The Ghost That Got Away

Chapter 2-2

Despite my protests, I’m admitted to Springside Hospital for an overnight stay.

“Observation,” the doctor intones, looking very serious right before she winks. I’ve known her all my life, and this isn’t my first trip to the emergency room. When she adds, “Your grandmother would never forgive me if something happened to you,” I know she’s sincere.

But I’m alone in my own room. No one will tell me how Sadie is. The room phone is out of my reach. I don’t have my cell—and even if I did, it’s probably broken—so I can’t call Malcolm. The television makes my head ache even worse. Someone with a sense of humor selected my hospital gown. I stare down at the print.

Dozens of little ghosts and jack-o’-lanterns stare back.

I wait, worry eating away at my insides. My head is throbbing, so I shut my eyes and concentrate on the footfalls that echo outside in the corridor. Some whisper. Some clomp. Then I hear steps that have a familiar cadence, footsteps that have shadowed mine.

I open my eyes in time to see Malcolm enter the room. Part of his forehead is covered with a bandage. I open my mouth, but before I can say anything, he waves away my words.

“Just a graze,” he says. “Damn thing threw a vase at me.”

“And?” I’m certain this is not a full report.

“And maybe a few bruises.” He pulls up a chair and sits at my bedside. He reaches toward me as if to brush hair from my face but pulls his hand back. “I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“And Sadie? How is she?”

He sighs. “She’s fine, physically, according to the doctors. But she’s still unconscious. They’ll run more tests in the morning, but she’s not injured—well, not like you are. They’re letting Nigel stay with her.”

I start to nod, then my head decides that’s a bad idea. I swallow back the pain. I want to talk, not be coddled, so I school my face.

“What do you think it is?” I ask. “I mean, is it more than a ghost?”

It wasn’t so long ago that I freed Malcolm—and myself—from an entity. This ghost in Sadie’s house doesn’t feel as calculating or intelligent as that other being was. True, Sadie’s new ghost flavored the air, but it didn’t change it, didn’t manipulate, didn’t suck the life from everything. I remind myself that not only did I banish the entity, I’m the only one who knows how to invoke it. Even so, I feel as if I should glance over my shoulder once in a while, just to make sure it’s truly gone.

“It feels like a ghost to me,” Malcolm says. “Completely nasty, but just a ghost. We used to get the really horrible kinds once in a while when I was living in the frat house. I used to catch them—” He breaks off, eyes widening, a look of chagrin painting his features.

“In my samovar,” he finishes. “I had all those ghosts in there when it exploded at Sadie’s,” he says. “What if this is my fault? Nigel will never forgive me.”

“But that was months ago. Why now?”

“It hates Christmas? It’s holiday central at Sadie’s. Or at least, it was. The place is a mess.”

“I don’t think that’s it, and I don’t think it’s your fault either.”

His jaw tenses, his lips a thin line. No matter what I say, he’ll blame himself. With my eyes closed, I cast my mind back to Sadie’s bedroom. The ghost attacked so fast and so hard, I barely had time to get a read on it. But I spent plenty of time on the floor before help arrived.

“Suffocating,” I say, testing the word for how it feels.

“Is that what it wants?” Malcolm asks.

“How it feels, what’s left of its personality. Suffocating.” I want to elaborate, but my thoughts are too fuzzy, my mind too dull to grasp the right words for it.

He nods as if I’ve made perfect sense. It’s one of the things I love about working with him. He connects the dots between my random thoughts.

“And it’s not leaving,” he adds. “We’ll have to eradicate.”

“And clean up the mess.” Not just the one it made, but the coffee-soaked one we’re bound to create getting rid of the thing.

Malcolm manages a short laugh. “Yes, and clean. When you’re up to it.”

“Thank you,” I say, something else occurring to me.

“What are partners for?”

“Well, that, but I meant the other, for the wreath. I just saw it this morning.”

His brow crinkles. “What wreath?”

“The one on my door. You sent it, right?”

He gives his head a slow shake. “No, I didn’t, but I’m thinking maybe I should have sent something.”

“If you didn’t send it …” My mind gropes for an answer or at least a clue. Then I remember. “My coat. I shoved the card into my pocket before I went to Sadie’s.”

Malcolm rummages in the built-in closet and pulls out an envelope.

“For one speaker to the dead from another,” he reads before skewering me with a look. “Really, Katy? You thought I wrote that?”

“Who else would?”

“It’s terrible.” He makes a face. “Plus, it isn’t signed. Trust me, when I send you something, you’ll know it’s from me. This?” He waves the card in the air. “This is just creepy.”

I let out a breath, all relief and no regret. I knew it didn’t sound a thing like Malcolm.

“But if you didn’t send it, who did?”

Malcolm turns the card in his hands, studying it, holding it up to the light. His features shift from grim to amused. He throws his head back, but his laugh lacks its usual warmth.

“It seems they’re courting you already,” he says.

“Who’s courting me … and why?”

“You met him today. So that’s why he’s in town.” Malcolm shakes his head, self-recrimination painting his features. “I should’ve known.”

“Who?”

“Carter Dupree.”

“So he’s a friend of yours?”

Malcolm snorts. “That might be pushing it.”

“He said he was.”

“Yeah, well, Carter says lots of things he shouldn’t and not enough things that he should.”

“Even without the head injury I’m not sure I’d know what that means.”

He doesn’t laugh, but the smile he gives me is indulgent and dazzling. After a quick glance at the door, he scoots his chair closer to the bedside.

“He’s like us,” Malcolm says. “A necromancer.”

“I’m not a necromancer.” We’ve had this conversation. Right now I’m in no shape to have it again.

“Whatever. Only with Carter it’s different. He’s part of a necromancer ... guild, I guess you could call it.”

“Such a thing exists? What do they do? Go through training?”

“Yes, but it’s more like a consortium, or maybe a cabal, a syndicate.”

“That sounds shady,” I say.

He raises his hands, palms skyward. “It does, doesn’t it?”

What is he saying, exactly, and why won’t he spell it out? An awful thought strikes me, sends a second spike of pain through my head.

“Are you part of this thing? Is Nigel?”

He leans forward, so close I can smell the Ivory Soap laced with his sweat from this afternoon’s battle. He is both warm and safe. I’m praying he won’t say something to change that.

“Honestly? I don’t think I ever made it onto their radar. That’s maybe just as well.” He pauses as if considering his next words. “Besides, the Armands have always been … free agents. We’ll consult with each other occasionally, but this is the longest Nigel and I have ever worked together.” This time when he reaches out, his hand does travel my forehead and sweeps strands of hair from my face.

Shady cabals and families filled with lone wolves. Both options strike me as unbearably sad. There are many reasons I refuse the label of necromancer. I’ve now added two more to the list.

“Why is he here?” I ask.

“Ghost gossip.”

“Ghost gossip?”

“You can’t banish an evil entity without that fact getting around. One sprite told another, that one told a ghost who told another who has a … pact with a necromancer.”

“And then that necromancer tells all the others.”

“Well, in this case, yes. I’m surprised it took them this long, now that I think of it.”

“What do they want?”

“You.”

“Me? What on earth for?”

“Less earth, more otherworldly. You called forth that entity once, right?”

Despite the ache in my head, I manage a small nod. Yes, I did, and we both wear the scars from that. There’s still a faint blue cast to my left cheek from where the entity marked me. Malcolm’s ebony hair has a touch of gray, especially around the temples.

“That means you can do it again,” he says now.

“I don’t want to do it again. That would be stupid.”

“They don’t think so. In fact, that’s how they … work things. They find the most powerful ghosts they can and then use their membership to leverage them.”

“That sounds awful. It sounds … cruel.”

Again, Malcolm raises his hands. “I’m not disagreeing, just telling you how it is.”

Dinner arrives then, in a clattering of the cart across the linoleum floor (loud … so loud) and the scent of turkey with gravy. The meal includes pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream on top. I plan to skip straight to dessert.

“That looks almost edible,” Malcolm says.

The remark earns him a glare from the nurse entering the room.

“I think, young man, it’s time to end your visit.”

He turns one of his dazzling smiles on her and melts some of her ice. Her own smile in return is indulgent.

Oh so predictable.

“I just wanted to make sure Katy’s okay for the night,” he says.

“We’ll be watching her.” The nurse holds up her hand, five fingers extended. “Five minutes and no more.”

Malcolm leans close as if to give me a goodbye kiss. Instead, he says, “We’ll sort through this tomorrow.”

I start to agree, then a panicked thought strikes me. “I left a sprite on the counter in my kitchen, and Belinda can’t stay the night with that ghost next door.”

Belinda Barnes is my roommate. She’s also a magnet for the nastier ghosts that haunt this world. The one next door fits the profile perfectly.

“I called the Pancake House to warn her. She says she has a place to stay and will grab something to eat before she goes off shift.”

She does? Before she moved in with me, that place was more often than not some back alley.

“Really?” I say, because Belinda having somewhere new to stay is a curious development.

He shrugs. “Don’t think too hard on it.”

With that, Malcolm leans even closer and places a gentle kiss on my forehead. I want to tell him he can do more than that—my lips are in perfect working order. But there’s so much tenderness and concern in that one simple gesture that I decide to simply savor it instead.

“I’ll be here in the morning to pick you up.”

And then he’s gone, out the door in five minutes as promised.