by Box Set
"Well that’s just awesome. I wonder if Death will let me scour hell for some more recruits." Rumors of our constant battles had spread, and finding more souls willing to fight with us was getting difficult. Death himself was trying to bargain with them, offering rides on his hell hounds or tea and biscuits at night when they returned to their cells. So far, it wasn’t helping much, but I held out hope.
"I wish we could contact some of the other Agents. I’d like to see if they’re having the same problem we are." I sat up so fast my head spun, and I had to try to hold my brain in my skull with both hands. "Ouch. Maybe we could ask Death if he would consider creating another Agent."
Elizabeth looked up sharply. "Are you going to quit?"
I shook my head, but gently this time. "No. No way. But if there was another Agent, with my strength and power, we’d have a much better chance of killing the sea witch."
"Your mother and aunt were both Agents and they did not succeed." Elizabeth relaxed back onto her fist as the sun’s rays shone through her, sparkling against her soul. It almost hurt my eyes to look at her, she was so bright.
I slumped back onto the grass. "Yeah, I guess. Maybe we could convince the souls in limbo to join us. But I can’t offer them freedom."
"They might join just for protection. Her demons are snatching up any of the souls they see—whether they’re yours or just trapped ghosts."
The sun felt like it was frying my eyes. I slowly rolled over and shoved myself to my feet. "I’ll get started early tonight. We’ll see if we can find some souls to recruit before the sun goes down and we have to fight."
Her eyes widened. "Your shoulder is wounded, Navi. You should have taken care of that as soon as the demons sank into the sea."
I glanced down. "Oh. Yeah, so it is. It will heal tonight. I won’t die from blood loss before then." I started slowly walking down the dirt road, swinging my shoes. "What are you going to do today?" I asked as she floated beside me.
"I will search for recruits. Maybe I could go to the other Agents. Gather information."
"That will take you clear across the world. You won’t be able to come back quickly if something were to happen. Unless you went through Death’s chambers."
She shook her head vehemently. "No, no. I’ll stay here. In case you have need of me."
I gave her a sympathetic smile. She was so brave. But facing Death alone, no matter how adorable he seemed to me, was something she just couldn’t do. And I didn’t blame her. "Maybe one day we will find someone to travel with you."
Chapter 41
Alec
The weirdest sound woke me—like a moan, but not a moan. I sat up, rubbing my eyes with my finally cast-free hand. The fingers were weak and sore and misshapen, but I didn't care. I had my damn hand back.
Another moan echoed through my room. "What the hell?" I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up, staggering into the living room. "Bryson?" I called. If he was in there with Navi while I was right through the wall, I'd kill him. A guy only had so much willpower, and I had reached my limits.
I pounded on his door but there was no response, and then the weird moan thing slithered through the living room, coming not from Bryson's room, but mine. Just to be sure, I pushed his door open and stuck my head inside. It was empty. No Bryson, no Navi.
"Alec."
I spun, but there was no one there. Without a doubt, though, it was Bryson's voice. Weak and barely audible, but definitely Bryson's. "Dude, you're not funny. Where the hell are you?"
"I'm right here, bro. I need your help."
I could hear him like he was standing in front of me, but I couldn't see him. Maybe my phone... I stalked back to my bedroom and grabbed it, checking to see if he was somehow on the other end, but it was off. I'd long since gone to turning it off at night so I'd stop waiting for Navi to text me and tell me Konstanz was wrong.
Because she never did.
"Alec, I'm right here. I need your help."
I spun in a circle, checked under the bed, and then went back to the living room and looked in every hidden space in the blasted apartment. He wasn't there. And as far as I could see, there were no wires or speakers. "This isn't funny, Bryson. I'm going back to bed. I have to work in two hours."
I went back to my room and snapped off the light. And suddenly, there in front of me, stood my roommate.
Except it wasn't my roommate. The Bryson that stood in front of me wasn't standing at all, he was hovering, and he was translucent. Like a... "Ghost?" I stumbled back, bellowing like a mad bull, and slammed into my door. "Bryson, what the f—?"
"I know! I know, Alec, but calm down. I need your help."
"You're a freaking ghost, Bryson!"
"I know." His head hung in defeat as he wafted two feet away. I tried to rationalize my way through this. I knew it wasn't a dream because I'd just impaled myself on my doorknob and it hurt. And I know I should have suspected tricks or... or something, but he was right in front of me and there was no damn way any tricks were involved.
My roommate was a ghost.
"Look, I need you to get Navi for me. She'll know what to do."
I stared stupidly. "What do you mean, she'll know what to do? You're dead!"
"No! I'm not dead!" He held his hands up toward me, completely see-through hands. "I'm still alive. My body is on the beach, and if you get me to a hospital, Navi will know how to fix me. But there's not much time. Hurry, Alec!"
I stared stupidly some more.
"Alec!" He rushed toward me, a blast of cold air preceding him and freezing my exposed skin.
"Dude!" I screeched. Like a girl. I'm not proud. "Back off!"
"Get your keys. We have to get my body. I feel it fading."
I swore. I hadn't even had time to process this, but I was shoving my feet into shoes and pulling on a shirt. Before I realized it, I was in my truck, driving like a madman down the freeway to the beach. And Bryson appeared on the seat next to me. "Explain. Now. Before I go check myself into a psychiatric hospital." It was official. Navi had finally caused me to lose my mind. Maybe I'd killed Bryson in a jealous rage and I just didn't remember? Was this guilt that made me completely lose all sense of anything?
He started talking really fast, like he realized I was about to drive myself straight to the psych ward. "Okay so Navi has been working a lot at night, right? And Konstanz was really worried, because she’s always gone and Konstanz can’t sleep when she’s gone. Navi kept saying work was really insane, that her parolees were losing these fights they were in and something big was coming. It... it wasn’t believable at all." I risked a glance over at him. Yeah, I'd been there. I knew how bad it hurt when she started going out every single night.
"She was really edgy. Really nervous. She freaking dropped out of school, Alec."
I was having a conversation with a ghost and all I could think about was Navi. "What? Why? What kind of trouble is she in?"
"Something you can't even comprehend."
That sounded awful and ominous. "What do you mean?"
"There. Turn up there."
"You can't even get to the beach from there, dude."
"There's a rock formation. My body is by the base."
I followed his instructions as far as the truck would go and jumped out. He was already racing down the beach, his translucent form catching the moonlight and shimmering like a rainbow. If the situation wasn't so bizarre and terrifying, I would laugh at how completely unmanly he looked right then. I might have even tried to take a picture for Navi. Real tough boyfriend you've got there—he's all shimmers and rainbows! Yeah, the fact that I was having this conversation with myself clearly showed how out of touch with reality I was.
But he stopped by the base of Devil's gate, a huge rock formation that faded out into the ocean. He paced around and threw up his hands and then dove onto the sand, and before I made it very far I could see Bryson's body laying motionless in the darkness. I slid to a stop next to him and fell on my knees. With
one shaking hand I dialed 911 while the other one took his pulse. "What happened, Bryson?" I asked hoarsely.
"Well, I followed her to see who she was seeing—"
The emergency dispatch answered right then and I jerked a hand up to silence him. "I need help. My friend is unconscious. He's still breathing, but his pulse is really slow."
"Where is your friend, sir? Can you tell me what happened?"
"I'm by the Devil's Gate. I think he must have fallen or... or something? I don't know. I was looking for him and I found him and he needs help—"
"We'll send someone right away, sir."
I dropped the phone. "They're on their way. Talk fast."
Bryson was watching his body with such a horrified expression that I finally had the sense to feel sorry for him. The whole experience must have been terrifying. "I followed her." His voice was numb now. "She's not what you think she is, Alec."
"So... so what? You caught her with some guy and he attacked you?"
"No." He shook his head slowly, almost like he was suddenly in some kind of trance. "No. She fights sea monsters, Alec. With a bunch of ghosts. Ghosts like me. She fights sea monsters and a sea monster came out of the water and attacked me and she didn't see me but she chased it and killed it. With an army of ghosts. She fights sea monsters."
I fell backward like I'd been punched. Or maybe whacked in the head with a two by four. Everything spun and nothing made sense. "What?"
Seriously. What else could I say?
"I tried to go to her house. To get her to help me. But her ghosts won't let me through. They said I was in limbo and that I was haunting her and they wouldn't let me through." His head suddenly snapped up, trance gone, and his milky eyes focused with a terrifying intensity on my face. "You have to help me, Alec. You have to tell Navi to fix this."
I could hear sirens in the distance, coming fast. "Why can't you just, like, hop back in your body and wake up? That's how it works on TV."
"This isn't TV, Alec! My girlfriend’s roommate is a sea monster fighter with an army of ghosts and I'm almost dead!" Bryson screamed. The air around him shook—like I could literally see it shattering away from him in waves. "Navi is the only one who can help me."
Funny. I'd had that same thought yesterday.
My mind wanted to grasp at something else he said in that sentence, but the flashing lights distracted me.
The ambulance roared past my truck and right up the beach, skidding to a stop in the sand not far from where I knelt. The next hour was a blur of red and blue lights and a thousand questions I couldn't answer and racing ambulances. And then wires and doctors and questions they couldn't answer—like why he wouldn't wake up and what had caused the weird injuries that looked like he'd been attacked by giant claws and then I was standing in a hospital room at six a.m., watching my roommate struggling to breathe while his ghost stood next to me, sobbing quietly.
"Please, Alec. Navi is the only one who can help me."
I ran a hand through my hair, noting absently that I needed a haircut. "Okay. I'll go talk to her. Just... just don't die, okay?"
"I'm coming with you."
"If you come with me, how will you not die?" I asked, exasperated. A nurse walked in to hear that last little bit and looked at me sympathetically with big brown eyes through black-rimmed glasses. Her black hair waved away from her face, and her badge said Jasmyn Stamper.
"He'll be okay, honey. We'll figure this out. Probably head trauma is all." She patted me on the arm as she passed by to check his vitals, her hands moving easily through a routine she'd obviously done at least thousand times.
Bryson stopped sobbing to watch her. "She's good. Tell them I don't want any other nurses. Just her."
I sank down in a chair and watched, wondering how, exactly, to do that. "Have you notified his next of kin?" she asked, glancing at me over her shoulder.
"Uh. No. I'll... I'll call his mom. I didn't think—" Holy crap what would I tell his mom?
"No! No, you will not call my mom. She'll have a heart attack." Bryson crossed his arms over his chest and stared me down, which was somewhat not effective when it had the substance of milk. I ignored him until she patted his hand (the physical hand, not the ghost hand) and left, telling me very sweetly to get some rest.
"Bryson," I said, my head in my hands, speaking through my fingers. "I don't even know how to process this."
"Well at least you have someone telling you what's going on. I watched it all while I tried not to die. It was crazy, Alec. She was there alone, and then she wasn't there, and then this thing came out of the water and right at me, and then she was there, but it was too late, and she had these swords and there were all these ghosts... and then I tried to go to her house, but the ghosts won't let me through."
"So you're telling me that Navi fights demons. My tiny, sweet little Navi."
She’s not yours anymore.
It was true. She wasn't. If she fought demons and had this whole secret life, maybe she never had been.
"Dude," Bryson said as he hovered right in front of me, face desperate and only half-there, "I need you to go to Navi's house. She'll know what to do." He spoke very slowly, like I might not be completely comprehending his words when he spoke at a normal speed.
He was right.
I called my boss on my way out to my truck because clearly I wasn't going to work today, and then I thought about calling Navi to give her a heads up. But I knew she wouldn't answer if she saw my name on screen and my brain was beyond able to function, so I just drove over to her apartment in a confused haze of disbelief and prayed she'd let me through the door.
I thought—stupidly—that seeing Bryson's ghost standing over his unconscious, barely-breathing body would be the weirdest thing I'd see in probably this whole life time. But as I pulled into her apartment building, I finally realized what Bryson meant when he said her ghosts were keeping him out.
Because her entire apartment building was surrounded by ghosts wielding very large, very dangerous weapons. Swords and axes and knives. I froze in my truck, staring in horror. This was pretty much every nightmare I'd had as a kid come to life.
"What am I supposed to do now?" I asked Bryson, who sat silent in my passenger seat.
"They won't hurt you. You're not a demon. Or a ghost in limbo. Just walk through them."
I glared at him, horrified. "You're kidding, right?"
He shook his head.
"I can't just walk through them—can you see their weapons?" This morning was pretty damn freaky and I'd had about as much as I could handle.
Reese strode briskly out the door, digging through her purse, looking for her keys in the twilight. The sun would be up soon, and I wanted to jump out of the truck and beg it to hurry. But Reese didn't even see them. She walked right through them, and they parted like a river around a rock to let her through. "Those are Navi's ghosts?" My voice sounded strangled. And scared. I sounded scared, even to my own ears. Not gonna lie.
"Yeah. They fight the monsters with her."
Holy Hell.
I took the longest breath ever and shoved my door open. "If they attack me, I'm coming after you."
Then I turned my back on my ghost roommate and walked toward the sea of nightmares.
Chapter 42
Navi
I was just getting out of the shower when I heard the pounding. Thinking Reese had forgotten her keys or something, I wrapped my towel around me and padded into the living room, dripping on the carpet. Reese might kill me, but she was already late for work. She'd have to kill me later.
But Konstanz beat me to the door. She gave me an odd look as she passed, and I realized my entire shoulder was a bloody, bruised mess. The moon had sunk too far in the sky to heal me, and I could already feel my ghosts outside fading.
Except for Elizabeth. She was almost always there, but outside so she didn't accidentally open my roommates’ eyes. Because that would be the epitome of awful.
The fights last night had
been brutal, which might have explained why I’d had to hang out at the river for a while to chill. We'd lost a lot of our new recruits, and some of my older members. Several asuwangs had gotten past us and made it to the other side of the rock, but we'd caught all of them but two before they made it to the city streets. Still, it was going to take me a while to recover from that one.
Thank goodness I didn't have school.
Konstanz had spent a good amount of time lately fixing my random wounds. I couldn't go to a doctor, because I couldn't explain them, and even though Konstanz had hinted once or twice, when I told her I couldn't tell her what happened, she'd quit asking.
The girl was a saint.
And possibly the only thing that was a balm to the open wound Alec had left on my heart.
"Alec." Her voice was absolute ice. "What are you doing here?"
I froze, standing there beyond the doorway in my towel. I was absolutely exhausted. Maybe I'd misheard her? Maybe I'd imagined the whole thing? But suddenly Elizabeth appeared just beyond the door.
Clearly, it wasn't Reese coming to retrieve lost keys.
"I need to see Navi." His voice sounded desperate and, if I wasn't hearing things, terrified.
Konstanz, unaware that she was surrounded by unearthly beings, crossed her arms over her chest and dug in her heels. "I told you no, Alec."
"Konstanz, this isn't the time, and it's not personal. I need to talk to her now, and if you don't get out of my way, I'll move you. You have no idea what kind of freaky crap I've seen tonight."
That was my second clue that something was very, very wrong.
Forgetting that I was standing in a towel, only knowing that he was so close I could touch him and that I could hear fear in his voice, I left my soaked spot and came around the door. "What's wrong?"
His eyes widened. Oh, right. Then I remembered the towel. "Navi, I need to talk to you. Like, now."
