Heroic Hearts

COMFORT ZONE by Kelley Armstrong

I was going to be the one who told the stories of heroes. Fictional heroes, characters born in my head and cast out into make-believe worlds where they would, naturally, save the day, rescue the dude-in-distress, bring about world peace, and, if they were really feeling energetic, cure the common cold.

I would tell the stories that would grace a thousand movie screens. Before that, I had to hone my skills, so I joined high school writing clubs, and every time I showed off a new storyboard, fellow scribes would point at my protagonist and say, “Is that you?” The answer was always no. For them, stories were wish fulfillment, bringing to life an idealized version of themselves. I could create entire universes in my head, but I could not stretch my imagination far enough to place myself in the role of hero.

I was the quiet girl with the stutter. The poor little rich girl, who lived in a penthouse with a housekeeper while her father traveled for work. To most of my classmates, I was a ghost. An invisible girl who passed without a ripple. Perhaps it’s ironic, then, that if they remember me at all, it’s as the girl who saw ghosts. Who snapped one day and was hustled off to a padded room.

Hey, remember Chloe Saunders? Wasn’t she the one who lost it? Started ranting about ghosts? I hear she’s still locked up in a psych ward.

Even there, I’m not the hero of my story; I’m the victim of it.

Thankfully, that version isn’t the truth, and that ending definitely isn’t. My life got a whole lot more interesting after I started seeing ghosts. I became someone else. Someone who is indeed the protagonist of her own story. Hero, though? No. To be a hero, you need to step off your own path to help others in distress, and some of us don’t have the luxury of doing that. We have our own safety—and the safety of those we love—to worry about, and we cannot be distracted by altruism. Or that’s what we tell ourselves.

I’m twenty-one now, in my last year of university. I haven’t lived in the States for four years, and I’m not sure I’ll ever go back. It’s safer for us in Canada. Also, while I still write, a career in screenwriting feels like the dream of a child. Or, perhaps, the dream of a girl destined to an ordinary life. For me, going to school under an assumed name and suffering twice-weekly check-ins with my parole officers—sorry, security detail—is as normal as it gets.

Still, my life is far closer to normal than I’d once imagined possible. I’m going to a regular university, walking from class without a bodyguard trailing behind me, and enjoying a warm October day, gold and scarlet leaves pirouetting around me. I’m heading to the apartment I share with my boyfriend. Tonight we’re staying in, studying and making spaghetti, and if we get done with our homework early, we might cut loose and rent a movie. Terribly mundane. Wonderfully mundane for a genetically modified necromancer and a genetically modified werewolf. There are days, even weeks, when we are just a regular couple, crazy in love, studying our asses off and enjoying the kind of stability we’d once envied.

Behind our apartment complex, there’s a tiny courtyard. As I cut through it, a voice says, “Miss?”

I jump a foot in the air and nearly drop my books, proving that no matter what I’ve been through, in some ways, I haven’t changed at all.

A guy walks toward me, and I curse myself for not noticing him sooner. I’m no longer the girl who can afford to float through life with her head in the clouds. Even at four p.m., in downtown Toronto, I can’t step into a quiet spot without being aware of everyone around me. Except, apparently, I just did.

Before I blame myself too much for that, I must acknowledge the possibility that there’s a reason I didn’t see this guy. Because he made sure I didn’t until it was too late to flee.

While there are far more valuable subjects from our experiments, Derek and I get our share of unwanted attention from groups hoping to recruit us while we’re still young and naive. And they’re not above having a guy—my age, blond, cute—waylay me to make their offer. They’re also not above kidnapping me so they can deliver a more complete sales pitch.

I should drop my books to free my hands for fighting, but let’s be honest, years of martial arts training still hasn’t turned my body into a lethal weapon. I’m small and kind of clumsy. I can fight. I will. It’s just not my primary skill set. As for that primary skill set, well, I’m a necromancer. That limits my choices down to one really unsavory power.

I glance around the park and nod as I spot the remains of a dead squirrel.

When I first came into my abilities, I accidentally raised dead animals. And sometimes dead people. I’ve learned to control my ability, but as those early accidents prove, my genetic modifications make me a natural at a skill that normal necromancers take decades to perfect.

Even as I take note of the dead squirrel, it twitches, one half-skeletal paw lifting in a grotesque wave. I release the squirrel, and the paw drops, but the connection between us still sizzles like a live wire. One jolt of focused thought, and this guy will have a rotting squirrel going for his throat. Well, more like leaping onto his pant leg, but in my experience, that’s enough.

“Miss?” the guy says again, still walking toward me.

I clutch the textbooks to my chest and widen my eyes. “Y-yes,” I say. I don’t stutter much these days, but faking it can come in handy. It makes me the last person anyone expects to launch a zombified attack squirrel.

As the guy crosses those last steps, I catch . . . I’m never quite sure what I catch in a case like this. It’s much easier when the person is dressed in a crinolined gown or a Union soldier uniform. If they look like a regular person, recognizing them as a ghost takes a little more. Some give themselves away by walking through furniture. Or other people ignore them, even dogs not glancing up as they pass. But for the few who give none of the usual “dead people” signals, recognizing them as ghosts has taken years, and I’m still not sure how I know.

I cut the connection between myself and the squirrel. Then I do something terrible, something I hate myself for. Something I hate myself for a little less each time I do it, and then I feel a little colder, a little further from the person I want to be.

I shake my head and continue walking, and when he jogs up beside me, I say, “No.” Just that one word. No. A horrible word, in its way, and it doesn’t matter how many necromancers tell me this is the right thing to do, the only thing to do, I will never lose that initial surge of guilt. And I’m not sure I should.

“Just listen,” he says. “Please.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

I am sorry. So sorry. I’m the girl who wrote stories about heroes. I’m still the girl who scribbles those stories when she has a spare moment. My heroes are no longer anonymous creations. They’re inspired by people I know. At first, by people who made sacrifices to help us. Lately, by two of our friends, Maya and Daniel, who juggle postgrad studies with helping supernaturals.

Maya and Daniel help others, and I don’t, and it’s killing me a little more each day. I create characters by putting myself in the shoes of others. I can imagine only too well what it’s like for ghosts. They wander the world, trapped between dimensions, needing something done before they can cross over. Yet they cannot interact with our world. Cannot speak to anyone . . . until one day, they see a necromancer.

They recognize the faint glow that marks us like an old-fashioned pay phone sign. The shining light in the darkness. At last, here is a way to communicate with the outside world. A way to accomplish what they must accomplish to cross over. They pick up the receiver . . . and there is nothing. The line is severed. The necromancer walks on, heart hardened to their pleas.

“Just two minutes,” the guy says. “Two minutes of your time, miss.”

Keep walking.

Keep walking.

For ghosts, we’re that one pay phone in the desert. For necromancers, though, ghosts are toll booths that spring up in our path everywhere we go, and to pass, we must agree to pay the toll without knowing what it is.

Please tell my wife I love her.

Sure, I can do that. Just pop an anonymous letter in the mail.

Please find my grandfather’s watch and give it to my son.

I have classes. I can’t hop on a plane and fly to your house.

Please find my killer and bring him to justice.

Do you see me? I’m a twenty-one-year-old student. Not a cop.

Please tell my wife she’s a no-good cheating whore, so I can rest in peace.

Wait. What? No. Hell, no. Now leave me alone.

My faith in humanity has been tested by the sheer number of the last kind. Ghosts trapped in this realm by bitterness and a need for revenge. I’ve taken to humming “Let It Go” as my answer, which works much better on modern ghosts.

Then there are the ghosts who treat necromancers like an Internet connection. They want us to pop off an e-mail. Or check the stock market. Hey, you there, necromancer, can you tell me how the Cubs are doing this season? Can you tell me how my favorite TV show ended? Simple requests, easily completed, but once you start doing them, you never stop, and pretty soon, you have a dozen ghosts wanting weekly coffee dates, during which they watch you creep on their family and friends’ social media accounts.

Just say no. The mantra of necromancers everywhere.

So I say it to this guy. And I keep walking until he leaps into my path with “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“It usually is,” I murmur . . . and walk through him.

He swings around to get in front of me again. “No, seriously. It’s my little sister. She’s—”

“No,” a deep voice rumbles behind me.

I glance over to see a guy stalking our way. Now, I’ll be blunt—if I didn’t know Derek Souza, he’d send me scurrying away a whole lot faster than this ghost would. Six foot three. Built like a quarterback. With a scowl known to send small children running. Shaggy dark hair and a broad face, rough from old acne scars. Derek is . . . well, I think he’s the hottest guy ever . . . which puts me in a fan group of one.

“Did she tell you to go away?” he says.

The ghost sputters.

“Yes,” Derek says. “She did. Now go.”

The ghost glances at me. “How can he see—?”

“I can’t,” Derek says. “Can’t see you. Can’t hear you. Doesn’t mean I don’t know exactly where you are and exactly what you’re saying. Now piss off.”

I lay my hand on Derek’s arm. “I’m giving him two minutes.”

Derek’s jaw works, but he only eases back with a curt nod.

I turn to the ghost. “I mean that. Two minutes.” I lift my watch and hit a timer. “Go.”

“It’s my sister. I . . . I died last night. Not really sure how.” A strained chuckle. “Well, I may not know how—that part’s a blank—but I do know why. I got mixed up in . . .” He swallows. “Can I have three minutes? Please?”

“Just talk.”

He rocks back on his heels. “It’s just me and my sister. Half sister. She’s thirteen. Our mom died last year. I’ve been trying to take care of my sister—Gina—and I got mixed up in . . .”

He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I agreed to move some product. Drugs. A onetime thing. A buddy convinced me it was easy money. As you can see”—he throws up his arms—“not so easy. I got the drugs, and then they disappeared. When I explained, the dealer threatened to go after my sister. I freaked out and . . . and that’s the last thing I remember.”

The ghost inhales deeply, those habits of life slow to fade. “Now she’s in danger. She was staying at a friend’s house last night. I’ve been haunting the apartment, waiting for her. She came home at lunch and found two guys searching the place. So she ran. They went after her. I followed as long as I could. Then I lost her. Now she’s out there, and they’re hunting for her, thinking she knows where to find the drugs, and I can’t even explain to her what’s going on.”

“You want me to tell the police?” I say. “Explain it to them so they can find her?”

“Normally, yes. Absolutely. But this dealer gets his drugs from a cop. Stolen from evidence.”

“So you’re asking me to . . .”

“Find Gina. Tell her what’s happened. Help her. Please. And tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I’m so, so sorry.”

Derek and I are in our apartment. I told him the ghost’s story on the way up. As for the ghost himself—Justin—I told him I’d think about it and took down the information he provided, in case we followed up. I’m afraid that was an excuse, empty words blurted to let me flee like a coward so I didn’t have to tell him no.

Now I’m curled up on the sofa with Derek, my back against him, his arms around me. We aren’t talking. We haven’t talked since I finished the story. I’m holding back the plaintive cry of “We have to do something,” and he’s holding back the ugly truth of “There’s nothing we can do.”

No, there’s nothing we should do. That’s the problem. If we couldn’t honestly do anything, we’d just feel bad. Refusing to do anything is so much worse.

Finally, he says, “I’ll let Sean know. His people can look for her.”

Sean Nast is the guy who took us in, who built an entire wilderness community for the Edison Group subjects, where we could grow up in safety. He’s also the one who sends our “parole officers” to check in on us. As the co-CEO of a supernatural Cabal, he has entire security departments at his disposal. He can—and will—send investigators to find this girl.

But when? How long will it take to reorganize missions and dispatch help? Too long for a thirteen-year-old girl with a murderous drug dealer on her tail.

“We can’t get involved,” Derek says. “This is a dealer. A guy who obviously has no problem killing anyone who gets in his way. We’ll tell Maya and Daniel about it.”

I don’t answer. He doesn’t expect me to. While our friends would happily fly from Vancouver to help, we can’t dump this on them.

“We’ll . . . figure out something,” Derek says.

I nod and push to my feet. “I’ll start the spaghetti.”

He nudges me back down. “I’ve got it. You write down what Justin told you. Get all the details out while you remember them.”

I kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”

He hugs me, murmurs again that we’ll figure something out, and then pads off to the kitchen to start dinner.

Between readings that evening, I look up Justin’s story. That’s the first basic step, and there’s a good chance it’ll be the last. He wouldn’t be the first secret supernatural—living or dead—to try luring us into trouble with a sob story. That’s what I’m hoping for here. That I’ll find no evidence to corroborate his claims and we can leave it at that.

I find the story right away. The body of a young man discovered in the ravines this morning, dead of a gunshot wound. Lacking ID, the police are circulating a sketch and description. It’s Justin. While the police aren’t speculating on the manner of his death, someone in the comments points out that the spot where he was found is known for drug activity. Also, in Toronto, gun-related death usually means organized crime of some variety.

So Justin’s story checks out. I tell Derek. He grunts and keeps working, soldering circuits for a project. That doesn’t mean we’ve dropped it—just that we’re letting it slide for now. Taking time to think this through and make our decision in the morning.

Derek and I have been together since I was fifteen. Thus followed years of impatiently waiting for the day when we could start sleeping together. I don’t mean sex. Even in a community as small as ours, it was easy enough to find private time. What we longed for was the actual “sleeping together.” Not needing to part at the end of the evening. Going to bed together and waking up together and truly feeling like a couple who planned to be together for the rest of their lives.

For us, it’s more than simple nighttime companionship. It’s about feeling safe and knowing the other is safe. We sleep curled up and entwined, his arms around me, my head against his chest. This means that if one of us slips from bed, the other almost certainly notices. So that night, when his warmth and his heartbeat disappear, I wake to hear the soft swish of him pulling on his jeans.

“Going for a run?” I ask.

The sound stops, and I crack open one eye to see him poised in a sliver of moonlight, his chest bare, jeans half on.

Derek’s “runs” aren’t jogs through the streets of Toronto. We have a car, which spends most of its life in a very expensive parking garage, the advantage of having a rich father who tries to cushion my life with stacks of cash. That car usually comes out only when Derek and I go to the ravines—or outside the city—for his runs. If I’m swamped with work, he’ll insist on going alone. I’m not currently swamped with work.

Still, he could say yes. When he’s swamped with work, he sometimes needs the stress release of a run, and he wouldn’t wake me at two a.m. to accompany him. It’d be such an easy lie to tell. Yet once we start lying to each other—even for the best reasons—we erode the thing we treasure above all else. Trust.

We have a small circle of people in our lives that we trust, but none so implicitly as each other. In this life, we need that. The one person who would never betray us, never hurt us, never lie to us.

“I’m restless,” he says. “Not sleeping. No reason you shouldn’t.”

I lift onto my elbow. “So you’re going for a walk?”

“Yeah.”

“Over to Justin’s apartment to see whether you can pick up his sister’s trail?”

When he’s quiet, I sit up. “Answer carefully, Derek. Because if you say you just need air, and then I find out you ended up three miles away at their apartment, I’ll sleep on the sofa for a month.”

One brow rises. “Shouldn’t I be the one sleeping on the sofa?”

“You’ll feel worse if I do.”

A low rumble of a laugh. “True.” He sits on the edge of the bed and tucks back a lock of my hair. “I wasn’t planning to follow her trail, necessarily. To do that, I’d need her scent. I was going to see whether Justin was right about the key being in the garden.”

“And if it was?”

“I’d go in and find a scent source.”

“Then come straight home without trying to find her trail? Leave that until tomorrow because it’s so much easier sniffing city sidewalks in broad daylight?”

He sighs and leans against the headboard. “Yeah, I guess I’d have checked it out. I just wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

“You always think that far ahead, Derek. You just weren’t committing to trying to find her. Baby steps. With any luck, there’d be no key, so we could stop there. Or you wouldn’t be able to find a good source of her scent in the apartment, so we could stop there. Or the trail would be cold, so we could stop there.” I shift up beside him. “Not that you’d actually be happy if we had an excuse to stop. The excuse is telling yourself you were looking for an excuse.”

He sighs again, deeper. “We don’t need this shit.”

“We don’t.”

“It doesn’t involve us.”

“It doesn’t.”

“We could get hurt.”

When I don’t answer that, he manages a still deeper sigh, one that shudders through him. “Fine. Yes. I wasn’t thinking that I could get hurt. I was thinking you could. I was leaving you behind, which is stupid. I should have backup. Second pair of eyes and all that. And if I had managed to sneak out, you’d have been very cross with me.”

I sputter a laugh. “Which is terrible.”

“It is.” He glances over. “I’d rather you fought, like Maya. Lose your temper. Yell at me. Maybe throw a few things. Kick my ass. Your ‘very cross’ is so much worse. Almost as bad as ‘quietly disappointed.’ ”

I hug him. “Well, you got away with ‘mildly exasperated’ this time. Now let’s go see if we can find a scent source. We’ll be fine. Remember, the couple that breaks and enters together goes to prison together.”

He shakes his head and pushes out of bed, and we get ready to go.

The key is where Justin said to expect it. He and his sister live in an old house that’s been converted to apartments, and they keep a key under a garden rock. From there, it’s just a matter of climbing rickety external stairs and opening the apartment. Inside we find a photograph with a woman—their mother, I presume—looping her arms around a teenage Justin and a preteen girl who must be Gina.

I’m stepping outside when Derek yanks me back and shoulders past me without a word. At one time, I’d have grumbled at him wanting to take the lead, put himself between me and the oh-so-dangerous world. That’s changed—for both of us. If he pulled me back, it’s because he saw something.

He stands on the tiny stoop and scans the narrow laneway below the stairs.

“Is there another exit?” he asks, his voice a low rumble.

“A window. I could take that.”

I don’t suggest he go out the window—he wouldn’t fit. He pauses, weighing the safety of sending me another way against the danger of me going it alone.

“Do you see something?” I whisper.

“Heard. Footsteps.”

His gaze sweeps back and forth like a searchlight. The lane is dark and silent. Or it is to me. His night vision and werewolf hearing mean he’s rightly the person who should step out first.

“You think someone’s staking out the apartment,” I whisper.

“They killed the guy who lived here. After he ripped them off. Now they’re after his sister. Who also lives here.” His voice drops to an almost inaudible mutter. “Why didn’t I expect this? Fucking stupid.”

“We both didn’t expect it, because dealing with drug dealers isn’t really our thing.”

Another muttered profanity. Then, “I’m going down. As soon as I give the all clear, follow. Or if you hear a fight, get over to that coffee shop on the corner. I’ll meet you inside.”

I want to argue, but he’s right. Before he can leave, I catch his sleeve.

“These aren’t supernaturals,” I say. “They may have guns.”

“Yeah, I know. Be careful.”

He slips down the rickety steps, somehow managing not to creak a single one, despite his size. I withdraw into the shadows of the doorway.

Below, the lane remains silent and still. Derek pauses and sniffs the air. A sharp shake of his head has me stifling a laugh. Sniffing an alleyway on a warm night is never the best idea.

He rubs his nose and then inhales again. His head swivels, as if he’s caught a sound. It’s coming from farther down the laneway. He takes one step in that direction. Then he pauses and peers toward the street. A car passes. That must be all that caught his attention, though, because after it’s gone, he’s making his way down the lane.

I lose sight of him three steps into the darkness, and my pulse quickens. I resist the urge to try getting a better look, and I strain to listen instead. This is one thing that living with a werewolf has taught me—use all your senses. Hearing works here, especially when I close my eyes and focus.

I don’t hear Derek’s footsteps. That’s normal. If I were a werewolf, I might pick up the faint scuff of his shoes, but to a human, he moves silently. Right now, silence in general is good. It means he hasn’t found anything. Then comes a cry of surprise, too high-pitched to be Derek. The smack of fist hitting flesh. The thud of a body slamming into a wall. Grunts and groans, none of them my boyfriend’s, but that doesn’t keep me from bouncing on my toes, wanting to clamber down those stairs and see what’s happening.

I know what’s happening. I can tell by the sounds. Derek got the jump on whoever was watching the apartment. Time for me to run. Get to that coffee shop.

That’s the plan. And the plan, frankly, sucks. It’s the antithesis of what I imagined in those movies I’d write someday, where the girl never needed to run while her boyfriend fought the bad guys. But this is the story I’m stuck with. He’s the genetically modified super-soldier, and I’m the girl who can talk to ghosts. One of these things is always better in a fight. The other can fight, but having her there worries and distracts him. That stings, and it will never stop stinging, but the best way to keep him safe is to do as he said—use this diversion to get to safety.

I scamper down the stairs as quietly as possible, which isn’t quietly at all. Derek hears me. I can tell when words punctuate the sounds of fighting. “Why were you following me?” “What do you want?” Meaningless dialogue as he makes sure they don’t hear me.

I creep toward the end of the lane. Duck around the corner, onto the street and—

Hands grab me. I yelp, but one of those hands slaps over my mouth, and before I can even process what’s happening, I’m propelled into a shadow-shrouded doorway and shoved up against the wall. A guy’s face lowers to mine. Pale skin glows from the depths of a hoodie, and that’s all I see. No gun, though. Not in his hands, at least.

“Where’s the girl?” a man’s voice says.

“G-girl?”

“What did you want in that apartment?”

“N-nothing,” I say, faking my stammer. “M-my b-boyfriend said a f-friend of his—”

The guy gasps, head jerking up. I slam him backward, and he stumbles, hand clapping to his stomach, where blood oozes through his fingers.

“You—you—”

As I brandish the switchblade, my attention stays on his hands, watching to see if he’ll go for a gun while I back out of the doorway onto the sidewalk. A passing car doesn’t even slow.

The guy advances on me, one hand pressed to his wound, the other jabbing at me. “You think you can get away with that?”

“Kinda, yeah. The real question is whether you’re going to get away with that.” I nod at his injury. “Or do you want more?”

It’s pure bravado. Laughable even, and his face twists. Then he freezes. Blinks. Backs away, hands rising before he wheels and tears off down the street.

“You’re right behind me, aren’t you?” I say.

“Yeah.”

I turn to see Derek. He’s in half shadow, a massive dark hulk with blood dripping from a cut lip. It’s his hand that sent the guy running, though. It’s misshapen, the nails thickened to claws. A localized partial Change makes a very nice weapon, but—when dealing with humans—it’s even better as a pure “What the hell?” scare tactic, especially paired with the blood dripping from his mouth.

“Is the other guy gone?” I say, nodding to the alley.

“Both of them, yeah.”

I arch my brows.

“Seems I interrupted a drug deal,” he says.

“Ah. Well, maybe you scared them straight.”

A rumbling chuckle. “Doubt it.” He shakes his head. “First I didn’t think to see if anyone was watching the apartment. Then I missed the actual guy who was. I’m screwing up all over the place, and we’ve barely started.”

“We’re screwing up. If they were Cabal half demons sent to kidnap us, we’d be fine. This is not our wheelhouse.” I glance back toward the apartment. “I’ll understand if you want to quit. You’re already injured.”

“Just a bloody lip. If you’re okay to keep going . . .”

“I am. We just really need to make sure we aren’t being followed, or instead of rescuing this girl, we’ll lead the bad guys right to her.”

“Agreed.”

There seemed to only be the one guy watching the apartment, and we follow his trail a half block where it disappears at the curb, as if he called a friend or a cab. If he’s smart, the hospital will be his next stop. We don’t see anyone else around, but we keep our eyes out as we backtrack to the apartment and start following Gina’s trail. Well, Derek follows it. He hasn’t shifted. Whatever the hour, a two-hundred-pound black wolf in downtown Toronto is kinda noticeable.

Wolf form would be easier—Derek could just walk with his nose down. Being in human form requires stopping for a sniff check at every corner and backtracking when he loses the trail, woven through a hundred others.

Justin warned us that Gina had no place to go. She had no idea where her father was. More distant relatives were indeed distant, living in the prairies and long out of contact. There’d been a teacher she’d been close to, but she’d retired last year. Their social worker was new, and Gina didn’t feel comfortable with her yet. While she had plenty of friends, she wouldn’t bring trouble to their doorsteps.

Her trail confirms the sad truth of her situation. After she fled the apartment, she’d moved from public space to public space. A coffee shop. A library. Another coffee shop. Eaton Centre mall. Derek loses her outside the last. Too many scents and too many entrances.

We’re standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to change—despite the complete lack of cars—when Derek’s head jerks up. After making sure there’s no one around, he drops to one knee and sniffs near the sidewalk.

I’m about to ask whether he smells something when a movement catches my attention. Someone’s crossing the road a half block down. Just as I lay my fingers on Derek’s shoulder, the woman moves under a streetlamp, and I see her A-line polka-dot dress. A car turns the corner and heads straight for her, and she only glances at it. The car whooshes past, close enough to ruffle her skirt, which stays perfectly flat.

The ghost crosses to our side and strolls our way. I press the amulet under my T-shirt. A family heirloom, it douses the glow that marks me as someone who can hear the dead. For an ordinary necromancer, it would cover that light entirely. For me, it just turns my neon pulsing Necromancer Here! sign into a gentle glow. If ghosts do see it, experienced ones presume I’m a very weak and untrained necromancer, lacking the power to help them.

“Gina came this way,” Derek says as he rises.

“Oh? Great. All right, then. Can you tell which way she went? I know it’s hard to determine scent direction.”

His brows rise only for a split second before he recognizes my blather as cover.

Why hello, ghost lady who is walking straight toward me. I’m afraid I don’t see you there. I’m just so busy talking to my boyfriend. Deep in very important conversation.

It isn’t necessary. The ghost doesn’t seem to see me. She just strolls along, humming under her breath, ignoring the humans at the streetlight.

“The girl by the city hall skating rink,” she says as she passes.

I blink as she keeps going. “Wh-what?”

She stops and looks over her shoulder. “You are looking for a girl, yes? That’s what I thought I heard when your boyfriend was sniffing around earlier. Werewolf, I presume?”

“Uh, yes . . .”

She smiles, lipstick glowing a cartoon red under the streetlight. “Haven’t seen one of those in ages. As for the girl . . . Thirteen, maybe fourteen? Running from someone?”

“Not us.”

She gives a tinkling laugh. “Ah, sugar, I had no doubt of that. Neither of you strikes me as the sort who goes around frightening children.” She glances at Derek. “Not on purpose, anyway. Go help the girl. Poor thing’s putting on a brave face, but she’s scared out of her wits. This town ain’t too bad, but no place is good for a girl like that on her own.”

“Thank you.” I pause. “If there’s anything I can do—”

Her tinkling laugh cuts me short. “Not looking for quid pro quo, sugar. Just a fellow traveler in the night. You take care of yourself now.”

With that, she’s gone, sauntering along the dark street.

I tell Derek what she said.

“Seem legit?” he says.

“Yes, but after earlier, we can’t take chances.”

“Let’s go check it out, then. Carefully.”

It isn’t a trap. There’s a girl huddled behind the giant TORONTO sign in Nathan Phillips Square, and she’s the one from that photograph in Justin and Gina’s apartment. She has her back against the sign, arms wrapped around her knees, backpack at her side. As we watch, a passing homeless man spots her and gives her wide berth. A woman pushing a cart walks over and exchanges a few words before moving on.

“She was telling Gina where she can find a shelter for teens,” Derek says.

“Not exactly well hidden, is she? No wonder that ghost noticed her.”

“You think that’s suspicious?”

I shake my head. “I think she’s even worse at this sort of thing than we are. She’s tired and scared, and at least here, if someone does grab her, she might be able to scream and bring help.”

Tucked behind that sign next to the out-of-season skating rink, she’s on the doorstep of city hall, in the heart of downtown. Did she really pick the spot because it was safe? Or because she’s hoping someone will notice her, someone who can do more than direct her to the nearest teen shelter?

At least this makes our job easy. Not like we need to worry about her bolting. Well, not unless . . .

I glance at Derek.

“I’m staying here,” he says. “I’ve got your back, but yeah, I’m not exactly the friendly face she needs right now.”

I put my arms around his neck and rise up to kiss him. A quick squeeze, and then I’m off. I get halfway there before Gina sees me coming. She doesn’t tense. Doesn’t grab her backpack. Just watches me approach.

“Gina?” I say.

That has her stiffening. I put out my palms and stay back. She gives me a once-over and relaxes. I might not have Derek’s brute strength, but there’s power in being able to lower people’s defenses, too.

“Don’t go back to your apartment,” I say. “There’s a guy watching it.”

“I know.” Not defensive. Not sarcastic. Flat, emotionless, empty. Defeated.

“Do you know what happened to your brother?” I ask.

Every muscle tenses, and grief flashes before she ducks her face, letting her light brown hair curtain it from view.

“I saw the news,” she says. “After . . . after I realized Justin hadn’t come home, I knew—Fuck!”

The word takes me by surprise as she slams her fist into the ground.

“He was stupid,” she says. “Always so fucking stupid. And see, Justin, now that you’re gone there’s no one to tell me I shouldn’t swear, is there?”

Tears well up as she continues. “You and your stupid, stupid schemes. We didn’t need the money. We never needed it, but you had to have it. Dad sent enough. Then you lost your job and suddenly you’re being stupid, doing stupid things and treating me like the stupid one, too dumb to figure it out.”

She swipes at her face. Then she looks up at me. “It’s true, isn’t it? What was in the news. That was him.”

I crouch to her level, staying an arm’s length away. “It is. I’m sorry.”

The tears burst through then, streaming down her face as she begins to sob.

We have a problem. Well, the first problem is what to do with Gina while we sort this out, but we can handle that. The bigger issue is that Justin lied. No one stole the drugs. He double-crossed the dealer.

According to Gina, everything had been fine while Justin worked in a sandwich shop. When the shop closed down, Justin said they’d be okay until he found a new job. Her dad sent them money every month, and it was enough to live on. Then Justin started sneaking around, making furtive calls, buying a second phone. She followed him and heard that he owed money to a guy, which he promised to repay soon. He had a plan. That plan, apparently, was double-crossing a drug dealer.

Gina had been following him when he took possession of the drugs. Then she watched where he hid them—inside the still-shuttered sandwich shop. That night, he told her to stay at a friend’s place. Yesterday, she went home at lunch to find two guys searching their apartment. She’d fled and realized that whatever Justin was up to, it’d gone wrong. That was when she went to a library and found the story about the unidentified body.

So Justin hid the drugs and then told the dealer they’d been stolen, and the guy threatened his sister . . . and then shot him? Wouldn’t they try to get his sister then, use her as leverage?

They’re following Gina because they think she has the drugs. What’s the chance that Justin’s partner in crime is his thirteen-year-old sister? No. There’s a reason they think Gina knows more, and I hate it. For Gina’s sake, I really hate it.

We’ve put Gina up in a hotel. That seems oddly impersonal. She’s thirteen—shouldn’t we take her back to our place? No. One, Justin knows where we live, and I don’t trust him. Two, while Derek would never complain, I know he’s uncomfortable with strangers in his “den.” I can easily afford to check into an upscale hotel, and that seems the safest place for Gina while we resolve this.

Then we need to confront Justin.

“Justin!” I call, as Derek and I stand in the courtyard behind our apartment. “Time for another chat.”

The ghost doesn’t show up right away. Usually, I have a spirit guide to help me with this sort of thing. Liz was another subject in our experiment, one who didn’t survive. Right now, she’s out of contact, enjoying her afterlife. Wonderful for her . . . lousy timing for us.

Justin must be within shouting distance, though. A few minutes later, he comes running into the courtyard.

“Did you find her?” he says. “Please say yes. I’ve been checking out her friends’ homes and her favorite spots all night.”

“Why are they after Gina?” I say.

He blinks. “Because they think she has the drugs.”

“Which you hid.”

“What? No. Someone stole them. I put them—”

“—in the sandwich shop where you used to work.”

He pauses.

“They’re still there,” I say. “We just checked.”

That’s a lie—we may have made mistakes tonight, but we aren’t stupid enough to risk being found near a drug stash.

Justin swallows. “I . . .”

“You thought you could double-cross a dealer. He figured it out, probably because you aren’t the first idiot to try it. They threatened your sister, and when you didn’t tell them where the drugs were, they shot you.” I continue. “So why go after Gina?”

“Like I said, they must think she knows where—”

“Bullshit. You’re not bringing your kid sister in on a plot like this. You aren’t even going to admit you have a little sister. You told them she took the drugs. That’s why they’re after her. They think she has the stash.”

“No. I wouldn’t—I’d never—This was for my sister. So we could keep the apartment until I got a new job.”

“Why is she with you?” I ask. “Why are you her guardian?”

His eyes bug. “She’s my sister.”

“It’s the money, isn’t it? The money her dad sends.”

He stares at me. Then very slowly, he sighs and drops his head to his hands. After a moment, he raises it.

“There is no money,” he says, quietly. “After Mom died, I got in touch with Gina’s dad, hoping he might help out. He told me to fuck off. Said Gina probably wasn’t his anyway, and . . . And he said a lot more. Nothing I was ever going to tell Gina.”

“So you lied.”

He nods. “I made up a story about why he couldn’t come and said he was sending money. My job at the sandwich shop was part time, minimum wage, but a few of us had a little side hustle selling weed. When the shop closed, I lost both jobs. I got in debt just paying rent on the apartment. The guy who supplied the weed gave me this job and told me to pretend I got mugged and someone stole the stuff. Then he’d buy it at half price. He said because I was a first-timer, they’d buy my story.”

“They didn’t, and you blamed Gina.”

His mouth opens. Then his face falls, gaze dropping. “Yes,” he says with a shudder. “I panicked. I said I had a little sister. I didn’t actually say she stole it. I said maybe she found it and hid it to teach me a lesson. I said I’d fix things—I’d confront her and get it back. The guy said he could do that himself, and I realized what he meant and started to say I lied—that I had the dope—but it was too late.”

I say nothing.

He continues. “I panicked. That’s no excuse, but it’s all I have. It was the first thing I thought of. I’d tell them that, now that I think about it, maybe no one stole it and my sister hid it. Then I’d give them back their stuff and it’d be fine.”

He meets my gaze. “Help me fix this. Please. I don’t care if she knows what I did and hates me for it. Just help me fix it.”

It’s not yet dawn, and we’re outside the sandwich shop where Justin stashed the drugs. Following his instructions, we’ve contacted the dealer to let him know where to find his product. The most complicated part of this operation so far? Finding a pay phone to make that call. But it’s done, and now we’re safely in a coffee shop watching the building.

We want to be sure the guy gets his product, but I don’t know how much good that will do. It’s a drug dealer—it isn’t like we can produce video evidence of him retrieving his goods, demand he leave Gina alone, and expect him to follow through on the deal. We can only trust that once he has his stuff, he’ll have no reason to bother her. We also contacted Sean to help navigate her through the system and get help.

As for Gina herself, she isn’t sleeping. Can’t say I blame her. She’s been texting for updates. I told her what we’re doing, and she’s been silent ever since. I could hope that means she’s gone to sleep, but I think she’s just waiting for my next message—the one to say it’s done.

Justin has been accessing the shop through the delivery door, which he still had a key for. We can see that from our spot, along with the front door. When someone finally shows up, it’s the guy I stabbed last night. He’s with a bigger guy, who stands watch. The wounded one doesn’t bother with the delivery door. He jimmies the front one and slips inside.

“Please find the stuff,” I whisper, as I clutch my now-cold hot chocolate. “Please find it.”

“He will,” Derek says.

Sure enough, the door reopens and the guy walks out with a duffel bag.

“Okay,” I say. “We’ll let him get out of sight and then—”

A police car appears from nowhere, sirens flicking to life. The two guys turn to run, but two foot officers are already closing in from both sides. The bigger guy reaches under his jacket. He doesn’t get a chance to pull out a gun. The officers are on him, their own weapons drawn.

That’s when I see Gina. She’s standing on the corner, arms crossed as she watches the arrest.

I’m on my feet and flying out the door before Derek can stop me. He catches up, and we continue down the road. Gina doesn’t see us coming. She only sees the police cuffing the guys. When we draw close, I slow, in case she bolts, but she only turns to us and grins.

“You called them?” I say.

She nods. “They shot my brother. I’m not letting them get away with that.”

No wonder she’d been so keen to know what we were doing. I’d considered doing this myself, but we’d decided our primary concern had to be Gina, and if the guys escaped the police, she’d be in even more danger.

As she watches the arrest, she glows with triumph. The moment they’re gone, though, she sags.

“It doesn’t help, does it?” she says. “Doesn’t bring him back.”

“No, but it’s still a good thing, making them pay.”

She shrugs. “I guess so. I just wish . . . I wish I knew why he’d done it. Why the money was so important.” Her voice drops. “More important than me.”

I lay my hand on her arm. “I think there’s someone you need to talk to about that.”

We return to the courtyard where I first met Justin. While Derek keeps Gina occupied, I summon Justin and tell him what I’m about to do, make sure he’s okay with that. He is.

I explain to Gina that I’m a psychic, in contact with her brother. She’s far less shocked than one might expect. There’s an accepted place in the human world for people who can speak to ghosts—far more than those who can turn into wolves—and I never risk much by admitting what I can do.

I have Justin prove it’s him—Gina asking a question only he can answer. She didn’t want to bother with that, but it’ll be important later, when the adrenaline rush of tonight passes and she questions what happened.

Once we’ve established he’s really there, I act as interpreter while Derek leaves the courtyard, giving them as much privacy as we can manage.

Justin admits the truth about Gina’s father, and the truth about what he did—panicking and blaming her for the drugs, thinking the lie would give him a chance to fix it.

They say everything they need to say. The love and the anger and the grief and the forgiveness. They spend one last hour together, and then Gina sets him free, tells him she’ll be fine and he needs to go someplace better, trusts he will go someplace better, that he deserves it. He does, and he will. I’m certain of that.

That evening we’re back in our apartment, right where we were when this started, on the couch with me curled up on Derek’s lap, both of us sitting in silent contemplation. Gina is safely with one of Sean’s people, who’ll keep her safe while they figure out the next steps to her new life.

“You made the right call listening to this ghost,” Derek says. “He’s found peace, and his sister is safe, thanks to you.”

“Thanks to us,” I say. “Thank you for helping.”

He snorts. “Like I’d just let you do it on your own. I want to help, too, Chloe. You know that. Sure, part of me would rather we holed up in a den I can protect. But that’s not how you’re wired.”

“It’s not how you’re wired, either.”

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe. All I do know is that it’s been killing you to watch Maya and Daniel help others while we bury ourselves in our studies and pretend we don’t have time for anything else. If they have time, we do, too. School comes first, but that doesn’t mean we can’t lend a hand now and then to someone who needs it as badly as we once did. Would that make you feel better?”

I nod. “It would.”

He reaches for his phone. “Then let’s see what Maya has for us.”

I lean over to kiss him. Then we make the call.