“Jesus,” I breathed, going to my knees beside her. “Alice?”
She made a tiny sound that ripped through my heart like blades.
Her phone screen readWolf-Call Ended.Our call must have cut off when I crossed the house wards.
She’d kept my number after all.
Suddenly, I no longer minded that she’d tagged me asWolf. My wolf certainly didn’t mind; even through his boundless rage and worry, he seemed smugly satisfied.
Gently and carefully, I rolled her onto her back. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. I pressed my fingertips to her wrist and started to breathe a little easier when I found her pulse was weak but steady. She moaned.
With the most tender touch I could manage, I scooped her up and rose. Her cry of pain made my guts twist, and my wolf howled in rage and grief.
“I’m taking you to a hospital,” I said, unsure if Alice could even hear me in this condition.
She startled me by attempting to fight. “No,” she wheezed, kicking her feet. “No hospital. Malcolm…”
“Who is Malcolm?” I demanded.
Something cold gripped my right bicep, and I felt a strange tug on my shifter magic. For the first time, I sensed the telltale chill of a ghost nearby. I’d been too focused on Alice earlier to notice.
I snarled at my unseen companion. “Who’s here?”
“Ghost,” Alice whispered. “Help Malcolm.”
My wolf tried to shove me toward the door, toward my car and the safety of a hospital or my home, but I needed to focus on making the right decisions.
I pushed the wolf back and demanded, “Help him how?”
The reply came not from Alice, but out of thin air. “Help me save her.” The very strained voice sounded like it belonged to a young man who was maybe in his twenties.
I’d never spoken to a ghost before. At any other time, this would have been a novel experience, but my concern for Alice and anger about her injuries overrode everything else.
“Where are you?” I asked, my wolf’s growl making my human voice rough.
“I’m right next to you,” the ghost said, clearly irritated. “I need to pull energy from you.”
I didn’t understand why Alice didn’t want to go to a hospital, or why this ghost needed some of my energy, but my instincts told me to do as they asked—at least for now.
“Do it!” I snapped. “Help her!”
In my arms, Alice let out another wheeze, and then said, “No hospital, Malcolm.” Her voice was little more than a wisp, and yet it sounded like a command. What was the relationship between Alice and this ghost?
“I won’t let him take you,” Malcolm assured her.
My wolf disliked their dismissal of my desire to get Alice medical help as much as I did. His growl escaped my human mouth.
Malcolm’s cold hand gripped my upper arm again, and this time he drew urgently on my alpha magic and energy.
“I need power so I can try to heal her,” the ghost said before I could ask what he was doing.
Alice suddenly stopped fighting to escape. As Malcolm siphoned energy, I adjusted her position in my arms. Her head flopped against my chest.
“Alice?” I called. “Alice!”
She didn’t respond. She must be drifting in and out of consciousness again.
A painful surge of natural magic rolled over me. It felt like the kind Alice had, but it wasn’t her own power prickling painfully on my skin.
