Blood Spirits

Table of Contents

 

 

ALSO BY SHERWOOD SMITH:

CORONETS & STEEL
BLOOD SPIRITS

 

 

The History of Sartorias-deles
INDA
THE FOX
KING'S SHIELD
TREASON'S SHORE

 

BANNER OF THE DAMNED
¹

Copyright © 2011 by Sherwood Smith.

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

DAW Books Collector's No. 1559.

 

DAW Books Inc. is distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

 

All characters in the book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

ISBN : 978-1-101-54771-7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing, September

 

to Margot.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My heartfelt thanks to Estara Swanberg for overseeing my German,
Pilgrimsoul for help in envisioning London,
Emily Feeley for reading the first few chapters,

 

And
Rachel Manija Brown, Beth Bernobich, Hallie O'Donovan and Kate Elliott
for trudging through raw draft.

ONE

I
WAS SPEED-MARKING a stack of French grammar finals, trying not to think about Marius Alexander Ysvorod, Crown Prince of Dobrenica, when the office phone rang.

One phone was shared by four foreign language teachers, so it could have been for any one of us, but by the second ring I had a really bad feeling.

Okay, I have abilities some would call weird, but premonitions aren't among them. So what was this dread? The phone's ringing broke with the norm. In my three months of teaching in Oklahoma, students usually called with excuses before quizzes and tests, not after. And definitely not the Friday night after finals, when the entire college campus had gone home for the end-of-year holidays.

I stared at the phone as if it were going to bite me, then picked up the receiver.

“Yeah?” I grimaced, remembering slightly too late that I should have answered in a more professional way:
Fort Williams College, Foreign Language Department, Kim Murray speaking
.

All that zapped out of my head when a woman said, “This is College Hospital. Are you related to Ronald Huber?”

Ron was the other newbie, teaching French and Spanish, whereas I taught French and German. Since we both covered beginning French, we'd graded the exams together, earlier this evening. He'd finished, left, and should be home by now, taking over baby care while his wife worked the night shift. I'd learned all this not two hours ago when, after three months of mutual reticence, we finally broke the ice as we tiredly ground through test corrections together.

The hospital calling? This was not good. Why didn't they call his wife? But I was so worried that I didn't ask. “Yes,” I said instead, “what is it?”

“There has been an accident,” the woman said.

The rest of her words filtered through a shockwave, and I only comprehended a few:
intersection . . . emergency surgery
.

“I'll be right there.” I grabbed my purse and ran, not even stopping to lock the office door.

The hospital was at the other end of campus. People surrounded me, talking in clipped voices. I tried to take it all in:
drunk driver, jaws of life, cell phone smashed, driver's license from a small town in Iowa, only legible thing a record book of grades with a phone number.
Our shared office number.
Are you his wife?

“His wife's name is LaToya,” I said, and on pure instinct added hastily, “I'm his sister.”

Did his wife use his last name? I'd only met her once, my first day, but that memory was a blur. As I'd been a blur to Ron:
What's your name? Cami? Kerry? Kim! Geez, I'm sorry, I'm crap with names. Great thing in a teacher, eh?

I banished the memory of the gaunt, earnest, gentle fellow whose pen still sat on my desk, and gave them what little I'd gathered from Ron during our marathon session correcting finals. “She works for Child Protective Services. Duty therapist nights at Grace Morton Children's Home.”

Last name? Phone?
someone repeated insistently.

I grimaced. “Uh—uh—”

Someone else called out from further away:
I've got Grace Morton Home on speed dial. There can't be more than one LaToya on the night staff who's married to a Ronald Huber.

I looked down at the bloody wreck of my office mate, whose blond hair and skinny form resembled mine just enough for the harassed staff to accept us as relatives. The instinct was to not leave him alone among these businesslike hospital people exchanging unintelligible exclamations in medicalese.

I spotted a loose hand dangling beyond a blanket and slid my fingers into Ron's. I felt a faint, convulsive grip, human to human. He clung, and I was glad to be clung to, as hospital people circled us, speaking in the tight, clipped voices of adrenaline-fueled competence.

One by one machines came to life, displays bouncing and bleeping. I could not bear to look down at Ron's mangled flesh, so I stared beyond him through an observation window, at a bad reproduction of a Cezanne bolted to the beige wall of the corridor. I tried not to breathe the amalgam of cleaning fluids, antiseptics, and the sticky-sweet smell of blood as some of the flow of words worked their way into my comprehension.

Then three things happened. The fingers in my hand loosened their grip, the air around me took on a bone-deep chill, and one of the machines shifted from
bleep-bleep, bleep-bleep
to
wheeeeeeeeee!

And suddenly Ron stood next to me, looking around in a puzzled way, his glasses winking with reflection of the bright lights.
Kim, what's going on? Why are you crying?

“Don't you see yourself?” I said.

A nurse cast a distracted glance my way, then muttered, “Sorry,” as she shoved me aside. I had to step back, my grip on Ron's hand lost, as they closed around Ron in a huddle.

But the ghost didn't waver.
I have to go
, Ron said. He still had his nerdy shirt on, though I could see the bloody remains of it in the waste receptacle ten feet away.

“Where?” I whispered

“Now!” someone said—or something like it. There was a sickening thumping noise as Ron's body jolted.

The Ron next to me began to blur.
Cami, I think I need to . . .

“Ronald Huber.” I hissed the words voicelessly at that image suspended a yard away, through which I could see a technician bent over Ron's chest, and beyond him that machine going
wheeeeeee
. “Look at me!
Look at me!
No you don't. You can't leave LaToya. You can't leave that baby. Don't you
dare
go, or I'll kick your booty from here to Mars.”

Ron looked at me—really looked—his watery blue eyes gazed into me, and through me, and then my tear-blurred eyes blinked, and I was glaring at the machine that had reverted to
bleep-bleep
,
bleep-bleep
.

“Got him!” A doctor shouted, and then began uttering a stream of incomprehensible orders as I stood there staring at the bleeping machine until someone elbowed me toward the door, saying, “Gabblegabble, quack, quack.” At least, that's what it sounded like through the rushing sound in my ears.

I zombie-walked into the hall, dropped onto a bench, and put my head between my knees.

The next thing I was aware of was a deep female voice. “His
sister?
But—”

“She's right over there.”

I raised my head. There was LaToya, a large, curvy woman whose hair, eyes, and skin were the same dark hue. She stopped right in front of me, lowering her voice. “Aren't you the other French teacher? Katie? Cami?”

“Kim. French and German.”

“Right.” The word had a thousand invisible questions attached.

So I took a deep breath and started in. “A drunk broadsided him in the intersection outside of campus. All they could find was our office number. He told me you worked nights, and your families are out of state, like mine. So I thought he shouldn't be alone. . . .”

I remembered the ghost and shook my head, my words drying up.

A nurse appeared. “They're going to begin surgery.”

LaToya spun around. “I want to see him.”

“As soon as we're finished. Please sit down. There is a waiting room right past that door.” The nurse nodded toward the other end of the hall, then vanished inside the emergency room.

LaToya's phone burred. She pulled it out. “He's in surgery. No. No. No. Yeah. Call you as soon as he's out. You tell everyone else, okay? No, Olivia's with the sitter. I don't want to talk until I know something.” Her Chicago accent was strong. She and Ron were strangers to Oklahoma, as was I.