Lay the Ghost: Nightwatch Series book 4

by Cassidy, Debbie

  “No, you’re not. We’re soulmates that were once bound, and sometimes feelings can get—”

  His mouth cut off my words, lips soft against mine, lingering, tasting. The kiss was sweet, but it didn’t spark a fire inside me. Henri pulled back with a frown. And then he kissed me again, harder.

  This time I’d have to be made of stone not to feel something. But my Nightblood lust wasn’t love. It wasn’t even attraction.

  I shoved him away. “Enough.”

  We stood facing each other, chests heaving.

  “I’m sorry,” Henri said. “I thought … The last time we kissed, it was …”

  “Fireworks, I know. I was there. But everything has changed since then. We were bound and feeding off each other’s emotions. It was a complicated time, and everything was heightened, but we’re not bound any longer.”

  He nodded slowly. “No, we’re not.” He ran a hand over his face in agitation. “I came back for you, Kat. I came back because there is nowhere else that I belong. I’m fucking lost without you, and I thought … I thought we belonged together.”

  He’d thought we’d be in love. Together romantically. A few months ago, I’d wanted nothing more. But it wasn’t real. This was real. This was us without the bond clouding our minds.

  He looked so forlorn, so sad, it made my heart ache. I wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my head on his chest.

  “We do belong together, Henri. You’re my soulmate, and I do love you. The kind of love that won’t fade, won’t be tainted. A forever love that’s more than romance. I’m so fucking glad you came back.”

  He hugged me back. “So am I. This here, with you, is home. I love you too, Kat. It makes sense now. I’m glad I kissed you, although Bres might not take kindly to that.”

  “I’ll speak to him. He’ll understand.” I pulled back and looked up at him. “Truth time, what was that kiss like for you?”

  Henri winced. “I’ve had more of a thrill kissing my hand.”

  Ouch. “Yeah, don’t go around telling people you do that. It’s just weird.” I grabbed the drinking chocolate tub off the counter and headed for the door.

  “Hey, wait.” Henri followed. “I didn’t actually kiss my hand. I was just—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I believe you.”

  “Hey. No. Wait.”

  I exited the café with a grin. God, it was so easy to wind him up.

  We were halfway across the square with Henri still insisting he had never kissed his own hand when the world shook. I pitched forward and almost dropped the tub of drinking chocolate, but Henri grabbed my arm to steady me.

  “What the he—” A flash of light stole my vision. “Fuck.” I blinked away the dark spots and stared at the pale red snow.

  Wait, what?

  “Kat …” Henri was looking up at the sky.

  I followed his gaze up to the crimson sky.

  Henri stood and hauled me to my feet. “I think we have a problem.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The clock was ticking. Like really ticking. In three days, the worst of the Abyss creatures would be here, and then I’d have no choice … No choice …

  “We’re out of time,” Jay said. “What we need isn’t in these books.”

  He was right. The chances of us finding Tartarus’s heart were minuscule, and we were almost out of time. The plan to hand it over and hope he grew a conscience was now on the scrap heap.

  There was only one option left.

  “I have to fight him. Me and Death.” I looked over at Death, who we’d laid on a sofa up against the wall. His torso was now human; only his head was still beastly. Would he wake up in time? Would he have the power to fight alongside me? “There’s no other way, but we need to buy him some time to finish … whatever it is he’s doing.”

  “So, we fight the horrors,” Bres said. “We gather allies, and we fight them off until Death is ready.”

  “It may have escaped your notice,” Kris said. “But everyone is asleep.”

  It was true. The shimmer man had achieved his goal. The radio stations were dead, and no one was broadcasting on any channel.

  The world was asleep.

  We were alone.

  Except, maybe we weren’t. “Karishma, can you get a message to the Academy?”

  She made an ‘o’ of surprise with her mouth. “I’d have to deliver it personally. It would mean opening the port again. Orion had me seal it and ordered me to open it only when the threat was averted. He couldn’t risk the infection spreading.”

  “And now we know it can’t. They’re safe at the Academy. The shimmer man can’t get to them in that pocket of reality, regardless of whether the port is open.”

  Karishma’s eyes widened in comprehension. “Shit. Yes.”

  “You need to go to Orion and get help. Surely, they can spare some shadow knights.”

  Karishma nodded. “I can leave now.”

  “Wait,” Jay said. “I know Orion. I know how his mind works. I’m not sure he’ll agree to leave one breach undefended to protect another one … especially when we have no concrete plan to get rid of the shimmer man.”

  “I hate that you have a point,” Karishma said. “He’ll probably say no.”

  “We need a plan B,” Henri said.

  I stared at him. At his perfect golem face, and an idea formed in my mind. “Then, we hedge our bets …”

  All eyes were on me.

  “We have a treaty with Demonica.”

  “No,” Kris said. “They won’t get involved in this.”

  “They don’t need to. They just need to give us back something they’ve been holding on to for us.”

  Kris’s brows shot up. “The golems. Fuck, they have free golems.”

  Henri looked confused.

  I stood and began to pace, the idea a rush in my veins as I explained. “The Nightwatch didn’t dismantle the free golems after the war. They couldn’t. They didn’t have the weaver power to take the free golems apart, and they couldn’t control them. But daemon mage power was different. It couldn’t end the golems, but it could control them, overpower them. The council made a deal with Demonica, and as part of the treaty, daemon mages rounded up the free golems and took them to Demonica, where they’ve been locked up all this time.”

  “You want to use the free golems?” Henri asked.

  He made it sound dirty. “Yes. They’re powerful, and they can’t be killed.”

  Henri’s lip curled. “And what makes you think they’d work for the council after what the council did to them?”

  “They won’t be working for the council, they’ll be doing humanity a favor.”

  Yeah, there was skepticism on every face, and he was right, why would the golems want to help us at all?

  “Look, we have to try, okay. If I can speak to them, maybe I can convince them to help.”

  “You have to get there first,” Max said. “And that’ll be impossible without a crossroads daemon. Murray is gone.”

  What? “When?”

  “A few days after you got back from Demonica, I went over to the island to visit. He was gone. Ceberi too. The place was cleaned out.”

  My heart sank. “If Orion says no, then we’re screwed. If Death doesn’t wake up on time … if he’s too weak to fight …”

  Too many ifs and buts, and the only sure-fire solution was to give in. With no other plan, the only way to stop the horrors was to allow the shimmer man to walk into our world. Still, I couldn’t give up. Not until the last minute. Not until there was no other option.

  I nodded at Karishma. “Just do your best.”

  “Wait.” Gramps stood slowly and took a deep breath. “You do need a plan B. Kat, you’re right, and I may have a way to get you to Demonica.”

  “Gramps?”

  “You know a crossroads daemon?” Kris asked.

  Gramps’s smile was wry. “Yes. I do. My father was one.”

  * * *

  This was a jaw-drop moment, but instead, my brai
n did the clickity-click of putting pieces together and coming up with a full picture. I had demon blood, so it stood to reason we had a demon somewhere in our family tree.

  Still …

  A crossroads daemon…

  Those were rare. “How long have you known?”

  “Always.” Gramps smiled. “He used to come and see me when I was a child, and then he stopped. I discovered later in life that my mother had begged him to leave us alone. My Nightblood father was getting suspicious. I didn’t hear from him for several years, but he showed up the night your mother was born. He told me he’d loved my mother, but he doubted she’d loved him. He believed she’d simply used him to bear a child. It seems that Baron males aren’t as fertile as we would like. He gave me this pendant.” Gramps unclasped it and handed it to me. “He told me I could use it to summon him if I was ever in need of his help, but goodness knows, I have no clue how to summon anything.”

  The pendant had hung around my gramps’s neck for as long as I could recall. I closed my fist around it.

  “Karishma?”

  She shook her head. “No. Summoning daemons isn’t part of weaver training.”

  “It was prohibited by the Treaty,” Luther said. “Daemons don’t like being summoned. Back in the day, weavers were killed for the audacity.”

  He’d been so silent that I’d forgotten he was in the room, but now his presence swelled as power radiated out from him.

  Karishma took several steps away from him, her expression stunned. “What are you?”

  “A weaver.” I frowned. “He’s an independent weaver.”

  Karishma shook her head. “Like hell, he is. That power … it’s not from the weave. I don’t know what it is.”

  Luther offered me a closed-lip smile.

  I was so confused right now. “Wait, you said you were a weaver?”

  He arched a brow. “Did I?”

  He had … hadn’t he? No, wait … had I assumed? “What are you?”

  “Able to help, and that’s all you need to know. I can summon the crossroads daemon.” He held out his hand for the pendant, and power shot out to brush against me with an electric tingle.

  “Shit, Luther, no need to show off. I mean, you’ve held your power in check this long …” I rubbed my hand to dispel the sting and gave him the stink eye.

  His smile was wry. “I’m afraid the events are having an adverse effect on my ability to shield my powers, but I’m perfectly capable of controlling them. I can do what you need.”

  I handed him the pendant.

  “I’ll need some blood, yours or your grandfather’s, either will do.” He glanced at Karishma. “No need for you to stay, I have this under control. You better get plan A in action.”

  Karishma looked torn, like she didn’t entirely trust Luther, like she wanted to stay and watch, but my gut told me Luther was on our side, despite the weird vibe he was giving off right now.

  “Go.” I smiled at Karishma. “We got this.”

  She grabbed her coat and headed out the door.

  Gramps cut his finger on a fang. “Here.” He squeezed a drop onto the pendant.

  “Thank you.” Luther placed the blood-stained pendant in the palm of his hand. His emerald eyes flashed, and then the pendant began to glow. It pulsed a few times and then went dull. “All done.”

  “That’s it?” Mai asked.

  Luther handed the pendant back to my gramps. “What did you expect? Fireworks and chanting? Should I have slaughtered a lamb?”

  Mai shrugged. “It was kinda anticlimactic.”

  Luther rolled his eyes. “If you must know, most of the ceremonial shit involved in spells is for show. Not needed. Trust me. Power is in the air around you; some of us can harness it and others can’t. Some of us need to use objects and symbols to focus our power, others don’t.”

  He obviously belonged to the latter group. “What now?”

  “I’ve summoned the daemon, and now we wait to see if he answers.”

  “I thought they were forced to answer,” Mai said.

  “The pendant is a conduit, a way to send a message, an invite if you will. I can’t do a raw summoning without the daemon’s full given name.” He looked to Gramps. “Which I doubt he gave you.”

  Gramps shook his head. “No. I don’t have that information.”

  “We don’t usually give it out,” Kris said. “We’re all given a common name and a blood name. The blood names are what can be used to summon us, and we don’t usually give those out.”

  “So, we wait,” Jay said.

  I grabbed the tub of drinking chocolate. “Meanwhile, I’ll make us all a drink.”

  The store kitchen was tiny but neat and cozy. There was a small TV on the counter, a coffee machine, a fridge, and a hob. I set to work, grabbing milk and a largish saucepan.

  “How are things with Henri?” Bres asked from the doorway.

  I poured milk into the pan and turned on the hob. “Well … he kissed me.”

  “And?”

  I turned to face him. “And? I just told you another guy kissed me. Aren’t you pissed off?”

  He slow-blinked. “I don’t care what Henri does, Kat. He kissed you, I can’t control that, and neither can you. The question is, did you kiss him back?” He walked into the room and stopped a meter away from me. “The question is … did you feel something?” His expression was serious now, expectant, as if he was holding his breath.

  There was no lying to him, not that I wanted to lie. There was no need for deception. “He kissed me. It was sweet. I didn’t kiss him back. We agreed that there are no romantic feelings on either side, that we love each other, but aren’t in love.”

  Bres exhaled and nodded. “Okay …” He tucked in his chin.

  “Okay?” I approached him, peering up at his face. “Bres, look at me.”

  He locked gazes with me, and his pupils dilated to drink me in.

  “Thank you for understanding what Henri needed. I didn’t think I could love you more, but I was wrong.”

  He grazed my cheek with his fingertips. “He said he didn’t have feelings for you, and I tasted the lie.” His jaw flexed. “I guess he had to kiss you to feel the truth. I can live with that. But from now on, these lips …” He ran his thumb over my bottom lip. “Belong to me.”

  His mouth claimed mine. The contact sent a searing heat shooting through me. It pooled at my core. Desire was a whiplash response that tightened my body and injected fire into my blood. I ran my hands over his head and brought my leg up to hook around his waist, needing to get closer, to press into his hardness and draw on his heat.

  His hands squeezed and kneaded my hips and my back, settling on my ass and hauling me up to grind against him.

  A sizzle mingled with my moans, and then Bres was pulling away. “Kat, the milk …”

  Splash, sizzle.

  Shit.

  I tore away from him and turned down the heat on the pan of milk. We locked gazes again, and then Bres let out a chuckle. “Grab some more milk while I clean this up.”

  I patted his butt as he slipped past me, then ducked into the fridge for more milk, but Mai’s shrill scream had me slamming the fridge closed and racing onto the shop floor.

  No fire, no death. Just several hands on hearts and eyes on a male figure standing by the window.

  The dark-haired, slender man fixed his startling emerald eyes on me.

  “Murray?” Max said.

  Murray smiled thinly. “Hello, all.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Murray, with the tousled black hair, ripped denim, and I-don’t-give-a shit air, was my great-grandfather?

  Gramps was staring at him with stars in his eyes.

  “Hello, Jacque,” Murray said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  And then the two men were hugging.

  Murray broke the hug but gripped Gramps’s shoulders. “It’s been a long time, son.”

  “It has,” Gramps said. “I’m sorry I didn’t contact you
sooner. I wanted to, but … there was never a good time.”

  Murray’s smile was sad. “I wanted to reach out, but I was worried someone would discover your secret. I thought about you so often over the years, but now I understand how things have been for you.” He glanced my way. “After I met Kat, I did some digging.”

  Gramps balked in surprise. “You’ve met Kat?” He looked my way.

  I shrugged. “Long story, but the gist is Murray is the crossroads daemon who got me into Demonica the last time.” I smiled warmly at Murray. “Is this why you changed your mind about helping me the last time?”

  He released my gramps and returned my smile. “I couldn’t tell my great-granddaughter to piss off, now could I?”

  It was so weird that he looked as young as me, yet he was my ancestor. My great-grandfather.

  “Where did you go?” Max asked Murray. “I came to the island twice.”

  “I went home,” Murray said.

  “But the ceberi …”

  Murray’s eyes darkened. “Dead. They got sick, one by one, and died. I did everything I could, but I wasn’t able to save them.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Max said.

  Murray waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t be. They had good lives.” He looked out at the red sky. The sun should have gone down, it should be dark, but it wasn’t. “I see you have a problem here.”

  “Yes,” Gramps said. “And we need your help.”

  “Oh, I doubt I can do anything about that.” Murray jerked his head at the window. “That, out there, looks positively apocalyptic.” His smile was mirthless. “Max, is this one of those events we talked about while getting shit-faced on my homemade brew?”

  Max’s expression was grim.

  “Please,” Gramps said. “Can you take Kat to Demonica with you? Can you help her to free the golems?”

  Murray’s brows shot up. “The golems your Nightwatch rounded up and exiled?”

  Gramps looked shame-faced.

  We were wasting time. “Look, will you take me to Demonica or not? You don’t have to help me, just get me there and back. I’ll do the rest.”