Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(40)

All the color drains out of Lucy’s face. “Do something,” she says. “Do something.” Her voice pitches higher as she repeats herself. It’s a command, a plea. Her voice echoes like a banshee’s cry. She pounds my chest but I don’t let go. I know what kind of person she is. She’ll run in there looking for our parents. She’ll die if she does.

She knees me hard in the crotch and the shock of it makes me loosen my grip. True to form she bolts for the house. I’m running behind her, ignoring the lightning pain in my nuts and the nausea crawling up into my gut. I need to get to her before she gets herself killed.

I manage to, but barely. I get my arms around her and lift her off her feet. She’s kicking and screaming.

“Why won’t you do something?” she yells.

“I am doing something, goddammit. I’m saving your life.”

“You’re a fucking coward. You have magic. You can bring them back.”

“I can’t. Dammit, Lucy, you know I—”

A look of determination clamps down on her face, and I can tell she’s feeling some of the same anger I am. Only directed at me. “Bring. Them. Back.”

I can’t. I can’t do a goddamn thing. I have never felt so powerless in my entire life than at this moment. I have no control over anything. I am too late, too weak and too vulnerable.

I am less than nothing.

Everything freezes. The fire engine lights stop strobing, Lucy stops beating against my chest. Even the water from the firehoses and the flames in the remains of the house go stock still. Then slowly fades into a hazy gray of nothing. I am holding empty air.

I snap out of the memory and back into the present. Like in the recreation of Canter’s I suddenly realize what’s happening. Like a switch that’s been thrown. Maybe this is what Hell is. Living the horrible things that have happened in your life over and over again. I had no idea it wasn’t real.

Wait. No, I did. A little. That woman who was with Lucy. She hadn’t been there when it happened. That’s why she felt wrong. Was that the guide who’s walking me through?

“Why didn’t you save them, Eric?” says a voice. It’s not a man or a woman, just a flat, androgynous sound. “Fear? Surely you could have done something.”

“Is this where I talk about my feelings?” I say. “My inner demons? Is this seriously one of my regrets? Saving my sister?”

“She didn’t feel that way, though, did she?”

No, she didn’t. She saw it as letting our parents die. For the next couple of weeks as we picked up the pieces, prepared for the funeral, paid lawyers, greased palms and cast spells to move things along, she either wouldn’t talk to me, or outright accused me of murdering them.

And the hell of it is, I felt the same way. If I’d been a few minutes sooner I could have saved them.

Lucy didn’t ask, but I knew she wanted me to look for their ghosts. I didn’t want to, and I tried to avoid it as long as I could. And when I finally did there was nothing. No Haunts, no Wanderers. Not even Echoes. I know that was the best possible outcome, but not finding them just added to my failure.

“So what am I supposed to do with this?” I say. “Tap into my inner child and cry about it? You know you’re a shit therapist, right? It’s been more than fifteen years. I got over it. I made a choice.”

“Was it the right one?” says the voice.

Like I haven’t asked myself that question. Look what it led to. Exiled from home, leaving what was left of my family in the care of Alex and Vivian, who I selfishly assumed would take care of her. Running away with my tail between my legs. No contact with anyone for fifteen years.

I still don’t know the answer. And then the world snaps around me like a rubber band.

I’m standing outside a San Pedro warehouse at night, a smoking hole of twisted metal in its side from a burning car that’s been run straight through. One man is on the ground, the other is slumped over the hood.

I’d loaded the car with a bunch of propane tanks and opened the taps, wrapped the whole mess in detcord. And then, when the man who killed my parents came outside, I stuck a brick on the accelerator. A small fire spell, once the car hit the warehouse, took care of the rest.

This time I’m not reliving the memory, I’m watching it. I can see myself walking across the parking lot from behind a shipping container, full of piss and vinegar and unending rage. Younger me grabs the man on the hood, Jean Boudreau. Punches and kicks him.

This is different from Canter’s or at the house fire. This is watching myself instead of being in the middle of it. The actions might feel distant, but the rage is white hot and present. Even now I’m getting a sick sort of glee out of watching myself beat the living fuck out of Boudreau.

I remember every one of those blows. How my hand kept creeping toward the Browning in my waistband. I wanted to drag it out, make him hurt. How I eventually decided that I could do something so much worse than shoot him.

I remember being glad I hadn’t killed him, that he was conscious. I wanted him to be awake. I wanted him to know what was happening to him. I watch myself slap him hard and his eyes jerk open. He tries to go for a gun, but it’s kicked out of his hand to go skittering across the pavement.

Boudreau’s weak, disoriented. Broken bones for sure. If he’d been any more aware of his surroundings he’d have killed me. I gave him the mother of all sucker punches, and it didn’t even occur to me that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I knew a handful of spells. He could have wiped the floor with me.