The Voodoo Killings Page 17

  Someone yelled, “Tornado,” as another yelled, “Cyclone.” Great, panic was setting in.

  The wind picked my hair up and whipped it into my eyes. I tied it back in a messy ponytail and ran for the stage. The band had stopped playing and were dodging beer-cup projectiles. Nate was staring blankly at the unfolding chaos as if hypnotized.

  “Nate!”

  He looked around, trying to pinpoint me. The Otherside unleashed in the backyard was disorienting him. He couldn’t tell the sky from the floor anymore.

  I leapt onto the stage as another lawn chair sailed overhead. People were screaming now, which meant the cops wouldn’t be far behind.

  The chair went straight through Nate before crashing into the drum set. I waved my hand under his nose. “Nate, here!” I yelled.

  He blinked twice then managed to focus on me. “What the fuck? It’s like the Otherside is bleeding through.”

  I glanced at what was left of the party. A table lifted this time, chasing a group of students. Shit. I was going to have to figure out a way to shut this down before someone got really hurt.

  “I’ll explain later. Right now I need something big and reflective.” Just then, the drum set crashed over and one of the cymbals rolled across the stage, spinning until it collapsed in a slow circle. Bingo.

  “Nate—cymbal, now!”

  He blinked at me, then scrambled out of the pentagram and grabbed it for me. I flinched as he fumbled it. He was fading, but this was an emergency.

  People were running for the gate and forest now, trying to get the hell away from what they thought was a flash windstorm. If I could funnel the Otherside fuelling this freak show back across the barrier, I could stop this mess.

  I knelt down by the back of the stage where there was some shelter from the wind. I could smell burnt hair over the sage now—the scent of unfiltered Otherside. And it was getting stronger as more of it flooded through. I started polishing the cymbal with the hem of my concert T. When it was as shiny as I was going to get it, I pulled a black china marker from my bag and drew the first symbol I needed along its edge. Nate came up beside me.

  “K, what can I do?”

  “How much juice do you have left?”

  “Not much. Ten minutes, maybe?”

  “The best thing you can do is go get my bike and bring it around back of the stage.”

  Nate stared at the grey fog filling the backyard.

  “But only if you think you won’t get lost in that fog.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

  That was doubtful. Nate was all about self-preservation.

  “I mean, what if you get hit by something?”

  “That’s why I need this,” I said, pointing to the cymbal.

  He glanced down at it, now half covered with china marker, and frowned. “Shit, K, how many globes have you pulled in the last couple of days?”

  “Not now, Nate. Besides, I’m not doing anything fancy,” I lied. “Just sending the Otherside fuelling this disaster back where it came from, that’s all.”

  “How stupid do I look?”

  “Just go get my bike. If that fails…I don’t know, stall the cops so I have enough time to fix this.”

  Nate looked far from convinced but dissolved into fog.

  I focused on the cymbal, scribbling with the marker to create a reversed mirror.

  I heard Kelvin shout, “Dude, you can’t come in! This is a private party!”

  He was still trying to save his ass, which might save mine.

  I finished, then double-checked my work. I’d exorcised enough poltergeists while working with the PD to know what I was doing. I just hoped it worked on this Otherside wind.

  I mentally crossed my fingers and pulled a globe, bracing for the nausea that hit me full force. At least I didn’t pass out.

  Before I could siphon Otherside into the cymbal to catalyze my inscriptions, the cymbal fogged up, and across it scrawled:

  Had enough yet?

  Smug bastard. I wiped the message off with my sleeve and replied with the marker.

  Yup.

  Students were either fleeing or using the tables as windbreaks. No one was looking at the stage. Good. I crawled to the centre of the pentagram, carrying the cymbal. There was still some Otherside left from burning the sage, and I used it to stabilize my globe.

  Crouching in the pentagram, I held the cymbal over my head and flooded the inscriptions with Otherside. The entire cymbal flared gold and the ghost-grey wind shifted course, rushing towards me.

  Shit.

  I braced myself against the cold as Otherside shocked through me. I held on to my globe for dear life as more and more Otherside rushed into the cymbal turned portal. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but it worked; the wind began to die down.

  I just had to last long enough as impromptu conductor to get rid of the wind. I forced a second wave of Otherside into the cymbal, hoping to speed things up. The funnel picked up speed and more Otherside wind rushed towards the pentagram, along with a chill that went straight to my bones and set my teeth chattering. A smarter person would have let go, but I have a stubborn streak. Sharp pain built up in the space behind my eyes as unfiltered Otherside filled my head.

  Okay, maybe faster wasn’t such a great idea….

  I screamed as the pain behind my eyes thrummed through my whole skull.

  “This is getting us nowhere.” The ghost’s voice was in my head.

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Look, I’ve been dead a long time, but I’m fairly certain it’s not a pleasant experience. You’re getting dangerously close to the end of the road.”

  I fought to keep the siphon going. “Let me guess. I wipe off the china marker and you give me a running start? No deal.”

  I thought I heard the ghost sigh. “Fine. Have it your way.”

  And just like that, it was gone. Again.

  I didn’t have time to celebrate, though, as a string of dragonfly lights whipped towards my head. I almost dropped the cymbal as I ducked out of the way.

  Then another set wrapped around my throat. I managed to wedge my free hand between my neck and the cord, giving myself a little breathing room. I clenched my teeth and held on to the cymbal for dear life. A few more seconds…

  The cord tightened, cutting off the circulation in my fingers. My vision clouded. If the ghost kept this up much longer…

  Like hell was I going to be killed by a ghost.

  Miraculously, I hadn’t dropped my globe yet, and with a last burst of adrenalin I threw every ounce of Otherside I had left into the cymbal.

  Nausea overran all my senses and the funnel kicked into overdrive. All I could do was sink to my knees and keep a death grip on my consciousness. At last the cord loosened, and I pulled it free and tossed it across the stage. I pushed myself back up to standing and gasped as I surveyed the backyard. Though the place looked as if a tornado had touched down, all traces of the Otherside-fuelled storm were gone.

  Score one for me against the crazy ghost.

  There was a tug at my globe. I glanced down at the cymbal in my hand. It was still trying to funnel Otherside. When I attempted to turn it off, the cymbal just pulled harder at my globe. Shit. In all Max’s drawn-out lectures and lessons on how to corral Otherside into bindings and back through to the barrier, he’d never said a damn thing about people being dragged through with it. And he used to wonder why I kept pushing for answers. Exactly because of situations like this!

  As the last trace of my globe was siphoned off, the funnel latched on to me. It stripped life force, energy, whatever the hell you want to call it, off me in thin, painful layers.

  I started to panic.

  “Gotten yourself into trouble, I see?”

  The damned ghost in my head again.

  “Fuck off.”

  A hollow sigh sounded in my mind for the second time that night. “Unfortunately, you’re no good to me dead.”

  The pressure stopped just like th
at. It felt as though a dozen elastics snapped against my brain as things resettled. I managed to get over to the side of the stage before I threw up.

  Once my stomach was done revolting, I sat down on the edge of the stage and took an unfiltered look at the destruction from the ghost storm.

  People started to emerge from under tables and other objects they’d hidden behind and look around at the garbage-strewn wasteland that had once been the backyard. I rubbed my neck and pulled my fingers away as they hit the tender parts. The dragonflies had left a mark. Well, it could have been worse. There could have been bodies wrapped around the mangled lawn chairs….Now, where the hell was Nate with my bike?

  A megaphone cut through the quiet. “This is the Seattle police. Everyone remain calm—”

  The announcement had about the effect you’d predict. The few hundred people who were left went into full panic mode. It was as though we’d been in the eye of the storm and the police raid was the other side. The remaining beer table, loaded down with kegs, upended as people jumped over it in their rush to get away.

  Idiots. People were going to get injured in the stampede out of here. Either the cop with the megaphone had no idea just how many people had been packed into the field or he wanted to be a jerk. I figured it was fifty-fifty.

  “We need to detain everyone for questioning,” the voice on the megaphone announced.

  Like hell was I sticking around for that. I forced myself to stand in spite of my head pounding away.

  “You, up on the stage, remain where you are.”

  Since I was the only person left on the stage, he must mean me. I spotted a decent-sized pack of people cramming along the side of the stage, the kind of group I’d be easily lost in. I’d like to say I jumped down gracefully, but the fact is I looked more like a walrus rolling off rocks into water. Blame it on my Otherside hangover.

  The crowd bottlenecked as people headed for the forest and the neighbouring backyards. I wasn’t getting past them, so I dove under a table that was still standing against a row of dense bushes, its plastic tablecloth still in place.

  I smacked headfirst into someone already hiding under the table. “Oww!” I grabbed my forehead and so did the other guy. I glanced up. “Kelvin?”

  “Hey, Kincaid. Don’t worry, you keep this table, I’ll find something else.”

  Must have lost himself in the crowd when the cops started the stampede. I grabbed him by the sleeve of his Hawaiian shirt before he could disappear. I pulled out half the cash he’d given me and shoved it into his hand. “Kelvin, I’m real sorry about this. Usually cops don’t raid a seance and, well—” I pointed towards the destroyed backyard.

  “No way, dude, that was awesome!” He shoved the money back at me. “A Nathan Cade concert bowl that ends in a cop raid? Talk about an authentic experience. That’s, what, once in a lifetime? You’re free for Halloween, right?”

  Part of me wanted to express how unwise it was to try for a repeat of tonight. Instead, I nodded and pocketed the cash.

  I felt the brush of cold on my left just before Nate appeared beside me under the table.

  “K, cop with the megaphone is closing in.”

  I peeked under the tablecloth and swore. Four cops, including the one with the megaphone, were heading our way. Time to make our exit.

  “Loved the show, Nathan, and I loved your last album,” Kelvin said.

  I cut off a badly timed super-fan moment. “Where there’s four, there’ll be more. Nate, where’s my bike?”

  “I pushed it under there,” he said, pointing at a group of bushes nearby. “And I don’t think we’ll be dealing with any more cops,” he continued. “Managed to get on the radio. Pretty sure I diverted them.”

  Leave it to Nate to find a stupidly illegal way to get us out of a jam. He was dead and couldn’t go to jail. Me, on the other hand…

  “I’ll buy you some time to get out of here. My parents are lawyers,” Kelvin said, and started to crawl out into the open. I heard shouting and something garbled over the megaphone. Probably aimed at Kelvin.

  I might have stalled another second or three to watch the outcome, but Nate was already dragging me towards my bike. Give a ghost a corporeal body for a couple of hours and they forget they’re dead.

  “Get on the back,” Nate said.

  Like hell I was getting on back. “Nate, you haven’t ridden a bike in fifteen years!”

  “I’ve still got ten minutes of juice left. Come on, we’ll switch at the 7-Eleven down the hill.”

  “You said that ten minutes ago!”

  “But which of the two of us has more experience outrunning cops?”

  That I couldn’t argue with. I climbed on the back. “One scratch, Nate, one scratch,” I warned. “And as soon as we get off campus, we’re switch—”

  Nate gunned the engine, cutting me off.

  One thing kept running through my mind as we rode away: my stalker ghost was well past parlour tricks.

  CHAPTER 13

  NO GOOD DEED…

  Nate miraculously didn’t crash my bike on the way to the 7-Eleven. His hands were barely corporeal when he handed it over, and he dissolved back to the Otherside without so much as a word. He’d overdone it. I felt bad I hadn’t stopped him from driving the bike, but by the time I reached the front door to my apartment, the number one question doing laps in my head was what the hell my stalker ghost wanted. What could I possibly have that belonged to him? A close second was, Where had he accumulated his extensive bag of tricks?

  Projecting thoughts? Sure, every now and then a ghost or poltergeist manages to pull that off. Localized weather disasters, throwing things around a room? Usually the work of poltergeists, but it happens all the time. Ghosts setting their own mirrors? That shouldn’t be possible: the barrier only works one way.

  My crazy stalker ghost wasn’t the only thing frustrating me; it took me three tries to jiggle the front lock open this time.

  “Cameron?” I yelled as I stepped inside.

  He ducked his head around the spare room door.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  He nodded, then frowned. “Yes, and you?”

  He came towards me, and I watched him for a misstep, something that might betray neurological failure. He looked fine. Still, I reached for his hand.

  “I remembered to eat the damn brains,” he said, frowning when I pried at one of his fingernails. He was fine, totally fine. The front loading on the brains seemed to have helped.

  “You’re fine and I’m fine too, Cameron. Go back to whatever you were doing. Just scream if anything strange happens.”

  He gave me an odd look. “Like what?”

  “Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.”

  Tea, that’s what I needed, and ice for my neck….I dropped my bag on the desk in the kitchen. I pulled the textbooks out and placed them beside my laptop. Somehow King Solomon’s Jinn didn’t seem so important anymore, not with my ghost stalker disaster.

  “Seriously, go back to whatever you were doing,” I said when I realized Cameron was still hovering.

  He said, “I finished with the list—the missing parts of my memory. I left it on your laptop,” then headed back into the spare room.

  Yet another thing I had to worry about: getting Cameron’s life back on track. Maybe I could hit two birds with one stone….I grabbed my phone after I turned on the kettle and dialed Max. Straight to voice mail. “Max, call me back. This is important. Ghost trying to kill me is able to set own mirror.” Max didn’t appreciate long-drawn-out messages. I dialed Lee next. Maybe she’d know about ghosts that could pull those kinds of stunts.

  Lee didn’t answer either, and I left another message.

  I had a hard time believing that neither Lee nor Max had any inkling there was a very powerful and psychotic ghost in the area. It pissed me off they hadn’t bothered to warn me. But then again, that was the paranormal community. Everyone worked on a need-to-know basis.

  I switche
d on the ringer on the phone and left it on top of King Solomon’s Jinn so I’d be sure to hear it if Lee or Max called back.

  I was too cold to take my boots or jacket off yet. I checked the heater, but it was on, and why hadn’t my water boiled yet?

  “Hey K, you made it.”

  I scowled as Nate floated out of the bathroom back to his normal non-corporeal self. He didn’t look too worse for wear, except maybe a little more transparent, though looks can be deceiving when it comes to ghosts.

  “A damn miracle considering you barely got my bike into the 7-Eleven parking lot before it fell on its side.” I glared at him until the kettle whistled. I couldn’t get to the hot water fast enough. I poured myself a cup of tea and wrapped my hands around it. It barely warmed the skin on my palms. Son of a bitch.

  I grabbed a wool sweater from the closet and dug out a pair of slippers. I thought I had a hot water bottle stashed somewhere too. I headed into my room to find it, checking the dresser mirror for any signs of my stalker ghost before searching under the bed. Maybe I’d be lucky and the concert was the last I’d see of him. Doubted it, but one can hope.

  “What’s with you?” Nate asked as I re-emerged from my room bundled up and began filling the water bottle with what was left in the kettle.

  “I’ve never been this cold from Otherside before. It’s like it seeped into my bones this time.”

  “Are you okay, though?”

  I gave Nate points for trying; he actually sounded and looked concerned. A feat for him, since he usually only managed one or the other.

  “I’m fine, Nate. I just need to warm up.” My god, I was freezing.

  Nate watched me with something resembling concern as he settled on the couch, only bothering to keep his face in focus as the rest of him faded into a hazy mix of yellow and blue.

  I didn’t know why I was so grumpy with him—he was only being Nate. I gave myself a mental shake and started over. “You ghosts are a gossip factory. Have you ever heard of a ghost who could do any of what happened back there?”

  His face greyed, in colour and expression. “Serious questions get you serious answers, Kincaid. Trust me, no ghost on my side of the barrier wants that.”