Moonscale London
“Mori, you have to wake up,” a gruff, desperate voice growled in my ear. For half a second, I thought Snowy learned to talk. Then realized that was bullshit and woke up, swinging a haymaker at the speaker. Only Venal dodged and I nearly fell out of bed.
“Stupid fucker,” I groaned.
“You can’t sleep forever. Fucking Pami!”
“I am not fucking a ghost!” I said, shaking my head.
Snowy let out a long line of warning barks that sounded like he planned to eat Venal and wear his beard as a hat.
“Fucking hell, Mori. Get it together,” Venal said. “Pami’s found some loophole to get out of the damn book page over on the other side of the world. She killed three fucking people! She killed three fucking people because she thought one of them was Amorti.”
I cringed at my true-mate’s name hanging in the air and then remembered only Snowy and I could hear this particular ethereal brute.
“Thought that would get your attention. She wants revenge on Mom for killing her. I don’t blame her but deer balls on a broken fucking cracker!” Venal swore. “She wants to keep her from resurrecting even if that means killing off everyone related to her!”
“Do they know? Does anyone else know?” I swung my legs off the bed, my heart pounding in my ears.
“Everyone knows because she ran her big mouth! What they don’t know is that the horny, cheating coyote wasn’t my brother,” Venal said. “You’ve got to do something.”
I racked my head for ideas. I knew of a spell where he could banish Pami to the afterlife, but he’d go with her. It was made by a dying witch years ago so that if her ghostly ex ever killed her, he couldn’t hang around and haunt her new mate and children. I didn’t think Venal would go for it. He wanted to see this whole Sharon Claudis thing to the end. I didn’t think Pras would go for it either. Ferrick was out of the question almost as much as Sharon herself. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Maybe I could call Ormund but first I needed to take the dog for a walk. What was I thinking? People had died. What—
“This would be a lot easier if I could go over there, you know!” I growled at the dead bear.
“Don’t I fucking know it?” Venal growled back and for a second, I saw a flash of Baby Andy having a chew and shake at his throw pillow. He did sort of look like Venal a little and that was the only reason I didn’t lie to him about the spell that would banish both him and Pami. That’s the only reason I didn’t bring it up at all.
“Don’t develop too much of a soft spot for him,”my wolf warned.
I wasn’t. At least I didn’t think I would.
“You need to tell them to close the runes! Someone related to Pras needs to close them all!” Venal said. “It’s not rocket science.”
“Then why aren’t you waking them up?”
“Most of them don’t see spirits like you do!” Venal said, tossing his hands into the air. “Do you know how frustrating it is to be dead?”
“No and if I were dead I wouldn’t hang around. I’d move on and let sleeping wolves stay that way,” I said, patting around the bed for my phone. Bernard or Diamond? I weighed the options for a long moment. They both had pregnant mates at the moment but Bree wasn’t as pregnant as Nashen because of how dragon egg gestation worked. Plus, Diamond wouldn’t hesitate to lock her up whereas Pami was Bernard’s sister-in-law for better or worse.
Yep. Diamond it was. So I dialed her number. She answered on the first ring.
“Is the bitch fucking with you over there too? She gave Nashen some bloody sob story about only doing this because she loves him,” Diamond said. Her words were laced with disgust. “He was so distraught that the healer had to come and I brought the page upstairs with me. Bree’s asleep in the guest room and I’m currently holed up inside the cat playroom because if she comes out again, I’m eating her. And I don’t want any moral judgements about eating dirty, lying---”
“Diamond!” I shouted over her. “If you would give me half a second to say hello, I have what I think might be the solution.”
“Who told you?” Diamond asked. “Are you in contact with Clarence and Medwin?”
“No, now shush, please. The spirits tell me many things. You know that. They tell me things like they tell my carrier things and his carrier before him. The spirits never shut their big mouths. So I know things. You say you have the page with you?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding sour about my attitude.
“Good. One of Pras’s descendants needs to close up any broken lines. There’s some loophole she’s using and you can fix it.”
“Mori, I don’t know the first thing about runes and I don’t think Bernard does either.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Have you studied runes?”
