Her Last Whisper

by Karen Robards

  “He was kissing you, and doing a half-ass job of it, too.” Michael shoved his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels, and watched as she frantically loosened Tony’s tie and unbuttoned the top few buttons on his shirt to make it easier for him to breathe.

  “That’s your excuse? Look at him!”

  “Yeah, well, watching him kiss you pissed me off.” He had the grace to sound a little ashamed of himself, at least. “It’s not like I did it on purpose. I was standing there watching him slobber all over you, and I remembered how you almost passed out there at the morgue and I tried to grab you and I couldn’t but he could, and then I thought about how those spirits took over Creason and the trustee. Next thing I knew, whoosh, I did it. It was easier than I thought. Dudley didn’t even put up a fight.” She didn’t have to look at him to see the quick lightening of his expression: she could hear what was going on with him in the sudden note of humor in his voice as he added, “FYI, that was me grabbing your ass.”

  They both knew that shortly before that, actually precisely when Michael had taken over Tony’s body, which she was pretty sure she could pinpoint to the nanosecond, was when the kiss had caught fire. Not that Charlie was ever going to admit it. And the fact that he could find even a trace of amusement in what he’d done? Not cool.

  The glance she threw at him should have blasted him into eternity. “You know what? I figured that out.” She paused, considered how he might take that, conceited thing that he was, and added with a sniff, “Tony would never do something that crude.”

  “You liked it.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  She was busy running her fingers through Tony’s hair, feeling every inch of his skull. The injury was in the hairline just above his right temple. There was a definite bump, but no blood, as far as she could tell. His head must have hit the edge of the door frame. Scrambling to her feet, she dived for the nearest light switch. As light flooded the room, she glared at Michael then returned to crouch beside Tony. He was definitely pale, but everything else about him seemed normal to her anxious examination. The bump above his temple, however, was rapidly swelling. It was approaching the size of a small egg.

  “He should be fine,” Michael said, sounding almost sulky. “I was only in there for a few minutes.”

  “You remember what happened to Creason and the trustee, right? Being possessed almost killed them! For all we know, it still might.” With yet another glare for Michael, she jumped to her feet, ran to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and headed for the door. There was an ice machine down the hall. In her professional opinion, that bump needed ice.

  “I’m pretty sure the hunter did that. When it yanked the evil spirits that were inside them out.” Michael followed her into the hall.

  “You don’t know that.” By this time Charlie was so mad at him she was practically sputtering. Scooping a ladle full of ice cubes out of the machine, she dropped them into the towel, wrapped it around them, and rushed back toward the room. A trio of middle-aged women passed her, clearly on the way to their rooms: the looks they gave her as they heard her apparently yelling at herself would have totally shut her up at any other time. Right at that moment, though, she barely noticed and didn’t care. She added nastily, “I’m only surprised you got out when you did. I know it wasn’t because you had an attack of conscience.”

  “You’re right about that.” They were back inside her room. “I got knocked out of him when he hit his damned head. Otherwise, babe, you and I’d be in bed right now.”

  “Oh, no, we would not be.” She glared at him one more time as she crouched beside Tony again and applied her makeshift ice pack to his head. “Once I knew that was you? Take it from me, Casper: sex wasn’t happening.”

  “Easy for you to say now. I was there, remember?”

  “Just so we’re clear, it was Tony I was kissing, not you.”

  “It was me who was getting you hot.”

  “Under false pretenses!” To Charlie’s relief, Tony began to stir.

  “See there, he’s not hurt.”

  “If he’s not, it’s no thanks to you,” Charlie said fiercely, then clamped her lips together as Tony groaned and opened his eyes.

  “What happened?” He blinked at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, and reached up to touch the ice pack that she was holding to the bump on his head.

  Oh, God. How to explain?

  She said, “You tripped over my suitcase and hit your head.”

  “What do you know? That’s even the truth,” Michael marveled. “Sort of.”

  With Tony’s eyes on her, Charlie couldn’t even shoot her own personal evil spirit a blistering look.

  Tony frowned, then made a face. “Ouch.”

  “I imagine it’s a little tender.”

  “I can’t remember coming into your room. Last thing I remember”—Tony’s probing fingers slid beneath the ice pack and encountered the bump. He winced, grimaced, and then, to Charlie’s distress, sat up—“we were out in the hall. I kissed you good night, right?”

  Charlie nodded. She was still holding the ice pack in place and he was looking at her quizzically, their faces just inches apart.

  “Then what happened?” Tony asked.

  “Um, well …” Charlie’s voice trailed off as the instant, unbidden memory of his hand on her bare breast surfaced, unexpectedly flustering her. Of course, while the hand had technically belonged to Tony, the memory did not: that belonged to Michael. Thinking back, Charlie realized to her chagrin that somewhere deep in her screwed-up psyche she must have recognized Michael from the moment he’d entered Tony’s body. Only Michael had ever been able to turn her on like that.

  You have some real issues, she told herself.

  “Things were heating up, huh?” One corner of Tony’s mouth quirked wryly. “Then I had to go and trip over a damned suitcase. I can’t believe I don’t remember.”

  “A blow to the head will do that sometimes.”

  “You’re getting good at this,” Michael approved. “Of course, you’re still doing that thing with your tongue that you do. You know, kind of sexily wetting your lips whenever you tell a lie. Like I said before, it’s a dead tell.”

  Had she really saved him from total annihilation just a couple of hours previously? Charlie asked herself wrathfully.

  What was I thinking?

  “I’m not usually so clumsy.” Sounding rueful, Tony reached up and took the ice pack away from her, then gingerly felt his head. His eyes cut to her face. “Quit looking so worried. I’ll live.”

  “I’m glad.” Her incautious response was so heartfelt that Tony gave her a slow smile while Michael snorted derisively and said, “There you go getting his hopes up all over again.”

  “I’m actually pretty hard to kill,” Tony told her. Still holding the ice pack, he got to his feet, pulling her up beside him even as she protested, “You should probably stay sitting for a while.”

  “Except for a little bit of a headache, I’m fine.” His grip on her hand tightened, and he leaned toward her, his intention to kiss her again impossible to mistake. “No harm, no foul.”

  Okay, so he obviously wasn’t suffering any severe ill effects.

  “You know, I could get to liking this,” Michael observed from behind her. “He and I fit together like a hand in a glove.”

  “It’s late,” Charlie demurred, speaking to Tony as she freed her hand and took a step back. “I know you have to be as exhausted as I am, and now you’ve got that bump on your head. Let me get you some Tylenol and walk you to your room.”

  Tony looked at her for a fraction of a second without saying anything, while comprehension flickered in his eyes.

  “By golly, I think he just figured out that he’s not getting any,” Michael said. “Smart guy.”

  Tony, meanwhile, shook his head and turned toward the door. “I’ve got some Tylenol in my room. I’ll take some if I need it.”

  Charlie followed him anxiously. “Are you sure you’
re going to be all right?”

  “I’m sure.” Opening the door, he stepped out into the hall, saying over his shoulder to her, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Grabbing the door in turn, Charlie moved into the open doorway. “Keep that ice pack on the bump. It’ll bring the swelling down.”

  “Will do.” But he was focused on something behind her, his expression turning slightly wry. Charlie followed his gaze to discover Buzz there in the hall staring at them. Buzz was, in fact, standing in front of Lena’s door, which was open just enough so that Charlie could see Lena, clad in what looked like men’s pale blue cotton pajamas, looking at them, too. Both Lena and Buzz were wide-eyed with interest, and Charlie realized that Tony, with his hair all mussed from her fingers running through it and his tie askew and his shirt partly unbuttoned, looked like he’d been getting busy. So did she, probably.

  No way was she even going to try to explain this to Buzz and Lena, was the lightning conclusion she came to. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

  “Good night,” she said to the three of them with what she hoped was at least a modicum of dignity. Then she stepped back inside her room, closed her door, and turned to glare for what felt like at least the hundredth time in the last fifteen minutes at Michael.

  “Let’s see, what was it Dudley said? Oh, yeah, I got it: you’re cute when you’re cranky.” The bane of her existence was unwise enough to give her a slow grin. “Now I see what he meant.”

  “You are a—” Charlie broke off, swallowed what she had been going to say, and finished with a fierce, “I’m not talking to you right now. I’m dead tired, and I’m going to bed.”

  “Jesus, babe, it wasn’t that big a deal.”

  “Not—talking.” Rigid with anger, she grabbed her suitcase, unzipped it, yanked a nightgown and her toiletry kit out of it, and stomped to the bathroom, saying over her shoulder, “If you dare to come in here, I’ll have Tam summon a hunter to get you, I swear.”

  Before he could reply, she shut (did not slam, although it was a close run thing) the bathroom door. Then, seething, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, got into her nightgown, and made damned sure to turn the bathroom light and the room light off (both switches were outside the bathroom door) before stalking back into the main part of the room. The last thing she intended to do was give him an eyeful, which was what he’d get if he could see her properly, because she tended to like pretty, feminine lingerie to the point that it was all she possessed.

  Enough light glimmered in through the window to allow her to see him. He was sitting in the armchair in the corner, his hands locked behind his head, his long legs stretched comfortably out in front of him, his booted feet crossed at the ankles.

  Unfortunately, she realized that if she could see him so well it meant that there was also enough light to allow him to see her in significant detail.

  His gaze tracked her. “You wearing that sexy pink lace thing you know I like?”

  She seethed. She fumed. Her thigh-high pink floaty chiffon nightgown was lavished with lace, and, indeed, the last time she’d worn it he’d expressed his extreme approval of it.

  Item number one on her shopping list, she decided savagely: flannel granny gowns. And granny panties. And granny bras.

  Hah!

  Turning a deaf ear to every other infuriating comment the maddening creature made, she marched across the room in the starlit darkness, yanked the curtains closed, and tumbled into bed. Ostentatiously turning her back on him, she pulled the covers up around her ears.

  And then, despite her exhaustion, she lay scowling into the darkness.

  “You awake?” he asked after a few minutes.

  Clearly he knew she was. She stiffened, but didn’t reply.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” he said, and that was enough of a surprise to make her roll onto her back and look suspiciously in his direction. She couldn’t see him: the room was now too dark. But she could tell from his voice where he was: still in that armchair in the corner. “I just thought”—he hesitated; she thought she could hear a shrug in his voice—“it might be a way out.”

  That did it: he had her. She was still mad at him, but she couldn’t resist asking, “A way out?”

  “I want my life back. I want you. I want—a lot of things. I thought, if I could get a new body …” His voice trailed off. “It was a way out.”

  A whole host of emotions hit her. They were varied and tangled, but they swept the hard knot of her anger away. She sat up in bed.

  “Michael.” She hesitated, then added gently, “I don’t think there is a way out of being dead.”

  “If there was, everybody’d be doing it, right?” The wry humor in his voice wrung her heart. “I got it. I’m a fucking ghost. I don’t have to like it, but there it is.”

  Sugarcoating the hard truth would do him no good.

  “Pretty much,” she said.

  “Yeah.” It was acceptance. “Go on to sleep, babe. I’ll still be sitting here dead when you wake up.”

  That made her smile. The fact that he could make her smile when he was in such obvious pain brought a lump to her throat. He didn’t say anything else, and she didn’t, either: really, what was there to say? After a moment she lay back down and curled onto her side, but this time she was facing him. At some point her eyes must have closed because finally, against all odds, she slept.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In the morning, Michael was flickering. Solid one moment, see-through the next. Having lived with ghosts in her life for what felt like millennia now, and with this ghost in particular for a little more than six weeks, Charlie knew the signs: flickering meant trouble. Flickering meant a spirit was on its way out.

  Her heart was in her throat from the moment she woke up, glanced at him stretched out on the bed beside her, and saw what was happening to him.

  “Holy crap!” were the first words out of her mouth as she sat bolt upright in bed and stared at him by the dim gray light filtering in around the curtains. To which he replied with a quick quirk of his lips, “I’m pretty sure holy’s got nothing to do with it.” At the same time, his eyes were sliding over her (the covers having dropped to puddle around her waist) and he added, “Looking good, babe.”

  She almost screeched it. “You’re flickering.”

  “I caught that.”

  Bottom line was, he hadn’t even tried to do anything about it. Hadn’t tried to wake her up so that she could try to do something about it. He’d just watched himself flicker and waited to see what would happen.

  Que sera sera was what his new attitude seemed to be: what will be, will be.

  Which she found almost as alarming as the flickering.

  “What are you, a ghost with a death wish now?” she fumed at him as she hurriedly dressed. Then she rushed him down to Tam like a mother whisking an injured child to the emergency room.

  “There are no more spells to fix you to earth,” Tam told Michael sternly. This morning she wore a figure-hugging hot pink silk jumpsuit with a gold scorpion pendant nestled where it would call the most attention to her ample cleavage. Her outfit should have clashed with her red hair and bright lipstick but somehow didn’t: she looked as fresh and vivid as Charlie didn’t feel wearing a white blouse and black slacks with only small silver hoop earrings and Michael’s heavy silver watch by way of accessories. By that time, Tam and Charlie—with Michael prowling restlessly around the sleek modern table—were finishing up a quick breakfast in the sumptuous, surprisingly-crowded-given-the-early-hour buffet. Charlie had mainlined coffee, and nibbled on a piece of toast, which was a total waste considering the vast quantity of food on offer for a single price. Her appetite clearly unimpaired by this latest crisis, Tam was polishing off the last of a heaping plate of waffles, eggs, and bacon. Looking at Michael, she added, “Last night, when you left me, you were restored. Then you possessed a body!” She shook her head and looked at Charlie, who’d spent breakfast filling her in, with a small number of judicious edits, on
everything that had transpired after they’d left her the previous night. “Once a spell is used on an individual, it won’t work again on that same individual. It loses its potency.”

  “So what do we do?” Charlie put down her coffee cup. She needed the caffeine, but the sudden lump in her throat made swallowing difficult.

  “There’s that we again.” Tam frowned at her as she ate the last of her waffle. “The first thing you do is put that out of your head. You and he—no. Not we.”

  “Tam—” Charlie looked at her friend impatiently.

  “Fine. You want to know what to do?” Tam sipped at her juice. “You hope he’s strong enough to recover. It’s possible that the grounding spell I used on him last night will have enough lingering aftereffects to keep him here. Possible, but not certain.”

  Michael’s response was flat. “In other words, I either make it or I don’t.”

  “Exactly.” Tam nodded, giving him an assessing look. “This has been going on for about six hours?”

  “Give or take,” Michael agreed.

  “Probably you would already be gone if that’s what was going to happen,” Tam told him grudgingly, and Charlie got the impression that she wouldn’t have been entirely sorry if Michael had been sucked away into Spookville during the night. Despite Tam’s tone, Charlie instantly felt better: Tam was rarely wrong about anything to do with the spirit world. “Although I can’t guarantee it. What I can guarantee is that if you’d done something so stupid without having recently been fixed to this plane by my grounding spell, you would have no hope. You would have been hurtled into The Dark Place the instant you left the mortal body you stole.”

  “Borrowed,” Michael corrected, and Tam made a derisive face.