Page 4 of Ghosted AF (At First #4)

four

~ Caius ~

S ome cases called for brute force, while others required finesse. Getting it wrong didn’t necessarily mean failure, but it did make the job more complicated.

And I had complicated the hell out of my current job.

Dousing the entire apartment in arcane magic without knowing the source of the disturbance had been a rookie mistake. What I had incorrectly assumed was a weak signature, I now knew to be purposeful distance.

I could still sense the presence, could feel it lurking at the edges of my awareness, but it always remained just beyond my reach. That made it nearly impossible to get an accurate read, but the behavior itself did provide some useful information.

For starters, it indicated intelligence, which ruled out any kind of charm, hex, or curse. It avoided me, but it hadn’t left, meaning it wanted something. I stood by my claim that this wasn’t a haunting, which didn’t leave a lot of other options.

While rare, Elementals still existed. With the ability to transform into literal wind, an air spirit like a sylph could have caused the scene I’d walked in on that first night. I knew Elementals to be pretty docile, though, and I couldn’t think of a good reason one would attack Rylee.

Some magic users had the ability to astral project—a fairly new term for soul casting—but it was temporary and required immense concentration.

Quite a few shadelings could cloak themselves from most forms of detection, but they would still have to be physically present. The thought that another person could be inside the apartment at that very moment unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.

I also had to consider the timing of when the maintenance worker went missing. It felt too coincidental not to be related.

“Tell me more about Mykal.”

Tucked into the cushions at the end of the sofa, Rylee looked up from his phone with a confused frown. “Like what? I didn’t really know him that well.”

“You said he’s a shadeling?”

His brow furrowed to match his frown, and he tilted his head. “You really think he’s still alive?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Even the most peaceful death left a scar, an ugly one, and I didn’t sense anything like that in the apartment. Well, not recent anyway, but Rylee didn’t need to know about that.

“I really hope you’re right. I mean, obviously, I don’t want him to be dead, but selfishly, I’d feel bad for not reporting it if he was.” He set his phone down beside his leg with a sigh. “Plus, it’s probably illegal. Unless I don’t know for sure that he’s dead?”

In the few days I had spent with him, I’d come to realize that Rylee had a habit of talking himself into circles. If I took the time to untangle what he said, however, there was usually a fair bit of logic hiding under the mess.

“All we know is that he left in the middle of a job without his tools,” I reminded him. “There is no evidence to suggest that something fatal happened to him.”

No evidence…like a dead body.

“Except his ghost.”

I gritted my teeth, but I couldn’t hold back my growl. “There is no ghost.”

The words still hung between us when a loud crash sounded from the back of the unit. In response, Rylee yelped and launched across the sofa, plastering himself against my side as he clung to my arm.

“You were saying?” he asked, his voice wavering.

My arm burned where his hands clung to me, my skin stinging with the spark of electricity. This close, his earthy scent saturated the air, filling my lungs with every breath, and making my mouth water. Even tainted with the stench of anxiety, it was no less potent because of it.

“It’s not a ghost,” I reiterated through gritted teeth as I gently pried him off my arm. “Stay here. I’ll go check it out.”

“What if you get possessed?”

He sounded so damn earnest I didn’t have the heart to laugh, but I damn sure had the urge. The guy had a lot of ideas about how he thought the supernatural world worked, none of them remotely accurate.

We’d talk about it later.

Pushing up from the sofa, I paused to look at him. He might be wrong about a lot of things, but that didn’t lessen the fear.

With a barely audible sigh, I crouched in front of him and took his hands, surprised by how cold they felt. “Nothing is going to happen. I’m just going to check out what caused that crash, and I’ll be right back.” Chuckling, I cupped his jaw and brushed my thumb across his cheek. “Unpossessed.”

He leaned into the touch, his eyelids fluttering closed briefly before he opened them wide to meet my gaze again. “Promise?”

Caught in those endless pools of cerulean, I had the insane urge to lean in, to close the small distance between us and brush our lips together. Instead, I did something I hadn’t done in almost two hundred years.

I surrendered and looked away.

“Promise,” I said, my voice strained, thick with an emotion I didn’t understand. “Wait here.”

Shoving to my feet, I stared down at him for another moment before forcing myself to walk away. Still, I paused at the edge of the kitchen and glanced over my shoulder, fighting the urge to return and comfort him again.

I turned away and stepped into the darkened hallway.

The crash had come from Rylee’s room, and it had echoed with enough volume to suggest something substantial had fallen. Not furniture being toppled over, but maybe a shelf giving out, or an overstuffed box in the closet surrendering to gravity.

Nearing the open bedroom door, I tensed when I felt a presence behind me, the scent of lavender and sage drifting on the air. “What are you doing?”

Rylee hovered at the threshold, just beyond the line where the light met the shadows. Wide-eyed but with a stubborn set to his jaw, he clutched the handle of a frying pan in both hands, holding it up near his shoulder like a baseball bat.

“You’re not supposed to split up,” he whispered. “Everyone knows that’s how people die in horror movies.”

His reference to the genre actually explained a lot.

“Then it’s a good thing this isn’t a movie,” I countered as I moved cautiously toward the bedroom door.

A sliver of moonlight spilled out into the hallway through the crack, the glow dancing off the dust particles that hung in the air. Each step sent a chorus of floorboards creaking beneath my feet, the sound barely audible over the rattling and rustling coming from inside the room.

“Be careful,” Rylee hissed.

I choked back a sigh and reached out to push the door open wider. “Nothing is going to—”

I jerked my hand back, narrowly avoiding a broken finger when the door snapped closed in my face. Frowning, growing more pissed off by the second, I grabbed the scarred knob.

It didn’t budge.

The metal beneath my palm warmed, subtly at first, then surging with heat and intensity, forcing my hand back once again. Apparently, whatever had moved into Rylee’s apartment had decided to come out of hiding.

Game on.

Curling my hand into a fist, I draped my arm across my abdomen and angled sideways, ramming my shoulder against the thin wood. The frame cracked, and the lock popped, but it didn’t open.

I drove my shoulder into it again, a growl of satisfaction rumbling in my chest when the door exploded inward and banged against the wall.

The bedroom was stifling, the atmosphere heavy and cloying.

Hot and arid, the air seemed to move, flowing and shifting, flickering like an invisible flame. Sweat beaded across my brow and slicked the skin on my back when I stepped into the room, and every breath seared, sticking in my throat.

Across from the bed, the closet door stood open, showing the jumbled contents piled haphazardly on the floor. Clothes, hangers, shoes, boxes, and an assortment of odds and ends spilled out onto the carpet, while inside, the mountain of debris pulsed like a heartbeat.

I inched closer, making it as far as the end of the mattress before the wind kicked up, slamming into me like a hurricane. My hair whipped around my face, and my wings caught on the updraft.

I tried to tuck them closer, to shield them from the onslaught, but the new position only caused more damage. Feathers tore free to fly around the room, and tufts of down clung to my eyelashes.

Ducking my head, I shielded myself as best I could, but ultimately, I could do nothing but wait for the storm to pass. Magic flared to life inside me, pushing against my consciousness, but I battled it back, unwilling to unleash that kind of power, even to protect myself.

I finally understood what we were dealing with, and I worried any show of force would send it back into hiding. Plus, I didn’t exactly relish using a magical uppercut on a baby.

Rylee, however, didn’t have the same restraint.

Screaming like a fucking banshee, he charged into the room, frying pan held out in front of him with both hands. Then, with about as much coordination as a newborn giraffe, he began waving the skillet around, banging it against everything from the dresser to my arms and chest.

Insane? Yes. Effective? Surprisingly, also yes.

The harsh wind didn’t vanish. It just retreated to swirl around the edges of the room, and I sensed a feeling of confusion mixed with cautious humor.

And honestly, same.

Though the danger had passed, Rylee didn’t stop. He continued to swing the pan in wild arcs as he screamed a litany of colorful threats.

“Rylee!” I shouted. “Stop!”

My voice boomed, vibrating the windowpanes, but it did nothing to penetrate the haze of frenzied violence. When he brought the pan down again, swinging it like an ax, I caught him by the arms and wrested the weapon from him, tossing it onto the mattress.

“Rylee!” Grabbing him by the shoulders, I stooped so I could look him in the eyes, and gave him a gentle shake. “Rylee, you can stop. It’s over now.”

Eyes wide, pupils blown, it took a minute for his gaze to focus, and even then, recognition came slowly. Once reasoning returned, however, the panic didn’t fade. Instead, it found something else to focus on.

“Oh, my god,” he breathed. “Your wings. Your feathers. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m not hurt.”

“But your feathers,” he repeated, his eyes straying to the floor. “There’s so many.”

Tawny quills and white down blanketed the carpet, some occasionally getting caught on the breeze and floating up from the floor. It looked a lot worse than it felt, though, and the feathers would grow back in a day or two.

“This is all my fault,” he whispered, his bottom lip quivering as he continued to survey the carnage. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

“Rylee, it’s fine.” I brushed his hair back from his face and stroked his cheeks, trying to comfort him. “It was just a little temper tantrum.”

He finally looked at me again, his expression a mixture of guilt and incredulity. “You got poltergeisted by a fucking ghost—”

“It’s not a ghost.”

“—and you call that a temper tantrum ?” he finished, ignoring the interruption. “You know what? This is fine. I can fix it.” Jerking out of my grasp, he dropped to the floor and began gathering the fallen quills. “We can put them back. That’s what we’ll do.”

With super glue? I didn’t know what kind of thoughts he had swirling in that brain of his, or if he was thinking at all, but we would not be turning my wings into arts and crafts time at the community center.

“Rylee, please stop.” Falling to my knees beside him, I tried to take his hands, but he batted me away and continued gathering feathers. “Rylee! Damn it, stop.”

“Don’t worry,” he assured me, his voice somehow both flat and frantic. “I’ll make it right. I might need to watch a YouTube video, but it shouldn’t be that hard.”

“You can’t just glue them back on. That’s not how any of this works.”

“Right. Of course. I probably have a needle somewhere.”

What the actual fuck? Now he planned to sew them back on, like a goddamn quilting circle?

“Rylee!” I bellowed, grabbing him by the face and forcing him to look at me. “I’m not hurt. My feathers will grow back. Everything is fine, okay? No one is in danger.”

When he just continued to stare at me with glassy, red-rimmed eyes, I couldn’t take it anymore. The instincts I had been battling back for days forced their way to the surface, demanding I do something—anything—to erase that look from his face.

So, I did the only thing I could think of, the only way I knew how to comfort him.

I pulled him to me and slanted my mouth over his.