The Ghost and The Graveyard (The Monk's Hill Witch) (27 page)

Michelle and I turned toward Logan and blinked. The room was so quiet I could hear the fluid dripping in his IV. I pivoted toward the window and saw the sun low in the sky. We had roughly thirty-five minutes to stop Rick’s spell. I wasn’t sure what would happen if Rick tried to force Logan over, considering he wasn’t exactly dead, but I didn’t want to find out. One thing was clear to me; we needed to rejoin Logan to his body.

“We have to get back to the house, and Logan has to come with us.”

“Are you kidding me? Grateful, he’s been on continual tube feeding for a month. If you disconnect it he’s going to go hypoglycemic on your ass.” She was right, of course. People had to be weaned from the stuff slowly, like over days and weeks. The machine had to keep running.

“We need an ambulance.”

Michelle’s face went stoic. “Oh my God. You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.”
Or a coma.

“We could lose our licenses.”

“Yes, we could. I don’t expect you to do this with me.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m totally in.” She flipped open her cell phone. “I know an EMT who might be able to help.”

While she talked to her friend, I moved to the nurse’s station. It was shift change so it was deserted; the nurses were in the rooms getting reports. I wondered for a minute why no one had been in Logan’s room but then realized they would probably visit him last, considering he was stable and unconscious. It’s true what they say, that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and comatose Logan was not squeaking.

I found a computer that one of the floor nurses hadn’t logged out of. I felt guilty doing the dirty work under her name, but hell, if you couldn’t train yourself to hit the little lock when you were done in the system, you deserved to be messed with. Also, if all went well tonight, I’d be using magic to reverse what I was about to do. I brought up Logan’s file and marveled again that I had chosen the right name.

All that time I’d been searching for his name in his memories, and it was right in front of me—Logan Valentine, owner and chef of Valentine’s, my favorite restaurant. I’d even seen the restaurant in his memories. I just didn’t realize it was Valentine’s. Somehow, the witch had known his name, before I’d even fully accepted her.

I added a CT scan to his orders and scheduled it for now. That way, when the body was missing, the nurse would think radiology had come and taken him while she was away. That should give us enough time to get him home.

By the time I’d returned to the room, Michelle had found a gurney and was butting it up to the bed. “Help me move him.”

“Sure, but we’ve gotta be quick. His nurse will be here any minute.”

I moved to the other side of the bed and helped shift him onto the gurney. Moving his fluids over, I checked the drip rates. We had several hours before he’d run out. We were rolling him out the door when his nurse came barreling down the hall. Luckily she was new and didn’t recognize either of us.

“Where are you two taking my patient?”

I tucked my ID into my pocket. “We’re from Radiology. He’s got orders for a CT.”

“‘Kay. You guys need help getting him in the elevator?”

“Nope. We’ve got it,” Michelle said. With a cheesy smile plastered on my face, I held my breath until the doors closed.

I let it all out in a whoosh once we were alone.

“Should I be concerned she seemed almost excited to have one less patient to take care of?” Michelle asked.

“Wouldn’t you be? I mean, it’s not like people steal grown men in comas every day. She thinks he’ll be back in an hour,” I said.

“It’s surprising, really, that more people don’t get themselves a comatose guy. There’s no better way to keep birds out of the garden.”

I tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh.

“So, who is this EMT friend of yours and how are we going to get Logan to the ambulance?”

She shrugged. “The less you know the better. Trust me.”

The elevator doors opened on the ground floor. I swung my head out and looked both ways.

“Clear,” I whispered, and we rolled Logan out.

The hall seemed to stretch on forever as we proceeded toward the double doors to the back lot where Michelle said her friend had left the ambulance. Halfway there, trouble came around the bend in the form of Dr. Wellington.

“Grateful Knight, I’m glad to run into you. I’ve been meaning to ask you about your opinion on the effects of low glycemic diet on controlling inflammation.” Dr. Wellington walked right by Logan and Michelle as if they didn’t exist and came to stand in front of me. Without looking up from the file in his hands, he continued to talk.

“Um, we’re in the middle of something—”

“—this month’s JAMA research seems to indicate…” Dr. Wellington droned on and on, motioning for me to follow him as he walked.

I complied, hoping to steer him away from the gurney and Logan. I knew better than to try to stop him. Dr. Wellington would not take a breath until his entire thought was aired in a verbal string of logic and statistics. Ten minutes later, we’d stopped in front of the emergency room doors.

“So what do you think?” he asked me. I had no idea what he’d said.

“I think you are absolutely right about that. Insightful as ever, doctor.”

“Good. Then you’ll help me chair a cross-disciplinary committee to make the change?”

“Um, sure,” I said. Surely there was a spell in the
Book of Light
that would erase this conversation from Dr. Wellington’s memory. I hoped.

He gave a little nod and disappeared into the emergency department. I raced back to where I had left Logan, but Michelle was gone, as was the gurney. As fast as I could walk without drawing attention to myself, I moved out the doors into the back lot and toward the ambulance. I hoped Michelle had made it without me, but the vehicle was dark and quiet. I looked in the window and saw the keys were in it.

“Psst,” Michelle’s voice came from the back. “Get in. You need to drive so I can stay back here with Logan.”

I climbed behind the wheel and took off for home.

I’ve always loved sunsets, especially the orangey-pink ones that happen low in the sky on a cool fall night. But as I raced for home, I cursed the setting star that would without a doubt beat us there. I sent up a silent prayer that Logan would wait to decide his fate, that he would resist Rick’s spell.

Then I yelled to Logan in the back, just in case some part of his unconscious got through to his soul. “Logan, if you can hear me, don’t choose. Please don’t choose.”

By the time I reached home, the sun was completely behind the horizon. I tore through the front door. Logan’s ghost hovered over a bowl of blood. Rick, in some kind of a trance, chanted in front of the circle of bones.

I did what any woman would have done. I slid, screaming, across the floor, crashing into the skulls and pushing the bowl out from under Logan. To be honest, I had no idea what the consequences of my actions might have been and in hindsight, it could have been disastrous.

I don’t know if it was because I was the witch or simply that the stars were aligned in my favor that night. But I got lucky.

For The Best

“G
rateful, what is going on?” Logan yelled, his molecules separating and rejoining with his anger.

“Yes, explain yourself,” Rick said.

“You stay out of this, dirt jockey.” Logan turned, pointing a finger in Rick’s direction. “Do you know what this bastard almost did to me? I might have never seen you again!”

“It was for the best. She agreed,” Rick said, pointing at me.

The brutal force of the words slammed into Logan, and he broke apart in a flash of light. “You knew, Grateful? How could you agree to this?” Logan’s voice blasted at me, shaking the walls and making the hanging pots in the kitchen clink together.

“I didn’t want you to spend eternity forgetting yourself in my attic,” I yelled. “I thought it was for the best.”

“Why did you stop me?” Rick asked. “Have you changed your mind?”

“Of course she’s changed her mind! Grateful and I have something. She wouldn’t do this to me.” Logan’s orb form floated closer to my face.

“Actually, Logan, it would have been for the best if I hadn’t found what I did.”

“What did you find?” Logan and Rick asked in unison.

I walked to the door and opened it for Michelle, helping the gurney’s wheels over the threshold. Logan floated over to his body, and Rick stepped closer. After a moment of awestruck silence, Rick jerked backward.

Logan took longer. He hovered over his body until I wondered if I’d caused some type of metaphysical shock. Eventually, he reformed in front of me, looking like a younger, healthier Logan than the body on the gurney. With a glance toward Rick, he nodded in my direction and said, “Can you put me back in?”

“I hope so. I don’t know yet. I need to check the book.”

“Can I suggest we move Logan’s body to the attic and get cookin’?” Michelle said. “I mean, we do need to sneak Logan back into the hospital tonight if this works. He’s already been gone a long time for a CT scan.”

“I agree. Rick, can you carry him up the stairs?” I asked.

“What? I don’t want that guy touching my body,” Logan protested.

“You should have had such qualms when you possessed me, you insolent ball of gas!” Rick threw up his hands in disgust.

“Rick has a point, Logan. And furthermore, there is no way Michelle and I are making it up those stairs with this gurney. If we’re going to do this, we need Rick’s help.”

Logan frowned, placing his hands on his hips and pacing around his body. “I don’t look good. Are we sure I’m not going to die anyway?”

“Logan! Are we going to try this or not?”

“Okay, okay. He can carry me up the stairs.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Rick lifted Logan’s body in his arms and carefully moved toward the attic. Michelle and I followed with the liquid nutrition and his IV fluids. As we turned the corner at the second floor landing, Logan’s head bumped into the banister. I didn’t think Rick did it on purpose. I really didn’t. But Logan was not happy.

“Hey! Do you mind?”

“Sorry,” Rick said, but I caught the tiniest of smiles flash across his face. I gave him my best death stare.

We all spilled into the attic, and I conjured a hospital bed for Logan’s body. Once he was settled in with his fluids safely hung, I hurried to the
Book of Light
. I started with P for possession but the only spells in my book were to force a ghost out of a living body. I found some promising spells under H for healing, but while they would make Logan’s body stronger, they wouldn’t bind his soul to it. After an hour of searching, I slammed the thing shut and turned toward Rick.

“Before I die, I’m upgrading this thing into a searchable database. I can’t find anything useful. What do you know? Any caretaker magic that can put him back?”

“No. Caretakers usually exorcise ghosts, not the other way around.”

“Maybe we’re making this harder than it needs to be.” I moved to the hospital bed. “Logan, try to possess your body.”

Logan floated to himself and placed a hand over his body’s heart, but before he proceeded he looked at me with something close to panic in his eyes. “I don’t think I want to do this. Look at me. Will I ever be normal again? I don’t even know if my limbs work. Did I break anything in the crash? Will I be in pain?”

Michelle piped up. “You have a broken femur and collarbone. They should heal eventually, but you’ve endured a nasty bump on the head.”

“The bottom line is that we don’t know, Logan,” I said. “There are no guarantees but it’s your life to live, whatever there is left of it.”

“Maybe I don’t want to live it. Maybe it would be better if I let this body die and didn’t have to go through the horror of seeing myself waste away every morning. I’m not sure I want to grow old and crippled. I’m not sure I want to live again.”

Fear is a poor decision-maker. I saw it strangle all of the logic out of my friend, felt the weight of it on my shoulders. The terror of crawling back into a broken body was a feeling I would never want to experience, but the worst part was doing it alone. I’d read some things about him in his file. Logan was a chef, a restaurant owner, an avid biker. But the one thing he wasn’t was a husband and father. His next of kin was a cousin who lived in Albuquerque. Recovery was bad enough when you had a support system, but when you were alone, every day could be a struggle.

“Logan, I know you’re scared. I’m not sure what condition your body is in right now or how long it will take for you to get better. But I can promise you this. I’ll be there for you. I won’t let you do this alone. I’ll help you with your recovery.”

Michelle had known me long enough to pick up on when to chime in. “Hey, when Grateful promises something, she does it. I’ll help too. We’ll be your support system.”

Hovering over his body, he seemed to consider this. He looked from me to Rick as if weighing the costs and benefits of what it would mean to have his body back, his life back. I couldn’t help, in that moment, to question what my life would be like without Logan. I’d quickly become accustomed to his presence in the house and wondered how empty it would feel without him. But like a lost dog, I couldn’t keep him. His life did not belong to me.