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  I wanted to ask what speed had to do with anything if we were talking about a ghost. From what little bit I’d gleaned from Oscar and just pop culture in general, I didn’t think ghosts were bound by something as mundane as how fast they could run. Instead of arguing, I just made a noise of agreement. “Well, better me than you, I suppose.”

  He choked wetly, turning his face away. “I’m real sorry, okay? And if he… if he uses you, he probably won’t use you up. He needs the energy too bad for him to just like blow the wad, you know?”

  “Er, charming phrase, and okay. Let’s just go, Enoch.” At that point I’d have agreed to crawl naked through broken glass if it meant we got out of there and got to the Carstairs place.

  Enoch helped me into the kitchen proper and went to pick up Deborah. She moaned and tried to fight him, but he lifted her with little effort. She was literally skin and bones, from the looks of things, and couldn’t weigh over sixty or seventy pounds. Her head lolled towards me and her bloodless, cracked lips parted in a grimace that might have been an attempt at a smile. “Follow me carefully,” Enoch said. “The place is shot to hell, but it’s safer than leaving her outside.”

  He led us out of the kitchen and into a narrow, short corridor that smelled so strongly of mildew, I gagged. It burned my nose as we made our way down the wet, spongy carpet and into a large foyer. Deborah rattled out a moan and started to fight weakly in Enoch’s arms, turning her face against his chest and making wet, hacking, broken sounds in her throat. “Sorry, Mom,” he murmured, jostling her like a fussy baby. “We’re gonna go fast, okay? Don’t look up.” He glanced back at me, nodding at the remains of a wooden chandelier hanging overhead, one of those that looked like a wagon wheel and was stereotypical ‘western ranch’ style. “Dewayne Hicks topped himself there,” he murmured. “Mom found him and…” he closed his eyes. “I was following her, you know, like a ghost? With that projection? She’d been upset all day and I wanted to help her and she found him and…” He hiccoughed on a sob. “And when I came runnin’ after I saw what she did, she was gone. And Dewayne Hicks was on the ground. Rope broke,” he added, sniffing in an affectation of a tough guy ‘eh, who cares?’ attitude. “I think she really liked him special,” he added. “She was real upset when Pops didn’t let her see him again.”

  Deborah’s moans were frantic, her fingers plucking at Enoch’s shirt fruitlessly. “Okay, okay,” he soothed. “Sorry, Mom. Doctor Weems didn’t know. And he needs to know why… why this is going on, okay?”

  “Enoch,” I began, but the house groaned around us. Not settled, not ‘made a weird noise like an old house,’ not wind passing through holes in the roof. Groaned. A heavy, tired, sad, but angry noise like the house itself was tired of our shit and ready for us to go. The front door, hanging by a single hinge, swung inwards and dropped off, crashing to the floor and making us jump. “Shit,” I gasped.

  Enoch nodded. “Uh huh. He doesn’t want us going. He wants us scared.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “He’s done this before. When I brought Mom here to hide her, when she refused to get near home, he tried to drive us out. But if I kept Mom back in the kitchen, he didn’t get so het up. I think…” he trailed off, looking a little embarrassed at his own theorizing, “I think it’s because this part of the house was his one time, you know? But the Hicks family added the kitchen in like the fifties. That was never part of the original house.”

  As if on cue, the house rattled out another groan. “Let’s move,” I said. “Today’s been shitty enough without dying under a pile of rubble.”

  Enoch adjusted his hold on Deborah and, after taking a deep breath, marched towards the open door. “When we get separated—and we will—keep runnin’ across the old cow field, okay? There are two fences. One of ‘em is gonna be hard to see because it’s half-fallen down. It’ll hit about knee high on you and it’s barbed wire so keep an eye out. The other is split-rail and when you hit that one, you’re at the property line. Get over it and you’ll be back on Pops’ land.”

  I nodded. “Lead the way.”

  Enoch stepped onto the sagging porch, looking fearfully towards the tree line past the house, and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and took off at a loping run with far more ease than anyone carrying deadweight should be able to do.

  I lurched after, leg and head screaming for me to stop, threatening to take me down with every step. I glanced down the old drive leading to the road where we’d broken down not so long ago but what felt like a different lifetime. For a moment, I considered heading for the road, flagging down help, but the drive was long and overgrown. If I stayed behind Enoch, there was a better chance of reaching help instead of waiting for a car to pass and hoping they stopped for a beaten, bloody man waving at them like a mad thing. Enoch was already in the cow pasture by the time I made it to the edge of the front yard. And something was moving in the pecan grove between the house and the road, the one I’d seen someone moving in the other day while trying to get a signal on my phone. Pushing myself faster, I made it to the edge of the high grass before the dark shape broke free from the trees and headed for me. Enoch’s wordless shout told me he saw it, too, and gave me a burst of speed I knew I’d pay for soon. Enoch disappeared from sight, dipping down with the slope of the land, and I found the first fence.

  It hit me across the legs, just above the knees as Enoch had guessed it would, and I tumbled face-first, the sharp thorns of metal tearing through my jeans and into my skin with a hot-sicking tug. My scream was raw and loud. I was unable to stop it as I rolled onto my back, the feeling of warm blood spilling down my legs as the shape loomed over me and resolved into a man with a grim, unpleasant smile and dark, narrowed eyes taking me in thoughtfully. “Not my first choice,” he muttered. “But you’ll do.”

  Everything hurt and felt wrong. My already mushy head was suddenly too full, too frantic, then it all snapped quiet, and I was left feeling like I’d been shoved into a bag and tucked away in a corner. I could hear the world around me, but I couldn’t speak. I could see, but it wasn’t the way I usually did. Everything was a blur, like I was using someone else’s eyes.

  I’m going to miss Oscar, I thought as everything seemed to close in around me and the smothered-trapped feeling melted into a haze where I hung like a bug in a web. I think I might love you, Oscar, I thought as I finally sank down into whatever was happening.

  Chapter 14

  Oscar

  I walked out of the bunkhouse, following the wisps of the two ladies and Hudson’s stalking gait. Everything was normal out there—birds being loud, the rattle-hum of insects in the dry grass, and very distantly the rumble of trucks on the highway, miles away. It felt wrong, like there should be some ominous clouds overhead, or silence pressing in.

  “You’ve always been dramatic,” Grandmeresniffed, coming into view beside me. “I only tried to save you from yourself.”

  “We’re doing this now?”

  “Well, you’re the one insisting upon making a scene. Really, Oscar. I shouldn’t still be having to guide you at this stage. If you’d stayed to what you’d been taught—”

  “Then I’d be living a lie. Like you were.”

  Grandmere, wearing her favorite pantsuit and glittering with her favorite jewelry, glared at me imperiously from the bunkhouse porch. “Impudent brat,” she muttered. “Your mother’s influence. She was too soft when it came to your abilities. To our abilities.”

  I refused to rise to the bait. It was tempting, though. Mother had been kind, if a bit distant, and loved me in her way, but when it came to my mediumship, she’d treated it as a sweet party trick and said it made her nervous if I did it too often around her. When she passed, I didn’t try to contact her because I didn’t want to scare her. “Why are you doing this to me,” I asked. “You’ve been the one blocking me.” It wasn’t a question—I already knew the answer.

  “That spectacle in New York was gauche, Oscar! It was bey
ond gauche, if such a thing is even possible!” She stepped off the porch as if she were still alive, moving fluidly and keeping every shred of grace and to the manor born snobbery she’d had in life. “It was shameful, whoring yourself out like that. And if I’ve taught you nothing else, it’s respect for what we do!”

  “Whoring?” Hudson muttered. “Sounds like you had a lot more goin’ on than chatting with us poor spooks, huh?”

  “Hush,” I hissed at him. Grandmere arched her dark brows at me. “Can you see them?” I asked.

  She inclined her chin, her nose wrinkling in distaste. “First lesson, Oscar: Don’t speak to that which is not summoned.”

  “You taught me to close down parts of my ability for your comfort. Because of your fears,” I cried. “And now people are suffering because I don’t know what to do!”

  “Really,” she sniffed. “What you need to do is keep out of it. You were not asked to handle anything. These ghosts are not under your hand—”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, my tone more frantic than not. “Grandmere, what do you mean, under my hand?” My stomach lurched and I wanted to just curl around it, reset my entire day, Hell, my entire month. Maybe the year. “You didn’t teach me everything,” I challenged. “You kept so much from me. I know it. You were afraid, though, and I’m not mad at you for being afraid.”

  “I taught you what was necessary,” Grandmere said with more than a hint of frost in her tone. “I taught you what was safe. I love you, Oscar, even if you don’t believe that. And I protected you. You’re spitting in my face, trying to step away from those teachings!”

  “Please,” the spectral Ms. Carstairs murmured. “Please stop!” She shimmered, going nearly see-through before snapping back into focus. She looked like she felt ill, her features drawn and pinched as her spectral jaw worked. “He’s going to take us,” she gritted out. I’d never known a ghost to experience pain, but she seemed to be in the throes of something bad, something that was hurting her. “You’re fighting with that old biddy and—” she broke off on a ragged cry. “Oh!”

  “Old biddy!” Grandmere shrieked, losing her cool exterior. “How dare—”

  Ms. O’Halloran and Hudson crowded me as Ms. Carstairs swooped and Grandmere drew herself up imperiously. “Listen to me,” Ms. O’Halloran insisted in her reedy voice, “Albright is going to kill us. I mean, again!”

  Hudson nodded. “He’s been taking us out since his own death. He’s… he’s not like us. He pulls on us, on our, what’s it, on our energy, you know? Like draining a battery dry.” He glanced at Ms. O’Halloran. “You know what a battery is, right?”

  “I’m dead, not stupid. I see things. Or I did.” She turned her translucent face to me, and I realized she looked like she was crying. “The only ones left from the founding families, the ones who… who did Albright wrong, are the Carstairs. Once he’s done with them, he… Well, I doubt he’ll move on like he says he will.”

  “How is he drawing on you? I don’t understand,” I protested. “How is that even possible?”

  Grandmere broke away from her fight with Mrs. Carstairs. “It’s nothing you should concern yourself with,” she snapped at me. “It’s not what we do, Oscar. This projecting, this draining is vulgar and beneath us.”

  “For the love of god,” I groaned. “Grandmere! This isn’t some goddamn dame and poodle party! People are literally dying! I know you were—you are—afraid but… but I need help. Please. Please, Grandmere. Help me.”

  She stared at me for a very long moment. I could almost pretend she was alive again, so vibrant and real she seemed. But then she shimmered and frowned. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think I should encourage this. You’re refusing to follow the path I laid for you. The safe path. The right one. I will not be party to your self-destructive tendencies.”

  She was gone. I felt her leave in a huff and snap. I wanted to cry like a child and demand she come back, demand she help me. Instead, I pulled myself up and turned to the remaining three ghosts. “I don’t know how to help you. I’ve never faced someone like Albright. Hell, all I’ve done is be the middle man for communication. I don’t know what Albright is, what he’s doing to you.”

  “Stop him,” Hudson said quietly. “Enoch, bless his heart, he’s been trying but he doesn’t know the first thing about what to do. Less than you, even. But he’s been trying. We don’t want to disappear like the others. We want to go to whatever’s next. We deserve that. We didn’t kill Albright—that was our ancestors. But we’re paying for what they did in ways you cannot imagine. This,” he waved a hand at himself, at the ladies, at the ranch, “this is our Hell, slowly diminishing until he’s done using us up, then…” He shook his head. “Then we’re just gone. There’s no crossing over, there’s no haunted houses. Gone.”

  A low, keening sob—very alive, very human—broke over us and the ghosts vanished from sight, though they lingered still. Out of the cow pasture lumbered Enoch, sweaty and dirty and carrying a bundle of—no, not a bundle! A person!

  “Enoch!” I broke into a run towards the split-rail fence as he heaved himself against it. He shoved his burden at me and sank to his knees. I grabbed for them automatically, nearly recoiling in horror when I saw who—what—I was holding.

  A dead woman.

  A dead woman who rattled out a coughing moan and tried to reach her hand for my face.

  My shriek was loud and tore at my throat as I staggered back.

  “Don’t drop her!” Enoch cried. “It’s my mom! Don’t hurt her!”

  I fell back into the dust, clutching the woman to me as if my arms had locked at his words. She smelled, God how she smelled! And she looked weeks dead, but she was moving, making sounds. Reaching for Enoch.

  “Shit, son.” I looked up, fully expecting David Carstairs but realizing, belatedly, it was a different man entirely. It was the man I’d seen in the photo at the diner. The man I’d caught a glimpse of before.

  Mason Albright.

  “I wish you’d gone already. I don’t like collateral damage, as they call it. I wanted to be nice and clean, get this over with.” He sucked his teeth, dropping down into a crouch to touch Deborah’s face. She moaned and writhed, surprisingly strong for someone in her condition. “Aw, girlie, you’ve been real helpful. More than I’d expect from a Carstairs,” he chuckled. The sound was grating and perverse, gallows humor out of place.

  “I’m sorry,” Enoch sobbed, but I didn’t know if he meant me or Deborah. He crawled frantically between the slats of the fence, reaching for her even as Albright stroked her face. Enoch could see him—I knew he could, by the way he flailed at the spectral fingers, trying to brush them away from his mother. “I can’t make him leave her alone. He’s… he’s…”

  I nodded. “Enoch, take her. Move her away, okay?” I didn’t know if it would help but it would get him away from us, from Albright and whatever he was trying to do.

  Albright smirked. “You’re a funny one, little man.”

  The crunch of tires on gravel and the sound of David Carstairs shouting erupted in front of the main house. He had pulled up in his truck and was thundering across the yard towards us, Yancy sprinting from the house at the commotion. “Get off my property,” Carstairs shouted. “Get away from my grandson or I swear to God, I’ll have you arrested. I’ll—” His sudden stop would’ve been comical in almost any other circumstance. He and Yancy saw Enoch at the same time, his tear-streaked and snotty face twisted in pain, mouth open on a sobbing scream as his mother thrashed and heaved between us. “She,” David gasped, going a shade of gray that spoke only of bad things. “She…” He pitched onto his knees. “Oh my god… Oh my god, no!”

  “Mom,” Yancy’s voice was strangled, a bare whisper. “Oh no… No, Enoch, no! Where did you… Where was she?” he asked, voice ragged. He couldn’t take his eyes off his mother, but he went to Enoch’s side and pulled him into a rough embrace, pressing Enoch’s face against his chest as if, by hiding his eyes, he could keep hi
m from the horror of what was happening, what had happened.

  Albright smiled up at me. His energy pulled at me, like he was sinking fingers inside my chest and rummaging around. Never in my life had I felt something like this, even in my most intense encounters with spirits. He could touch me, I realized. Touch whatever made up my soul, my spirit, my energy. He was trying to… to what? His touch squeezed and I gasped. “No,” I shouted, pushing back against him. There was that glow again, quick and hot, and he was gone. Deborah was shaking as David screamed into a phone for help, Yancy was rocking back and forth with Enoch clutched to his chest. I scooted back, my stomach cramping and hands shaking.

  “Your friend,” Enoch said, muffled. “He’s… he’s gonna come. And I tried but I don’t know what to do!” He shoved himself away from Yancy and found me, his eyes wild and panicked. “I tried to talk to you, but you couldn’t hear me,” he said, voice catching.

  “How,” I asked. “I suspected but… how?”

  He shook his head. “What was keeping me out? How can you let ghosts in but not me?” He dashed at his face again and Yancy pulled him back, turning hard eyes on me. I shook my head—I don’t know what he means.

  I was suspecting maybe I did, though. Maybe I did know more than I thought. “Enoch, are you… were you able to reach out to me?”

  “That’s what I said!” He growled in frustration, the sound twisting into a rage-filled scream. “Fuck!”

  “Oscar.”

  “Oh, thank god,” I gasped. Julian was hurrying across the field towards us. “Where have you been? The gh—Enoch,” I corrected, now that I knew, “said you were in trouble and—”

  And he was. He still was. He was moving wrong. Not like an injured man, not entirely. That I’d expected. He was limping on the injured leg, favoring that side as he reached the fence, but it was only as he got closer that I realized he was holding himself stiffly, arms twitching at his sides. His face was contorted into a mockery of his usual expression. “Oscar, you should’ve just gone. But I guess I can thank you and your friends,” Julian said. No, Mason, it was Mason, using Julian’s body like he’d tried to use Ezra. “All I need is here now. And I can finally, finally rest.” He started to climb over the fence, but Julian must have fought him, pushed back against him, because his body jerked back and he flailed, scratching at his arms, his face, like he was trying to rid himself of bugs on his skin. With a yowl, Mason surged forward, overpowering any fight Julian tried to put up and climbing sloppily over the fence. Julian was covered with gashes and blood coated his legs, an angry, seeping wound on his leg that looked suspiciously like a bite mark, joined by deep gashes and furrows on his thighs. The angry goose-egg on his forehead was purple and black and worryingly close to his eye. “Julian,” I whispered. “No, no, no, no, no…” He couldn’t handle this! How the Hell could he be okay after this? I made a movement towards him, but Enoch grabbed me before I could get to my feet. “Let me go!”