits dogging my every step.

“She’s right. You can’t banish this thing yourself.”

At the sound of Fred’s voice, I groaned. I so did
not
need their bickering help tonight. I needed to concentrate. Come up with a better plan than, uh…watching the specter.

“Beri, you’re out of your element alone on this one. I told you a partner is needed. One with some magical abilities other than seeing into dimensions and being able to rip apart things with your bare hands.” He squatted next to me, tussled, sandy-colored hair over his eyes and his boyishly handsome face twisted with concern. “Can’t rip what you can’t grab.”

Normally, I had to do a little dimensional surgery to call on Fred. But lately, he’d been hanging around all the time. Fred Rawlings was my actual spirit guide—around me from birth, companion to a young girl who spent most of her early life trekking through strange foster homes. He’d explained to me that while most people couldn’t see them, everyone had a spirit guide—an experienced soul who chose to chaperone a person on this life’s journey. Once I died, Fred would either move on to someone else or decide to reincarnate himself to experience another life.

According to him, all souls had many lessons to learn.

And right now, all of us needed to learn to pay attention to the problem.

I picked up the binoculars only to have them slammed into the already-sore rings around my eyes as the thing lunged again. “Shit! Why didn’t you guys warn me it was coming back?”

“Better get out of here,” Fred whispered, leaning in too close. Unlike Phro, whose scent was fairly pleasant, Fred had the misfortune to die in his father’s rotting corn fields during a thunderstorm. Black flakes reappeared daily on his blue chambray shirt and early fifties-style Levi jeans, no matter how often he picked at the charred areas. With the faint smell of charcoal and the morbid burn marks on his clothes, Fred represented a constant reminder to go inside during lightning storms.

“Beri, your sister was right.” He turned to watch the ghost as it shot into the sky, then came back to glide over the water. “Something is going on out there—something big enough to stretch fingers into my side of the dimensional barriers.”

I frowned, my gaze not straying from the ghost. I hurriedly pulled my now-sopping pack off my back and frantically searched inside for rock salt. I’d sprinkle the damned stuff on myself. Fumbling with the canister, I spoke under my breath. “How is that possible?”

Phro perched on her knees on my other side. “He doesn’t know. None of us do. But we’ve been trying to knock some sense in your head for weeks now. If I’d known you’d listen to your sister, I would have dragged her ass to this
gods forsaken
place myself.”

Fred leaned over me, blocking my vision of the oncoming ghost. I ducked low, watched it slow and swirl about in one place as if it knew the stuff in my container was bad. I held up the salt as if in a toast.

 
Fred growled at Phro. “Maybe if you realized knocking sense wasn’t to be taken literally, Beri would have listened.”

“She’s tough. She can take it. Pipe down, virgin.”

He sucked in an angry breath. “You know? Sometimes I wish I could—”

“What?” Phro broke in, her taunting laughter grating even to my ears. She slowly shifted her legs, tilting her head. “Knock sense into me? You can’t.”

“Is that what you think?”
 

“It’s what I know.” She tossed her long black hair over her shoulder. It contrasted sharply with the skimpy white dress she wore tonight. The plump curves of her breasts drew the eye and she knew it. I was pretty sure she dressed in next–to-nothing to bother Fred. Her name-calling hadn’t been a joke. He was still miffed about dying in that state.

He rolled his eyes. “If your compassion was even half the size of your ego, world hunger would be a problem of the past.”

I held up my hands, salt scattering over the top of the open canister. “Stop! Goddess, you two. Is this really the time and place for this crap? I’m about to get sucked into the ocean when that thing starts singing. I could die here.”

“You’re always in danger of death on these hunts.” Phro’s lip curled into a snarl. “You don’t research enough beforehand. Maybe if you’d stop hiding like a scared ninny, face what happened with that fire elemental and go back into society where they have real libraries…”

“Shut. Up.” I dumped salt over my head, knowing it would cling to my wet hat and clothes. And just as I’d thought, the ghost stopped its approach.

But then…it started to sing.

Both Fred and Phro slapped hands over their ears and turned disbelieving eyes to the horrible sound.

“You’re sure no fucking siren!” Phro yelled.

I rolled my eyes, spit most of the salt out of my mouth, and crunched on what was left. “That’s it, piss it off more.” In that instant the horrible sound crawled into my heart and lodged what felt like a big, thick fish hook. Slicing pain came with the tugging. “Oh crap,” I muttered as I was slowly pulled to my feet.

“Told you,” Phro snapped, hands still over her ears. “You need someone with some magic skills. This is really going to piss me off. Me, the Goddess of Love. Banished to this damned Earth plane, spending the last nineteen years of my precious life following around the only live person who can see me just to watch her march into the water and drown over a bad Louis Armstrong impression.”

“Focus on the problem here,” I bit out between gritted teeth. I clamped every muscle in my body, but I still took a step toward the water. “Not good. Not good.”

“Well what did you expect to do when you found it, huh? Capture it in your little tin of salt?” Phro dropped her hands and began to stomp around. “I’m so
sick
of having to save your butt.”

This angered me enough to help me fight. I stopped moving, and with Herculean effort, managed to turn toward her and sneer. “Since when do you save anything? You are the biggest, nosiest, most pain-in-the-ass creature—one who never lets me have any sort of normal, private life—”