Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4)

by Maria E. Schneider

  He sprinted so fast, he actually beat me back to the room where I’d left myself. It didn’t take me long to flash back there and open my eyes.

  “I’m fine.”

  He was halfway to the bed before I blinked. Without a sound, he stilled, staring at me. “You’re alive?”

  Puzzled, I nodded. “Well, sure.”

  “But I just saw your ghost.”

  Understanding dawned. “Oh, no. That’s not...well, I guess it is, kind of. I can still slide sideways out of my body, pretty much like when I was In Between, only now I’m here, not there.”

  His eyes widened. “Wait. You can ghost whenever you want? And you ain’t dead?”

  The feat hadn’t impressed me at all, not until that moment. I had existed so long outside my body that when I decided to move around, it had come naturally. “I guess so. And no, I’m not dead.” I flicked my arm with the opposite hand. “No more so than I was before.” I sniffed. “I think the bacon is burning.”

  His head started to tilt, and then he was gone that fast, gliding on feet so silent there was no sound when he left, just a swirl of air and absence.

  Since I slept in sweatpants and a t-shirt, changing clothes wasn’t necessary. I followed him to the kitchen.

  He had saved the bacon by dumping it on a plate. Eggs replaced the bacon in the pan, sizzling fast. “Still hungry?”

  “Yeah.” The t-shirt hung on me like a sack. “I think maybe going ghost takes energy too.”

  “You just leave your body like that? Empty?”

  “I didn’t really think about it. It was a way to get around. Check things out.”

  He dumped the eggs on a plate. Then he slid half onto the other plate with the bacon. Finally he put some of the bacon on the first egg plate and handed it to me. “I bought more milk. Chocolate.”

  “Thanks. It seems to be my favorite.” I helped myself. The only table was across a small bar off to the side of the kitchen. It was homey, but not fancy.

  “You like coffee? Or tea? Adriel makes tea. I don’t have any, but I can get some.”

  “This works. I can heat the chocolate milk. I can’t remember what I used to like. The eggs are great. Everything you’ve brought has been great. I’d eat a whole cow if it showed up, I think.”

  He nodded as though he understood my hunger. Or maybe he thought I could eat a whole cow based on the way I’d been pigging out.

  We dug in, eating hard.

  “Can you still feel your body when you’re away from it?” he asked abruptly.

  I thought about it. “No, not really.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Being a ghost was dangerous when I was In Between. I couldn’t affect anything happening to my body or my ghost. I don’t think I can here either when I’m ghost. Sometimes Spook stays with my body, but usually he follows me around.”

  “Spook is your ghost dog?”

  He was really Troy’s dog, but Troy was gone. “I guess he’s mine now.”

  Lynx chewed some more. “Ghosting could be a useful talent. But leaving your body unprotected isn’t wise.” He gulped some chocolate milk. “This stuff is good, isn’t it? I usually drink soda.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t roam very far from myself.”

  “You think you could get lost?”

  “I never have unless you count losing my body while I was In Between. I didn’t know where my body was for the longest time after arriving there. Martin helped me figure it out.” Shy, I dropped my eyes. “And you. You kept calling me back to it until eventually I found it.”

  Lynx stopped chewing. He stared without blinking for a few seconds. “I never knew if what I did was helping. I threw you the packet that was linked to mine. Talked to you. But you just laid there. Not dead. But not alive.”

  He grabbed his plate and rinsed it at the sink. “If you’re gonna be traveling around like that all the time, you’re gonna need some protection.”

  “I could stop doing it, I suppose, but it’s easier to talk to Spook there. Plus things look different when I’m ghost so I learn things.”

  “Different? How?”

  “The vampires. They aren’t the same creatures when I’m ghost. Patrick is more like a giant beast with wings.”

  Lynx nodded. “He’s part bat or something. I know he can fly. Sometimes he’s not there and then he is. Adriel thinks he might be part gargoyle, but one time...” He hesitated.

  “One time what?”

  “I smelled him when he was in his other form. Reminded me of a bat.”

  “Oh. What does a gargoyle smell like?”

  He blinked, a slow cat blink that managed to convey amusement. “Probably not like a bat.”

  I smiled and slid sideways, but only a little, like when petting Spook. “You always have the ghost of your other self, the cat, around your head.”

  He froze. His ears went back, and his eyes shifted. “You sound different.”

  I nodded and let go. “I can slide partway.”

  “So that’s how you knew...what I am?”

  It took a minute to remember seeing him the first time. “Well, that and Martin told me. You have a gold energy line. It’s the same whether you’re cat or not. When you fought that zombie, the energy was the same even after you went cat. After you guys took me out of the hospital, I noticed that when you walked across the ground, there is a white color near your feet. You soak up life or energy and convert it to gold because you’re always that color.”

  “You see everyone like that?”

  I shrugged. “If I’m sideways. Adriel has a lot of silver energy. White Feather, now that was weird. His energy is a blue fire with icy white bands.”

  Lynx nodded. “He’s one cool dude.”

  “I don’t think I knew any of this stuff before I died. I certainly never saw it.”

  “Probably because dying halfway changed some things. It changed ’Trick, that’s for sure.”

  “Patrick, the vampire?”

  He nodded.

  “He’s not dead. He’s like one of the creatures In Between. Maybe.”

  I expected Lynx to ask me more about In Between, but he didn’t. He exhausted all the energy I had left asking about what I could and couldn’t do while sideways. We tried a few things, but I was too tired, too fast.

  He went for burritos for lunch, and I went back to bed.

  Chapter 24

  The next morning, I accompanied Lynx on a breakfast burrito run. Stepping out into the sunlight was like being born again. It was bright. Alive. Full of noise and smells. Full of life force. Energy was everywhere.

  He filled the empty bowl with cat food and added water to the other one.

  “You have a cat?”

  “Nah. One adopted me a while back. She helped us out of a tight spot. I just feed her.”

  Most people would consider that having a cat, but apparently Lynx didn’t apply those rules to his situation.

  I walked over to the first line of juniper trees and breathed in the medicinal pine scent. Crouching, I grabbed up fistfuls of juniper berries. There were hundreds just lying all over the ground where any ghost could come along and eat for weeks.

  I slid sideways and absorbed the sparks of energy until the berries in my hand shriveled. Guilt assailed me. I offered some to Spook. He didn’t seem to mind that I had pigged out first. He probably didn’t need my help harvesting energy either. He wagged his tail, conveying his happiness.

  I gave him a pat on the head and asked if he planned to join us today. He looked at the car and then barked an enthusiastic yes.

  “Okay.” I rejoined my body.

  Lynx could easily discern my sideways maneuver if he watched, but if he wondered what I was doing, he didn’t ask. He just waited patiently as if everyone he knew collected juniper berries and talked to their ghost dog.

  I brushed the shriveled berries off my hand, but was unable to resist harvesting a few more for my pocket. Just in case. Because they were still a little bit alive, and
I couldn’t quite forget being more than a little bit dead.

  As we climbed into his white Mustang, he asked, “You know how to drive stick?”

  I glanced at the gears. “Yeah. Blue car.” I thought hard, but couldn’t remember when or where or if it was my last car or my first. “I wonder what happened to everything that was me.”

  Lynx shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

  He seemed more concerned about my future than my past.

  I stared out the window. If I had seen much of Santa Fe before I died, there were no recent memories in my head. The desert had a familiar feel, but I had changed so much from seeing the world through the eyes of the dead, it was hard to be certain what was new and what wasn’t.

  We stopped at Walmart, and Lynx shuffled me inside before demanding that I purchase better fitting sneakers, food and “whatever else you want.”

  “I don’t need anything. Adriel’s clothes are fine, and there was a fresh toothbrush in the bathroom.”

  He lifted my hand and dropped a credit card onto it. “I hate shopping. I ain’t gonna do it, and Adriel’s shoes are too small for you. You walk funny in them. When you need to run, you need the right shoes.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Maybe if I’d been able to run...I frowned.

  “Will you just buy shoes already?” he hissed.

  Absently, I grabbed a pair of white and gray size nines. “I couldn’t run.”

  “That’s what I just said. You gotta be able to run.”

  “During the attack. I was trying to break away, but I couldn’t run. I can’t remember why.”

  “Maybe you had bad shoes.”

  I snickered. “Fine, fine. I’m letting you buy me shoes. But now I owe you.” I sighed. “More than I already do.”

  “Get other stuff. As long as you’re running a tab, make it worthwhile.”

  During checkout, I asked the lady if they were hiring.

  “It’s easiest if you fill out an application online,” she replied, bagging the purchases. “Takes almost an hour to answer all the questions.”

  Lynx didn’t say anything, but his ears went flat against his head and stayed that way even after we were back in the car.

  “’Trick has been tracking every nurse and doctor who helped treat you or Espy. But you were there long enough that just about everyone had access.”

  “What about Sonya? She was the nurse who brought in the IV that might have been tainted.”

  “So far, everyone is coming up clean. And almost anyone who works at the hospital has access to the blood bank—either legitimately or not. The place isn’t that well guarded. The bags can also be tampered with before or after they were picked up.”

  “What happened to Espy?”

  “Tara and Adriel’s mom helped her. She’s doing a lot better.”

  That was good news. And maybe her condition was just a coincidence. Maybe nothing had been after her. “Are you sure the vampires are on the up and up? I mean, anything like that on the other side viewed us as dinner.”

  “He’s cool. He and his girlfriend, Tina, work at the hospital. They siphon off their meals from the blood bank.”

  “How’d he lose his arm?”

  “Fighting a ghoul.”

  “Here or In Between?”

  “He said he’s never been to In Between. That’s why he went vamp. He didn’t want to cross over.”

  “Ghouls are worse than hellhounds. They’re mindless. They do nothing but eat souls, entire body and all. Bad news.”

  “Damn straight.”

  We didn’t say anything more until we pulled up at the hospital. Instead of parking in the front, he backed the car behind a dumpster in the rear of the building.

  I was tiring fast, but didn’t admit it out loud.

  Spook followed us out of the car this time and bound ahead as soon as Lynx opened a large metal door leading into the back of the hospital. Both Lynx and Spook paused and sniffed.

  Lynx had let me enter first at Walmart, but here, he led the way. He glided along the wall, moving fast. “Door isn’t open. I told ’Trick we were coming.”

  I didn’t spot any doors, but Spook prowled ahead down the hallway and then stopped suddenly.

  My new shoes made it easier for me to shadow Lynx silently down the concrete steps. I kept far enough behind him that we wouldn’t interfere with one another, but his eyes had me beat in the dark until I slid sideways. “Nothing in the hallway,” I whispered.

  He eased forward, his feet soundless. “Can’t get in if the door isn’t open. This doesn’t look good.” He stood back from the wall, staring at the same section of painted cinder blocks that Spook watched.

  “Maybe if we knock?”

  “He always knows when we come here. You better wait in the car.”

  “I can check behind that wall. Watch my...me.”

  Before he could argue, I went fully sideways and hunted for the cracks that had to be there. There wasn’t even enough of a gap for air, but then, vampires didn’t need to breathe. Neither did my floating form.

  I slithered through and got more than my money’s worth.

  Tina was surrounded by dots of blood that formed a strange pattern. Instead of a regular pentagram, the blood was a trail map of arrows forming a general circle shape. The lines wound in and around and were connected by black flames.

  Patrick was balanced on his toes, just outside the line of blood surrounding Tina. A snarl peeled his face back, revealing fangs. There was barely room for him between the circle of blood droplets and a half full bag of blood that had been dropped nearby. A ghostly face hovered over the bag.

  I gasped. “Amy!”

  She would have noticed me if she hadn’t been busy talking. “Either you welcome me, or I take your girlfriend. I assure you, it will be temporary until I find the host we prepared.”

  I hightailed it back through the door, hitting Spook in my haste. He was crouched low, waiting for a signal from me.

  I slid back into my body so fast, I nearly knocked myself over. “Tina.” I stopped to heave in air. “She’s trapped in a blood circle. Amy is there!”

  “Amy? Who is Amy?”

  “Amy was In Between causing all kinds of havoc. But she’s in there trying to convince one of the vampires to take her in!”

  Lynx shook my arm. “Can you open the door? Getting the key will take forever and picking a vampire lock is worse than stupid!”

  “It’s tight in there.” I didn’t tell him just how tight or what the squeeze meant. It had been possible to knock things over when I was ghosted, but it required an enormous effort. Maybe I could still do something similar now, but it had hurt then, and in a tight spot like a lock, any energy was sure to ricochet.

  I reached in my pocket and clutched the juniper berries. If nothing else, maybe I could hit Amy with them.

  “Is there a turn lock on the inside?”

  Lynx shook his head. “It’s keys only. That’s how I ended up stuck in that room with the zombie. I was checking rooms, helping Patrick investigate. That one room was locked, marked as a lab, so I knew something was up. I picked the lock, ducked in and closed the door to have privacy. A few seconds later, the lock clicked, and I was stuck in there with Beef for Brains.”

  There wasn’t time for further explanation. “Be ready to push on the door if I succeed.”

  The berry was nothing more in my hand than a smear of ghost energy. There was no such thing as fingers with my essence squeezed to fit into the space. What I really required was a bomb of some sort. I couldn’t snap the berry like a towel.

  I shoved the berry essence into the lock mechanism, but there wasn’t enough room to leverage it. I tried pushing my own essence at it, but there simply wasn’t any momentum. Popping the berry might help. I could absorb its energy and possibly donate energy, but how much energy would be required before it would affect the physical lock?

  Frustrated, I flitted inside the room. Patrick needed to open the door for Lynx.

>   I spun a berry hard at the female vampire, hoping to break her free. The gray energy hit an invisible wall and exploded back. That was more like it!

  Spook took my action as a signal to attack. Without so much as a warning growl, he sprang at the enemy.

  Amy screamed and dove for the female vampire, but Spook knocked her sideways.

  “Open the door,” I yelled at Patrick. He was dead; he should be able to hear me. From the way his cold stare flicked to me and then avoided me, I knew he could see me.

  His nearly liquid motion was even faster than Lynx, but he wasn’t interested in running for freedom.

  His foot kicked the bag of blood with a vengeance, almost separating Amy from it.

  The bloody container slid a good three feet from Tina. The weave sliced deep, and Amy’s face wavered, half melting into shreds.

  Patrick was suddenly at the door, slamming the key home before my eyes could track him.

  Instead of the click of a lock turning, the door gave a muffled boom.

  The noise didn’t deter Lynx. He slammed into the room, claws out and ready to pounce.

  I returned to my body and staggered after him.

  Patrick went for the bag of blood again, but the weave stopped him dead in his tracks. With Amy focused on him, he couldn’t close in. If she didn’t claim him, the weave would.

  He growled, fangs out, but was forced to step back before In Between could bid him welcome.

  Amy still hovered over the bloody plastic, her face a nasty contortion of frayed bits. She pleaded with him. “I’m no different than you. I just want to live!”

  Patrick kicked the door closed. I glanced at Lynx for reassurance, not liking being shut in here.

  The vampire cursed. “The lock is blown.” His dark eyes focused on Lynx. “Did you cram explosives in there?”

  Lynx raised empty palms, never batting an eye my way. “Didn’t bring any.”

  That cat knew how to keep secrets, although not even I understood exactly what had happened. When Patrick stuck the key in, it must have pushed against the juniper essence enough to explode it. Ghosted energy was unpredictable. It took enormous amounts to create a breeze, but a sensitive person—or cat—could feel the presence of it without any expenditure whatsoever.