Spellbound (Otherworld 12)

"Ghost?" I said.

She nodded, then rose and turned to the newcomer. "If you were sent to protect me, you're about an hour late."

"Hey, Mom," I said.

I said it casually enough, but it didn't feel casual. It never does. When my mother first became Jaime's spirit guide, the Fates had threatened to end the relationship if Mom had too much contact with me. God, how I'd hated that. Threw tantrums. Screamed at the heavens. Cursed the Fates the way only a fifteen-year-old would dare.

Over the years, I'd come to realize they were right. If we couldn't be together, we couldn't keep pretending we were. We both had to move on. Still I loved being able to have some contact with my mother, and it was hard, knowing she was right there and I couldn't see her, couldn't hear her, couldn't touch her. Couldn't be with her.

"It's not your mom, Savannah," Jaime said.

Not Mom? Who else would come to protect her? No, not come. Jaime had said "sent." Who would be sent to protect Jaime?

"My father."

When she nodded, I turned to the empty air and said, "Hey." Again. It was as casually as I could say it, but there was nothing casual about it. I couldn't even say "Hey, Dad," because Kristof Nast had never been my dad. I'd only met him a few days before he died. Died at my hands. Caught up in a storm of grief, thinking he'd had Paige killed, I'd launched a knockback spell so hard it threw him against a concrete wall. I'd been in a trance state, so everyone thinks I don't remember what happened. But I do.

So does he, I'm sure, but when I brought it up once through Jaime, he stuck to the fiction that he'd died when the house collapsed. He said it was his own fault, that he'd screwed up trying to get custody from Paige, and he regretted that. But he was with my mother again so he was happy, even if he did miss his sons and the chance to really get to know me.

I missed that, too. Sometimes I think about what it would have been like if Mom was still alive and Kristof had come back into our lives. I knew from my half brother, Sean, that our father had been everything he could have wanted in a dad, maybe everything I would have wanted, too. Only I'll never get the chance to find out. Not really.

Anyway, awkward. Just all-around awkward.

"If you guys need to talk," I said, "we'll step out and--"

"No, he's here for you," Jaime said. She glanced his way, listening. Then she blinked, startled. "Can't you just--?" A pause and her cheeks flamed. "No, of course. Right. Okay, well . . ." She forced lightness into her voice. "Just take good care of it. I put a lot of work into making it just the way I want it."

"What's he--?" I said.

Jaime's head jerked back. The water bottle fell from her hand.

"Savannah."

Jaime's voice was pitched low, the inflections wrong. She'd let my father take over her body. Full-channeling, something she'd once claimed she'd never let a ghost do. Since then she has a few times, with my mother. She trusts her. My father? Not so much.

I knew he scared her, though she tried to hide it. In life, Kristof Nast had scared most people. He'd been the heir to the most powerful Cabal in the country, a corporation that gained and maintained its position through raw, merciless ambition. According to everyone who'd known my father, he'd been perfectly suited to lead the company. Even my mother called him a ruthless bastard, though coming from her, that was a compliment.

My mother loved him. Jaime tolerated him only because of that. Yet she trusted he wouldn't have any reason to keep her body, so she'd let him do it once before, the first time we "met" after his death. To allow it again . . . ?

Something was wrong.

"What's--?" I began.

"Sit, Savannah. Please."

I did.

"Your mother wanted to be here," he said. "But the Fates have sent her on a mission, and if she'd made a stop to see Jaime, they'd know it was to speak to you."

Figures. The Fates were always sending my mother on errands. That was the bargain she'd made to return Paige and Lucas from the afterlife. Don't even ask how they ended up there--long story--but to get them returned, Mom agreed to do a favor for the Fates, which somehow turned into years of favors, proving that when it comes to dealing with otherworldly entities, it's not just the demons you have to watch.

"I need to talk to her," I said. "Or to the Fates. Can you arrange that?"

"I could," he said. "But . . . I know what happened last night, Savannah. With your powers. That's why I'm here."

My hands trembled with relief. "Good. Thank you. It was a mistake. I wanted to fix the mess I made, but I didn't seriously mean I'd give up my powers. I didn't even say it out loud."

"Someone took advantage of you, sweetheart. A bargain requires a spoken or written binding agreement, not just a thought or a wish."