“Jasmine! You shot my couch!”
“You’re looking at it al wrong, as usual, Vayl. What happened was that I didn’t shoot your kid.
Now, be honest, which means more to you?”
Vayl motioned to Aaron.
“That’s what I thought. So I’l buy you a new couch, which wil , I promise, be a lot more comfortable than that stiff old backbreaker. I also promise, if this little shit doesn’t start talking I wil start taking chunks out of him.” I chambered another round.
“Don’t tel her, Aaron!” The demand didn’t come from any voice I was familiar with. But Aaron knew it wel . He spun in his seat.
Aaron gasped. “Dad!”
I let the .38 drop to the floor and risked a look over my shoulder. A man, or rather what was left of him, floated in the corner behind the pianoforte stool, Vayl’s framed col ection of Picasso pencil drawings showing clearly through his brown business suit. He held his emaciated hands out, his entire expression echoing the pleading gesture.
“What’s he doing here?” I asked Vayl and Raoul. “Ghosts are supposed to be rooted to their homeplaces.” I put a hand to my eye, trying to shove back the pain that suddenly exploded there.
“Something’s wrong,” I whispered, just as a gout of blood gushed from my right nostril.
My knees buckled. Vayl caught me and pul ed me upright before I could hit the floor. Raoul, only a step behind, had pul ed a length of gauze from a first-aid kit I never even knew he carried. He pressed it under my nose and nodded for me to hold it there as I forced my eyes back up to the ghost, who was continuously scratching his forearms like he couldn’t stand the feel of his own skin. I looked up at Vayl as he wrapped his arm around me. “It’s Brude. I can feel him, beating his fists on the wal s of my mind. We weren’t supposed to know that he’s done something to the Thin. He’s made it so ghosts can walk. So they can travel long distances. Of course. If he’s going to defeat Lucifer and crown himself king of New Hel he’s gotta be able to transport his armies. He must be behind this. If he kil s you, he paralyzes me—” I moaned, not so much from fear of that happening.
We’d survived this long for a reason. But because my head felt like Brude had ripped it off and rol ed it down Vayl’s stairs.
“That is not going to happen,” he said.
“Just because it hasn’t so far—” I put my fingers to my temples and rubbed. It didn’t help. Then Raoul shoved my hands away and took over. The pain began to subside.
“What do you know about Brude?” Aaron had risen from the couch. He held the pil ow in front of him. Aw. Now I was going to have to put it in Vayl’s third-floor armory along with a little plaque with the inscription MOST PATHETIC SHIELD EVER.
Vayl said, “He is the king of a realm cal ed the Thin. It is a nightmare world where souls sometimes travel, or are trapped, on their way to their final destination.”
“My dad’s there?” Aaron whispered.
Vayl answered, “It seems so. We believe that Brude has engineered this entire scene, except for my survival, of course. Because he wants to render Jasmine helpless, at least for the length of time it would take for him to kil her from the inside out.”
That word “helpless” galvanized me. I stepped away from my nurses, my headache bearable now that Raoul had massaged the worst of it away, my nosebleed on temporary hiatus.
Aaron’s nose wrinkled as he stared at me, his lawyer’s mind ticking off new facts that were making his mouth twist with disgust. “He’s inside you?”
“He tried to possess me,” I admitted. “It didn’t work, but I couldn’t boot him out of my psyche either. So I’ve got him trapped. For now. I know how to vanquish him. I was just waiting for this guy to find me the best route into the place.” I nodded to Raoul, who managed to look more anxious than he had just seconds before. As if I needed another reason to worry. Hadn’t his scouts had any success at al ?
“If you beat Brude, what happens to my dad?” asked Aaron. He winced as Senior wailed in the background.
“The Thin existed before Brude and it wil continue after him,” said Raoul. “But once his hold over your father ends, I can save him.”
“You?” Aaron looked Raoul over doubtful y. Now I was doubly insulted. First he dissed my vamp.
Then he questioned my Spirit Guide. That kind of ignorance only came from years of hard work. And I had no patience for such bigotry.
I kept my voice low, which should’ve been a warning to him, as I said, “The fact that you took Vayl down before? That was what we cal a rookie run. It happens to al newbies. Once. Then most of them get cocky and die. You are in the presence of masters, you little shit. Al you have to figure out is whether you want to be standing in the crossfire or watching from the roof when we get down to business.”
While I waited for him to decide I wondered if I’d gone too far. If, maybe, the ghost of Aaron Senior, and Junior’s shocked blue eyes, would cause Vayl to launch into an “Aw, come on, be nice to my wittle boy” lecture. But when I looked up at him, he leaned down and brushed a kiss onto my cheek. “Have I told you lately what a magnificent woman you are?” he whispered, his breath tickling the lobe of my ear.
I shook my head, not trusting my voice to stay steady at that precise moment. I cut my gaze to Raoul, who’d been studying the moaning ghost of Senior thoughtful y. When he realized I was watching, he said, “If you needed any more proof that you’ve got Brude scraping the barrel to save his sorry hide, there it is.” He motioned first to the ghost and then to his son. “My scouts stil haven’t found a clear path to any of hel ’s gates for you yet. But I promise, it’l be soon.” He pointed to my head. “How much does it hurt and how often?”
