“Not quite.”
“What do you mean, ‘not quite’?”
“I have a place for little ones to get used to the idea. Not heaven yet. More like the waiting room.”
Ruthie’s version of heaven was a house with a white picket fence and kids who’d died too soon. Even in the afterlife, Ruthie was still the mother to every lost soul.
The thought gave me pause. Obviously mothering was in her DNA, and that it was made me think that she had loved me for more than my talents.
But thinking and believing, then accepting and forgiving can be pretty far apart, and they can take a lot of time to draw together. Time was one thing I didn’t have much of right now.
“Is there another waiting room for adults?” I asked.
“No. Adults understand death a little better than children.”
“Then what are you saying?” I asked. “Xander’s dead. He has to be somewhere, and it isn’t where the living walk.”
“You’re certain of that?”
There hadn’t been enough left of him to be anything but dead, even before we’d burned the place down.
“Yes.”
Ruthie-Luther lowered her-his chin toward the thin, olive drab–shrouded chest. “If he isn’t in heaven or hell, then his spirit’s still on earth.”
Sawyer drew in a sharp breath, but when I glanced at him, his face remained stoic, and I returned my attention to the woman speaking from the boy’s mouth, resolving to get to the bottom of that later.
“Xander’s a ghost,” I clarified.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Spirits remain on earth for a lot of reasons. Unfinished business, a violent death.”
“Two for two,” I murmured. “We need to ask him what he wanted to tell me, that’ll finish up his business, and he can . . .”—I made a fluttering, move along gesture with both hands—“go into the light. Win-win.”
“Not that simple,” Ruthie said.
“Why not? Just ask him.”
“I can’t ask him, Lizbeth. I’m dead.”
“So’s he.”
“Not in the same way.”
“There are degrees of deadness?”
“No. Dead is dead. But for some, not really.”
I smacked myself in the forehead. “Fine. You can’t ask him. The world’s gonna end; we’re all gonna be Satan’s bitch because the guy with the info can’t get his deadness to fit just right.”
“Watch that mouth!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said automatically. I couldn’t help myself. Years of respecting Ruthie, loving her, practically worshiping the ground she walked on, died hard, perhaps never. But anger, hurt and fear died hard too, and I’d always been a sarcastic, snotty pain in the ass when any of those emotions were involved. Sometimes even when they weren’t.
“I didn’t say we couldn’t find out the information,” Ruthie soothed, “just that I couldn’t talk to the man.”
“Who can?”
Ruthie-Luther turned her-his head toward Sawyer. “Him.”
CHAPTER 12
Him.
I should have known.
“You can talk to ghosts?” I asked.
“It’s one of the gifts of a skinwalker.”
“Then I can do it too.”
“No. It’s a talent tied to my magic.”
A skinwalker is both witch and shifter. The shifting comes at birth; the magic comes later.
I could be as gifted as Sawyer. I could toss people across the room with a flick of my hand; I could talk to ghosts; I could heal wounds at the speed of sound. All I’d have to do was kill someone I loved.
I’d decided to pass.
Most days I had a hard time believing Sawyer was capable of loving anyone. Killing yes, loving no. However, I’d seen into his head, into his past. I knew he’d lived as a wolf; he’d had a mate, but he didn’t have her now. Maybe he’d killed her.
Or maybe he’d killed someone else. When I’d touched him and seen the frighteningly long and lonely aeons of his existence, he’d hidden things from me, blocked me in a way that no one else ever had.
“Why are we standing here chatting?” I asked. “Open up the phone lines. Talk to Xander and find out what he knows.” I frowned. “Knew. Whatever. Just do it.”
“Just?” Sawyer repeated. “It’s not that easy.”
“Do whatever voodoo you do.”
“I’m not a bokur.”
“A what?”
“Voodoo dark priest,” Ruthie-Luther said. “Very dangerous.”
“And he isn’t?”
Sawyer’s lips curved. He loved it when someone called him dangerous. Sometimes I thought he purposely cultivated the fear that surrounded him, fed the legends by doing just enough creepy stuff to keep them circulating. I had a feeling that people being scared of him had kept Sawyer alive on more than one occasion.
“I can’t just talk to Whitelaw,” Sawyer said. “I’ve got to bring him forth.”
“From where?”
“The realm where he walks.”
“You’re talking about raising the dead. That doesn’t sound like a good idea.” I glanced at Ruthie-Luther. “Does it?”
“He won’t actually be raising him to life,” Ruthie said, “just raising his ghost.”