by Jenn Burke
Yeah, they washed stuff off in here all right.
You couldn’t be close to a family of witches for generations without picking up a bit about their craft, even if I’d tried to keep the paranormal at arm’s length. Their biggest rule was that whatever you put out into the world—good or bad—you got back, and Lexi and her family took it very seriously. The formal spells I’d observed used a lot of the same trappings I saw here, but they always felt welcoming. In contrast, this room wasn’t giving off a cozy fuzzy feeling. The presence of the pentagram didn’t mean it was good magic that happened here—it was merely a tool to focus magic and intent.
But the fact that the room was tiled, for easy clean-up, I assumed? Not a good sign.
Magic that required sacrifices—as Lexi had said, that shit was the darkest of the dark, and no one would admit to practicing it.
But was it truly possible that I was standing in a sacrificial room? Was it possible that Shawn Cartwright—or someone in his family—was a practicing dark witch?
As the thoughts spun in my brain, I realized something kept drawing my attention to the other side of the room. I moved closer, careful not to step on the pentagram etched into the floor. On one of the shelves, there was a...void. I wasn’t sure how else to describe it. It was as though something had imprinted itself on the otherplane but was no longer there in the living plane. I could almost make out what it had looked like—its shape and size. The edges were blurry and indistinct, as though I was seeing a visual echo of an object.
What the hell?
I took another step closer—
And a hand fastened around my neck.
“I see you, little ghost.” The voice was deep, dark, and seemed to fill the otherplane. I grabbed the hand squeezing my throat—only to realize that whatever had grabbed me wasn’t on the otherplane. I couldn’t touch the hand, as though it was the ghost instead of me.
The person—no, the creature—had a form like I’d never seen. Darker even than a vampire’s, and without the jagged edges, it was human-shaped, but at the same time monstrous and enormous, as though it were expanding the longer I looked at it. But what I truly couldn’t comprehend was that it was reaching through the planes.
Hudson had reached into the otherplane and dragged me out of it, like a bear slapping a fish out of the water. This? Restraining me on the otherplane while existing in the living plane?
Not possible. Not fucking possible.
“Little ghost, how have you managed to elude me? How did you escape my trap?” The hand on my neck increased its pressure for an instant. “Answer me.”
“I don’t know,” I rasped.
“Nor do I,” it admitted. “You are an exquisite creature, aren’t you?”
I tried to dig my fingernails into the hand that held me, but they slid through without impact. “Let me fucking go!”
“Now that I’ve finally caught you? Not a chance.” It chuckled, the noise harsh and rasping against my ears. “It will hurt when I drag you back into the living plane. Go ahead and scream—I promise no one will hear you.”
“The cops—”
“Are busy with the present I left them upstairs. I decided to remain here on the off chance you would appear, as you have with every other scene.” The creature’s thumb stroked the skin under my ear, but I still couldn’t latch my fingers on to it. Goddamn it. “And what is your interest here, hmm, little ghost? Or should I call you little thief?”
My lungs were burning. My neck too. If this creature—whatever it was—managed to kill me in my ghost form, did that mean I would truly die? For real?
“No answer? It doesn’t matter. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”
It started pulling me into the living plane. And it was right—it hurt. I’d never been forced between the planes, with the exception of Hudson grabbing me—but that had been quick, and I’d already been in pain, so maybe that’s why I didn’t feel this sort of agony. Moving back and forth had always been under my control, by my choice. Either plane had always welcomed me. Now it felt like the living plane was rejecting my presence. Or maybe it was rejecting the creature who had me at its mercy, and I was caught up in that.
I had to do something now, before the pain rendered me senseless. I couldn’t break free of the thing’s hold—it was stupidly strong, stronger even than Evan had been after drinking my blood—and I couldn’t dig my metaphorical heels in to stay in the otherplane.
That left one option.
I tried to relax and called to mind thoughts of Hudson. How he’d looked sitting on the chair with a beer, complaining about his sore feet. His grunts as we’d fooled around for the first time in thirty-three years. His smoky cedar scent, the rasp of his chest hair on my skin, his crooked smile, his wider, special smile that crinkled the corners of his not-quite-the-same-but-still-wonderful eyes.
I exhaled. I sensed movement around me, a roar of frustration—
But I couldn’t remember inhaling again.
Chapter Nineteen
“Wes! Goddamn it, Wesley! Breathe!”
I sucked in a huge gasp of air, enough to make me start coughing, and opened my eyes. I barely focused on Hudson kneeling beside me, his brown eyes turned golden and his fangs down, before my eyes slid shut again.
I was safe.
* * *
The next time I woke, it was with a familiar figure in bed beside me. Not Hudson—Lexi. I recognized the scent of coconut oil that was always present when she wore her microbraids. The memories of how we’d ended up cuddling in bed again were fuzzy—in fact, I was fuzzy. Like my brain didn’t want to work and my body wasn’t keen on the idea, either. I didn’t have a hangover, but I felt...slow.
I was about to tuck my nose into Lexi’s neck and go back to sleep when I spotted Hudson in a chair in the corner. What the hell was he doing in my bedroom?
Wait—I didn’t have a chair in my bedroom.
“Hud?” I said—or tried to. My voice came out as little more than a breath and an unintelligible croak.
I might as well have shouted for the reaction I got from both Lexi and Hudson. In an instant, they were both awake, hovering, asking me questions on top of questions, enough to make me want to slip into the otherplane and hide.
Maybe my form flickered, because Hudson instantly shut up and pulled Lexi back too. “Stay with us,” he pleaded.
Lexi retrieved a glass of water from the nightstand and held it out to me. I sat up and accepted it, stunned that my hands were shaking even from that minute bit of exertion.
“What happened?” I whispered.
Lexi sat on the bed beside me while Hudson continued to hover next to it. She brushed a strand of hair from my forehead and glanced at Hudson. “We were hoping you could tell us.”
“I’m hurt?”
“Yeah.” Hudson’s voice was low and growly. His eyes were lighter than usual, dancing on the edge of turning yellow, though I didn’t know why. “You went to check out the newest crime scene, remember?”
Blood and glass in the sun... “I remember.”
Sort of. It was like viewing a movie. I felt detached, not only from my memories, but from the world. Except I knew I wasn’t in the otherplane, because I could see all the features of Lexi’s face—her intense hazel gaze, the slight frizziness of her microbraids. Same with Hudson—the lines around his eyes seemed to be deeper than before.
“Can you tell us what happened?”
My hands started shaking. Not the small trembles of before, but full-on shaking I couldn’t calm or control. Lexi rescued the glass and set it aside, while Hudson moved around to the other side of the bed, climbed in, and pulled me close.
“I’ve got you,” he rumbled. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Hudson apologizing twice in the span of a week? New record.
“I don’t—I don’t know—” A small, h
umorless, almost soundless chuckle escaped me. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Lexi pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Shock, trauma, exhaustion. You’ll be okay. You need rest, that’s all.”
“Close your eyes, Wes.” Hudson’s breath fanned my temple. “I’m right here.”
I did as he said, and let his warmth chase away the quivers.
I didn’t remember falling asleep.
* * *
I bolted upright in bed. “Hudson!”
As soon as his name left my lips, I couldn’t remember why I was calling out. It didn’t matter—he was there anyway, gently guiding me back to horizontal, holding me, murmuring softly. I couldn’t hear the words, not yet, but the tone of voice was all I needed. Soft, calm. Whatever had my heart pounding fast enough to fly from my chest, it wasn’t real. Hudson wouldn’t be so subdued if we were in danger.
“Okay? Okay, Wes? You with me?”
I clutched at his hands on my chest and nodded.
“Bad dream?”
It must have been, but the images in my head were gone like so much fog burned off by the sun. I relaxed back into Hudson’s arms. Part of me thought it should be weird that he was here and I was leaning on him as though it were 1984 again, but it wasn’t. It felt as natural as breathing.
“How long?” I asked, because I had a vague sense that more time had passed than it would seem on the surface. I remembered waking up a few times, and talking with Hudson and Lexi, drinking some water and broth, but the conversations were dreamlike things. This time, I felt more present. More aware.
“Two days.”
“Two—Holy shit.”
“Pretty much, yeah.” Hudson chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound, only fatigue. “You seem more coherent.”
“Have you—You haven’t been here the whole time, have you?”
Hudson cleared his throat. “Yeah. Had to be.”
I pushed away from him and spun around—as best I could in bed—to face him. “But—work!”
He shrugged, and if I wasn’t seeing things, his cheeks got a little rosy. “I had days I was owed, and, well, work isn’t everything. Kat’s the lead for the murders anyhow.”
I stared at him, shocked speechless.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“It’s...” I shook my head, unable to find the words. “What did you tell them?”
“The truth.” Before I could screech what? at him, Hudson continued. “That my boyfriend was very sick with the flu and he had no one else to look after him.”
Very deliberately, I lifted my arm and pinched the inside of my elbow.
“What’d you do that for?”
“I had to make sure I’m not dreaming. You taking time off work because your—your—”
“Boyfriend.”
“Your boyfriend is sick?” I squinted at him. “You can’t possibly be Hudson. You’re a pod alien.”
“Ha. Funny.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“But... I’m not—”
“No,” Hudson said on a ragged breath. “Maybe not. But it sounded better than ex-boyfriend. And—I couldn’t leave you alone. Not after I convinced you—” He swiped a hand over his face, shifted away from me and got out of bed. “C’mon. I’ll make you something to eat. Think you can handle a shower on your own?”
Oh, eating sounded good. Great, even. A shower sounded even better. My limbs were shaky, but not so much that I worried they wouldn’t hold me. “Yeah.”
“Have a shower, then. Join me in the kitchen when you’re ready.”
I made my way to the bathroom and felt validated when my knees held me up without too much protest. After a couple of days of lying in bed, I did not smell nice. Wrinkling my nose, I stripped out of my underwear and turned on the shower. The water pelting my skin felt amazing—comforting and cleansing all at once. With a sigh, I closed my eyes—
“I see you, little ghost.”
—and remembered.
* * *
I cupped my hands around my mug of coffee, needing the grounding warmth of the ceramic. Lexi and Evan occupied the other two seats at Hudson’s kitchen table, and Hudson leaned his butt against the counter as he sipped from his own mug of coffee. He was doing his best to give off a casual air, but I could see the lines of tension in his face. Lexi kept fiddling with her braids, a sure sign of agitation. And Evan just looked flat-out worried. He had no poker face.
“It held you in the otherplane?” Lexi said.
I nodded.
“It stood in the living plane, but reached into the otherplane, and held you there. By the neck.”
“Yes.”
Frown lines bisected Evan’s forehead and he rubbed his arms as though he was chilled by my words. “That’s fucked up.”
“What it is, is impossible,” Lexi said. “Sorry, but there’s no way—”
“Clearly there is, because it happened,” I said.
“You must be remembering wrong.”
“Hudson reached into the otherplane and yanked me out of it.”
“That’s different. That’s like—like—” Her gaze rose to the ceiling as she sought a metaphor. Or simile. I always got those two mixed up. “Like whipping your hand through a flame. You can do it if you have to, but you can’t sustain it without pain.”
Hudson tipped his mug in Lexi’s direction. “It’s true. Grabbing you out of the otherplane wasn’t fun.”
“But you did it,” I pointed out. “What’s to say that someone else hasn’t practiced and managed to find a way to reach into the otherplane for longer than a few seconds?”
“But why?” Lexi countered. “What would be the point? There’s nothing in the otherplane, except for the occasional spirit.”
“Maybe it comes back to that idea you had, that the anomaly at Cyril’s murder was a trap for ghosts in general and not me in particular.”
“No,” Hudson stated in a flat voice. “Whatever this...thing is, it seems pretty fucking fixated on you.”
He was right. The—the lust in the thing’s voice still resonated in my memories. It wanted me. It coveted me. I shuddered. “But it didn’t have the same shadow form as you, so it wasn’t Meredith’s murderer.”
Hudson arched a brow. “How accurate do you think your view of the living plane is from the otherplane?”
“Uh...” I glanced at Lexi for backup, but she gave me a shrug. “Pretty accurate?”
“You sure? Because you didn’t realize my shadow form matched the killer’s until Cyril’s place, right? And you’d seen it...what, three times before that?”
“That doesn’t count. Your shadow form was the same as a human’s until you vamped out.”
“My point stands. You thought you were seeing a human from the otherplane, but you weren’t. You weren’t seeing everything.” His voice softened. “Eyewitness accounts, even from people we trust, can’t be relied on.”
I swept a hand through my still-damp hair. “Fine.”
“Regardless,” Lexi cut in, “we have an unknown creature focused on Wes. One that’s able to hurt him even when he’s in the otherplane.”
My coffee definitely didn’t seem warm enough anymore. “Plus a secret room in Shawn Cartwright’s mansion with a missing arcane artifact.”
They all stared at me.
“Uh...” I bit my lower lip. “I mentioned that, right?”
“No,” Hudson growled.
I gave him an apologetic smile and shared the details about the hidden passage and tiled room. In return, he gave me a narrow-eyed glare as he moved into the other room to make a call—probably to give Kat the head’s-up. Yay for “anonymous” tips.
“How’d you know it was missing?” Lexi demanded, gesturing at me with her hands like, come on, give it to me.
>
“There was an echo on the otherplane of it. Vague shape—pointy and jagged.”
“What kind of vibe did it give off?”
“I don’t know. I barely had time to notice it before I got grabbed.”
“But...a room like that—it’s not normal for witches, right?” Evan’s voice was more than a little breathless. “Like, do they do sacrifices? For real?”
Hudson blew out a breath. “Witches have been known—”
“No,” Lexi snapped. “Don’t you dare call them witches. We don’t know—” She swallowed. “And even if they are doing magic, they’re not witches.”
“Because karma,” I said.
She pointed at me. “That. Exactly. Whatever we put into the world is what we get back, and that’s why we don’t use our magic for personal gain, and we don’t use it to harm anyone.”
Hudson held up his hands in surrender. “You’re right.”
She sighed. “But faux witches? That could be a thing. Let me do some digging.”
Hudson put his mug on the counter. “You feel up for a field trip, Wes?”
“He needs rest,” Lexi insisted.
I glared. “I’ve slept for days.”
“And you look like you could sleep for another week.”
I couldn’t mount a counterargument because, well, she wasn’t wrong.
“No danger, I promise. I was thinking, if there’s a secret room at Shawn’s...” Hudson waggled his brows.
“Maybe there’s a secret room at Meredith’s.” That could be what connected all of them—as ludicrous as it sounded. Could multiple members of Toronto’s elite be faux witches, as Lexi said, carrying out...stuff in their perfectly tiled and soundproof secret rooms?
They could be sex rooms. With the gear stowed away...somewhere. Yeah, let’s go with that. I liked that better than the alternative.
“Maybe,” Hudson said, “but I won’t be able to get us in. They’ve released the house to her ex-wife and I’m going to need something better than vague suspicions to disturb her again.”
