Alarmed, I asked, “Do you think someone already took the money?”
“Did he say it was in the case he was carrying?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think he would have carried the money to the concert that night. The way he worded it made it sound like it was in one of the cases at home with her.”
“I didn’t want to set anything up with his wife until you had some protection and we had the guitar. Roberto’s good, but he can’t hold that window open for very long on his own steam. He just about got himself yanked over there the first time when he gave the bloodstone to Martin. We’re more careful now.”
That reminded me of another problem. “Martin used the bloodstone to open the portal to send me back. He doesn’t have it anymore.”
Lynx nodded. “I know. In the canyon when we talked about what was needed to get you back, he told Roberto to hold onto the bloodstone and yank it the second you were through. We knew it might be difficult so Adriel had a hold of him to make sure everything pulled this way and not Martin’s way.”
“Can we throw more bloodstone to Martin?”
His ears swiveled forward. “Does he need it?”
I nodded. “It’s...” Trying to describe how important it was made me relive In Between. Old desperation clawed through me, and I started to sweat. “It’s like your braid. Like a lifeline. Even though we are dead and things from this side can’t save us, it helps.”
His eyebrow flicked the tiniest bit with surprise. “Can he come back here?”
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t anyway. He’s happy there. But the bloodstone is energy. It’s...” I waved my hand, the one not holding the staff.
Lynx sat back, determining the answer before I did. “It’s earth. For Martin that’s about as close to life as it gets. He’s an earth witch, like Adriel, but don’t tell her I said that. She’ll start yammering about how they are nothing alike.”
“She doesn’t like him?”
“He was a drunk when he was alive and liked to roam the desert naked.”
My eyes widened. “He still does that!”
Lynx gave his silent cat chuckle. “Figures.”
“So when can we visit Paula?”
“I can get more bloodstone from Adriel. She keeps the pure stuff. Roberto’s recovered, but he’s worried about Kyle’s wife. She’s pregnant and due soon.”
I had conveniently forgotten that part. “Oh. We don’t want to trigger any unexpected events.”
“And even without that, it’s dangerous. So you gotta make sure you have this protection stuff down before we take too many risks. We don’t know what’s on the other side.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The problem was that I knew all too well about the hungry things waiting on the other side.
Chapter 29
I slept dead to the world again, but this time when morning rolled around, I had a plan. Lynx had an entire room that was nearly empty. It was perfect for practicing. I was out of shape. I’d already died once; no need for a premature repeat.
The add-on room had a concrete floor that was cold on my bare feet. Despite the chill, it felt natural to flow through the forms with no shoes. After the first practice, I put shoes on. It changed my balance, but practicing both ways was important because unlike Lynx, I didn’t often run around without shoes.
The third practice was all the forms with me sideways. That took the most out of me, and my concentration wavered all over the place. By the time I finished, I was shaking and starved.
Lynx reappeared from whatever haunts he visited in the morning.
We crammed ourselves full of leftovers, and then he joined me for the afternoon practice.
He was a quick study, mirroring the forms without a staff. He was faster than me, and it wasn’t because I was still regaining my strength. The cat was just amazingly agile. I’d never match his speed, not on my best day.
Once he had the basic pattern down, he flew through the forms, adding a wall climbing run that left me gasping. “I need to learn that!”
He shook his head. “Your center of gravity isn’t right for it. I adjust mine as I go. You’ll just land on your head.”
But he was wrong. I used the staff as leverage, climbed and somersaulted backwards. I landed off-balance and had to roll. My staff stayed with me though.
“Not the same thing!” He then mimicked my straight up the wall without the benefit of a staff. He held it for an extra second before flipping all the way over and landing on his feet.
I shook my head. “You’re amazing. Absolutely amazing.”
His eyes flashed a smile. “You’re not so bad yourself. Teach me that thing you do with the staff.”
“Which thing?”
“All of ’em.”
I laughed. “Okay.”
Lynx was faster than a human and smart too. I only had to show him a technique once. The hand twirls gave him the most trouble, but it wouldn’t be long before he’d outdo me there too. “It’s not just the speed,” I told him. “It’s positioning it, being ready to fling it, switch it, bat with it, stab with it.”
We sparred, using four different exercises, a light back and forth with the staffs. “These can be done with a knife too if you’re careful enough.” That thought stopped me cold. Pictures flashed through my mind; a dagger with a long wooden handle hitting the staff.
Lynx pulled the practice swing that he had aimed at my head, but left it a bit too late. The memories distracting me kept me from deflecting the smack.
“Ow.” I spun inside automatically, despite the sting.
He was good for the maneuver, grabbing for me as I spun. His arm snaked around my ribs, locking me in tight, but he had to drop his staff to hold me there. The move left him without a defense against my staff.
I slid my hand along the bar and then jabbed it backwards into his ribs. “Ha! You’re fast, but with the stab, my point!”
He kicked my legs out from under me in retaliation. His hold loosened enough that I tumbled towards the concrete.
I grabbed his arm and forced him down using my weight.
Well, maybe that would have worked had I been twenty pounds heavier, in good shape and not running on empty.
He followed me down easily enough, but rolled me under him.
“Okay, we’re even. Your point,” I panted.
“I didn’t use my claws. I’d have earned the first point too if I clawed you instead of grabbed you.”
“There is that.” I inhaled another deep breath, which wasn’t all that easy with him pressed across me. “I used to teach this stuff.”
“You remembered. That’s good. But in a real fight, can you not stop to think about it so much?”
“Absolutely. No distractions allowed.”
Despite my agreement, the worry in his eyes didn’t disappear. He reached up and brushed away a gray lock that had fallen across my eyes. He felt along the side of my head searching for a bump, his fingers tangling in my hair. “We’ll practice more.” After failing to find any sign of an injury, very carefully, he extracted his fingers. He placed his palms against the concrete and lifted himself off me using just his arms, like a push-up. “Did I hurt you?”
I smiled. “No. Besides, it was my own fault.” I reached over and traced his ribs in one gentle swipe, but I was certain I hadn’t hurt him. He sucked in a breath, startled.
“Hey, your ribs aren’t hurt! Pulling punches is part of training. We all learn that.”
His eyes locked on mine. “I’ve never pulled a punch in my entire life. And I’ve almost never fought without my claws.”
“Oh.” That meant he’d never been in anything other than a real fight. And he had never shared his techniques with anyone other than me.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I said. “I forgot we were training because you’re fast, and then the memories got in the way. Sorry.”
He blinked. “Sorry? You’re apologizing to me? I almost took your head off!”
I shrugge
d. “But it was my fault. Part of teaching is to know when the student is dangerous. Do you think maybe I made a living teaching?”
He rolled his eyes. “Will you quit worrying about money?”
“I don’t like...being...”
He spun into a sitting position. “I know. I can’t stand owing anyone anything either. But we’ll settle. And I don’t care about it, anyway.” He stood and hauled me to my feet. I could tell he still didn’t trust my assessment of not being hurt because he kept his hand under my elbow and the other ready to catch me.
I deliberately swayed towards his shoulder, forcing him to reach out and tuck me under his arm. Like any good warrior he was watching my eyes so he wasn’t fooled. I giggled. “See. Told you I am fine.”
“Shadow...” Conflict flashed across his eyes. He let go, dropping his arm without any warning.
Despite the surprise, my feet snapped to support me with only the slightest skip. I balanced on the balls of my feet, ready for whatever might come next.
He gave a clipped nod of approval. “You can’t ever stop looking out for yourself even if you’re with someone you can trust.” He turned on his heel and walked back into the main part of the house.
I frowned, wondering if he was telling me he couldn’t be trusted. But no, what he said was more complicated than that. More like he needed me to be able to take care of myself.
That idea didn’t bother me in the least.
Chapter 30
Adriel and White Feather stopped by the next morning with breakfast, medicinal tea from her mother and some new weapons for me.
While we ate, she explained how she had fine-tuned the beads. “Since throwing them didn’t work well, I spelled them to explode if anyone touches you after you activate them. Lynx will need to know how to disable them. White Feather and I already know, but we can’t tell everyone how to rescue your body if you’re not in it. The beads will explode away from you. You probably won’t be hurt, but there is that possibility if the explosion hits something and bounces.”
“Can you design something like that for the tip of her staff?” Lynx stood at the kitchen bar eating, but he paused long enough to toss me the mesquite weapon resting near him.
I caught it, spinning it along my body automatically before handing it to Adriel.
“You’re teaching her to fight?” Adriel’s eyes went wide.
“She knew how already.” He gave her a blank cat stare. “You don’t wanna mess with her either. She nearly kicked my ass.”
I rolled my eyes. The ear shot didn’t count, and he’d been my equal or bested me in practice every time. “I’m not sure I can fling energy from the end of a staff any better than I was able to when throwing energy from the silver ball.”
Adriel stared at Lynx for another few seconds, but eventually she turned her attention to my new collection of staffs. She watched as I demonstrated with one. “Wood doesn’t transfer magic very well. A staff with a silver liner might be useful. Or maybe we could line it with a silver rod.”
“Wood doesn’t transfer magic well? That’s odd,” I said.
She tapped her foot. “I thought you didn’t know anything about magic?”
“I don’t. But In Between, I could draw energy from anything living or that had any living residue. Pine needles, a branch—it didn’t even have to be connected to its original source.”
She paced, staring at the staff resting along my thigh. “I should have said wood doesn’t work well for me in most spells. I do use wood to track items and find water.” She shrugged. “Try throwing the energy from one place to another off the end of the staff.”
I picked up the staff and attempted to toss energy while sideways, not sideways, pushing and pulling. My energy flowed readily along the wood and boy, it could pack an extra punch when I did that. But it didn’t flow outside of the staff very far, not until I snapped it like a towel, a kind of punching, halted fling. I also missed the stone fireplace where I was aiming because I didn’t expect anything to happen. The shot went wide. The television hanging off to the side of the mantel crackled with an odd popping noise when the force hit. A funny gray line sparked across the center, like an inert streak of lightning. “Uh-oh.”
“I don’t watch it anyways,” Lynx said calmly. “It was payment from a buddy who didn’t have any cash.”
Adriel paced away from me, probably hoping for more distance between us in case I started throwing off invisible sparks.
“Interesting,” she said. “We can tip the end with silver. That might very well cause the energy to arc away a bit, but it might not travel any further than it does now. It also doesn’t solve the problem of protecting you when you’re outside your body if you drift too far away.” She handed me the silver balls. “Carry these. Remember to activate them if you leave yourself. Release the spell when you return. Try it once so I can make sure you have the hang of it.”
I was exhausted already, but sliding sideways was nothing compared to flinging energy down the end of the stick. That had taken a big chunk out of me.
I set the spell as instructed, went sideways and saw the balls as little silver orbs of energy. Without thinking, I touched one, drawing the energy to me. It was like eating a full meal. I instantly felt better.
“Aztec—” Adriel closed her eyes. “You just drained that spell completely, didn’t you?”
I shifted fully back. “Sorry. I was In Between a long time and there it sat, a happy little feast.”
“Now I’ll have to recharge it. Well, you have three others. Try not to drain them every time you see them. Save them for weapons!”
Feeling better, but still tired, I sat on the couch. Lynx handed me a glass of chocolate milk and perched on the arm. It felt nice to have him nearby. With the energy from Adriel’s spell I wasn’t in danger of falling over, but knowing he had my back warmed me in a way that not even returning from In Between had done.
White Feather had remained at the kitchen table watching us the entire time. He finally asked, “Any luck tracking down the story on Amy?”
Lynx nodded. “She died about four months ago when she was twenty-one. She had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer about eight months earlier, but was still working as a tech at the blood bank next to the hospital. Ted ended up as a patient at the hospital when he started having convulsions and chewing on people. ’Trick says it’s obvious Amy has another accomplice at the hospital, and whoever it is could have easily listed her death as the ovarian cancer rather than ‘dumb ass who called a demon and tried to turn herself into a zombie.’”
“I’m not sure a forensic scientist would recognize death by demon blood,” White Feather replied.
Adriel tilted her head. “The demon blood didn’t kill her. It just failed to heal her body like she thought it would. But technically, the demon magic should have allowed her to possess another body.”
I tucked my legs under me. “I wasn’t a willing donor. She made it sound like she died because she didn’t find a donor fast enough.”
Adriel nodded. “After failing to possess you, she was probably drained with no backup plan. It’s also probable that when she left her body to possess you, her body died and she had nothing to re-inhabit.”
“Does anyone know how I ended up in the hospital?” I asked.
Lynx didn’t look at me when he answered. “You were attacked in the park across from the Santa Fe Indian Hospital. If you’d been any further from assistance, you wouldn’t have made it, but from what ’Trick gathered, someone saw the fight and called it in. The paramedics didn’t have to do more than run across the street. You had no ID. You landed in his hospital, Specialty Center, because no one knew who you were. ’Trick said you had to be resuscitated twice.”
That was a lot of information to digest, but it was also no information at all. “Do you know where Amy lived? I saw the blood from at least one pentagram at the hospital. The splatters attracted a minor demon. There were remnants of another drawing around Ted even though he w
as a zombie. Whoever helped Amy probably drew the pentagrams to allow her to jump back and forth from In Between, but whoever it is had to store supplies, or books, or something.”
Lynx fidgeted but didn’t say anything until Adriel crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “I know you must have found the place, Lynx.”
He didn’t blink, but he answered. “Ted still had an apartment, but it isn’t paid up. Looked like Amy musta lived there before she died, but there was nothing significant there. Didn’t even smell of magic or blood.”
Adriel stopped tapping, but left her arms crossed.
“There wasn’t any sign of the occult?” I found that hard to believe.
He flashed me a smug cat look. “The carpet was pretty new. Something burned there, but it was quite a while ago. It was in a small enough area that it could have been a pentagram.”
“Maybe it was left over from when they called the demon to obtain the demon blood the first time?” Adriel threw up her hands. “We’ll probably never know!”
“I could look,” I suggested. “There might be something useful at the apartment that I can spot.”
“Lynx can smell magic,” Adriel said. “He wouldn’t miss that.”
I shrugged. “And he can see ghosts too, but maybe there’s something there that I can see, some link to In Between.”
Lynx’s eyes flashed. “Not a good idea to go roaming around the place. You tell me what to look for and I’ll find it. You get in too much trouble.”
“I know what that’s like,” White Feather muttered, glancing in Adriel’s direction.
He earned a glare from Adriel. “I can take care of myself,” she huffed.
“Not really the point,” was White Feather’s reply.
“Shadow gets in way more trouble than Adriel,” Lynx said.
White Feather slapped him across the shoulders. “That’s simply not possible.”
Lynx snorted. “Yeah? She got herself killed, and we had to drag her back. Adriel hasn’t tried dying yet.”
Adriel shook her head at me. “Men.”
Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) Page 17