Dweller on the Threshold (3 page)

“Uh, ladies…” Fred stepped between us and pointed.

The ghost had lost patience. It grew large, turning into this enormous boat-sized mass of swirling, hissing mist. Its song got louder and louder until the very sound shook the earth.

I began to walk faster, against my will. “Any ideas?” I had to admit, if only to myself, that I was getting scared. I was usually a little more equipped for these situations. However, I’d not only been curious and worried about possible future drowning victims, but I’d also been annoyed by the constant phone calls from Elsa. I never used to be a coward. Not until I’d awakened in a still-warm pool of blood. Someone else’s blood.

Someone dead by my own hands.

My spirit guides still bickered behind me. Seemed I had to get out of this one alone. As usual.

I dug my feet into the soft earth, water now up to my knees. Grunting with effort, I covered my ears, knowing the song was too loud yet hoping I could muffle it a bit. The low, growly notes thankfully lessened—not enough to stop me from moving entirely, but enough to allow more brain function. There was a sharp tug in my chest. I stumbled and went down on one knee, which, of course, sent my entire lower body under water. My lips quivered with cold.

“That’s it!” I put both hands down and burrowed my fingers into the earth, securing myself to this plane. “I’m still alive here, Louis, not you!” I pulled in energy from the earth herself, using it to boost my strength. After forcing my body to turn, I crawled my way back to the pack still stuck in some of the sturdy, tall grass. Pushing through the magic was like trudging through sludge. It pulled back on my legs, sent pain careening through my veins. I gritted my teeth, clenched my hands into one piece of soft ground after another, and concentrated on each move.

 
The feel of wet canvass on my filthy hands was so damned welcome. I searched blindly for the plastic bottle of vinegar I kept inside before flipping off the cap and raising the bottle to my lips. I’d drink the damned stuff.

With my free hand, I pulled my ankh from beneath my T-shirt and wrapped my fist around it. This was my anchor, my spirit protection. Maybe if I focused while chugging the vinegar…

I swallowed several bitter gulps and promptly gagged. Lurching forward nearly face-down in the marsh, I gasped as my eyes watered and my stomach complained with much pain and cramping.

“It worked.” Phro’s voice wavered.

I shook my head, still gagging. “No.” I gasped. “Too easy. It’s never that easy. Besides, I still have the pain.” Actually, it had worsened. Felt like a broadsword was slicing my belly in two. Water sloshed over my hands as I curled them into fists.

Fred dropped to his knees, and I looked up to see real panic on his face. “It’s not the ghost, Beri.”

I stared into his eyes, focused, then looked over my shoulder but didn’t see the ghost. I’d made it let go of me, but I could sense it was still out there. Not as strong, though. I’d have to hope that was enough to keep it from hurting anyone else, because the pain slammed into my chest again and this time my world came to a shuddering halt. No, it wasn’t the ghost.

“It’s Elsa.” It was all I could get out as I ran for my Jeep.

The hospital room reeked of pine cleaner—like they’d dumped an entire bottle of the noxious crap on the floor without diluting it. Loud voices trickled in from the hall. The place was in an uproar with a thick crowd of people from the emergency room that had spilled into all the hallways.

The air of frantic anxiety pricked the hair on my arms. So many angry people demanding answers out there. But they were nothing like the ones no one else could see.

I usually avoided hospitals. Hospitals and cemeteries were the two places where the despair of the recently passed sometimes grew strong enough to help them jump dimensional layers.

Phro and Fred stood guard at the door, keeping the curious and the desperate spirits out. The halls had been a gauntlet of hopeless, translucent faces, all turning my way once they realized I could see them. I couldn’t possibly help them all—and right now Elsa was my only concern.

I sat in the empty chair next to Elsa’s bed after nodding at Jed Grant, my sister’s partner. His khaki pants and long-sleeved white shirt seemed out of place on him. He was so square and broad-chested—his arms stuck out from his sides. He had thick legs, thick arms, a thick neck and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on that entire body. He was like the human version of a pit bull.

Jed had partnered with Elsa four years now and I knew three solid things about him. One, he worked out like a fiend because, as he’d once said he had the body-type that turned to fat if he even thought about a Twinkie. Two, he was honest. And three, he was completely and utterly in love with my sister, though they’d never dated.

Picking some dried mud from the knee of my jeans, I finally took a deep breath and looked at Elsa, heart lodging in my throat. Her tall frame looked so small in the hospital bed. I ran my fingers over her cheeks, feeling cool skin and trying to erase the frozen mask of fear twisting her pretty features. Her open mouth put deep, unnatural grooves in her chin and though her eyes remained tightly shut, the crease over her brows was so taut it nearly touched her eyelashes.

“What happened?” I didn’t take my gaze from her face, knowing Jed didn’t expect me to. I swallowed the wail gathering force in my throat, cold terror stiffening my lungs and raking down my spine as I searched for and didn’t find her soul. Elsa was closer to death than anybody realized. “Tell me everything you know. Now.”

 
Jed blinked and shifted in the small wooden chair. It creaked and moaned as if it were about to give. He rasped a hand over his whisker-covered jaw, his Italian heritage apparent in the dark shadows of his face. “I don’t have much. Elsa called a few hours ago and said she’d found someone she thought could help us. We’ve been working on this case because a sister of one of the first coma victims came to us about signs of a struggle in her sibling’s kitchen.”

“Did Elsa say who she found?”

He shook his head. “Only that the person is a witch. She didn’t sound too happy about it.”

“No, she wouldn’t.” I murmured the words, turning back to tuck a strand of soft, blonde hair behind my sister’s ear. That last case we worked on together had left emotional marks on Elsa, just like it had on me. Neither of us would ever completely trust magically-inclined people, like witches or wizards, again. “She didn’t say anything else?”

“Not much. She was supposed to meet me with the details.” His voice caught and he cleared his throat. “A patrolman found her, recognized her and phoned me after he called it in. Her car was pulled over to the side of the road. She was just propped up in the driver’s seat.” He picked up one of Elsa’s hands. “It didn’t look like there was a struggle. Not like the others. No tears on the seats, no broken glass. No marks on her hands or fingernails. Elsa would have fought and fought hard. She could kick butt, ya know?”

“She still can. She’s not dead.”

“No,” he said, stroking Elsa’s fingers. “She’s not dead.”

 
“So what are you going to do next?”
 

“Go over her car. Try and find the witch. Retrace Elsa’s steps since yesterday, if I can. I’m going by the station first. Want to come with me?”

I didn’t. The best thing I could do would be to let him go about his search while I quietly went about mine. “I’m going to stay here with Elsa a little while longer.”

“That’s good.” He stood. Clearing his throat again, he walked to the door then stopped, not turning to look at us. “No, it’s not. Nothing’s really good, is it?”

After he left, I lifted Elsa’s hand, hating the feel of her ice cold fingers. I rubbed them with my own, circulating blood to the best of my abilities. Glancing over my shoulder, I met Fred’s eyes. “Can you find Bea?”

He nodded and vanished into the spirit realm. Bea was Elsa’s spirit guide—a sturdy, no-nonsense protector who had never once been out of Elsa’s presence, as far as I knew. The only reason Fred ever left me was because of my spare—Phro. At least that’s what I assumed.

“Bea would be here if she could.” Phro had come forward to touch Elsa’s shoulder. The spirit had a soft spot for the only kid who’d ever welcomed me into her home. “We have to find that witch.”

“We’ll go to Elsa’s house first. She writes everything in her journal.” I stood and bent to kiss Elsa’s cheek. “I’ll get you back,” I whispered. “Promise.”

Fred reappeared in the hall after I quietly shut the door behind us. “Bea is missing.”

“That’s not possible.” I stopped, not caring that people around me had quit speaking to watch the dirty, crazy woman talk to air. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” Fred’s voice shook and there was a fine trembling in his hands. I didn’t blame him for being scared. “But—” He broke off.

“What?”

“Bea isn’t the only one. When I said whatever
it
is had fingers in our world, I was wrong. It’s more than fingers. Way more.”

Time seemed to slow, a dull ring sounded in my ears as I struggled to come to terms with the ramifications of his statement. As far as they knew—as Fred and Phro had explained it to me—once a person died, harm could no longer come to them. They were free to move about in the spirit realm or to choose to come back to earth as guides. No one ever disappeared.

Ice skittered over my skin. I pushed through the silent crowd and into another busy hallway.

The pine scent was worse here, but I was thankful since it helped dispel the odor of old blood that tainted this part of the hospital. With the emergency areas so full, the hospital staff had wheeled in what looked like the victims of a multi-car accident. I saw blood-covered bandages, tear-slicked cheeks and damaged skin already turning mottled shades of yellow and blue.

Harsh moans assaulted my ears and before I could figure out how to get through, the dead finally noticed my presence. Here, the strength of their anguish and confusion blurred the dimensional layers. Here, I couldn’t keep the walls strong—didn’t have to actually peel them away to see the spirits beyond.

They came at me in one fell swoop of hammering, suffocating despair.

“Please, I need you to—”

“The car swerved—it wasn’t my fault—”

“My daughter, can you—”

The voices swelled as the ghosts’ emotions mixed with the pain of the wounded. The combined weight took me to my knees, the crack of bone on the hard floor loud despite my jeans. My senses began to shut down out of pure self-preservation. In the back of my mind, I heard Fred yelling, heard Phro cursing…

I managed to look up only to see larvae, the lowest of the low on the spirit food chain, hovering over the more devastated of the victims. Fury galvanized me into fighting the empathic weakness as I slowly climbed to my feet and fought to rebuild the mental shields I usually kept in place. I waved off an orderly who had rushed to help me.

“Hey you two, ignore those spirits, because there are worse ones.” I pointed up and watched as Phro and Fred both scowled and began shooing the larvae out of the hallway. A few larvae in a hospital were normal, but the number of creatures here alarmed me. Psychic buzzards, bubble-shaped and a sick-colored grey, the relentless beings formed a specific function in the spirit realms—feeding on the scraps of magical waste, much like worms in the physical dimension. But they also liked to attach themselves to sick humans and hurry the process for the dying. “Come on. Let’s find the witch and bring her back to spell the larvae out. I don’t want them munching on my sister.”

“Nasty little buggers.” Fred shuddered, pushing away from the hand of a beseeching ghost. “There shouldn’t be this many lost spirits, either. I want out of here.”

I tried to shake off my anger as we left the hospital. The fresh air and warm sunlight helped. I needed to focus.

Elsa once told me she thought I’d been given extra strength to fight the monsters. That I’d been given the ability to peel dimensional layers to see them. My sister had always believed it my job to find the bad guys, like some comic book superhero.

At puberty, when most girls were going through the normal routine of bodily changes, I went through those and so much more. I became something other than human. So I sought out the lower rungs of hidden society because somewhere out there, one of the creatures had to know what I was.

I sure as hell didn’t.

Chapter Two

Tracking the witch turned out to be easy. I found her trying to climb Elsa’s stockade fence.
In the daytime. When anyone could see her
. I didn’t know it was her at first so I climbed out of my Jeep, stalked over and yanked the woman down just before her leg swung over.

I found myself looking at the most pale, delicate person I’d ever seen. The tingle of electricity in my hands told me right away that she was a being of magic.

“Oh goodness.” She sputtered and struggled briefly, then began muttering under her breath, all the while staring down at me with huge, curious eyes. They were so wide they took up most of her face—the kind of eyes that made grown men weep and buy stupid flowers.

I didn’t like her.

But I did put her down just as a small flame burst to life in a patch of grass next to my right foot. I stomped it out quickly before the unusually hot sun and dry conditions could spread it. I lifted a brow as the woman kept muttering. A spell no doubt. And not a very good one. Ignoring the witch for a second, I looked over her shoulder and narrowed my eyes to let the veil between worlds slide apart. It was like peeling an orange. I kind of folded back this layer of reality to look into the next. I could keep going if needed, but I didn’t have to go very far to meet the gaze of the small woman’s spirit guide.