by D. R. Perry
“Sorry, man.” I winked, touching my fingers to my lips as I stared through my ghost buddy’s chest at the platinum-haired woman in the seat beside mine. “And sorry, Olivia.”
“No need to apologize for talking to your less-visible friends, Bianca.” The owl shifter grinned. I wasn’t sure why she leaned forward in her seat to peer at me. It wasn’t like Horace could obstruct her view. Owl shifters could sometimes see ghosts but only while in their feathered forms. “I’d better get used to having ghosts around if I’m going nocturnal. The skeleton crew runs the campus after dark.”
“If these legal eagles really want to get used to us, you had better tell them to get their own seats,” said the knitting lady neither Olivia nor Mr. Ichiro could see. “I’m sick of being sat on, especially at this hour of the night.”
“Um, Mr. Ichiro?” I glanced at the clock, the cup of pens on the Nursing Station’s counter, the linen cart, everywhere but at the attorney I spoke to.
“I’ve done it again, haven’t I, Miss Brighton?” He sighed and gripped the chair’s armrests.
“Yeah, you have, sir.” I gazed at my shoes until he chuckled softly.
I looked up to see Mr. Yoshi Ichiro, Attorney at Law, standing up and turning to face the seat he’d just vacated. He bowed his head and apologized to the ghostly knitter he’d been sitting on as the nurse arrived.
“I’ll take you to see Professor Watkins now.” The nurse spun on one clogged heel before I could get a good look at his name badge. The four of us followed even though the nurse thought he only escorted three visitors. Horace and I were the only ones dodging and turning to avoid walking through the hall’s incorporeal denizens. I knew it made me look like an oddball, but I didn’t care. The ghosts appreciated it, at any rate.
At first, it had been the weirdest thing ever, seeing all those people no one else can, even more anxiety-inducing than the pimples and hand-wringing of everyone else’s puberty problems. But after ten years, I’d grown out of pimples and into being a medium. I hadn’t done it alone. Since the minute I’d woken up in this very hospital, Horace had been with me, helping me make sense of all the extra, slightly transparent people I could see. If Horace hadn’t gone to Delilah Redford, told her there was a brand new medium in town, I might have ended up at Butler Mental Hospital instead of Providence Paranormal College.
“You sure you’re ready for what you might see in there?” Horace hovered close beside me. The other ghosts dodged him, making it easier for me to avoid them on my left.
“No, but the poor Professor’s been stuck in here all summer,” I mumbled. Only the nurse looked at me funny. Olivia and Mr. Ichiro expected me to have seemingly one-sided conversations. “This is the least I can do.”
“But are you sure you’re the medium who has to do it?” Horace peered at me from under the brim of his bowler hat.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I still don’t know if Delilah’s been in to see him. And if so, nothing he’s said to her will help at this trial, anyway.” Even though I’d taken pains to be quiet, I didn’t dare mention Richard Hopewell, the Extramagus who’d been attacking my college and its students for over six months. According to the crew who hung out in the Nocturnal Lounge, the big bad Extramagus liked using magical surveillance gadgets. Lynn Frampton, the smartest girl at school, had a theory that he either couldn’t or wouldn’t spy with mundane devices. I took out my phone.
“Good idea.” Olivia snapped her fingers to get Mr. Ichiro’s attention once we’d all filed into the room. I waited until the nurse left before looking around to confirm my suspicions on the professor’s condition. I typed everything I saw on Evernote, so I didn’t have to risk anything I said getting picked up by a bug, magical or otherwise.
Professor Nathaniel Watkins looked like a waxwork in the bed. His pale, still hands and arms bristled with tubes embedded in his papery skin. Wires hung from electrodes clinging like morbid versions of stickers to his legs and neck. The hospital gown draped over his artificially rising and falling chest was a washed-out blue. I’d known he’d been in a coma and thought I was prepared to see him like this, but I still gasped and swallowed and blinked back tears. Psychics tended toward empathy, but my reaction was more extreme than usual. I took a deep breath and counted to four before looking around the room.
No flowers stood in vases. No balloons floated over the nightstand. No knick-knack or religious item or family photo sat propped on any of the stark, sterile surfaces. Only one faded, folded piece of cardboard lay flat on the windowsill on the other side of the bed. Olivia went and stood it up. I recognized it as the card Lynn Frampton and Bobby Tremain had insisted their entire pack sign and send back in June. But it was September now. It looked like no one besides the hospital staff had bothered with Professor Watkins since then.
I felt my hands tighten around the phone I still clutched and took three deep, cleansing, meditative breaths. I wasn’t here to see the professor in the flesh, I’d come to see him in spirit. So I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, narrowed my focus to concentrate on how he’d look to someone like me—a medium.
He wasn’t dead. I’m not talking about the scientific sense, where the doctors look at an EKG’s peaks and valleys or psychedelic blots of color on a brain scan. All those would look like Vacancy signs on the professor’s body to almost anyone else. But the silver thread stretching between his midsection and a nearby wall told me he was just out to lunch, in a manner of speaking. Psychically projected. And that’s what I tapped into Evernote, what Mr. Ichiro and Olivia read over my shoulder.
I caught Horace’s eye, and he nodded. My partner plunged one arm through the wall behind the respirator up to his elbow. He smirked, moving his shoulder up and down, then locking his elbow before pulling his arm back through. A translucent and much healthier looking version of Nathaniel Watkins emerged, the silver thread at his middle shrinking as he got closer to the sickly form in the bed. I tapped away, describing and transcribing everything for the other solid people in the room.
“Don’t even try to put me back in my body, Casper.” The out-of-body professor gave my friend his best “you’re failing this exam” stare. I knew it well. “Won’t work. And I don’t want visitors.”
“The name’s Horace.” The ghost tipped his hat.
“I know who you are. Let go of my tether.” Professor Watkins crossed his arms over his chest. Unlike ghosts, his limbs didn’t pass through each other. That was promising. It meant his spirit form still remembered being in his body even though he could pass through inert barriers. “I won’t go back inside the wall.”
“You’re an Astral Psychic so you know how this works, Professor.” Horace shook his head. “You have to make an actual promise.”
“Fine.” Professor Watkins folded his arms over his chest, hovering in the air with his feet flexed. “I swear on my silver cord I’ll stick around for this pointless chat.”
“Good.” Horace smiled and adjusted the goggles perched around the brim of his hat. Most of the other ghosts thought Horace was from the Victorian era, which sometimes gave him more authority over them. But he came clean with me about his love of Steampunk. “But you know, this chat is hardly pointless for poor Professor Brodsky. His trial’s in October. We’re told you have information that might exonerate him.”
“Boo fricking hoo.” Professor Watkins rolled his eyes. I noticed a slight movement under his body’s eyelids to match. “I wish that old thing would work.” He jerked his chin at his comatose form. “If it did, I’d finally get all the funding back for my department that he convinced Thurston to allocate to his.”
“Oops.” I shut my mouth around the end of the word I’d let slip. I typed out the rest of the thought so it couldn’t get overheard. I’d forgotten those two were academic rivals, worse than Lynn versus Blaine. Ichiro-san and Olivia nodded.
“Listen, I know you don’t care about Pavlo Brodsky personally.” Horace tilted his head at me. “But I care about her. And you care about t
he College.”
“What’s that got to do with an old bigot finally going so completely nuts that he started exterminating vampires?” Watkins put his hands on his hips and leaned forward until he was right in Horace’s face.
“Plenty.” My friend kept his cool. “But the old bigot’s not the real threat because his mind was compromised. Someone whammied him. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I recommended a Psychic sleep-aid for him.” The professor leaned back and looked sideways at each of us in turn. “I knew all about his insomnia.” Nate’s eyes glittered with something brittle, angry. “It’s no excuse for crimes against extrahumanity. No excuse for trying to frame Thurston for them, either.”
“But the Counselor here thinks it wasn’t actually him.” Horace nodded, reaching one hand out to indicate Mr. Ichiro. “You could help put the right person away, the one who’s still messing with the school and everyone in it.”
“I’m no fool, kid.” He rolled his eyes. “There hasn’t been anyone capable of Mind magic in Rhode Island since Ignacius Harcourt died taking down that Extramagus back before the Reveal. I’m giving you homework before I dismiss you. Check the Registry.”
“Been there, done that, Bianca bought the T-shirt because I don’t wear them.” Horace’s eyes jittered to the left, telling me he was about to take a leap of faith. “And by the way, that was not the last Extramagus, you know.”
“I know. There was that one Henry and Dahlia fought against back in ‘89.” Watkins waved one hand dismissively. “He didn’t have Mind magic, by the way. But that was definitely the last one around these parts.”
“You’re wrong.” Horace narrowed his eyes.
“What?” Nate Watkins blinked, his hand reaching absently for the silver thread at his midsection, a sign that Horace had caught him flat-footed.
“Guess you haven’t heard since you’ve been hiding away in here.” Horace’s face went blank, grave. “Richard Hopewell’s an Extramagus. Untithed changeling, too. Been posing as a garden-variety Fire Magus all this time, and he’s getting himself involved in Faerie business. Courting the queen.”
“Now, that’s the biggest crock of bull I’ve heard this century.” Watkins snorted. "Last century, too."
“Newport PD has proof Hopewell’s attacked vampires with his registered Fire magic. We have four witnesses to him using Spectral magic in the Under, right in the queen’s castle.” Horace’s lip curled in a sneer. “All we need to help with Brodsky’s trial is reasonable doubt. If there’s any hint, the tiniest clue that Richard’s skill-set includes Mind magic and Brodsky was under his spell, you could help save an innocent man from a death sentence.”
“Pavlo Brodsky’s no innocent.” Nate Watkins shook his head. “You should look into what he got up to back in Russia sometime. But still, it’s true that he didn’t torture and kill those poor vampires. I saw something that’ll cast enough reasonable doubt to clear him, but nothing to incriminate Hopewell. I’m willing to help, I just don’t know how. Even if I give you what information I have, there’s no way my testimony will be valid in court.”
“Why?” I typed the question, and Horace asked it.
“Because I can’t get back in my body. I should be able to, but something’s blocking me. And you know the courts only allow corporeal witnesses. Ghosts and other disembodied people can only help by pointing the authorities at hard evidence.”
I peered at the professor’s silver thread, unsure of what he meant by not being able to get back in. I couldn’t see anything else occupying his corporeal form, but there was a faint bluish light around his incorporeal form that typically didn’t surround the out-of-body set. I tapped all of this out on my phone, understanding that I’d have to do some research into it later.
“That must be awful.” Horace shook his head. “So, there’s no chance your information will lead to evidence?”
“No.” Nate sighed, staring down at his body. “All I’ve got is my own eyewitness testimony about Hopewell giving Brodsky a magical device to help with his insomnia. My brother’s another story. He has information on all of Rhode Island’s Extramagi, family trees and the like, stored in a memory charm somewhere. That’d be some nuclear corroboration for a case against Hopewell.”
“You didn’t say ‘had,’ Nathaniel.” Horace held up one finger, shaking it from side to side like a parent scolding a child.
“No, I didn’t.” Nate Watkins tilted his chin, his face a portrait of defiance. “Edgar’s not dead.”
“I tend to agree.” Horace winked. “We spent the better part of the last month searching Rhode Island for his ghost. Yours, too. But if he isn’t dead, where is he?”
“No idea.” The corners of Nate’s mouth turned down. “He should have shown up by now, with me in a coma all this time.” He waved one hand at his body. “Then again, if there’s a Hopewell Extramagus lighting the town up, I can hardly blame him for sticking with hiding. We’ve got something anyone involved in a power grab is going to want. The item’s been hidden, but won’t be for much longer.”
The sound of the respirator filled the room as Olivia and Mr. Ichiro read along. I wished I could say something to Professor Watkins. He was a hard but effective teacher, one of the best at Providence Paranormal. I glanced around again at the bare room, hoping the reason he couldn’t get back into his body wasn’t that, deep down, he didn’t want to. We certainly hadn’t given him much encouragement to recover, psychically or otherwise.
Mr. Ichiro cleared his throat. “Perhaps the professor could tell us how to help him with this item.”
“Even with your little electronic note-passing trick, I shouldn’t.” Professor Watkins grinned at me. “Nice job, by the way, Brighton. Way better than your Freshman coursework. Maybe I’m paranoid, but just in case I’m not—” He pointed his finger at numbers and letters on the phone, guided me to enter the address without speaking.
“We’ll find your item there?” Horace peered at the street name right along with me. I wrinkled my nose as I realized it was in Olneyville. I hate Olneyville. It’s where I had the near-death experience that made me a medium.
“Yes, Casper, if you do things the smart way.” Professor Watkins snorted, his sarcasm approaching his legendary lecture hall levels. “There’s a trunk in the attic at that address. You can’t miss it. You’ll need help, so bring the Umbral girl and that Gitano kid with you. If you only go with Brighton, you’ll have big trouble.”
“What about the police?” Horace translated my question.
“No cops or the people who own that building will torch the place, probably with you in it.” He shook his head. “You’ll need to go in hidden. That house is crawling with creatures you don’t want your solid friends tangling with.”
“Lion shifters?” Horace shuddered. I wondered whether they had anything to do with his own demise.
“Yeah. And maybe a few other things.” Nathaniel Watkins smirked as he drifted back toward the wall he’d been hiding in. “Let Gitano take the lead, and don’t let him make himself scarce until the other cats are in the bag. And find out how to get me back in my body. You’re welcome.” The last thing that vanished was that smirky half-smile. After that, the nurse cleared his throat from the doorway.
Mr. Ichiro gave Olivia and me a pointed look. It was about time we made ourselves scarce.
Chapter Three
Horace
“But Tony. We really need your help.” Bianca stood wringing her hands by the coffee station with Maddie May, the Umbral Magus.
“Yeah, and I distinctly remember you saying you were sick of sitting around waiting back in July.” Maddie locked gazes with Tony Gitano. She put her hands on her hips so hard, the amulet that helped people like Bianca and ghosts like me remember her bounced against the front of her frilly black dress.
He turned his gaze away first. “Look, I said that about having a tango with the Extramagus, okay? This thing you want me to do is completely different. It’s messing with Dad’s b
usiness.”
“Tell him you don’t get how he can tell someone that powerful to just bring it and then chicken out over some of his own dad’s goons.” I exerted some of my energy to cool off the scalding coffee in the cup Bianca held. She took my advice, paraphrasing my idea.
“Do you have any idea how much worse my dad is than Richard Hopewell?”
“Last time I checked, the Gatto Gang hadn’t committed any crimes against extrahumanity.” Maddie crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing as shadows gathered around her. I didn’t blame her for being angry since said crimes had been targeting her fiancé.
“That you know of.” Tony sighed, looking like a sail with the wind gone out of it. “Look, part of the reason Dad’s so scary is that he’s slipperier than an eel. Nothing sticks, he’s made of Teflon, his Patronus is a stick of butter. I’m not going.”
“I will hide us with Umbral magic, though.” Maddie shook her head so hard, her curls bounced. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“You did not seriously just say those words? No, wait. You did.” Tony wrinkled his nose, then stretched his mouth into a manic grin. “You’re Maddie May, the girl who took a vampire on the lam from a Grim at dawn with nothing but an umbrella and a solar-powered calculator for a sun shield. Everyone knows you’re dare-ier than the Daredevil.” Tony stared into his coffee. “Look, Dad keeps all his operations warded ten ways from Sunday. He’s got Magi and Faeries on his payroll. You won’t get through.”
“They will.” Olivia Adler came down the stairs, her pace measured and mannish, almost like marching. “I’m going with them.” She pulled a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from her pocket and brandished them like a dagger. They looked magipsychically enhanced. “I’ll check for wards with these. Then, I get them to open the door. A piece of paper with Mr. Ichiro’s letterhead on it should do the trick better than Doctor Who’s psychic paper.”
