Following the ghostly compass in my brain was a strange sensation. It felt like searching for the source of an elusive scent or trying to find the thing in your house that’s making the noise nobody else seems to hear. If I didn’t focus on it completely, the feeling faded enough to be overtaken by the urge to find the lathu rune that had lured Stephen out into the cold. But when I did concentrate on the spiritual energy calling to me, the overwhelming nausea nearly brought me to my knees.
The closer I got to the source, the more difficult it became to push forward. The tourmaline around my neck did nothing to block any of it out, or if it did, what leaked through pressed against me like a giant pair of hands squeezing my skull.
How could Horace stand to be so close to this much energy? How could he relax enough to fall asleep to astral project? If I blacked out from the pain, would I find myself on the astral plane?
I gritted my teeth and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other until I bumped up against the sidewalk at the end of the parking lot. It took some effort to lift my shoes the few inches required to go from asphalt to concrete, but I soon found myself in a wide, open-air hallway with a pair of numbered doors on both sides. A metal staircase led to more apartments on the floors above me, but I couldn’t imagine climbing it without falling backward and breaking my neck.
It felt safer to start my search at ground level. I squinted at the doors around me, most of which sported Thanksgiving decorations—cornucopia wreaths, hand turkeys, and pilgrim hats. But there was one door that looked like it wasn’t yet aware that Halloween was two weeks past. A pair of vampire fangs had been taped to the door, perfectly framing the number three.
The pull was strongest here. I stumbled as I approached the door but caught myself on the rough plaster beside it. The voices calling to me were just feet away, right on the other side of this wall.
“Mrrrrooooowwwww.” A black cat growled at me from the far end of the hallway as I steadied myself. It arched its back, and its green eyes flashed, as though it was trying to warn me away from its territory.
My head throbbed like a bass drum, but through the searing pain, I recognized that cat. Fang had shown me a photo of it. I looked from the cat to the vampire fangs and back again.
Fang. This was Fang’s apartment. What the hell was Fang, that little fake, doing with this much spiritual energy pouring out of his home?
There was only one way to find out. I had to get through that door.
Shadow hissed at me. Apparently deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he turned tail and darted around the corner. An idea wormed its way past the pulsing in my brain. I forced myself off the wall to follow him, turning the corner just in time to see Shadow leap up through a window on the other side of the apartment building.
Fang had made a makeshift cat door with a piece of cardboard, some duct tape, and a cat-flap insert that looked like it was intended to sit in something much thicker. With no regard for the amount of noise I was making or the way this might look to an outside observer, I yanked the cardboard away from the window. The next step took more energy than I thought I had left in me, but I managed to hoist myself up and through the opening, landing on a metal pet dish that thumped softly against the carpet beneath my feet.
Dimly, at the back of my mind, I registered a change. The lathu rune no longer called to me. Graham must have destroyed it, which meant he had either reached Stephen or beaten the rune caster to the box. In either case, I prayed he had gotten there in time.
If Horace was out there, he had just witnessed his plan failing. I was sure he would recognize Graham and realize I was behind this turn of events. Would he stick around in astral form to see how I’d managed to stop him, or would he wake up to run before I got any closer?
I didn’t love my odds.
The space the absence of the lathu rune left in my mind was quickly filled by the increased pressure from the nearby ghosts. They were here, in this apartment. I leaned into the pain, begging it to guide me to its source. But it was all around me now, pressing against my mind from every direction. Forget wading too deeply in Grey’s river of spiritual energy; I was a submarine that had sunk to the very bottom of the ocean, and the hull was caving in.
My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the snow-white carpet. I forced myself forward on my hands and knees, eventually reaching a closed door. I didn’t register any of Fang’s furniture as my fingers curled around the knob; he could have hung flashing neon signs all over his bedroom, and I wouldn’t have noticed. My vision was limited to the six inches in front of my nose as I crawled out of the room.
Carpet.
Carpet.
My shoulder scraped against something. An open doorway, I decided.
More carpet.
Then—cedar.
The woodsy scent of the red boards invaded my nose and cleared my senses. I blinked the tears out of my eyes and focused on the thing in front of me: a large cedar chest. It was open, and I gripped its lip to pull myself to a sitting position. I inhaled deeply, focusing on the smell. It was masculine, like my father’s aftershave. Natural, like a peaceful forest.
The scent cleared my head enough for me to fully process what I was seeing. Strange symbols covered the inside of the chest’s lid, painted in a thin reddish-brown color that I hoped had come out of a can. Beneath the rim rested rows upon rows of small square jewelry boxes with hinged lids. Ten across, five down, and who knew how deeply stacked. There had to be hundreds of them.
Hundreds.
Horace had hundreds of spirits trapped in here.
This time, my stomach found something to vomit up. Yellow bile erupted out of my mouth and spattered across the boxes.
A secret fantasy, one I had buried as far down in my psyche as I could delve, disappeared in a puff of my breath. After channeling Camila, I was sure I could do the same with my mother. No more half visitations where she couldn’t even properly communicate with me. We could have a real conversation—one where I could ask her any question I wanted and she could take her time answering.
But to do that, I would have to find the jewelry box that contained her spirit.
I cringed against the returning pressure and lifted a few at random. Each had a different symbol on the bottom, most of which I didn’t recognize—glyphs, runes, single alphabet letters, an abstract sketch of a cat. Was it some kind of system? Could Horace pick up a box with a diamond carved into the bottom and know exactly who it belonged to?
My theory was confirmed when I found a box marked with a pickax. I’d been right; Horace had collected the miner’s spirit from the Ace of Cups.
There was no time to crack the rest of his code. The moment of clarity the cedar scent bought me had long since started to fade, and the pain came roaring back into my head like a freight train. I gripped the chest with one hand and reminded myself what I had come here to do. It took every ounce of my focus to dip my other hand into my purse, close my fingers around something small and cold, and haul out Darlene’s lighter.
The little green head with its oversize black eyes made me think of Camila and her alien obsession. I had set her free, and I would free the others.
“Sorry, Mom,” I whispered.
Blue flame erupted out of the alien’s head. I lowered it into the chest, where it licked at the unvarnished edge of the centermost box.
Then the cedar chest’s lid slammed shut. Pain shot through me. I yanked my aching limbs to my torso with a yelp, dropping the lighter. It bounced off my knee and landed on the carpet.
“I should have known you’d show up sooner or later,” a familiar voice said above me.
I jerked my head up, and my eyes went wide.
Noah leaned over the cedar chest, rage tattooed across his snarling face as he reached for me.