Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (7 page)

Cinderspark nodded. “Troy’s problem isn’t exactly a demon mark, but he’s been marked. If I continue to give him energy, that mark will eventually lead to me. That’s the way it is with a demon mark, or even a fairy mark for that matter. But his mark isn’t a demon mark, not precisely.” Her words tumbled out so rapidly, it was hard to assimilate the information.

“Demon mark?” Her words sent a chill through me that was colder than the ice of another ghost.

She bobbed up and down. “I don’t know exactly what it is! That’s the problem. What if...what if it’s just a demon type that I haven’t seen? I can see the mark. I didn’t really notice it at first, but now it’s growing.”

“Oh, no.”

She nodded, flying every which way so quickly, I stopped trying to track her. “It’s true!”

“I believe you.” I stared into the swirls of the river, the ley line. Guilt consumed me. “He rescued me from a demon. He must have gotten hurt or marked. I had no idea.”

Cinderspark shook her head, sparks flying. “No. That isn’t how a mark happens. It’s not a battle scar. It has to be accepted for the binding to take place. Uh-oh. I have to go.” And she did.

In the blink of an eye, I was left alone with only the glow from the ley line running through the rock. Given Cinderspark’s sudden exit, I gathered myself into a tight ball and drifted back towards In Between. There was no point to further exploration. Waiting around to see whatever it was that scared Cinderspark would be worse than foolhardy.

* * *

I didn’t have any experience with fairies, demons, demon marks or magic of any sort before I died. Turns out, In Between lacked libraries or the internet. Maybe I should try to contact someone dirt-side and see if they’d run a quick Google search for me. Of course, there was the small problem that even on the side of the living, there was probably only a handful of people who would know anything about demon marks.

When stumped, I usually asked Troy questions because he’d been here longer than me, but in this case, it didn’t seem like a great idea. Maybe Martin would be able to help me.

I waited outside the juniper while sorting my options, pretending to be Troy’s backup, pretending I hadn’t just infringed on his territory.

When he finally slipped out of the trunk, he was filled with energy, virtually bursting with life, except that he was still dead. I studied him meticulously from head to toe while he was still close to the tree, where colors were most visible. Since he wore a school jacket and jeans, there wasn’t much flesh visible. Then again, as ghosts, maybe a demon mark didn’t have to be on his flesh. His face and neck were clearly formed as he approached. There were no weird, detectable marks.

“I couldn’t find her.” His voice was strong now, barely ghosting at the edges.

I didn’t answer. My attention was completely focused on examining every piece of hair, every bit of visible flesh, including his ears. He hadn’t worn earrings; there was nothing there but gray ear. The jacket looked like any high school jock jacket. Embarrassed, I forced myself to inspect his legs, all the way to his shoes. He was nicely built. Right now he glowed.

I sighed in defeat. I wouldn’t know a demon mark if it floated in front of my face.

Noticing my preoccupation, he asked, “You okay?” His eyebrows were raised.

Who could blame him. I’d been fixated on him like some kind of lovelorn groupie. “Fine. I, uhm, found some leaves that must have floated through.”

“That’s good. There wasn’t much to bring back. There was no roadkill either, but I managed some blades of grass.”

“You keep them. You tire so easily lately. You might need them later on.”

I stared at the blades clutched in his hand.

He nodded. “You’re right. I don’t know why, but the energy doesn’t last long anymore. Maybe it’s because I’ve made my peace topside. It isn’t as easy to slide through anymore, and I don’t feel the call like I used to.” He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket.

“What changed?” My heart beat faster. Maybe he knew what had happened.

“I said goodbye to my parents.”

That didn’t sound right. “What?”

He nodded. “I made my peace with them. I let them know it was okay that I had moved on. But that was a while ago. A new sapling started growing in place of the huge tree that the vehicle crashed into. The new growth is causing the opening here to narrow, and there just isn’t as much energy available.”

But Cinderspark had said he was marked. “Did you see anyone else? Was there anything bad there?”

He focused on me then, instead of staring into the gray. “No. I guess I forgave the people responsible. They kidnapped Cinderspark because they thought she could spin gold. I helped her escape. That’s how we became such great friends, but she’s been around less frequently lately. It’s like I insulted her or she’s afraid of me for some reason, but that doesn’t make sense.”

I had to tell him what Cinderspark had said, even though it meant confessing I’d invaded his privacy. Why hadn’t Cinderspark told him the truth? Maybe I could avoid the whole truth. “She came through while you were in there.”

He blinked and his form wavered in surprise. “She did?”

“Troy, she is afraid, but not of you,
for
you. She said you were marked by something.” I gave him as much detail as Cinderspark had given me without admitting I’d gone into the tree. I felt like a burglar who had taken his secret stash with no ability to return it. I owed him the truth, but wasn’t brave enough to admit my transgression. If the energy here was fading, I’d just pillaged some of the last dredges. “She wants to help, but she’s very afraid of the mark, whatever it is.”

Troy shook his head. “I can’t put her in any danger.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and clenched his fists before shoving them back in. His fingers were their normal gray, although one hand was less formed than the other. That could easily be the whim of In Between or lack of concentration.

“Can you see anything? Any mark at all?” he demanded.

I shook my head. “I don’t see anything unusual, but I don’t know what to look for, and she didn’t have time to tell me!”

“Maybe I can figure it out.”

“We have to figure it out! The way she described it made it sound like it was a mark that would draw a demon, or whatever marked you, right to you.”

“No, not we. If Cinderspark is avoiding me, I should be avoiding everyone.”

Cold fear filled me again, and it had to be worse for him. Loneliness might be just as bad for some people still alive, but I doubted it was as screamingly miserable as it was here. People talk about cold spots, well, wait until you’re on this end. Those spots reach the land of the living because the kind of pain that comes from being a lonely ghost can’t be stopped by a murky curtain. You walk near a lonely ghost, and you’d have to be a serial killer to miss the vibe. It’s a physical pain that, since I’m dead, shouldn’t be felt anymore, but the hurt is real.

Troy raised one hand halfheartedly and began to drift away.

“Troy, you can’t tackle this by yourself!”

Spook came around the tree then, barking. He was having none of Troy’s nonsense. He took his spot, trailing after Troy, leaving me standing next to a juniper that wasn’t mine and with worry that had nowhere else to go.

Chapter 8

I floated slowly towards home, searching for Martin. He was the only one I knew who might have a clue about demon marks. He seemed to take great pride in knowledge of obscure facts. Either that or he just enjoyed babbling nonsense while pretending to be erudite.

As the gray drifted around me, I felt a tug to the edge. From the beckoning light, I knew it wasn’t a death. There was still a whisper of a gentle life breeze, the brush more like the magic of Troy’s tree than the opening of the weave to let in a soul.

It rarely paid to be curious In Between. But energy was energy and who really knew all the reasons a link to the other side might exist? Truth was, I was a moth to a flame where the living side was concerned even though other, more dangerous things were attracted there as well.

Before I could puff myself closer, a darker gray on gray froze me on the spot. Ghouls lacked the red eyes of demons and hellhounds. Once you were too close, there was nothing but a sucking blackness that would absorb you before you could escape.

I guardedly watched the shape as I paddled away in the opposite direction as fast as my blob could bobble. If weapons had been available here, I’d happily float around in full Rambo gear. Too bad shotguns never came through. Then again, there were far more dangerous creatures here than myself. With my luck they’d control all the guns. But even something simple would be better than nothing. My hands clenched as though with the memory of holding a weapon of some sort, but it was the ghost of a ghost, an instinct more than a recollection.

The blotch of gray didn’t follow me, but the moan of misery did. Ah, a spirit then. Other than coating me with sadness, it couldn’t actually do any harm. Martin said the spirits were very old ghosts who had never moved on, either because they hadn’t made their peace or they had gone bad. They tried to take over other ghosts, but had no power to do so.

I had no idea what he meant about going bad. Did ghosts spoil like meat left sitting out? Did we go rancid if left in the gray too long?

The dark shadow drifted away from the tug; the call from dirt-side wasn’t a death so the spirit couldn’t wallow. It fed on misery the way most of us ghosts subsisted on discarded life energy.

I resumed hunting the pull along the edge. The scent of life was easy to follow once you were in the current because the edge accommodated, shifting.

The walls that came into focus were the same blank concrete as the other hospital rooms, but there was no patient this time. The dead guy caught my attention first because his energy was similar to my own, borrowed; not that of a living soul. He was in blue nursing scrubs, standing across the room from Martin’s two friends. Roberto was the short Hispanic guy who had talked to us and given Martin the bloodstone. The other guy had to be Lynx because the ghostly image of a cat with long tufted ears hovered around his face. While his eyes shifted between the yellow glow of a cat and those of a human, both were filled with the spark of life.

“Martin says the girl doesn’t belong there. We need to find her body here and call her back. I thought you could cross because you’re already dead. You could ask her questions to help us locate her on this side,” the cat said. “Why wouldn’t it work?”

The dead man in nursing smocks had a ghostly image of his own. The image around him was a humanoid shape, but leathery as though mummified. The human form had hair neatly tied into a ponytail. In the ghost image, his head was rippled black skin with short, shiny hair so tight across a bony skull, it was nearly invisible. His bat ears were enormous, and I couldn’t tell if the wings across his back went with the human form or the other creature because they seemed to belong to both. Part of one wing was missing, and the human was minus most of one arm.

“There is no way I can cross.” The dead man’s voice was elegant but clipped, matching his cold black stare. Since he was dead, he could probably cross easily. Of course, once he was In Between, I doubted he could find his way back over to the side of the living. Even with the gentle winds crossing the open weave right now, the weave encouraged me to stay away. It wasn’t yet painful, but the pressure was a headache building across every part of me.

Roberto’s voice was the easiest to understand. Like the cat, his hair was black or close to it, but his was longer, instead of a buzz cut. The thick part on top stood nearly straight up from the breezes crossing into the weave. “What’s your name?” he asked me. Unlike the others, his pleasant tenor came right through to In Between as if he were standing in both places at once. He was easily able to see me, just like when Martin had spoken to him.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Everyone calls me Shadow.”

“Roberto,” he introduced himself. “That’s Lynx and Patrick.” He pointed to the cat and then the dead guy.

“Patrick can cross, but once here, I doubt he could cross back,” I told Roberto.

There might have been a flicker of surprise in the dead guy’s eyes. He gave me a nod of either welcome or acknowledgment. “Is that so?”

The cat half hissed, but sounded more excited than angry. “When Roberto does his thing, it’s as if there is a window. She found us!”

I had been drawn here, much like other places in the hospital. “Why are you looking for me?”

“We saw you with Martin when you helped tear him away from Roberto. Saved both their asses, if you ask me. Martin said we need to locate you on this side. Patrick is a vamp so we figured since he was dead, he could cross and ask you questions without it killing him.” A Cheshire grin stretched across both the ghost cat and the human. While there was no sound of laughter, there might have been a ghostly purr.

My attention flicked to Patrick. I hadn’t believed in vampires when I was alive. Now, it wasn’t even a slight stretch. “A vampire? You use the energy from blood as your own life energy source.”

“That’s what I said,” the cat agreed. “He’s a vamp.” His human eyes flashed yellow again.

I wanted to reach out and touch that energy. It sparked like fresh green leaves, like the earth energy Martin had brought back the last time he had talked to them. Lynx was beautiful, his face full of shifting shadows; even the human side of him seemed to dance in the low light, drifting between rays so that he was somehow partly camouflaged. His glowing eyes matched the taut energy bundled inside his body.

I had never possessed that much life energy even when alive.

“Do you know where you lived? The names of any relatives? How long have you been stuck where you are now?” Roberto shot questions out quickly, and I realized he was tiring. The weave drew closer, but the pressure level wasn’t any worse. The dangerous edges would remain that way, hovering, until it snapped closed. If it happened suddenly enough, the steel fabric would shatter me into so many pieces I’d never recover.