could feel it, like pressure waves, trying to fall into a recognizable pattern but never quite matching up.
I let go of Stymak’s hand and reached for the two ghosts. The Grey wavered and shimmered, then realigned itself with a jolt. Stymak shivered, shedding his brightness for a moment before it flared back, not so bright as before but without the green tinge. “Who else is like Julianne?” His voice sang on the Grey.
The ghost chorus replied. “Jorvin. Stermar. Kadon. Derling.” Stymak shuddered, but I resisted touching him again. I brushed my tentative fingers against the ghosts and they flushed with a fleeting spectrum of color, whining like an ancient crystal radio. With a sudden pop, the ghosts sang back: “Kevin Sterling. Jordan Delamar. Sterling. Delamar. Delamar. Sterling. Kevin. Jordan . . .”
The ghost voices faded as the two primary singers slid away from Stymak, back toward Julianne again.
In the Grey I saw the dim form in the bed flare into color. The ghosts rushed toward her, swirling again into their desperate, dancing gyre.
I pushed away from the Grey, coming back into the normal as much as I could. The silver light of the world between still lay over everything in my left eye, but I could see the rest of the room normally. I glanced quickly at Stymak, who looked all right, if a bit pale and shaken, and then toward the bed.
Julianne sat up like a marionette being raised by a careless puppeteer, her limbs oddly flopping as her head lolled. She picked up the brush she had recently put aside and brought it to the wet canvas with strokes so harsh and slashing that they pushed the built-up paint aside and left a smear across the painting: “DelamarSterling.”
Then she fell back onto the bed, the heart and blood pressure monitors blipping faster for a few seconds before they reverted to their usual low, dull murmur. Eva Wrothen rushed into the room—I hadn’t realized she was even in the house and her appearance startled me for a moment. Then I turned to Stymak again.
He was blinking at Julianne. “That’s what the ghosts said.”
FOUR
“Kevin Sterling and Jordan Delamar. Do you recognize the names? Could they be the other patients?”
“I’d guess,” Stymak replied, shrugging. “That is the information you were after, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but ghosts don’t always give the answers you ask for.” I looked away from him and back to Lily Goss by the bed. “Do those names mean anything to you? Either of you?” I added, turning to fix the nurse in my gaze.
She blanched, but Goss just looked confused and shook her head. “Nothing,” Goss replied. “I don’t recognize those names. They aren’t anyone I know. Or that Julianne knew, so far as I can remember.”
I looked harder at Wrothen, and said, “But you know.”
Wrothen shook her head, conflicted, but what she said was, “I can’t—I can’t tell you.”
“You don’t have to. But do you recognize either of those names?”
Trembling, she nodded, her aura glowing a sickened shade of yellow-green as she said nothing.
“Patients, like Julianne,” I guessed.
She nodded again, breathing a little easier, as if I was taking some weight off her.
I put my hand on her shoulder and offered a grateful smile. “Thank you.”
I don’t think I have a movie-star smile, but I guess it was good enough. Wrothen seemed to sag, sighing out the last of her confusion as she slid from under my hand, her head bowed. “I’m supposed to help people. . . . I hope I haven’t done the wrong thing.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re helping us find out what’s happening to Julianne. You haven’t said or done anything to harm anyone.”
Lily jumped up and ran over to hug Wrothen. “Thank you! Oh, God, thank you, Eva!”
Wrothen looked almost comically startled and stiffened in Lily’s embrace before she put her arms around the other woman and returned a weak hug. I turned away from them, wanting to give them a moment’s privacy, and focused on Stymak again.
“You OK?” I asked as he plopped into a chair.
He blew out a breath and pushed his hair back from his face. “Yeah. That wasn’t quite what I’m used to.”
“I think that was my fault. I was afraid the first ghost was hurting you and I pushed it away.”
“It was. That’s—I mean the whole thing was just wrong from the beginning. That was just really, really weird. Usually I just get impressions, ideas, a few words, but this was . . . painful. Scary. I’ve never been afraid of a ghost in my life and that was . . . really scary. What happened at your end?”
“It was . . . very loud. There are a lot of ghosts in here and they’re clustered around Julianne, waiting for an opportunity to . . . use her, I guess. But they were very interested in you once you started calling to them. And then they were babbling and it sounded like a bunch of pieces trying to make one whole or . . . well, more like a jumbled signal that needed to be adjusted. So I tried to ‘tune’ the ghosts a bit, I guess you’d say, trying to get the bits of the noise to line up into an intelligible sound. It was just a guess, though.”
“Seems to have been the right one. But, man, that was really unpleasant.”
“Ghosts generally are.”
He frowned at me. “I don’t find them to be. They’re just . . . needy. Scared. Lonely. Like the living.”
“That’s a nice commentary on your fellow man.”
“I mean the things that make them seek help are the same things that make living people do it. And like us, they sometimes do the wrong thing or don’t know how to express themselves. People don’t get wiser when they get deader.”
“That’s the truth.”
“So, now what do you plan to do?”
“I need to find those other patients and see if they truly are manifesting anything like Julianne’s behavior. With three cases, I might find something they have in common that could tell me what’s happening.”
“I’d like to come along.”
I hesitated. I wasn’t keen on having an impromptu partner, but I had to admit Stymak had been able to make contact with the ghosts in a way I couldn’t. I wasn’t certain I’d have been able to get any information out of them on my own. “I’m not sure it’s a great idea . . .” I started.
“It’s a better idea than keeping our information to ourselves. We both want to find out what’s going on with Julie and I’m not sure what would have happened if you hadn’t been here to push that ghost off me. I’m scared, to be honest. But you’re not scared.”
I made a face. “Oh, I’m scared. I just know it doesn’t help, so I’m going ahead anyhow.”
Stymak brightened up. “Good! Then I’m sticking with you.”
Whether I liked it or not, it appeared I had a sidekick. Or something like that. “It may take a while to track these guys down,” I said. “I can start on that. Could you get started deciphering yesterday’s recording?”
“Oh, crap! I forgot to send it to you. I knew I’d forgotten something.” He looked abashed. “I’ll get it done today. I still haven’t figured out what language it is—if it is a language.”
“Don’t worry about it. Once you get it to me, I’ll have a friend of mine work on it too. It’ll go faster that way.”
Stymak nodded. “All right. I’ll stay with Julianne for a while and then head back to my place to work on the file. She usually gets pretty quiet in the middle of the day.”
“Maybe she’s exhausted by then.”
“Could be. . . .”
I turned back to Lily Goss and Eva Wrothen, who had settled down near the bed. Julianne was apparently asleep—or whatever one called the state she was in. Wrothen kept shooting me furtive glances. I wondered what she thought I was going to do. Maybe she’d noticed my tendency to become a bit see-through when I dropped toward the Grey. Most people ignore it, but those who do notice are often a little freaked out at the sight. I hadn’t been too hard on her . . . had I?
I frowned and turned my attention back to Stymak.
