Shifting Shadows

“Nope,” I told him. “I don’t lie to werewolves, it’s too much trouble. I had every intention of going out with the others, though I think I’m going to need a hand to get there. I just thought I’d destroy the pendant before I did.”

He shook his head. “I am glad you aren’t mine. You’re going to be dead before you’re forty.”

“No,” rumbled my husband’s soft deep voice from the hallway. I could always tell when he was really mad: it was when his voice got really quiet. “I’m going to be dead before she’s forty.”

He stuck his head through the doorway and took in the mess. He frowned at me. “There I was, talking to five cops at the same time, when Samuel called me from Ireland and told me that Ariana said you were about to get yourself killed. I might have a speeding ticket waiting for me when I get home—if they don’t show up here.”

I’d made Adam break the speed limit. Adam always drove the speed limit.

I tried to look like breathing didn’t hurt. A big drop of blood from my forehead hit the carpet. It was probably a good thing the carpet was dark brown. “I’m not dead yet.”

He closed his eyes and sagged against the door frame. Since he couldn’t see me with his eyes closed, I figured I was safe limping over to him. But he lifted an arm for me to duck under as soon as I got near, so trying to hide how badly I was hurt was probably a lost cause.

“Are you finished here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Zack said.

“No,” I told them. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” Adam nodded at Zack. To me he said, “Do we need to wait here, or is it okay to head downstairs?”

Before I answered, there were sounds on the stairs.

“She said wait outside,” said Lisa.

“My house, my ghost,” Rick answered. “And it sounds like the worst is over, one way or another, anyway.”

He walked through the doorway, Lisa trailing after him. She gave me an apologetic look. “He’s not used to following orders.”

“No,” Rick said. “He isn’t. He also doesn’t like being talked about in the third person.” He took a good look at his bedroom and quit teasing Lisa. “Holy Roman Empire. What happened to my bedroom?” He paused, glanced around a little mournfully. “I liked that Tiffany lamp.”

Guiltily, I shook my hair, and a few more fragments of colored glass fell on the floor. Zack had had time to mend, so the dark red spots on his na**d chest that would have been bruises on someone else had faded to normal.

“Your mama,” said Zack apologetically, “didn’t want us to smash that necklace.”

He paused, and his nostrils flared.

I smelled it too, ozone and bubble gum.

“Mercy?” asked Adam, his body stiffening next to mine.

“I thought it was too easy,” I told them. “The pendant was a focus, but ghosts don’t just—” I paused as a woman took form in the center of the room.

Ghosts don’t just appear at nighttime, but they are scarier then—and maybe easier for people to believe in.

“Can anyone else see her?” I asked quietly.

Adam shook his head—and so did everyone else.

“Rick?” I asked. “What’s your mother’s full name?”

I don’t know that it mattered. But the fae thought it did, and I know that pack magic rides on identity; new pack members come in with their full names for the pack to recognize. As my brother Gary said, most of the Indian tribes don’t speak the name of the dead for fear that they’ll attract their attention—or make them linger.

“Gina,” he said. “Gina Stephanie Albright. Is she here?”

“She’s tiny,” I told him. I could see where Rick got his lack of height. “Dark hair, blue eyes.” She was staring at me.

“That’s her.”

She threw the knife so fast that if I hadn’t been half expecting something, and if I hadn’t been a fair bit faster than human, she’d have hit Lisa with it. As it was, I knocked it out of the air and stepped in front of Lisa. Adam followed my lead, and the other two men closed the holes until we had Lisa walled off.

“Gina,” I said. “It’s time to sleep now.”

She shook her head, looking at me with wide, innocent eyes. “That tramp. I thought he was safe. But that tramp, she has to die. You saw how she looks at my boy. She wants him—but she’ll only hurt him. He’s too unworldly, he doesn’t know that she’s a whore at heart. You’ll see.”

“Gina”

“It’s my job,” she screamed at me. The violence of her anger was sudden, like a flipped switch. “My child. I protect him, and he won’t leave.” She frowned at him, and as quickly as it had come, the rage was gone, and she was just sad. “They always leave. Mama says that men are weak and women are whores.” She looked at me with sudden intensity, and I became aware that Rick’s shoulder brushed mine. “Whore.”

“Gina Stephanie Albright,” I told her. “It’s time for you to stop.” She was spirit without soul, so there would be no moving on for her—and I never lied to something that might know I was lying.

She made no motion, but a pottery vase flung itself at my head. I knocked it away with the pry bar, took a deep breath, and pulled on my mate-tie to Adam, borrowing the absolute authority that he bore innately. And also that part of me that was Coyote, the part that allowed me to see ghosts when no one else could.

“Gina Stephanie Albright,” I told her, filling my words with truth and command. “You have no power. You have no place. You will not hurt anyone ever again. You do not belong here. Go away.”

Her face twisted in rage, and I could feel her push at the commands I had given her. But I could also feel the fade in the energy of whatever force it was that allowed her ghost to remain.

“Whore,” she screamed at me. “Whore!”

“Go,” I told her.

And she was gone.

•   •   •

“So,” I told Adam as we drove home together—Zack had volunteered to take my van home. “I think that there’s no point in rebuilding the garage.”

I’d told Rick and Lisa that I was pretty sure that the one ghost was gone and that the other would fade with a little time. I also told them that if they (or the neighbors) had any further trouble, they were welcome to call me. I had the distinct impression that “they” was the right pronoun, and Lisa wasn’t going to be going to her home anytime in the near future.