Page 39 of Challenge Me

Ghost didn’t answer.

I tilted my head back against him and looked up at the dark, starless sky. “He didn’t abandon you in that impound lot.”

A chill moved through the metal. Beside me, the air warped as Ghost tried to pull together his usual shape, though grief made him unstable. His shoulder appeared first, then the hard outline of his face. The blue glow of his eyes flickered weakly as he stared at me, silently demanding the rest of the story.

I gave it to him. “He was murdered.”

The gentle blue glow of his eyes paled, narrowing as a strong hand grabbed my jaw. I watched as his throat swelled with heat and fire, gears grinding in a blood-curdling growl.

“By WHOM?”

The words did not sound human. His engine roared back to life behind me, the force of it shaking the abandoned car park. Every panel rattled with rage, grief, and a violence too large for the shape attempting to contain it.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Ghost’s grip tightened on my face. I held his gaze.

“But I intend to find out.”

Chapter Thirteen

Lai

We drove slowly and carefully, in the fugue state of numbness that follows after heartbreak, until we found ourselves back home with no real memory of how we got there. I wondered if Ghost would ever consider the manor to be his home, pushing aside my own hurt at his desire to see John again.

Now wasn’t the time.

I guided Ghost down the ramp into the underground garage. The lights woke one row at a time, washing over polished concrete. Fox’s usual space stood empty; Al had taken him for the night, which was probably wise. Fox would have wanted to order pizza and watch a movie in a bid to cheer up his friend, but Ghost wouldn’t have been kind about Fox getting into his business, and the ridiculous Mustang deserved better than to be snapped at tonight.

The students’ cars remained asleep, empty and without souls. They were all too new, too rarely loved enough to have developed anything resembling a spark like Ghost and Fox had. I still didn’t understand how the magic worked entirely, but I knew it took a long time to give something sentience.

Ghost rolled into his space and stopped with a creak and the click of his handbrake.

“Ghost?” I asked. Nothing.

I switched off the ignition; the sudden silence was numbing. The dashboard went dark, and Ghost’s engine gave one final shudder before it stilled completely. I remained in the driver’s seat, staring through the windscreen at the bare concrete wall ahead.

“I’m going upstairs,” I declared, giving Ghost a chance to reach back to me. It was taking all of my hard-earned maturity not to take the rejection personally, but it wasn’t easy.

There was no answer. I waited anyway.

The driver’s door flung open.

Ghost wanted to be alone; I understood. It hurt, but I climbed out, closed the door gently, and walked toward the stairs.

◆◆◆

I went to my room, stripped off the clothes that still smelled of oil, gasoline, and grease, and left them in an undignified heap beside the wardrobe as I examined myself in the mirror. My hair was beyond taming, and I grabbed it to tie it up in a bun, and paused.

A lone silver hair glittered against my temple, the same color as Ghost’s paint. I stared at it, feeling the same disgust and contempt as I had the first time, before the outrage softened slowly, and I reached up to touch the strand.

I had earned that silver; it was something to show for a lifetime of pain and grief and love, a badge of honor that I had made it this far, and a promise of more to come. And I did count love as part of the cause for the silver; without the love of my husband and my family, I may not have lived long enough to ever see that flash of my own age.

Was silver really so bad, then? Was aging really so terrible, if it came with love worth living for?

I thought of the silvery glow of Ghost’s paint, of all the pain he’d endured, and of all the love that could still be given.

I groaned and tied up my messy hair, deciding that Ghost was unlikely to be offended by a lack of presentation. I changed into soft sleeping clothes, gathered two pillows and dragged my blankets from the end of the bed.