There was no sign of Espy’s life force. Her energy may have already crossed, but it wasn’t in the process now. Nothing else In Between was like a life coming over or through.
I puffed myself a tiny bit closer to the girl. The aunt seemed to understand right away and hurried to her side. She reached down to hold the girl’s hand.
There. It was nothing more than a spark, just as her aunt touched her. I shook my head at the aunt. “I don’t think she is here.” My words didn’t make it across intact. I looked for a way to show her. The problem was that there was no way to tell how much of Espy was still on the living side, though some certainly remained.
Little in the room was of use to me. As I explored, the door from the hallway swung open into the room. The aunt’s concentration immediately dropped, snapping the weave right through me.
Rather than fight it, I allowed it to shred me and push me back. I helped myself by not struggling.
Even though the IV monitor was beeping, the nurse who entered was completely focused on the aunt, probably because, with a moan, Aunt Brenda collapsed on top of Espy. The séance had extracted too much from her.
I stitched myself back together, letting the weave slowly bind itself more tightly between worlds.
To my surprise, the nurse was attentive, but not very panicked over the aunt. She pressed the call button and hung a fresh IV on the hook next to the nearly empty one. The badge clipped to the bottom of her shirt read, “Sonya.”
She checked the aunt’s pulse, peeled back an eyelid, and then slid her carefully onto the armchair near the bed.
Aunt Brenda was already coming around. “Espy?” she asked weakly.
“No, it’s Sonya, the nurse. Espy is right here. You sit still,” she instructed. “You can’t keep staying here all day and night. You fainted again.”
The nurse swiveled back to Espy and the beeping IV monitor. She changed out the bag and reset the monitor. A trail of blood had spattered onto the sheets and bedspread around Espy’s arm where the IV went in, but was already dried, a messy splotch of dark dribbles.
The guy I’d seen before when he requested sheets from the cleaning lady came through the door. Paul still wore his badge around his neck. His hair was spiked and bleached on the ends. He had clean linens in one hand and his phone in the other.
As soon as he saw Sonya, the phone disappeared into one of the loose pockets at the front of his uniform.
Sonya accepted the sheets and turned the call light off. “Thanks, Paul. Can you bring some ice water and have the kitchen send up some juice, please? I’ll start on the bed.”
“Sure.” Paul spun on silent soles.
With practiced ease, Sonya pulled the soiled linens free and made the bed with the fresh ones. She bundled the sheets and dropped them on the floor at the bottom of the bed. “Have you eaten yet today?” she asked the aunt.
Brenda nodded. “I even brought in some crackers.”
While Sonya opened the packet of crackers and fussed over the aunt, I watched Espy. The blood bag seemed to contain more life energy than the girl. The dark red liquid shown with a brightness along the edges. Surely the energy would help. Why hadn’t someone given me something with so much energy that might have kept me alive?
It affected Espy almost instantly too, nearly reviving her from the coma. Her body stiffened, and around the fabric that was rapidly thickening between us, the ghost of an image formed across her face.
The ghost girl saw me and screamed. A spindle of life sparked in her heart and was drawn towards the blood slowing traveling into her veins.
I raised my hands, empty palms out, to show I was not a threat.
“Heeeeellp!” Her life force stalled in its journey along her veins to the fresh blood. She reached with her ghost hands towards me and the edge.
Alarmed, I shook my head. “You don’t want to come here! Let the medicine—”
I scowled. During my own death there had been a violent pull on my life force. Had I been fighting something trying to save me? Had I gone the opposite direction due to stubbornness and ended up here? There hadn’t been any ghosts willing to advise me, that was for sure. I stared at the blood traveling from the IV bag to her arm. It definitely pulled on the girl’s life force. Was that a glow of life force in the blood or flames licking along the surface?
The nurse was assisting Espy’s aunt with a drink of water, but she glanced over at Espy suddenly, staring at her for a moment. With a puzzled frown, she looked around the room before turning back to the aunt. “You really shouldn’t stay here all day. This is the second time you’ve fainted.”
The fabric was now knit too tightly for me to see anything clearly.
The girl hadn’t made it across, not this time, but something was after her life force. I had felt it, and she had too.
Chapter 12
I floated aimlessly through the gray for longer than was wise, wondering about that glow in the blood. My cairn was a better bet for me than wandering because once again the weave had left me leaking. Instead of heading for shelter, I used my sleeve to soak up essence.
I stared at the cloth and the ghost essence. Both were gray blobs, one with shape, the other without. The blood that had attracted Espy’s life force was dark red or black. It was darker than the blood already in her veins. There had been bright orange flashes of energy licking at the blood.
In Between, we were all hungry. But the only thing I’d ever seen flash that color was a demon. And something was eating at Troy. And Martin claimed his beer buzz wasn’t buzzing.
What if something in the blood was killing Espy? What had threatened me when I was dying? Was that same thing threatening Espy?
If I found myself, would I still feel foreign fingers grasping at my essence, preventing me from fully claiming myself? Maybe I was here because it was safer than my own body.
The only way to find out was to find myself.
Martin was attracted to the canyon. That is where we’d met Roberto and the others. When Martin trained me, we went to his canyon. Where did I keep finding myself? The hospital. It couldn’t be coincidence.
The only real question was whether or not I’d have to search room by room. Was my body in a morgue? A cold drawer somewhere?
Any action might be better than no action, especially with constant reminders that time was my enemy. If my body was still alive, it couldn’t remain that way indefinitely, not with my essence here.
I closed my eyes, drew myself in and ghosted along the edge. I searched not only for a weakness in the weave, but for any life that called to my soul.
Martin had merely hummed. There was nothing beckoning me, but nothing in particular had enticed him either, not really. He just waited by the weave, and his last strong connection dirt-side had appeared.
I watched the weave and nudged it into thinning just the way Martin had taught me. Most of the hospital rooms were empty shells, floating past with no clues.
Disappointment filled me when my first glimpse of a person was that of a stranger. She was nothing but a gaunt, sallow face on the hospital bed. Straw-like hair made the whole picture into a morbid scarecrow. Just another needy, nearly dead person.
It wasn’t until I noticed the cat that the realization hit me. My eyes went from Lynx to the mummified form on the bed. “Wow.” My living body was in worse shape than my current ghost form. “Yikes.”
The cat held his hand out as if maybe he had felt a cold breeze. It was possible he sensed my presence.
His blurry form leaned over mine and quick as a cat, he brushed his lips against my cold, dead ones.
I shrank back, horrified. How could he touch that thing? Did he think, like Sleeping Beauty, he could bring back that half mummy on the bed with his gallant gesture? And to be sure, it was gallant. The body was no more attractive than a day old corpse. Who would want to touch it?
The weird thing was that I felt it. Not the me lying in the bed, because there was no association there, or so I had thought
. But a shot of warmth, of energy that was almost visible, radiated across the weave.
I reached up and touched my lips, my ghost fingertips tingling from the odd energy. As if he were here with me, raw emotion pulsed through me. The feeling was almost the same as a ghost touch, but Lynx was very much alive, giving off a heat and aura. I might be dead, but, oh, I wished I weren’t.
The edge had thinned even further without me noticing. He must have sensed me because he whirled to find me hovering. I didn’t think it was possible for a ghost to blush, but sudden shyness gripped me.
“Hey’ya Shadow.”
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t cat casualness. Did he see ghosts every day?
“If you don’t belong there, how do we get you back here? I have the other half of the spell bundle I gave you.” He held up another braid. I felt the resonance tingle through my hair as the bundle he had thrown me responded to the nearness of its mate.
“I don’t know.” I enunciated carefully, although he didn’t seem to have much trouble hearing me.
“You’re in a special ward,” Lynx said. “There’s two or three other people here too.”
“Is there a girl named Espy there? Her life force tried to come across, but I told her to stay. Something was trying to capture her on your side. I think that may be what happened to me. Something was after me, and I ended up here!” It all came out in a rush, confused. I had put the thoughts together but not organized them enough to be coherent. But the cat, maybe the cat could help anyway.
“I haven’t seen her, but I haven’t checked around. Patrick recognized you as soon as he saw you. He’s one of the special nurses assigned to this ward a few times a week.”
“The vampire? Do you think he could be stealing our lives by imbibing our life force?”
Lynx shook his head, adamant. “’Trick is cool. He gets blood from the hospital bank. He doesn’t need to run around draining patients.”
“But what if he does? Or what if it’s another vampire? I saw a female at the blood bank. What if they require more than just blood to stay alive? In Between the things that steal aren’t after blood. We don’t have any. They want the sparks of life. Maybe it works that way for vampires too!”
His ears twitched then, followed by his eyes slanting towards the door. Without even a whisper of sound, he casually tucked himself along the wall where he wouldn’t be readily visible and if seen, he was nothing more than a tired visitor brooding over a dying patient.
I had a bad feeling. It was going to be the vampire, I just knew it. What if he was the thing I felt calling to my life force, the thing I’d run from before they could save me?
The door opened slowly. A single, bony hand held the edge of the door. A short person in a dark uniform backed partway into the room. The cleaning lady maneuvered a cart that was more than half full of dirty sheets. I recognized her gray head of hair and stooped shoulders as she scanned the room. The guy asking for sheets had called her Julia, but I couldn’t see her badge from this vantage point.
She gave a short nod directed somewhere between the body on the bed and Lynx. She might have seen him or she might just be noting that there were no sheets to pick up. The body on the bed didn’t look as though it had done anything as ambitious as sweat in a long time. They probably didn’t have to change the sheets more than once a month.
The cleaning lady pushed the cart back out, leaving the door hanging partially ajar as she exited.
Lynx padded to the door, pushing it closed.
Maybe the vampire was after Espy, maybe not. But whatever had come after me was still in this hospital. Espy was proof enough for me. Her fear had been a choking tendril of desperation, an echo of the bone chilling panic I’d felt when dying. “The girl. Her name is Espy. She’s probably in this ward now, in a coma like me. You need to get her out.”
I stared at the near-corpse on the bed. It might be too late for me, but if we hurried, maybe we could prevent Espy from coming across.
Chapter 13
Seeing my body had not been the victory I’d expected. The husk that remained on the side of the living was well past its expiration date. The whole experience had exhausted me and yielded little by way of answers to my questions. It was a long shot, but the only person I could think of who might be able to tell me about the blood I’d seen was Cinderspark. Maybe she had changed her mind and decided to dally here one more time.
Once I determined my destination, it didn’t take long to puff myself there.
Troy’s juniper was the same looming gray as always. The color that had appeared when he was nearby wasn’t evident now.
Before I could drift any closer, Spook materialized in front of me. I tamped down my hunger, even though Spook would have already sniffed out my longing for energy. The tree had been a temptation ever since I’d followed Troy through, and it was embarrassing to be caught blatantly coveting what was not mine.
Spook barked.
I was surprised because he usually ignored me. His tentative hello was filled with the same wariness he always exhibited.
“Is Troy around?” I asked.
He whined, worried.
“Yeah, me too.” I sat on the nearest rock, wishing I could run up to the tree and jump inside and gather sparks and be full forever. But without Troy here, the tree was probably dormant.
I forgot myself for a moment and reached over to pet Spook. To my surprise, he scooted one hop closer and accepted my hand. “Cinderspark told me that Troy is marked by something. Maybe a demon, or something similar. Can you see the mark on Troy, Spook? Is there one on me? I was hoping Cinder had returned and would tell me more. Martin says a mark can’t be good and that the balance In Between is all wrong right now.”
Spook whined and barked again, a quiet sound of desperation mixed with urgency. He trotted in a circle, undecided, but then hopped quickly towards the tree. He barked encouragement, planting his feet as though inviting me to play, but his tone was not that of a game.
I hesitated, but Spook whined again. “Is Troy in there?”
Spook turned stubborn then, sitting and barking, demanding that I get up. He wasn’t interested in sharing Troy’s whereabouts, but he wanted me to follow him.
“Okay. You know this is dangerous, right?”
Spook barked a low growl, his version of a snort. He was right. Everywhere In Between was dangerous.
The tree was silent. When Troy was around, the jagged side sometimes shifted as though swaying in the breeze, but today it was as still as a rock.
Spook sat next to the tree and waited for me to approach.
“Can’t you enter without me?”
He didn’t answer. I reached for the smooth surface, feeling it immediately, a warmth that wasn’t felt In Between often. Troy had to be inside. I wasn’t sure whether it would be good news or bad if I ran into him, but there was no point in standing here with my back exposed.
I slipped into the darkness, Spook at my heels. Just as before, there was a nighttime sky, but with less stars this time. Maybe it was cloudy. The ley line was barely visible in the distance to my right. I would have headed that way, but Spook took the lead, pressing me towards the starlight, precisely where I had no desire to go.
Without the constant hazy light of In Between, my eyesight was lacking. I reached for Spook and held on. The further we drifted, the more out of breath I felt, which was entirely strange because the dead don’t need air. There was no edge to fray me, yet there seemed to be less of me.
The tunnel was narrow with rocks that contained varying hints of color; dull reds and yellowish browns as if they might be real, might be part of dirt-side.
As we floated upwards, larger tree roots began to appear, a darker color than gray, poking through the rocks. The further we ventured, the thicker the roots, until they were crossing the tunnel and running along the bottom. My ghostly feet brushed against them, and I wasn’t too proud to slurp up the energy they contained.
Water tri
ckled somewhere, feeding these roots. The happy sound scared me because water In Between was an open invitation to another realm.
Spook didn’t care about my fear or the water. He whined and coaxed me along.
The tunnel narrowed further, forcing us to float single file.
A dip was followed by a Y-shaped choice. The surface, probably full dirt-side, was still impossibly far away, but Spook chose that tunnel. The ley line was the other direction, beaming light down the corridors in a flickering dance even as we traveled away from it.
Finally, Spook halted. He pushed his ghostly nose into an impression in the rocks. The dim glow from the ley line illuminated lighter brown roots. An odd shaped piece of metal, a ring, glinted up at us.
I knelt, wondering about the root that had grown through the ring. The gemstone was flat and winked with color, a deep red with flecks of gold from the band that housed it. The band was engraved, but was too far embedded in dirt for me to read.
Troy had played football. His jacket had a number on it that was clearly visible when he was near the tree. “Was this Troy’s class ring? Or some kind of athletic ring?” Just how close were we to the surface anyway? Worried, I glanced up at the stars, but the tiny pricks of light held no answer.
When I might have touched the ring, Spook growled. He deliberately butted into me, knocking me back. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t planning on stealing it.” But I had wanted to touch it. It seemed so real, so full of color.
Spook whined then, and when I turned to find him, he was loping back down the tunnel. He hadn’t warned of any impending danger, but he certainly wasn’t lingering. He knew these tunnels far better than me.
I took a last longing look at the ring and followed Spook out. The tree roots had filled my hunger, but my questions remained without answers.
Chapter 14
Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) Page 8