“Now I see the attraction.” He chuckled. “You keep him on his toes while other girls fall at his feet.”
“Oh, I fell at his feet. I was probably the first girl who did, but I had an unfair advantage.” If that’s what you wanted to call it. “When he stepped over me and kept walking, he didn’t have far to go since he lived next door. Fall down every day, and you start building scar tissue. Get enough scar tissue, and the falls stop hurting. Once the falls stop hurting, you work up an immunity. After you get immune, there’s no more reason to fall, is there?”
Heinz was cackling at this point. “I’m so glad I was on duty tonight.”
“Me too.” I enjoyed meeting people who saw other facets to Boaz or who had different perspectives on the ones familiar to me. “Just don’t tell him who ratted him out.”
“I won’t breathe a word,” he promised as the ambulance rocked to a halt. “Even if he tries to beat it out of me.”
“That’s all I ask.” I was smiling as they wheeled me into the hospital.
I might have lied about having an allergy to anesthesia when the nice doctor asked me. Drugs were a hard no for me. I would rather suffer than be trapped behind my eyelids. I also might have invented an entirely new language of swear words that appeared to impress even the most seasoned nurses with the depths of their vulgarity when the doctor reopened the wound on my side to repair the internal damage. There’s even a slight chance I blacked out, hurling myself into the safety of my mind, to escape the sting of the needle and the pull of the stitches in my skin.
The temptation to linger in that place, too far away for pain to touch me, was great.
But then I heard singing.
“The night birds are calling, calling, calling. The princess she’s falling, falling, falling. A stone for a heart and a blade for a tongue, fair beauty she slayed all her suitors but one. His armor was love, and his weapon this tune. Their battle was fierce, the casualties great, but fair beauty, she smiled as she lowered her gate.”
“I always wondered if that was a metaphor for sex,” I murmured, eyes closed.
“Lowering her gate?” Linus mused. “I never understood why you loved that song so much.”
“Maud had a beautiful voice, but that was the only song she knew start to finish.” I blinked the room into focus and exhaled with relief that Linus had dimmed the overhead lights. “She sang it on a loop. I was forced to love it or go mad hearing it on repeat.”
“I never knew that.”
“It took me a while to figure out too, so don’t feel bad.” I turned my head on my pillow and got my first good look at him since Ambrose attacked. His long hair gathered at his nape, but limp strands plastered to his neck with dried sweat. “Are you okay?”
“Minor cuts and scratches.” He flashed his hands and forearms at me. “I treated myself on the drive over to see you.”
“You saved my life.” The bald statement hung between us. “How did you trap him?”
“While you provided the distraction, I painted as many concentric traps as I could around Oscar.” His lips, full and hard, turned downward. “I’ve been asking myself if I acted logically, staying behind after you ran downstairs, or if I was a coward for not chasing him.” He pulled his hair down and ran his fingers through the auburn tangle. “I still don’t have an answer.”
“There’s a joke in there somewhere about the teacher not having all the answers, but I’m fresh out of snark.” I shifted onto my uninjured side to see him better. “You trusted me to take care of myself, and that’s no small thing.”
“I’ve watched you train with Taz.” His lips pulled to one side. “I knew you could handle yourself.”
“Shush,” I warned him, though his praise made me glow. “I’m not finished yet.”
He inclined his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You did the smart thing. Your quick thinking saved all four of us.” I might have invited him there for all the wrong reasons, but my lack of faith is what saved us in the end. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if we’d had to resort to violence to bring down Amelie. Hurting her that way would have killed me, so thank you.”
The tips of his ears reddened adorably, and he cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.”
Though I longed to ask after Boaz and Amelie, I didn’t want Linus to feel unwelcome, so I bit my tongue.
“I brought you a gift,” he began, reaching into his pocket.
“This is starting to be a habit with you,” I chastised. “You don’t have to buy my friendship, Linus. You’re earning it. Brick by brick. Literally, in the case of what you’ve helped me do with Woolly.”
“I think you’ll want this one.”
“Okay.” I held out my hand. “Gimme.”
He placed a dented brass button on my palm. “This is the first half.”
“You shouldn’t have?” I examined the raised anchor pattern for clues before turning it over to inspect the shank. “Is this a memento from my latest near-death experience?”
“Not quite.” He penned a sigil for perception on my hand. “This is the second half.”
Oscar flickered into being at the foot of my bed, his round cheeks stretched to capacity. “Hi, Grier.” He launched himself at me, and I grunted at the impact even though he weighed nothing. “I thought you were going to be a ghost like me. I didn’t want you trapped on that boat. It’s no fun there.”
“I’m fine, little guy.” I kissed his curls while staring at Linus. “How is this possible?”
“You woke a ghost, Grier, an unprecedented feat, and you’re asking me about a simple relocation?”
Relocations seemed pretty magical from where I sat covered in squishy ghost boy. “Yes?”
“Oscar’s recollection was correct. He died onboard. He vanished during a cruise, and he was never found. I searched the boat and located his remains walled up in the engine room.” He looked so tired all of a sudden. “I collected his bones to return to his family.”
Spirits could only drift so far from their remains. Oscar’s first undead memory held the clue as to why he ended up haunting the dining room instead of below decks. His soul had been drawn to his parents in that moment of elasticity after death when he stretched his tether to its limits. Once it snapped into place, there was no going back. He was stuck. Anchored to the spot where his parents’ world fell apart.
“I don’t know anybody anymore.” Oscar clenched his fingers in my gown. “I don’t want to go back. I want to stay with you. Can I?”
Adopt a ghost child? As an adoptee myself, I understood what a gift it was to be wanted by a second family, but I was too young to be mothering a ghost more than five times my age. And yet… I had woken him. He was my responsibility. At the very least, he was already dead, so it’s not like I could kill him.
“Sure, if you want.” I gasped when his arms closed around my throat, cutting off my oxygen. “Okay, pal, let’s tone it down a bit. I really don’t want to get stuck haunting a hospital because you suffocated me in my bed.” I checked with Linus and held out the brassy token. “How does this work?”
“I bound his spirit to a button from the shorts he was wearing when he died. That anchor ought to satisfy his needs since past violence imbues objects with more power.” Linus shook his head. “Frankly, I’m amazed it worked. Relocations are more like small-scale banishments to rid particular areas of spiritual energy. All it does is move a ghost into another room. But, in this case, he was relocated into a button.”
“We make quite a team.” I sank back into the pillows and shifted Oscar against my good side. “What did you tell the Elite?”