This Side of the Grave (Page 37)

"Let me say right off that if I could avoid you two for the next decade, I would," I got out in a rush. "But since I can’t indulge in a little modesty-salvaging me time right now, I’ll just offer my sincerest apologies and hope we never mention what happened again. In fact, you know that amnesia spell you put on me when I was sixteen, Mencheres? I’d love another one."

"You erased her memory when she was a teenager?" Kira asked in surprise.

"That’s a story for another time," he smoothly answered her before turning that charcoal gaze back to me. "Unfortunately, Cat, my ability to erase your memory was predicated on your half-human status. Vampire memories can’t be altered. At least, not that I’m aware of."

"Just my luck," I muttered. "Well, then let’s go with Plan A: Pretend it never happened."

"Pretend what never happened?" Kira replied with deliberate emphasis even as she gave me a purposefully blank look.

I flashed her a grateful smile. "Exactly."

Something hazy caught the corner of my eye. I turned to see Fabian floating in the doorway, watching me with a mixture of happiness and wariness.

"Hey," I said in surprise. "Aren’t you supposed to be with Dave? He’s not here, too, is he?"

"He’s still in Ohio." Fabian came nearer, almost twitching in either excitement or agitation. "Are you well, Cat? Can I . . . do anything for you?" There went that tingling in my cheeks again before I reminded myself that Fabian couldn’t mean anything suggestive by his question. He wasn’t solid, which was a definite requirement for what I’d needed before, my smutty lack of preference as to who provided it notwithstanding.

"I’m fine," I said, trying to cover my lingering embarrassment with a businesslike mentality. "But why’d you leave Dave? Did something happen?" Maybe Dave had to stop trying to infiltrate Apollyon’s ghouls because of something going on with Don or the team?

Fabian seemed to shift uncomfortably even though his feet didn’t touch the floor. "I thought you needed me," he mumbled. "So I found you. Dave still hadn’t come across the ghouls and it seemed okay to leave him – "

"What do you mean, you found me?" I interrupted, trying to make my voice calm instead of accusing. Fabian already looked like he might burst into tears, if that was even possible for a ghost. Still, if anything had happened to Dave because he hadn’t been able to send Fabian for help . . .

"He means you seem to be a spook magnet now," Bones supplied, coming into the room.

"Dozens of ghosts followed you from New Orleans to Tepesh’s and then even here. I suspect Mencheres has been sending them away lately, or you’d have woken up with some perched next to you in the cell below."

Mencheres gave a concurring shrug even as Fabian looked more miserable. "So you just

. . . found your way to me with no one telling you where I was?" I asked the ghost in disbelief.

He nodded, almost boyish in his dejection despite the fact that Fabian had been forty-five when he died. "Don’t be angry. Dave tried to call you but it went to voice mail, and I just felt like you were reaching out to me. I rode a few ley lines, not sure where I was going, but somehow I ended up here."

Ley lines. Spook highways, Bones had called them once. I still didn’t fully understand how they worked, but I knew ghosts used them to get places very fast because they contained some sort of magnetic energy they could ride on. Like bullet trains for the dead, but invisible.

And these ley lines had led Fabian to me because he felt like I was "reaching out" to him.

Him, and a bunch of other ghosts, from what Bones had said. Marie’s blood was the gift that kept on giving, it seemed, and each new revelation about its effects only mired me deeper into trouble.

If I’m a ghost magnet, it won’t take long before more than ghosts find me, I thought with dismay. Aside from how I didn’t like that some of them might be Marie’s spies, this presented another problem, too. For the lethal cadre of ghouls out to stop Apollyon by killing me before tensions reached a boiling point, I’d just made myself a much easier target. Nothing said, "She’s over here!" quite like a line of ghosts following after me wherever I went.

"Fabian, I’m not mad at you," I said in a soothing way, because he was flitting around in obvious agitation and it hadn’t been his fault. How could he know I now had the ghostly version of a dog whistle going off in my veins? "But I’m going to need your help. Are those other ghosts still nearby now?"

He glanced at the windows, which, due to the glare from the lights inside and the darkness outside, were harder for me to see through. Especially since I was looking for people who were transparent, anyway.

"Yes."

And being so close, they could hear everything I said. No point in having Fabian relay a message for me.

"Alrighty, then . . ." I sighed, leaving the room to look for the front door. After living with Fabian for almost a year, I knew that showing ghosts the same respect I’d show a living – or undead – person went a long way toward winning brownie points with a species that was routinely ignored.

Bones followed me, pointing to the left with a resigned look on his face. At least he didn’t argue about what he’d obviously guessed I was about to do. I went out the front door and saw the many diaphanous forms twirling around the trees at the end of the driveway. I couldn’t see any other houses nearby, but having been in several of Mencheres’s homes, I recognized this as one of his typical, large, off-the-beaten-path locations. In fact, with the steep hills, occasional rocks jutting through the landscape, and woods nearby, it reminded me of my home in the Blue Ridge. Like Bones and I, Mencheres didn’t want to increase his chances of having nosy neighbors get in on his business.

"Hi," I said to the group. A flurry of activity commenced as at least two dozen hazy apparitions stopped what they were doing and zoomed over to the front porch, hovering around it like the coolest Halloween decorations ever. I was amazed at the range of eras the ghosts represented, like a snapshot of history in a glance. Out of outfits I could recognize, I saw one had on what looked like a Union army uniform while another wore Confederate gray and saffron.

One was shirtless with buckskin leggings, another was a woman in full Victorian gear, two wore sailors’ gear, another was in a twenties flapper dress, a few looked straight out of a fifties movie, and a few more might have been cowboys. Only two looked like they were from my time, judging from the cut and style of their clothes.

All we need is some spooky music, a full moon, and a few bats for this to be perfect, I thought irreverently.