Haunted Read online

  Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before he lost whatever humanity he had in him.

  “What does a sleep whisperer have to do with any of that?” I asked as I navigated the dark tunnels with Trubble’s bobbing foxfire balls skirting the ceiling just ahead of us. By the time I reached the pile of rubble and the hole that led from the sewer to the Catacombs, I was panting heavily, soaked in sweat beneath the rubber suit. I was in good shape, but I hadn’t slept for days, and I was tired and thirsty and hungry. My body was getting close to rebelling on me.

  “I’m not sure,” Trubble said, hopping off my shoulders and shifting mid-air, growing into a shape large enough for a full-grown adult to ride. All he needed was a fucking saddle. He glanced over his shoulder, that cluster of fluffy tails twitching. “But as soon as we this situation sorted, I intend to find out.” He bared his double row of teeth before turning and taking off down a much drier, dustier little tunnel.

  It led out through yet another hole in the wall and into a well-kept tunnel with a goddamn dragon in it.

  “Haversey’s tits,” I cursed, skirting around the sprawled body of a red dragon, its crimson scales glittering in the torchlight. It was, surprisingly, still alive, its massive side heaving with each slow intake of breath.

  “I do have some self-control, you know,” Trubble said with what could only be described as a smirk. Even in fox form, it was quite obvious. “If I’d killed him, the Royal College Guard would make ten, twenty, thirty times the effort to find the culprit. Let’s hurry on before he wakes up.”

  I skirted around the dragon’s body and past corridor after corridor of books, scrolls, artifacts, and tombs. We’d just broken into one of the largest collections of arcane knowledge in the world and it hadn’t been all that difficult. That scared me, really fucking terrified me. Either it was too easy to get in here or else this shadow, Trubble, was too gods-damned powerful for his own good.

  After the first three guards we passed, I stopped checking pulses; they were all alive.

  “This is where it gets tricky,” Trubble said as we headed right down a narrow tunnel, squeezed through a smashed metal door with more burnt runes on the ground and walls, and headed up a steep flight of stairs. We emerged … in the building Brynn had pointed out as the haunting of that professor. A haunting was the casual, uneducated person’s term for a ghost’s, uh, personal residence. “We need to make it across campus without knocking anyone out or causing a fuss.”

  Trubble paused in the empty building, tail twitching as I took off the rubber suspenders, but left the boots. He glanced over at me with a small sigh.

  “You hardly look like a student or I’d suggest borrowing a uniform. Gods, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight,” I said with narrowed eyes and he made a little sound in his throat, as if to say I figured as much. I’d never wanted to punch a fox before, but I was quickly getting to that point.

  “Get on.” Trubble trotted in front of me and blocked me off from the doors. “And try not to fall off.” With a small snarl, I reached out and took a handful of the shadow’s fur, hauling myself up and onto his back. Usually, I was the one being ridden. To climb onto another creature’s back was slightly surreal. But I couldn’t exactly shift to my other form and fly across campus; I’d be shot through with arrows before I cleared the rooftops.

  But Trubble was a shadow—a nearly undetectable entity who could move between worlds. As soon as he started running, I felt it, this sick lurching inside my stomach. If he actually did decide to use the Otherside—an in-between realm of spirits and shadows—then I’d be knocked off his back and onto mine. He was skirting it though, using the natural shadows cast by the moon and the torches and the tall stone buildings to toe the line, absorbing the sound of our movements. If someone saw us now, they’d blink and we’d be gone, just a figment of the imagination.

  It wasn’t until Trubble left off a copper roof and onto the white stone street in front of the queen’s residence that I started to worry.

  “What the fuck are you doing?!” I asked as the guard sitting out front stood up with strange, jerking motions and yanking open the door to the house.

  “Hurry … up …” the soldier ground out between clenched teeth. “Can’t … hold … forever.” I jogged up to the house with Trubble on my heels, slipping past the guard and inside before it struck me. He was being possessed. One of Brynn’s ghosts had control of the man’s body. My money was on that prodigy student, Elijah of Haversey.

  Trubble shifted and bit my ankle as I stood there in a brief moment of shock, reaching down to pick him up before he really clamped his jaws down on me. Without even bothering to ask, he slipped over my face again and revealed … the prince.

  “Your majesty,” I said carefully, trying not to clench my jaw. Airmienan just looked back at me with tight lips and shimmering green eyes, stepping aside and holding out an arm to indicate the staircase.

  “She’s upstairs, first door on the right.”

  I charged up the steps and into Brynn’s bedroom, pausing when I discovered her surrounded by ghosts. The professor smiled tightly at me.

  “You found your way in. Excellent.” He was sitting apart from the others, on a small chaise opposite the corner where the bed sat. With Brynn lying still atop it. My throat got tight and my hands curled into fists.

  “Oh, Vexer,” her handler choked out, rising from the bed with pink in her cheeks and forehead. She flicked a quick glance over at the boy sitting nearby, with raven-dark hair and deep blue eyes. Not a ghost, that one. What was his name again? Matz? The scribe the queen had sent with Jasinda and Brynn. “We’ve been waiting for you. Gods, I was so scared something would happen to you and …” She trailed off and swallowed hard, gesturing back at her friend’s comatose form.

  I didn’t need to hear anything else; I knew what she meant.

  “Fucking traitor,” the Vaennish prince growled, sitting on the floor at the end of the bed with one knee up, his katana wrapped in his arms. The look he threw my way was pure poison, but I had a feeling he was talking to his brother rather than me. With a scowl, he turned away and rested his cheek on his knee.

  “I hope you care about her as much as you say you do,” the prince said from behind me, his voice formal and stiff, half-fear and half-fear anger making his words stilted and strange. “Because this better gods-damn well work.”

  “It’ll work,” I whispered as I took a seat on the edge of the mattress and looked down at Brynn’s sleeping face. Fuck, she was beautiful, with full lips and a small nose, those big round eyes ringed with white lashes. Her brows were curved in graceful arches, and the roundness of her face just invited one of my hands to reach out and cup it.

  “Are you really going to sit there and gaze at her, or are you going to wake her up?” an angry voice snapped from the doorway. I glanced over to find Elijah of Haversey, his white wings lifted in frustration, his angel-blue eyes latched onto my face. He hated me. Or else, maybe he was jealous? A spirit whisperer might be able to kiss a ghost, date a ghost, even fuck a ghost … but it wasn’t the same. Brynn needed someone warm and alive to ground her, someone who was as much a part of this world as she was.

  “I’m here, little spirit whisperer,” I said, brushing some of that snow-white hair from Brynn’s face with my fingers. She didn’t stir, not like someone who was truly sleeping might. No, she was clearly spelled; I could smell the burnt taste of magic in the air, hanging over the room in a fog. Carefully, I adjusted one of her ebony wings so I could scoot closer and heard one of the spirits behind me let out a growl.

  “Watch your hands, griffin,” the prince declared, but I ignored him. I would never take advantage of a sleeping woman. With all the time we were soon going to be spending together, he’d come to find out. Because as soon as I woke Brynn up, I intended to find some way to stay here with her permanently. That is, if she’d have me, of course.

  “Are you ready for this, Brynn?” I continued with a small sig
h, looking down at her with affection and aggression both churning inside of me. The affection was all for her, my future mate, but the rage was for whoever had done this to her. I wasn’t an easy man to anger, but once that fuse was lit, it was nearly impossible to put out.

  “If you’re waiting for an invitation, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it’s not coming. Just kiss the girl and worry about apologizing later.” Trubble’s voice echoed in my head as I leaned down and slowly, carefully, put my lips to Brynn’s. Normally, I wouldn’t kiss a sleeping woman like this, slip my tongue between her lips, cup her head with my hand … but the only way to break a sleep whisperer’s spell was with true love’s kiss. Corny, but true.

  I’m not sure that anyone else in that room thought it was going to work.

  But I did.

  Remember? I was a man who was never lost. I always knew my destination and how to get there. And this girl, she was it.

  I slept like the dead, this long, quiet void where I wandered alone and confused down a stone corridor with no exit. My voice echoed in the silent space as I called out for Air, for Elijah, for Talon, the poor thief boy who’d jumped in front of a razor wolf to save me. But nobody answered, nobody called back to let me know that I wasn’t completely and utterly alone.

  There was no light, no torches or candles, but somehow I could still see through the darkness, down that endless stretch of black shadows and gray stone. I was freezing cold, my arms and wings wrapped tightly around me as I tried not to think of Dyre’s blood splattering across the snow. The Vaennish prince was now dead because he’d tried to save me. But why? We hardly knew each other. Exhaling, I watched my breath frost in the icy air and wondered if I were in the Otherside now, that purgatorial space between life and rebirth. Some said the gods lived here, but I didn’t think so. Why would the gods want to live on the same street as a bunch of spirits and shadows?

  No, there were no gods here. There was nobody and nothing.

  Spreading my wings out behind me, I closed my eyes. Why not? It was all black-on-black anyway. I searched for my mind for memories of that last few minutes after Dyre was killed, but … all I could recall were my knives plunging onto a razor wolf and then nothing. Nothing at all. Had I died, too? If so, why wasn’t I being reborn? Why wasn’t I a spirit?

  Opening my eyes again, I found that I’d reached the end of the tunnel. A wall of stone greeted me, just inches in front of my face, so I turned around. And when I did, there she was, the woman with the melted fox mask. She seemed to stumble toward me, her gait uneven, almost like she was drunk. Reaching up a hand, I took hold of Haversey’s five-pointed star hanging around my neck.

  But … what if I were sleeping again? What if, like last time, I almost exorcised Air or Elijah instead of this woman?

  “What do you want?” I asked her, but she didn’t speak, her copper eyes blazing as she reached out a hand toward me, grasping me around the wrist. Her mouth opened and closed, but she didn’t speak, that fox mask melting down her face and over her lips.

  Speaking of, I felt something warm and comforting against mine.

  And … was that Vexer’s voice?

  The woman faded away with a scream at the same time the ground did. I found myself falling fast, my arms and legs thrashing as a hot mouth covered mine and kissed me in mid-air. With a jolt, I hit something soft—my flubbing mattress!—and sensation shot through me, overwhelming in its intensity.

  My eyes flickered open and there he was, Vexer of Reisender, kissing me and running his fingers through my hair. My wings opened wide and smashed into the wall and the lamp on the nightstand—good thing it was screwed in, thanks Air!—as I sat up with a gasping scream stuck in my throat. Vexer was smart enough to move back so we didn’t bash our foreheads. He was wearing Dyre’s mask—Dyre’s brother—and smiling at me.

  “True love’s kiss,” Vex said as my eyes darted around the room, taking in Jasinda and Matz, Professor Cross, Dyre, Elijah, Air. But no Talon. He was gone, swallowed up by a razor wolf to live century after century in darkness. “I woke you up.”

  “You … what?” I asked, putting the heel of my hand to my forehead and closing my eyes against the wild spinning in the room. I felt so disoriented in that moment, detached from the whole world, and I didn’t like it one bit. Nothing a little good ol’ fashioned embarrassment couldn’t sort out. Sometimes, I had to wonder if the goddess hated me.

  “With the exception of a sleep whisperer, the only thing that can break one of those spells is a kiss from a lover.” Vexer’s voice was low and even, a deep rumbling sound that seemed to travel down through his chest to his arm, his hand, and into me. I could feel that sound in my bones, and I loved it. “Well, I woke you up.”

  My eyes opened to find Air and Elijah crowding close, their faces tight with worry and fear. Jasinda was there, too, with tears in her eyes, but she was also blushing profusely which was weird. I mean, I too was blushing profusely, but that was to be expected. I’d just been woken up by a griffin with a seriously huge erection in his tight breeches. When he caught me looking, he gave a slightly apologetic smile. I saw slightly because his eyes were sparkling with mischief.

  “Sorry about that. You’re just so fucking beautiful; it’s just a natural act.” He gestured at his crotch as my blush intensified about a hundredfold. “I won’t violate your trust, of course.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said as I scooted up into the pillows and tried to ignore my own ‘natural acts’, i.e. my hardened nipples and the molten heat gathering between my thighs. Vexer, he was so big and beautiful, his face so thick with stubble, he was almost sporting a beard, his muscles tight as he placed his tattooed palm on the bed and leaned in toward me. He smelled like sunshine and fresh grass, and Hell, mostly he smelled like sweat.

  Alive.

  He smelled alive.

  I wanted nothing more in that moment than to throw my arms around him and hug him close. Instead, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to get oriented as best I could.

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice husky and rough. I had to swallow several times to clear it. “The last thing I remember is …” Dyre rose up from the floor, katana in hand, his eyes shimmery and see-through, like any new spirit. And he was here, in my room, which meant … I’d bound yet another ghost to me?! What was wrong with me?

  “We were put under by the Royal Sleep Whisperer,” Jasinda said softly, reaching out and putting her hand on my bare ankle. I was dressed in one of my silk nightgowns, a solid black one this time, and somebody had scrubbed all the blood off of my skin. From what I could remember, there was a lot of it. A lot of blood … and a lot of spirits. Fuck. A feather popped off as I rubbed my hands down my face, but I didn’t care. Now that I was thinking about all those flubbing spirits pouring out of the wolves and into me, I wanted to throw up. Curling my wings around my body, I checked for missing feathers and sure enough, there were a few bald patches here and there. Fortunately, they were mostly invisible unless you knew specifically to look at them, but it was just more proof that what I thought had happened, really had.

  Spirits poured into me, blood oozed down my face, my feathers sloughed off in clumps.

  What in Hellim’s hell had happened to me?

  “Who woke you up?” I asked before I noticed Jasinda’s eyes flicking over to Matz. Her blush turned copperberry red before she turned her wide eyes to me.

  “The person who’s sleeping, they don’t have to … Well, only the person doing the waking has to feel love. I—” Jasinda rambled on for a moment and then took a deep breath, putting her fingers over her eyes for a split-second before dropping them into her lap. “Matz woke me up, and I am forever grateful. Now, we’re sort of on a time schedule here. Need I remind everyone in this room that the queen had us knocked out and locked up here?”

  “Locked up?” I asked, rubbing at my forehead and wondering how the flub I could I be so damn tired when I’d been in a magically induced sleep for … “How long
was I out anyway?”

  “Two days, thereabouts,” Air said, moving over to sit beside me. I reached out for him, but he was nervous and scared, and he hadn’t had my spirit to ‘warm’ him, so when I made contact with his arm, he was ice-cold. Still, I pulled him to me and laid my head on his shoulder as I stared at Vexer and Elijah. Dyre and Professor Cross stood behind them, watching me. I still had yet to process the fact that the professor had used me to escape his point of binding. As of right now, however, I had plenty of other ship to worry about, much more pressing ship.

  “Why would your mother put Jasinda and me out like that?” I asked, just as the sound of the front door opening echoed through the house. Elijah didn’t hesitate before dropping through the ceiling … and popping right back up. He might’ve been a ghost, but his face was clearly ashen.

  “It’s the Royal Spirit Whisperer and her handler,” he hissed as Vexer rose to his feet and I followed along behind him, dragging Air with me.

  “In the wardrobe,” I whispered as I tried to move and stumbled. My legs were shaky and I felt completely disoriented. Those spirits had done their best to drive themselves into me. I felt them pummeling my metaphysical shields, looking for an opening. I hadn’t been able to tell if they were trying to possess me, if they wanted me to exorcism them, or if they were attempting to bind themselves to me the way the professor had done. It’d been too overwhelming to even guess. And even having slept the past two days away, I was exhausted.

  “The wardrobe?” Dyre asked with a scowl. “That’s original.”

  “She’s a spirit whisper for flub’s sake,” I snapped back at him as Air and Elijah helped me to stay standing. “She won’t be looking for a griffin in the closet.”

  Fortunately, Vexer didn’t wait around for us to argue, squeezing his large body into the wardrobe and yanking the doors closed behind him.

  “Whatever,” the Vaennish prince growled, running his fingers through his blue-white hair. I felt awful fighting with him, even in something so small as this. He’d died for me. And we’d both known it was coming; he’d locked eyes with me just before his guts spilled into the snow. “Trubble will keep him hidden.”