The room blurred unpleasantly and then pulled itself together before starting to fade around the edges. The ache in my arm transformed into a rush of pleasant heat. I heard myself moan and felt my eyes shut.
A noise in the room pulled me back.
I was used to reading things and people, not summoning them. Tristan had already been present in Dec’s room when I’d gone looking for him. This was different. I wasn’t totally sure how I was going to go about finding Ian when everyone else had failed.
The room was suddenly crowded as I searched face after face. Time felt slippery, and so it seemed like less than a minute before Ian walked out of the wall near my closet, looking surprisingly alive for someone who had been dead for a year.
“About freaking time, Griffin,” Ian said.
He looked exactly the same as he had in my dream. I forced myself to blink. “Death obviously suits you,” I said. It was a confession I hoped would buy me some goodwill.
Ian bent forward, close enough that his cold breath caressed my cheek. “Good to see you too. Awake this time, I mean.”
“Stop.” I took a step back. “I’m here about your brother.”
Ian folded his arms across his chest and smirked. Even dead, he was apparently unused to rejection. “Colin? I figured he’d be relieved I was gone.”
Yeah, probably. “No. Alex.”
“That makes more sense. I keep meaning to check on the little bastard, but”—Ian waved to the barely visible ghosts behind him—“I’ve been busy.”
“You’re dead,” I reminded him.
“No shit, Sherlock. Doesn’t mean I don’t have things to do.”
I took a harder look around the room. It looked like the aftermath of one hell of a party, apparently that also hadn’t changed for Ian since he had died.
“I don’t get it. You could have done anything you wanted. Why bother…” I didn’t finish the question. He hadn’t shared the manner of his death before, and I didn’t expect him to explain it this time either. But time was running out.
Ian cocked his head. “Curiosity, Griffin, curiosity. It’s fucking real. All of it. And don’t tell me you haven’t lain awake in your little twin bed with the Batman sheets on it, wondering.”
I clenched my teeth and got to the point. “Alex is out of control. He wants to talk to you.”
“Yeah, man, well. The gene pool kind of ran out before it got to him, you know? He couldn’t contact a dead rat. I told him the one way I thought he could get in touch with me, but he was never good at following directions.”
“The Guild has been spinning their wheels trying to reach you, you know,” I said while I replayed Ian’s answer. One way I thought he could get in touch. One way. I was missing something. “I get you not talking to them, but any chance you could work a conversation with Alex into your schedule? Like now, perhaps?”
“I told him what to do. He’s halfway there. I left him my freaking car.”
I weighed the pluses and minuses of telling Ian I was the new owner of the Mustang and decided against it. Sometimes the key to dealing with Ian boiled down to simply having more information than he did. But I had to wonder. “The other half of your little plan wouldn’t have to do with Dec Hampton’s piano, would it?”
Ian smiled and reached out to run his fingers over the collar of my shirt. “You dressed up for me. Nice,” he said. “So, let me guess. You’re still stuck on Hampton, and he still has no clue, right?”
My head spun. Talk about places I was not going to let this conversation go. I snapped my fingers in front of Ian’s face. “Focus. Your psycho little brother has your gun.”
Ian’s hand dropped. I had his attention now. “My gun? Shit. Mom should have locked that thing up.”
“You need to do something.”
“What? Haunt him?”
I glanced back from the shadow figures in the room to where Alex was sitting, agitated and looking at his watch repeatedly as if he thought I was trying to screw him over.
“Can you?”
“If you remember, I can do whatever you want me to,” Ian said. I knew he wasn’t talking about Alex, and when I didn’t reply, he simply said, “Well, no. I don’t know. As I said, I’m kind of busy.”
The room shifted suddenly on the edge of my field of vision. Something else shifted inside, pulling and dragging me away.
“What’s the one way Alex can contact you?” I asked as the room started to swim. “Tell me, Ian. What’s the one way?”
Ian’s words were garbled as everything went dark.
* * *
I shook my head. Then regretted it. I vowed to lie still until the waves of pain subsided. Only they didn’t.
Alex stood above me, a dripping needle in his hand.
My arm hurt like hell. Hopefully Alex had no plans to go into medicine. The only upside was that the pain in my arm distracted me from the pounding in my head. I needed to cut back or take a couple of days off. Now that this was over, I was going to need to get my shit together for a while.
My mouth was as sore as if I’d had all of my teeth pulled without Novocain. “You cut that a bit close,” I mumbled.
“Did you see him?” Alex waved the needle around.
“You can put that down now.” Although at some level, I was pleasantly surprised Alex had followed my instructions, I still didn’t enjoy seeing him with anything that could be used as a weapon.
Alex scratched his head and stared at the needle as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. He tossed it across the floor. “Did you see him? Did you talk to him? Stop stalling and tell me.”
There were many things I could tell Alex about his older brother, but none Alex would appreciate hearing. Instead, I asked him the same question I’d asked Ian. “What does Dec’s piano have to do with Ian’s car?”
Alex shook his head. “No way. If he didn’t tell you, I’m not going to.”
I struggled to pull myself up, determined not to vomit. “I have the car, Alex. And I’m trying to help you.”
“Ian said not to tell anyone.”
I leaned over and felt the room spin. When it stopped, I grabbed the needle off the floor. “He started to tell me, but, you know what? Never mind.” Against reason, I hauled myself to a standing position and held onto the desk. “This has been interesting. Fun, even.”
Then I turned toward the door, faking stability, and gestured Alex out.
“Wait. That’s it?” Alex’s voice rose.