Sin & Spirit (Demigods of San Francisco Book 4)

by K. F. Breene

  24

  Alexis

  “Hey.”

  Bleary-eyed, I looked up in time for Bria to come around the island. Dark circles lined her tight eyes. She squinted in the midmorning sun streaming through the open kitchen windows.

  “Hey,” I replied, my gut churning with worry, hating that I was just sitting around, doing nothing, when Daisy needed me.

  Kieran and the guys were at the government office, checking in with police and looking at footage from traffic cams, trying to find a trace of the car and the kidnapper. They were also getting more information on Aaron and his people. It was unanimously agreed that I needed to stay home with Mordecai, out of sight, or else risk alerting everyone that laid eyes on me that something was wrong. Kieran didn’t want this in the papers, fearing it might freak the kidnapper out enough to kill Daisy and make a run for it.

  “Where’s Red and Aubri with an I?” Bria asked, grabbing the coffee pot.

  “I accidentally on purpose told them to fuck off. Red only did so because I forced her to leave with my magic. I don’t think that woman is used to getting scared. I guess this’ll put manners in her.”

  “Doubtful. So hey, I’m just going to break it to you. We’ve got nothing yet.” Bria filled a coffee cup before sliding it my way. Liquid sloshed over the side. “But nothing is not nothing. It means the wench is staying put. Kieran is hoping to hear about a trade.”

  “Or else they got on a plane and are no longer in the area.”

  Bria shook her head, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Henry was in charge of looking into that possibility, and he does not fail. She’s in the area. Somewhere. We just need to find out where. How’s Mordecai?”

  “He’s Mordecai. That guy has been on the brink of death more times than you’d care to hear. He’s crawling his way back to health.” I pushed my cup away and dropped my face into my hands. “I brought this on them. I’m the reason these kids can’t catch a break. I’m the only reason they were in any danger at all.”

  “Nah. They were in danger because of Kieran. If you are going to lay danger at someone’s feet, you might as well choose the right pair.”

  “Something is going on outside, Lexi,” Jack said quietly, waiting in the corner. His eyes were solemn, his voice subdued—I knew he was responding to the loss of himself. Of his life. The dead mourned, too, maybe more than the living.

  I’d offered to push him over the Line, but he felt responsible for Daisy. He wanted to hang around and help. He just didn’t know how.

  I turned to find Frank on the grass, his hands on his hips, arguing. He flung his hand at the window, as though talking about someone inside.

  “Want me to go sort it out?” Jack asked, and I knew he didn’t want to. That would be admitting he had more in common with Frank than he did with us. The guy was dead; he didn’t need to be depressed too.

  “No, it’s fine. Frank only listens to Kieran and me,” I said, sliding off the stool. “You’d just be annoyed.”

  A glimmer sparkled in his eye. He stepped forward, flexing his spectral muscles. “We’ll see about that.”

  I stopped from huffing. I should’ve used a different excuse. Jack was going through a post-living crisis, but he was still Jack, and he didn’t like being told someone wouldn’t listen to him. Now I would have to pull off the spirit repellent then quickly reapply it before Frank caught wind of the change and decided to make himself at home. The whole exercise still required a lot of effort.

  We got outside in time to hear Frank yell, “You don’t belong here, that’s why.”

  The other Spirit Walker stood in front of him in human form, his sideburns accenting his strong jaw, his hair pleasantly tousled, and his lips pulled up in a grin. “And I suppose you do?”

  “Yeah. That’s right. I do. Her mother asked me to watch out for her.” Frank spread his arms.

  “And how have you been doing that, exactly? By yelling at the good guys and running away from the baddies?”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. Jack stood at my side, his hands on his hips, flaring his huge biceps.

  The Spirit Walker chuckled softly. “Not a thing. I was just waiting patiently for you to stop doing nothing and ask how you could help your kid. Frank was keeping me company.”

  “He’s a smug jackass,” Frank said, scowling.

  “Kieran can’t be thrilled with how suave and attractive this guy is,” Jack murmured.

  The Spirit Walker’s smile intensified. “It’s as if you don’t think I hear you.”

  “I wish I didn’t hear you,” Frank replied.

  “What did you say about helping my kid?” I asked, motioning for the other two to shut it.

  “I said you should ask how you could.” The Spirit Walker slipped his hands into his pockets. “Instead, you’ve been letting your Demigod do all the heavy lifting. He’s making strides—I checked up on him. But he’s not working fast enough. You’re the key to finding her in time, not him.”

  “Finding her in time…” I struggled to breathe. I felt a spirit hand on my shoulder, and I didn’t have the heart to tell Jack about the no-touching rule.

  “Oops. You’re not gonna wanna do that, haus.” The Spirit Walker made a motion, and even though he didn’t actually touch Jack, Jack pulled his hand away as if he’d been burned. “You’re unintentionally greedy when you just lose your body. You’ll suck up all her energy, and then she can’t go and fix your mistake.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said automatically, seeing Jack’s face fall.

  “Eh.” The Spirit Walker waggled his hand. “Fifty-fifty. Which is something we need to go over, Lexi—I can call you Lexi, right? I feel like we’re close enough now. You need to learn how to protect yourself from Hades’s minions. But first, there are more important things. Like being a hero.”

  “A really smug jackass,” Frank grumbled.

  “How?” I asked, ignoring Frank. “And why couldn’t you tell me all this sooner in cat form?”

  The Spirit Walker looked around. “Because the damn thing keeps running off on me. I should’ve picked a dog. They aim to please. A big dog, so it’d be easier to find in the jungle you got around here. Anyway, you have a missing person on your hands. I can show you how to locate her.”

  “How?” I asked again, blinking away moisture.

  “Are you ready for your next lesson?”

  I didn’t get a chance to answer before he started walking. At the back of the house, he sat down on the grass and crossed his legs. I followed, my heart pinging around my ribcage. Jack stood off a ways, his arms crossed, with Frank a little behind him, apparently giving him backup. I felt Bria starting out of the house, working her way around to us.

  “Is this a trick?” I asked softly.

  “That question only applies if I have a body and there is a bed nearby. Look, it’s real simple. You’re able to call spirits from across the Line, right?”

  I clasped my shaking hands and nodded. “When I have an item, yes. A personal item, like when I called you.”

  “Right…mostly. You don’t actually need an item when you know the soul, but that’s a lesson for another day.” He stretched out on his side and braced his head on his fist—getting a little too comfortable, if you asked me. “You’re also able to call spirits to you on this side of the Line, correct? You can even call them on behalf of other people. You think about them hard enough, and they drift to you.”

  I nodded slowly. “But those are spirits. They’re not living people.”

  “They’re souls.”

  “Right. But souls without a body that keeps them put.”

  “Exactly. They are souls with no anchor, but they are still souls. Souls that you can feel. Souls whose signature you can recognize. The woman wandering this way right now, for example, is your friend. The kid out near the cliff is probably high and a stranger. One of them you recognize, and judging by the sudden anxious look on your face, one you didn’t know was there. You need to do some serious
exercising in magical reach.”

  Bria cleared the corner of the house before drifting to one of the patio chairs to watch. She was clearly checking up on me.

  He was right—I could find souls beyond the Line and in our world. The latter I called to me because they were easier to reel in. When a soul was over the Line, though, I had to slip into a trance to call them, and if they were powerful, I sometimes had to meet them halfway. Or, in the Spirit Walker’s case, go and get him.

  “Okay, assuming I can track her soul down in the world of the living…somehow, then what? She does have an anchor.” Fear choked me. “God, I hope she still has an anchor.”

  “She does, Lexi,” Jack interjected. “She does. That little gremlin isn’t one to give up. She’s not one to say die. She’s alive.”

  “That’s right. She can’t come to you…but you can go to her,” the Spirit Walker said.

  I tried to fit this into what I knew about my magic, but the pieces just weren’t connecting.

  “The world of the living operates differently than the spirit realm,” I said. “I can’t be mobile and in a trance at the same time, even if Bria were driving me. I don’t have spatial awareness when I’m finding the souls. It’s just—” I shook my head in frustration.

  “You need to think outside of the body. Outside the constructs of the living. You’ll be leaving your body behind.”

  Tingles washed over me. Jack shifted his weight from side to side, but didn’t say anything. I repeated what the Spirit Walker had said for Bria.

  She nodded slowly. “This is the training no one else but a Demigod or a Spirit Walker could give you,” she said, her voice a low murmur, like she was uncomfortable. It was happening a lot lately, and it made me nervous. It took a lot to make her uncomfortable. “It’s your magic.”

  “It’s dangerous,” Jack said.

  “How do you know?” the Spirit Walker replied.

  Jack spread his hands. “How do you think I know? I’m fucking dead, aren’t I? She has the magic, sure, but if she doesn’t use it right, there’ll be two of us making the boss jump when we enter a room. He doesn’t need that shit. I don’t need that shit.”

  I relayed all that was being said for Bria, not getting a chance to offer any kind of response before the Spirit Walker replied, “Then scamper across the Line.”

  Jack’s jaw set. “I need to see this through first.”

  “So what you’re saying is…” I took a deep breath. “I can find a soul anywhere, but since she has a body, I will need to let go of my body and travel through spirit to find her. Then, once I’m there…” I thought about it a moment. “Once I’m there, I’ll look around, get a lock on the location somehow, and return to my body so I can direct the cavalry?”

  “Bingo,” the Spirit Walker replied.

  “This isn’t a trick?”

  “I’m not going to lie—I’d really like to have a body and a bed. You’re incredibly smart and sexy as hell. I barely need to train you; I just have to explain the basic rules and you do all the work.” He winked. “I like a woman who does all the work.”

  I shook my head as urgency coursed through me. “Let me go get—”

  “You don’t need to get something of Daisy’s to focus on. You already know her well enough.” He draped his arm over his waist. “Just lie back, close your eyes, and join me in spirit. I’ll guide you until you get your bearings. It won’t take long, not with your kid counting on you.”

  I hesitated, and his eyes increased in intensity.

  “Think,” he said, his voice low, his tone sending shivers across my body. “This isn’t your first time doing this. This is just the first time you’ve started from a wakeful state. It’s harder, but you have a good reason to make this trip successful.”

  “What’s he saying?” Bria asked, leaning forward, but I ignored her.

  Memories jostled for position. Dreams and the feeling of intimacy. Of lust. The feeling of a shadowy hand holding mine, escorting me across the Line. Showing me the other plane.

  “A body and a bed, indeed,” I said, my breath catching in my throat.

  “What does that mean?” Jack asked, stepping forward. Frank shadowed him, clearly with no clue why.

  A sly smile curled the Spirit Walker’s lips. “Well. Maybe I don’t always need a body, no. What can I say? When I got word there was another Spirit Walker roaming around, I had to have a closer look. I liked what I found.”

  I remembered the feeling of being helped when working on Will Green’s spirit box, of the shadowy form that helped with Valens. I hadn’t felt the same intimacy with those. If anything, the spirit guide in those situations had been gruff, pushy but acting in my best interest, mostly non-violent. They didn’t seem like this guy at all.

  I shook my head. None of this felt like it was adding up. “I had to travel really far across the Line to make contact with you.”

  “I know, right? Without any training. That was truly exemplary.”

  “And you attacked me.”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? I wanted to make you earn it. I wanted to see how determined you were.”

  His grin pissed me off. I pushed it aside as Bria stood, expressionless. It meant she was trying to keep from influencing me. She was out of her depth.

  That makes two of us.

  “What if I can’t figure out where she is from the setting?” I asked. “Is there another way to get her location?”

  “Eventually you’ll develop a sort of inner guidance. A spirit GPS, if you will. For now, however, you’ll have to look for street signs. Peek in mailboxes—whatever you can do to tack the location on a map. It’s not like this is in the Beyond, which is much more complex. That will take a lot more training. A lot of late-night walks, hand in hand.”

  Which, apparently, we’d already done.

  “Can I rip someone’s arms off in spirit land?” Jack asked, taking a big step toward me. Frank followed, scowling.

  “My, my, you do have a lot of bodyguards.” It didn’t seem to bother the Spirit Walker. “Rest assured, with guidance, this will be easier than leaving your body to cross the Line.”

  “So why didn’t you take this approach before?”

  He shrugged. “The Beyond is more intimate in certain ways. I wanted to see how attached you are to your Demigod. Annoyingly so, I found out.”

  “What’s going on?” Bria asked, walking closer.

  I quickly explained what the Spirit Walker had said, what I would probably do, and who had been behind those walks in spirit, which were apparently not dreams at all.

  She sat down cross-legged next to me. “With enough time, Kieran and his team will find her. Of that, I have no doubt. With enough time, Zorn will pull her out of whatever situation she is in. He’s not holding together much better than you are; he just doesn’t show it. He feels responsible.”

  We all did, so I didn’t argue.

  “But with enough time, she could be dead,” Bria finished, hitting the nail on the head. “I should mention that Kieran would be against you doing this on your own with a guide like that.”

  “Yes, he would,” the Spirit Walker said, clearly tickled.

  “He certainly would,” Jack agreed.

  “Young women shouldn’t be discussing their bodies like they’re sacks of skin,” Frank mused. “It’s unseemly.”

  “Thanks, Frank,” I said dryly. “But it’s not like Kieran can chaperone, so I don’t know what other choice we have.”

  “To not go right now, and to train in smaller increments,” the Spirit Walker said, completely at ease. He clearly didn’t care one way or the other. That actually made me feel better about the situation.

  “Could I get lost?” I asked him, adrenaline coursing through my body.

  “On your own, yes,” he answered, and his smile dripped off. “Your Demigod is your anchor. That’s part of what a soul link does. You latched on to him when there was a fear of you getting lost in the Beyond. Your connection was strong enou
gh to pull you toward the world of the living, and you found your way from there. But this time you’ll already be in the world of the living, so if you get lost, you’ll pull yourself right back to him. Directly to him. If he is not next to your body, there’s a good chance you’ll just get yourself turned around and lost again. Enough time passes, and your body will die without its soul.

  “In this situation, however, I’ll be guiding you. There is no fear of me getting lost.” Absolute certainty rang through his tone. His body, still loose and relaxed, somehow conveyed his unyielding confidence. “You will get us to your ward, and I can easily get us back. Hopefully in time to meet that cat and hitch a ride again.”

  I blew out a breath, trying to stay cautious, to remember that I didn’t really know this guy, and now I had proof he wasn’t trustworthy. He’d been hanging around a while, and at any time he could’ve been training me. At any time he could’ve made a real impact in my life. Instead, he’d chosen to play mind games.

  He still might be playing mind games.

  The smart thing to do would be to wait for my anchor, ensure Kieran was waiting beside my body.

  Except…if I pulled Kieran away from trying to find Daisy, and this didn’t work…

  With enough time, she could be dead.

  “Okay.” I lay down on the grass. “I’m going to try to find her.”

  Bria put out her hands like she should be doing something. “Do you need…incense or bells or anything?”

  “For the love of the Great Mountain, no bells,” the Spirit Walker said.

  After I relayed the info, she paused, then said, “I’ll get the incense. Maybe I can see what’s going on.”

  “She is tenacious. I like that in a woman.” The Spirit Walker scooted closer to me and lay down on his back. His spirit arm brushed mine, and I scooted away. “Don’t worry. I’m not hungry for your energy. Just you.”