Season of the Witch (Claws Clause 2)

“I didn’t know. Thanks for the heads up. Dad would’ve had my tail if I missed it.”

“Hey, if you answered your phone or checked your e-mail once in a while, you would’ve known.”

Colt didn’t have an answer for that. Mainly because Maddox was right.

Over the last few months, he’d purposely cut himself off from his family, his packmates, and the few others he considered his friends. The only ones he continued to talk on a regular basis were his brother and his best friend, Dodge McCoy. And considering weeks could go by in between their conversations, he accepted he had a very loose definition of what regular meant.

It was actually Dodge who convinced Colt to pick up the phone when Maddox called earlier. Colt had been regretting it ever since.

For once, he found Colt at home instead of locked up inside his work shed out back. Since Dodge was a ghost who actually haunted Colt, the two had laid down a couple of ground rules years ago. The biggie was that Dodge was free to come and go inside of Colt’s house—but the work shed, Colt’s private space, was off limits.

He’d been spending a lot of time in there lately.

“Alright, Mad. You made your point. Yes to the meet—”

“And dinner?”

“That would be… oh, yes. I remember… fuck you.”

Colt ended the call, cutting his brother off mid-chuckle. Showing great restraint, he slipped his phone into his back pocket instead of crushing it in his grip like he really, really wanted to.

“That went well.”

“Shut it, Dodge.”

“Hey. Just sayin’.” Dodge threw his ghostly hands up in the air, though the smirk on his transparent face showed off his humor at Colt’s situation. “What happened? Mad Dog giving you grief ‘bout the witch?”

“He’s pushing me to have dinner with him and his mate on Thursday. Doesn’t matter if he wants to invite her or not, I’m still not going.”

“Thursday, huh? You know why he was inviting you, right?”

“Because he can’t keep his nose out of my business,” guessed Colt.

“Could be that,” Dodge agreed. He jerked his chin toward Colt. “What was that last part about? You leaving?”

“Yeah. Not like I want to, but Alpha’s calling an important meet for some of the shifters higher up in the pack. I’ve got to go. Maddox, too. He wants to start at sundown.”

“Don’t have much time ‘til then.”

“Yeah. I’ll have to leave soon. You want to come with?”

The second the words were out, Colt regretted them. He was so used to the Dodge he’d known his entire life: the smartass, the instigator, the loyal phantom. The ghost who could be counted on to remember every last detail, who could pop in and out of all the places he’d been in a blink of an eye.

Except, sometime over the last year, his ghostly existence had started to catch up with Dodge. Being a ghost didn’t mean you were immortal. Each ghost was given one hundred years to tend to the unfinished business that created them. If they found their anchor—which was how Colt got stuck with Dodge in the first place—before they finished up what they were supposed to, their life force was extended—but not for long.

First, they lost their ability to materialize over long distances. Next, they started to fade. For a while they could go anywhere, so long as they traveled with their anchor. Toward the end, when they were more see-through than substantial, the ghost was confined to the physical landmark they last imprinted on.

For Dodge, that was the Bumptown. The meet was on pack land. He couldn’t go and they both knew it.

Dodge’s electric blue eyes—the only spot of color left to the ghost—dimmed to a smoky, pale periwinkle shade, though he held onto his smirk. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a meet of my own. Gigi’s coming in to see me along the Row.” Cemetery Row, where he technically kept his own place for whenever he “got tired of seeing Colt’s face”. “You can fill me in on what the pack meeting’s about when you get back.”

“Yeah. I can do that.” Colt cocked his head. With more than a century of deadtime under Dodge’s belt, he knew far too many people—some alive, most dead—for Colt to keep tabs on all of them. Gigi… that one sounded new, though. “Gigi, huh? You change your mind about looking for your key?”

Just like how shifters had their fated mates, ghosts had their key. The one person who was their “key” to having a second chance at life.

Dodge had never seemed interested in locating his. Maybe, with the deadline to his second death coming up so soon, he was giving it a try.

“Fat chance,” snorted Dodge. “She haunts a coven in California. I figure, if the witches around here haven’t figured out where she’s hiding, maybe I should widen my search to the other side of the country.”