by Elsa Jade
Her claws aim at my face, to slap, to strangle, to sever the threads binding me to a life I’d fled. Her mouth stretches impossibly wide, her jaw unhinging to reveal row after row of serrated needle teeth spiraling straight down her black throat.
For a timeless instant, I stare into that void. What she is? A witch? A vampire feeding on the lives we hadn’t finished living? A greedy fallen angel who stole these lost souls instead of ushering them into the light? A thieving monster, without a doubt.
But how much worse was I, who’d had what she wanted and yet didn’t think the sweetness was worth the scars?
I catch her wrists, forcing her to stop. Her black eyes widen as if she hadn’t really bothered looking at me before or wondered what kind of wandering soul she’d snagged this time. She sees me now, though.
And I’m not sure which of us is more shocked.
I am holding her.
Which means I’m not dead. I’m not a ghost who can’t touch or be touched. Somehow I stumbled into this house of nothing, but as Jewel had warned, I’m not like the others.
I’m not dead.
Bianca tries to wrench away, but I tighten my grip on her wrists. “It’s over,” I tell her. My voice trembles, but my bare toes curl on the paver stones, holding me steady. “They aren’t yours to keep. Not anymore.”
As if to prove my words, more souls are streaming from the hacienda’s windows to find their emptied shells and then flickering upward in dancing flames.
“They’ll be lost without me,” she snarls. “They’re nothing but shadows.”
From the top of my used-to-be-dyed-black head to the soles of my missing boots, I resent her derision. “What better than shadows to point the way to the light?”
“Their light is mine!” She screams and darts her fanged mouth at me, impossibly quick.
I stumble back. Wyatt said she might be weakened, but I’ve never had to fight off a witch before. Actually, it’s embarrassing to admit, but for all my tough-girl ways, I’ve never fought anyone. Except myself, of course.
My heart is pounding with adrenalin—big, painful thuds that shudder in my chest—and I let her go rather than be bitten. Though my distraction is giving the ghosts time to escape, I don’t know what else to do. But I know I want to live.
Bianca darts at me again. Her flowing skirt seems to flap like leathery wings.
I dodge, spinning away from the pool.
Out of nowhere, Wyatt looms up behind her, still pale but ferocious as the whitecaps of an oncoming tsunami. “You want the light, mistress? Then you can fight for it, same as the rest of us.”
She whirls to lunge at him, mindless in her hunger and reaching for the last flickering vestiges of him. He is almost translucent; it’s impossible he could stop her from draining him entirely. But he stands unflinching, except for the slight incline of his head, his hazy blue gaze locked on mine.
From behind, I grab her white gown and her long pale hair. Her shrieks pierce my ears. Under my fingers, something slimy and bristly squirms, but I refuse to let go.
Until I fling her toward the pool.
“Surf’s up,” Wyatt murmurs.
Like the mosh pit at a heavy metal concert, the gray mist of dissolved ghosts raises a thousand fingers to catch her. Passing her farther in, it seems almost gentle. Until it drags her down.
She claws for the edge of the pool, and this time her screams are not rage, but terror.
The vapors close over her head, pouring into the black pits of her eyes. The golden light that belonged to these ghosts is gone forever, and now the shadows she left with no place to go have found an emptiness they can call home.
When eddies of scarlet stain the mist, I finally look away.
To Wish Impossible Things
The last of the freed souls rise, untroubled by the mayhem here in Las Ombras del Sol, and their glow lightens Wyatt’s hair until my eyes ache. I blink hard and this time the tears trickle down my cheeks.
“Hey.” He reaches out to caress my cheek, hesitates, then I feel his shimmering touch, like floating in the Pacific, warm and soft and uplifting. Wonder makes his eyes brighter than his hair. “I can feel you. And it feels… right.”
“I’m not a ghost.” Saying the words, another matched set of tears course down.
“I can’t even start to tell you how happy that makes me.” His voice thrums with sincerity. Of course it would. My Golden Boy. He saved me, from Bianca’s teeth and from my own darkness.
He is so luminous I have to glance away. But when I blink through the tears, the flickering remains, and I turn to track the new radiance. “Oh no, the house is burning! Some of the broken lanterns must’ve had candles after all.”
The bell tower is filled with gold and purest white and a hint of bloody red.
“It’s not burning.” Wyatt stands close behind me. I can tell by the shimmery feel, alluring as the touch of summer on my skin. “Look. The sun is rising. Finally.”
This place steeped in everlasting night is seeing its first dawn, and I feel the wonder slowly flooding into me. “But it can’t…” Obviously I’m wrong, as I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.
With ghostly hands, he turns me to face him again. “It is, because of you. The girl who walked in her own shadows brought the morning too.”
Knowing the incandescence of him is only reflected daybreak should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. It makes him look alive. And reminds me he’s not.
He thumbs away more of my tears and my pulse quickens at his touch. “Good thing you aren’t wearing eyeliner right now.”
“Jewel knew I wasn’t one of you. I’m… I’m still alive.” Even though for awhile I think I’d forgotten what that meant. “When she took care of me after I passed out, she must have figured it out.”
“And she sacrificed herself to Bianca so I would intervene.”
“So then I would come after you,” I finish. “But she’s free now.”
He tilts his head to smile down at me. “Why did you come after me, goth girl?”
I open my mouth to tell him off, but… instead I kiss him.
It’s awkward, since he’s a ghost and mostly incorporeal and I’m alive. But first kisses are always awkward.
Still, I make the most of it, because from now on, I’m always going to find the sweetness through the stings. I spent so long staring into the shadows, I’d never looked up to see what was beyond. But now I’ve seen, and I won’t forget. I close my eyes so I can concentrate of the subtle sensations. I feather my fingers through his hair and catch a faint tang of ocean wind as I breathe my life, my light, my love, into his mouth.
When I sink back to my heels and look up, there’s a color to his skin that has nothing to do with the rising sun. Who knew ghosts could blush?
He touches the tip of his tongue to that lush upper lip. “Ah. That’s why you came after me.”
His kiss rouses something in me that is too much like the hunger I saw in Bianca. I shudder; I could’ve been like her, trying to steal life and love rather than risk my own. So I remind him. “You’re free too.”
“I know.” He tilts his head in the other direction, sending the shock of hair sliding into his eyes. “Do you hear that?”
“Choirs of angels summoning you to heaven?” I ask miserably.
“No. Sounds like waves.”
I hear it then, a thrumming hush like a pulse. “Where is this place, really? What do we do next?”
“I don’t know, Alma. But I know I’m with you.”
I stare at him. My heart aches with a fragile hope. I always preferred leather and steel because this feeling is just so delicate it terrifies me. “Don’t you want…” I swallow around the lump in my throat, but I have to say it or I’m no better than Bianca. “Do you want to go with the others?”
He meets my gaze dead on, unfaltering. “I want to be with you.”
The sun rises into the frame of the bell tower and floods across the courtyard. The pool glistens blue as
a sapphire under the open sky. Reflected sparkles glitter on the tips of the yuccas like diamonds.
But I still see darkness in the corners. I can live with that, though. I always have. Aba was right to say the sweetness of life is worth the stings. The one can’t exist without the other.
“Not all the shadows have moved on,” Wyatt says. “When Bianca consumed the souls entirely, the ghosts couldn’t leave with the others. They still need a place to be.”
“This is their place,” I say. “And ours.” I touch his lip and smile at the tingle in my fingertip. “I’d love having a golden boy to brighten my nights.” I turn to face the sun. “Las ombras have a new mistress now.”
About the Author
Elsa Jade, author of sexy shapeshifting romances, also writes paranormal romance, urban fantasy romance, and science fiction romance as Jessa Slade and sexy contemporary romance as Jenna Dales. In all her incarnations, she believes in the transformational power of love and is thrilled to share her stories with like-minded readers.
More from Elsa Jade
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Intergalactic Dating Agency: Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides
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