I might not have recognized the gateway to In Between had Amy not used water before, but a claw foot tub in the living room would have gotten our attention regardless.
“Don’t stand too close to it,” I warned. “I don’t think it’s an open portal right now, but it might suck you right into In Between. Martin said some portals are doors that will let anything through.”
“How do we close it?” Adriel demanded.
“Martin used a bloodstone to activate the other portal. Amy used Troy’s life energy to activate it. I never saw how Martin destroyed the portal. It closed when Roberto yanked the bloodstone, but Martin would have had to destroy the circle of stones Amy had set there.”
Spook barked and circled the tub. I knew what he wanted, but it made me sigh. “Sideways again.”
“Don’t get too close,” Lynx muttered.
I circled first. The portal didn’t appear to be open, not exactly. Like the water In Between, there was an odd sheen to it. Nothing other than the tub bottom should have been visible, but there was a gray swirl underneath the surface. I had a bad feeling that if any of us touched it, it would use us to open the portal. I sank back into myself.
“It’s not really open. But it’s not closed either. I think it needs some kind of energy to activate it, but I’m not sure what would happen if we attacked it.”
White Feather said, “The problem isn’t opening it. It’s closing it down. Can we drain the water?”
“Not without touching it. And we definitely don’t want anything with energy touching it.”
“I can blow it out of there,” he replied.
“Would that move the portal? Or destroy it? It might change how it worked.” I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Lynx disappeared outside and returned with a large rock. “Nothing attached to us. Not magic. You witches waste too much time.”
“But that rock is earth,” Adriel said. “It holds some magic!”
“I could never obtain energy from plain rocks,” I asserted.
Lynx didn’t wait a millisecond longer before he tossed the boulder directly into the water.
The tub was half full. The rock was heavy. Water should have splashed out onto the already dirty carpet, but the rock hit and then sank slowly. It was still on this side, but it took on an odd grayish cast amidst the ripples.
I flicked my fingernails and slid sideways.
The rock had changed the portal. I could now see the mist, the fog that was always In Between. The shadows shifted.
Spook barked.
I ignored him in favor of trying to make out the shapes...Spook barked again. There was an odd sound of music, not the demon kind, but...was that Troy? No, not Troy. Why was I so confused?
Kyle was a ghost of his former ghost self. His back was hunched, much as Troy’s had been when he was drained. He was trying to play, but there were notes missing. He may have banished the demon, but it had cost him. Unless he obtained new strings, he couldn’t repair himself. His music was part of his soul.
Spook barked again, and this time he dashed right through me, startling me into floating backwards. How had I gotten so close?!?
Lynx was yelling. “Shadow! Shadow, breathe!”
No, this portal wasn’t open, not exactly. But it had a vortex that slowly sucked energy into it.
I sank back into myself, staggering.
Lynx had hold of my shoulders. He didn’t stop shaking me. “You stopped breathing! Don’t do that!”
Adriel’s bracelets were on fire. “I can’t ground here,” she said through her teeth. “This place is contaminated.”
White Feather threw open a window. He used the fresh air to blast out two more windows at the back of the house. Old books and piles of paper scattered across the couch fluttered in the breeze.
“Keep breathing,” Lynx ordered.
When I tried to speak, I realized I had half floated free again. I hadn’t meant to do it.
He snapped his fingers in front of my face, but my eyes were wide open and staring at nothing.
The swirling gray was pulling things into it. Not just me, but the breeze that blew through and the line of blue where Adriel had tried to ground. She was connected to it. The scattered bits of her power slowly rotated closer to the center of the gray vortex.
I did the only thing I could think of. I reached for Adriel’s bracelet and slashed my hand through the energy, sucking a hole through it.
The spark tossed me backwards, slamming me into myself so fast and hard, I knocked myself and Lynx to the floor.
White Feather had the door open now.
Spook ran back and forth between me and the tub, whining.
I stared at Lynx. “Kyle was there attempting to play his guitar, but the strings are broken.” I frowned. “He knows it’s broken. Maybe he was trying to tell me something. Do guitar strings have any energy? Do you think we could throw strings through there? Maybe he can close it if he has the strings?”
“You ain’t going near that thing again.” Lynx’s ears were back. His voice was flat. He reached into his pocket.
I sat up.
Adriel pulled her pack around and extracted several guitar string envelopes. “I bought a whole set because I didn’t know which ones he might need, and I wasn’t sure when we might see him.”
Lynx had the set he had bought already out. He had insisted he carry one set, and I carry the other.
“Don’t ground again,” I told Adriel. “It goes straight into the vortex. Spook—” I put my hand out to the dog. He hopped my way, but stayed out of reach. “No transfers of energy.”
“Metal is never inert,” Adriel said tersely. “Throwing these strings in there might make it worse, like the rock did.”
I threw the packet, but I didn’t dare slip sideways to do it. Lynx had tossed me the braid. He hadn’t gone sideways.
The strings bounced off the water and landed on the other side of the tub.
“What happened?” Lynx asked.
I gripped his hand tightly and dared a peek sideways. The vortex was dark in the center. “Let me try yours.”
He handed me one.
“Spook, ready?” I asked.
Lynx growled. “Shadow...”
I threw the packet, trusting Spook to jump between me and the portal if need be. I winked sideways as it hit the water, already diving back to myself. The strings were metal, not wood or life, but Martin said the portals were open walkways between worlds.
When the string hit, there was a flash of black. The rim of the tub dimmed with the same darkness. “Uh-oh.” I was dizzy from the transfer. Luckily I was still sitting. “This portal is different. I don’t know how Amy opened the portal that I used to return here, but I’m guessing she used Troy’s life energy, not his death.”
Adriel caught on first. “And this one used blood or death?”
“Maybe both. It’s black, not gray. When I looked into the portal from In Between there was color. This one is gray, but it turned black as soon as the string hit.”
“The rock sank. The strings bounced,” Adriel said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know why. Maybe because Kyle is on the other side. He looked terrible. He can’t play. Without his music, he’s fading.”
“Maybe it appeared that way because of this portal,” White Feather said.
But I knew how much energy was required just to remain sane In Between. “He won’t attempt to reach us through that thing. We need to destroy it.”
“These old tubs are iron inside. How the hell are we going to destroy it?” Adriel muttered. “Can’t use water. It’s already part of the problem. Can’t use air. Can’t use earth.”
“Melting it would be damn near impossible,” White Feather added.
“Shoot it full of holes,” Lynx declared.
“There is a drain,” Adriel said. She turned to me. “Would that work?”
White Feather muttered, “Whoever built this never intended it to be unplugged.”
“Amy had to have a way to transfer herself back and forth from In Between after Martin destroyed the other portal.”
Lynx waved his hand in front of my eyes. I followed his hand, if for no other reason than to reassure him. Satisfied, he got up and went outside again.
White Feather pulled out his cell and dialed his brother. “Gordon has something that will shoot through this thing.”
When Lynx returned, he carried my longest staff, the one with the pointed end. “It’s an old tub so it has to have a drain.”
“What will happen when the water drains out?” Adriel asked me as though I had an answer.
“The drain unplugged would break the circle. And wood...it might suck the staff right through.”
“Breaking the circle is definitely good,” she decided.
White Feather hung up. “Gordon’s on his way.”
I stood behind Lynx ready to pull him back in case he broke through and something grabbed him. I didn’t know if I could save him, but if he was sucked In Between, I was going with him.
Spook waited next to him too.
“Can we cut through anything that comes at you?” White Feather asked.
“It might be a good idea if you can keep the water back,” I said. “But I really don’t know.”
Lynx was already poking under the tub with the staff. There wasn’t much room for him to maneuver. “It’s plugged with something tight,” he muttered. “I need a curved staff.”
White Feather said, “Hang on. I’ll bring the crowbar from the car.”
Lynx ignored him, but had no luck dislodging whatever was stuck in the drain.
White Feather knelt next to him and poked at the plug with the bar.
Adriel watched for a second and then suggested, “Power hitting it from the outside would travel around the circle or be absorbed. It’s just a circle, like any other circle. Blood circles require blood or death to activate. So while power may be absorbed, it also stands a chance of bouncing or breaking through, right?”
No one had an answer.
White Feather grumbled when she put her hand on the crowbar. “Let me hit it. I can push earth power through the metal.”
Her eyes locked with his. Lynx glared at me as though I had somehow suggested I hit it instead of Adriel. I wasn’t about to offer. Well, I would have, except in this case, it wouldn’t help. My sideways energy was too easily drawn into the vortex. If this thing fed on death, it could easily feed on souls, and it wasn’t getting mine. It had sucked in Adriel’s power, but it was probably only collecting stray pieces. Of course, if it collected enough of her, it might reach for her soul too.
“No,” White Feather said. “Put one of your delayed explosions on the end. I’ll jam the crowbar up against the seal, and we’ll all hightail it out of here.”
She nodded her head in agreement, reached behind to her pack, and without looking, removed a packet.
White Feather drew the crowbar in and she attached it. “Okay, everyone back.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. The only reason Lynx didn’t beat me outside is because he was herding me and Spook from behind.
“Fifteen seconds,” Adriel said.
I started counting. When I hit three, Adriel was in the doorway. When I hit four, she and White Feather were flying through the air. Lights exploded behind them.
Lynx grabbed me, but I was already rolling, knowing something had gone terribly wrong.
The entire house might have blown if White Feather hadn’t already opened the windows and doors. As it was, part of the roof blew off.
For a few seconds, there was a calm, but before relief had a chance to set in, a large dark shadow blotted out the moon and the stars.
The roof crashed back down, disappearing behind the wall of the house. Oddly, instead of a crash, there was a loud splash.
The front part of the house, along with the roof, was sucked into the vortex as the water drained.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“I thought you said we had fifteen seconds!” It was White Feather’s voice, but he wheezed.
I sat up, wincing as my face brushed a rosebush. I scooted closer to the lilacs before trying to extract myself from the bushes. The lilac was missing all of its leaves.
“Should...have had more time,” Adriel panted. “I think that thing tried to toss the magic away and that set it off early. Thanks for the landing.”
“I’m used to forming bubbles around you. You’re always flying through the air,” he grumbled.
Lynx found my hand and pulled me up.
“Where’s Spook?” I worried.
The dog woofed from somewhere behind the Mustang.
“We need to give Kyle new guitar strings,” I said. There were probably other things I should have been worried about right now, but Kyle’s gaunt face haunted me. Troy had looked like that.
“There were books in there,” Adriel said. “We should have secured them first.”
Lynx peered through the open hole that had been a house. “You think that portal is closed?”
The tub was cracked in half. Not only was there no water, the circle that had been the tub was fractured. “You want me to check sideways?” I offered.
“No. Let’s go deliver those strings.” He didn’t release my hand. “You got this?” he asked the other two.
White Feather had one hand on his head, the other on his wife’s shoulder. “Yeah.”
“Where are you going?” Adriel demanded.
“Kyle’s wife. She has his guitar. With it nearby, we should be able to pass the strings to him,” I said.
“Now? It’s after one in the morning!”
“It can’t wait,” I said.
“Now Lynx has her thinking all these jobs have to be done at night,” Adriel muttered as we hurried past.
Chapter 38
I expected sneaking Roberto out of the School for the Deaf in the middle of the night would be difficult, but Lynx pulled into a cemetery next to the school, looked in the backseat and said, “You wanna get him or should I?”
Spook barked and disappeared.
“Roberto’s in the cemetery? What’s he doing in the cemetery?”
“He talks to ghosts. It’s the only place he can hear people and have regular conversations. I’ve been telling him he needs to hang out with a better crowd, but he still comes here a lot. Even if he’s not out there tonight, Spook will find him, and the cemetery is his route out of the school.”
I thought about the tunnels we had just been in and hoped for Roberto’s sake that none of the tunnels connected to the cemetery. That was just too creepy to consider.
Within ten minutes, Roberto joined us. He and Spook hopped in back.
Paula was less wary of us this time, despite it being the middle of the night. She had obviously given birth because her tummy was deflated.
I explained the reason for the late-night visit. “Kyle needs new guitar strings.”
Her eyebrow, one with an earring in it, quirked up. “Really? Right now?”
I nodded.
“Okay, I guess. You were right about the money.”
I nodded and introduced her to Roberto. “He’s here to facilitate the communication. And this is Lynx. My name is Shadow,” I reminded her.
She opened the door wider to let us in. The house was small, but neatly kept. “How did you know I had moved in with my mom?”
I hadn’t asked Lynx how he knew. He didn’t offer an explanation either.
Paula’s mother stood in a robe at the head of the hallway. A crib was in the living room next to the couch where it was obvious Paula had been sleeping.
I was happy to see Kyle’s guitar leaning against one edge of the sofa.
“The baby is sleeping. You won’t wake her, will you?”
She placed herself between us and the crib as though she didn’t want us too near her baby. I couldn’t blame her. We were a strange crew. Neither Roberto nor Lynx had spoken other than to nod during the introduc
tions.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
“Don’t you want to know about the money?”
“The money?” I repeated.
“I did find it. Kyle must have been saving for a long time. It’s really helped a lot.” She took a shuddering breath. “God bless him. I miss him.”
Roberto signed something, and Lynx translated. “Roberto doesn’t need any money, but he would like to hold the guitar.”
“Oh.” She blushed with embarrassment. She started to walk around the crib, but caught sight of her mother and stopped. She looked back at us, her body still between us and the baby. “Go ahead.” She motioned towards the guitar case.
I thought maybe Roberto would play the guitar, but he didn’t even open the case. He just sat on the couch with it across his lap. I wondered if the call was like that of a séance, or if Kyle would just feel the pull.
When the weave shifted, it was more peaceful than it had ever been before. Roberto knew his stuff. Instead of fighting the weave, Roberto somehow invited the gray of In Between into the room with us.
Kyle was there, his guitar across his lap. It was the first time he hadn’t been playing it since I’d visited him from this side. He was still crying, though.
“We...I...your strings.” I tossed the packets, remembering to go sideways and snap the bundle away from me. The bundled packets, tied with twine, slipped through.
He missed them, probably because he couldn’t see well through the tears. Or maybe it was because he was only a shadow of his former self.
“Careful, Kyle,” I warned, still sideways. “Don’t let anything there feel your sorrow.”
He nodded, but he only had eyes for Paula. “I’m sorry. I didn’t leave you on purpose.”
“I know.” Her voice was thick. “She looks like me.”
“I know.”
I searched the gray around him, worried.
“Can you come again? More often? Oh, I never thought I’d see your face again!” Paula was now bawling, too. She reached into the cloud of gray, snapping Kyle out of his misery.
“Don’t! Paula! You don’t belong here. Lisa needs you.”
“She needs you too!”
“I—” he looked at me, the desperation leaking to our side. “I saw you at the other portal through the water. I wanted to cross. I remembered how you did it, but when I tried to play, thinking it would open it, something was wrong. There was no music.”
Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) Page 22