by CK Dawn
As far as I could tell, they hadn't even been investigated. Just reported and forgotten.
How did that even make sense?
I ran out of things to look for just before dinner. Which meant I had no choice.
I had to call him.
He'd been the one to send me out here, after all. To look for the exact thing I was finding now. Which meant that whatever he'd been looking for, it was here.
I just wish he trusted me enough to tell me what, exactly, that was.
His was number three on my speed dial. Konstanz was number two.
"Bryson. It's been a while." His voice was too smooth, too calculating for a simple hello.
"Hi…Dad." It had never felt natural calling him such an endearing term. "I've run into something here. I wanted to run it by you and see if you had any ideas."
He had a huge corporation. He had hundreds of employees and so much money, lavish was an understatement. And yet in this, it was us. He and I were the only ones who knew about his little projects. He trusted no one. Not even me, because while I searched the parameters for him, he didn't ever tell me what it was he searched the world over for. Just paid me well and told me to keep my mouth shut.
"What's going on?"
I rattled off everything that had happened, keeping it to the facts without any messy emotions like fear or worry to get in the way. He didn't like emotion. It was a waste of time.
"My friend is in trouble but we have no idea what she's into. I'm thinking gang-related, but this…I don't know. They're not a huge force in Astoria."
He was quiet for several long seconds but I could almost feel how pleased he was without him saying a word. "It sounds like an agent."
"A what? Is that—what?"
"We can't be sure. You'll have to follow your friend, Bryson. Find out what exactly she's doing. I'll expect a report in the morning."
"Oh, yeah. She won't be going to work tonight. She can barely walk. I'll report back—"
"She'll go to work tonight. Call me when you have more information."
He hung up.
I had no idea what an agent was, and Googling didn't help at all because there were ten thousand different kinds of agents and none of them worked in jobs that would involve blood and death and swords. By the time Konstanz knocked, I was out of ideas. But I knew Navi wouldn't be going to work that night. He'd underestimated just how bad her injuries were.
I swung the door open. "Hey, gorgeous."
She looked a hundred times better than she had when I'd left her, but worry and fear still clouded her eyes.
"Hey." She smiled, leaning up on her toes to kiss me and suddenly I had no desire to eat or do anything that required leaving the apartment. She apparently had other ideas, though, because she practically dragged me out the door and down the stairs to her car.
"I haven't eaten today and my stomach is about to devour itself. Do you have any preferences?"
Yes, but none that we would find at a restaurant. "You can pick," I said instead.
She grinned. "Perfect."
Along the way, I told her bits and pieces of my conversation with my dad, but I didn't tell her he'd suggested I follow Navi. That would only cause her more worry. The point of all this was to make her worry stop.
Or at least to lessen it.
Besides, she would argue with me or worse, insist on coming. So I kept that little information to myself.
"An agent. I don't—like a literary agent? Or—or a movie agent? I don't think that fits here. Are you sure your dad knows what he's talking about?" She scrunched her nose, so damn adorable I ached.
And nearly drove off the road.
"Usually," I said, my voice strangled. I had to clear my throat and pull my mind out of the metaphorical gutter before I could finish my sentence. "But this might be out of his range. He's had me researching random shi—stuff for years and it's always been weird but never swords and death kind of weird."
She twitched her lips to the side and I was immediately distracted again. I should be kissing those lips, not driving away from any hope of privacy.
But a guy had to eat, right?
And there was always after dinner.
Except there wasn't. Because Reese called halfway through dinner in a panic.
Navi was going to work.
I could hear Reese through the phone, half the time yelling at Konstanz and the other half yelling at Navi. "She can barely freaking walk and —Navi! I did not tell you that you could leave. Get back here! Konstanz is on her—Konstanz, she just walked out the door. Like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. She's—crap, she's got her keys. Terrie! I told you to hide her keys!"
I didn't hear Terrie's response but apparently she hadn't hidden them well.
"I'm on my way. Just, like, block the car or something until I get there." Konstanz signaled a waiter, waving her hand frantically.
"Terrie! We're setting up a barricade! Get your boots on!" Reese bellowed.
I paid the check while Konstanz gathered her stuff and we raced out of the restaurant to my car. She waved me to my side and jumped in the passenger seat, apparently in too big of a hurry to let me be a gentleman. I roared down the road, focusing on the tight curves along the coast but it couldn't escape me that my dad had been right. He'd been so sure and I'd been certain he was wrong, yet here she was. Going to work.
"—Uck the moon!" I caught the tail end of Reese's infuriated yell. "The moon doesn't have magical powers, Navi. You won't be fine once it rises."
Konstanz was quiet, listening with her eyes wide. I think we both knew if Navi wanted to go to work so badly, she would go and I didn't understand the ride for our lives trying to stop her.
Unless it was to stop Reese from trying to kill her.
By the time we got there, Navi was gone. Reese was bewildered, she didn't even know how it happened.
The jeep still sat in the parking lot.
"I don't know," Reese said into her phone, despite the fact that we were walking toward her. "One minute we were standing behind her and then Terrie just shoved me over—"
"I didn't shove you over," Terrie snapped. "Something shoved us both over."
"There's no one here!" Reese yelled.
Terrie shrugged. "By the time we got up, Navi was gone. But as hurt as she was, she couldn't have gone very far. It took her forever just to walk from the door to her jeep."
Konstanz tipped her head, searching the sky. The moon had risen in the east.
"Maybe the moon does have magical powers," she murmured.
Navi was gone. On foot. And I was supposed to follow her.
Shit.
"I'm sure she'll turn up. Did you check in the apartment? Maybe she gave up and went back to bed."
"Navi?" Reese scoffed. "Not hardly."
"Come on. Let's go look." Konstanz was genuinely worried and I felt awful leaving her like that. But this was for Navi's sake.
"Baby, I've got to go. Work emergency." Which wasn't technically a lie.
"Now?" She paled. "But Navi—"
"I know. Keep me posted. I'll watch for her along the way." I kissed the top of her head and jogged back to my car.
I drove around the corner and started scanning the streets. I had no idea where she worked, but if she was on foot she couldn't have gotten too far. I pulled a picture of her up on my phone and got out, asking anyone I could find outside.
In the middle of talking to a bewildered old man, my phone dinged and I checked the text, hoping it was Konstanz telling me Navi was tucked away in her bed.
It was Konstanz, but all it said was, "You've never called me Baby before." With a heart next to it.
I smiled despite myself. "It felt right."
And then back to work.
It wasn't until I was two miles away from Konstanz's house that I finally got a hit. "Yes, I recognize her. She stopped to fix her boot. Right over there." The woman pointed across the street. "Right in the middle of the street. She's wearing boots and running dow
n the middle of the street." She shook her head in disgust and started away.
"Which way did she go?" I asked, jogging after her.
She shrugged. "She was facing the ocean. But I didn't see her leave. One minute she was there, the next she was gone. Kids these days are always in a rush."
I went to the middle of the street. There were what looked like deep scratches in the asphalt, but no blood. And if Konstanz was right, Navi would have been bleeding, especially if she were running. None of it made sense.
Plus, she was heading right toward the beach. Navi hated the beach. Although if that's where she got the shit beat out of her every night, that would explain the hatred.
I didn't want to go to the beach. Foreboding coiled in my stomach, dark and lethal. I'd never felt anything like it in my life, but I couldn't go to that beach.
Swallowing hard, I picked up my phone. I didn't know what Navi was doing but everything in me was screaming to run the other way.
My phone rang, startling me out of my own head. It was Konstanz. "Navi's not here. She's not anywhere near here," she said by way of greeting. "We've looked everywhere. I'm really worried." Her voice caught.
I had no choice. I had to follow Navi, despite what I hoped to be my irrational fear. "I'm on her trail. I'll hog tie her and drag her home," I said, forcing a lightness to my voice I did not feel.
"Really? Where is she?" The hope in Konstanz's voice solidified it for me. If I'd had any doubt, that erased it.
"She's…wandering through town. I should find her any minute."
"Thank you, Bryson. You're—you're amazing. Have I told you that lately?"
I smiled as I started back toward my car, despite the foreboding nearly crippling me with every step. It was a physical thing, pushing me back. The smile died on my lips but I forced it into my voice. "Not lately, no."
"You're amazing, Bryson. I'm sorry dinner was cut short. But—I thought you were on your way to work?"
"I am. I caught sight of her as I was driving by. I'll call you when I know more."
"Thank you, Bryson. I—thank you."
I hung up and started the car, sitting by the side of the road for several seconds, trying to talk myself into putting it into gear.
"Don't go."
I froze, everything in the car turning icy. The voice—it was…real, but not real all at once. Like the very air was talking aloud, telling me what every instinct was screaming.
"Don't go. Turn around."
But I didn't have a choice. Navi wasn't listening to Konstanz and it was killing her. Both of them. I couldn't let Konstanz hurt anymore.
Besides, it was only a matter of time. If I didn't follow Navi and find out just what she was doing, someone else would.
Fifteen
Bryson
There were boot prints in the sand. This late at night, the beach was completely empty and the tide had rolled in, but above the waves, clear boot prints. Navi had been here.
And yet…she was nowhere.
I wandered up and down the beach, looking for signs. I was beginning to fear she'd been dragged into the ocean, and the dread in my stomach ate at me in slowly rising panic. I was nearing Devil's Gate, a huge rock formation that was rumored to be fantastically haunted. I'd checked it out a few times on my dad's orders, but never seen anything suspicious at all. It was just a giant outcropping of rock, too high and too steep to climb. People attempted it, but no one had ever succeeded, apparently. Attempts had put many in the hospital and resulted in a couple deaths. But ghosts, evil spirits, demons? I hadn't seen anything even remotely frightening.
Until I saw Navi standing in front of it.
Holding swords.
My jaw dropped and in the time it took me to find my voice, she was just…gone.
Horror swirled through me, overwhelming, and if panic hadn't been driving me forward it would have knocked me to my knees. I ran toward the high wall, trying to dig my phone out of my pocket, cursing the sand that slowed my feet. I almost made it, so focused on fear for Navi that I forgot the foreboding that had been trying to hold me back until it was too late.
My dad had always said self-preservation was our strongest gift.
Mine failed me.
I felt the eyes on me too late, and when I turned, terror froze me.
It was a sea monster, crawling toward me like a crab on bent-the-wrong-way hands and feet. It looked like someone had broken the elbows and knees and reset them, and the face was oddly and horrifically human.
I screamed and dove backward, scrambling to get away from it, but it moved too quickly, a blur coming at me with claws and teeth. I felt the sharp pain just as Navi reappeared above me, jumping from the top of Devil's Gate.
My body fell. I watched it fall, but my—my soul was caught in the sea monster's claws and I just watched it all happen. There was no running. No escaping. Not now.
My body lay motionless on the sand, and the creature crawled toward it, claws reaching for my skin. Like—like it was going to climb inside me and wear me as a coat. So focused on that, the monster almost didn't see the ghosts behind it, flying up the beach with swords of their own.
At the last minute, it abandoned my body and skittered away up the beach, toward the road and civilization. I had to just watch it go. The ghosts swarmed my body, protecting it from the other monsters that now filled the beach, splashing through the waves, trying to escape either into the ocean or into the city. The ghosts, an army of them, chased them down, swords and axes gleaming in the moonlight.
And Navi led them.
"The aswangs want your soul. You must leave." The man stood in front of me, but I could see right through him. He wasn't solid, and his eyes were a milky white.
"But my body! Help me—"
"Touch your heart. You'll go back in." He turned away, swinging his axe, and I quickly did what I was told. My hand.
My hand was milky white. Like his.
I felt my quickly cooling body, but nothing happened. I pushed on my chest, I tried to do compressions, tried to keep my heart beating, but nothing. I went right through to the sand below.
Navi. Navi would know what to do. But Navi stood a mile away, fighting like a legendary knight with two swords, one in each hand. She was flawless in her movements, so fast my eyes couldn't follow.
And covered in blood.
But she didn't seem to notice. And the battle was so fierce, she hadn't seen my body lying near the wall. She couldn't see me among a hundred other ghosts, and even as I tried to fight my way toward her, they wouldn't let me. I was pushed back again and again, until I found myself on the outskirts of the fight, even further from her than when I'd started. And still, the ghosts fought me, until I had no choice but to retreat.
I didn’t know what to do next.
Navi was running. Maybe she was going home. My only option was to follow her.
I made it to the apartment before the sun came up, but it was disconcerting, moving without a body. I kept blinking in and out, one second being in the middle of the street, the next being several hundred yards ahead. That was when it worked in my favor. But I couldn't control it, not very well. Most of the time I ended up moving backward, instead.
I kept practicing. Kept trying to focus my energy on moving forward. I had to get to Navi, had to get her help before it was too late. What if one of those things got my body? Would I even know?
I tried not to look at my hands. Or down at myself at all, really. It was horrifying and the despair that washed over me every time only made my progress slower. I didn't have time to be slow.
So I focused on learning to move quickly.
By the time I reached the apartment, I'd managed it. I could control what direction I moved and how far, and I was immensely pleased with myself. I started up the sidewalk, so focused on just moving forward I didn't realize there was an army standing between me and her.
Ghosts. Like me.
Except these ghosts all had huge weapons and looked like they would
happily tear me apart. It was her army, but they looked different now. "Stop."
I froze. Obedient, that's me. "I need to talk to Navi. She lives inside."
"We know Navi." A woman near the front smiled grimly. "We work for Navi."
That much I had assumed on my own, given how she'd led them into battle on the beach where I was attacked. Had I not been panicking about my situation, I would have spent more time marveling over the fact that all this time, we'd believed she was just a parole officer. Working with people, reforming criminals. Humans.
It wasn't that at all.
She'd lied to us. Flat out lied. Maybe if she hadn't, I would have been prepared. This wouldn't have happened.
"I need to see her," I said, angrier than I'd intended.
The weapons raised.
"We can't let you past. Go back to your haunts." It was the man from the beach. The man who had told me to leave.
"You—you helped me, remember? After I was attacked—"
"You're in limbo now. We don't know what you could do—you're haunting Navi. Leave before we are forced to make you."
"Haunting her? No—no. I'm not. I'm Navi's friend! Surely you recognize me, if you know her at all."
They raised their weapons. "Leave."
"Please! You have to let me through. I have to see her. It's a matter of—" Life and death. But something told me they wouldn't care. "Please."
"I'm sorry." A woman, who seemed to be in charge of the rest, pushed her way through to the front. "We can't let you through. You aren't recognizable to us and souls in limbo are a danger to us all. Please leave."
"I will die if you don't let me see her. Don't you understand?" I yelled, so much frustration, so much fear, in every word I literally drove them backward, like they'd been hit by a great wind.
That was a bad move.
Immediately, they attacked, coming at me with weapons raised. There were so many of them—too many for me to try to run through.
I had to retreat. Again.
But to where? Where would I be safe? Where could I find help? I was trapped in a darkness I didn't even understand and I didn't know how to get out. The one person who could have helped me seemed to be protected by an army of ghosts and I had no way to contact her.
