Give Up the Ghost

by Jenn Burke

  The ghost smiled, showing off not-so-straight teeth. “I go by Mac.”

  I returned his smile. “Nice to meet you, Mac. Kee, say hello to the guy who built your farm.”

  Their eyes widened. “Uh...hi.”

  “I ain’t sure if she’s a he or he’s a she, but tell ’em I’m happy with what’s been done. Everyone should have a place, ’specially kids whose own family don’t want ’em. You can’t help none who you love.”

  “Kee is genderfluid. They use the pronoun ‘they,’” I said with a smile. “I’m glad to hear you’re happy with Aurora House.”

  “Yeah, I am. So you’re gonna find out what’s going on?”

  “I’m going to do my best. Listen, if you feel the urge to, uh, go somewhere...”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be here,” he said, and disappeared.

  “He’s gone,” I told Kee.

  “That—that was wild,” they said breathlessly. “That was actually Malcolm MacKinnon? And he was okay with all the queer kids in his farmhouse?”

  “Sounded like it.”

  “Wow. Just...wow.”

  That about covered it. And while Kee was caught up in the wonder of it all, I couldn’t help but reflect on the sadness and exhaustion I’d heard in Mac’s voice. The beacon—or whatever it was—and everything it was putting into motion was taking its toll on Mac. He might be dead, but he was still a person.

  And he needed our help as much as Kee and the kids did.

  * * *

  Hudson’s garage workshop was the perfect place to examine the not-lamp. With his monster car at my back, I put the box containing it on the workbench and grabbed a pair of heavy-duty gardening gloves from their place on the pegboard. I pulled them on and carefully opened the flaps of the box, as though the thing might jump out at me.

  When dealing with magical things, you never knew.

  I lifted it and nudged the box out of the way, then placed the not-lamp upright on the bench. It swayed for a moment when I let go, but didn’t fall over, and I leaned back to eye it from top to bottom.

  The initial observation that it looked like a basement craft project still stood. I didn’t know if it had started out life as an actual lamp or if it just happened to be built in that general shape, but it was covered with buttons and what I could only surmise were tiny radio dishes...or something that looked like them. As though it were a miniature antenna. Which made sense, considering what Mac had said about it being a beacon.

  I picked up a screwdriver and used it to poke the tiny dishes. Nothing happened—there was no resurgence of the blue sparks that had burst forth when Lexi brought her hand close to the device. I considered mimicking what she’d done to see if I got a reaction, but decided not to since I was all alone out in Hudson’s garage. If anything happened, it would be hours before either Hudson or Evan awoke, and probably longer still before they found me.

  One last thing to try. I slipped into the otherplane, expecting to feel the same resonance I had in the hayloft...but it was absent. There was no power running through it anymore, nothing was emanating from it, and I saw no indication that it had ever been anything other than dead and de-energized.

  With a sigh, I reentered the living plane. I clearly didn’t have the skills needed to unlock the secrets of this thing. I needed Lexi.

  I crossed my arms and closed my eyes, fighting off the pain in my heart. What the hell was the point of my roided-out magic if I couldn’t heal Lexi? If I couldn’t figure out what this damned device was? If I couldn’t snap my fingers and close these damned rifts the imps were coming through? The only thing I’d managed to really fix was Omar’s homophobia—which had been an experiment that shouldn’t have worked, and something I still wasn’t sure I was okay with.

  But maybe...maybe in that case the ends justified the means. If it made for a happier relationship for Isk and his family, wasn’t that worth it?

  And what if I could help Evan in the same kind of way?

  My eyes popped open at the thought. I—I could. I was pretty sure I could. It would be similar to what I’d done to Omar, nudging and molding his memories. I could erase what Evan had seen me do, and especially how I’d reacted. My demand for him to keep it a secret wouldn’t exist. He’d be free of that burden.

  I could take care of it. I could.

  And if I did, it would be one thing I’d been able to make better on purpose.

  I left the garage, entered the house through the side door into the kitchen, and headed downstairs. I had no illusions that this was going to be easy—part of what I’d done to Omar was use my voice to give form to my magic. Since Evan was asleep, I’d have to take a different tack. Not sure what, but I’d figure it out. Because it was the right thing to do.

  I paused at the locked door to the bedroom in the basement, my hand hesitating over the electronic combination lock. This was the right thing...wasn’t it? It would help him, I knew it would. But...consent. I didn’t have it. Even if I asked, I probably wouldn’t get it, because who wanted someone messing with their brain? Still...it would help. It would erase the reason for this downswing. And shouldn’t that be my main concern? Protecting Evan? Making up for my mistake?

  A scratching sound on the other side of the basement caught my attention. Normally, I’d think it was a mouse seeking out shelter for the winter. But with everything that had happened...

  I smelled something too. Something like...rotten eggs. The odor was familiar, but I was too focused on tracking down the sound to think about it. I wrinkled my nose and stepped away from Evan’s door, heading in the direction of the scratches. I swear to god, if it was imps again, I was going to lose my shit.

  I rounded the corner into the alcove where the furnace was located, and—damn it—spotted a now-familiar miniature horror lurking in the shadows. The imp chomped on a metal pipe, its mouth stretched wide in a macabre grin, and I don’t know what the hell its teeth were made of, but there were sparks.

  Just as my brain categorized the smell.

  Natural gas leak.

  “Oh, f—”

  The explosion happened in slow motion. I watched the spark and natural gas mate and birth a tiny fireball, growing, growing, expanding into a murderous force that would take the lives of the men I loved—one as a partner, and one as a little brother.

  No. This wasn’t how it ended. Not after everything else we’d survived. I refused to be taken out by a glorified rat-bat too stupid to know you don’t eat natural gas lines.

  I threw open the box of magic in my head and reached. Escape. That was my only thought. My magic latched on to Hudson and Evan, and I pulled on that part of me that allowed me to haunt someone, to teleport through the otherplane to somewhere else in the living plane.

  Even as I acted on instinct, the logical part of me screamed this wouldn’t work. I could haunt only people, not places. I could move only myself through the otherplane, no one else. There was no possible way this was a viable solution—

  Except it was.

  I blinked hard against the midafternoon sun glinting off snowbanks in Hudson’s front yard. Hudson stood beside me, swaying on his feet. Evan was on the ground, his limbs arranged haphazardly, as though he’d fallen, and he looked like he was mostly asleep. The house was still intact—how the hell—

  The boom of the explosion knocked us off our feet. Glass sprayed around us and smoke and debris flew into the air. I rolled to the side and covered my head as pieces of wood and metal fell from the sky. Something hit my back, but the pain was muted, and I wasn’t sure if that was because whatever it was hadn’t hurt me or because I was in shock.

  I’d teleported them. It shouldn’t have been possible.

  “My—what the fuck, my house!” Hudson tried to push to his feet, but I grabbed at his ankles. I couldn’t see what was left of Hudson’s house through the smoke, but given the debris still fal
ling from the sky and the pulverized brick dust strewn across the street, I was going to guess it wasn’t much.

  Blood trickled down his legs—holy shit, he was wearing only underwear—from a multitude of tiny cuts from flying glass. Something dripped into my eye and I realized I hadn’t escaped the explosion unscathed, either. “Hud!”

  “My research!”

  His house was gone and he was worried about his fucking research? He’d been looking for one of his sire’s lieutenants—the only one who hadn’t been there when Hudson killed his band—for twenty years, but Jesus. His life was worth more than that.

  Digging my short fingernails into his skin, I yanked back on one foot. Gone was his usual predatory grace—it was the middle of the fucking day, and he wasn’t supposed to be awake, so that was no surprise. I didn’t expect him to fall on top of me, though. His elbow cracked against my temple, and black spots danced around my vision.

  Or had they already been there? Magical exhaustion burned through me. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think. Smoke burned my throat and I coughed weakly as Hudson rolled off me.

  “Uh...it’s daylight.” Evan said. He sounded shaky. Scared. “It’s daylight and I’m not feeling sick. Why aren’t I feeling sick?”

  Hudson sat up and looked at his flaming house again before rubbing his hands over his face. “How the hell did you get us out?” Before I could decide if I was going to answer, his hands were on my T-shirt, grabbing it and jolting me up as he glared. I had no doubt part of that glare was powered by concern, but a good chunk was a cop—ex-cop—who needed answers. I braced my hand on the concrete and sat up, my head spinning from Hudson’s rough treatment and everything else.

  “Magic,” Evan supplied.

  Hudson glanced at him and shook his head. “There’s no way—Wes isn’t that powerful.”

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “Fuck.” Evan sounded as exhausted as I felt. “Tell him, Wes.”

  The smell of burning wood and plastic permeated everything, clogging the back of my throat. Bits of stuff were still cascading down around us—lighter things, like foam from furniture, smoldering clothes, and charred pieces of paper. The fire roared and crackled, an innocuously happy sound given what it was doing. What it was destroying.

  My silence snapped something in Evan. He roared, “Fuck you, Wesley! You tell him—you tell him now. Tell him what you did. Tell him what you made me promise.”

  Oh god.

  “My—” I turned my head to the side, but Hudson gave me another shake. “My magic is...big. Bigger.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I can...do things. More things than—more things than I should be able to.”

  “He made Scott float and held him against the ceiling—the fucking ceiling.” The words rushed out of Evan as though a dam had been cracked and everything could now flow.

  “Since when?”

  I swallowed. “Since the crown.”

  “Jesus—Jesus Christ.” Hudson stood and stumbled back, almost as though he didn’t want to touch me anymore. I fell back, barely catching myself on one arm. He shoved a hand into his hair as he paced away a few steps. “Jesus Christ, Wes. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  That reaction, right there, was why I hadn’t. That subtle rejection. That look of disbelief and betrayal. I’d never wanted to see it. Feel it.

  But Hudson might as well have slapped me.

  This was it. This was what would break us.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hudson didn’t talk to me. All the way through going to the hospital and being officially declared whole and hale, if exhausted, through having the cops question us in the little ER cubicles, through the story that I’d woken up and smelled the gas and gotten Hudson and Evan out before the house exploded, through getting dressed in the donated clothing, through getting a ride over to the office, he said nothing. Not to me, anyway. He spoke to the cops and shared some quiet words with Evan, but I got nothing from him.

  The Hudson I’d dated in the eighties could be cold and emotionless, but the silent treatment wasn’t his thing. We’d fought—too often in the last year we were together then—loudly, fiercely, getting everything, or mostly everything, out into the open.

  This was new, and I didn’t like it. He was angry. Furious. I got that. But I felt shut out like I’d never been before. I felt like this life I’d cobbled together, this family, was about to shatter.

  The sun had set when we piled through the door into the office. Iskander was there, expecting us, since Hudson made a phone call to him earlier. He watched Hudson and Evan with curious eyes, noting that neither of them seemed to be showing any ill effects from being awake during the day and out in the sunlight.

  “You’re okay?” he said as we settled into various pieces of furniture. “Not burned or...or anything?”

  “Wes got us out before the fire could hurt us,” Evan said tiredly.

  “And the sunlight?”

  “Apparently no longer an issue.” Hudson collapsed back onto one of the armchairs we kept in the sitting area.

  “What? How?”

  “We found out the day Lexi got hurt that the sun didn’t bother me anymore. I thought it was because I was older—but Evan didn’t have any trouble today, either. So the only thing I can think of is that it’s because of Wes’s blood.”

  Hudson sipped from me regularly when we made love. And Evan had been spoiled for regular human blood when he’d drunk mine the first night he’d awoken as a vampire. Mine was, apparently, extra special.

  “So what the hell happened?”

  I wanted to curl up on my side on the couch, facing the back of it, and escape into unconsciousness for a while. Maybe I thought about it too loudly, because Hudson grunted and glared at me.

  “Tell him.”

  Reluctantly, I did. From the changes after I’d used the crown, to finding the imp munching on the natural gas line. By the end of it, Isk had moved to one of the desks and was sitting behind it, his face blank with shock.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered. He blinked a couple of times, then focused on Evan. “And you knew?”

  “Only for a couple of days. Since...you know.” Evan shrugged. “Wes didn’t want me to tell.”

  “See, that’s what I don’t get. Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell us?” Hudson demanded, his fingers gripping the arms of the chair so hard his knuckles were white.

  I shrank in on myself. There were any number of excuses I could give, but it all boiled down to one thing. “I was scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “This. You. Your reaction.”

  “I wouldn’t have had a reaction if you weren’t keeping secrets!”

  “No? Think so?” I released my ever-present hold on the magic in my head. It was sluggish to respond, but it was still there—still huge and ill-fitting. It flushed my skin with power, and I knew the instant it was reflected as cold, icy light in my eyes. “So there’s no reaction to this, then?” My magic reached farther, grabbing loose items on the desks and lifting them into the air. “How about now?”

  Something flitted across Hudson’s face—an emotion I’d never wanted to see in his expression because of me.

  Fear.

  It was there and gone in a second, but it didn’t matter. The fact that it had been there at all told me everything.

  I stuffed the magic back into the box. “Sorry,” I murmured.

  “Omar,” Iskander said suddenly. “You talked to him alone and then—he changed his mind about me completely.”

  I bit my lip. “He saw my magic. I didn’t realize I could—could do that.”

  “You messed with his head. With his memories.” Iskander’s eyes hardened. “Just like the demon did to me.”

  Oh shit. I hadn’t exactly forgotten t
hat Iskander’s memories had been futzed with in the demon’s attempts to get to me in the spring, but I definitely hadn’t made the connection between what I’d done to Omar and what had been done to Isk. “I didn’t—”

  “What were you doing in the basement before the explosion?”

  Fuck. Iskander was too good of an investigator. Of course he would pick up on that—Hudson’s laundry room was on the main floor, and his tools were all out in the garage. There was no reason for me to go into the basement unless it was to see Evan. And why would I see Evan when he was sleeping?

  “Wes? What the fuck were you doing in the basement?” Iskander’s eyes glittered with anger and something else. Something damned close to disgust. “Were you going to fix Evan’s thoughts too?”

  “It was my fault,” I managed, even though my mouth had gone dry as dust. I tried to clear my throat but it didn’t help. “I shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have asked Evan to keep my secret.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” Evan put in.

  “And—and I thought—I thought if I—”

  Evan shoved to his feet. “You’d protect your secret forever.”

  “No!” I leaned forward and cupped my head in my hands. “No, that’s not—I swear. I wanted to take away the pain that I—”

  “By stealing from me?” Evan let out a humorless puff of a chuckle. “Oh right. You’re a thief.”

  “No. Evan, I swear—”

  “I need to not be here right now,” he said to Iskander.

  Isk gave a tight nod and held out a hand to invite Evan upstairs, into Iskander’s residence. He shot me a look that promised some sort of retribution, but Evan walked away without looking back once.

  And then it was just Hudson and me. In stony, cold silence.

  I don’t know how much time had passed before Hudson spoke. “Were you going to fuck with his memories?”

  “I wanted to help.”

  “No—Evan was right. You wanted to protect yourself. Because if you’d wanted to help, you would have told us everything.” His voice softened—but not in a tender way, in an I’m so hurt I can barely breathe way. “How could you, Wes?”