One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress #6)(12)
I was about to point out that things were hardly rosy considering my uncle’s stuck-in-between state, the potentially troublesome Madigan, and a murderous ghost on the loose, but then I paused. Wouldn’t there always be something stressful going on in our lives? If I didn’t learn how to savor the positives—and everything Bones pointed out was a big positive—then I would march through life with a permanent case of Glass Half-Empty syndrome.
“You’re right,” I said, reaching out to squeeze his thigh. “Things have never been better.”
Bones caught my hand and raised it to his mouth, lips brushing over my knuckles in a whisper of a kiss.
We’d always have challenges, but like everyone else, we would tackle them one at a time. Right now, Kramer was first on the list, and for all the problems the spectral schmuck represented, there were also positives. He might be able to terrorize and harm humans, but once I had Kramer in my sights, he’d be picking on someone his own size. I didn’t scare easily, and a ghost could never beat a vampire in a fight. He couldn’t even throw a punch until Halloween, and we’d lay the smackdown on him well before that. My mood improved even further.
“I bet this medium is going to give us great news,” I added, voice throatier from Bones’s tongue flicking between my fingers with the barest of touches.
Elisabeth had said mediums couldn’t get the job done before, but she’d only been able to get a few to try, and the last attempt had been over fifty years ago. Bones’s best friend, Spade, knew some noted demonologists who’d recommended the medium we were on our way to see, and if we were lucky, he’d prove more efficient than the others. If he didn’t pan out, we still had a few other tricks up our sleeves. Good thing, too, because October wasn’t far away.
At least we had an ace in the hole. As a ghost, Elisabeth was limited to traveling long distances by either physically hitching a ride on a car or using a ley line, which was a supernatural version of a speed train. Ley lines usually led to various supernatural hot spots, so then she’d have to pit stop at each one during her attempts to locate Kramer, but put me within a hundred mile radius of him, and I could use the borrowed power in my blood to lure Kramer to me. Then, once he was there, I could command him not to leave until we were done exorcising him. I’d detested that one of the side effects of drinking the voodoo queen’s blood—in addition to becoming catnip for spirits—was the ability to strip ghosts of their free will, but that ability would come in handy in this situation. I didn’t feel comfortable using that power on the ghosts who found their way to me, but on a prick like Kramer, I’d wield it with a smile. And a distinctly witchy cackle.
As for the accomplice, well, a human would be so easy to dispatch, it took the fun out of contemplating it.
“We’re here,” Bones said, letting go of my hand to pull into a strip mall parking lot.
I glanced around, looking for any afterlife-themed names in the businesses lining the front of the L-shaped complex. The closest thing I found was Deena’s Heavenly Cheesecake, but I doubted that was the place.
“Are you sure this is it?”
Bones pointed. “Helen of Troy’s Garden is right over there.”
“But that’s a florist,” I said, as if the obvious had escaped him.
He answered me as he parked the car. “Maybe he fancies communing with flowers as well as ghosts.”
It shouldn’t surprise me that a medium would have a regular day job, but it did. Then I gave a mental shrug. Several years ago, I’d gone to college during the day and hunted vampires at night. Just because people were connected to the paranormal in one way didn’t mean they had to be involved with it in all parts of their lives.
When I got out of the car, a smash of voices assaulted my mind, as abrupt as a switch being flipped. My hand flew to my head in an instinctive yet totally useless gesture of defense against the sudden deluge of chatter.
“Aw, crap,” I muttered. “Give me a second.”
Bones came over to me without asking what was wrong. He’d seen this response enough before to know. His gaze flitted between me and the rest of the parking lot while coiled, dangerous energy leaked from his aura—a warning to anyone without a pulse that approaching us would be a bad idea. I was at my most vulnerable in those first few moments, when I used all of my concentration to turn down the roar of voices in my mind, courtesy of my mind-reading abilities suddenly kicking in.
Once I was able to dim the carousel of conversations to a level similar to annoying background music, I gave Bones a thumbs-up.
“What’s my time?”
“Seventy-two seconds,” he replied.
Bones didn’t have a stopwatch, but I knew his quote was accurate. I blew out a sigh. On the plus side, that was my fastest recovery time to date. In the negative column, if we’d been under attack during those seventy-two seconds, I could’ve been killed several times over. Not by another human, sure, but a midlevel vampire or ghoul could clean my clock while my attention was so dangerously divided.
“You were right. The voices are easier to control when I’m used to them being there. Wish this on-again, off-again garbage would stop already.”
He ran his hands down my arms in a slow, firm caress, his touch conveying both strength and resolve.
“It’s happening less, and you’re rebounding faster. Soon you’ll master it completely, just like you’ve done with every other challenge that’s been thrown at you.”