“Like I said, the greater immortals get their mortal forms by making deals with humans.” And the human sorcerers involved in those deals usually got incredible power as a result, including, but not limited to, the possibility of living forever. “Come with me. I can put up a protective circle to keep the scavengers away from both of us for a little while, and we’ll see about giving you a little of my mortality. Enough to let you protect yourself from the shadows, and maybe let you form a solid body for yourself.”
“You would do that for me?”
So naive, Delilah thought. Samantha had no idea what Delilah could possibly gain from such an exchange. “I’m up for an adventure if you are,” she answered.
14
Cooper’s head was spinning, but he wasn’t sure whether it was the result of what Ryan had done, or what he was still saying.
The doctors had told Cooper that his survival after the accident had been a miracle. Now, Ryan was telling him his continued existence was equally mysterious. How could it suddenly be so eerie to be alive?
He looked to Brent for some kind of support, but the telepath had curled up in a chair across the room and seemed to be trying to figure out what Cooper had seen. Cooper envied him that particular blindness.
“So, if the shadows are a symptom, not the problem, then what’s the problem?” Cooper asked.
“Well, you have two,” Ryan answered. “The first is that you’re not well-connected to your flesh, and have the ability to disconnect other people from theirs. The skin is a human’s primary defense against the scavengers, so stepping outside it gives them ample opportunity to feed. If it weren’t above their capacity for reason, I would suggest they may be keeping you alive because you’re likely to deliver them other meals.”
“Not likely,” Cooper mumbled. Why would he want to give them anything?
“Accidentally,” Ryan clarified. “Delilah and Brent both have more than their fair share clinging to them.” Cooper saw Brent look up swiftly, eyes wide, before Ryan continued. “Luckily, they’re both stable enough not to be in too much danger. However, I suspect you’ve infected almost everyone you’ve been in contact with since the accident.”
Cooper shuddered at the thought. “Most of the time they don’t even bother me,” he insisted. “I see them when I try to sleep or something, but not much otherwise.”
“Most of the time, you aren’t able to see them,” Ryan said. “It takes intense training or a dreadful mistake for a human to be able to see creatures of raw power, like the beasts hunting you. In your case, you can see them when you’re partially outside your flesh.”
The concept made Cooper shudder, but he tried to stay focused. “What’s the other problem?”
“Samantha,” Ryan answered bluntly. “She’s not a ghost. Human ghosts don’t exist. I can’t say for certain what she is, except that she is obviously associated with the scavengers and closely linked to you. The beasts that cling to you don’t have the intelligence to make a plan, or keep their host alive for their long-term benefit, but there are creatures that do possess such a capacity. Samantha might be one of them.”
Cooper shook his head at the implication. “You don’t know Samantha. She’s lonely and scared, not some kind of evil parasite.”
“If we stop to assume for a moment that Samantha is a human ghost,” Ryan said slowly, “what did you want from me?”
Somehow, the question surprised Cooper, though it was an entirely reasonable one. He couldn’t answer right away. What had he hoped for? He suspected he had clung to Brent’s company for reassurance that he wasn’t in fact crazy. Brent had said that Ryan could help, and Cooper had gone with him, wanting help … but with what, if not just further validation?
“I want to help Samantha,” he said out loud, though even that was vague and, of course, Ryan caught on to that ambiguity right away.
“You want to help her,” Ryan said. “How? If she is in fact a ghost, if she is in fact dead, then how do you intend to help her? Would you bring her back to life if you had the ability? Even if she died in a pretty fashion, according to your tale she’s been gone for months. Her body is not going to be in good shape. She might need to acquire another one—”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Cooper protested, repulsed by the image of a Samantha who had been left to rot for months, with her long blond hair pooling in fluids of decay.
“If she is a ghost,” Ryan said, continuing inexorably, “then it’s likely that whatever else is left of her is in a box somewhere. If you’re not discussing resurrection or possession, then you’re talking about exorcism. If you want me to banish her—or, more gently, I could say ‘to send her on’—then I could almost certainly do that.”
“But you already said that ghosts like her don’t exist, so how can you propose to do anything like that?” Cooper challenged.
Ryan shrugged enigmatically. “Whether she’s a ghost or something else, she doesn’t have a mortal form, and that makes her vulnerable. In the field of psychic arm wrestling, I almost always win. I usually prefer to understand something before I banish it, especially when dealing with apparently sentient beings, but I’m offering scenarios here.”
“And if she’s one of those other things you talked about, what will happen to her?”
“Oh, now you’re willing to consider it?” Ryan asked. Cooper was pretty sure he had just fallen into a really obvious verbal trap. “I think, Cooper, that you should take some time to sort out what you want. Do you want the truth and to help Samantha, or do you want to comfort yourself? If it’s the latter, is having her around and dealing with her mystery more comforting to you than letting her go would be?”
Of course he wanted to help Samantha, but if she was really a ghost, that would mean allowing her to be dead.
He remembered what Ryan had said about the shadows making painful emotions worse. Maybe, without them, he and Samantha would be in better shape, and could take care of their own problems.
“You said my first problem was my not being attached to my body right or something, which attracts the shadows,” he said, trying to circle back to a simpler part of the conversation. “Can you help me solve that issue? I mean, if you’re right, and Samantha is … something else, something bad … then if I fix my shadow problem, she won’t have any use for me, right? And if she stays around after they’re gone, then she probably isn’t using me the way you think she might be, and we can explore other options.”
Ryan smiled again. It was patronizing, and it kind of made Cooper want to hit him.
“If that’s the plan,” Cooper said when it became obvious that Ryan was waiting for him to continue, “then I guess it would help to know how this happened in the first place? I mean, I didn’t just pick up magic powers out of nowhere, right?”
Ryan’s indulgent smile was replaced by a wince. “Your ability isn’t a ‘magic power,’” Ryan said. “For human beings to gain real power, they need to make deals. They need to work with beings a little less human than those of us in this room. Your little trick? It’s more like a reflex. You probably learned it in the accident. It’s no more inhuman than Brent’s telepathy, or—”
“How do you pick up telepathy as a reflex?” Cooper interrupted.
“Just like any other one,” Ryan replied vaguely. “May I demonstrate?”
“Um … okay?”
He had barely spoken the words before Ryan’s fist came up and caught him square on the jaw. It wasn’t nearly as hard a blow as Cooper had received on the football field, but he was completely unprepared for it, and it sent him stumbling back toward the couch.
“What the hell was that for?” he demanded.
“You said I could demonstrate.”
“I didn’t—” Okay, he did, and should have known better, given how many times Ryan had already pushed his buttons. “I didn’t mean—”
“The point would have been lost if I explained ahead of time,” Ryan said before, incredibly, he tried it again.
Still wound up from the first blow, and watching Ryan a good deal more carefully now, Cooper managed to
