Ethereal Entanglements (14 page)

He sighed and ruined their afternoon. “Girls, I need to go do Knight things for a little while.”

“But you said you’d play with us all day.” Lisa pointed a carrot stick at him in an uncanny imitation of her mother. “You told Mommy you’d be here when she got home.”

Missy pouted. “Daddy stay. I want to play Princess Knight after lunch.”

He took his seat at the table and leaned on his arms. The last time he’d taken this position, he’d been warning them about dinner table manners and turning their noses up at the food on Thanksgiving. This time, it would be a lie, but if he thought about it as a story intended to shield them from things they couldn’t understand yet, he felt no guilt about telling it.

Not much guilt. A little.

Enough to crush a rock.

“I know what I said. Something happened when I was gone all day and someone got hurt. I didn’t know about it until that man in the coat came to tell me just now. So I have to go now and make sure nobody else gets hurt from it.”

Lisa sighed and picked up her plate. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Daddy. Come on, Missy.”

Her resignation stabbed Justin through the heart. He stood and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Pumpkin. You know it’s not like this every day. And we had fun all morning.”

“Yes, Daddy.” She stacked her plate on top of Missy’s and picked them up.

Missy crossed her little arms and screwed up her face in a scowl too cute for the word. “Not fair.”

“No, it’s not.” Justin picked her up and squeezed her tight. “Be good for Grandma and Grandpa. “I’ll walk you over.”

“Daddy, if you’re not home for dinner, Mommy is going to cry.” Lisa put on her garden clogs and followed him out the front door, still carrying their lunch plates.

“I know.” He suspected Marie would shout and throw him out for the night. Tears would come later, in private. Despite the general injustice of this, he wouldn’t resist. Tariel would make space for him to sleep in the stable with her. Tomorrow morning, he’d get up early enough to apologize to her and offer to take her to work. The plan seemed sound in his head.

They passed Avery in his gray sedan to reach the farmhouse. Justin ignored him. Five minutes and two grandparent glares later, he slid into the passenger seat of Avery’s sprite and tossed his armor and sword into the back seat, fetched to be on the safe side. Two Knights roaming Portland sounded like the start of either a bad joke or a disaster.

Missy waved from the front window with a pout. Tammy stood behind her with a disapproving frown. Justin hadn’t counted on Tammy’s anger over this. Hopefully, she’d mellow when Marie did. Otherwise, he needed to come up with a gift or gesture for her. This development cast a dark pall over his already unpleasant task.

“Your kids are cute,” Avery said as the car backed out of the driveway. It turned and trundled down the street. “I remember when my boys were that little. It was harder to leave for work then.”

Justin clenched his jaw and reminded himself that Avery didn’t need to be punched in the face. “Is there anything I need to know for the police station?”

Avery’s hands rested on the wheel, but he paid no attention to the road. His sprite could drive itself. “Don’t break character and you should be fine.” He looked like he might say something else, but his radio clicked and the Portland police dispatcher chattered.

Uninterested in the information, Justin watched out the side window as they headed for the freeway.

The voice faded into the background until Avery sat up straighter and said, “What?”

“Paramedics en route,” the dispatcher reported. “Available units in the area needed to secure the location and direct traffic.”

“I guess your reckoning can wait,” Avery said. “Stirin, take us to Nine Cans, as fast as you can.” He retrieved a red light from the floor at Justin’s feet and set it on the dashboard.

Mystified, Justin buckled his seatbelt as the car revved and jumped well past the speed limit. He knew Nine Cans, of course, but had no idea why they needed get there fast. “I wasn’t paying attention. What did I miss?”

“Some kind of break-in or other disturbance at Ki’s place. Reports of weird mist. Maybe Ki’s doing chemistry experiments, but I’m betting it’s something we need to deal with.”

“Great,” Justin grumbled. “Just what we need.” He couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or pleased. They either had a problem or a convenient distraction. Hopefully, it would turn out to be the latter.

Chapter 20

Claire

The fog faded away to leave Claire lying on the ground, surrounded by trees, both evergreen and leafless. She stopped screaming. Drew stood with Ki, both frowning at her from several feet away.

“Courage?” Enion chirped from her neck.

Claire slumped and rested her forehead on the ground. “I’ve never been so scared of anything in my whole life. Why did ghosts bubble out of the ley line like…like…like water?”

“I think you mean champagne,” Ki said. “It makes a better comparison.”

“I couldn’t hurt them. Why didn’t my dagger hurt them?” Rising to her hands and knees, she shook her head. Her shoulder prickled with ice. “Did I kill it? When Iulia said all that would make the locket self-sustaining, I don’t know she meant it would kill my dagger.”

Drew crouched beside her and brushed his thumb across her cheek. It came away smeared with blood. He showed her, then wiped it on his pants. “I never thought I’d see you freak out that much. I mean, they were pretty scary, but you really panicked.”

She stabbed the dirt with her dagger and wished her eyes would stop burning. “It didn’t work! What am I supposed to do if it doesn’t work? Punch them?”

Ki turned around in a circle. “This is a truly charming spot, and the conversation is beyond all imagination, but I wonder if you could direct me out? I should return to my bar and wait for the police to come file a report so I can use an insurance claim to get the glass fixed.”

“How can you be so goddamned calm?” Claire roared. “A dozen ghosts just swarmed your bar and Third Street!”

Drew touched her frozen shoulder. She couldn’t feel it, but shied away from him anyway. “Claire, they weren’t ghosts, and they didn’t leave the basement. We shut the trap door and they didn’t come through. They probably got riled up by what we did with the ley line.”

“Most likely, they’ll settle.” Ki shrugged. “This sort of thing has happened before. Well, not exactly like this. I had a pair of Knights go through down there a decade ago or so, right after I bought the place. Avery and Mark. Nice men. They swept the place from one end to the other and dealt with a few animated memories for me. As I recall, they had no trouble handling it, so maybe it’s just about experience.”

At the unexpected mention of her father, Claire broke into tears. “They were on the sidewalk. I saw them. A big, giant cloud of them.”

“Claire.” Drew kept his hands to himself this time. “That was my mist. I was trying to catch you to get us out of there.”

“What?”

“The mist that followed you out was me. I can’t take you anywhere if you’re not in the mist.”

Claire wiped her face and tried to understand. “But…I saw hands. Trying to grab me.”

“Yeah. I was trying to take your hand, but you kept running. I didn’t realize you were in gibbering-pile-of-terror mode.” He stood and offered a hand to Ki. “I’ll take you back. I’m sorry you got caught up. I’m still new to this. Anyone in the mist comes with me at this point. When I’ve had more practice, I’ll probably be able to pick and choose.”

“It’s fine,” Ki said, taking his hand. “I doubt I’ve
mist
much at my bar. And it’s not like I
fog-ot
to lock the door.”

Mist shot out of the ground to envelop both. “Please stop,” Drew groaned. The fog dissipated, leaving Claire alone with Enion.

The dragon slid off her neck and flapped to the ground. He poked her knee with a tiny claw. “Where was courage? Knights have courage. Strength of will. Tenacity.”

“Someplace else.” Claire covered her face. “I felt so useless. And small.” Ki called those things animate memories, which sounded like a type of ghost to her. If her father could handle things like that, why had she failed? Did she just need more practice, like Ki suggested?

“I just don’t understand. They looked like ghosts.” She prodded her shoulder, disturbed to find it still numb. The strange wound should heal, yet it stubbornly refused. At least the joint still worked, and so did her hand. “And my armor is supposed to protect me from magic. That’s what I thought the whole point of it was.” She yanked her dagger out of the soft ground and used her sleeve to clean it.

Enion sat on the ground, his tiny tail swishing back and forth over a dead leaf. “Need to fly or explode.”

If she had a partner who couldn’t keep her stuff together, she’d want to go someplace else too. “Go ahead.”

“Claire go run. Run makes things better.” He touched her knee again, then flapped his wings and left her behind.

She sat and rocked herself for a while, unable to stop seeing that ghost-thing barely affected by her dagger. For the first time, she wondered if she could dismiss Enion, or if he could disavow her. He deserved better than her. He’d bled for a fraud. After everything she’d done to try to prove herself, all those Knights were right.

Djembe was right.

Wiping her face with her sleeve, she thought maybe she could talk to Marie about this. Justin wouldn’t understand. He’d tell her to run a few laps around the trees or chop some wood, as if either would fix anything. Despite all his skill with a pink and purple princess tea party, he had no idea what to do with her. Like all the other Knights.

If only she could quit being a Knight. She already knew it was a lifetime gig and hated it for that. If her father had known what he was forcing on her, would he have chosen to let her die instead? Maybe he should have. Maybe he’d be alive now. Avery wouldn’t have been tainted. Neither would Justin. Everything would’ve been so much better if her dad hadn’t saved her from what that ne-phasm did when she was three.

Staring at nothing, she noticed mist swirling up nearby. Drew stepped out of it with Mutt. She couldn’t look at him. Technically, him getting possessed had been her fault. Justin blamed himself, and so did Drew, but she knew the truth. Without her, that never happens.

Drew dropped to one knee beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Claire, we have to talk.”

Chapter 21

Claire

“Why?” The question came out more heated than Claire meant it to. She practically spat in his face. Not wanting to push away the only friends she had right now, she sighed and tried to crack a joke. “Did Ki admit to being an elder god or something?”

“No,” Drew said with a shake of his head, “but if he is, that would explain a lot.”

Beside him, Mutt stood with his tail curled between his legs and his head hung. “I’m sorry I ran away.”

“It’s okay, Mutt.” Drew patted him on the head. “Go take a walk. Hit the ley line. We both now know I can always find you if I want to.”

The dog padded away with a wordless whine. Claire wanted to go with him.

Drew waited until the dog walked out of sight. He pushed up his glasses and stared at the trees. Finally, he sighed and said, “Do you remember running out of the bar? You hit the glass and it broke. It cut your face and maybe your neck, and you kept going.”

She hugged her knees. Of all the things he wanted to talk about right now, he had to pick the stupidest, most embarrassing thing she’d ever done. Crawling into a hole felt like a good idea. “What about it?” she snapped.

He squeezed her shoulder. “Can you tell me what happened after that?” His voice softened so much that she felt like a jerk for being crabby. “I didn’t really see anything, I just knew where you were.”

“I dunno.” She shrugged and couldn’t look at him. “I bounced like a pinball and fell down.”

“You bounced off of what, exactly?”

“People? Trees? I dunno. I wasn’t really paying a whole lot of attention.” The questions made no sense to her. Meeting his gaze, she flinched from the quiet intensity in his eyes. “Why?”

Drew sighed and took his hand away. “I took Ki to his back room. We chatted briefly, then we heard sirens. He and I went out front to see an ambulance pulling up.” He pursed his lips and dropped his gaze to the ground. “Right outside the door, a man fell and hit his head so hard he was lying in a pool of blood. Just around the corner, a woman got hit by a car.”

For a moment, Claire had no idea why he told her that. Then she remembered running into a man and shoving him off. She’d hit someone at the curb and heard brakes screeching. Those things had happened and the rush of bizarre panic had flushed them out of her mind. Her blood turned to ice and she couldn’t force her voice above a whisper. “Was—” She gulped. “Was the man wearing a suit?”

“Yes. I heard the driver tell a cop on the scene that the woman stumbled out in front of his car and he didn’t have time to stop. He also said he saw mist. Someone else saw mist near the man.”

“Could you tell…if they were alive or dead?”

Drew stayed still and said nothing. But the muscles in his jaw flexed.

Claire’s heart thumped too loud in her ears. “Tell me. Tell me!” She hugged herself and shifted away from him, already knowing the answer from the small sigh he let out.

He sighed again. “I don’t know.” She thought he lied, maybe to save her sanity. “The woman was being loaded into the ambulance when I left. They were hurrying, so she might be okay. I didn’t get a good look at the man. Paramedics blocked my view. But there was a lot of blood and his feet weren’t moving.”

Regular people died because she failed as a Knight. Only ghosts and possessed things were supposed to die. So far, she’d only ever seen regular people as innocent bystanders or annoying witnesses. Worse, these regular people died because of her, because she couldn’t handle the situation, because she panicked.

She fell forward and threw up. Her gut churned and pushed everything out until she heaved up burning yellow bile. Somewhere in the middle, Drew started rubbing her back, reminding her she had a witness. When her stomach finally stopped rebelling, she lurched to her feet on shaky legs and wobbled away from the steaming pile of gross. Maybe she should leave Drew behind too. At this rate, staying close to her would get him killed.