“The voodoo priestess?” Sounding less than enthused, Michael followed her as she rushed past him. He was still bare-chested; he’d picked up his shirt and it dangled from his hand. Ordinarily she would have enjoyed the view, but under the circumstances all her eyes could focus on was that horrible, spreading gray. “Do we really need to bring her into this?”
Charlie was already at the dresser snatching her phone out of her purse. Michael was, she knew, remembering the other times Tam had intervened on his behalf. Both times had ended up causing him considerable pain—but Tam’s prescriptions had worked. She threw a look over her shoulder at him even as she found Tam’s name in her list of contacts and hit the call button.
“Depends on how you feel about turning into one of those things,” she answered. As the phone rang once, twice, she tried to calculate the time in California: she was too on edge to do much in the way of math, but bottom line was that Tam should be up and about by now.
“Cherie! I was just thinking about you,” Tam greeted her cheerfully. Tam was the most upbeat person Charlie knew, and she felt better just hearing her voice. “What’s going on?”
Charlie told her. Everything.
“Are we talking about that same ghost you’ve been helping to stay earthbound? The one from the Dark Place?” Tam’s disapproval oozed through the phone. “Tell me you’ve let him return to where he belongs by now.”
Having put his shirt back on, Michael was leaning a shoulder against the wall beside the dresser and looking dour, and Charlie realized that he could hear both sides of the conversation. Even with his shirt on, he was a distraction she didn’t need. She turned her back on him.
“Can you help us?” Charlie asked, disregarding both Tam’s questions and disapproval. Anyway, responding wasn’t necessary: she knew Tam already knew the answers.
“Us?” Tam’s voice went up an octave. “You and he, us? That isn’t good, cherie.”
“Tam …”
“Listen to me,” Tam said forcefully. “First, you need to understand that you are messing with the laws of the universe. That is just wrong. Second, those evil spirits you say came out of the Dark Place?” That, Charlie remembered, was what Tam called Spookville. “They are souls who were in the process of being terminated: that’s why they were all gray and burnt-looking. A little longer, and they’ll turn to ash and poof out of existence. And your ghost? If he’s turning gray, he’s in the process of being terminated, too. The same thing will happen to him: poof and he will be no more. And if he’s from the Dark Place, you need to let it happen. There is a reason.”
“Oh, no,” Charlie said faintly, turning to look at Michael. He’d straightened away from the wall and was looking grim. She spoke to Tam, “There has to be a way to stop it. Tam, please.”
“To help you wouldn’t be doing you a favor, Charlie.”
Charlie realized how serious Tam was by her use of her name: Tam almost never called her Charlie. She also realized that Tam knew of something that would help: otherwise she would have said she knew of nothing that could be done.
“Do you remember when you brought that girl to me whose arm had been sliced open in a voodoo ritual of your mother’s?” Charlie’s voice was fierce. “Do you remember the kid with the high fever that you were afraid to take to the hospital because you thought your mother caused it? I treated both of them for you. Remember that?”
“Yes.” Tam’s reply was grudging.
“I’m asking for that kind of favor from you now. Tam, please.”
“It’s a mistake,” Tam warned.
“I don’t care.”
“What can be done must be done within twelve hours. How long ago did the abaissement begin?”
Charlie roughly translated abaissement to mean decrease or melting away, and felt her chest tighten.
“About two hours ago.”
“You are at home? I don’t think I can reach you in time. I must go to the airport, catch a flight—”
“I’m getting ready to leave for Las Vegas,” Charlie broke in. The ringing of the doorbell made her jump: Tony had arrived. Michael, who’d been listening intently to the conversation, grimaced. “I should be there by midnight or a little later.” That gave them a window of only about two and a half hours. “Tam—”
“I can meet you there.” Tam’s tone was faintly grudging. “For me, it’s about a four and a half hour drive. Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know. I’ll text you on the way,” she said, mindful of Tony at the door. “Tam. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m doing you a disservice, not a favor.”
“Thank you anyway.”
“You’re welcome. Remember, though, if we get past the twelve-hour window, nothing can be done.”
With another quick word of farewell, Charlie disconnected and looked at Michael.
“You heard.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” His tone was sour. “What can I say? Viva Las Vegas.”
CHAPTER TEN
The doorbell peeled again as Charlie ran for the bathroom. Gathering up her toiletries, she hurried back to her suitcase, crammed them inside it, and zipped the whole thing up, not without considerable difficulty because she’d thrown everything in haphazardly and the small suitcase was overstuffed as a result. The big, muscular guy who just stood there and watched as she wrestled with the zipper then flung her hot mess of a purse over one arm before lugging the suitcase down the stairs was worse than useless, as she told him.
She didn’t get so much as a grimace in reply.
By the time Charlie opened the front door, Tony was already knocking on it and she was hot, flustered, and so worried about the broody ghost behind her that she had barely a glance to spare for the handsome dark-haired man on her doorstep.
“Hey,” Tony said, and smiled at her. God, it was an attractive smile. The sad thing about it was that, right at the moment anyway, it left her cold.
“I’m ready.” Instead of inviting Tony in, she stepped out onto the small front porch, dragging her suitcase behind her. What with everything, she didn’t want to waste a single minute. “Sorry I took so long opening the door.”
He was looking at her a little strangely. Probably, she thought, she was not giving off the most together of vibes. Her emotions were in a tangle, just like her hair, which she had not yet taken the time to brush. With a quick gesture, she tossed it back, then tucked it behind her ears.
“I thought the bell might be broken.”
“No,” she replied.
Tony took her suitcase from her and put it in the trunk while she got into the front passenger seat of the big black Lincoln, a rental. Her shoulders were tense as she glanced quickly around for any sign of the hunter, but there was nothing and she shoved the ongoing threat to the back of her mind. The possibility of another attack had just been thrust into also-ran status in the Terrible Things That Could Happen sweepstakes. For all kinds of reasons, she was supremely aware of Michael’s silent presence in the backseat as Tony got behind the wheel and they headed toward the airport.
“How are you feeling?” Tony asked after a moment. It was still Indian summer and there was about an hour to go until full dark, but dusk was starting to fall and the few vehicles they passed had their headlights on. The bright beams periodically sliced through the interior of the car, illuminating Tony’s classic profile. The road was narrow and curvy, but he drove as competently as he seemed to do everything else.
“I’m recovered,” Charlie replied, and forced a smile. “No more headache.”
She was slewed a little sideways in her seat, the better to throw occasional glances back at Michael, who was swathed in shadows and uncharacteristically silent. It was too dark to allow her to read his expression, or assess the state of his injured arm, but fear for him was making it hard for her to concentrate on anything else. She was supremely conscious of the passage of time. It was hard not to count each swish of the tires. Hurry, hurry, hurry, was the refrain th
at kept running through her head. It was all she could do not to say it aloud.
“Sure?”
She could see the gleam of Tony’s eyes as he glanced at her through the growing darkness. Something in his tone made her look at him more closely. The slash of yet another set of oncoming headlights showed her that he was frowning at her. Thoughtfully.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.” Her tone was cautious. “Of course.”
“How did you know that Walter Spivey was the name of the fatality in the infirmary? No one told you.”
Charlie had a sudden, vivid memory of herself in the elevator asking Pugh, What killed Walter Spivey? Replaying the preceding events in her mind, she saw it: there was no way she could have known the dead man’s identity by any ordinary means.
Well, she’d always known that Tony was quick.
She hesitated only briefly. It occurred to her to lie, telling him that she had deduced as much because it was Spivey who had bitten her and he’d been displaying distressing symptoms as he was dragged off to the infirmary, blah blah blah. But if she was to have any chance of forming a real, true relationship with Tony, some honesty was called for. He already knew that she could communicate with the dead. It was time to expand on that a little.
“I saw him,” she said, and waited.
“You saw him?” Tony threw a startled glance at her. “This would be—after he was dead? Like, his ghost?”
“Yes.” Charlie looked at him steadily.
It didn’t take him long to make the connection. “In the hall, when you got sick.”
“Yes.”
Tony drew an audible breath. In it, she could hear all kinds of mental gears shifting. “Obviously he didn’t tell you what killed him or you wouldn’t have asked Pugh.”
“No,” Charlie agreed. “He just screamed and lunged at me. Then he vanished. I have no idea what killed him. I only know that if I saw him he died violently, because I can only see the recently, violently dead.”
“Okay.” Tony didn’t draw the word out skeptically. In fact, he sounded almost matter-of-fact, like he wasn’t having any trouble processing what she was telling him, like he took her at her word.
After a moment he glanced at her again. “The salt on the floor—it wasn’t about ants, was it?”
“No.”
“It was about ghosts?”
Actually, one ghost in particular. But that she wasn’t going to tell him. “Yes.”
There was a pause. “You’re an interesting woman, Charlie Stone.”
That was so unexpected that her face relaxed a little, into what almost felt like a smile. “That’s certainly one way of looking at it.”
“Hey, your abilities have added a lot to our last two investigations. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
This time she really did smile at him. “You’re one of the few.”
“You know you can tell me anything, right?” His tone was unexpectedly earnest.
Really? Like there’s a dead guy in the backseat with whom I may or may not be, to quote him, crazy in love, who’s currently atrophying from some supernatural poison injected into him by a giant monster from the bad section of the Great Beyond and who, if we don’t get to Las Vegas in time and if the efforts of the psychic daughter of a voodoo priestess who is meeting us there don’t work, will abruptly cease to exist, thus very possibly shattering my heart into a million pieces?
She didn’t even have to think about it: Yeah. No.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and managed another smile.
They had reached the airport by then, and Tony drove up to the hangar that handled the private planes. The team’s Citation 500 gleamed white through the encroaching darkness as Tony parked near it. The small windows in the streamlined fuselage gleamed with light. The steps were already down.
Tony cut the lights and turned off the engine but made no move to get out. Instead he turned in his seat to look at her.
“You know, when I first asked you to come with me, I got the impression that you were going to say no.”
“I probably was. I wasn’t feeling too excited about anything to do with serial killers at that particular moment.” She held up her bandaged hand to illustrate. “One or two bad experiences too many.”
His face changed. “Last time—what happened—I feel like I let you down.” His voice had gone lower and deeper. He looked at her steadily.
She knew what he was talking about: her near drowning. He’d already apologized in the hospital at least a dozen times, but she supposed that for a man like him, responsible and conscientious, being Special Agent in Charge of the team meant taking the weight of whatever happened on his shoulders.
“It wasn’t your fault.” She’d said that to him about a dozen times, too.
“It happened on my watch.” His expression was grim as he looked at her through the deepening gloom. “I just want you to know, it won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Charlie responded briskly as her eyes found the dashboard clock: 6:51 p.m. Enough with the chitchat. They needed to get on the plane, and the plane needed to get in the air. Pronto.
Her response surprised a laugh from Tony.
“Really interesting,” he said. “Fascinating, in fact.”
Then to Charlie’s surprise, he slid a hand around the side of her neck, leaned over, and kissed her.
It was quick, but extremely thorough. Plenty expert. Lots of tongue.
If it hadn’t been for the alarmingly silent ghost undoubtedly watching from the backseat, and the tick of passing seconds in her brain, she probably really could have gotten into it.
As it was, she didn’t.
“Welcome back to the team, Dr. Stone,” Tony said huskily, smiling at her as he lifted his head. If he noticed anything lacking in her response, she couldn’t tell.
Charlie’s answering smile was weak, and she cast a wary eye at the large, shadow-shrouded, stone-still figure in the backseat. Under the circumstances, his silence was downright unnerving. Also under the circumstances, making out in the car with Tony just wasn’t going to happen.
Tony made a move as though he meant to kiss her again. She reached for the door handle.
“We should go,” she said firmly, and opened the door. The smell of jet fuel wafted her way, carried on the quickening autumn breeze. It was too cold now to be without a jacket, but she’d forgotten to grab hers on the way out of her house and as she stepped onto the tarmac she folded her arms over her chest in defense against the rising chill.
Tony got out at the same time she did, and went around to the trunk to retrieve her things. Michael stepped out of the car, too. When he did it, it didn’t require opening a door. He slid through the metal to stand beside her.
She shot him an anxious look. It was too dark to allow her to read his face, or even monitor the progress of discoloration along his arm. The deepening twilight and the purr of the plane’s engine were enough to give them privacy.
“So say something already,” she hissed, with a wary eye on the open trunk. “You’re worrying me.”
“You kissed Dudley.” He slanted a look down at her. “What do you want me to say?”
He’d had plenty to say on the subject previously. His reticence only increased her apprehension about him.
“He kissed me,” she clarified.
“Okay.” His tone acknowledged the truth of that. “He still don’t do it for you, babe. If something happens to me, you might want to keep that in mind.”
“Oh, my God, nothing’s going to happen to you.” Panic tried digging tiny little claws into her heart, but she fought it off. “Tam’s going to fix you and—”
“She might—or might not—be able to fix what’s wrong with me now, but we both know that sooner or later, one way or another, I’m going to be gone.”
He was looking at her, just looking at her, and she felt her heart start to beat faster and her p
ulse start to race. Where they were standing was only a few steps beyond the reach of the airport lights. The plane’s headlights cut through the darkness away from them. In the shadows, Michael looked tall and broad-shouldered and solid as a rock. Every instinct she possessed urged her to turn in to his arms. She would have, instantly, except—Oh, wait, she couldn’t. The knowledge made her throat go tight.
“You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time,” he said. “I want you to know that.” The merest hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Without you, being dead would’ve been hell.”
“Cute.” Her heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. If he was actually going to go, leave this plane, cease to exist as Tam had suggested, there was so much she wanted to say to him that the words crowded together as they fought to get out. But pure self-defense kept her silent. Besides, she had faith in Tam: if her friend couldn’t do anything to save him, she wouldn’t be driving to Las Vegas. “Who’s sweet-talking who now?”
He shook his head. “I mean it. I’ve been contemplating mortality, babe. First time I’ve really done that since I died. Where I am, there’s no coming back from, and where I’m going—” He broke off, grimacing. “I thought hell was bad, and as you know I’ve been doing my damnedest to avoid it, but turns out that the idea of nothingness—just ceasing to exist—is worse.”
Her heart turned over. “Michael—”
“Ready?” Tony came up, pulling her suitcase behind him. Charlie was so focused on Michael that she hadn’t seen, or heard, him close the trunk, or heard the rattle of the small wheels on pavement, or noticed his approach at all.
“Yes,” Charlie replied, and added strongly, for Michael’s benefit, “Let’s go get the job done.”
“Kaminsky’s waiting on pins and needles,” Tony agreed, or at least thought he was agreeing with her, while Michael muttered something that sounded like, “From your lips to God’s ears.”
Her Last Whisper Page 11