Give Up the Ghost

by Jenn Burke

  Rosanna made a beeline for me as soon as she saw me, and I rose to gather her in my arms. “Wes,” she breathed. She pressed a kiss to my cheek and drew back so she could look at me. A hand swept over my forehead, brushing aside a stray curl. “Any news?”

  I returned Rosanna’s cheek kiss and shook Darrell’s hand. “Nothing since I texted you.”

  The doctor had been reluctant to share any information with me at first, but relented when she realized I was on Lexi’s record as a substitute decision-maker since her parents were in Alberta. I listened, shaking, as she described Lexi’s injuries—and I stopped breathing when she said skull fracture. The dislocated shoulder, the bruises and cuts, they’d all heal on their own, for the most part. But the skull fracture needed surgery. Except first they had to manage the pressure in her brain, or something. I didn’t quite understand it all, and the one person who could have interpreted it for me was the one who was unconscious.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and pulled Rosanna into a tight hug.

  She let out a muffled sob and shook her head against my chest. Her back trembled, and I didn’t say anything, not even when Darrell moved in closer to rub her shoulders and laid an arm around the both of us.

  She could use me as a leaning post, as a tear-towel, for as long as she needed.

  I’d told her the circumstances surrounding Lexi’s fall, how I hadn’t acted quickly enough. Anyone else would have been at least a little resentful of me—I mean, I’d been right there. I was a fucking not-ghost with jacked-up magic. I should have been able to do something. “I should have—”

  She leaned back, shaking her head again, and wiped her eyes. “Stop. You’re not omnipotent.”

  “I know, but...”

  “I’ll go find a doctor, see if I can get an update,” Darrell said, his voice a low rumble. He dropped a soft kiss on his wife’s lips before turning to the nurses’ station.

  Rosanna wove her arm through mine and leaned on my shoulder. She was close to my height in her sneakers. I tilted my head so it rested on hers and reveled in the closeness for a second, but the doubts I’d been trying to fight for the past few hours kept rising up. Maybe if I’d used my extra magic, if I wasn’t so intent on suppressing it, I would have known there was someone hiding in the shadows, behind another set of crates and boxes. I would have been able to stop them before they hurt Lexi.

  “She’ll be fine.” Rosanna’s voice was firm, strong, but I still detected a slight waver in it, as though she wanted to believe her words with everything in her, but still had a sliver of uncertainty.

  I didn’t call her on it.

  A few minutes later, Darrell returned with the same doctor I’d spoken to earlier. She repeated everything she’d said earlier—depressed skull fracture, other injuries, no surgery yet, ICU for the foreseeable future.

  “She’s breathing on her own and her pupils are reacting to light,” the doctor said. “Those are both very good signs.”

  “Does that mean she’ll wake up soon?” I asked.

  “We’re keeping her sedated for now so we can get the pressure on her brain under control. Everything looks as good as it can be right now.”

  The doctor said we could go in and see her, two at a time, and Darrell made sure my name was on the list of allowed visitors. Rosanna and Darrell followed the doctor to Lexi’s room first, and when they came out a few minutes later, Rosanna’s eyes were red and her nose was running. Darrell wasn’t faring much better.

  Rosanna nodded and gestured for me to go in. Swallowing, I retraced their path into Lexi’s room, and froze on the threshold.

  The first thing I noticed was that they’d shaved her hair. Oh, she wasn’t going to appreciate that. She lay still on the hospital bed, her eyes closed. Wires and tubes cascaded around her and a machine beeped in the corner, an incessant noise that punctuated every second she wasn’t awake. A cannula fed oxygen into her nose.

  My body moved on autopilot and sat on the chair next to her bed. Leaning forward, I grasped her hand, pressed a shaky kiss to the back of it, then held my forehead to it in a silent, godless prayer.

  “Please wake up,” I whispered. “I mean, not now—you’ve got excellent drugs, I hear. But...you know. When you’re supposed to wake up, you need to.”

  The only response I received was the unending series of mechanical beeps.

  Inside my head, my magic swirled, and I tentatively reached out a mental finger. It reacted to my interest like a dog being offered a treat, eager and excited, and for once, I didn’t slam it back into its container. What if I could use it to help Lexi? Immediately, I scoffed. I wasn’t a healer. Hell, even Lexi, a nurse, wasn’t much for magical healing—that discipline was difficult to master and even more difficult to use, if you had any morals at all. Patients couldn’t consent to something they didn’t believe in.

  But...what if?

  So far, I’d tried very hard not to use my magic at all. I’d let it out—I had to, or else I felt as though I would explode—but other than the incident at the café, I hadn’t consciously exploited it. It had increased my sensitivity, obviously, but I didn’t know if that could be categorized as using it.

  If I concentrated, focused, maybe I could help Lexi. Somehow.

  I gripped her hand with both of mine, keeping it pressed to my forehead, and closed my eyes. Deliberately, I widened the opening of the metaphysical box that held my power—slowly cracking the lid so the magic didn’t rush through me uncontrollably. It saturated me like bubbles fizzing in a glass of soda—almost enough to make me giggle, until I remembered why I was doing this.

  I pushed the magic in Lexi’s direction.

  It bounced back at me.

  “Heal,” I said, and pushed it again.

  It bounced back hard enough this time to jolt me off my seat. I let go of her hand before I tugged her sideways.

  “That’s not go—to work.”

  I looked up to find Michael standing on the other side of Lexi’s bed. Glaring at him, I righted myself. “How do you know?”

  “—I know.”

  “That’s helpful. Thanks.”

  Michael watched Lexi’s face for a moment, and it hit me that this was his great-great-niece. I felt a twinge of something like sympathy deep in my gut—then shoved it away, because Michael wasn’t actually here. He was a figment of my demented brain.

  “You’re n—a healer.”

  Despite the fact that I’d said the same thing to myself a couple of minutes ago, Michael’s words stung. “But I have magic. And willpower.”

  Michael shook his head in that jerky, there-not-there motion.

  “I had to try.”

  “—like a child with—shotgun.” Michael’s voice dropped into a growl for the first time since he’d reappeared in my life. Or my mind. Whichever. “—isn’t a toy—need to—”

  “It wants me to use it, so I used it!”

  “Wes?”

  I jerked my gaze away from Michael to see Rosanna at the door, then glanced back—but Michael was gone. I hoped Rosanna hadn’t heard any of that argument. When I looked at her again, though, the concern in her face told me she had.

  “You okay?” she asked softly.

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, fine. Just—” Nothing came to mind as an excuse. “My time’s up?”

  “Why don’t you head on home, get some rest.” The way she said it, I knew it wasn’t a suggestion. Like all Aster women, Rosanna had a spine of steel. “You’ll feel better.”

  “I—Yeah, okay.” I offered her a reassuring smile before bending to kiss Lexi’s cheek. “I’ll be back soon,” I murmured to her, before turning to Rosanna. “Do you need anything? Want me to pick up some lunch, or coffee, or—”

  “Lunch would be great. Anything. I’m not picky.”

  And probably not terribly hungry, either, but Rosanna was pra
ctical enough to know she needed to eat even if she didn’t feel like it. “You got it.”

  As I started to slip by her, she placed a hand on my arm. “I know we’ve never had the same relationship as you and Lexi do, but...you know you can talk to me, right? Anytime. About anything.”

  I laid my hand over hers and kissed her temple. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

  If she knew it for the lie it was, she didn’t let on.

  Chapter Eight

  When I woke that evening, Hudson was already in the shower. I checked my phone to find an update from Rosanna—the pressure in Lexi’s head had eased but she was still sedated. Rosanna said I didn’t have to come in; I could if I wanted to, but she hoped I would take the time to rest some more.

  I knew Rosanna’s suggestion came from the knowledge that I’d stayed at the hospital for nearly twenty-four hours already, but I felt the tiniest bit slighted. Except...the thought of returning to the hospital, with all its hated smells, sights, and sounds, only to sit helplessly in the waiting room, made me want to collapse back to the mattress and pull the covers over my head.

  Maybe recharging would be a good idea.

  I put my phone aside, undecided, when Hudson emerged from the bathroom, a towel slung low on his hips and rubbing another one over his wavy hair. “Any news?” he asked.

  “Same.”

  He draped the towel around his neck and leaned over to kiss me. “Good morning.”

  I couldn’t help the upward curve of my lips. It wasn’t morning, but Hudson insisted that greeting me with “Good evening” sounded weird and Dracula-ish. I brushed my lips against his, a chaste caress. “Morning,” I returned.

  “You and I are going to play hooky,” Hudson announced. “Because, sweetheart, the bags under your eyes have bags.”

  I squinted at him. “Thanks.”

  “Come out with me. We’ll go for a walk. Maybe get something to eat.”

  “Hud...”

  He loosely cupped my ear, the heel of his palm sliding against my jaw and cheek. “Trust me. You need this.”

  I heaved out a sigh. The man wasn’t wrong. “All right. Let me have a shower and get dressed.”

  I thought we’d go for a walk around Hudson’s neighborhood or in a park somewhere, but Hudson aimed his car for Old Toronto. We ended up in the Distillery District—not a place I spent a lot of time in. It was quaint and quirky, and as a result, drew a lot of tourists year-round. Which meant crowds and people stopped randomly on sidewalks ogling the skyline or something else the big city offered that their home residence didn’t, or holding their cameras out as they tried to take selfies or whatever in the middle of the freaking walkway.

  I didn’t like tourists. Sue me.

  But the nip in the air must have deterred some of the crowds, because the Distillery District wasn’t that busy. As we stepped into a broad alleyway, I realized why Hudson had brought me here.

  Everything was lit up.

  Not only tiny fairy Christmas lights left over from the holiday season, but sculptures made of light. Against one wall, lasers traced a figure of a woman, making it seem as though she were dancing with strips of ribbon flowing around her form. A little farther down was the form of a dog, with lights twinkling to give the illusion of fur blowing in the wind—even though the dog was simply a wire sculpture without any covering. Above our heads, butterflies flitted by in a seemingly random path. Everywhere I looked, there was something new and creative that someone had dreamed up, and it took my breath away.

  When I pointed out a new amazing thing, Hudson smiled that wide, brilliant smile I adored. He spent more time looking at me than at the lights, and I didn’t protest when he tugged me into a dark corner after we’d been walking for about thirty minutes. The kiss he gave me was soft, full of love and tenderness, and I soaked it up like dry ground in a drought.

  “How did you know?” I whispered when the kiss was done and I had tucked my head into his chest.

  I felt the rumble of his chuckle more than heard it. “Because my Wes likes pretty things.”

  I shook my head, but I couldn’t help smiling. He was right. Quiet time was good, but nothing recharged me like surrounding myself with beauty and life.

  The moment changed subtly. I could feel tension in Hudson’s muscles that wasn’t there a moment before and I drew back so I could look up at him. His golden-brown eyes regarded me with a weight I hadn’t expected, and his fingers trailed down the side of my face, skimming along the curve of my cheekbone to my jaw.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “We’re good together, right?”

  I pushed up on my tiptoes to kiss him, trying to ease the worry in his face. “We’re amazing together.”

  “And we can—we can talk about...stuff. Even weird stuff.”

  My smile dimmed. Had Hudson figured out that it wasn’t PTSD I didn’t want to talk about, but something more magical? “Yeah,” I said cautiously.

  “Good.” A heavy breath escaped him. “Because there’s something—” Hudson’s phone chimed in his pocket. He pressed his lips together in a firm, white line, before deflating. “Goddamn it.”

  “You better check it.” I’d recognized the notification sound—it was Iskander, and I doubt he would have disturbed our free night unless it was important.

  He drew out the phone and frowned at it. “Kat’s at the office.”

  Why on earth would Hudson’s old boss be at the office? I supposed it could be for a visit, but Isk would have told us later. Another chime sounded, and the way Hudson’s expression transformed into something close to his Asshole Cop expression told me I was right.

  “She wants to talk to you,” he said.

  “Me? Why?” I liked Detective Sergeant Katrina Li, but we weren’t friends. In fact, I was pretty sure she wasn’t all that thrilled to know any of us at this point. Because of us, the paranormal cat was out of the bag—for her, anyway—and she’d had to twist and bend the truth to cover for us last year.

  “Something about a theft.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “I know.” Hudson tucked his phone away. “Let’s go talk to her and see what this is all about.”

  I would have preferred to stay among the magical lights, but I’d known the real world would intrude. It always did.

  * * *

  Katrina Li was a powerhouse of a woman. Not in size or stature, but in attitude. She was average height for a woman—so a few inches shorter than me—and always wore perfectly tailored pantsuits in nice, neutral colors. She kept her hair clipped short and tidy. With her badge on her belt and the hint of a gun holster under her arm...well, if I was at all into women, I might have been interested.

  Good thing I wasn’t, because damn, I did not need that complication in my life.

  Kat gave me a smile from the couch in the reception area as we entered the office and stomped the salt and slush from our boots. It was a good sign—until I noticed that the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Fantastic. So this was a courtesy call to confirm her preconceived notions.

  “I’m not in that life anymore,” I said as I shucked off my winter jacket.

  She shot a glance in Iskander’s direction where he was leaning against the reception desk, and he lifted his hands innocently. Sighing, she placed her mug of coffee on the table in front of her and pulled a tablet onto her lap. “Come have a look at this.”

  Curiosity piqued, I did as she requested—but as I sat down, I noticed Evan wasn’t present. I caught Iskander’s eye and made a quizzical expression. Date, he mouthed.

  Another one? Jesus, were things getting serious with this guy? I hoped Evan would bring him by to introduce him soon.

  Iskander joined Hudson behind the low minimalist couch and they both leaned over to see the tablet.

  “What’re you showing us?” Hudson asked.

 
; Kat brought up a video but didn’t start it. “This is footage captured at 3:00 a.m. yesterday from a pawnshop over on Church Street. I need you to keep an open mind, okay?”

  “Because we’re so disbelieving of weird things,” I deadpanned.

  “Yeah, okay, fair. I forgot who I was talking to for a minute. Have a look.” She triggered the video.

  It was your typical surveillance tape—black-and-white, a little grainy. It flipped between two cameras: one at the front of the store, and one in the back room. The light was not good, but it was enough to make out the counter at the front of the store with some items on display and the register, and in the back office, the desk, with its computer monitor and chair set slightly askew, as though someone had gotten up and not set the chair neatly against the desk.

  For a few rotations of the image, the shop was empty, motionless. And then—

  “Is the chair moving?” Hudson asked.

  It was. The chair, which had been completely still, was now sliding out of frame. Not quickly, but consistently. The seat rotated, though whether that was simply from the motion of the chair or from an unseen someone manipulating it, I couldn’t tell.

  “Wait,” Kat said.

  The image flipped back and forth a few more times, and then I saw movement behind the counter in the front of the store. A drawer near the bottom, to the right of the cash register, was opening. Centimeter by centimeter, it extended out from the counter, pulled by an invisible force. It moved as we watched it, so it wasn’t like someone was pulling at it only when the camera wasn’t on them.

  “I see why you wanted us to see it.” I couldn’t help it—my voice was shaky. There were way too many fucking ghosts in my life at the moment.

  “Wait,” Kat stressed.

  Just as Kat said it, something rose from the drawer. Before I could identify what it was, it disappeared—and all movement in the shop stopped.

  I cleared my throat. “That was...uh.”