Again, the barest hint of a shake.
“You didn’t see her?”
He didn’t move.
“Is it her name that you’re shaking your head at? Elwyn Loehr?”
“Not anymore,” the departed said in a harsh whisper, though he still didn’t move or drop his gaze from the horizon beyond. He curled his hands into fists at his sides, and Marika took an involuntary step back.
“Did he say something?” Garrett asked.
She held up an index finger. She would explain later, but at the moment, she needed to get what she could out of this guy. “It’s not her name anymore? She changed it?”
Nothing. Back to stone.
Garrett spoke softly in her ear. “You gotta give me something.”
She pretended his voice, his nearness, wasn’t quickening her pulse. After a perfunctory nod, she continued. “What’s your name?”
No reaction.
“Did someone take her? Did you see someone take her?”
“Wait for it,” the guy whispered, then his irises shifted to his left. “Wait for it.”
Marika turned, but again, saw nothing. She fought a wave of dizziness, furious that her own body would betray her so malevolently, then asked him, “Wait for what?”
When she turned back, the departed was staring straight at her.
She stumbled back against Garrett, then righted herself as quickly as she could, ignoring the hand he slid over her ribs to offer extra support, the stirring warmth that soaked through to her skin. “Wait for what?” she repeated.
“You’ll know.” He gestured to his side with a nod.
She looked again, but when she turned back to him a second time, he’d vanished. “Damn it,” she said, stepping out of Garrett’s hold and turning in a full circle to search for the man.
“What?” Garrett asked, scanning the area as well.
“He disappeared.”
“Him, too?”
“No. I mean, yes, but he’s pure spiritual energy. He can do it at the drop of a hat. Did you see where he was gesturing?”
“You forget who you’re talking to.”
She grew as frustrated as Garrett, though more with herself than the situation. “No offense, but you are of absolutely no use to me.”
“That’s harsh,” he said, taken aback. “What’d I do?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.” She started to walk away, but he stepped in front of her. She stopped just short of barreling into him, filled her lungs, and said as patiently as she could, “You are blind. I need you to see, Garrett.”
“See what?”
“Them.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Them them?”
“Them them. Elwyn’s life could depend on it. And if…when we get her back, you need to be able to protect her from any enemy at her gate, not just the ones you can see.”
She sidestepped him. He followed.
“I get it,” he said. “Trust me. But there’s nothing I can do about it. And arguing is not going to suddenly make me see dead people. We need to—”
Marika whirled around to face him. “But if you could. If you could see them, would you want to?”
“I…I guess, but it’s a moot point.”
“So, if there were a way, you’d definitely want it? It’s a big decision, Garrett. One I was going to bring up later, but—”
His gaze turned wary, the gray in his eyes shimmering like silver silk. “Why are we talking about this?”
“Because there might be a way to make it happen. Remember, I couldn’t see them either. Not in the physical world. I had to learn.”
“That sounds great, but we don’t have time.”
“We need to make the time. I need your help to find her.”
“Right. I’m of no use to you as I am.”
Feeling a bit sheepish, she lifted a shoulder. “Something like that.”
After a long moment of contemplation, he asked, “You aren’t going to spread chicken blood on me, are you?”
“No.” Thrilled he was caving, she took his wrist and led him to a flat rock bench.
“Wait, we’re doing this here?” he asked as he sank onto the seat. “Now?”
“No time like the present. Hold this.” That morning while Garrett slept, she’d prepared the materials she’d need. She handed him a small leather pouch filled with herbs and spices.
He took it and crinkled his nose. “What’s in this?”
“You don’t want to know.” She handed him another pouch filled with human bone fragments and white sand soaked in a sparrow’s blood. “Put one in each hand.”
He frowned at her but obeyed.
Garrett had always wondered what it would be like to really see the departed in all their glory. Not just the occasional gray blur. Would it freak him out? He doubted it. He’d been to hell, after all. Seen people in all manner of horror. How much worse could seeing the departed on Earth be?
“What do these do?” he asked, turning the pouches this way and that.
“Nothing. They’re the distraction.”
“What?” He looked back at her to find a hand cupped in front of his face. Before it registered what she was doing, she blew into her hand.
A white powder billowed out of her palm and clouded his vision. He jerked back, but the shock had caused him to gasp—which was probably the witch’s plan—and he inhaled a large portion of the powder deep into his lungs.
He reared back. Blinked. Rubbed his eyes and doubled over in a fit of coughs. “What the fuck, Marika?” The world tilted to the side, and he fell to his hands and knees. She’d just dosed him with LSD.
Chapter Five
Fifty shades of cray.
—Coffee Mug
“Was that LSD?” Garrett asked, his body burning.
“Just relax.”
He felt Marika’s hand on his shoulder. He shook it off and tried to stumble to his feet.
“I wouldn’t do that just yet.”
“Fuck you. What was that? What did you—?” His tongue thickened in his mouth, and he fought to form a simple sentence. When he tried to focus on his surroundings, they melted. The trees. The sagebrush. The clumps of wild grasses. The sun dripped down from the sky and melded with the mountains, their colors mixing to create an entirely different landscape, exciting and new.
Oh, yeah. It was definitely LSD. Or something like it.
He heard Marika’s voice from far away. “Garrett, you need to sit down. This part won’t last long.”
He felt blindly for the bench to help him balance, but he couldn’t quite make it. Waves kept crashing into him, pushing him over like a rag doll. Suddenly, he wondered if he still had feet. He couldn’t feel them. Could he normally feel his feet? Panicked, he searched for his hands to no avail.
“Garrett, you’re hyperventilating. You need to slow your breathing.”
He tried to tell Marika exactly where she could shove her pseudo-scientific advice, but his voice sounded like a cassette tape that had been eaten. Those were the days.
“That’s better,” she said, her voice soothing, but he didn’t remember doing anything to make it better. Was he sitting on the bench? He couldn’t feel his ass. Did he still have an ass?
Panic shot through him again. Women liked his backside. If that was gone, what else did he have to live for?
“Slower,” she said, her voice like a cool ocean wave at night.
He could smell her. Her scent reminded him of the first time he’d cruised a boardwalk in California. The salt on the ocean breeze. The spun sugar in the cotton candy. The perfume of a girl who’d smiled at him, rich and warm like vanilla. The scent and the smile.
“Garrett, look at me.”
He shook his head.
“Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
“I can’t. I don’t have any.” He realized she was on her knees between his legs. A very dangerous place to be.
“You do. I promise.”
“Do I still have an ass?”
He tried to pry his lids apart. After several failed attempts, he finally succeeded. The world had taken shape again, and yet it hadn’t. It was somehow different from the one he’d been in only moments earlier.
“I don’t remember it,” Marika said, her voice sad. “The world you just left. But I remember it was beautiful, especially New Mexico.”
“What do you mean?” He turned to her and her face…she was stunning, swimming in a sea of greens and golds. The colors of her hazel eyes had been amplified a thousand times, and they flowed like water around her. Then he realized she had streaks on her face.
“Is that blood?” he asked, trying to focus.
She took out a wipe and smoothed it over her skin. “It’s part of the ritual.”
“So, there was chicken blood involved?”
“No.”
Then he saw the cut on her wrist. “It was your blood?”
“I needed human blood. It’ll heal.”
He reached out and ran a thumb over her mouth. “You are absolutely beautiful. Like a mermaid.”
“Uh-oh.” She bit her bottom lip, and he would’ve sold his soul to do the same. It was just so bitable. “I forgot about this part. My grandmother warned me, but I was a kid when she did this to me. I hadn’t…reached that stage yet.”
“What stage?”
“The, um, coupling stage.”
“Ah.” When he let his hands slide down her neck, she took it into hers.
“How do you feel?”
“Wonderful.” And he did. Suddenly, every molecule in his body hummed with energy. Some of them leaked out and collided with hers, crashing into her like he wanted to do.
“That’s good. I need you to take a deep breath to steady yourself, then look to your right.”
“That would mean looking away from you.”
“Yes, it would. But only for a second.”
He caved, slowly turned his head to the right, and fought two urges at once. The first was to grab Marika and run for his life. The second was to black out.
He lurched to the side and backed off the bench, falling backwards onto the ground.
Standing next to the bench was the biggest, blackest werewolf-bear-looking dog he’d ever seen. Only it wasn’t a dog. Its fur was scalloped as though it had scales. They were covered in an iridescent silver powder that seemed to change color with each movement. And if Garrett didn’t know better, he’d have sworn that molten lava flowed underneath its oddly textured fur. An orange glow leaked from between the scales when the creature moved.
The canine slowly advanced, its massive paws eating up the ground faster than Garrett could crab-walk away. Its quivering lips were pulled back in a snarl that revealed a mouthful of huge, razor-sharp teeth.
Marika laughed and reached out to pet it. Garrett started to scramble to his feet to save her, but he’d barely moved when he realized the dog wasn’t going to attack her and feast upon her intestines.
Instead, it stopped snarling and nuzzled her neck with a soft, deep whimper.
“This,” she said with a giggle, giving the massive beast a few solid pats, “could be your Buttercup. I’m not one hundred percent sure, though. I have a tough time telling them apart.”
Garrett was still on his back, unconsciously putting as much distance between himself and the beast as he could.
“It’s okay,” Marika said, walking over to him. “He was just giving you a hard time. They’re very playful.”
“That’s a hellhound,” Garrett said, never passing up a chance to state the obvious. The hound stood head-to-head with Marika. It wasn’t a dog. It was a dragon.
“It is indeed a hellhound.” She reached down to him.
He cast her a quick glower, suddenly humiliated, and stood all on his very own. “Beep sketches them,” he said, brushing himself off. “I just thought she sucked at drawing.”
“And now?”
“Girl has real talent.”
The hellhound eased closer, and Garrett took an involuntary step back. Thankfully, it wasn’t interested in him. It wanted more nuzzles from Marika. He could hardly blame the beast.
“Wait. I thought we couldn’t touch the departed. That they weren’t solid to us.”
“We can’t,” she said, rubbing her face against the beast’s neck even though it looked like the scales would shred her skin. “This isn’t a departed. If the hellhounds want to let you see them—or even touch them—they can. It’s entirely up to the alpha. Except when it comes to Elwyn, of course. I assume any spiritual being is solid to her, much like they were to her mother.”
Garrett nodded just as the beast turned to the horizon and lowered his head. After expelling a throaty growl that rumbled deep and low, it tore across the field, kicking up patches of dirt and gravel before it disappeared.
“Would one of the hounds have taken her?”
“I don’t think so,” Marika said, gathering up her supplies. “Why would they? Unless they did it to protect her. But she’s not on this plane. I’m certain of it. Where would they have taken her?”
“You’re asking me?” He sat back on the bench before his knees gave out and looked around. “Is she dead?” He pointed to an older Native American woman standing just outside the tree line in the distance.
“Departed,” Marika corrected. “And, yes.” She took out a moist towelette, knelt down in front of him again, and began wiping his face.
“So, that’s it?” he asked, taking her in. “You just blow some powder into my face, and I can suddenly see? Anyone could do it? Any person alive could breathe that shit in—which tasted like vomit, thank you very much—and be able to see dead people?”
“Of course, not.” She blotted the tissue around his eyes, but he hardly felt it. His whole face felt numb. He was afraid to ask her what the white substance was. Too short-acting to be LSD. “The person must already be sensitive to that which lies beyond the veil. Their mind simply needs to be opened a little further.”
“What does that mean?” he asked. “Sensitive to that which lies beyond the veil.”
“It means you. Your heritage. Your experiences. Your training.” When he didn’t comment, she continued. “You come from a long line of people with supernatural abilities. And you have done things few on Earth have done.”
He took the wipe, pressed it against his eyes, and leaned back against the bench. “Like?”
“You have been to hell, for one.”
“That sucked so hard.”
“I don’t doubt it. You’ve fought demons and kept company with gods.”
“Who, might I add, are not always the most hospitable hosts.”
“You’ve also wielded a celestial knife. One that could kill any supernatural being, spirit or demon or god. Did you think none of that would rub off on you? That it wouldn’t leave a mark? A trace of its power.”
He lowered the wipe, leveled a grim expression on her, and asked, “This is a baby wipe, isn’t it?”
“They’re very handy,” she said defensively, grabbing it away from him. “Especially with a five-year-old.”
“Speaking of five-year-olds, this isn’t getting us anywhere. What did the dead guy say to you? Wait.” A strange thought hit him. A thought he’d had when he was tripping on the vomit-flavored psychedelic powder. He studied her for a long moment, her blond hair, the pert shape of her nose, the delicate lines of her jaw, then said, “You were the girl.”
“I’m sorry?” She packed up her supplies, took out the Osh doll, and then looked back up at him.
“The girl on the boardwalk.”
She stilled for a solid thirty seconds, then asked, “What are you talking about?”
“I remember.” He nodded as he thought back. “I was…I don’t know, seventeen. Maybe eighteen. And you were at the boardwalk in California.”
“Don’t be sil
ly.” She stood and scanned the area.
He stood, too. “No, it was you. I remember your smile. And the way you smelled. The way you always smell. Like the beach and vanilla.”
Marika slammed her lids shut, her face warming with mortification. She knew her cheeks would glow a bright red if they weren’t already, so she turned away from him. But she could still see him from her periphery, the astonishment evident on his handsome face.
“Yes.” He pointed at her. “I remember. You sent a friend over with a note.”
“I’ve never been to Santa Cruz.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I never said it was in Santa Cruz.”
She’d started to argue when she realized her mistake. Instead, she stuffed the Osh doll back into her bag to cover the fact that another dizzy spell had washed over her, and the world was tilting haphazardly to the left. “Yes,” she admitted at last.
She watched as he tried to come to terms with what he would likely see as yet another betrayal.
He shook his head in thought, as though trying to wrap it around his latest discovery, then gaped at her with a mixture of astonishment and…what? Disgust? Repugnance? Revulsion? “That was fifteen years ago. How the fuck long did you stalk me?”
She whirled back and regretted it instantly. “I didn’t stalk you. Well, not back then. I was simply doing research.”
“Is that what they called it?”
“Do we really need to talk about this now? We need to find your ward. You remember? Our son’s best friend?”
The silver in Garrett’s irises flashed with a dangerous glint. He conceded, but he was not happy about it. “We will come back to this.”
She raised her chin. “I expect we will.”
“And we’ve gotten nowhere.” He turned away from her in frustration and studied the spot where he’d last seen Elwyn.
He said something else, but Marika didn’t quite catch it. The earth beneath her feet suddenly felt unstable. Her balance unsteady.
Garrett turned as though expecting her to answer him, but she’d missed what he said again.
Maybe it had nothing to do with her condition. Maybe the aftereffects of the ritual were still coursing through her veins. Or perhaps she’d been awakened at three in the morning after only going to bed an hour earlier. Still, the earth shook around her and then tilted on its axis. If Garrett hadn’t been right there, she would’ve fallen, and few things were more embarrassing.
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