No Humans Involved (Otherworld 7)

She donned heavy gloves and shook the tray of ash, helping it cool faster.

"Looks like more this time," Don said, peering at it.

She smiled. "That's the advantage to using an older one."

PENALTY BOX

HAD MY TRIP TO PORTLAND and near-death experience put me any closer to banishing the spirits in the garden? I'd like to think so, but I was convinced I'd only made things worse. First, in the midst of problems on the set, I'd taken off, which wouldn't help. Second, Jeremy had finally joined me...only to leave again.

I needed to stop worrying about how to contact these ghosts and simply get rid of them.

My Nan raised me to regard ghosts the same way the average person sees door-to-door salespeople and telemarketers: an unavoidable nuisance of life, one that should be dealt with firmly and swiftly and, ultimately, ignored. As cruel as that sounds, it was rooted in self-preservation. Like salespeople, if you say yes to one, you'll suddenly be on the contact list for hundreds more. Rather than weed through the requests, taking only those you can manage, it's better to slam that door to all of them and walk away.

If I could speak to my Nan again, I'd ask her this: did it hurt you to say no and does it ever

stop hurting? She always acted as if it didn't bother her, so I feel that it shouldn't bother me, and when it does, I feel weak. As much as I long for the day when it will stop hurting, part of me dreads it too, because I'm not sure I ever want to be that hard, that cold.

But now I needed to be cold. I had to banish these spirits. So when I finally got back to the house, as the first light of dawn broke, I went to my room only long enough to retrieve my kit. Then I headed into the garden.

The moment I stepped out there something whizzed past me. Then the whispering started. Fingers brushed my hand. I kept walking until I reached the far rear corner, where I knelt in the shadows between the fence and a towering tiered garden bed, and tried to contact them one last time.

I performed each ritual methodically, completely focused on each step. As before, as long as I appeared to be trying to help them, they behaved, stroking my cheek or patting my hair as if telling me I was doing a good job. Though I still couldn't find any words in their whispers, I had a feeling that if I could, they'd be telling me to keep going, to keep trying.

I had to smile, reminded of when I'd first started doing this, under my Nan's guidance. I could see myself, kneeling in the basement of her old house, trying to summon a spirit. If I closed my eyes, I could feel her in those pats and caresses, hear her encouragement in those whispers.

When I tried to persuade the spirits--again--to find another way to communicate with me, they went silent at first, as if trying to do as I asked, but soon returned to the whispering, their caresses becoming pokes and prods. Like easily distracted children.

A chill raced through me.

When I did as they wanted, they caressed and patted me. Treating me as if I were a child? Or rewarding me in the only way they knew how.

I stood. A hand pulling at my top fell away, as did the one touching my hair. The whispering continued, but lower now. Fingers pulled at the edge of my skirt, like a child trying to get someone's attention. Pulling, poking, prodding...and when that failed, hitting and pinching.

Not possible. Necromancers rarely encountered child ghosts. There were stories of young-adult ghosts who'd made contact, and were later discovered to have died as children, then allowed to grow to physical maturity rather than spend their afterlife trapped in a child's body.

How would a child ghost remain a child? Only if it was caught between dimensions, unable to step into ours and get help, unable to pass over and grow up.

That's what I had--not adult ghosts, but children, trapped between the worlds. I couldn't just banish children. I had to help.

When these spirits first contacted me, I'd thought it was a random event. Happens all the time. I go someplace new and I attract some ghosts. But was that really all there was to it? Coincidence? I just happen to be billeted at a house with trapped child ghosts, a puzzle best solved by a necromancer with connections to the rest of the supernatural world?

Where others see coincidence, I see fate. And where I see fate, I see the hand of a higher power. I'm not sure if I see "God" as others would recognize him, but I see someone--a benevolent entity, maybe not as all-powerful as we'd like, but a concerned being with the ability to watch and the power to do something about it.

Maybe that higher power couldn't free these ghosts alone. Or maybe that's not her place--we must solve our problems ourselves and the best she could do was put someone here, in this house, who might be able to help. And maybe I've got too high of an opinion of myself if I think I'd be that person, but I still felt like I'd been given a mission, and damned if I wasn't going to do my best to fulfill it.

I PACED along the cobblestone path, Eve's ring clutched in my hand.

"Goddamn it," I muttered. "You said I could call you. Well, I'm calling and you'd damned well better not be ignoring me, you arrogant Cabal son--"

A sound behind me. I turned. Kristof stood there wearing...skates. And holding what I was pretty sure was a hockey stick.

"'Son-of-a-bitch' is the phrase you wanted," he said. "I suppose it could have been simply 'Cabal son,' which, while accurate, isn't much of an insult." He leaned on the stick, musing. "Or perhaps..."

"I didn't mean--"

"Of course you did. I wasn't ignoring you, Jaime. If you've been calling me for a while, I'm afraid I didn't hear it. But now I'm here."

"If you're busy..."