“A ghost is using your device as their heartbeat,” I say without emotion. “Hm. You don’t see that every day.”
Morgan goes quite still. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we get the fuck out of here?”
So we promptly get the fuck out of there, not relaxing until the Surefire’s red lens has stopped palpitating.
And soon, I’m following voices again.
“We’re lost,” a young male is saying. “We’ll never get back home.”
Morgan clicks open his voice recorder, his thumb jamming a button. “What are they saying?”
“Shh.” I strain to listen.
“Have you seen my father?” the boy asks. “The wolves will be out soon. We’re stranded.” He fades off, and then it starts again: “We’re lost, we’ll never get back home. Have you seen my father? The wolves will be out soon. We’re stranded.”
I twist my braid into an anxious knot. “Terrible,” I mutter. “This isterrible.”
“What?” Morgan wants to know. “What do you hear?” He plays what he’s just recorded, but all that crackles out of it is dead air and the hush of our breathing.
“It’s the people. They don’t know they’re dead.”
Thirty
Soothhounds: dogs charmed to evoke a soothing, tranquilizing effect in people who show them love. Soothhounds who have adopted humans to care for will often shift into a different animal or insect form once their physical vessel is no longer serving them well, in order to retain a close eye on their human(s), who are quite a weak species and require much supervision.
Paranimals,NthroughZ,
Tempest Family Grimoire
“We should makecamp, then pick up our investigation at first light,” I suggest after we’ve left the voices far behind.
“I love how you say ‘first light’ instead of ‘morning,’ ” Morgan says with a laugh.
I bristle.
Morgan pats my head. “I mean that. It’s cute.”
My discomfort increases. I refuse to make eye contact.
“Cute and unexpected, like a gingersnappus,” he winds on relentlessly. “You have the same burnt-orange hair as a gingersnappus, too. Wonder what you’d shape-shift into?” He scrutinizes me sidelong. “Maybe a typewriter.”
“A barrel of eels. Slimy, gray. Mutated with duck feet.”
He wags a finger. “No. A bookmark.”
“No, thank you.” I make a face. “I’d be smothered all my life.”
“In books. You love books, you love hiding; it stands to reason you’d love hiding in books. Speaking of books—”
“If you were a gingersnappus,” I interject before he can finish his thought, “I think you’d turn into a Slinky.”
“I wouldlovebeing a Slinky.” He is effectively sidetracked. “What color?”
“All of them.”
“Terrific. My favorite’s orange, like the harvest moon. Too bad all these trees block our view. Guess what? Saturn has one hundred and forty-six moons, and the largest one, Titan, is bigger than Mercury. One of its cryovolcanoes erupts a substance remarkably similar to vanilla extract, rather than magma, and one milligram could get a horse very drunk, or flavor two hundred waffles. How’s the new book going?”
His speech has me dizzy. “Can you repeat all that?”
