Ghost at the Feast: The Nightwatch Book 3 Read online

  My scalp prickled with foreboding. “Do we know how soon it will happen?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He walked over to the rope that summoned Emmett and tugged. “I need a fucking drink.”

  It was the first time I’d heard him swear, and the curse word felt wrong falling from his lips.

  Tris sat up straighter. “Well, sweetie, it seems that we need to keep a journal.”

  Jay looked down at her. “A journal? How will that help?”

  “A collective journal where we document any strange events, anything out of the ordinary. We can go through the events at the end of each day to look for patterns or clues that might point to an impending catastrophe.”

  Jay nodded. “Yes, excellent idea, Tris.” He smiled down at her. “You’re in charge of the journal.”

  She blinked in surprise. “Me?”

  “You’re part of the team, after all, and it’s your idea.”

  She puffed up her chest. “Well, in that case, I would be honored.”

  “In the meantime,” Jay said, “we do our jobs, and we remain vigilant.”

  “What about the Custodians?” Kris asked. “What about Lex?”

  “The council is reallocating the case as it’s no longer in our jurisdiction,” Jay replied. “As for Lex, he’s being transferred to Hallow Hill tomorrow.”

  Hallow Hill … shit. The Hills, as the Watch liked to call it, was the largest facility in the country, holding some of the most dangerous but valuable prisoners. It was also where the executions took place.

  I guess Lark had contacted the council about Lex and backed down on the rehabilitation route. He sat with his gaze fixed straight ahead.

  Emmett entered the room with a silver tray carrying a decanter and one crystal-cut glass.

  Jay took the tray off him. “Back to work, team. Patrols won’t run themselves.” He looked wistful for a moment, but the expression was fleeting. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He clipped out of the room.

  “Did you see his face?” Mai said. “He wants to be out there with us.”

  “He deserves to be free of this house,” Kris said.

  Lark stood abruptly. “I need to get back to work on that problem. If there is a big bad headed our way, then we need all hands on deck—Jay and Bres included. You guys will have to patrol without me for a few days.” He left the room.

  Mai sat back in her seat and blew out a breath. “He’s beating himself up about the Lex thing. He honestly thought that if he weaned him off the demon blood, Lex would see the error of his ways.”

  “Yeah, well, Lex is an asshole,” Kris said.

  “And Lark is too kind.” I stood. “I’ve got to make a few calls, but then I’ll be ready for patrol.”

  “Meet you out front in a half-hour,” Mai said.

  I scooped up Tris and headed up to my room.

  * * *

  “It could be the patch playing up,” Karishma said on the other end of the line. “It could just be how the patch affects the bond. I won’t know until I get a look at it.” She sounded distracted.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine. I have to go off base for a few days on official business, and then there’s family stuff. Urgh. Listen, I’ll come see you as soon as I get back. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, but I’ll drop Lark a call with instructions on how to do a basic test of the bond. I can do a more in-depth one on my return.”

  “Thanks, babe.”

  “See you soon, sweetie.”

  She ended the call.

  “She’s right,” Tris said. “We’re worrying for no reason. Things were bound to be a little different after she patched up the bond.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. We’ve got this.” I picked up the compact and called my gramps.

  He answered almost immediately. “Kat, sweetheart, how are you?” He looked bright-eyed, like he’d just fed.

  “I’m good, Gramps, you?”

  “Better for seeing you.” But his expression was troubled.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I went to see your mother.” He looked down for a moment as if composing himself. “The carers believe her body is shutting down. That she’s … dying.”

  A hole opened inside me, a mixture of regret and sadness for the woman I’d never known. “Are they sure?”

  He nodded. “Sweetheart … you should go see her. Before it’s too late.”

  I’d avoided it because, heck, there was nothing I could do to save her, and seeing her like that just intensified my impotence. If her body was shutting down, it meant her soul was becoming untethered. That she’d traveled somewhere far out of all our reach.

  “Kat?” Gramps gave me a watery smile. “Say goodbye, sweetheart. While you still can.”

  I nodded, my neck feeling stiff. “I’ll go see her soon. I promise.”

  I ended the call.

  Tris patted my thigh. “It’s for the best, chickie. At least that bastard can’t get hold of her now.”

  “I know, I just … I always just hoped she’d wake up one day, you know?” I clenched my fist. “She saved me from him, the shimmer man. I know she did. I brought back a message from her, so I must have seen her in my dreams as a child, but I can’t remember. I wish I could remember.”

  Tris climbed onto my lap and hugged me. “I know, chickie. I know.”

  I hugged her back, and my gaze fell on the book Luther had given me. I’d popped it onto my bedside table and forgotten about it.

  Shit. “Tris, remind me to read that chapter Luther marked.”

  “Ooh, can you pick up a journal while you’re out?”

  “Deal.” I left her on the bed and headed out to meet the others. “See you after patrol.”

  She blew me a kiss.

  * * *

  “I need chocolate,” Kris said as we entered the supermarket. At this time of night, it was mainly self-checkout. The aisles were empty, and a tired-looking security guard sat on a stool by the entrance. He looked up briefly from his newspaper and then went back to reading. We were nothing special to see. Just three bland, forgettable humans. He didn’t see the leather, the holsters, and the weapons. The glamour that protected supernaturals made us look harmless, average, and that included shielding the weapons on our person.

  My stomach rumbled. “I need food, and I need to pick up a journal for Tris.” So far, the night had been dead. No monsters, no supernatural disturbances. “It’s weird for things to be so quiet.”

  “Don’t knock it,” Mai said. “I say we grab snacks, head home, and watch a movie.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Kris said. “I get to be in the middle.”

  Mai looked at me then rolled her eyes. “Are you going to scream like a little girl again?”

  Kris pouted. “The guy had knives for fingers. Knives!”

  We fought monsters for a living, but stick one on the screen, and Kris needed a cushion to hide behind.

  I followed Mai down the confectionary aisle. Kris grabbed a basket and began to load up on jelly sweets and crisps.

  “We need dip,” Mai said.

  I offered her a salute. “I’ll get some. Salsa or sour cream?”

  “Both,” Kris and Mai said in unison before exchanging cheesy grins.

  Urgh, yeah, they liked to mix them up in a bowl and then dip all kinds of stuff in the concoction, and they thought drinking blood was yuck. I repressed a shudder and went in search of dips.

  I stepped around the corner to see a woman in the next aisle. She had her back to me and was wearing a tattered brown coat.

  “Not here. Can’t be here. What? What is it? Where? Where is it?” she mumbled.

  Ookay. I spotted the dips. So many dips. My stomach rumbled again. Food and blood. I needed both.

  “No. No, no, no. Not here.” The woman moved away a little, her back still to me. “Where, where is it? Where?”

  “Excuse me?” I took a step toward her. “Maybe I can help?”

  “You got the dip?�
�� Mai came up behind me.

  I handed her the two tubs, my gaze still on the irate woman. “Excuse me?”

  “Um, Kat, who are you talking to?” Mai asked.

  Shit. I looked down to the woman’s feet to see her boots floating an inch or two above the ground. She was so solid looking.

  “Ghost.” I walked up to the spirit. “Hey, maybe I can help you?”

  She spun to face me, and I let out an involuntary yelp. Her face … It was missing. Gone. Just a blank flesh-colored space.

  Her hands went to the spot where her mouth would have been, up to her nose and her absent eyes.

  “Where? Where is it? Where?”

  She was speaking without a mouth, which was cool. I mean, she was a ghost, and ghosts didn’t need a mouth to speak. Hell, they didn’t even need faces, but they sure helped, and this one seemed mighty distressed at losing hers.

  “Kat, is everything okay?” Mai asked.

  “Yeah, just a distressed ghost missing a face.” I studied the apparition.

  “I was gonna say can I see, but I’ll pass,” Mai said.

  “Hey.” I reached for the ghost and touched her arm. Ice shot through my hand. I pulled back quickly. “Hey, can you hear me?”

  She touched her ears. “Where? Where is it? Give it back. Please. What are you? What?”

  Shit. Confused disorientated spirits were the worst, and I usually avoided them, but after Jay’s vision of doom, anything could be a clue. Leaving the ghost wandering the aisles looking for her face wasn’t an option. We needed to get her somewhere where we could figure out what happened to her, but with the state she was in, there was only one way to do that, and it wasn’t pleasant.

  “Kris, I might need you to warm me up in a bit.”

  It was the perfect time for an innuendo, but the seriousness of my tone must have stalled his smart mouth because all he did was nod and move closer to me.

  He rubbed his hands together and then shrugged off his jacket. “I’m ready.”

  “What can I do?” Mai asked.

  I reached out and touched them both, pushing my sight into them.

  “Whoa!” Kris balked.

  Mai backed up a couple of steps. “Shit, that is freaky.”

  The ghost was getting more agitated. “Where? No, no, no. Please, where is it?”

  If Henri were here, he’d be reminding me of all the reasons why what I was about to do was a bad idea. I closed my eyes and pressed my palm to the ghost’s chest, pushing the power I didn’t quite understand into her. Ice clawed at my fingers and crawled up my hand. Come on, come on. The ice gripped my wrist and moved up my forearm. I focused, pushing more power into the ghost until there was a snap followed by a pressure in my chest. The ghost grew limp, and her head fell forward. I pulled my hand back and held it to my torso. Fuck, that hurt.

  Kris wrapped his coat around me and began to rub my arms. The heat and the friction took the biting edge off the chill.

  Mai circled the floating limp apparition. “What did you do to the faceless ghost?”

  “I’m not sure how it works. But it won’t last long, so we need to move fast.”

  “And what exactly are we doing?” Kris asked.

  “Taking her to people who might be able to get through to her.”

  I began to walk up the aisle toward the exit, and the ghost floated after me.

  “Whoa!” Mai followed, her heels clipping on the ground. “Now that is seriously cool.”

  Yeah, it looked cool, but the longer I maintained the connection, the more it would hurt. Right now, the spot at my solar plexus ached like indigestion, but in an hour, it would burn like cold fire, and if I remained tethered to the spirit, the ice would spread out and consume me and then … Hell, I had no idea what would happen, only the primal knowledge that it would be bad.

  Kris dumped the basket of snacks on a nearby conveyor belt, and we walked out into the snow-covered street. The ghost passed through the doors and joined us on the street, hovering a foot off the ground.

  Pain lanced through my chest. Okay, that was new, it was too soon for the pain to start.

  “Where to, Justice?” Mai asked.

  I crunched through the snow toward the van. “I think we could all do with some Good Spirits.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The last couple of times we’d popped into Good Spirits to hang out, there’d been plenty of ghosts loitering outside, but today, the pavement was empty. The inside, however, was heaving with spectral bodies. Music played, and phantom cocktails were being handed out on phantom trays.

  It took a few minutes for the place to solidify around us, but when it did, color bled into the world, and Good Spirits was a sight to behold. The new management had put up chandeliers, and the stage was now home to a band that rotated what kind of music they played. Right now, sixties music was rocking the room.

  “I bloody love this place,” Mai said. “And I can’t believe it was under our noses all the time. Sod Cryptic Gods.”

  It had been a while since we’d visited Cryptic Gods, the club owned by Kris’s mysterious friend, Max. I still had no idea what kind of supernatural Max was, and Kris wasn’t talking.

  The demon winked at one of the can-can girls as she sashayed past with a tray of drinks. “It’s a classy joint with something for everyone.”

  My chest throbbed, reminding me I needed to untether our tagalong spirit. The ghost I’d brought with me twirled slowly above the ground, garnering more than a few curious glances. Her solidity had bled away, and she was completely transparent now, which made her stand out like a nun in a whorehouse.

  It was time to unload and maybe get some answers. “You guys chill out. I’ll be right back.”

  I made my way through the spirits, past the bar, where Dotty, the head barmaid, was frantically serving drinks to specters from all eras, and to a door at the back that led to the administration’s inner sanctum. Harmony practically lived back here in the maze of twisting corridors that took you only where you wanted or needed to be. The trick was to focus. I pushed open the door and visualized Harmony in my mind.

  Silver-streaked hair, laugh lines at the corners of her pale blue eyes, and a mouth that loved to cuss.

  I stepped over the threshold and into Harmony’s private quarters that doubled as her office. The new owner of Good Spirits was sitting on her squishy sofa, smoking a cigarette, and watching some detective drama on her TV.

  She groaned in annoyance, obviously sensing my entrance, and stood slowly to face me.

  Her attention flew over my head to the specter behind me. “What the fuck, fangs? What the fuck did you bring into my house?”

  I jerked a thumb in the spinning lady’s direction. “Oh, this old thing? Found her off her face in the supermarket, totally disorientated. Thought you could help fix her.”

  “What do I look like to you, eh? A fucking charity? A fucking orphanage for torn-up spirits?”

  But she was intrigued, I could see it on her face as she approached and circled the faceless ghost.

  “One of two things,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Ghosts and spirits are energy with memories and desires. These memories and desires give us form. There are two ways for us to lose that form. Either through isolation and madness or by being sliced.”

  “Sliced?”

  “It’s when a part of our memories and desires are cut away. It can affect the way we manifest.” She stepped away from the faceless ghost.

  “You think she was sliced? How does that even happen?”

  Harmony shook her head. “Nah, I’d know if there was a poltergeist in town.”

  Poltergeist? Okay. “Philip mentioned some disturbances on the spirit plane?”

  “A poltergeist would emit a different kind of signature. They draw a hellavulot of energy. They suck it out of the air and out of the living, then use it to power themselves. My eyes on the street would have picked up on a geist presence.”

  “So, isolati
on? She’s been alone so long, she’s lost a grip on herself?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Can we fix her?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  Needles pricked my chest, a warning that it was time to untether. “Any chance I can leave her here? I could dump her back outside, but …” I gave Harmony my puppy-dog eyes.

  She sighed. “Fucking hell, fine. I knew you were bad news bringing the living into my establishment and now this.”

  I grinned. “Shut it, you cranky cow. You love it. I know this place thrives off the energy Kris, Mai, and Lark bring.”

  She frowned. “Really? And how’d you figure?”

  “The fact that they’re always wiped when they leave.”

  She grinned. “Nah, this place is powered by the leylines. Your friends are wiped because it takes energy to interact with the dead, to part the veil and see.”

  “Doesn’t seem to affect me.”

  “And that’s a conundrum I’ve been mulling over.”

  “Yeah? Well, if you figure it out, let me know.”

  A stabbing pain sliced through my chest. “Fuck.”

  “You okay?” Harmony asked, her cranky face creasing in concern.

  “Fine, just got to drop the ghost.”

  “Wait, it’s tethered to you?” She was looking at me like I was a puzzle in need of solving. “What are you?”

  “Me? I’m super sexy.” I winked. “Just one moment.”

  I pressed my palm to my solar plexus and closed my eyes, allowing my other sense to take over. There it was, the tendril of ice that pressed into my chest. I gripped it, twisted, and pulled to disengage the tether.

  The ghost dropped to the ground, and I staggered back a step, rubbing the spot where the tether had been digging into me.

  “Urgh, I hate doing that.”

  “Where? Where is it?” faceless girl said. “Where? Please? Give it back, please.”