Tears and Shadow (kitsune series) Read online

  “Dinner and a movie?”

  Onyx muttered from across the room, “Over his dead body.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s a good start, Fenn. A good restaurant would help, if there’s one within a hundred miles.”

  “You’ve quite the mercenary soul,” Fenn said. “It’s kind of refreshing the way you bother hiding it.”

  The door dinged open and I got on, turning around to see the whole room watching me, even the personal assistant. “Yeah? Well my momma taught me well.” My human momma. She’d always had a fondness for the finer things in life. My father could often dissipate her anger by waving jewelry around.

  The door closed on the drama. The car lifted me toward my floor, my home away from home.

  My older sister also liked bling. A pole dancer at a sleazy strip joint, being sent to stay with her would have been cruel and unusual punishment. She slept ‘til noon, seldom cleaned her apartment, yelled at me way too much … and I missed her. She’d given me my first condom, saying boys weren’t always sensible about these things.

  Not that I’d ever done that. Except in passionate daydreams with a shadowy, handsome figure that bore a strong resemblance to Shaun. My heart beat faster and warmth suffused me as I thought of him.

  The doors opened onto the small corridor with the weight room and laundry where repairs were still under way. I stepped out and went left toward the lounge. Entering the large space, I had to cut around a three-panel, standing screen that obscured the hall behind me. The screen was painted with cranes wading in water, spearing small fish with their beaks. There were several more like it, lining the wall, turning a corner to create a smaller, more comfy zone enclosing a plasma screen TV, coffee tables, and plush couches weighed down by red and aqua pillows.

  The TV displayed a cable show where paranormal investigators explored dark rooms, taping sounds, scanning for “cold spots”. I spotted Jill half-covered with a blue and white throw that could have been the upper left corner of a huge American flag. She occupied a loveseat, guzzling soda. Drew was curled up on a beige couch, her hand buried in a bowl of popcorn, a diet soda on the floor near her. I saw a few people leaving the area as I arrived, but my real friends were showing solidarity.

  I went over and dropped near Drew. Her short curls, dyed a vibrant pink, surrounded her oval face like a feather boa. Her glasses balanced on a petite nose dusted with golden-brown freckles, and her lips were coated with some kind of glittery lip gloss. Wild cherry. She wore a white and blue sweater with a stylized red reindeer on front, and faded hip-hugging denim jeans.

  Eyes bright with excitement, she stared at me. “Ohmygosh! Did you hear?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “There’s been another sighting.”

  “Not the ghost again?” I shook my head. “This place isn’t haunted. Trust me, I’d know. And Ms. Griffin still has those wards up from when ISIS was after me. A ghost isn’t getting in here.” After all, the ghost at Kenny’s Bar-B-Q—may it rest in peace, and in pieces—hadn’t been able to get into here to bug me.

  Drew used a finger to keep her glasses from sliding off her nose. “Yeah, well, Jamie says she saw it out in front of the main gate this morning. Just for a moment, then it vanished. Ghosts do that, you know? And two days before that, Patty and Bobbie said they saw...”

  Clair dropped into an empty recliner. She held an apple from one of the lounge’s vending machines. The chips and candy had recently vanished, replaced by healthier fare. I approved the food, but not the high handedness of it. I knew only a little about Clair. A jock, with a gift for precognition, she earned top grades with actual study, breaking the stereotype. She offered me a nod, and Jill a toothy grin.

  Clair had gone cowgirl in a lady’s Stetson, boot-cut jeans, wool-lined jacket, and cockroach killers with silver tips on the toes. The hat de jour was teal blue. Clair got them in bright, creamy, metro-sexual colors with beaded and feathered bands. She seemed to always painfully straddle the cutting edge of fashion. Surprisingly unassuming, her eyes were as faded as a watercolor sky. She set her hat off to the side, and I noticed her sandy hair had successfully resisted an attempt at brushing.

  “No such thing as ghosts,” she said. “When you’re gone, you’re gone. Bucket kicked. End of story.”

  Jill gave a sharp, precise nod of agreement.

  Drew sucked in a deep breath to support her indignation. “How can you say that? Why, on the last episode of Ghost Chasers...”

  I rolled my eyes at the mention of the show we were watching. Like they’d know what to do with a ghost if they really found one.

  Clair bristled at Jill’s hardheaded pragmatism. The cowgirl pointed at one of the guys on screen. “That’s my dad. He may hunt what people call ghosts, but he’s not stupid.”

  “Look,” Jill said, “I’ve done the research. This facility is only ten years old, and no one’s died on the property. Even if there are ghosts, there’s no reason one would be here.”

  “Ghosts don’t always haunt the place they die. Sometimes they haunt people instead of places. Maybe he’s a hit-and-run victim trying to get his killer to confess.” Needing support and running out of options, Drew looked to me to back her up, her eyes burning with the light of a true believer. “Grace, haven’t you ever walked through a shivery patch of shadows where you just knew unseen eyes were following you?”

  I gave her my way-serious look, dropping my voice into hushed tones, “And felt the wind plucking my sleeve like a lost soul desperately trying to say ‘Ohmigawd, I’m dead—help me to the Light?’ Sure, happens all the time—not.”

  Jill rolled her eyes at me. “You’re not helping.”

  Drew glowered at me now. “Clair, get your dad over here. Have him give us an unreality check. We’ll see if this ghost thing’s just a bunch of cold air.”

  Jill swiveled to see Clair better. “How exactly?”

  Clair violently snapped open a plastic package of chocolate-covered Dingdongs from her private stash. “He has EM scanners and infrared cameras.”

  Jill looked back at the TV as a commercial for cell phones came on. “My guess is his program will get the usual; zip, zilch, zero with a sound track, fade to black, end of story.”

  I swallowed; my throat dry. “I need a drink.”

  “Just a sec.” Jill rummaged under her throw and pulled out a juice box with a picture of a teddy bear juggling oranges. “Here.” She lobbed it my way with a high arc. Reaching to catch it, my fingertips met a patch of icy air. The box stopped dead, mid air, then changed course, setting itself on a coffee table.

  I stared, then looked to the others, wondering if anyone else had noticed.

  Drew’s eyes bulged. Her mouth hung open. “Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus!”

  “That’s one possibility.” Jill’s voice was calm, but her eyes were wide, captured by the juice box.

  I pushed off the couch and stepped over to the coffee table. The cartoon bear on the front of the box smiled at me, his eyes full of dark secrets. I reached for the box. As I was about to apprehend the miscreant, it skittered away as if kicked. Someone was picking on me, playing with my food. Tukka? Michiko? Did one of them want my attention? Tukka usually slept during the day, and his methods were usually as subtle as a runaway train. Such an irritating manifestation—inside a warded building—was more likely the work of a very powerful spirit like Michiko.

  “How are you doing that?” Jill asked.

  “Me? I’m just trying to get a drink. Help me catch it!” I vented my exasperation to reinforce my innocence.

  Clair jumped up and hurried over, a Dingdong stuck in her mouth like a hockey puck. She chewed hastily, standing over the juice box on the carpet. Jill and I joined her. Jill waved her hand over the box as if feeling for wires.

  “Check for smoke and mirrors while you’re at it,” I suggested.

  She looked at me with suspicion creasing the space between her eyes.

  A moment of silence followed, during which Clair swallowed the cake in her mouth and
everyone drifted my way.

  “It’s not me. Honest,” I said.

  Tentatively, Jill nudged the box with a fingertip.

  The box failed to respond.

  Emboldened, she picked it up and, with a flick of her wrist, tossed the box to me. “Trick-or-Treat’s over, Grace.”

  “It wasn’t me.” I pulled off the little pointy straw attached to the box and took great pleasure in stabbing the foil-covered hole, sucking out the juice.

  “It’s the ghost,” Drew said. “He doesn’t like it that we’ve been talking about him.”

  “You’ve been talking about him; why is he picking on me?” I complained.

  Clair smiled with one corner of her mouth. “Maybe you remind him of an ex-girlfriend.”

  Drew nodded. “Men can be such children sometimes.”

  “I hear that,” Clair muttered, “but don’t get me started.”

  Drew went back to the couch, reaching down by its leg for her soda.

  With a great deal of satisfaction, I crumpled my now empty juice box.

  Drew’s soda can imploded. Soda fountained, as if under great pressure.

  Drew yelped. Jill squealed. Clair caught a shot of soda across her face while dancing back. She swore, “Son of a beast!”

  The only way to check this out was to cross over, but I didn’t want to do that in front of Clair. I was short on friends as it was. And if I didn’t drive her off, she’d borrow her dad’s ion sensors and thermometers to poke and prod the stuffin’ outta me. “I’m outta here.” I headed for the hallway behind the screen. I’d be back in a few seconds, to deal with this from the ghost side of things.

  TEN

  DUEL: personal single combat, usually illicit

  and illegal, only sometimes of gentlemanly or

  even honorable character.

  I zipped behind the screen and, finding the dead-end hallway empty, didn’t hesitate to cross over. The world turned to silent graphite, except for the orange haze of cold fire that skimmed my now golden skin, lifting my hair. My stomach floated within me, but without the momentary nausea this time. Maybe I was getting used to the transitions at last. The rest of me went along, losing some traction as my weight altered. I pushed off the floor, turning the way I’d come, and settled long enough to shove off the carpet with both feet.

  I shot out the door, pulling in my aura to pass through the edge of the screen. I ghosted on into the TV lounge, scanning for a real ghost.

  The area around the couches and plasma screen lacked a malevolent presence. The girls were still there, clustered in a knot, mouths moving in wordless conversations. Clair was on her cell phone, probably putting in a call for Daddy. I shot my stare across the area, past the main elevators and vending machines, and paused at the baby grand. Someone was almost sitting on top of it, floating a few inches off its glossy black surface.

  I sprang to a couch and flounced from its cushion to its high back. This served as a springboard to the ceiling. I touched it, passing on aura so the tiles glowed like a bed of embers, becoming solid enough to deflect me diagonally down. The carpet shimmered orange where my feet hit. I shunted from carpet to ceiling, ping-ponging toward the ghost faster than I could have run. My erratic motion made me a harder target to hit should any ghostly energy come crackling my way, but the motion made it a little hard to focus on details. Still, I thought I recognized the ghost from Kenny’s place.

  A pale shimmer of emerald edged him, denoting strong will and aggression. Green wasn’t as bad as demon black. That would have sent me running with my heart leaping out of my chest. One thing about the ghost realm, one can quickly size up the evilness of a threat by the color coding. Ghosts burn in monochromatic hues: usually blue, green, or violet.

  Demons burn with black flames—smudges of shadow across their bodies—and they’re mean, willing to pull out your guts and lick them dry just to hear you scream. I’d seen one feed on a ghost once, drinking energy and memory until the specter faded to tiny, blue-white embers cooling to nothingness. I never wanted to see something like that again. Yeah, I knew they were copies, not real people at all, but their death screams could still wrench at the heart.

  My sentimentality embarrassed me, so I put on a tough front as I caught myself on the piano. The weakening of inertia as well as gravity, let me stop on a dime without a lot of momentum trying to crash me headlong into the piano, which would have banged me up quite a bit. I moved around to his position, looking Ghost Guy dead in the eyed.

  His hair waved in a wind-tossed, sexy way as if he’d just fallen out of bed. The pale curls had probably been blond in life. He looked like someone who should have been an elf in a Lord of the Rings movie, a tough elf. He possessed an awareness of his own beauty that came off as smug arrogance. Going for the bad boy look, he’d dressed himself in denim, boots, and a biker’s black leather jacket with padded elbows.

  “Just what the hell is your problem?” I demanded.

  “Direct.” He smiled. It was a beautiful smile. This guy knew his effect on women, and probably used it to advantage. “Don’t you want to take a few seconds to stare longingly into my eyes?”

  I glowered at Ghost Guy. “How did you get in here? I thought the warding kept supernatural vermin out of here.”

  “The shadow men, coming and going, weakened the barriers just enough.”

  Wonderful; now any ghost wanting something can get in here to bother me.

  I intensified my scowl, crossing my arms. “Okay, who are you and why do I keep running into you.”

  He flashed a heart-melting smile at me, but I managed not to slump into an adoring puddle. “I’m Trevor Bain, but most people call me Crunch.”

  “Like the cereal? Or do you get into a lot of accidents?”

  “It’s ‘cause I play power chords.” A solid-body guitar materialized, hanging from his neck by a wide leather strap. The name CRUNCH was tooled into the leather strap. The electric wasn’t plugged into an amp, but he strummed and the air warped with grungy screams that obliterated the quiet. I looked back at my friends. None of them were looking over. I was the only one hearing him.

  “Get to the point already,” I said.

  “You’re wound tight. Bet I could fix that.”

  I pooled aura in my palm, creating a swirling fireball. “Bet you can’t.”

  The guitar vanished along with the lascivious gleam in his eyes. His voice turned brisk, “Tell me what you know about ghostly hierarchy?”

  “As much as I want to: nothing.”

  He shook his head sadly. “The failings of our modern education system…”

  Smart ass.

  He said, “Look, just like vamps and werewolves, we ghosts—”

  I held up my hand to stop him, letting the fireball fizzle out. “There are real vampires?”

  “Yes, and just like them—”

  “And werewolves?”

  He frowned at me, his eyes transmuting to green coals. His voice deepened as he pressed on doggedly. “Like them, we divide the preternatural world into territories where someone’s at the top of the heap and others scheme for that position.”

  “Yeah, I get it. Everybody wants to rule the world.” I uncrossed my arms to plant my fists on my hips. “So what are you, Mojo the Magnificent or Wannabe Light?”

  The corner of his jaws knotted. Little, green flames licked out from his eyeballs. “If you’ll stop interrupting, this will go a whole lot faster.”

  “This is my home you’ve come busting into. Those were my friends you were playing with. I’ll cop an attitude if I want to.” Jeez, hadn’t this guy heard? It’s a heroine’s constitutional right to get snarky. The one’s I put in my stories always took full advantage of that. Still, the best way to get rid of him was to hear him out—and then say no. I lifted eyebrows, holding both hands up mock-surrender. “Sorry, please, go on.”

  He drew a breath he didn’t really need. “I run this territory. The ghosts in this corner of the state follow my lead, all but one.
You’ve just met her.”

  My ears perked up. We were finally getting to the point. “Michiko?”

  “She’s making me look bad. I need to slap her down—hard—so other ghosts don’t get ideas.”

  Even though she wasn’t on my Christmas card list, I considered warning the brat; she was Shaun’s sister, in a creepy sorta way. “I still don’t see what that has to do with me

  He sighed. “She’s drawing on some kind of powerful relic to boost her energy level. I need to separate her from it, or she’ll wind up handing me my head.”

  Relic? The storm sword the Shisou Ninja were looking for? Everybody seems to want it—but me. I shook my head. “That is so not my problem.”

  Crunch’s ghostly fire settled down. Bedroom eyes locked on to me, as he smiled. His tone softened, growing more intimate, “But that’s where you come in. You go over there all the time. You have access. You can find the relic and bring it to me.”

  “No way, no how, goodbye, and have a nice afterlife. Bother me again, and I’ll sic my fu dog on you, and maybe some shadow men as well. Harassing you would make a good hobby.” I turned and headed for my room. I needed to pack a few things.

  His voice boomed, “Michiko’s a predator. She kills other ghosts. How can you do nothing?”

  I called over my shoulder. “Ghosts are energy, bad psychic copies of souls that have passed on, not people. It’s not murder.” Besides, I had the feeling that once I let him start running me, he might not stop. I needed a line in the sand here.

  “You will help,” he called out. “You just don’t know why—yet.”

  I heard the threat, but kept going. What’s he going to do? Splatter me with more juice and soda? Yeah, that’ll break me.

  I should have backed away, and not turned my back. Next thing I knew, he tackled me from behind, and slammed me to the carpet. I drew in my aura, trying to shake him by phasing through the floor, but he shimmered with green aura, crushing me tight, pouring his ghostly energy over me so I remained solid.