Chapter 28

"If you've been dead since I got here, who have I been talking to all this time?" I asked, my voice paper thin.

Instead of answering me, the ghost simply vanished.

"Well, great. Fuck you too, then. All these months of scaring the ever-living shit out of me, and when I finally solve the mystery of you, you just ghost me. I know you're dead and all, and that sucks, but have you ever heard of common decency? In case you missed that day at school, let me bring you up to speed. Not cool, lady. Not cool." I dropped the lab coat on Masterson's desk before gingerly placing her—shudder—murder weapon next to it. "Guess you can't cross over yet, which means I'm not finished with my job, huh? I have to fucking find your body, don't I? I don't like finding bodies. Bodies scare me more than you do. Bodies are gross and all decomposed and sometimes come back to life and try to eat me."

To say that I wasn't handling my little revelation very well would be the fucking understatement of a lifetime. Would you? I mean, Jesus. The woman I thought I'd been baring my soul to has been dead the entire time. Which means I'd been had. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Who the fuck was the impostor I'd been talking to? Did Masterson have an evil twin? Oh, shit... Did the evil twin kill her and take her place so she could destroy us all? Was she jealous of her situationship with Temperance and wanted to steal her man? Ohmigod, what if she was Temperance's estranged wife, and he'd been having an affair with Lizzie all this time, so she offed her in order to get what she wanted?

I slapped myself, the sound ringing out in the little office. "Get yourself together, Dahlia. Now is not the time to start plotting romantic thrillers. You need to find your men, fill them the eff in, and get the hell out of Dodge."

There were some holes in that plan, but I didn't care. The only thing that mattered was sharing what I'd learned so it wouldn't be on me alone to figure out what to do with the secret.

Yanking open the office door, I stepped out into the hallway, the urge to get to my men so strong I could feel it pulsing in my veins. Something was wrong in the energy swirling through Blackwood, though. It pulled me off center, made me stop and take in my surroundings before I continued on. Was it another spirit? Or had Masterson returned for a little extra haunting?

With a quick glance from side to side, I noted no visible ghosts, nothing out of the ordinary. Well... not nothing.

The usually empty halls were not so empty. I wouldn't say they were crowded, but more than a few people were rushing around. Doors opened and closed as they darted into rooms or knocked urgently on someone else"s.

Spotting a familiar head of inky black hair, I made my way over to Sorcha. The usually kempt vampire was decidedly unkempt. That was a real departure, and it sent all my spidey senses tingling.

"Sorcha, is everything okay?" I asked as she took a long swig from a crystal decanter filled with what smelled a lot like whiskey but looked like blood.

"No. They're coming for us, you naive little creature. Haven't you been paying attention?"

I rolled my lips together, the news not so much a surprise as a pile-on. Wasn't one crisis at a time enough? Couldn't people take a number and wait their turn?

"So you're going to get hammered and just wait for them?" I asked, gesturing to the bottle in her hand.

"No. I'm going to get pissed and make my escape. If you know what's good for you, you'll do the same."

"Uh, Sorcha, I think you're forgetting something."

She raised a brow at me.

"What about the wards?"

"Devil take them. I'd rather risk my chances out there in the woods than stay locked in here only to burn alive when they set this place on fire."

Kit came tearing around the corner, his expression bedraggled as he rushed to Sorcha. "Come on. We have to go. They've breached the gates. They'll be here within the next ten minutes at the most."

"No! You have to stay and fight. What about the rest of us?"

Kit shot me a withering look. "I'm a demon, darling girl. I don't care about the rest of you."

I shook my head, realizing I wasn't going to get anywhere with these two, and ultimately, they weren't who I wanted to find anyway. If shit really had hit the fan, I needed to find my mates, pronto.

Unfortunately, their rooms were empty, no trace of any of them to be found, and I wasn't ashamed to admit panic threatened to take over by the time I got to my bedroom. Where were they? Had something happened to them? I'd know, wouldn't I? We had a bond.

We have a bond, I thought to myself, a little lightbulb going off in my mind.

I'd gotten so used to shielding my thoughts that I'd forgotten I should be able to contact them from anywhere. Or, at the very least, sense them. Hadn't that been the whole point? I vaguely recalled Kai mentioning something about how the tattoos would help them find me or sense when I was in danger.

Closing my eyes, I focused on the part of me that felt like them. It was hard to explain it more specifically than that. I guess if I had to describe it in one of my books, I'd say it was like a cabinet, and when I opened it, they were on the other side, just waiting for me to pick them up and play with them. Nope. Scratch that. Kiki would edit the shit out of that metaphor. They were just part of me now, okay? And when I focused on them, it was like that connection became tangible. Like I could wrap my hand around the invisible tethers between us and tug.

"I need you. Meet me in my room. Hurry."

When I opened my eyes, a little squeak of surprise escaped me at the sight of that pretty blonde woman I'd seen a few times before standing in front of me. Her hair was a tumble of golden ringlets, her eyes big and innocent, cheeks like a cherub's.

Oh God, was I dying? She only ever appeared when I was on the brink of death. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

"Dahlia, I need you to listen to me," she said, her sweet voice reminding me of a kindergarten teacher.

"Are you a ghost? Am I dying? What is fucking happening this time?"

"Does it look like you're dying?"

"No, but every time I see you, I am. Shit. Am I about to have a stroke?"

"Dahlia..."

"I could be dead on the floor of Masterson's office, and now I'm just a ghost who doesn't know she's a ghost."

"Dahlia..."

"Oh God, I don't have a me to help me cross over."

"Dahlia!"

I slammed my lips shut, my face molten when I realized I'd gone full spiral on this woman. "Sorry."

"You're not dying, but you are in danger. I've been watching over you since the day you were born, sweet girl. It's been my purpose."

I looked at her, confusion swirling within me. "Are you like... a guardian angel or something?"

"You could say that. But even more than that, I'm your mother. I promised I'd always protect you, and to date, I've kept that promise. Don't make me break it now."

I sat down hard on the edge of my bed, my knees giving out on me. "My mother?"

Fuck. She must've died in childbirth. She never abandoned me, not by choice. For all I knew, my asshole father killed her.

She cast her gaze out my window, then looked back at me. "I need you to listen to me, Dahlia. Trust that I'm only here to help you, like I've always helped you. We can talk in depth later, once the danger has passed."

"O-okay."

"There's a terrible army of angry people headed this way. They're going to kill you all, and they won't stop until they're sure no one survives."

"I know."

"Then you must also know we have to fight them. We can't let them win. If they do, it'll change the relationship between supernaturals and humans forever. It will be the end of the golden era. A return to all-out war. Days filled with nothing but death and dismay."

For someone who looked and sounded like she'd be at home on a cheerleading squad, she sure painted a grim picture.

"Residents are already taking off, heading for the forest. Soon there will be no one left to fight with."

"You have to convince them to defend their territory. Your mate is out there in the middle of it right now. Tor is strong, but they'll overpower him. He will be torn to pieces, and it will be your fault."

My heart lurched. "How? How can I convince these creatures to listen to me? I'm not a leader."

"No. But you have something the rest don't."

"Big tits and a witty mind?"

She ignored my bad joke and shook her head. "A captain with the power of persuasion. If anyone can rally the troops for you, it'll be him."

Cas. I'd almost forgotten about his glamour since it had never really worked on me. The reason for that was a question for another time.

"I can try," I said with a shrug.

Cas was hard to wrangle on his best day, and lately he hadn't had many of those. More and more often, I'd catch him staring off into space, his eye twitching, his fingers spasming in his lap while he mouthed things I couldn't quite hear. The only way to bring him back was to touch him and say his name.

"Try isn't good enough. If you don't succeed, it will all be over, Dahlia."

A crash sounded from the hallway, pulling my attention from her and to the door. When I looked back, she was gone. "Damn. Don't these ghosts understand I need a little more than an ominous warning before they leave? An itemized to-do list would be nice. Or maybe a phone tree."

I didn't have much time to sit in the information she'd just given me because Kai, Cas, and Hades burst through the door, all three of them breathing hard, Asshole wriggling his way between Hades's ankles and running to me with a series of concerned barks.

"Gem, what's wrong?"

"Besides the obvious," Hades added, hitching his thumb over his shoulder and gesturing to the ruckus in the hallway.

"Everyone is running. We have to get them to stay and fight if we're going to survive."

Thinking of Tor out there alone with an angry mob focused on taking him down made my purpose crystal clear. My mother was right; I had the ultimate trump card up my sleeve, and I was going to play it.

I didn't look at my other two mates. My gaze was pinned on Caspian, whose expression made my heart ache. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, as though he hadn't slept, and dark purple shadows had taken up residence underneath them, the hallmark of someone who wasn't well. But it was more than that. His usually neatly trimmed scruff was now the beginnings of a scraggly beard.

"How can we help?" Hades asked.

"It's not you who can help, actually. It's him."

Cas blinked at me. "What can I do?"

I took his face between my hands, holding on to him until I knew he was fully present and locked in on me. He'd mentioned more than once that using his glamour was becoming harder, that it took a lot out of him. I hoped now that we'd bonded, my power would strengthen him and asking this of him wouldn't cause more harm. Honestly, if Tor wasn't in danger, I wouldn't risk asking at all.

Closing my eyes, I inhaled the scent of my mate. Salt and clean air, the sea on a clear day. Then I lifted my lids and stared deep into his eyes, recognizing just how lucid he was. "I know that your mind is a mess right now, and I don't have any illusions that what I'm going to ask of you will be easy. In fact, I'm pretty sure it might cost more than you can afford to give, but I'm going to ask anyway because it's important."

"Anything, love. I'll do anything for you, you know that."

"I need you to use your glamour, Cas. I need you to rally the troops and defend the ship."

"The ship?" Kai whispered.

"She means Blackwood," Hades explained.

"Defend the ship," Caspian whispered. "Captain goes down with the ship."

"Yes, Cas. Get them to defend us. Keep us from going down."

He gripped me by the nape and crushed his lips to mine in a fierce kiss, then murmured, "It'll be done, darling. You have my word."

He tore away from me and fled from the room, my heart aching as I watched him go, worried it might be the last time. I didn't know why I had the sense that whatever version of Cas returned to me once this was over wouldn't be the flirtatious rogue I'd fallen in love with.

"Does this mean what I think it means?" Kai asked, entering the room fully and taking me by the shoulders.

"What?" Hades questioned, his voice low and suspicious.

"We're going to war."

Taking a deep breath, I turned and faced them fully, accepting the weight of his words and knowing that whatever happened next was on me. "Yes. Tor is out there, and they're after him. They think he's the Ripper, and there's no way he'll escape them all. If the residents of Blackwood stay and fight, he might have a chance. I couldn't risk any other outcome. And I won't apologize for it."

Hades sent a shadow to wrap around my waist. "Nor should you. Each one of us would do the same were our positions reversed. That's what mates do, Dahlia."

"Aye, gem. When it comes to the one we love, we burn the world to the ground. Every time."