Ghost Is the New Normal (Spirit Knights Book 4)

by Lee French

  When Iulia let her go, she hung in the air while her mist gathered, unable to think or move.

  Iulia clucked her tongue. “No, that didn’t do anything useful. We’ll just have to try this again,” she held up the dagger, “to see if it works.”

  Too numb to react or resist, Claire drifted to Iulia’s side and took the dagger. She carried it to the table holding her corpse. “I don’t want to.”

  Iulia nodded and directed her gaze to the body. “I understand your reticence, Claire, I really do. Looking at this body, I see myself. It’s unnerving. I’m faced with the mortality I’ve avoided for so long and need to reassure myself I haven’t slipped into a dream of death. But it’s just a body. You can’t use it anymore. As soon as the locket is removed, I’ll remove my protections and it’ll decompose as nature intended. There’s no other use for it left.”

  Claire swished a hand through her body’s arm, wishing she could touch it. “I hate being a ghost.”

  “Hate Caius, not your circumstance. He killed you. He put you in the position of having to oppose him.”

  “There’s nothing left of him to hate.”

  “No man truly dies until he is forgotten. I would shed my memories of him if I could, but they’re etched in my mind. I see them in the darkest part of the night, when hope is a tiny, fleeting thing. The light of a single candle is enough to sustain it, but not enough to defeat those wretched visions.”

  Taken aback by what seemed a deeply personal admission, Claire gaped at Iulia. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. This is why I want the locket.” The bitter edge on Iulia’s words pressed Claire with urgency. “These next few years will be hard. I expect many lives to be lost. If I can find a way to accelerate the process, I will. My wish is to save lives, not challenge them.”

  In the face of such a reasonable goal and request, Claire had no choice but to help. She touched the dagger tip to the base of her locket and tried to forget what she needed to cut it out of. The blue flesh had nothing to do with anything. This locket had been her life, but no longer. Before pressing on the dagger to cut the flesh, she tried to brush her fingertips over the locket’s surface.

  She fell. Unknown force dragged her mist through a tiny hole until she landed on the ground in her demesne, blinking up at trees.

  “Huh. I didn’t expect that.”

  “Welcome back,” Rondy said from his chair. “Is Justin on his way?”

  “No. Iulia set a trap and caught me.” Claire sat up. “I was about to cut the locket out of my body for her when I touched it and landed here. I guess it’s a sort of gateway from here to Earth for me. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have touched it.”

  Rondy furrowed his brow. “Why would you cut the locket out for her? If she uses it to create a new seal, you’ll probably be destroyed.”

  “She seems so sincere.” The ramifications of using the locket hadn’t occurred to her. “What makes you think it’ll destroy me?”

  “I may not know a lot about magic, but I know what she’s said. She wants a new seal, but Caius being at the center of the old one was a mistake. Whatever she does to create a new one will be centered around not replicating that mistake. And using your locket means using you.”

  “But—” But she’d just told Iulia in no uncertain terms that she hated being a ghost. Claire raked her hands through her hair. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. That woman is so good at…at making me think she’s right. And that stupid locket is still my biggest weakness. I almost hate my dad for making it to save me. He should’ve let me die.”

  Rondy sighed like he intended to refute her. Then he blinked at something over Claire’s shoulder. “Why is there a stag in your demesne?”

  Claire twisted to see the buck she’d crafted earlier. It stood in a regal pose, glowing in a beam of sunlight piercing the clouds and canopy. Glimmering motes danced around it like tiny golden butterflies.

  “Leather,” Claire murmured. She stood, not sure what to make of this creature affecting her demesne without her permission. “It was your idea, remember? Only I didn’t need leather to make the swords, I just needed to figure out the memory thing.” She paused, thinking she’d fallen into rambling. “Can you do that with light?”

  “No. I can’t even modify this chair to fit me better. I believe I said to give it enough sentience to evade you. I didn’t say anything about making an entirely independent creature. How did you do that?”

  “Accident?” Claire shuffled toward the buck, afraid of spooking it. “Hello?”

  The stag dipped its head in a polite nod, its antlers flashing as if made of green-tinted gold. As soon as Claire approached within ten feet, the stag turned and bounded away, disappearing into the forest.

  “You don’t get to hide from me,” Claire growled. “Not here.” She plunged into the trees, shoving them aside to make her path. The run felt honest and real. Her legs found a rhythm and carried her through the woods. Panting and sweating, she caught sight of a puff of white fur and sped to catch the stag.

  “This is my demesne! How many times do I have to say that?” She kept chasing, but saw no further sign of the creature. Giving up, she leaned against a tree to catch her breath. “This is my demesne. Mine. Not some deer’s. I made you.” Of course, she made the deer to evade her so she could hunt it.

  “Stupid deer.” She pushed damp hair out of her face and trudged back to Rondy. No matter how good it might be at disappearing, it shouldn’t have come looking for her like that. The stag, an entity she created, had taunted her. In her own demesne. For unknown reasons.

  “I don’t understand any of this.” Claire flopped into her chair with a huff.

  “I admit I’m out of my depth as well.” Rondy shrugged.

  “Never mind. It’s just a deer. I have bigger problems. If I go back through to Earth, I’ll just be trapped by Iulia again. So now I’m stuck waiting for Justin, Drew, Avery, or Enion to think of showing up here and figure out how to do it. I don’t even know what to do with myself.”

  “We could work on your memories. The more you remember and the more new memories you create, the more powerful you become. That may be the path to becoming physically present on Earth.”

  Claire took a deep breath, then remembered she didn’t need to breathe. “I guess. What do I do?”

  “The only thing that comes to mind is word association.”

  “Great. Sounds like therapy. They make you do that while you’re in foster care. It’s a giant joke and everyone knows it, but we all play along anyway. The first time I went…” Claire strained to recall the details. Had it been this distant a memory before she died? “The shrink was a man.” She tried and failed to picture his face, instead conjuring an image of his hands holding a pad of yellow, college-ruled paper and a thick, black ballpoint pen with gold lettering on the side.

  In response to her efforts, an echo of the image formed in the air. She sculpted it until the creases in his fingers and the glint on the pen’s clip seemed right. His pen scritched across the paper, recording words she never saw.

  “He asked me to draw pictures of my family. With crayons. Like I was five. When I sat there, doing nothing, he asked if I wanted colored pencils instead, as if that somehow made the exercise less stupid.”

  “Can you make images of them now? Do you remember what they looked like?”

  She swiped a hand through the image and dispersed it. “Of course I remember.” With no effort, she crafted images of three amorphous, anonymous people with blurred faces and clothes. The man, woman, and child sat around a blank table from the perspective of the person sitting in the fourth vague chair.

  Claire scowled at them. Prodding the table with her finger, she willed it to take on more detail. “I just saw my dad a few weeks ago. His ghost, I mean. He tried to kill me and Justin destroyed him. With his sword. He had to beat up Avery to do it.” To the side, the battle between the two men flickered into life. Justin and Avery faced each other inside the Portland
downtown police station, swords clanging and flashing in the fluorescent light.

  Despite the detail flowing into the battle scene, including typed words on papers dancing in the air, her family remained undefined.

  “They have the same skin tone as me. Or did they? What’s my skin tone?” Claire looked down at herself, panic rising. Her flesh shimmered from olive-toned to pink to bright purple. She gasped for breath, no longer certain of anything. “Who am I?”

  Chapter 15

  Drew

  Sophie groaned and stirred. “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure.” Drew clasped his hands to avoid touching her. He tried and failed to tear his gaze away from the line of her neck. “I think I stole power from you by accident.”

  She rolled onto her back and snapped her eyes open. “Where am I?”

  “My bed. It didn’t seem right to leave you lying on the ground.”

  She blushed bright red. “So you took me to your bed?”

  Drew’s cheeks burned and he jerked his head around to stop looking at her. “I barely touched you, I swear. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

  “This is going well,” Kay said.

  “I’ll take you as close to wherever you want as I can, I just didn’t know where that was. Besides, you said your mom would be weird about what we did. Even if I knew where you live, I wouldn’t have taken you there.”

  “You make it sound dirty.” Sophie sat up with a groan, pressing her hand to her forehead. “The person on my end of that process isn’t supposed to be messed up by what I did. You’re supposed to be weak and need time to heal.”

  Drew’s blush grew fiercer. “I’m sorry. Whatever I did to you, it wasn’t on purpose. I have no idea what I’m doing. Especially with magic stuff. Using Kay’s power doesn’t give me much insight. I just know how to direct what he offers.”

  “Oh, yes, you’re an expert at that,” Kay said with a snort.

  “You know what I mean, Kay.”

  Sophie swung her feet off the edge of the bed, sitting next to Drew with an awkward space between them. “Can’t you talk to him without saying things out loud?”

  “I’m pretty happy to have that line of separation between us.”

  Kay snorted again. “So am I. Let’s get rid of her so we can go screw around with magic and figure out how to save the world.”

  Drew thought his head might explode if he blushed any harder. “Um, so, where can I take you?”

  “I have a bus pass, just point me at the nearest stop and I’ll be fine.” She stood and fussed with her hair to tame it.

  He watched her fingers, noticing her nails had smooth, rounded edges. Claire ripped her fingernails all the time and never did anything about it. She didn’t care.

  She used to rip her fingernails and not care. In the past. Before she died. He rubbed his eyes with a finger and thumb. The hurt crowded around him. Sucking in a harsh breath, he shoved it away.

  “You don’t have to drive me anywhere,” Sophie said.

  “I wasn’t going to. What neighborhood do you live in?”

  “Rockwood. If you didn’t mean driving, what did you—” She froze and blinked. “Oh. The mist. Like how you appeared in Anne’s living room.”

  “Yeah. I know Rockwood. I grew up there. Went to Davis Elementary.” He stood and offered her a hand. “Is near the school okay?”

  “Sure. That’s where my house is anyway.” Sophie bit her lip and stared at his hand.

  “Just take her damned hand and drop her.”

  Drew rolled his eyes. “Shut up, Kay.”

  Sophie smirked. “The fact you argue with a genuine voice in your head is kind of awesome.” She took Drew’s hand and watched the mist he spun around them.

  When the mist cleared, they stood in front of Drew’s childhood home. The trees had grown since he last saw it through the rear window of his social worker’s car. He thought the front door had been replaced, and he didn’t remember rosebushes. His mother had never liked gardening. She had preferred fake flowers in pots and shrubs that took no effort. Considering that, he doubted she had been a witch.

  Gramma Peg, on the other hand, always had the best, juiciest vegetables. She made an herbal tea Drew had loved more than juice. But she died three days before his sixth birthday. He barely remembered her. Of course the witch in his family hadn’t lived long enough to offer Drew any guidance.

  Sophie dropped his hand and eyed him. “How did you know this is my house? Are you playing me?”

  Startled out of half-formed memories of riding his tricycle on the driveway, Drew blinked at her. “What?”

  She jabbed a finger at him. “Have you been stalking me?”

  “What are you talking about? No! This was my house. I grew up here until my parents died. Seven and a half years ago.” Seven years, seven months, and ten days ago, at four-thirteen in the afternoon, someone had finally arrived and pulled him out of the car.

  “Oh.” Sophie withdrew her finger and crossed her arms. “That’s a crazy coincidence.”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence when magic is involved,” Kay said. “You’re connected to her somehow.”

  “Yeah.” Drew ignored Kay. The front door tugged at him like a magnet, chasing all other thoughts away. His feet carried him up the driveway of their own free will. “Can I see inside? I don’t know why I want to, I just do.”

  “I suppose so.” Sophie opened the unlocked front door for him and held it while he gaped all around like an idiot. “We moved into the house about seven and a half years ago, so I guess we bought it from you. Did you get that money?”

  “Trust fund,” he mumbled. Her voice faded into the background as she said something else. They’d repainted and recarpeted with inoffensive neutral tones. Like a surreal movie, the place reminded him of home and family he hadn’t had in a long time, while also being all wrong. The wrong couch sat in the wrong place with the wrong blanket folded on the wrong end.

  “What did you bring into my house?” An unfamiliar woman stepped into the room from the hallway he knew led to the family room and kitchen. With the same coloring and build as Sophie, he guessed her to be Sophie’s mother.

  He opened his mouth to say something, then saw the pictures hanging on the hallway wall and couldn’t prevent himself from brushing past her to approach them. Framed photographs showed Sophie’s latest school picture, the family with Sophie’s parents and two younger brothers, and Sophie’s mother laughing with someone unexpected. Behind him, Sophie and her mother spoke, the words lost as his attention focused to a sharp point on the third photo.

  Running his fingers over the glass protecting it, he wanted to touch the actual photograph. He’d last seen this woman years ago. His few memories of her—including the ice cream cone one he’d lost—had left him wondering whether she really existed or not. Turning to see Sophie and her mother again, he asked, “How do you know Aunt Stace?”

  Sophie’s mother raised an eyebrow. “That’s a bold question for an abomination waltzing into my house and touching things without so much as a hello.”

  “Mom,” Sophie said, sounding embarrassed.

  “No, Sophie.” The woman crossed her arms and fixed Drew with a stern stare. “This boy is all kinds of trouble. He needs to either explain himself or get out.”

  “This is my Aunt Stace.” He tapped on the glass. “Anastasia. Her mother and my grandmother were sisters. My name is Drew Sanders. Who are you?”

  “If that’s true, then your grandmother was my father’s cousin.” Sophie’s mother furrowed her brow and moved next to Drew, examining a picture she’d probably seen thousands of times before. “I’m Belinda Harris. Stace is a family friend. I call her a cousin because we’re distantly related.” She gave Drew a sidelong glance. “But that explains nothing about the mess you have for an aura.”

  “I think we should leave before she decides you’re a threat to the world who needs to be put down like a rabid dog,” Kay said.

&nb
sp; The intensity in Mrs. Harris’s eye made Drew agree. He took a step away from her. “I’m fine. Nothing some rest and time won’t fix.”

  Mrs. Harris flicked her gaze to Sophie and back to Drew. “Why does your aura have Sophie’s signature mixed in?” Anger smoothed her features into a pointed glare. “Did you sleep with my daughter?”

  Sophie covered her face with both hands. “Oh my god. No, Mom.”

  “Ding, ding, ding, time to go!”

  Drew blushed and shoved past Mrs. Harris to escape. The front door slammed shut before he reached it.

  “This is my house, young man.” Mrs. Harris advanced, stabbing the air with a finger pointed at him. “You don’t get to leave until I say so. I want to know exactly what you did with my daughter, and I want to know now.”

  “N-nothing.” Desperate to flee, Drew twisted the doorknob to no avail.

  “Use the mist, dumbass. Get out of here. Now!”

  Drew spun mist around himself. Someone jumped on him and they shifted together, landing in the woods of the Brady farm. He staggered to the side and realized he’d brought Sophie. She fell to the ground with a squeal.

  “That went well,” Kay said.

  “Yeah. Smashing.” Drew leaned against a tree and covered his face. “I don’t think your mom likes me.”

  “Can’t imagine what gave you that impression.” Rubbing the thigh she’d landed on, Sophie stood. She shook wet leaves off her hands. “I’m sorry. I probably should’ve warned you she’d be home.”

  “I guess whatever I took from you merged with my aura. I’m sorry for that.”

  “It’s okay.” Sophie picked a tree across from him and leaned against it. “And I’m sorry I hitchhiked onto your escape. Mom looked like she was winding up, and I didn’t want to stick around for the immediate interrogation. It probably would’ve included screeching and ranting about boys. Followed by me getting grounded forever.”

  Kay made gagging noises. “Stop apologizing to each other. It’s pathetic. Since we’re stuck with her, though, at least for now, ask her to help you practice the magic thing and see what you can do.”