Kissing Midnight (31 page)

It stares at me with eyes the color of piss. Its voice is heavy, like the rasp of a corpse being dragged through dry leaves. “What do you want?”

I decide to come right out with it. “I want your help.”

The monster’s laugh is mostly a growl. “You want me to help you?” There’s the faintest memory of a Russian accent in the way it speaks. “You want
me
to help
you
?” Its voice is so loud, it seems impossible that the rest of the hospital can’t hear it.

And they certainly must hear the crash. The monster’s tentacle swipes out from under its folds, surprisingly swift, and knocks a tray of metal instruments off the bedside table. They clatter across the floor.

I freeze in place, my heart slamming in my chest. Certainly someone will come investigate.

But no one does. In a mental hospital, maybe the crash blends in. Or maybe they hear it and just don’t want to know what made it. Either way, the door behind me stays shut.

And I want to walk right through that door. But, I remind myself, the fact that the monster can throw things is exactly why I’m here. “Yes,” I say as calmly as I can, “I need your help to get a patient out. It’s urgent. They have her locked in her room on suicide watch…”

The monster’s nostrils flare wider in its flat face. “She will kill herself?”

“No,” I say quickly. “She won’t, but they think—”

“But
you
did, yes?” The monster oozes toward me. It moves slowly, but I can tell by the intensity in its eyes that it could catch me if it tried. It tilts its massive head, studying me. “I smell it on you. There is a certain scent to those that kill themselves.” It closes its eyes and sucks in a deep breath. “A certain…
sweetness
.”

I force myself to stand my ground. “That was a long time ago.”

“But it lingers, doesn’t it? It stays with you.”

I swallow hard. I’d love to run, but I can’t. I need its help. “I noticed,” I say shakily, “that you can move things.”

“Oh you noticed that, did you?” The monster’s wide lips curl into a smirk. Its liquid eyes shine with what must be humor. “I can do many things.” To demonstrate, it rams one enormous fist through the nearest wall, like its shoving it down someone’s throat, deep enough to grab their heart. It must be grabbing something electrical because the lights in the hall outside stutter. A little pocket of hope expands in my chest. That talent could do a lot toward thwarting the security system.

“Really impressive,” I say evenly. “How are you able to do it?”

Its smile widens. Its teeth look more like the jagged edges of splintered bones. For a second it coils itself, then it leaps—except it’s not so much like a leap, more like watching something viscous and black being poured from one place to another very quickly. In seconds it has congealed in a crouch behind me. “I can do these things because I
eat other ghosts
.”

So that’s why Saintly was trying to warn me. I should have guessed. It gets stronger when it eats another spirit, the same way the midnight girls get stronger when another one joins their number.

I’m in way over my head. But the monster doesn’t have me trapped—I can still move through the walls.

“I’ll just follow you,” the monster says calmly, as if it can read my mind “and I will eat you, and then I will eat your friend.” Its thick tongue crawls across its lips, leaving a trail like snail slime.

“No.” I know I shouldn’t react, but I can’t stop myself. “You can’t eat her because she’s not a ghost. I told you, she’s not going to kill herself.”

“She will,” it says simply. “By the time I’m done with her, she’ll want to die.” I think I hear a flash of sadness in the monster’s voice. “They always do.”

I square my shoulders. “You can’t do that.”

Now I’m sure I see the resignation in its eyes. “That’s
all
I do, all I am. It’s nothing personal, you know. Everyone has to eat.”

The monster thrusts out one oily tentacle and grabs me, pinning my arms to my sides. The feeling is like being sunk neck-deep in tar. It opens its mouth like a snake unhinging its jaw, and I can see the ropes of spit clinging to its back teeth and the tongue like a thick, black slug. There’s a putrid sweetness to its breath.

“My friend will be pissed!” I yell, “She’ll find you! She’ll send you into the light!”

The monster pauses, its jaws still poised around my head. It pulls me out so it can speak. “What?”

“It’s true,” I say quickly. “She knows how to send us into the light. She’ll do it.” I mean it as a threat. I want the monster to look horrified, taken aback. Instead, a very different emotion touches its ugly face. Interest. Longing. Maybe even hope.

It holds me up above its head and gives me a little shake. “Don’t lie to me, little girl.”

“She can!” I hesitate, unsure whether to shift my strategy, but I have nothing left to lose. “She’ll send you, if you want her to. If you help us.”

It’s a gamble, but as sure as the words are out of my mouth, I know I’ve said the right thing. The monsters eyes fill with hunger—not for me, for something deeper. “I’m listening.”

“All you have to do is help us escape from here. Short out the security alarms. Break the locks on the doors. Help us get a car or something. Then she’ll send you into the light.”

The monster’s black eyes narrow. “And if she doesn’t?”

“I have no doubt you could hunt us down,” I say, and I mean it.

The monster lets me drop to the floor. I land on my butt.

“Do you swear to me?” The creature towers over me, so close the smell of its breath makes me dizzy. “Swear she will!”

Will she? Can she, even? I mean, Dev believes Saintly could send a ghost into the light, and she came very close to sending me, but she has never actually done it all the way.

I take a deep breath. This is no time for hesitations. I mean, there’s a first time for everything, right? “I swear.”

I hold myself very, very still. The monster flares its nostrils again, as if it could smell a lie. Then it sits back, satisfied. “Take me to her now.”

Leading the monster to Saintly goes against every instinct I have. I know the creature is her greatest fear, the thing she hated most about Westgate. I know it might be tricking me, and that, even if it isn’t, it could change its mind at any moment.

But I take it to her anyhow.
It can only eat ghosts
, I remind myself, but that’s not very reassuring. It could easily eat me, and there’s no guarantee Saintly won’t be a ghost soon, too, at the rate we’re going. She might take one look at the monster and die of fright.

Luckily, she doesn’t have to see it yet. She’s still asleep, and even when she wakes, she won’t be able to see us until the medicine wears off.

“Wake her!” the monster growls impatiently.

“I can’t,’ I say. “We have to wait.”

The monster rumbles, but what can we do? It skulks into the corner and crouches there, its bright eyes locked on Saintly. My instinct is to get as far from it as possible, but instead I position myself between it and her, at the foot of Saintly’s bed. I was afraid the very presence of the monster might wake her—or at least give her nightmares—but she sleeps deeply. She looks surprisingly peaceful. I watch her breath rise and fall and I’m suddenly aware of how tired I am. How long has it been since I faded out? I can feel my essence dissipating, bits of me rolling away like grains of sand sucked by the tide. I’d like to let them go. Even more than that, I’d like to crawl into bed with Saintly, curl myself around her like a parenthesis around a secret and rest. Funny how folks say they’re going to “sleep like the dead” when it’s the living that know how to sleep.

But of course I can’t rest. I can’t let down my guard at all, not as long as the monster is watching us with its vigilant, hungry gaze. I pull myself up straight.
Concentrate, Jess
. What if I pull one of my disappearing tricks and lose time completely? What happens then?

The day passes painfully slowly. Doctors and nurses come and go, but they let Saintly sleep. It won’t do us any good to try to wake her, either; Until her medicine has worn off, she won’t be able to see us. There’s no clock in the room, and no window, but I’m sure it must be evening. Each minute seems to crawl, but at the same time, I feel like they’re going too fast, knowing that each one brings us closer to midnight. We’re running out of time.

Finally, Saintly stirs.

I step in front of her, not wanting the monster to be the first thing she sees, but I need not have worried. The full effect of the medicine hasn’t worn off, and she can’t see either of us yet. “Jesse?” she whispers. It’s cool to know I’m the first thing she thought of when she woke but disconcerting to watch her stare right through me. It makes me panic a little. What if Saintly doesn’t get her second sight back? I mean, I know she will, but what if she didn’t? The thought of being able to see her and hear her but never speak to her again is like torture.

“You lied,” the monster hisses. “She can’t see us.” It stalks toward me, its oily blackness oozing in all directions.

“She can! The meds just have to wear off!” I hold up my hands like I could fend the monster off, but I know I can’t. Its thin lips are pulled back from its jagged teeth in a snarl. A dark tendril reaches out to snag my leg, but I dodge.

Saintly props herself up on her pillow, staring straight at us, unable to see a thing.

“Saintly,” I say, “Can you hear me? I need you to say you can hear me!”

The monster’s tentacle twists around my ankle and tugs. My feet go out from under me and I fall, pulling the monster down with me. Its flank slams into the metal cart beside the bed with a crash.

Saintly

“Jesse?” I sit bolt upright, my head spinning. “Is that you?”
It has to be,
I tell myself.
It has to be because if it isn’t…

There’s another thump as something invisible hits the foot of my bed and I jump as the whole bed shudders. I strain to see something, anything, but there’s nothing to be seen. I listen on high alert, but the only sound is the nurse’s cart trundling down the hall. The nurse must be on her way here with meds, no doubt. Meds that will knock me out with God-knows-what in my room.

I wish I could go back to sleep. I’m still so tired! It would feel good just to stop treading water like this and let my head sink back under the surface of consciousness. My brain feels cocooned in spider silk. Dev and Delia seem so far away. Do we even stand a chance at saving Delia? Dev has been at this for centuries, and he has probably beaten girls much stronger and smarter than we are. What makes us think we can win?

“Saintly!”

The voice sounds so far away, at first I’m not sure I heard it at all. Then it comes again. “Saintly, listen!”

“Jesse!” I cast helplessly around the room, but I still can’t see her. My hearing must have come back before my vision. But at least I know it’s Jesse I heard earlier. Relief washes through me.

Then I hear something else: labored, wet breathing. It sounds like something big. “What is it?” I whisper. “What else is in here?”

“Quiet.” Jesse’s voice sounds muffled. “Don’t scream when you see us or they’ll hear you and come knock you out. We need you awake.”

“
We”? “Scream”?
I’m starting to freak. There’s a feeling in the room that is all too familiar, a sucking cold. “Where are you?” I whisper fiercely, desperately trying to orient to her voice. “Say something!”

There’s a muffled choking sound from Jesse and a deep, rumbling growl.

I’m up and out of bed, my still-sedated body swaying as my feet hit the linoleum. I snatch up the only thing in the room that isn’t bolted down—a lamp from the bedside table—and hold it at the ready, but I don’t know where to hit. “Say something!”

“Go—” Jesse starts, but she’s cut off by a fit of coughing. I can hear where it’s coming from now. Jesse is in the corner and there’s something there with her. But how can I hit it if I can’t see it? How can I keep from hitting her? That is, if the lamp doesn’t go right through them both?

Jesse must do something to whatever it is, because it gives a yelp of fury. I swing the lamp. It doesn’t connect with anything, but for a split second I see a flash of Jesse. She’s pinned, struggling, against the floor and there’s something on top of her. Something bulky and black.

The monster.

I recoil in spite of myself, my blood like ice. I want to run but there’s nowhere to go, and I can’t leave Jesse. The monster could be killing her right now. Killing her for good this time.

“Get off!” I swing the lamp again. This time it connects, bouncing off something solid as I get another flash, long enough to see that the thing’s big, liquid eyes are now turned on me—and that Jesse’s eyes are drooping closed.

“Go into the light!” I whisper as loud as I dare. I’m terrified to open the portal, terrified Jesse will somehow be sucked through with the monster, but what else can I do? If I don’t, the monster will eat her. “
Lux vos liberabit!”

I can feel the air around us start to shift. It’s charged, electric, like the air before a storm. The space above me swirls and I know the hole is about to open like a giant eye.

“Stop,” Jesse croaks, “Not yet. We need its help to escape.”

Its
help
? What makes her think the monster will help us?

But as my sight returns I can see that the monster has dropped her and is backing away from her fast. “Don’t close it!” it hisses. “Send me!”

My concentration has been broken. The portal is already shrinking, the air going still. The monster makes a strangled noise of frustration, swiping at the air above us like it could open the portal with its tentacles.

Jesse is in a fit of coughing. “Not yet,” she manages. “After you help us.”

The monster is looking at me differently now. It’s wary, reverent. It nods its big head. “I’ll help you.”

And not a second too soon. There’s a sharp rap on the door next to mine. I hear it open and the sound of muffled voices as the nurse lets herself in. “She’ll come to me next!” I whisper, panic rising in my chest. “What if they want to give me more meds? What time is it?”