Spellcasters (91 page)

“I’m not—I’m not a ghost. I didn’t—”

“Die? Jury’s still out on that one. All I know is you’re here, and if you’re here, you should be dead.” Eve shook her head. “Never expected you to go all Romeo and Juliet on me, Paige. I know, once you commit yourself to someone, you go all the way, like you did with Savannah, but, really—” She waved at our surroundings. “This is too far.”

“Lucas,” I said, scrambling up.

“Easy, girl. He’s right over—” Eve stood. “Now where …? Oh, there.”

I hurried past her. As I skirted an outcropping of rock, I saw Lucas’s shoes. I raced around a large boulder to find him lying on his back, eyes closed. I dropped down beside him, fingers going to his throat, feeling for a pulse.

“Uh, you won’t find that, Paige,” Eve said behind me. “Not on yourself, either. Part of the passing-over package deal. You can jog all you want and never run out of breath. First time in a week your stomach hasn’t hurt, I’ll bet.”

I touched Lucas’s cheek. His skin was warm. I leaned down, bringing my face to his, and gently shook his shoulder as I called his name.

“You could try kissing him,” Eve said. “But I don’t think that works in real life … or real afterlife.”

I glared at her. She held up her hands.

“Sorry, not the time for quips.” She walked around Lucas and knelt on his other side. “He’s okay, baby. This is normal. It’s death shock. Takes a day or two to recover. Normally, you’d come through into one of the waiting areas, where there are people to look after you, but you guys took the back door.”

“D—death shock?”

I looked down at Lucas’s chest. His shirt was whole. I slid my hand under it, but found no bullet hole.

“No, he’s okay,” I said. “He didn’t get shot. He just fell through the rift, like I did.”

Eve said nothing.

I turned to face her. “He didn’t get shot. Look, no hole.”

She nodded, eyes not meeting mine. I swallowed hard, then pulled up my blouse. On my stomach, where Weber had stabbed me, the skin was now smooth and unblemished.

Eve bent over Lucas and adjusted his glasses, which had slipped in the fall. “No need for these here, but they still pass through. Weird, huh?” She leaned back for a better look, then straightened the glasses again and brushed strands of hair off Lucas’s forehead. “Poor kid. All these years, being Ben’s son was the only thing that protected him, and now it’s what killed him.” She shook her head. “Did Lucas ever tell you we met?”

I struggled to focus, then nodded. The memory flashed and a tiny smile tweaked my lips. “He said ‘encountered’ was a more accurate word than ‘met.’ ”

Eve laughed. “That’s Lucas, isn’t it? Got to be precise.” She rocked back on her heels. “How long ago was that? Shit, it has to be four, five years. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. Tried to confiscate some of my grimoires. But I caught him. Trounced him good, too.”

“So he said.”

Eve’s left brow shot up. “He admitted it? Well, that’s real strength, isn’t it? Not being able to knock someone down, but being able to admit it when you’re the one who hit the floor. He’s a good kid. Good for Savannah, too. You both are.” She looked from me to Lucas, then thumped down and pulled her knees up. “Ah, shit, what are we going to do?”

“We need to go back.”

“Hey, I’m with you on that one, but it’s easier said than done. Normally, it’s a one-way ticket, but you guys didn’t take that train in, so maybe we can find a way—” Her head snapped back and she glared at something over my head. “Goddamn it, you’re worse than a bloodhound. Track me down no matter where I hide.” She waved her hands. “Shoo. I’m busy. Go away.”

I craned my neck to look behind me, but there was no one there.

“Of course I’m helping her get out of here,” she snapped. “What, you want our daughter raised by wolves?”

I hesitated. “Kristof?”

“Yeah. You can’t hear him?”

I shook my head.

Eve laughed. “Ha! Hear that, Mr. Almighty Cabal Sorcerer? You can’t even project far enough into this dimension for her to hear you. I broke right though. In living color.”

“Dimension?”

“Dimension, level, layer,” she said, “It’s complicated.”

“So the real ghosts are all in your layer? The one Kristof’s in now?”

“Nah, they’re scattered everywhere. That’s the bitch of it, really. You pass over, thinking you’ll see everyone who left before you, and you don’t, because they’re not all in your dimension. Some of us, the magical races, can blur a layer or two, see through to the other side, like Kristof’s doing. But to pass through—” She grinned in Kristof’s direction. “That takes a real spell-caster.”

“So my … my mother. Is she here?”

Eve shook her head. “Sorry, baby. Not in this layer or in mine. There are others, though. I just haven’t figured out how to see through them.”

Her gaze shot up again. “Yeah, yeah, funny guy. Go find someone else to pester. I need to talk to Paige.”

A pause.

“Is he leaving?” I asked.

“Nah, just sitting there. Being quiet, though, which is the best I can hope for. Now, let’s see what we’ve got here. That vamp bitch Natasha somehow ripped open a hole in her layer. I have no idea how she did that. Hell, I didn’t even think vamps
had
a layer. It’s all very strange. Almost makes me wonder if the Fates
let
her open it up, so she could suck her fiend-partner into hell with her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nice theory, but it doesn’t help you out, right? Point is, you guys fell through by accident, and we need to get you back. Now, since you came through here, this spot must be important. A portal, if you want to get all Trekkie about it.”

I looked around.

“Damned ugly place to stick one, isn’t it?” she continued. “Which is probably the point. No one comes here sightseeing.”

“So, can you break through?”

Eve shot a glare behind me. “Finish that sentence at your peril, Kris.” She paused. “That’s what I thought.” She turned to me. “No can do. Not yet anyway. We need a necromancer.”

“Good, I know just where to find one.”

“Jaime Vegas?” Eve made a face. “Not my first choice, but I guess any necro will do. Between her and me, we should be able to rip this thing open enough for you to go through.”

“
Lucas
and me.”

“Uh, right. Now, I can’t say it’ll work for sure, because I know there’s no way for
me
to go back permanently. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Her eyes cut to Kristof and, for a split second, I caught a glimpse of something in those eyes that sent a shiver down my spine, and reminded me of who and what Eve was. She locked glares with the air behind me.

I suspected whatever Kristof said, it had something to do with Eve trying to cross back into the world of the living. From the way she said it, I guessed she’d been trying damned hard to return to life and, for a moment, I wondered at that. She seemed happy and comfortable enough. It wasn’t like she was in some kind of hell dimension. So why fight to return to life?

Even as the question flitted through my brain, I thought of my own situation. I was here, in the afterlife, and not for one second did I consider staying. Why? Because my life was on that other side and, no matter how pleasant it might be to live in a world free of pain and discomfort, I wanted to finish my “real” life before I embarked on my afterlife. That real life, though, included Lucas. It had to.

“So if you can’t get back,” I said, “then you think maybe we …?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell gonna try. You’re a special case, so there’s gotta be a way.”

“Okay, so let’s do it. You’re a ghost, so you contact Jaime—”

“It’s not that easy. First, we have to find her.”

“Find her? She’s in Miami.”

“Obstacle number one, though it’s not as bad as it seems. Miami exists here, too, only it’s not quite … well, it’s different. Distance isn’t a problem. It’s all very … relative.”

“Uh-huh.”

Eve shook her head. “I can’t explain. Even I don’t understand it all yet. Obstacle number two, though—” She looked down at Lucas. “We can’t carry him.”

“I’m not leaving him here.”

“Well, then we have a real problem. He’ll wake up in a day or two, but by then, the Searchers will have found us, and once they do, you’re taking up permanent residence. Now, we can—” She stopped and looked up at Kristof, then nodded. “Kristof is offering to stay here with Lucas.”

When I hesitated, she looked back toward Kristof. “You ripped the poor girl’s life apart. That doesn’t encourage trust, Kris.” She looked at me. “It’s okay, Paige. If Kristof says he’ll watch Lucas, he will. He has nothing to gain if you and Lucas don’t make it back to Savannah. He knows now this is what I want, what I wanted from the start, for Savannah to be with you. He won’t interfere again.”

Eve stood. I squeezed Lucas’s hand, took one last look at him, then followed Eve across the rocky plain.

W
e hiked across the rocky plain for what must have been two hours. One problem with the ghost world? Serious lack of public transportation. Yet, even with all that walking, I didn’t suffer so much as sore feet. I suppose that renders motorized vehicles unnecessary. That and the fact that, here, you have all the time in the world to get wherever you’re going.

Normally, I guess, travel in the ghost world is like a Sunday stroll, relax and enjoy the scenery. Where we were, though, there was no scenery to enjoy, unless you were a geologist. Rock, rock, and more rock. Not exactly the Elysian fields I’d hoped for. Of course, this was a temporary stay—the more temporary, the better—but I couldn’t help being curious, if only to take my mind off the worries that were gnawing through my gut. This was the afterlife, the greatest mystery in the world unfolding before me. Yet my attempts to get more information from Eve were blocked with witticisms and non sequiturs. I can, however, be somewhat persistent, and finally she was forced to address the issue.

“I can’t tell you anything, Paige. I know you’re curious, but if we’re going to get you out of this world, then the less you know—”

“The better,” I finished.

“The better for
me
, too,” she said. “I’m already in the Fates’ bad books, and once they find out—”

“So the Fates are real?”

“Oh, yeah, only they don’t just sit around spinning yarn—” She shot me a mock glare. “Stop that. You’re going to trick me into talking, and then they’ll find out and I won’t just be up to my neck in shit anymore, I’ll be drowning in it. Believe me, they
will
find out—hopefully just not until you’re gone.”

“How will they find us? Those Searchers you mentioned?”

Eve kept walking.

I continued, “If I need to be on the lookout for these things, then I have to know what to look for.”

“No, you don’t. If you see them, they’ve already seen you, and we’re both going down. Not a whole lotta laws in this place, but we’re breaking most of them.”

“What if—”

I stopped and stared. The rocky plains ended less than a dozen yards in front of us. Beyond that was … nothing. They didn’t end in a cliff or a wall of darkness or anything so dramatic. They just ended, like hitting the last page in a book. I can’t describe it any better than that.

“Well, come on,” she said.

I couldn’t move. There was something indescribably terrifying about the view in front of me, the yawning nothingness of it.

“Oh, hell,” Eve said. “It’s just a way station.”

She grabbed my elbow and propelled me forward. When we reached the end of the plain, my brain went wild, digging in its mental heels. That response shot down to my legs and they stopped moving. Eve sighed and, without a word, stepped behind me, and pushed.

I’d been tricked. In that last second before Eve shoved me through, I realized the truth. Eve wasn’t helping me. She didn’t want me going back to Savannah. She hated me, hated what I was doing to her daughter, hated how I was raising her. This was her revenge. She was—

“There,” Eve said, stepping beside me. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

I looked around. Fog surrounded me, a strange, cold, bluish mist.

I rubbed my upper arms. “So what is this place? A way station between what?”

“Between planes, the nonearthly realms of the ghost world, like where you landed. From here I can transport us to another plane, or to any place on earth. Well, our version of earth.”

“But how—”

“Think of it as a cosmic elevator. A modern one, though. No elevator attendant on duty. Can’t just walk up and say ‘Miami, please.’ Don’t I wish. No, it’s strictly do-it-yourself, and you have to figure out the right incantation to get to each place, like breaking a code. Different place, different code.”

“So I assume they don’t like ghosts traveling.”

Eve shrugged. “They aren’t totally against it, but they’d rather you found a place and stuck to it, at least for a while. Frequent commuting is not encouraged. It confuses the older ghosts, seeing new faces popping in and out all the time.”

“But you know the codes.”

She grinned. “Not as many as I’d like, but I’m racking up far more
frequent flier miles than the Fates would like. They’ve rapped my knuckles a few times. Not about using the codes, because, technically, that’s allowed, but they don’t always approve of the methods I use to get them.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that’s all you need to know about that. Now hold on.”

Eve murmured an incantation in a language I’d never heard. Then she turned and walked back in the direction we’d come.

“It didn’t work?” I said as I hurried after her. “So now what—”

“More walking, less talking, Paige.”

I took one more step and my foot sank into what felt like a steaming pile of horseshit. I yelped and jumped back. I looked down. Warm, slimy mud oozed into my sandals.

“Gross, huh?” Eve said. “Come on.”

I followed. The mist still swirled around us. I opened my mouth to ask Eve something, then caught a whiff of the air and gagged. In grade school, a sadistic teacher had forced our class on an educational tour of a sewer plant. It had smelled like this, only better. One more cautious step, and a wave of humid heat washed over me. Then the mist cleared.