A Ghost of a Chance: The Nightwatch book 1

by Cassidy, Debbie

  “And you won’t need to,” Kris said. “This is what we do. Unravel the mystery, nab the bad guys, and put the world to rights.”

  “Thank you.” I looked to Jay. “We should act while it’s light like Kris suggested. His plan is solid.”

  “No,” Henri said. “You need to sleep.”

  Tris looked sharply at him. “She can go one day without a full day’s sleep.”

  Henri’s jaw ticked, and he gave me a look, urging me to tell her the truth, but that was something I needed to do in private just in case she decided to bawl me out, which, let’s be realistic, she would.

  “I’ll be fine.” I gave Henri a don’t-push-it glare.

  He looked pissed but didn’t press the issue. Even if he had, my gut was screaming at me that I needed to be there with them and that if I didn’t, something awful would happen. I wouldn’t have listened to him.

  “Fine.” Jay nodded curtly. “Gear up. You leave at dawn.”

  “You’re not coming?” Kris asked. “Seriously? Not even for this?” His lip curled slightly in what could only be described as a look of derision.

  Was there bad blood between these two that I’d missed?

  Jay’s mouth tightened. “I don’t have to justify my decisions to you.”

  Okay, so there were issues here, that much was clear. Strange because on the surface they seemed like such a close-knit team. It looked like I still had a lot to learn about them, but now that my secret was out, maybe I could let down my guard and get to really know them.

  “It’s fine.” Mai shot Kris a shut-the-fuck-up look. “We’ve got this, and someone needs to hold down the fort anyway. Be on hand to dive into the books in case we run into trouble and need information.”

  She was trying to give Jay an out, but why?

  “We have the cute gargoyle,” Kris said.

  Tris simpered.

  “Tris will be incapacitated,” Henri pointed out. “If you know anything about cute gargoyles, then you should know that.”

  “Not if you drop me back to Wicked Imaginations?” Tris said.

  Jay pushed away from the mantel. “No time. It’s forty-five minutes till dawn. You won’t make it.”

  He was right. “I’ll get Tris settled.”

  I needed to tell her the truth about my sleeping, or lack thereof as the case may be, and what better time than before she turned to stone. This way, she wouldn’t have time to get pissed at me. Gosh, I was sneaky.

  Upstairs in the bedroom, she turned on me, her face a mask of concern. “What is it? What are you hiding from me?”

  “I haven’t been sleeping through the day.”

  “What?” She stared at me in horror. “How many hours and how long?”

  “I’m getting maybe four hours a day, and it’s been over a week.”

  “We have to get back to the headquarters and fix this. There must be something wrong with the weaving between us. Vinod will …” Her eyes flared as she made the connections.

  “Yes, my pretty, Vinod is dead, and Gramps has ordered radio silence.”

  “That’s why you didn’t tell me, isn’t it? Because there was nothing we could do immediately.” She tutted softly. “Oh, chickie.”

  “Pretty much. But we will fix this once the man in the hat has been stopped. I’m sure Gramps will be in touch in the next couple of days.”

  Then why didn’t I sound confident about that? Why was my stomach suddenly writhing like it was filled with snakes? From the look on her face, she was thinking similar thoughts. What if Gramps didn’t get in touch? What then? What if my secret was out to the council? What if Gramps had failed to hide it? Because there was no doubt in my mind that he had hidden me here for that purpose, and me, I’d just told three almost-strangers the truth.

  I had to hope that my trust wasn’t misplaced.

  Tris looked at the window. “The sun is coming up. Kat, please be care—”

  Her body turned to stone.

  I tucked her into bed before leaving. Hopefully, I’d be back before she woke, but my gut was still squirming, and this time it was with foreboding because my instincts were telling me we’d missed something, a connection, a piece of vital information. I just didn’t know what.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The farm spread out before us, silent and ominous even in the dawn light. Kris and Mai had strapped on their mini arsenals. Just in case.

  I had my trusty dagger and Henri, and the knowledge that right now, I was more human than preternatural. But we’d trained for this also. All Nightbloods had been forced to train during the day at the Academy. Self-defense was key just in case we got caught in a situation where we needed to protect ourselves during daylight hours. Still, I’d never had to put it into practice.

  “Stay with me,” Henri instructed. “Don’t be a hero.”

  “Hopefully, this will be a simple retrieval job,” Mai said reassuringly.

  Kris snorted. “We should be so lucky.”

  Usually, I’d use my supernatural senses to hear heartbeats or sniff out blood, but not today. Today, I was useless.

  Mai led with Kris close behind. We made our way quickly and silently past the farmhouse, keeping to the tree line. The warehouse came into view, set maybe a hundred feet behind the main house.

  “Keep to the shadows,” Mai instructed.

  And there were plenty of those in the early dawn light.

  “Now.” Kris made a break from cover, and one by one we followed, moving swiftly across the grass toward the warehouse. The barn provided cover, and a quick scope-out proved it to be empty. Next came a small outhouse and then the warehouse. It was a large two-story building with several windows high up, but none at the lower level. The huge double doors were shut, probably locked from inside.

  Kris padded forward on the balls of his feet and tried the door. It swung open easily. He threw a frown over his shoulder before peering in. He nodded and gestured us to follow before slipping inside.

  Mai ducked in after him, and then I followed into the gloom. The dawn light was high up, lancing in through the windows but not making it to the lower levels of the building, so shadows were long and deep between the machinery that dotted the warehouse floor. A balcony ran along the upper floor shrouded in a haze of dust motes. There were no partitions. No rooms to search, no barriers. It was one huge open-plan space, and it was empty.

  “Looks like your intel was off,” Kris drawled.

  Shit. “She said the warehouse. She said full moon. Maybe we have to come back tonight?”

  “You think the humans are elsewhere and will be moved here tonight?” Kris asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I was at a loss. We searched the lower floor and the second floor, looking for trap doors and hidden nooks, but nothing.

  My gut was twinging, alarm bells going off in my head; we were missing something, but what?

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kris said. “We’ll swing by tonight just to be on the safe side. But we should get some rest.”

  I nodded. “You guys head out. Henri and I will follow. I just … I just want to look around a little more.”

  “We’ve searched the whole building,” Mai said softly. She looked upset, damn, she’d probably been hoping to see Lark.

  “I know. I’ll just do another sweep, look for clues that maybe someone was here? I mean, they could have cleared out. Maybe the shadow man found out what the ghost told me and moved the humans?”

  Kris yawned. “Fine, we’ll do another sweep.”

  “No, you get back and sleep. I can go without sleep better than you two, and Henri doesn’t need sleep. At least two out of four of us should be in top form for tonight.”

  Mai nodded. “Okay, see you back at base.”

  They headed off, and I turned to Henri. “Okay, let’s look for clues.”

  * * *

  A half-hour later and we’d come up empty.

  “The place is clean,” Henri confirmed.

  But my gut w
as saying otherwise. There was something here. Something that my preternatural senses, even though dulled, were telling me to look for.

  Damn it. Fuck the sun and its muting effects.

  I pulled my hair out of its tie, and then scraped it back up into a neater ponytail. “I can’t help but feel we’re missing something. I can feel it. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  Henri stepped up to me and rested his hands on my shoulders. “Then we look again.” He gave me a reassuring squeeze.

  I lifted my chin to lock gazes with him. His expression was determined, but his eyes were soft as they gazed into mine. It was a look I’d caught once or twice but one that he’d always masked, but now it shone down on me unabashed, and my breath snagged in my throat.

  A tangle of emotions formed in my chest.

  But then he blinked, and there was nothing but steel in those eyes. “I trust your instincts, muted or not.” His hands slipped from my shoulders, and his tone was suddenly all business. “I’ll check the balcony again.”

  A whisper of a breeze brushed my forehead. I looked back at the partially open door. Strange it was still out there today. No breeze. Sod this. What was I doing? We were wasting time when we could be researching the ritual some more. Maybe head to Luther’s bookstore and continue where Tris left off?

  “We should go.” I turned to Henri to find him frozen in place.

  His eyes stared straight ahead blankly, and his mouth was pressed in a thin line.

  “Henri?”

  “Oh, he can’t hear you.” The reaper stepped out from behind my golem. “Henri is indisposed right now.”

  My heart lurched in fear. “What did you do to him?”

  “I just … said the word.” His lids peeled back a little before dropping back down.

  Ice pricked at my skin. “The word? What are you talking about?”

  He made an oops face. “You know, the word that controls your mammoth construct. He won’t wake now. Not until I tell him to.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I get around.”

  “Because you’re a reaper, or because you’re Lark, a Nightwatch weaver?”

  He blinked at me in surprise. “Aw, now you’ve gone and ruined my big reveal.” He waved a hand. “Fine, I wasn’t planning a big reveal. I don’t care about the drama. What I care about is you. You, Kat, are very important to me.”

  I took a step back. “And why is that?”

  “Because you are the key ingredient to my special brew.” He waved a hand, and the world rippled.

  For a moment, I couldn’t see what the difference was. The reaper looked up, and I tracked his gaze. Fuck. Humans were tied to the balcony, twelve of them, unconscious, but from the gentle rise and fall of their chests, alive.

  My mind was whirring, trying to put together the pieces, trying to figure out what this was all about. I needed to stall, I needed to get away because if he needed me, then I needed to be elsewhere. But Henri.

  Fuck, how could I leave Henri?

  Think.

  Stall.

  “You never answered my earlier questions. Are you the reaper or are you Lark?”

  His lip curled. “I’m no reaper, Kat, and I’m not Lark, although his body has been very useful to me. It got me into the Nightwatch headquarters. Did you know that no one I came across realized he was dead? It wasn’t hard to coerce the information I needed out of the head weaver. It was even easier to place whispers about your heritage in the right ears.”

  “You killed Vinod?”

  “It wasn’t intentional, but the torture got out of hand. I wish I could say it was quick.” His smile said anything but.

  He was the reason Gramps had been forced to send me here. The death of Vinod, the whispers, they must have happened at the same time Gramps sent me the telegram to haul ass to Scorchwood.

  “You wanted me here …” My scalp crawled, and my skin broke out in gooseflesh.

  “Yes, I wanted you here. This is the perfect place for the ritual, the only place in the world with enough latent power to tap into. It’s been a favored haunt of mine for some time. A lot of legwork has gone into this plan. The spirits have been particularly helpful, lending me the power needed to affect this plane. And Lark … He was a delightful surprise.”

  “You were the monster they were chasing three months ago?”

  He grinned. “I may have had something to do with it.” He examined his nails, feigning nonchalance.

  He was arrogant and liked the sound of his own voice. He was fallible, but he was also something unknown. A monster we didn’t have detailed reports on. “You’re him, aren’t you? That man in the hat. What do you want with me?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I wear a hat once, and I get labeled. Of all the names humanity has given me, that one is my least favorite.”

  “So, what do I call you?”

  “Why, Kat, I’m wounded. Have you forgotten already?”

  The foreboding in my chest bloomed. “What are you talking about?”

  “You always called me the shimmer man.”

  Shimmer man.

  Shimmer man.

  The name was a lance shooting through my brain, and then my arm was on fire. I grasped the spot where my birthmark lay against my skin, and he smiled.

  “You remember. It’s deep down inside you, but you remember. And I made sure I would be able to find you. I marked you, Kat. Do you remember? Never mind. Soon we’ll be together again just the way it should be. You, Kat, were made for me. My anchor and my bridge.” He tapped his chin. “In a way, I’m responsible for your very existence.”

  My breath caught. Was he …

  He laughed. “Oh, petal. I am most certainly not your father. If I was, then the thoughts going through my mind would be criminal.”

  My chest tightened, and foreboding morphed into terror and a screaming need to get away from this place, from him, because my mind was trembling with the threat of fracture, a fracture I consciously knew I didn’t want.

  “Soon, Kat. Soon when you sleep, we’ll be together. The weave keeping you from coming to me is weakening, and in a few hours, with the help of these fine human souls, we’ll break it. Then, when you sleep, you’ll be mine.”

  He walked toward me. I backed up. The door slammed shut, and then I was pressed up against it with Lark’s body flush against mine. His angular face peered down at me, but something ancient looked at me from those eyes.

  “Oh, Kitty Kat, how I’ve missed you.”

  His mouth descended on mine, cinnamon and cloves, and the world went dark.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was nothing but inky blackness, but here and there was a spider web of silver fractures. This was my mind, this was the barrier, this was my protection, and the shimmer man, oh, God, this shimmer man was trying to break it. Why? Because he knew me because … Because we knew each other, except there was no conscious recollection, only a crawling awareness of the truth. Yes, we were acquainted. Yes. Yes, the place beyond the darkness was calling to me, and yes, part of me wanted to succumb.

  Laughter echoed in my head, smooth and melodious and achingly familiar. It opened a pit inside me and tore at my insides with claws.

  No. No, I didn’t want to know. No, I needed to wake up. I needed to wake up now!

  My body jerked upright, eyes snapping open to silvery light, shadows, and shapes. The world came into focus around me. Power rushed through me, filling my veins. It was night time. I was back.

  “Ah, sleeping beauty awakens, and just in time.”

  “I’m going to so kick your ass.” I made to stand, but my body was immobile.

  “The benefit of taking a weaver’s body is the ability to weave that comes with it. Okay, so I’m still mastering the intricacies, but immobilizing incantations are pretty simple.” He walked into view and then crouched in front of me, studying me almost hungrily. “The moon is almost at its apex, and then we can begin.”

  There were whimpers and sobs abo
ve me.

  He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately, the humans have to be awake for this part. You know, when I rip their hearts from their bodies, that is.”

  “You don’t have to do this.” Okay, so I was pretty sure he did if he wanted to get the desired result, but it seemed like the right thing to say in the circumstances.

  He arched his brow. “You’re smarter than that, Kitty Kat.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Why? You used to like it.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like it now.”

  “Ooh, so fiery. But not smart enough to smell a trap. Little Constance was the perfect lure.”

  The ghost? Was he talking about the ghost he had ripped? “You had her ripped.”

  He shrugged. “It had the desired effect, although I wasn’t expecting for you to follow her into the Shade. Now that was a surprise. Your abilities are far beyond what I could have hoped for. You are truly perfect.”

  “Aw, shucks, I’m flattered. Now let me go, and I can show you just how flattered I am.”

  He laughed low and deep. “We are going to have so much fun.” He glanced up at the windows. “Just a few more minutes.”

  Oh, God. Where were the others? Hadn’t they looked for me? Shit, they were probably just waking up. They probably thought I was still sleeping. By the time they realized something was wrong, it would be too late. I had to find a way out of this. He’d used an immobilize spell. Think, Kat, think. What had they taught us in Defense Against Rogue Weaving? The basic get-out-of-spell tricks. Even though only weavers could use magic, supernaturals tapped into it naturally just by existing. We were slaves to it, but that meant we could, on occasion, pinch and tweak and disrupt the more basic spells. Like immobilize. To do so, I needed to focus on the air around me. The spell would be woven into it and invisible to my eyes, but I could feel it. I just needed to concentrate. Oh, God. Yes, there it was. A thread … I just needed to—

  “Not long now, Kat.”

  My hands behind my back stopped moving. I needed to stall. “How did you get the riders on board?”