The Voodoo Killings (22 page)

The pressure stopped just like that. It felt as though a dozen elastics snapped against my brain as things resettled. I managed to get over to the side of the stage before I threw up.

Once my stomach was done revolting, I sat down on the edge of the stage and took an unfiltered look at the destruction from the ghost storm.

People started to emerge from under tables and other objects they’d hidden behind and look around at the garbage-strewn wasteland that had once been the backyard. I rubbed my neck and pulled my fingers away as they hit the tender parts. The dragonflies had left a mark. Well, it could have been worse. There could have been bodies wrapped around the mangled lawn chairs….Now, where the hell was Nate with my bike?

A megaphone cut through the quiet. “This is the Seattle police. Everyone remain calm—”

The announcement had about the effect you’d predict. The few hundred people who were left went into full panic mode. It was as though we’d been in the eye of the storm and the police raid was the other side. The remaining beer table, loaded down with kegs, upended as people jumped over it in their rush to get away.

Idiots. People were going to get injured in the stampede out of here. Either the cop with the megaphone had no idea just how many people had been packed into the field or he wanted to be a jerk. I figured it was fifty-fifty.

“We need to detain everyone for questioning,” the voice on the megaphone announced.

Like hell was I sticking around for that. I forced myself to stand in spite of my head pounding away.

“You, up on the stage, remain where you are.”

Since I was the only person left on the stage, he must mean me. I spotted a decent-sized pack of people cramming along the side of the stage, the kind of group I’d be easily lost in. I’d like to say I jumped down gracefully, but the fact is I looked more like a walrus rolling off rocks into water. Blame it on my Otherside hangover.

The crowd bottlenecked as people headed for the forest and the neighbouring backyards. I wasn’t getting past them, so I dove under a table that was still standing against a row of dense bushes, its plastic tablecloth still in place.

I smacked headfirst into someone already hiding under the table. “Oww!” I grabbed my forehead and so did the other guy. I glanced up. “Kelvin?”

“Hey, Kincaid. Don’t worry, you keep this table, I’ll find something else.”

Must have lost himself in the crowd when the cops started the stampede. I grabbed him by the sleeve of his Hawaiian shirt before he could disappear. I pulled out half the cash he’d given me and shoved it into his hand. “Kelvin, I’m real sorry about this. Usually cops don’t raid a seance and, well—” I pointed towards the destroyed backyard.

“No way, dude,
that
was awesome!” He shoved the money back at me. “A Nathan Cade concert bowl that ends in a cop raid? Talk about an authentic experience. That’s, what, once in a lifetime? You’re free for Halloween, right?”

Part of me wanted to express how unwise it was to try for a repeat of tonight. Instead, I nodded and pocketed the cash.

I felt the brush of cold on my left just before Nate appeared beside me under the table.

“K, cop with the megaphone is closing in.”

I peeked under the tablecloth and swore. Four cops, including the one with the megaphone, were heading our way. Time to make our exit.

“Loved the show, Nathan, and I loved your last album,” Kelvin said.

I cut off a badly timed super-fan moment. “Where there’s four, there’ll be more. Nate, where’s my bike?”

“I pushed it under there,” he said, pointing at a group of bushes nearby. “And I don’t think we’ll be dealing with any more cops,” he continued. “Managed to get on the radio. Pretty sure I diverted them.”

Leave it to Nate to find a stupidly illegal way to get us out of a jam.
He
was dead and couldn’t go to jail. Me, on the other hand…

“I’ll buy you some time to get out of here. My parents are lawyers,” Kelvin said, and started to crawl out into the open. I heard shouting and something garbled over the megaphone. Probably aimed at Kelvin.

I might have stalled another second or three to watch the outcome, but Nate was already dragging me towards my bike. Give a ghost a corporeal body for a couple of hours and they forget they’re dead.

“Get on the back,” Nate said.

Like hell I was getting on back. “Nate, you haven’t ridden a bike in fifteen years!”

“I’ve still got ten minutes of juice left. Come on, we’ll switch at the 7-Eleven down the hill.”

“You said that ten minutes ago!”

“But which of the two of us has more experience outrunning cops?”

That I couldn’t argue with. I climbed on the back. “One scratch, Nate, one scratch,” I warned. “And as soon as we get off campus, we’re switch—”

Nate gunned the engine, cutting me off.

One thing kept running through my mind as we rode away: my stalker ghost was well past parlour tricks.

CHAPTER 13

NO GOOD DEED…

Nate miraculously didn’t crash my bike on the way to the 7-Eleven. His hands were barely corporeal when he handed it over, and he dissolved back to the Otherside without so much as a word. He’d overdone it. I felt bad I hadn’t stopped him from driving the bike, but by the time I reached the front door to my apartment, the number one question doing laps in my head was what the hell my stalker ghost wanted. What could I possibly have that belonged to him? A close second was, Where had he accumulated his extensive bag of tricks?

Projecting thoughts? Sure, every now and then a ghost or poltergeist manages to pull that off. Localized weather disasters, throwing things around a room? Usually the work of poltergeists, but it happens all the time. Ghosts setting their own mirrors? That shouldn’t be possible: the barrier only works one way.

My crazy stalker ghost wasn’t the only thing frustrating me; it took me three tries to jiggle the front lock open this time.

“Cameron?” I yelled as I stepped inside.

He ducked his head around the spare room door.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

He nodded, then frowned. “Yes, and you?”

He came towards me, and I watched him for a misstep, something that might betray neurological failure. He looked fine. Still, I reached for his hand.

“I remembered to eat the damn brains,” he said, frowning when I pried at one of his fingernails. He was fine, totally fine. The front loading on the brains seemed to have helped.

“You’re fine and I’m fine too, Cameron. Go back to whatever you were doing. Just scream if anything strange happens.”

He gave me an odd look. “Like what?”

“Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.”

Tea, that’s what I needed, and ice for my neck….I dropped my bag on the desk in the kitchen. I pulled the textbooks out and placed them beside my laptop. Somehow King Solomon’s Jinn didn’t seem so important anymore, not with my ghost stalker disaster.

“Seriously, go back to whatever you were doing,” I said when I realized Cameron was still hovering.

He said, “I finished with the list—the missing parts of my memory. I left it on your laptop,” then headed back into the spare room.

Yet another thing I had to worry about: getting Cameron’s life back on track. Maybe I could hit two birds with one stone….I grabbed my phone after I turned on the kettle and dialed Max. Straight to voice mail. “Max, call me back. This is important. Ghost trying to kill me is able to set own mirror.” Max didn’t appreciate long-drawn-out messages. I dialed Lee next. Maybe she’d know about ghosts that could pull those kinds of stunts.

Lee didn’t answer either, and I left another message.

I had a hard time believing that neither Lee nor Max had any inkling there was a very powerful and psychotic ghost in the area. It pissed me off they hadn’t bothered to warn me. But then again, that was the paranormal community. Everyone worked on a need-to-know basis.

I switched on the ringer on the phone and left it on top of King Solomon’s Jinn so I’d be sure to hear it if Lee or Max called back.

I was too cold to take my boots or jacket off yet. I checked the heater, but it was on, and why hadn’t my water boiled yet?

“Hey K, you made it.”

I scowled as Nate floated out of the bathroom back to his normal non-corporeal self. He didn’t look too worse for wear, except maybe a little more transparent, though looks can be deceiving when it comes to ghosts.

“A damn miracle considering you barely got my bike into the 7-Eleven parking lot before it fell on its side.” I glared at him until the kettle whistled. I couldn’t get to the hot water fast enough. I poured myself a cup of tea and wrapped my hands around it. It barely warmed the skin on my palms. Son of a bitch.

I grabbed a wool sweater from the closet and dug out a pair of slippers. I thought I had a hot water bottle stashed somewhere too. I headed into my room to find it, checking the dresser mirror for any signs of my stalker ghost before searching under the bed. Maybe I’d be lucky and the concert was the last I’d see of him. Doubted it, but one can hope.

“What’s with you?” Nate asked as I re-emerged from my room bundled up and began filling the water bottle with what was left in the kettle.

“I’ve never been this cold from Otherside before. It’s like it seeped into my bones this time.”

“Are you okay, though?”

I gave Nate points for trying; he actually sounded
and
looked concerned. A feat for him, since he usually only managed one or the other.

“I’m fine, Nate. I just need to warm up.” My god, I was freezing.

Nate watched me with something resembling concern as he settled on the couch, only bothering to keep his face in focus as the rest of him faded into a hazy mix of yellow and blue.

I didn’t know why I was so grumpy with him—he was only being Nate. I gave myself a mental shake and started over. “You ghosts are a gossip factory. Have you ever heard of a ghost who could do any of what happened back there?”

His face greyed, in colour and expression. “Serious questions get you serious answers, Kincaid. Trust me, no ghost on my side of the barrier wants that.”

I took another sip of tea as I mulled his cryptic answer and how best to board my place up against any more ghost attacks. Sage smoke might be enough for a jerry-rigged barrier. Adding Otherside would work better, but like hell was I doing that—not for another day at least.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Nate said.

I shook my head.

Nate floated over to the door and peeked through the fish eye. He turned to me and mouthed, “Aaron,” at roughly the same time as Aaron called, “Kincaid, it’s me. Open up.” He didn’t sound happy.

Nate began making gestures for me not to open the door.

I shook my head. Aaron would just stand there and keep yelling until I did. He’d done it before. “Go warn Cameron to stay in the spare bedroom,” I whispered.

“Kincaid, open up now or I’ll drag you down to the station,” Aaron said.

“He only ever threatens to arrest you when he’s really pissed,” Nate said.

“Yup,” I said, and yelled, “Coming!” Nate disappeared through the closed bedroom door.

I took a deep breath, straightened my sweater and turned the knob.

Aaron was in jeans and a red hooded jacket that doubled as a raincoat. Aaron kept his hair short, and it was still damp, meaning he’d probably just showered and driven over. My heart skipped a beat and I told it in no uncertain terms to stop.

I put my best scowl forward. “Don’t you think it’s a little late?”

He shrugged and walked past me into the living room. “I’m here on business.”

“That’s one way to describe it, but please, by all means, come right on in.”

Aaron ignored me and headed straight for the kitchen. I hung back by the doorway as he opened the fridge and helped himself to a beer. He chugged half of it then put the bottle on the counter and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“Great couple of shots of you up at the university tonight,” he said, and turned the screen so it was facing me. “Looks like they documented it from start to finish. This one’s a particularly good angle for you—”

I covered the distance between us and snatched the phone from him. Sure enough, there I was up onstage looking scared out of my mind. Then summoning Nate. I winced. I figured someone would put it up on YouTube, just not so soon. “Shit.”

“I guess that’s one word to describe it,” Aaron said.

I fast-forwarded to see where it cut off. Whoever the camera belonged to had abandoned filming the moment the wind picked up. No one had linked the “storm” to my seance.

“Well?”

“There’s not much to tell. Me and Nate had a gig up at the university. It paid, we did the show, I now have rent money.”

Aaron finished off the beer. “You knew the party was illegal as soon as you walked in. Not
one
permit.”

“Not my job to check permits, Aaron. I was hired as the entertainment.”

He held up his phone again. “Yeah, I know. Which is the only reason no one is going to charge you—this time. Consider it your ‘Get out of jail free’ card. Any more gigs up at the university, you have to ask for permits and prove you asked.”

Was he nuts? None of these kids had permits.
No one
got permits for events on campus. “Aaron, that’s not fair! I won’t be able to work up at the university if I have to check for permits. That’s not my job, it’s the cops’ job—”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have agreed to work a concert bowl. Nathan Cade is famous on YouTube right now, which is quite the accomplishment since YouTube wasn’t invented when he was still alive. The department was screening calls about the noise all evening. Explain to me why I don’t arrest you now?”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Watch me.”

I took a big breath and shoved down the anger. “Aaron, I won’t
be able to work, which means I won’t be able to eat. Besides, you knew I was going to be up there!”

He held up another shot of the concert, this one taken from the stage. “I repeat, you said seance, not concert bowl. And how is this going to affect Nate? If you thought people were hounding you before…” He shook his head.