Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (22 page)

He gave a clipped nod of approval. “You can’t ever stop looking out for yourself even if you’re with someone you can trust.” He turned on his heel and walked back into the main part of the house.

I frowned, wondering if he was telling me he couldn’t be trusted. But no, what he said was more complicated than that. More like he needed me to be able to take care of myself.

That idea didn’t bother me in the least.

Chapter 30

Adriel and White Feather stopped by the next morning with breakfast, medicinal tea from her mother and some new weapons for me.

While we ate, she explained how she had fine-tuned the beads. “Since throwing them didn’t work well, I spelled them to explode if anyone touches you after you activate them. Lynx will need to know how to disable them. White Feather and I already know, but we can’t tell everyone how to rescue your body if you’re not in it. The beads will explode away from you. You probably won’t be hurt, but there is that possibility if the explosion hits something and bounces.”

“Can you design something like that for the tip of her staff?” Lynx stood at the kitchen bar eating, but he paused long enough to toss me the mesquite weapon resting near him.

I caught it, spinning it along my body automatically before handing it to Adriel.

“You’re teaching her to fight?” Adriel’s eyes went wide.

“She knew how already.” He gave her a blank cat stare. “You don’t wanna mess with her either. She nearly kicked my ass.”

I rolled my eyes. The ear shot didn’t count, and he’d been my equal or bested me in practice every time. “I’m not sure I can fling energy from the end of a staff any better than I was able to when throwing energy from the silver ball.”

Adriel stared at Lynx for another few seconds, but eventually she turned her attention to my new collection of staffs. She watched as I demonstrated with one. “Wood doesn’t transfer magic very well. A staff with a silver liner might be useful. Or maybe we could line it with a silver rod.”

“Wood doesn’t transfer magic well? That’s odd,” I said.

She tapped her foot. “I thought you didn’t know anything about magic?”

“I don’t. But In Between, I could draw energy from anything living or that had any living residue. Pine needles, a branch—it didn’t even have to be connected to its original source.”

She paced, staring at the staff resting along my thigh. “I should have said wood doesn’t work well for
me
in most spells. I do use wood to track items and find water.” She shrugged. “Try throwing the energy from one place to another off the end of the staff.”

I picked up the staff and attempted to toss energy while sideways, not sideways, pushing and pulling. My energy flowed readily along the wood and boy, it could pack an extra punch when I did that. But it didn’t flow outside of the staff very far, not until I snapped it like a towel, a kind of punching, halted fling. I also missed the stone fireplace where I was aiming because I didn’t expect anything to happen. The shot went wide. The television hanging off to the side of the mantel crackled with an odd popping noise when the force hit. A funny gray line sparked across the center, like an inert streak of lightning. “Uh-oh.”

“I don’t watch it anyways,” Lynx said calmly. “It was payment from a buddy who didn’t have any cash.”

Adriel paced away from me, probably hoping for more distance between us in case I started throwing off invisible sparks.

“Interesting,” she said. “We can tip the end with silver. That might very well cause the energy to arc away a bit, but it might not travel any further than it does now. It also doesn’t solve the problem of protecting you when you’re outside your body if you drift too far away.” She handed me the silver balls. “Carry these. Remember to activate them if you leave yourself. Release the spell when you return. Try it once so I can make sure you have the hang of it.”

I was exhausted already, but sliding sideways was nothing compared to flinging energy down the end of the stick. That had taken a big chunk out of me.

I set the spell as instructed, went sideways and saw the balls as little silver orbs of energy. Without thinking, I touched one, drawing the energy to me. It was like eating a full meal. I instantly felt better.

“Aztec—” Adriel closed her eyes. “You just drained that spell completely, didn’t you?”

I shifted fully back. “Sorry. I was In Between a long time and there it sat, a happy little feast.”

“Now I’ll have to recharge it. Well, you have three others. Try not to drain them every time you see them. Save them for weapons!”

Feeling better, but still tired, I sat on the couch. Lynx handed me a glass of chocolate milk and perched on the arm. It felt nice to have him nearby. With the energy from Adriel’s spell I wasn’t in danger of falling over, but knowing he had my back warmed me in a way that not even returning from In Between had done.

White Feather had remained at the kitchen table watching us the entire time. He finally asked, “Any luck tracking down the story on Amy?”

Lynx nodded. “She died about four months ago when she was twenty-one. She had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer about eight months earlier, but was still working as a tech at the blood bank next to the hospital. Ted ended up as a patient at the hospital when he started having convulsions and chewing on people. ’Trick says it’s obvious Amy has another accomplice at the hospital, and whoever it is could have easily listed her death as the ovarian cancer rather than ‘dumb ass who called a demon and tried to turn herself into a zombie.’”

“I’m not sure a forensic scientist would recognize death by demon blood,” White Feather replied.

Adriel tilted her head. “The demon blood didn’t kill her. It just failed to heal her body like she thought it would. But technically, the demon magic should have allowed her to possess another body.”

I tucked my legs under me. “I wasn’t a willing donor. She made it sound like she died because she didn’t find a donor fast enough.”

Adriel nodded. “After failing to possess you, she was probably drained with no backup plan. It’s also probable that when she left her body to possess you, her body died and she had nothing to re-inhabit.”

“Does anyone know how I ended up in the hospital?” I asked.

Lynx didn’t look at me when he answered. “You were attacked in the park across from the Santa Fe Indian Hospital. If you’d been any further from assistance, you wouldn’t have made it, but from what ’Trick gathered, someone saw the fight and called it in. The paramedics didn’t have to do more than run across the street. You had no ID. You landed in his hospital, Specialty Center, because no one knew who you were. ’Trick said you had to be resuscitated twice.”

That was a lot of information to digest, but it was also no information at all. “Do you know where Amy lived? I saw the blood from at least one pentagram at the hospital. The splatters attracted a minor demon. There were remnants of another drawing around Ted even though he was a zombie. Whoever helped Amy probably drew the pentagrams to allow her to jump back and forth from In Between, but whoever it is had to store supplies, or books, or something.”

Lynx fidgeted but didn’t say anything until Adriel crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “I know you must have found the place, Lynx.”

He didn’t blink, but he answered. “Ted still had an apartment, but it isn’t paid up. Looked like Amy musta lived there before she died, but there was nothing significant there. Didn’t even smell of magic or blood.”

Adriel stopped tapping, but left her arms crossed.

“There wasn’t any sign of the occult?” I found that hard to believe.

He flashed me a smug cat look. “The carpet was pretty new. Something burned there, but it was quite a while ago. It was in a small enough area that it could have been a pentagram.”

“Maybe it was left over from when they called the demon to obtain the demon blood the first time?” Adriel threw up her hands. “We’ll probably never know!”

“I could look,” I suggested. “There might be something useful at the apartment that I can spot.”

“Lynx can smell magic,” Adriel said. “He wouldn’t miss that.”

I shrugged. “And he can see ghosts too, but maybe there’s something there that I can see, some link to In Between.”

Lynx’s eyes flashed. “Not a good idea to go roaming around the place. You tell me what to look for and I’ll find it. You get in too much trouble.”

“I know what that’s like,” White Feather muttered, glancing in Adriel’s direction.

He earned a glare from Adriel. “I can take care of myself,” she huffed.

“Not really the point,” was White Feather’s reply.

“Shadow gets in way more trouble than Adriel,” Lynx said.

White Feather slapped him across the shoulders. “That’s simply not possible.”

Lynx snorted. “Yeah? She got herself killed, and we had to drag her back. Adriel hasn’t tried dying yet.”

Adriel shook her head at me. “Men.”

They were both right, but so was Adriel. There were things that needed to be done. And as long as I was asking favors, I might as well go for broke. “I need to talk to Paula and give her Kyle’s message too before it’s too late. Time is different In Between. I know Paula’s pregnant, but I’d rather contact Kyle sooner rather than later. In Between was bad enough before Amy set the demon loose there.”

Adriel nodded. “I talked to Mom. She’ll set the stage.” Before I could ask how, Adriel explained. “My mom knows everyone or someone who knows everyone else. Paula’s mom knows a friend of my mom who can break the news to Paula that you have a message from Kyle. If you walk in cold, she’ll be certain you’re a con artist.”

“Roberto’s ready,” Lynx said, “but Shadow and I can visit first to tell her to search for the money. Then we can bring Roberto in to see if we can reach Kyle.”

“I’m ready,” I said, in case anyone had any doubts.

After White Feather and Adriel left, I gathered juniper berries and wrapped them in two cotton hankies. They stored energy better than the pine needles, but one or two of those wouldn’t hurt either. I put extra bits in my own pocket, insurance that wasn’t logical, but I didn’t care.

I shaved two bits of wood from the staffs I’d been using and added that to the bundles before tying them tightly.

Lynx waited without asking questions. He held a quiet position better than a cat.

I finally grabbed two of my staffs. “Okay, let’s go.”

He led the way to the car.

Paula’s apartment complex was a typical brown adobe structure. Musicians apparently weren’t paid well even in Santa Fe, where art was considered a major part of the economy. The building was riddled with cracked stucco, uneven pavement and a general air of neglect.

We knocked and waited for less than a minute before Paula opened the door. She was quite short so her pregnant belly was not only prominent, it affected her balance. Her dark hair was pulled back into a long ponytail. She was barefoot.

I wished Roberto had come along. He could prove we weren’t liars, but more than that, I wanted to make sure Martin and Kyle were okay. Without Roberto, we were just empty-handed messengers.

Well, except for the guitar. Lynx set the case upright while Paula stared at us from the doorway.

The apartment behind her was very small. From the boxes piled in the living room behind her, it appeared she was getting ready to move out. It was imperative she keep Kyle’s guitar or he’d have a very hard time finding her from In Between.

I introduced myself and stuttered condolences, telling her we were there to return the guitar and had a message from Kyle.

She blocked the doorway with her person and her glare. “Kyle’s grandmother is crazy. She said you’d stop by, but I don’t believe a word you have to say.”

Adriel had said she set the stage, but it hadn’t helped. Paula wasn’t a believer.

“We brought Kyle’s guitar. It’s the one that was in the hotel room with him.”

“And I suppose your message is that he wants me to have it?
Very
original.”

“No. The message is that he left some money in one of the guitar cases. He was saving it for a surprise when your daughter was born.”

“We don’t know the sex of the child.”

I hadn’t known that, but Kyle had told me it was a daughter. I shrugged. “He said she was a girl. I didn’t know that it was supposed to be a secret.”

“And I would imagine you are here to help me find this fortune? And then what? You demand some of it, or you come back later with more messages telling me where to send it and any other money I have?”

I shook my head. “No. Kyle asked me to deliver the message and to hurry because he was afraid you’d sell the guitars. He wanted to make sure you found the money first. There was a false bottom in this case, but no money.” She sucked in a deep breath, ready to lambast us, but I kept talking. “But it wouldn’t be in this one anyway because he told me...well, he implied it wasn’t the one he had with him that night.”

Her furious brown eyes were fast turning red with held back tears. “He had more than one guitar with him. He always does.”

Lynx finally spoke. “There was only the one at the hotel. If he had others, he left them somewhere else.”

“And this is your proof? I’m supposed to believe you because you show up pretending to be some mystic with gray hair and my husband’s guitar?”

I blinked. The gray hair made me look silly, it was true, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. “It really doesn’t matter if you believe us or not. Check the cases. We can show you in this one how the inside has an extra piece of padding fit to the bottom. The others are probably constructed the same way. Kyle also wants you to have this guitar back because he had it with him when he died. He’d like you to keep it even if you can’t keep the others.”

My ear started to tingle. I glanced at the guitar case, but it hadn’t changed. I clicked my fingernails, the signal Lynx and I had agreed upon if I intended to slide sideways. With the pressure building near my ear, I didn’t wait to make sure he heard.

A soon as I drifted sideways, there was music, and I remembered the guitar pick. I’d searched for it once after my return, but not while sideways. I reached for it, and Kyle was suddenly standing next to Lynx, almost superimposed on him.