Sarah felt no need to be tactful. “You drive slower than my grandmother. And she’s been dead for three years.”
Let her know I found her grandma’s wedding ring. Sledge’s words came back to me sounding nowhere near as innocent as they had when I’d first heard them. In fact, I would’ve put money on him being the main reason Sarah had “lost” it to begin with.
I’ve been burned enough by people who turned out to be wolves in sheep’s clothing—from Roger Burke to Jennifer Chance to the freaking Assassin—that I no longer take anyone at face value. It was hard to tell if my cop-sense was picking up on Sledge…or if I simply didn’t like the guy, and Sarah was in cahoots with him and playing me like a big, gullible fiddle.
In the dash where a navigation system, or a CD player, or even an old-school FM radio might have been was an empty hole filled with dangling wires. But not for a minute did I think Boswell had been robbed. He caught me eyeing it and said, “You can never be too careful around electronics. Do you know how easy it would be to slip in an extra transmitter? It would look just like all the other legitimate components inside. How would a layman like me know if it was an unauthorized addition? I’ve gota cassette player in the back I picked up at the thrift store. Burns through batteries like you wouldn’t believe. But at least I know it’s not hollering out my location for everyone to see.”
I’d let Sarah ride shotgun, mainly so she kept her focus out the cracked windshield and didn’t take much notice of the hoard in back. So I didn’t see why traffic slowed ahead and Boswell preemptively slammed his brakes. The car behind him honked and a bottle of liquid rolled up and knocked me in the foot. Hopefully Blast cola. Hopefully.
“And this is why people need to mind the speed limit,” he said, and swerved onto the off-ramp we’d almost passed, all the while serenaded by Posy Simon’s plaintive ballad. I craned my neck around him and saw the way was clear—what a relief—and tried to calculate the best way to hand him off at HQ so we could focus on Sarah. His issues ran way deeper than mediumship. Let the company shrink deal with him. Dr. Santiago would have her work cut out for her. But she was a telepath, so maybe she’d have a better chance at connecting the dots.
The van jerked again as the brakes squawked by the corner—thankfully, we hadn’t been going fast on the surface street—and Sarah said, “Now what?”
Just as a bloody guy in lycra barged into the van.
He’d rushed through the door—rightthroughthe door…right throughSarah—and lunged at Boswell. The cat immediately went silent as the ghost made a grab for a now-flailing Boswell.
“I was wearing my helmet!” the ghost shouted.
Jesus Christ. The van sputtered and lurched as Boswell swatted the air like he was being accosted by a swarm of angry bees. “Are you having a seizure?” Sarah wondered—notparticularly alarmed—while I kicked myself for not being in position to stomp my foot on the brake. “Posy, no—ugh, she peed on me.”
“I was wearing my goddamn helmet! And what good did it do me?”
Instinct took over. I pulled down a surge of adrenaline-laced white light, leaned in over the seat back, and reached directly through the ghost. Cold raced up my arm, the sickening frigid cold of the grave, crawling like frozen ants through my veins. A small, panicky part of me wondered if they made it to my heart, would I die? Maybe it was a coping mechanism. Or maybe one of my undocumented subtle bodies was responsible for the idiotic mental commentary that cropped up in life-or-death situations. Either way, I shoved it all aside, grabbed the shift, and slammed it into neutral.
I yanked myself back and my breath came out in a frigid cloud. My arm was so cold it burned.
“Why did you even let him drive?” Sarah asked me, mildly annoyed.
White light. I sucked it down so hard, pain throbbed behind my eyeball well before my reservoir topped off. As the van jerked—less alarmingly now that the gas pedal was disengaged—I threw a strong white balloon around Boswell. Then, belatedly, me. The dead guy in lycra recoiled. Not as quick as I’d want. Not like he’d touched a hot stove, but like he’d just noticed the van was full of pee. But at least he stopped grabbing at the driver.
“What the…?” The ghost had been yelling at Boswell…but now he turned to me. The entire right side of his head was caved in. Shit. “Do you know how much that helmet cost?”
No way was I touching that thing again. Or letting it touch me. I grabbed for my salt. Damn it, I’d used it back at the apartment! And I fumbled out my Florida Water. The spritzer seemed ridiculously small now, like fending off a tornado with an inside-out umbrella, but it was all I had. “You’re dead,” I snapped, and spritzed him with stinky cologne.
“Are you threatening my cat?” Sarah said.
“I’mprotectingyour cat.” I pumped furiously at the tiny spray. Pathetic gasps of Florida Water misted out. “Stay put, Sarah—you too, Boswell—and let me do my job!”
The van had stopped rolling, mostly, though it rocked as flailing Boswell stomped the brakes. By whatever etheric physics existed, the ghost stayed with the van, not the landscape. And now he was focused on me. “I hated that helmet, but it’s the law for bike messengers. Tell me—what good did it do?”
I pumped my spritzer for all I was worth. A cloud of clove-scented alcohol filled the van.
“Well, that’s useless,” Sarah remarked. She had no idea how right she was. “The smell of cat urine never comes out.”
The dead guy flickered and tried to wave off the herbal potion. I pumped harder…but the juice was getting low. “Forget about your helmet,” I told the dead guy. “Maybe your gear failed you, but the longer you hang onto that, the more you keep yourself stuck where you don’t belong. There’s something good waiting for you. But you’ve gotta let the past go.”
Boswell and Sarah both looked at me like I was nuts—pot, kettle—but I had to deal with the ghost before he used me like a skin suit to get back at someone for his helmet. Who? No idea.But he was fixated in the way only spirits can be, and I had no doubt he’d do it.
“Let it go?” the ghost demanded. “Over my dead body.” And then he made a grab for me.
If only Carl had packed me a bag, then I’d have more whatnot to throw. If only Mood Blaster still worked, I could’ve filled myself with its whub-whub-whub.
If only I hadn’t left behind the one true Stiff I knew.
The ghost was on me and there was nowhere to dodge. What would Jacob do?
He’d grit his teeth and stand his ground.
