The ghost said to Michael, She said that you would understand.
Michael’s arm tightened on her shoulders. He glanced down at her, and he looked grimmer than ever. He said, “I do.” He looked north. “We don’t have time to try to play it safe and go south. We need to go into Petoskey and get a boat. We’d better hurry. There’s a hell of a storm coming our way.”
“And getting on a boat right now is supposed to be a good thing?” She looked between Michael and Nicholas doubtfully. “I’m pretty sure I’m missing something important here, because usually people like to get off the water when there’s a hell of a storm coming their way.”
Michael said, “If we go south we won’t be able to get on the water in time to take advantage of the cover she’s offering. When it hits, the storm will be the dominant image on any radar systems, and it will help to disguise our presence from pursuers. It will also drive police patrols to dock until it has passed.”
“It still sounds awfully risky,” she said.
Michael nodded. “It is. So is going south.”
“But if we go south, you can do the null space thing while we’re on the boat, right?”
“Yes, but I can’t project the effect onto long-distance radar equipment,” he said. He lifted one broad shoulder. “Going north or going south—there’s going to be dangers and risks either way. What do you want to do? Whatever we decide, we’d better do it quickly. We shouldn’t keep standing here. If we don’t move north fast enough, we may not be able to get out on the water in time.”
A sharp gust of wind hit them. She shivered as she said, “I don’t know. . . .”
Nicholas interrupted her. My father is dying.
Her mouth snapped shut. She and Michael stared at the ghost. She said softly, “Oh, damn. I’m so sorry.”
Michael asked, “What happened?”
The ghost seemed to shake his head. I don’t know. He was already unconscious when I reached him. All I know is that he is on the island, and Astra has said that she can’t do anything for him. His glimmering, dark eyes fixed on Mary. But perhaps you could, if you reached him in time.
Nicholas had come to help her, unasked, when she had been running alone and terrified in the forest. She didn’t even have to think about it. “Of course,” she said, instinctively reaching a hand out toward him even though he was insubstantial. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Nicholas raised his own hand, as if he would clasp hers.
But he couldn’t, of course, because he was dead.
Unless she could do something about that too.
That morning, she had examined two men whose souls were dead, although their bodies were still active and dangerous. Drones, Michael called them. Their spirits were gone, and there was no way to recall them. She could even see how the Deceiver had killed the spirits but left the bodies animate and functional. The long, slashing psychic scar on both drones had been clearly visible to her mind’s eye.
While here she looked at a ghost of a courageous and extraordinary man who had not deserved to die.
She bit her lip. What she was considering did not seem as chilling as it had the first time it had occurred to her. She wasn’t sure what that said about her. In the next breath, she decided she didn’t care.
Because on the one hand, there was one man who did not deserve to be dead. While on the other hand, the Deceiver had created so many drones that no longer deserved to live.
“I have something I want to discuss with you,” she said to Nicholas.
“That’s going to have to wait,” Michael said. He turned her around and propelled her toward the front of the Jeep. “Either that or we’ll have to talk about it on the road, because we’ve got to get moving.”
I must return to my father while I can, said Nicholas. I will see you on the island, and we can talk there. Safe journey.
“And to you,” Michael said.
Nicholas vanished.
They were right, of course. She loped around to the passenger side of the Jeep and climbed in.
Michael slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he said, “What did you want to discuss with Nicholas?”
“He’s very present and remarkably lucid for a ghost, isn’t he?” She chewed on a thumbnail as she thought.
“Yes, he is.” Michael accelerated into a gap of traffic. “Some ghosts are fragments of personality, or traumatized by what happened to them, and most don’t stay long after their death. Nicholas is different. He is whole and present, at least for now. Maybe after he loses his sense of mission or responsibility, he will pass on too.”
“But what if he doesn’t pass on?” There, she said it.
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath. “If the Deceiver can take over another person’s body, why can’t someone else do it too?”
He stared at her. “What are you talking about? None of us have done that, ever.”
She rushed on, the words tumbling over one another. “Of course, I’m not talking about taking over a person who is alive and aware. That would be murder. I’m talking about people who are already dead—the drones. Their bodies are functional, but the spirit is gone. This morning when I examined those two men, I got to thinking, if the Deceiver can take over a drone, why can’t someone else do it too? It would be like—like organ harvesting. Sort of. Wouldn’t it?”
After his initial reaction, he looked quite alert and fascinated, without any sign of the revulsion she had feared. “You’re thinking of trying something like that for Nicholas.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I haven’t had a chance to think any of this through, and there’s a lot to consider. Many of those drones must have some kind of family. Either they are pretending to live their normal lives, or they’ve left their families behind. Or maybe they have criminal records. After all, they’re doing things at the Deceiver’s bidding. And who knows how Nicholas would feel about any of this? Even if he agreed, I think he would have to live in hiding for the rest of his life . . . or for the rest of the life span of the drone he inhabited.”
He gave her a keen glance. “But you still want to offer him the chance.”
“Yes.”
“And you could help him enter the body and take it over?”
She blew out a breath. “I don’t know, but I think I would like to try, if he would let me.”
“If you could resurrect him, then Nicholas would really be back in the game.”
“Or not,” she said strongly. “He’s sacrificed enough. If I could do it, he might want to retire, and he deserves that chance.”
“You don’t know Nicholas. He wouldn’t be able to stay uninvolved. For one thing, his murderer hasn’t been caught.” Michael grinned. “It’s never dull, is it?”
“No, it never is,” she said. She made a wry face. “Even if we manage to destroy the Deceiver, we’ll never live any kind of normal life. Or at least what other people consider normal.”
“We’ll have to achieve our own kind of normal.” His big hand covered hers. She turned her hand over and clasped his.
“That’s a deal,” she told him. “In the meantime, honey, would you mind picking up a drone for me whenever you can?”
He laughed softly. “Just as soon as an opportunity presents itself.”
Chapter Nine
MICHAEL TURNED OFF the main highway and drove through Petoskey’s side streets. Mary looked out her window. She didn’t know much about the city other than it was small, attractive and full of large Victorian houses. Petoskey’s old downtown Gaslight District, an area of about six blocks, had been restored and was populated with cafés, pubs, galleries, antique shops and boutiques.
She had once driven through Petoskey. She had stopped to have a late lunch in a small restaurant and had fallen into a conversation with
her waitress, who was a student at North Central Michigan College.
Apparently, her waitress had told her, Ernest Hemingway had referred to many local landmarks in his novel The Torrents of Spring. Mary had resolved to read the novel and had gone so far as to buy a copy, but she disliked Hemingway’s writing, so she had never followed through with her original intention.
She tried to think back. What had happened to that book? Had she ever unpacked it, or was it still in the boxes in the garage?
Then she remembered. The book no longer existed. It had been destroyed along with the rest of her house.
Following hard on the heels of that realization, in a one-two knockout punch, an image surfaced of Justin’s face surrounded by the sparkling black corona of the Deceiver’s aura. Dread shot adrenaline through her veins and left her feeling sick. The Deceiver’s smile had been an alien unwholesome travesty on Justin’s clever face.
Her life and her sense of identity had transformed almost beyond recognition, but her feelings for the people she knew and loved were still the same.
Justin’s partner, Tony, had to be so worried, not just about Justin but about her as well. He needed to hear that Justin had died. He deserved the right to mourn instead of enduring an endless agony of not knowing. When would she find time to call him? Was it safe to contact him? Was she reaching a point when she never would?
Her mouth tightened. She wouldn’t accept that. If they managed to live through this hellish mess, she would figure out how to live with both halves of herself. She would call Tony as soon as she knew that it wouldn’t put him in danger. She would tell him about Justin and tell him something about herself that didn’t sound too crazy. She had to call him, if for no other reason than to give him closure and to say good-bye.
An array of colorful Victorian houses with tall, wide porches passed by outside her window. The town twinkled with charm and serenity in the deepening twilight. It epitomized the small-town American myth, like Cabot Cove from the television detective series Murder, She Wrote.
Only people were murdered every week in Cabot Cove. Or maybe, she thought, it was more like the location in a Stephen King novel, where wholesome-looking restaurants had red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, but evil rotted underneath the quaint scenery.
The route Michael was driving clicked into a pattern. She realized he was working to get them as close to Lake Michigan as he could without drawing attention to them. Every time she turned her senses toward the shoreline, she sensed an oily dark whispering at the edge of her mind. Her stomach tightened.
They had to pass through that malevolent barrier. Somehow they had to get on a boat and sail to an island before an impending storm hit. The task sounded worse than impossible. It sounded like lighting oneself on fire and jumping off a cliff.
She chewed her lip as doubts attacked. She asked carefully, “It’s hard to wrap my brain around the fact that Astra has the capacity to create a storm so big it can block our presence on radar.”
“She’s not actually creating the storm,” he said. “She’s working with natural forces to create the storm.”
Mary paused as she thought about that. She didn’t see the difference. “What does it mean that Astra’s calling in all her favors?”
He shot her a quick glance. “You remember the small wind spirit that helped you in South Bend?”
“Of course. And you sent it away.” She remembered how bitter she felt at the time.
“There are wind spirits in the world that are much larger and more powerful.”
Gretchen, the psychic Mary had visited in South Bend, had talked about wind spirits. “Do you mean like the First Nation thunder beings, the Wakean?”
“Exactly like that.”
She blinked. “How did Astra grow acquainted enough with the Wakean that they would owe her favors?”
“We don’t have time to talk about it anymore right now,” he said. “Just trust me, if she said a storm is coming, it’s coming.”
He pulled parallel to a car parked on the side of the street, then signaled and reversed into the parking space behind it. Mary looked at the nearby building. It was a huge old house that had been converted into a law office, already closed for the night.
“I trust you,” she said. She kept her voice steady and patient. “I’m asking all these questions, because maybe I do sometimes still have a bit of a problem with Mister Enigmatic, and I need to understand what is going on.”
He rubbed the back of his head. “I promise that Mister Enigmatic will take more time to explain things when we’re not in so much danger.”
She felt her mouth quirk into a reluctant smile. “Is that ever going to happen?”
His eyebrows rose. He smiled back. “If we can pull this off, it should happen soon. As far as the Deceiver and his drones are concerned, it should seem like we’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Okay,” she said. That sounded a lot better than lighting themselves on fire and jumping off a cliff. “I’ve got more questions, but they can wait. Thank you.”
“I’m sorry about Mister Enigmatic.” He unbuckled his seat belt, twisted and dug into his black bag. “I expect he’s a pretty maddening character.”
“I like him when I’m not scared,” she told him. “He’s a man of mystery.”
He snorted and pulled a dark cap out of the bag. He handed it to her. “He’s a social misfit who’s not used to talking to people or explaining himself. Tuck your hair up in this. It’s too distinctive.”
She took the cap and jammed it down on her head, her attention snagged by the trees across the street. Branches were beginning to whip in the rising wind that blew off the Lake. She glanced at the heavy clouds amassing in the darkened sky. If Astra could instigate something of this magnitude, no wonder Michael believed it was to their advantage to unite with her.
Mary fought to keep from sounding as awestruck as she felt. “It looks like our help is arriving.”
He glanced at the sky. “It’s going to be an interesting boat ride. I want you to take the nine-millimeter with you.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He just gave her a steady look. She growled, “Fine, although I don’t know where I’m going to put it.”
She looked down at herself. Her jacket was in a different part of the state. In their stress and preoccupation, they had left it back at the cabin. All she had was her borrowed flannel shirt, and the temperature was plummeting fast. She suspected she was going to be sorry about losing that jacket soon.
He paused, glancing around to make sure there weren’t any close pedestrians. “Tuck it into your jeans under the shirt.”
“Wait, I forgot. I’ve still got my purse.” Gingerly, she took the nine-millimeter and an extra clip from him. She tucked both into her purse, grumbling, “Just my luck I’ll drop the purse in front of a cop and everything will spill out.”
“You’ll be fine. Keep watch for me.” She watched the street while he stuffed things into a backpack and wiped down surfaces. “Got it,” he said after a few moments. He straightened in his seat, resting the backpack on his thighs, those sword gray eyes assessing the scene in front of them.
Her heartbeat sped up. The palms of her hands turned clammy.
She thought, here we go.
He said, “Come on.”
Mary slung her purse onto her shoulder and climbed out of the Jeep when he did. She gasped as the wind, icy and wet with the storm’s sullen promise, sliced through her baggy flannel shirt, flattening it against her torso.
“My hotel on the beach is so hot I won’t need clothes,” she said through gritted teeth. She started to shiver. “I’ll have just three red triangles of cloth with strings to hold them in place. And that’s my dress-up-for-dinner outfit.”
“Oh, man,” said Michael. “I’m so there.” He grinned at her, teeth white against his dark, unshaven
face.
He put his backpack on one shoulder, rounded the end of the Jeep and put an arm across her shoulders. She slid hers around his waist and huddled close to his warmth. Then he took off at a pace that was so brisk she had to trot to keep up. She bent her head and watched their legs. For every step he took she had to take three.
They walked a block, crossed the street and turned toward the Lake. The air was thick with wicked shadows. She started to breathe hard and not just from the pace Michael set.
“Keep telling me about the beach,” he said. His quiet voice was unhurried.
She shook her head, unable to reply. Trepidation locked her throat, and her leg muscles quivered. Bad things waited for them up ahead, men like the ones who had tried to kidnap her. In the psychic realm something black, glistening and hungry lurked near the shore.
She could see it in her mind’s eye, lazily testing the air with long, shadowy tendrils like tentacles. It was all she could do to force her quaking body to keep pace with Michael, to keep taking one step after another.
“All right,” Michael said. He pulled her into a short, shadowed alley. They walked the length of it. “I’ll tell you about the beach. We’ll be finished with all of this, of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed.
“We’ll go snorkeling any time we want,” he told her. “And because the afternoons are long and lazy and full of sunshine, we’ll be able to explore the nearby coral reefs for hours. Every color imaginable is in that coral reef, framed by clear, cobalt blue water.” They reached the mouth of the alley and paused. “You’re going to get sick of swimming.”
“That’s hard to imagine.” Wretched with cold and fear, she sniffled and swiped at her nose with the back of one hand. “Healer and warrior. Balancing energies. Bleh. Try warrior and coward—there’s a balance for you.”
“You’re not a coward,” he said. He cupped her cheek with one big, warm hand. “Cowards don’t do things that scare them, and you do.”
“Don’t try to tell me what a coward is,” she growled. “I know exactly what I am. I am a coward. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. I’d be hiding in somebody’s basement in Tennessee.”
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