Kelley Armstrong - Haunted

He rolled onto his side. His gaze traveled across my wet clothing, and his lips parted.

I cut him off. "If that sentence contains the words 'mud wrestling,' I'd strongly suggest you reconsider them."

"I wasn't going to say anything about mud wrestling. Now, mud bathing, that's a whole other matter. Plenty of people pay good money to do this." He lifted a handful of mud and squeezed it through his fingers. "It would be… interesting, don't you think? A new sensation. You always love a new sensation."

"So you're suggesting this for my benefit?"

"Of course. I won't touch you. Won't even try. I'll just watch." A quick grin. "That'll be enough."

I pushed to my feet.

"God, you're sexy when you're flustered," he said.

"Please. It would take more than you to fluster me, Kristof Nast."

"Oh?" He swung to his feet and sidestepped into my path. "Then, if you don't want to try a mud bath, you won't mind waiting while I do."

He unbuttoned the top of his shirt.

"You take that off, and I'm leaving," I said.

He grinned. "Flustered?"

"Exasperated. And too busy for games."

"Oh, you can spare a minute or two. You wait right here, watch me, and I'll be done before you know it." The grin broadened. "You know how much I liked it when you watched."

I turned fast, and slid in the mud. An overhanging vine slapped my face. With a muttered oath, I shoved the vine out of my way and stomped toward the shore.

"Flustered," Kris called after me.

As I turned to answer, something splashed beside me. On the bank lay a huge alligator.

"Enjoying the show?" I asked.

He blinked and gave a lazy flick of his tail. A mini-tidal wave of mud splattered over me. Kristof laughed. I glowered at the beast. He yawned, showing off teeth as big as bowie knives, and twice as sharp.

"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Very impressive. And I'd be even more impressed if you could use them, ghost-gator."

Once on the bank, I gave my head a shake. Mud flew everywhere, but when I stopped, every strand of hair fell into place-shiny, clean, and brushed. Gotta love the afterlife. I closed my eyes and murmured an incantation. When I opened them, I was dressed in worn jeans and a T-shirt. The alligator harrumphed. I flipped him the finger and started walking, leaving Kristof to catch up.

Luther Ross lived on the island of Roatan, just north of Honduras. Even in the ghost world, this is well off the beaten path, which is why someone like Ross would choose to live here. The ghost world, like any other, has its laws. Poltergeist activity breaks most of them.

A poltergeist reaches into the living world and manipulates objects. Fortunately for the Fates, it's not a major problem because few ghosts can do it. Most so-called poltergeist activity isn't ghosts at all-it's earth tremors and faulty construction and bad wiring and bored teens.

The few true poltergeist ghosts find their services in high demand as teachers. When something is rare, it's always cool to be one of the few who can do it. There's only one problem. Most poltergeists haven't learned their power at all; they're born with it.

Almost all poltergeists are really telekinetic half-demons. Something about the power of telekinesis allows it to transcend dimensions, so after death, some find that they can continue to mentally will objects to move in both the ghost world and the living world. Yet they can't pass on this power to a nontelekinetic any more than I can teach a binding spell to a non-spell-caster.

That doesn't keep telekinetic half-demons from selling their "services" on the black market. To disguise the true source of their powers, they pose as druidic or Vodoun priests, or other supernaturals with minor, easily faked abilities. They'll pretend to teach a student, all the while manipulating the objects themselves.

Luther Ross was different. When I first heard of him a year ago, I also heard that he was half-demon and dismissed him as someone too stupid to even hide the source of his powers. Then, a few weeks ago, I discovered that he was a Gelo, an ice demon, not a telekinetic. It's damned near impossible to fake the powers of a Gelo. So it would appear Luther Ross might be the real deal, someone who truly had learned how to move objects in the living-world dimension.

Getting into Ross's classes wasn't easy. To evade the Fates and their Searchers, he holed up in remote locations like Roatan, and gave out the transportation code only to students he personally approved. At least a dozen of my contacts had tried to get into his class, and failed, so I'd decided that when I had time to take his classes, I'd skip the application process. I'd tracked down someone who had directions to his latest school location, and I'd paid a pretty price in spells and transportation codes to get them.

I told Kristof all this as we trudged through the swamp, taking turns blasting the vines from our path. I skipped that part about bartering for the directions, though, and made it sound as if they were common knowledge. Kris wasn't fooled. He knew me, and he knew I must have been investigating Ross as a potential teacher, someone to help me in my quest to help Savannah. But he let the matter drop without comment. My "Savannah project" was one subject guaranteed to start fireworks, and neither of us wanted that. Not today.

We headed north, knowing we'd eventually reach the Caribbean. We came out near Puerto Cortez, or so we were informed by the first person we came across, a young man with the bleached-blond hair and dark tan of someone who'd spent his life near the ocean, and wasn't about to leave it after his death.

"Good surf?" I asked, pointing at his board.

"Nah. Great snorkeling, but no freaking surf unless you make it yourself." A quick flash of white teeth. "Good thing I can."

"Tempestras," I said.

"Whoa, you're good."

"Aspicio," I said, extending my hand.

He shook it sideways, fingers hooking around mine, thumb up. "Cool. You guys have the X-ray vision, right?"

"Something like that." I looked at his board. "So where do you conjure up your surf?"

"Over by Tela, near the National Park."

"Is that anywhere near Roatan? That's where we're heading… or trying to."

"Roatan?" His gaze flicked over Kristof and me, then he shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat. Easiest way would be to stick to the coastal route. Eventually you'll come to La Ceiba. That's the gateway to Roatan. Got quite a ways to go. Nice hike, though."

"Great. Thanks."

"No problem. You folks enjoy yourselves over there."

He started to leave, then stopped and gave us another once-over. "Just, uh, make sure you change before you get to La Ceiba. They like to keep the place, you know, pure."

After he left, I turned to Kristof.

"Pure?"

He shrugged. "Guess we'll find out."

I certainly wasn't about to catch up to the half-demon surfer and ask, no matter how friendly he'd seemed. I'd landed myself into trouble doing that before. In the ghost world, it's one thing to admit you don't quite know where you're going, but it's another to admit you don't know what to expect when you get there. Opens you up to a whole world of grief.

In my first year, I'd been given the name of a potential contact in Stanton, Texas, and so I'd asked the referrer what to expect there-what the period was. The guy told me Stanton was set in the Old West, and my contact lived in a brothel. Naturally, I showed up in a costume appropriate for the period and the setting, and found myself in a nineteenth-century Carmelite monastery dressed as a whore. Lucky to get my ass out of there without a nice coating of tar and feathers. Oh, but the guy who sent me there had himself a good laugh. In a long and often monotonous afterlife, sometimes that's really all that counts.

I'm sure the scenery was lovely, but it had been ten miles since we'd seen any of it, trudging along in the darkness, under the glow of my light-ball spell. Finally, we saw another glow lighting the night sky.