Ghost at the Feast: The Nightwatch Book 3

by Cassidy, Debbie

  “She could be at Mirage Hills,” Mai said. “The annual weaver ball, remember?”

  Shit. Of course. Urgh. “Let’s go find some nasty supes to beat up.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “Can you drop me at Luther’s first?” Tris asked.

  Mai’s phone rang.

  “Sure.” I pulled on my boots. “You meeting up with Glory?”

  “She wants help choosing an outfit for the Christmas party,” Tris said wistfully.

  “Party?”

  Tris’s eyes lit up. “The free goyles have a party in the Night market every year. Glory says it’s the event of the year. She promised to take lots of photos.”

  A gargoyle get-together? “Wait, are you not invited?”

  Tris blinked up at me. “Oh, yes. Glory asked me to come, but I can’t go.”

  “Why not? You got other plans?”

  “I didn’t … I’m not free.”

  We’d been together for so long, and she’d become a part of my life, almost an extension of myself, part of the furniture. It had never crossed my mind that she might feel obliged to be here. Even though we were technically bound, I’d never thought of her as a possession. It was obvious now, though, that she did.

  Well, this would not do. Not one bit. “Do you want to be my companion?”

  “Of course I do!” She bristled.

  “And if the binding between us was broken, would you want to leave and be somewhere else?”

  “Of course not. I love you.”

  “Then you’re here of your free will. You hear me. You’re free to do whatever the fuck you want, as long as you’re back here for bedtime.” I smiled sheepishly.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Did something happen? Did you wake up early again? Did you fall asleep without me?”

  “All of the above, but it’s fine. I’m fine. Go find yourself an outfit, and tell Glory you’ll be at that party.”

  “Kat,” Mai said, ending her call. “That was Poppy; she needs to see us at the med lab at Scorchwood General. She says there’s something we need to see.”

  I nodded. “Okay, let’s let the guys know we’re headed out.”

  * * *

  Scorchwood General was the only hospital for miles, and unbeknownst to the human public, it served both humans and supernaturals. The administration had once been Nightwatch, and many of the doctors and nurses were feyblood. There was a whole wing of the hospital hidden from human eyes. But that wasn’t where Poppy worked. Our contact worked with the humans in the main hospital.

  Mai led the way through the sterile corridors and up a flight of stairs onto the research level.

  “The med lab is at the bottom of this corridor,” Mai said.

  Poppy’s bright purple hair was visible through the plexiglass as we approached. She looked up as if sensing our arrival and hurried to let us in. A white mask covered her nose and mouth, but her jaw was moving methodically as she chewed gum. Her eyes were huge behind her safety goggles.

  “Hey, guys, thanks for coming so quickly.” She ushered us in and pulled down her mask.

  Damn, she was small. Four foot nothing, but to the humans, she looked taller. They didn’t even notice the stepping stool she had to carry around with her to reach the lab equipment.

  “I found something weird.” She hopped up onto her stool and adjusted the microscope she’d been looking into. “Super-duper weird and creepy. Wanna see?”

  “Sure.” Mai leaned in to have a look. “Whoa. What the fuck is that?”

  “You want to see?” Poppy asked me, hopping from one foot to the other.

  Typical pixie. Perky, filled with energy, and over the top when it came to her outfits. The neon green lapel peeking out from under her white lab coat said it all. At least she wasn’t one of the carnivorous breeds with razor teeth.

  “Kat, Kat, Kat,” Poppy said.

  “What?”

  “You want to see?”

  Firstly, my chem and bio skills were limited, so I’d have no idea what it was I was seeing, and secondly, I hated microscopes ever since Vanessa Pratt had smashed me over the head with one in primary school. But a sulking pixie was a useless pixie, and Poppy’s bottom lip was already beginning to tremble. How the fuck had she gotten this job?

  I fixed a smile on my face. “Oh, my God, yes, please!” I shoved Mai. “Out of the way. My turn.”

  My sarcasm was lost on Poppy, who clapped her hands in delight, but Mai bit back a smile.

  Things were floating on the slide. Blood cells. Human ones. I recognized those. Nicely oxygenated. But there was something else too. Crescent-shaped cells that were locked onto the blood cells as if giving them a hug.

  “Poppy, what am I seeing?”

  “Infected human blood.”

  “And what is it infected with?”

  “It’s a viral toxin, one I haven’t seen for a very long time. Only one kind of creature secretes this and infects its victims with a scratch. I mean, just a tiny, itty-bitty scratch is all it takes, but the thing, the ingenious thing, is that the effects vary depending on the victim.”

  I looked up from the microscope. Sometimes Poppy needed to be taken by the hand and brought back on track. “And what kind of creature would that be?”

  “Oh, yes.” She chewed her gum furiously for a second. “A harpy.”

  Mai’s gaze snapped to mine.

  “Poppy, whose blood is this?”

  She consulted a chart. “This particular sample belongs to Mr. Chadwick, but the other five tested the same.”

  “Other five?” Mai asked.

  “Yes, the humans brought in two days ago. The doctors are flummoxed. The humans are in REM, not a coma, but nothing will wake them up. I was asked to do some bloodwork, and I found this. The toxin is keeping them asleep.”

  These humans had to be connected to the trio of harpies we’d run into at Cryptic Gods.

  The shimmer man says hi.

  This was connected to him. It had to be. “Can we see the patients?”

  Poppy nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. Come with me.”

  * * *

  Hospitals were usually the worst place if you wanted to avoid spirits. Scorchwood General, not so much. I guess when given the choice of haunting the place you died and chilling in a ghost bar, it was no surprise the specter level was low. I spotted one on the way past the intensive care unit. Recently dead if the beep of the emergency alarms and the look of confusion on the specter’s face were anything to go by.

  The spirit was running around, attempting to shake the nurses at the reception desk. Usually, I’d walk on by, but living in Scorchwood had given me a different level of appreciation for the dead.

  I caught the ghost’s eye when she glanced our way and jerked my head in a come-here gesture.

  Mai paused. “Spirit?”

  “Yeah, you go ahead. I’ll be two minutes.”

  The ghost floated over. “Can you help me? Can you put me back? I have to go back.”

  She floated across the corridor toward a door to the right. I followed and peered in through the plexiglass. Two nurses fiddled with the equipment, removing pipes from the dead woman’s throat while a middle-aged man stood at the bottom of the bed crying.

  It looked like she’d just been taken off life support.

  “I need to go back,” she said softly. “How will he look after the kids without me. Merry needs me to sing her to sleep, and Joshua needs me to check under the bed for monsters. Oh, God, who’ll cook them healthy, nutritious meals?”

  A pang of sorry pinched my chest. “I’m sorry, hon. There’s no going back.”

  “I can go home. Watch over them.”

  I stifled a weary sigh at the obvious train of thought. “You could. But do you really want to haunt your family? They won’t see you. They’ll just feel the cold and the sensation of being watched. Is that what you want?”

  She turned to me, blinking in surprise as she absorbed the fact that if she followed them, she’d forever be th
e invisible presence in their lives.

  Her mouth trembled. “I’d be the monster under the bed. I’m a ghost.”

  “Yeah, hon, you are.”

  She looked around the corridor. “There was no bright light.”

  I shrugged. “Things after death get a little fuzzy. You see, Death seems to be on an extended sabbatical; in other words, we have no clue where he is, but you’re not alone. There’s a place where you can be with other spirits. Have a drink, chill until a reaper decides to swing this way, and do whatever it is they need to do for you to move on.”

  “Reaper?”

  “Yeah, guides of the dead. Not too many left in the business, though, so you might have a bit of a wait.”

  Her attention was back on the room, back on her husband.

  “The bar is called Good Spirits. It’s in the center of town not too far from Cryptic Gods, the nightclub.”

  She nodded. “Hmmm.”

  I was losing her. If she stayed, she’d slip and probably follow her husband home. Her attachment to her family would trap her in her house, and after some time of being unheard and unseen, she’d become a lost, angry spirit. A poltergeist.

  This was my only shot at preventing that. “What’s your name?”

  “Huh?” She looked at me.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lisa. Lisa Coleman.”

  “Okay, Lisa Coleman. You sound like a wonderful wife and mother who wants what’s best for her family. You are no longer what is best. Do you understand me?”

  She took a shuddering breath and backed away from the door.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Lisa.”

  A sob broke from her throat as she nodded. “I understand. I have to … have to …” She turned and walked away, fading into nothing.

  The nurse at the reception desk was staring at me curiously.

  I tapped my ear. “Bluetooth.”

  Shit, time to make a quick getaway before they locked me up in the psych ward.

  * * *

  Five sleeping humans were visible through the glass of the hospital unit. A precaution because the hospital had no clue if the viral toxin was infectious or not, but still.

  “I’m sorry, but this is as close as you get,” Poppy said. “Hospital protocol. Only the doctors and nurses treating them are allowed in. Which reminds me I need to tell them the viral toxin isn’t airborne.”

  “What else will you tell them?” Mai asked. “What if they ask what it is?”

  “I’ll tell them I’m working on it. I’ve already sent a memo to administration; they’ll deal with whatever cover story we need. The reason I called you guys in is because the attack was a supernatural one.”

  “There were three harpies in town,” Mai said. “But they’re gone.”

  Poppy shrugged. “Well, then we should be good. I’ll just need to create an antidote for these humans, and we’ll be good to go.” She grinned. “I’ll be right back.”

  Poppy could cure these humans, which was great, but it didn’t explain why the harpies had infected them in the first place. It had to be something to do with the shimmer man. These humans were trapped in REM. Dream sleep.

  Dreaming. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Kat, look!” Mai pointed at the man closest to the glass. “His forehead.”

  Red lines bloomed on his forehead, connecting into words. My pulse hammered hard in my throat as the message formed.

  TICK TOCK

  A vise closed around my ribs, squeezing, crushing. It was him. He was doing this. He was coming for me.

  “Kat. Kat, breathe.” Mai’s arm was around my shoulder. “Breathe, dammit.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath and pushed her away. “I’m good. I’m fine. We need to get out of here. We need to get Lark and Karishma back here. The shimmer man is coming, and we need to be ready to counter-attack.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Voicemail.

  Again.

  The lounge fire crackled as if it were mocking me. Urgh.

  This time, I did throw my phone across the room. Luckily for me, Tris caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Calm down,” she said.

  “No. I won’t calm down. Where the fuck is Karishma? She’s supposed to be helping. She could at least check her fucking voicemail.”

  Mai walked into the lounge. “I just spoke to Lark. He says he’d drive over to the Raj residence and see if he can get hold of Karishma.”

  “See?” Tris said. “Can you calm down now?”

  Emmett entered and handed me a blood bag. Feeding … yes, that would help. “Thank you.”

  He inclined his head and left the room.

  Bres and Jay were still out on patrol.

  “How long does it take from Lark’s place to the Raj residence?”

  “No idea,” Mai said. She glanced at her phone, gnawing on her bottom lip.

  “What is it? You’re worried about something.”

  “Kris hasn’t called or texted, and his phone keeps going to voicemail.”

  “Could his battery be dead?” Tris suggested.

  “He has a car charger, and he’s a stickler for making sure his phone is charged,” Mai said. “He should have checked in by now or been back.”

  “You think he’s in trouble?”

  Mai sighed. “I don’t know. I just … I have this bad feeling.”

  I’d known Kris for a few months, but Mai had known him for years. She knew how he operated. “Grab your coat, and let’s go.”

  “What?”

  “We take a drive to Reverie and see what he’s up to. Tris, hold the fort.”

  Tris gave me a mock salute.

  Mai looked torn. “I’m probably being silly.”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t hurt to follow your gut. Besides, if I have to sit around here twiddling my thumbs waiting for Karishma to call back, I’ll go fucking nuts.”

  Mai grabbed the keys to the van off the hook by the door, and we strode into the chilly night.

  * * *

  “I’m being a clingy girlfriend, aren’t I?” Mai said. “This is so not me.”

  The roads were empty at this time of night, and the world was an icy, forbidding landscape.

  A half-hour more and we’d be there.

  I checked my phone for the tenth time to make sure it was on loud. To check if I’d missed a text. Dammit, Karishma. I need you. Why couldn’t this be a simple kick-a-monster’s-ass situation? The weave and everything to do with it went over my head, but right now, it was our only hope of figuring out what the bastard man was up to.

  A car became visible up on the road ahead. It was pulled up on the side of the road, hazard lights on, facing us.

  “Shit, you think they need help?” Mai said.

  She slowed down as we got closer.

  Wait a fucking minute. “It’s one of ours. Mai … that’s Kris’s car.”

  Mai jerked the wheel to the left and then hit the brakes. We were out on the road in seconds, jogging up to the car. The driver’s side door was open, and the windshield was smashed. Something crunched beneath my feet.

  I looked down at the black and silver rectangle that had once been a mobile phone.

  “He’s not here.” Mai’s eyes were wide. “Kat, there’s blood.”

  I picked up the mangled phone. “I found his phone.”

  My stomach trembled, but I grit my teeth. “Okay, look for a trail.”

  I scanned the snow, which seemed to glow in the moonlight, and traced several sets of boot prints round to the front of the car. There were tire marks to my right that curved around the car then swerved left onto the side of the road. Large wheels indicating a big vehicle, probably a van. A van had cut him off. One of the sets of boot prints morphed to drag marks. Kris … Had his assailants knocked him unconscious and dragged him?

  And then nothing.

  He’d been loaded into a van and driven away.

  I jogged back to the car, where Mai was doing an internal examination.<
br />
  “Anything?”

  “Nothing outside, but I found this.” She held out a leather bracelet. The clasp was broken. “It’s not Kris’s.”

  “Pocket it. It could come in useful.” I headed back to our van.

  “What are we going to do?” Mai asked. “Someone has Kris.”

  “We’re going to pay Vick a visit.”

  * * *

  I got off the phone to Jay just as we drove into Reverie. “Jay’s going to call this into headquarters. They’ll send a forensics team.”

  Mai was sitting bolt upright in her seat, her knuckles white where she gripped the wheel.

  “You know where he lives? I’ve never been to his house,” she said.

  “Yeah, just head to the center of town, but take the road on the right before you hit the square.”

  Ten minutes later, we were knocking on Vick’s door.

  No answer.

  “Fuck this.” I headed around the side of the house to the nearest window. “Stand back.”

  Mai obliged.

  The sound of shattering glass echoed in the crisp winter night. I knocked out the jagged pieces with my leather-clad elbow, and we were in.

  “Vick!” Mai called out.

  “He’s not here. If he were, he would have come running when I broke his window.”

  I clomped through the dark lounge into the corridor and toward the kitchen. A pot of tea and two mugs sat on the table.

  Mai sniffed. “Something smells off.” She moved closer to the table, sniffing the air until her nose was practically in one of the cups. “This cup had valerian in it.”

  “The sedative?”

  “Slow-acting sedative, yes.” She picked up the cup and sniffed the handle. “Kris drank from this.”

  “Vick drugged Kris? Why would he do that? Oh, God. He’s in on it. Whatever it is. But he must have known Kris was driving. He could have killed him.”

  I wanted to hit something, preferably Vick. Where the fuck was he? Mai vanished back into the lounge and returned with a laptop.

  “Maybe there’s some clue on here.”

  She touched the trackpad, and the machine lit up. No password. Good.