They came at me in one fell swoop of hammering, suffocating despair.
“Please, I need you to—”
“The car swerved—it wasn’t my fault—”
“My daughter, can you—”
The voices swelled as the ghosts’ emotions mixed with the pain of the wounded. The combined weight took me to my knees, the crack of bone on the hard floor loud despite my jeans. My senses began to shut down out of pure self-preservation. In the back of my mind, I heard Fred yelling, heard Phro cursing…
I managed to look up only to see larvae, the lowest of the low on the spirit food chain, hovering over the more devastated of the victims. Fury galvanized me into fighting the empathic weakness as I slowly climbed to my feet and fought to rebuild the mental shields I usually kept in place. I waved off an orderly who had rushed to help me.
“Hey you two, ignore those spirits, because there are worse ones.” I pointed up and watched as Phro and Fred both scowled and began shooing the larvae out of the hallway. A few larvae in a hospital were normal, but the number of creatures here alarmed me. Psychic buzzards, bubble-shaped and a sick-colored grey, the relentless beings formed a specific function in the spirit realms—feeding on the scraps of magical waste, much like worms in the physical dimension. But they also liked to attach themselves to sick humans and hurry the process for the dying. “Come on. Let’s find the witch and bring her back to spell the larvae out. I don’t want them munching on my sister.”
“Nasty little buggers.” Fred shuddered, pushing away from the hand of a beseeching ghost. “There shouldn’t be this many lost spirits, either. I want out of here.”
I tried to shake off my anger as we left the hospital. The fresh air and warm sunlight helped. I needed to focus.
Elsa once told me she thought I’d been given extra strength to fight the monsters. That I’d been given the ability to peel dimensional layers to see them. My sister had always believed it my job to find the bad guys, like some comic book superhero.
At puberty, when most girls were going through the normal routine of bodily changes, I went through those and so much more. I became something other than human. So I sought out the lower rungs of hidden society because somewhere out there, one of the creatures had to know what I was.
I sure as hell didn’t.
Chapter Two
Tracking the witch turned out to be easy. I found her trying to climb Elsa’s stockade fence. In the daytime. When anyone could see her. I didn’t know it was her at first so I climbed out of my Jeep, stalked over and yanked the woman down just before her leg swung over.
I found myself looking at the most pale, delicate person I’d ever seen. The tingle of electricity in my hands told me right away that she was a being of magic.
“Oh goodness.” She sputtered and struggled briefly, then began muttering under her breath, all the while staring down at me with huge, curious eyes. They were so wide they took up most of her face—the kind of eyes that made grown men weep and buy stupid flowers.
I didn’t like her.
But I did put her down just as a small flame burst to life in a patch of grass next to my right foot. I stomped it out quickly before the unusually hot sun and dry conditions could spread it. I lifted a brow as the woman kept muttering. A spell no doubt. And not a very good one. Ignoring the witch for a second, I looked over her shoulder and narrowed my eyes to let the veil between worlds slide apart. It was like peeling an orange. I kind of folded back this layer of reality to look into the next. I could keep going if needed, but I didn’t have to go very far to meet the gaze of the small woman’s spirit guide.
“Hey! What are you looking at?” The witch actually managed to sound both indignant and demanding. She had wispy yellow hair, stood all of five feet, and despite her delicate appearance, was seriously curvy. She reminded me of a painting I’d seen of a Victorian maiden draped over one of those ancient, puffy chaises.
Phro snorted, loud and unladylike.
Miss Big Eyes actually flinched. I watched her closely to see if she looked at the spirit guides. Her gaze never lit on Phro or Fred, who stood to either side of me, but it darted right and left really fast.
Her third eye was opening.
Great.
It would make her skittish. And she was definitely a witch. Real ones carried an electrical streak that could fry small animals if left unchecked. This one’s power was barely leashed. The fire proved that. The last thing we needed was a skittish witch. Magic and the jitters didn’t mesh. I glanced at her spirit guide again, took in his frown as he stared at Phro.
The witch crossed her arms. “Are you looking at Frida?”
“Who’s Frida?” I asked, slapping at a nosy mosquito buzzing near my neck. A handful of bees hovered about two feet away. I wondered how far these had roamed from their hive. They were always around whether I called them or not.
“My spirit guide,” she said, as if I should have already known this little bit of info. “I’m Blythe.”
I looked at the woman’s guide. Somehow, I didn’t think this seven-foot, bald black man with arms like the Governator carried that moniker. I bit my lip, taking in his red balloon style pants and the skimpy gold vest. “Let me get this straight, Blythe. You know you have a spirit guide. And… you know his name is Frida?”
Her head bobbed up and down, her curls bouncing in her enthusiasm. “She’s a real sweetie. To me anyway. She doesn’t like it when people manhandle me, though. The last one she managed to push off a pier and right into the ocean. He was sort of a boyfriend, but not really and it was pretty funny because he was so scared he actually swam away from the beach.”
Another spirit guide who didn’t follow the rules. This just kept getting better and better. And obviously, she couldn’t see him—just sense him. In a weird, totally wrong kind of way. “You get manhandled often?”
The witch bit her lip, nodding again. “Yes, surprising, isn’t it? I’m pretty small. You’re not small at all.” She released a dreamy smile. “I’d love to be really big and tall like you. I’ve had two boyfriends who picked me up just like you did. Of course they were angrier. I’ve never had a woman pick me up like that. One tried once, but she dropped me. She was mad, too. I just don’t understand why people get so angry and decide to manhandle me.”
I was beginning to understand…
I glanced at Phro, who stared at the woman in open-mouthed amazement. Phro never had patience for chattiness, but this was something else. Two minutes with this witch and I had already labeled her a ditherer. A jittery, magically unchecked dithering witch.
This woman could possibly be more dangerous than whatever we were looking for.
“Are you the witch Elsa spoke with last night?” My tone could slice glass. Big? Really big? I was tall. Not. Big.
She blinked. “Beg your pardon?”
Fred, in the meantime, had walked a complete circle around her and now stood leaning into her face. A sloppy grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Aw… she’s just adorable.”
It was just as I’d thought. Weeping and stupid flowers. Terrific. “You talked to Elsa Remington? You’re a witch?”
“How do you know? Oh!” She covered her mouth with pale pink-tipped fingers. The small silver pentagram ring on her third finger flashed in the sunlight. “You’re psychic, aren’t you? I should have known. I’m supposed to be able to pick up on these things, at least that’s what Sophie—she’s my mentor—or my witch’s guide—says, but—” She broke off, her head tilting as if she’d lost her place and was trying to catch it. I had a feeling this happened often with her.
I swallowed a chuckle lodged as a hard lump in my throat.
“What was I saying?” Blythe asked.
“That’s it! I’ve seen it all now.” Phro rolled her eyes and sighed. “I can finally go home. I’ll beg my father to hear me and find whichever goddess bitch stuck me here and then I’ll get out of this wretched world once and for all.” Phro had come as close to the woman as
Fred. They both stared into her face like she was something wiggling under a microscope. Frida, or whatever the hell his name was, was starting to blow smoke out of his nose.
Nice trick, that.
“You guys better back up,” I muttered to my guides. When aggravated enough, a spirit guide can gather enough energy to give a person a big shove. And since this one had gone so far as to push someone off a pier, things could get ugly, like winking into other dimensions ugly. I’d once pissed off a spirit enough to make him pop me one. Unfortunately, instead of me bouncing off like he’d expected, he’d been the one to take a ride on the space-time continuum. I still sometimes wondered if he’d ever found his way back.
“Oh, you’re talking to your own guides!” Blythe clapped her tiny hands, making the huge filmy sleeves around her wrists flutter. Those floaty things were attached to the girliest dress I’d ever seen. I glanced down at my own jeans, boots and black T-shirt. They didn’t make floaty, little peach dresses in my size.
Thank goddess.
“I’m assuming since you said ‘you guys’ that you have more than one? How nice. I’ve wondered myself but I’ve only been able to sense Frida. I do wonder if she gets lonely since she can’t talk to me.”
I couldn’t see her wall of a spirit guide getting lonely.
“Sometimes, I think I hear her. Maybe humming a sweet little tune or I’ll feel a breeze when I’m surrounded by flowers. I think she likes to dance among the flowers. I’ll purposely walk through every flower garden I see just so she can be filled with joy.”
That was it for Phro. She lost it. She slid her arms around her bare waist and bent over, her long, black hair sliding around to shield her face. Laughter shook her entire body.
As it was, I had to turn my head and blink rapidly and pretend to cover a cough. I caught Fred out of the corner of my eye. His watery eyes were locked on, um… Frida.
“So what are their names?”
I was so confused. “Who?”
Blythe sighed loudly, her expression changing to pity. “Your guides, of course.”
“Fred and Phro.”
She clapped again. “That’s so cute! Now we have Fred, Phro and Frida! Isn’t that a happy coincidence?”
Speaking of spirit energy punches, I felt a sharp one hit the side of my head. “Hey!” I hadn’t even seen Phro move. I rubbed my palm over my stinging temple.
Phro yelled in my ear. “Why’d you go and tell her our names? I don’t want that—that sorry excuse for a woman knowing my name. She’ll probably use it in some voodoo ritual.”
Phro knew very well witches didn’t practice voodoo. Well, not this kind of witch anyway. I looked to Frida to see if he objected to Phro’s insults. He said nothing. He hadn’t said a word since we had arrived. In my experience, there was only one kind of spirit that couldn’t talk. A murder victim. And since I was pretty sure Blythe wasn’t the dangerous criminal sort, I didn’t know why he was silent.
Maybe he was just rude.
Blythe wrinkled her small nose and sniffed. “Do you smell burnt corn?”
I sighed. She made my brain tired. “Let’s go inside and sit down. You can tell me why I found you climbing my sister’s fence.” The keys jangled loudly when I pulled them from my pocket. Clutching them tight in my fist, I turned and eyed the small, red brick house my sister had owned for six years. She’d inherited it from her grandmother, but her own small touches had made it completely Elsa in the time since. At first glance one would never expect a cop to live here. Maybe a gardener with the rows of brightly colored plants and flowers. My sister especially liked plants native to her home state—her favorites were the birds of paradise with their vivid orange and violet blooms. She also had snapdragons and her cranberry hibiscus shrubs were just now perking up with pretty pink hollyhock flowers. She always said she got her love of nature from me.
Shaking my head, I quickly walked up the three wooden steps to my sister’s small porch before unlocking the front door. It swung open and a wave of cold air slapped me in the face. This year, late fall in Jacksonville was still warm enough to warrant running the air conditioner.
I looked around the empty front room which, as always, resembled a museum. Not because Elsa was a good housekeeper, but because she worked even when home. Her office down the hall would show the most human activity. Here, only a stack of books on the corner of the cherry coffee table and an empty coffee mug on the matching side table showed Elsa had even been around.
Going into my sister’s house, knowing she wouldn’t be here, made me want to curl up into a ball and cry. I couldn’t even speak for a minute or two so I just pointed Blythe to the big, green couch and went into the kitchen to see what Elsa had here in the way of drinks.
But first, I braced my hands on the black granite counter and bent my head. Elsa wasn’t dead.
When I looked up, my eyes locked onto a picture of Elsa and myself. I had been eleven, Elsa ten. She had her arm slung around my neck and this big-ass smile on her face. I looked stunned. I had been. Elsa had loved me instantly—a completely new experience.
There was a giraffe magnet holding the picture to the fridge. Stupid giraffes. Elsa loved them. Collected any giraffe thing she could get her hands on.
The backs of my eyes burned and I blinked furiously, curling my hands into fists. I could hear Blythe murmuring in the living room. The woman seemed fine so I took another moment to calm. I had faced down some pretty scary creatures, lived through dangerous situations but nothing prepared me for dealing with this kind of thing—having a loved one involved and vulnerable. Of course, Elsa was my one and only loved one.
I took a deep breath and opened up the fridge, knowing my sister would have lemonade. “You like lemonade?” I called out to Blythe.
“Only if it’s fresh!”
I rolled my eyes and poured two glasses. “Picky little bitch,” I muttered, turning to face a huge expanse of deep brown muscle. Oops. I looked up into furious black eyes and shrugged.
Frida snarled. He had nicely defined muscles in his chest and huge arms, all on display in his little gold vest. Poor guy. While my relationship with Fred and Phro was unique in many different ways, most spirit guides didn’t have as much freedom as mine did. Phro wore whatever she wanted—manufactured her own bizarre designs, even. Fred—well, he was stuck in the clothes he’d died in. He said it was because I lacked imagination. The majority of guides were at the mercy of their companion’s imaginations. Blythe obviously thought her Frida was a genie. Or a harem girl.
I smirked.
His nostrils flared.
Chuckling, I quickly slid past him. I could have walked through but that gave me the creeps. Happened often enough without me doing it on purpose.
“Where is Elsa?” Blythe asked as she took her lemonade. Elsa had always liked big, fluffy couches. Blythe just about disappeared into the over-stuffed, moss-colored cushions, her feet hanging nowhere near the floor.
“I was hoping you could tell me. I assume you know she’s missing since you were climbing her fence?” I sat across from her in a brown leather chair. Both Phro and Fred stood to the side, staring at—er—Frida. I had a hard time calling such a manly man by that stupid name. He’d followed me back into the room and now stood behind the couch. I started to ask Blythe another question when the smell hit me.
There was a hint of sharp citrus in the air—stronger than the lemonade and faintly sour. No, rancid. A smell of death and magic. I didn’t think it was coming from the witch, but until I was sure, I’d keep my mouth shut. I did lean closer to see if it got stronger in her direction. I sniffed, hoping I didn’t resemble a cat catching something on a breeze, then cleared my throat. “Have you seen my sister today?”
The witch shook her head. “I haven’t seen her since last night. So, she is missing?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” I didn’t plan to give out much information, not until I had this lady’s number. Or in this case… all her numbers. I pushed my hair
off my shoulders, wishing I’d grabbed my scrunchy and cap out of the Jeep. My hair was so heavy up on my head I often took it down in my vehicle just to give my neck a rest. I noticed Blythe eyeing my hair and was surprised when she didn’t ask about it. “Why were you climbing her fence?”
“Oh.” She set her glass on a coaster before lifting her yellow purse. At least I thought it was a purse. It was pretty big and lumpy. Full. I didn’t carry a purse so I couldn’t imagine what a person would put in a bag like that. I’d been in situations where having free hands had saved my life.
“Here it is.” Blythe pulled a piece of folded paper from her yellow satchel. “Your sister came to my shop yesterday and left her card because I had a couple of customers. They didn’t buy anything. I get a lot of curious people who just come in to look around. I had to close it—my shop that is. Business has been so slow lately. I only opened the front door because I was there. Anyway, when I called, she came back last night. She wanted to know if I was the real deal. A real witch.”
I didn’t have to ask if she was. The electrical streak said it all. But Elsa would have. When she’d said her eyes had been opened because of me, she meant she noticed more things since she was aware of otherworldly beings now. Plus, my sister would never trust witches again after that last case. It had taken her months to physically recover. I wasn’t sure either of us would ever emotionally mend.
“I showed her my best magic spell.” She leaned forward, expression eager. “Wanna see it?”
“Maybe later.”
“Okay. So, when she was sure, she asked if I’d had any unusual customers lately, anyone who might have a darker aura—oh, my magic trick has to do with auras.”
“Goody.”
She frowned, and I smiled to put her at ease. I was kind of being a bitch. I just so wanted her to get to the point. That citrus smell was driving me nuts, and I wanted to search it out.
“I—” She broke off, eyes going wide. “Wow. You are truly beautiful when you smile.”
Dweller on the Threshold Page 3
