by A. J. Locke
“Does it sound like I may have somehow gotten Ethan bound to me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But if you and this ghost have indeed become bound, there will be more going on than just you gaining stronger power and the Rot. The ghost will be affected too.”
That immediately made me think of Ethan’s realization that he could touch physical things and eat. I told Ilyse about that.
“So is tangibility a side effect for the ghost?” I asked, even though I was sure I already knew the answer.
“It is,” Ilyse said. I suddenly felt weak and sagged against the pillows. “It’s a powerful bond, Selene, you gain strength and the ghost gains a constant connection to your energy, which allows him to have a physical form. It’s just that the ghost doesn’t have to be touching you, and you don’t have to actively pour energy into it.”
“But shouldn’t I be drained then?” I asked. “If I channel energy into a ghost too long, I end up exhausted, so wouldn’t this bond suck me dry?”
“This bond is different,” Ilyse said. “Because it’s more like you two are sharing energy rather than you giving him all your energy.”
“Fantastic,” I muttered. “Anything else?”
“There may be more,” she said. “I’m going to dig around and see what I can find. The literature on this topic is extremely obscure.” She got off the bed, and I made myself sit up, then stand.
“Do you think there is a way to undo it?” I asked.
“The only way I remember reading about the bond being broken is with the death of the reanimator due to the Rot,” Ilyse said. I wanted to collapse back onto the bed but managed to remain standing. “Selene, I will do everything I can to help you. If there’s a way to unbind you and save you from the Rot, I will find it. For now, I’ve drawn off as much ghost energy as I can, but since you’re connected to this ghost, it will keep accumulating. Come see me in a couple of days so I can draw from you again.”
“Okay,” I said. This new revelation had my head spinning on top of everything I was already dealing with, and I just wanted to sink back into unconsciousness to escape from it. I was not used to having a life that was this stressful. I missed the days when I was taking ghosts to strip clubs and helping them haunt their classmates.
Ilyse waited with me until I finished signing the release forms. Then she wheeled me outside and hailed a cab that would take me home.
“Damn it, I left my car parked somewhere near the Underground.” I rummaged around in my bag but didn’t find my keys. “And I lost my keys. Fabulous. That’s the least of my worries though.”
“For today, just rest,” Ilyse said, squeezing my arm. “And if I have to say it, I won’t tell anyone that you’re a reanimator, Selene.”
“You’ve kept my secret this long, and my grandmother’s longer than that. I trust you.” She hugged me, then helped me into the cab where I settled into my troubling thoughts as I headed home.
* * *
Ethan wasn’t around when I got home. Though I was still worried about what he was up to, I was a little thankful he wasn’t around, because I didn’t yet feel up to explaining the whole binding thing to him. Last time I saw him, he’d been mad at me, and if he was still away, I wondered if it was because he hadn’t cooled off yet. Maybe he’d forgive me when he saw all the trouble I’d gone through to track his body down. This was the first time I could say I’d gotten beaten up in a dark alley for someone.
Luna was a lot more energetic than she’d been since I’d reanimated her, and I was thankful to see her prancing all over the place. I had bought new goldfish, but she wouldn’t need to be recharged for a couple of weeks. I was tired and in pain but couldn’t ignore my dog, so I fed her, then took her for a walk. When we came back in, I showered and headed to bed. Luna followed after me, so I took her into bed and cuddled her as I fell asleep.
When I woke up, Luna was whining and licking my face, which indicated that enough time had passed for her to be hungry again. When I assessed myself, I realized that I was feeling a little better, no longer woozy from the medication, and the pain in my ribs was more like a burning-hot ember in my side rather than a raging volcano. The darkness in my bedroom indicated that it was nighttime, and when I checked my cell phone, I saw that it was almost ten. I’d had quite a sleep.
I fed Luna, but as I was about to dig up a menu to order food, my doorbell rang. Maybe it was Ethan, and he had to ring the bell because he was too solid to walk through the door. Thinking of Ethan made me remember everything else that was going on, and I suddenly wanted to crawl back into bed. I went to open my door, and to my surprise it was Micah there, not Ethan. To my further surprise, he was holding my car keys and Chinese takeout.
“How are you feeling?” he asked as he came in. “You look…”
“Like crap?” I said, smiling. I was sure my messy hair and rumpled shorts and T-shirt weren’t doing me any favors, but the way Micah was looking at me said he begged to differ. I felt myself flush. It was still kind of bizarre to deal with a Micah who smiled at me rather than scowled. We headed into the living room, where Micah unpacked the food and handed me my car keys.
“I figured your car was left hanging around somewhere, so I took your keys and used the tracker on it to find it. Thought I’d surprise you by driving it back.”
“You were the one who made me get that tracker, if I recall,” I said. That was, of course, before our one-night stand turned things sour between us.
“Came in handy,” he said.
“I still can’t believe you had the foresight to track down my car for me,” I said. “Thank you.” Andrew would never do something like that. Wait, why was I even comparing the two of them? Andrew was for sex, and Micah was for…well, I didn’t exactly know, but I found myself wanting to find out. I was floored that Micah had brought my car to me and had also brought food. Even though we were mostly silent as we ate, it was a comfortable silence, and since I was working one-handed, Micah helped me open my cartons of food.
“Try this,” he said, holding up a spoonful of fried rice.
Suddenly, I felt shy as I opened my mouth and accepted the food. Shy, me? Bizarre.
“So where’s Ethan?” Micah asked, looking around as though he’d spot Ethan lurking in a corner.
“He got angry that I still hadn’t found his body and his body-jacker is out there committing murder, and he stormed out Saturday night,” I said. “Hopefully, he’ll come back soon.”
“Guess he has reason to be upset,” Micah said.
“Yeah, and speaking of that, did anything come from researching who could want Leslie and Athena on the same hit list?”
“I spent the day researching Athena, but as you said, there’s a much longer list of people who’d want to hurt her than there was for Leslie. It’ll take some time to narrow it down, but I’ll keep at it. The dead witches also concluded that the runes turned in from Leslie and Athena’s body are missing.”
“Just as we thought. Have any more bodies with the same MO as Athena’s and Leslie’s come in?”
“No,” Micah said. “Our morgue didn’t call up with anything, but I did some research anyway since we know the body-jacker also uses a gun. I got Dr. Lane to help, and it turns out in the past couple of days, there’ve been over ten people who died by gunshot. Statistically, it’s a noticeable increase.”
“So you think the body-jacker is behind those murders?”
“We can’t count it out,” Micah said. “But I couldn’t get much information on the victims since their bodies are at the city morgue, and I couldn’t convince anyone that those murders fell under our jurisdiction. The police just think they were random acts of violence, no ghosts involved.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Well, hopefully we can round this asshole up soon and figure out how to get him out of Ethan’s body. He was skulking around the Underground, probably to meet up with the reanimator who got him into Ethan’s body. Wish I could have flushed them out.”
“Maybe
someone else there would know something,” Micah said.
“Yeah, and we know how willing people in the Underground are to talk to people like us,” I said. “We’d hit a wall as soon as we tried.”
“Still could be worth looking into,” Micah said. “Maybe try to ask questions in a way that won’t make it seem like we were digging around.”
“I suppose,” I said skeptically. I thought about Trevor then and wondered if he would know or have seen anything that could help with the case. I made a mental note to try and ask, but I didn’t say anything to Micah since I sort of had a soft spot for protecting my fellow reanimators.
“Selene?”
I blinked and looked at Micah, only now realizing that he’d been talking to me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You seemed distracted. Are you in pain?”
“In more ways than one,” I said.
He frowned and came to sit next to me on the sofa. Being this close to him raised the hair on my arms in a deliciously tingling way. I looked at Micah for a heartbeat and decided I would tell him about my conversation with Ilyse; he already knew I was a reanimator, after all. I told him about the Rot Ilyse found and the cause of it, and Micah’s face ran a gamut of emotions as I spoke. I had never seen such varied emotion from him directed at me.
“When I see Ethan, I have to tell him about this. Ilyse is going to see what more she can find out about this binding thing. Hopefully, she can come up with a solution to fix it that doesn’t involve me dying from the Rot, but right now I don’t feel too positive that she will.”
“She will,” Micah said, taking my hand and squeezing it hard. I was taken aback by the intensity in his voice. “If she doesn’t, then I will. I won’t let the Rot take you.”
“You know, I have to say, this is all a little strange,” I said. It wasn’t possible that the emotion I saw on Micah’s face was for me. “You’re throwing me for a loop, Micah. To go from hostile to caring so quickly…”
“Would you like me to go back to hostile?” he asked, mouth twitching in a smile.
I shook my head. “No, but…you’re confusing me. I don’t know what to make of this.”
His hand around mine was strong, and the strength was very appealing. Where Andrew’s touch carried a crushing strength, Micah’s seemed more like a supporting strength.
“Then I guess I’m not going to help matters by doing this…” Micah moved forward, slipped his hand around my neck, and kissed me.
I was shocked for only a split second before my body rippled in pleasure from the feel of his lips on mine, and I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the kiss. Micah pulled me closer, careful of my injured arm, and deepened the kiss. His tongue whispered across my lips like he was asking rather than demanding, and I found this thrilling.
I opened my mouth, and when our tongues brushed, his hands slid up my back under my shirt. He groaned low in his throat and cupped my face, sliding his fingers through my hair. I arched my head back as he planted whisper-soft kisses down my neck that literally made my toes curl. He moved his mouth back to mine and kissed me slow and deep, as though he was taking his time to explore the contours of my mouth. It was a novelty to me after months of having my mouth roughly savaged by Andrew, along with my body.
I had thought the way things were with Andrew had been the perfect scenario, but now I realized I had just never been kissed like this before—like the person on the other end of the kiss was it in for more than just the pleasure it brought him. There was a strength and intensity in the way Micah held me, possessively, but not like he thought he owned me, more like he was afraid I would slip away from him.
All of these realizations, plus the body-weakening ache that had erupted in me from his touch, overwhelmed me.
Micah was warm, and he smelled delicious. The scent of his skin under his cologne clung to me, and I nuzzled my face to his neck, sliding my fingers through his hair the way he had done to mine. My lips grazing his neck made him moan, and that made me smile. I pulled back a little and looked at him. When he frowned and reached up to brush my cheek, I realized I was crying.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. I shook my head. I couldn’t tell him about my comparisons between him and Andrew, or that I was crying because what Micah was giving me was something I didn’t even know I wanted.
“They’re not bad tears,” I reassured him. “This very moment, they’re not bad tears.”
We smiled at each other, and he kissed me again. I was all too happy to let myself think about nothing but the way Micah smelled, the way he held me, and the way he kissed me with more passion than I had ever felt before. It was a beautiful moment among the chaos that had suddenly descended into my life.
Chapter Fifteen
When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I did was smile because I remembered kissing Micah last night. We had sat on my sofa and made out for over an hour. My jaw had been wonderfully sore after, and the only thing that had stopped us from going further was the fact that I was injured.
But damn did I want us to go further. At one point, I was willing to say to hell with it and command him to rip my clothes off, but then his elbow had accidentally touched my side and the answering pain had brought me to my senses. He had been so worried he’d hurt me that he wanted to stop, but he didn’t protest when I just smiled and brought his lips back to mine.
I had received leave for the rest of the week as I healed, but after puttering around my house for most of the day, even Luna seemed to be getting tired of me, so I decided I had to go out. Of course I made this decision at about six in the evening, so I had limited choices as to where I could go with my bandaged head and bruised ribs.
I had been texting Micah throughout the day and knew he was still at work, sorting through information on the case, so I decided to take a cab to the office and help him since he planned to be there late. I even picked up food on the way, which he showed his appreciation for by giving me a lingering kiss.
For a moment, I panicked at the thought that someone, specifically Andrew, would see us. Micah had mentioned that Andrew was working late too, but when we broke the kiss, we were still the only ones in the cubicle room. I edged out a smile for Micah and tried to relax.
I knew Micah would have no problem with other people knowing something was going on between us (even though most of the women would probably want to kill me), but the thought of Andrew finding out didn’t leave a good feeling in my stomach. There was no reason why I shouldn’t be kissing Micah since Andrew and I weren’t a couple, he was married, and all we did was have sex, but something about Andrew's recent possessiveness made me uneasy. Maybe it was time I broke it off with him, even though that could mean something detrimental for my job.
I looked at Micah as he busied himself unpacking the Indian food I had brought. He offered me a piece of naan with a smile that made my heart feel like it was doing little flips. Yeah, I should definitely end it with Andrew.
The Indian food was spicy, but I liked my food even spicier, so I headed to my desk to get the bottle of hot sauce I kept in the drawer. It was that serious an addiction.
I paused before I got anywhere near the drawer though, because I spotted something peeking out from under the clutter on my desk and reached for that instead. My eyes widened when I recognized that telltale blue color that all women knew well; it was the color that graced a Tiffany box.
Sure enough, the word “Tiffany” was printed in neat letters on the lid, and I couldn’t help but feel a thrill go through me. I wasn’t much into diamonds and pearls, but this was the first time I had ever received a gift like this. One-night stands just didn’t tend to leave gifts in the morning.
Had Micah left it? I had to admit it seemed a little much since things had only changed between us a few days ago, but I wasn’t going to stress that too much since I was already imagining wearing whatever was in this box and nothing else to show him my appreciation.
There was a folded card attached to
the box. I flipped it open, and my smile faltered when I saw what was written on the card: “For my Selene, A.” It was from Andrew.
My Selene? Where did he get off thinking he could use a possessive in front of my name? I was less excited about opening the box now, but I did, and instead of squealing over the diamond-crusted heart-shaped pendant that lay inside, I frowned.
Why the hell was Andrew leaving me expensive gifts all of a sudden? Our relationship was far from the realm of buying gifts for each other, especially ones of this caliber. I was pissed, really pissed, and had to stand there for a few moments and take several deep breaths. Andrew was trying to buy me, and I had to let him know that I couldn’t be bought.
I took a step in the direction of Andrew’s office, then paused. Micah was waiting for me, and I knew there was no reason why he should think it strange for me to go have a word with Andrew, but I still hesitated. I would wait. As much as I wanted to stomp into Andrew’s office and throw this box at his face, I would wait. I shoved the box into a drawer, grabbed the hot sauce, and headed back to Micah.
“You okay?” Micah asked when we were halfway through our meal. “You seem a little tense. Are you in pain? I can take you home.”
I swallowed my mouthful and tried to give him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m fine,” I said. “Try this.”
I held out a spoonful for him the way he had done for me last night, and he grinned and accepted it, then immediately started fanning at his mouth and making little yipping sounds at how spicy it was. I had probably put too much hot sauce on that bite. I laughed, thinking he looked adorable with his watery eyes, and he tried to scowl at me but ending up laughing instead.
“I’m going to find some way to make you pay for that,” Micah said. I leaned into him and ran my tongue over his bottom lip, which made him take in a shaky breath.
“How about you let me make it up to you instead?” I suggested, smiling against his lips.