Devon Monk - Magic In the Blood

“Good.” He straightened and put both his hands on his knees, ready to push up onto his feet. “ ’Cause you looked like you’d seen a ghost out there.”

I choked on the scone and coughed uncontrollably.

“You okay?”

I nodded and thumped at my chest to try to get the bite of scone either up or down. I picked up my coffee and took a slurp. That got me a burnt tongue and scalded the roof of my mouth, but at least the scone slid down my throat. I coughed a little more and then sneezed.

How graceful was I today?

Grant calmly handed me the towel again, which I used to wipe the tears from the corners of my eyes.

“Maybe I should stop filling those things with gravel,” he said.

“What did you say?”

“Gravel. The scone. It’s a joke.”

“No. You said something about a ghost.”

Grant gave me a long look and then leaned his forearms on the table, folding his fingers together. “I said you looked like you’d seen a ghost,” he said calmly. “Standing out in the rain all pale and spooked. Why? Did you?”

I didn’t want to talk about this. Not to Grant. As far as I knew, he didn’t use magic, didn’t really understand it, and wouldn’t even care if I had seen ghostly glyphs or a whole herd of ghostly people stampeding outside his door.

“Did you see one?” he asked.

“What?”

He wiggled his fingers in the air. “A ghost.” Those dark, dark blue eyes still held the echo of his smile, but he was not joking around. It was a serious question.

I took a drink of coffee-a little more carefully this time.

“Get Mugged used to be an old saloon and boardinghouse,” Grant said. “It was built over the Shanghai Tunnels-did I ever mention that? Some people-especially people who use magic a lot-see things here. Spirits. I had a local ghost-hunting team come out and check into it a while back. Said there was a lot of activity. Ghosts of the men and women who were knocked out, locked up, killed, or sold onto pirate ships heading to China.”

“You had ghost hunters in here?”

“Sure. Why not? You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“I just-” I took a breath, exhaled. “I’m surprised you do.”

“Well, now that I’ve shared my secret, it’s your turn. Did you see a ghost?”

Hells. Why not?

“Yes.”

“Here?”

I took another drink of coffee, which hurt the burnt spots in my mouth. Totally worth it.

“Outside,” I said. “It was just for a couple seconds, but there was more than one.”

Grant grinned. “I liked the sound of that. Haven’t had multiple apparitions before. Were they full body?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you see them clearly from head to toe?”

The memory of them turning, gazing at me with hungry, empty eyes, moving toward me slowly, too slowly, flashed through my mind.

“Every bit of them. And I don’t know what you’re so happy about. They scared the hell out of me.”

“Haven’t seen a full body myself. Always kind of hoped I would. The ghost hunters said they didn’t think there was harmful activity here.”

“You might want to rethink that,” I said. Hells. Who was I to change Grant’s mind? If he liked thinking friendly ghosts were Caspering about in his coffee shop, that was cool with me. He could probably capitalize on the haunted thing and bring in the tourists.

And since no one else had seen multiple full-body apparitions (see how quick I pick up on this stuff?), I was beginning to think seeing them-and being touched by them-had more to do with those Death glyphs out on the wall than with Grant’s Shanghai victims.

“Oh, now. Don’t go holding out on me. I can see it in your eyes. There was more. Spill it, girl.”

I took another bite of the scone, which practically melted into sugar and spice in my mouth. “This is really good. Did you change bakeries?”

“It’s my own recipe. Less scone. More ghost.”

“You made this? I’m impressed. You should open a bakery or a coffee shop or something.”

“Allison Beckstrom,” he said. “Don’t make me sic Jula on you. And don’t think she can’t take you-she’s little, but she’s tougher than she looks.”

“Listen,” I said. “I saw ghosts-a lot of them. And they… um… touched me. It hurt. Don’t. Don’t look like that. I’m fine. It was just for a second. Right before you came out. And before that I saw some kind of magic written on the warehouse wall. Glyphs that were for Life and Healing-good glyphs. But around all those was the glyph for Death. When I got closer to the building, they…” Telling the truth and watching Grant’s expression go from excitement back to worry again was harder than I thought it would be. “… they just-”

“Disappeared?”

I nodded.

“And you’re sure you’re not hurt? I’ve heard of ghosts leaving marks.”

“I think I’m fine.”

He stared at me.

“I’ll check myself over when I go home. After coffee.” I picked up the cup and took another drink.

Grant didn’t push me on that, for which I was grateful.

“Life and death, huh?” he asked. “Were they city-cast to keep vandals off the block?”

I blinked. “I don’t know.” I’d never even thought about that. “Do you know if the city has any standing spells here?”

“I can look into it. The company that owns the lot next to me went bankrupt. I’m thinking about buying it, though I don’t know what I’d do with it.”

“Open a bakery?” I suggested.

“Like I need two businesses to run.”

“You could always rent the place out to the ghost chasers.” I popped the last of the scone in my mouth.

Grant’s eyes went wide. “That’s a fabulous idea.”

“Wait-I was joking.”

“No. It’s good. It’s really good. They’re looking to move out of their place-too small and not enough… you know…”

“Decay?”

“History. They were saying they wanted to move closer to the older part of town. This whole block’s been trying to go high-end for years.” He winced. “It hasn’t caught on, which is fine with it me. I like things the way they are.”

“And you think bringing in people who run around doing seances is going to bring the property value up?”

“Sйances.” He shook his head. “You really don’t know anything about this, do you? But even if it were sйances, do I look like I care?” He grinned and I could tell that no, he most certainly did not.

“Well, good luck with that. If things go well, maybe they can come de-ghost my apartment.”

I was joking around.

Grant didn’t buy it.

“Why? You seen ghosts there too? Ghost magic?”

“No. Not really. Not like here on the street. It’s complicated. And what do you mean ghost magic? There’s no such thing.”

“Those graffiti things you said you saw, that appeared and disappeared. Ghost magic, right? Talk to me.”

I could talk to him about the magic near his place, could talk to him about the ghosts on his street, but telling him about my dad, in my apartment bathroom, touching me when I was naked and alone in the dark…

Nope. Wasn’t gonna happen. All I wanted to do about that was find some way to scrub the memory of it, and the echo of his touch, out of my brain and off my skin. Too bad magic didn’t erase the memories I wanted to get rid of.

“I don’t really want to get into it, okay?”

And he must have caught the “please” in my tone because he reached over and patted my hand.

“Does it have something to do with this?” He gently brushed the back of my right hand and the whorls of metallic color that webbed there.

“Maybe.”

“That happened when you left town for a while, right? The coma and all?”