Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)(84)

I stopped, turned off lights and engine both, and got out of the car, forgetting my worries about whether or not I’d been summoned here by Marsilia, by Hao, or by some unknown enemy.

Ghosts are the remnants of the people they had once been. Most of the ones I’ve met don’t have much, if any, intelligence. There was no reason to stop. This wasn’t Peter, not really. He didn’t need me—but that didn’t matter. He looked like he needed someone, and I couldn’t leave him alone and vulnerable.

As I rounded the front of the Mercedes, the backup lights of Thomas Hao’s car turned on, Warren’s truck pulled in behind me—and Peter turned and saw me.

“Get out of here, Mercy,” he told me earnestly. “There is someone very bad here.” He tipped his head toward the burnt-out building. He was as coherent and aware as I’d ever seen.

“Peter?” I asked, conscious of Honey and Asil getting out of the truck.

“He can’t get me,” Peter said, sounding more hopeful than certain. “He’s calling me. Can you hear it? It’s like when Adam calls, but different.” He shivered and took a step toward the parking lot.

“Who is calling you?” I asked.

Peter shook his head. Sometimes ghosts appear in their dying state—complete with blood and gore. But there was no bullet hole in Peter’s forehead, nor was he wearing the slacks and dress shirt he’d been wearing when I’d last seen him at Thanksgiving dinner, the ones he’d worn when he’d died. Instead, he wore the jeans, steel-toed boots, and flannel shirt that was his more usual garb.

I hadn’t noticed at first because his presence had been too faint, but he’d become more real as he talked. If I hadn’t known him, hadn’t known he was dead, I might not have figured out he was a ghost—he was that solid to me.

Hao got out of his car and approached, arriving about the same time as Asil and Honey.

“Mercy?” asked Asil. “Who are you talking to?”

Honey whined very softly, staring at me intently, and Peter looked at her.

He fell on his knees, his face raw with pain, sorrow, and need, tears sliding down his face. “Honey. Min prinsesse. Oh, Honey, I am lost.” He reached out and touched her, his fingers making her fur move. She shook and tried to get closer, though I don’t think she could see him. Her movement only pushed her body through him.

Even when people don’t know that there is a ghost present, they don’t tend to stay intermingled with them for very long. Honey was no exception, and she took three quick steps back until she stood next to Asil, who put his hand on her head.

“Peter,” I said.

Honey whined again and let out a little yip. Peter reached out, leaning until he touched her nose and looked at me. He started to say something, then jerkily grabbed his ears.

“I’m not going to him,” he told me, wild-eyed. And suddenly there was a wolf where Peter had been—and that wolf was a submissive wolf. Peter the man might have been able to resist longer, but his wolf obeyed orders. Ears and tail drooping, he looked at Honey and turned to leave.

“Peter,” I said harshly. I was getting better at stealing Adam’s thunder. When I spoke, I pulled on the pack ties that, somehow, still held the dead werewolf. Something bothered me about that, but I was too concerned about keeping Peter from responding to whatever was calling him.

The pack bonds were gossamer-thin, but as I pushed my will through them, they grew more dense. He stopped, quivering—obedient still to the commands that had bound him in life.

“Peter.” And this time I called him with the part of me that could see ghosts, the part that had sent the ghost at Tad’s house away, that had forced obedience on the ghosts that had once belonged to James Blackwood, the Master of Spokane, who was now dead by my hand. I reached out to him, and said, “Come here.”

Peter turned and sat next to my feet, his eyes on my face as though he were a herding dog and I his shepherd. Waiting for me to save him.

There were more ghosts here. They had been standing sentinel between the parking lot and the front of the house, and, although I’d noticed them, I hadn’t paid attention because they weren’t mine as Peter was. But when Peter had come to me, when I’d called him, they had all turned in my direction. Slowly, as if it were very difficult as well as imperative, they were coming toward us, too.

I bent down and took Peter’s head between my hands. I breathed into his nose because it seemed like the right thing to do. Long-ago words spoken to me by Charles rang in my head.

Vision quest is opening yourself up to the world and waiting to perceive what it wants to show you, he’d told me. Then, almost absently, he’d said, Magic is like that. It wants to use you, and your only choice is yes or no.

So I followed my instincts, my magic.

“Peter,” I told him, using Adam, using the pack bonds, using that other part of me—using everything I had. Stone-cold logic told me that what stood before me right now wasn’t a ghost the way I knew them. I’d remembered why Peter shouldn’t be bound by pack ties anymore.

Ghosts didn’t look at me with intelligence and need, didn’t respond to pack bonds. I looked, as I’d been learning how to do, I looked for the pack bonds and saw them, tinsel bright still, strengthened by my will. Pack bonds were soul binding soul—Adam had told me that. Though I could not perceive souls—pack bonds were another matter. Those bonds were firmly set in Peter’s soul, and that soul was still here in his ghost, where it had no business being—here, where it was in danger from whoever it was who called him.