“There better not be any hiding out in our rooms, I’ll tell you that much.” I halted at the landing and looked over my shoulder. “Who’s sleeping on four?”
I heard Viktor before he rounded the corner into sight. “You and Christian will stay in the room next to Miss Parrish. Top floor. The rest of us will be on the fourth.”
I stepped over an unconscious man, but when I looked closer, he wasn’t unconscious. Just lying there, staring. Part of the ghost’s jaw was missing. “This is giving me the creeps.”
“Welcome to my world,” Wyatt said from the back. “At leastI’mnot staying on floor six.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“People like to kill themselves on the top floor. Jumpers.”
“Then perhaps you should sleep there after all,” Christian said. “Then I won’t have to hear you rabbit on about dead people.”
“Your girlfriend is dead. How do you like them apples?”
“One more word and I’ll drain you.”
When we reached the fourth level, Viktor opened the door and led the team into the hallway. Lenore and Christian stayed behind. I needed to get up on the roof—the only reason I’d chosen this particular hotel. Despite the musty smells and crumbling decor, it had a spectacular view of the city.
Lenore was huffing and puffing as she climbed the stairs. I wondered how many glasses of cider she’d had. Two? Three? Apparently the amount consumed played a factor in how long our abilities remained suppressed. Christian’s powers were back, so by that logic, mine would be next. I’d only had a sip. Everyone else, on the other hand, had indulged in at least one glass. I looked down at my hand, trying to get a sense of my energy. Yes, itwascoming back. It crackled at my fingertips, and my vision was improving. A man descended the stairs, his head tucked underneath one arm as he passed right through me.
This wasn’t in the brochure.
Christian offered me the other key when we reached the landing on five. “I’ll get Lenore settled in while you tidy up the room.”
I noticed Lenore’s backside swishing back and forth like a dinner bell beneath her blue dress. “Be sure to tuck her in.”
“Jealous?”
I slowed my pace as he gave me a wolfish grin.
“Don’t be giving me the cold shoulder, Precious. You know that makes me hard.”
I reached around and patted his ass. “I’m surprised you have any steam left after the party.”
“Worry not, lass,” he said, jogging up to meet Lenore. “I’ll get you back for that one.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
When they entered the sixth floor, I kept going up. I didn’t plan on sleeping in our room, let alone tidying it up. When I reached the roof, a shot of cold air hit me, yet I was only aware of the temperature and not affected by it. A few rogue snowflakes swirled around the night sky like a Van Gogh painting. In the distance, police sirens wailed. The women on the street were strutting around as cars slowed to a stop. Whenever the wind shifted, the delicious aroma of Chinese food from the restaurant next door made me wish I could eat. My life was about to take a depressing turn if I could never again enjoy the taste of sesame chicken and wonton soup.
“Make connections,” I grumbled, setting the key on the ledge. “Branch out of your comfort zone. Meet people. It figures that the one person I talk to at the party is the most psychotic man in the city. I should have left when he asked me to dance. I don’t dance. And drinking the cider just to be nice? Since when am I fucking nice? I need to stop being nice. Nice gets you killed.”
This old building had a ledge just a few feet high—a perfect place to sit and take it all in. I lifted my dress, sat down, and swung my legs over.Thiswas my Cognito—the one I’d grown to love. A smattering of airplanes in the distance, circling the airport; intersection lights changing colors like a holiday display; the crisp smell of winter air mingling with burning firewood and Italian food. Lots of evenings spent on rooftops, dreaming of a different life.
Well, it didn’t get more different than being a half-dead half-breed.
A woman in a skintight beige dress approached the ledge to my right. After stepping up, she teetered before taking a swan dive. I would have pulled her to safety had it not been for her bloody dress and dislocated arm. Wyatt said sometimes the dead lived out their last moments like a broken record. Some lived at the cemetery after watching their burial, still in denial that their life was over. Refusing to go wherever spirits were supposed to go. Others wandered the city like tourists. Not all of them displayed injuries sustained upon death. He guessed it had to do with how the dead saw themselves and if their death was a defining moment when they left their body. Our hotel was filled with the depressing leftovers of life.
“I thought I’d find you up here.” Christian warmed my shoulders with his hands.
“I’m not cold actually. I think it’s the whole being dead thing. Do I look any different?”
He sat to my left with his back to the city. “If this is the way you’re looking forever, you won’t hear any complaints out of me.”
My boot heels clacked against the building. “Now I understand why Wyatt was always running through the house like a chicken with his head cut off back when the ghosts were living there. I get it.”
“Can you really see them?”
