Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(20)

He was a faint shimmer in the quiet bedroom, a strong, steady presence. Jerry wasn’t awake, and apparently Jamie didn’t have the capacity to see or sense him, because the boy never reacted when the ghost laid a hand on Jamie’s shoulder.

Astra, however, could see the ghost very well. He had short black hair, distinguished aquiline features and the same copper skin as his father and nephew.

Nicholas Crow had indeed come, and just as she had expected, he had gone straight to his father’s sickbed.

She couldn’t do anything for any of them. She had no platitudes to speak. Nicholas was already dead. Jerry was going to die. And she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about Jamie.

Thanks to Jerry, now Jamie knew where she lived. And soon Jerry would no longer be around to teach the boy. Left alone, Jamie would mature without either Nicholas or his grandfather’s discipline or steadying influence.

In Astra’s mind, that turned him into a loose cannon. She might very well end up having to kill the boy just to ensure his silence, and wouldn’t that be a pretty turn of events. Then the deaths of all three males in the Crow family could be laid at her feet.

She turned away and put the sadness in that room out of her mind. She had work to do, and being maudlin wasn’t going to get any of it done.

As she regained energy, she worked while her old body rested.

She sent out psychic calls and waited for responses. When they came, she issued orders. Her creatures flew off to do her bidding. The Deceiver might have his spies, but so did she.

She still couldn’t discover how the Deceiver had traced Michael and Mary to Michael’s cabin. She knew he hadn’t found them through conventional means. As far as legal documentation went, the cabin didn’t exist. Finding the discrepancy in the county records would take a land surveyor with a significant amount of extra time on his hands.

Besides, nothing Michael carried or used could be traced back to his original identity in this life. Michael’s name and his Social Security number were pristine. From the time he had been a young boy, Astra had constructed several different aliases for him, complete with work, family and credit histories, mailing addresses and medical records. She created an elaborate web of smoke and mirrors that Michael had taken over when he had become an adult, and through which he now walked as easily as he breathed.

Perhaps it mattered how the Deceiver had found them. Perhaps it didn’t. Spies were everywhere. Michael had already admitted to being exhausted and overstretched. Either the issue would become relevant or it wouldn’t. She decided to concentrate her efforts on more productive tasks.

Then she heard something in the psychic realm, a sound so faint at first it was a mere tickle at the distant edges of her consciousness.

It grew rapidly in strength and harmony. She hadn’t heard anything like it for so very long, at first she almost didn’t recognize it.

Then memory settled over her like a warm blanket. Once her life had been filled with so many harmonic vibrations of such similar caliber that they had resounded to the heavens in a vast, ebullient symphony. Their crystal-shot planet had resonated with the thrum of their existence.

Though she had grown to enjoy Earth’s own unique complexity of vibrations, its interconnected psychic web that made up its own web of life, this world would never be the same for her. A part of her would forever remember her home. That part had listened, yearning through eons of silence.

Now her consciousness strained toward the gorgeous unearthly sound.

She laughed, a ghostly exhalation comprised of incredulity, pain and genuine amusement. Mary and Michael. What were those idiots doing now?

While the harmony lasted, she scanned for the direction from which it came, knowing all the while that the Deceiver was doing the same. Mary and Michael were traveling to northern Michigan and getting closer to her. That was both good news and bad, for she saw with her wider vision how much of the Deceiver’s attention and resources had been focused in that direction.

Meanwhile her spies began to fly in. They whispered of human activities, roadblocks erected along major highways and intensive police searches in port cities and towns. So much of Michigan’s borders were coastline that she knew the Deceiver had to be stretched to the utmost of even his massive capacity.

That passing realization gave her a grim smile. He couldn’t police the entire Michigan coast, but he was giving it his best shot, which would make life extremely challenging for her two idiots.

She had to get in touch with them, but she couldn’t do it with another dream sending because it was quite obvious they were wide awake. A spirit messenger would be prey to all of the Deceiver’s creatures in that realm, but a physical messenger would take too long and be just as vulnerable. She thought hard, but she didn’t have any other real choice.

She sighed. Either way, she had to wake up and get out of bed. She shifted levels in her consciousness, settled her psyche back into its fragile human body and surfaced to full wakefulness.

The body that housed her spirit groaned. She yawned and struggled to a sitting position, reacquainting herself with all the various aches and pains that attended her extreme old age. She sucked a tooth. Actually she didn’t feel too bad, all things considered. She heaved out of bed, drew on her bathrobe and slippers and shuffled out of the bedroom.

Jerry’s grandson had left his bedside. Jamie sat at the dining table, with his head in his hands. An empty coffee cup sat in front of him.