Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(32)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Chad’s two-point boat was devilishly well hidden, and he destroyed my navy while I hunted it fruitlessly.

"Argh!" I cried with feeling. "You sank my battleship!"

Chad’s face lit with laughter, and someone knocked at the door. I supposed I hadn’t needed to make so much noise since Chad couldn’t hear me anyway.

"Come in," I said. Reading my lips, Chad looked suddenly horrified, and I reached over and patted his shoulder.

The door popped open, and I rolled halfway over and looked back over my feet as if to see who it was. Most people would have needed to look, so I did, but I’d heard him coming – and Amber had never stalked angrily in her life. Stomp, yes. Stalk, no. Trust me – any predator knows the difference.

"Isn’t it after bedtime?" Corban said. He was wearing a pair of sweats and an old Seattle Seahawks shirt. His hair was rumpled as if he’d been to bed. I supposed I’d woken him up.

"Nope," I told him. "We’re playing games and waiting for the ghost to show up. Want to join us?"

"There isn’t a ghost," he said to his son, out loud and in sign.

I’d started to like Corban over dinner, he had seemed like a decent guy. But he was being a bully now.

I rolled up until I was facing him. "Isn’t there?"

He frowned at me. "There are no such things as ghosts. I am very happy you’ve come here to visit, but I don’t approve of encouraging nonsense. If you tell them there isn’t one here, they’ll believe you. Chad has enough to deal with without everyone thinking he’s crazy." He’d continued to sign, even though he was talking to me. I didn’t know if he left out the bit where I was supposed to tell Chad and Amber there weren’t any ghosts.

"He’s a damn fine naval commander," I told Corban. "And I think he’s too smart to make up ghosts."

He signed my reply, too. Then he said, "He just wants attention."

"He gets attention," I said. "He wants to stop being scared because someone he can’t see or hear is making a mess in his room. I thought you were the one who suggested I come check it out. Why did you do that if you don’t believe in ghosts?"

There was a loud bang as the car on the top of Chad’s chest of drawers made a suicide run off its perch, zoomed three feet across the room to hit the bookcase, and fell onto the floor. I’d been watching it roll back and forth, just a little bit, out of the corner of my eye for the last fifteen minutes, so I didn’t jump.

Chad couldn’t hear it, so he didn’t jump. But Corban did.

I got up and picked the car up. "Can you do that again?" I asked, setting the car back on the top of the bookcase.

I knelt beside Chad and looked at him so he could see my mouth. "It just made that car fall off. We’re all going to watch and see if it can do it again."

Silenced by the car’s fall, Corban sat down next to Chad and put a hand on his shoulder – and we all watched the car turn slowly in place then fall off the back of the bookcase.

Then the bookcase fell facedown on the floor, right on top of Chad’s plastic ocean fleet. I caught a glimpse of someone standing there, hands up, then nothing – and the sweet-salt smell of blood that I’d been smelling since I first entered the room faded away.

I stayed where I was while Corban checked the bookcase and the car for devices or strings or something. Finally, he looked back at Chad.

"Are you all right sleeping in here?"

"It’s gone," I told them both, and Corban obliged me by signing it.

Chad nodded, and his hands flew. At the end of it, Corban grinned. "I guess that’s true." He looked at me. "He told me the ghost hasn’t killed him yet."

Corban hefted the bookcase upright again, and I looked down at the mess of books and game pieces.

I waited until Chad glanced my way. Then I pointed at his two-hole destroyer, plainly visible, surrounded by white, useless missile pegs. "So that’s where you hid it, you little sneak."

He grinned. Not a full-fledged grin, but enough that I knew he’d be fine. Tough kid.

I left them to their manly nighttime rituals and went back to my room, all thoughts of going home tomorrow shelved. I wasn’t going to abandon Chad to the ghost. I still had no idea how to get rid of it, but maybe I could help him live with it instead. He was already halfway there.

Corban knocked at my door a few minutes later, then cracked it open.

"I don’t need to come in," he said. He stared at me grimly. "Tell me you didn’t engineer that somehow. I checked for wires and magnets."

I raised my eyebrow at him. "I didn’t engineer anything. Congratulations. Your house is haunted."

He frowned. "I’m pretty good at sniffing out lies."

"Good for you," I told him sincerely. "Now I’m tired, and I need to go to sleep."

He backed away from my doorway and started down the hall. But he hadn’t gotten two steps before he turned back. "If it is a ghost, is Chad safe?"

I shrugged. Truthfully, the smell of blood bothered me. Ghosts, in my experience, tend to smell like themselves. Mrs. Hanna, who used to visit my shop sometimes – both when she was alive and after she died – smelled like her laundry soap, her favorite perfume, and the cats who shared her home with her. I didn’t think the blood was a good sign.

Still, I gave him the truth as I knew it. "I’ve never been hurt by a ghost, and I only know of a few stories where someone was hurt, mostly only bruises. The Bell Witch supposedly killed a man named John Bell in Tennessee a couple of centuries ago – but it was probably something other than a ghost. And old John died of poison that the Witch was supposed to have put in his medicine, something more mundane hands could have done as well."

He stared at me, and I returned it.

"You date a werewolf," he said.

"That’s right."

"And you say there are ghosts."

"And fae," I told him. "I work with one. After werewolves and fae, ghosts aren’t such a leap now, are they?"

I shut my door and went to bed. After a few long minutes, he retreated to his bedroom.

I usually have a hard time sleeping in strange places, but it was very late (or really early), and I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep the night before either. I slept like a baby.

When I woke up the next morning there were two puncture marks, complete with a nifty purple bruise, on my neck. They were a lovely addition to the stitches in my chin. And my lamb necklace was gone.

I stared at the bite in the bathroom mirror and heard Samuel tell me that I shouldn’t count upon Stefan still being my friend… and Stefan making it clear that he needed to feed in order to avoid detection. I knew there were consequences to being bitten, but I wasn’t sure what they were.