by Amie Gibbons
I turned to follow him but a hand landed on my arm.
“Ah!” I screamed.
The world lost its misty cast and became real and solid as I stared up into Carvi’s eyes.
“Whatever happened,” he said, “it was right there. Rewind.”
“How?” I asked.
He growled. “If you’d been-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “I got it. Bad student. Carvi, I’ve been dealing with a lot up here. I have been helpin’ my daddy with his campaign, the election’s next week, and there’s Quil, and…”
“And Grant,” he said. “Do you have any idea how obvious you are, lea?”
“Yes.” I crossed my arms.
“What happened?”
“You did, ya big jerk. We were doing fine and then Miami happened and since then, he’s not him. He’s cold and distant and… just a boss. We’re not friends anymore. But…” I waved it away. “How do we rewind?”
I wasn’t even sure I was talkin’ about the case.
He sighed and took my hand.
“Close your eyes and picture what you just saw,” Carvi said. “The man was eating an early dinner. A salad, how dull, and he was scrolling through his phone. What else?”
I closed my eyes. “He’s cute, probably older than he looks at first. And there’s a white coat over the chair. I think he’s a doctor. He was looking at Facebook and he smiled, then suddenly he was flicking his hand.”
“Focus on the moment he was smiling.”
I did and the air moved the wispy little hairs around my face.
I opened my eyes.
The man was back at the table, scrolling through his phone.
“Yes!” I said, dropping Carvi’s hand and walking up to him, staring at his hands.
They were nice hands, long and strong.
Pianist’s hands.
My heart fluttered.
Wait, that wasn’t right.
“Carvi!” I said. “I think I’m picking up on emotions here!”
The feeling vanished.
“And I lost it,” I said.
“It’s okay. That happens,” he said. “What was it?”
“Butterflies,” I said. “It’s like I was lookin’ at someone I have a crush on. I was noticing his hands and getting all fluttery.”
“Really?” he asked with too much intensity.
I nodded. “That important?”
“If the ghost has a crush on him,” he said, “no, it’s just a connection to the guy that could explain who was haunting him, that’s all.”
“You’re an ass tonight.”
“I don’t like ghosts.”
Through all this, the man had already gotten up and left and Carvi growled.
“Rewind again,” he said, “and this time, focus, and pause when he cuts his hand.”
It was my turn to growl as I closed my eyes.
The world moved back faster this time and I focused on the guy’s hand.
He went through the motions again, scrolling through his feed, grinning big and wide, and then…
“Freeze!” Carvi commanded.
The world did.
“Was that you or me?” I asked.
“Me,” he said. “Faster this way. Look around. What do you see?”
I studied the man’s hand. The blood was barely welling up when Carvi hit the pause button and the smile hadn’t vanished yet, so it was the split second after whatever it was got the man.
I leaned down, staring so hard at the hand I was afraid I’d get a migraine.
“You’re looking in the wrong place,” Carvi said.
I stood straight and looked at him, propping my hands on my hips.
“Look at his phone,” he said.
I did.
A woman’s reflection with red eyes stared back.
Right at me.
“Carvi!” I yelped, scrambling back.
“Astral plane, lea,” he said, catching me. “The ghost’s eavesdropping.”
“So she’s in here with us?”
“Not exactly, but close enough to your understanding. She’s still on her plane, but the veils are lowered on this night.”
“So she did this to him from his phone?” I asked. “Why? Why give him an itty-bitty papercut?”
“Maybe that was her reaching out and that’s how it came out,” he said. “You said you felt like you were looking at a crush, maybe she had a crush on him and was just peeking in while she could.”
Aw, that was kinda sweet.
“Of course, since he ended up dead, I’m guessing she was pissed,” he said.
Which just ruined it.
“Can you hit play?” I asked. “I need to see what happened to him. I don’t even know where he went out.”
Carvi nodded and the scene picked up. The man went to the bathroom again. He came back a minute later with a Band-Aid on his finger and finished his dinner, apparently not too worried about the mysterious cut.
He washed his dishes and grabbed his lab coat, putting it in the washer stacked in a tiny closet in the kitchen.
He walked into his bedroom and changed. I averted my eyes when he took off his shirt, but Carvi watched and reported I was missing a guy who obviously worked out, probably swam since it was a lot of lean muscle.
The doctor put on a suit and mussed up his short hair, making it stick out with some gel, put on an ugly checkered tie and tied it crooked, and grabbed a sign from the closet, hanging it around his neck.
It said ‘Ambulance Chaser.’
I burst out laughing.
I liked this guy.
Carvi grinned back at me.
This was so weird and voyeuristic. It wasn’t like a normal vision where I just saw stuff. It was like I was watching this recreation in VR or something. Made it more real. More intrusive.
The man’s bedroom was as bare as the front of the apartment. Just a bed low to the ground since it was missing a box spring, a dark blue comforter over it, a chest of drawers with nothing on top save for an envelope, laptop and a stuffed dog, and a nightstand with a kindle, a notebook and a glass half full of water.
The window over the bed was covered with thick blackout curtains and a blanket bundled up to cover the very top of them.
“How long is this taking in the real world?” I asked as the doctor brushed his teeth. “We’ve been in here like twenty minutes.”
“It’s a vision still, so it is only a few seconds,” he said.
“But when we’re in here in not a vision, it moves faster?” I said.
He nodded.
“One of these days I’ll get the hang of all this and keep all these cockamamy rules straight,” I said.
“You will if you practice.”
“Yes, I got it. I will attend lessons and all that, okay?” I said.
“I’ve heard this before,” he said.
A scream shattered the world.
The doctor ran in from the adjoining bathroom and jumped up on the bed, running full out through the window with a giant crash, the double pane glass barely slowing him down.
The curtains billowed in the sudden breeze, fluttering where he’d gone through.
I swear I heard him hit the ground.
But we were probably too high up for that.
“Um, what just happened?” I asked.
“Bathroom,” Carvi said. “Mirrors are often used as a catalyst.”
The world whirled backwards, the doctor flying backwards almost comically and moonwalking back to the bathroom.
“And play,” Carvi said, the world returning to normal motion.
I ran into the bathroom.
The doctor brushed his teeth, nodding his head to some imaginary song.
“This guy wasn’t exactly exciting,” Carvi said.
“Most people’s lives aren’t a porno, Carvi,” I said. “Most people work, go home, have dinner, do their hobbies, hang with the families and friends, and go to bed. That’s it. Nothing exciting. Just life. Normal, bo
ring life.”
The doctor paled and backed away, dropping his toothbrush.
I stared at the mirror and didn’t see anything but the doctor’s reflection.
“What’s he seeing?” I asked.
Carvi shook his head. “Nothing’s there.”
Something stabbed through my heart and I rubbed my chest.
What was that?
The doctor screamed, turned and ran.
A moment later, the crash sounded again.
“Why couldn’t I see it?” I asked.
“Because whatever it was wasn’t a physical manifestation,” Carvi said. “It was mental.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
“It means if it is a ghost, it’s coherent enough to mess with someone’s head, instead of just popping up. It means, it’s not just some specter working out her issues. It’s doing this on purpose.”
“And that means?” I asked.
“It means, lea, that this is far worse than we thought.”
Chapter four
We exited the astral plane and I opened my eyes, still kneeling on the kitchen floor.
“Well?” Jet asked.
I shrugged. “I… I’m not sure what I just saw. Carvi?”
He stood and I followed suit.
“There is a ghost,” Carvi said. “But you already knew that. What we saw doesn’t fit anything I know about ghosts.”
“Explain.”
The icy voice came from the living room and I froze with it.
When he wanted to, Grant sure could be a cold bastard.
“Careful with that tone, Grant,” Carvi said, voice low and textured. “I’ll think you’re flirting with me.”
Grant didn’t say anything and it took everything in me not to walk around the wall separating the rooms and see what he was doing.
“You two are giving me an ice cream headache,” Carvi said mentally to me before saying out loud, “What do you know about ghosts?”
“Spirits, unfinished business, tied to a place, thing, or person,” Grant said.
“Those are the basics,” Carvi said. “Most of the time, ghosts don’t even know they’re dead. Not in the same way we do. Some are stuck repeating the same patterns on a loop. Those are usually the ones who died traumatically and fast. Others are more like a person dreaming. They are somewhat aware, and they know things are off, but they can’t fix whatever it is. Those are your unfinished business types.”
He paused and stared at the opening between the kitchen and living room.
“Are you changing in there, Grant?” he asked. “Or is there a reason you are hanging out in the living room?”
“Yes,” Grant said.
And nothin’ else.
Of course.
Carvi jerked his chin and walked to the living room and I followed.
Hey, if I had an excuse to go over there then it wasn’t like I was trying to be near Grant or anything. I was just trying to stay with my tutor.
Grant stood in the middle of the room, palms up and eyes closed.
It looked way too magic woo woo for Grant.
Maybe that’s why he wasn’t doing it in front of us?
He opened his eyes but kept his hands up.
“Ah, I see,” Carvi said. “Good idea.”
“What? What do you see?” I asked.
“Grant’s trying to sense the magic at play here, beyond just ghosts,” Carvi said.
“Remember our deal, Carvagio,” Grant said, staring the vampire down.
Carvi smirked.
Whatever Grant was, he didn’t want anyone else to know, and Carvi had only figured it out when we were in Miami and fighting a Fae on the astral plane.
And he refused to tell me what my boss was.
Honestly, I think he was a little afraid to.
And that really got my curiosity up higher than a cat’s back.
Not much scares a thirty-five-hundred-year-old vamp.
“There are also poltergeists,” Carvi said. “Those are angry spirits who lash out whenever they can.”
“What’s this one?” Jet asked.
Carvi did a palms up. “That’s the problem. This one, from what we saw, seems coherent. That’s not a normal ghost. Could be something like what that fairy whore of an ex of mine did, which is tie her spirit to this world, but that takes some serious magic. Kari was only able to pull it off because she’s Fae, and even then, she had to tie herself to the astral plane, which is far easier since it’s closer to limbo.”
“Limbo?” I asked.
“Where spirits go before they transition to whatever’s after,” Carvi said. “Some stay in limbo until their loved ones join them, some stay there only to relive their deaths, like the trauma cases, on the anniversary or once a month or week or whatever, and some never get further into it than just being dead, because they are so tied to this world, and they spend their years haunting earth.”
“So the veil that’s thin on Halloween night isn’t actually between the living and the dead, like wherever you end up,” I said. “It’s between the living and limbo?”
“Yes.”
Carvi turned to Grant. “I have been around a very long time, and I have never seen a ghost like this that I can remember. Coherent and with a plan, sure, but then they don’t lash out like what we saw in there. They’re either coherent or they’re not, and this one felt in between.”
“Interesting,” Grant said, nodding once at me.
“Soooooo, body?” I said.
He shook his head. “We have local LEOs down there. See what you can sense here. Kowalski, watch her.”
He walked out, shutting the apartment door behind him.
I sighed.
“Wow,” Carvi said, “ice, ice, baby.”
“And I’ve been dealing with that for over three months now,” I said, walking into the bedroom.
The heavy curtains were still in place, mostly hiding the damaged window.
“Hey, Carvi,” I said, “can you text Quil that I’m okay. I don’t want him to worry.”
He smiled and it actually seemed genuine… and a little pitying. “All the phones of anyone who knows you are probably tapped by now, lea. I can send out a psychic message, but even that could be traced.”
“You called Grant.”
“Yes, because I knew what spells he had on his end of things. I don’t know what, if any spells, Quil has.
“He must be worried.”
“He knows you were taken into protection by Grant and myself. He also knows if he doesn’t hear anything, it means nothing has happened. And that you are safe.”
“Okay,” I said. “You make good points.”
“I often do, but people just don’t give me credit for it.” He waved a finger in front of his face. “When the package is this pretty, people seem to think nothing’s inside.”
That made me smile a tiny bit.
“Come on,” he said. “See what you can get off the curtains and windows. The sooner you do your part, the sooner I can get you back to my hotel room.”
I shot him a look and he winked.
###
We didn’t get anything more off the room than we’d already seen and after about ten minutes, Jet came back in with Kat and a strange woman in tow.
“Who is she?” I asked, pointing at her.
She was in her thirties and sort of plain looking. Not skinny but definitely not chubby, average height, auburn hair pulled back in a frizzy ponytail, sharp features that could be pretty with makeup, but she was just very vanilla.
“Metro’s M.E.,” Jet said. “Grant wants you to see if you can get something off her since she thought she saw something on the body.”
“Couldn’t even come up to tell me himself?” I asked.
“Come on, girl,” Jet said. “Don’t read too much into it. You know he treats all of us like lackeys at crime scenes. He’s studying the scene down there.”
I pressed my lips together. “You really think how
he’s been treating me has nothing to do with having you play messenger? It’s like he doesn’t even want to be in the same room with me unless there’s at least a dozen other people.”
Jet shrugged. “I can’t really say anything about that, but from what you told me about Miami, can you blame him?”
“That was his fault!” I pointed at Carvi.
Carvi put on an offended look and placed his hand on his chest.
“Ariana, come on, some of that was you,” Jet said.
The stranger was staring at us and I didn’t even care we were airing dirty laundry in front of her.
Everything in my good Southern lady upbringing said you didn’t do that.
And I. Did. Not. Care.
“I went a little crazy, yeah,” I said. “But… I took it back. I apologized. I don’t know what else he wants from me.”
He shook his head and clapped me on the shoulder. “He wants you to see what you can get off the M.E.”
I nodded. “Will do. But um…” I looked between him and her. “Does she know?”
“Yes,” she said, making me jerk. She’d been so quiet. “I’m on the new taskforce in Metro to deal with the supernatural.”
“Oh wow. I heard somethin’ about that. Hi, I’m Agent Ryder.” I rushed forward with my hand out and she didn’t take it.
I turned as I heard the door open and Jet gave a short wave before closing it behind him.
“If I touch you, will you get stuff off me?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “but sounds like I need to, so… do ya mind?”
“What do you see?” she asked as I dropped my arm.
“First time I touch someone, I see what I call the First Impression. It’s the most significant moment in someone’s life, or at least what they consider to be the most significant moment. Like for you, I’m just guessin’, could be when you took the Hippocratic Oath and became a doctor.”
She made a face. “Can we skip that part and just have you get what you need to about the case?”
“Um, no?” I said, looking at Carvi.
“It’s involuntary,” Kat said. “She touches, she sees that. Nothing happens until that does.”
“Then excuse me, but no,” she said. “I don’t need you poking around in my head.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Carvi snapped, grabbing her wrist and yanking her forward with such force she stumbled and fell to her knees.
