Page 32 of Phantom’s Mate

“It’s not my fault,” Titan complained. “Remy just stepped on my foot.”

“If you didn’t have the big feet of a Bigfoot, Sasquatch, they wouldn’t get stepped on,” Remy said.

Titan reached over and tucked an ice cube from his drink into Remy’s owl pouch.

“Argh! Oh! Fuck you, motherfucker…” Remy danced around, cursing, shaking his pouch until the ice fell out.

“Sorry,” Titan said innocently. “I thought that was a dollar bill.”

“For fuck’s sake, Remy, put your dick back in,” Kitty said. “This is supposed to be festive, not porno.”

Muttering, Remy adjusted himself while a dark-haired woman—hopefully his mate—blew him kisses and then flashed her boobs at him. Kitty rolled her eyes.

Just as she got the camera into place, Brittany felt energy surge through Nick, and she added hers to it. There was a faint glow around him and then he grew visible, and the girls across the room started whooping and clapping just as Kitty snapped the picture.

“It’s Nick!” the short, curvy Asian woman called out. Mari. “Nick’s back!” Her eyes went wide as Brittany stepped out from behind him, suddenly feeling shy. “And he brought Brittany! It worked!”

Chapter 15

The crew greeting was almost overwhelming. After a while the guys went to get dressed and Kitty shooed the drunk girls away, so they could hold a meeting in the back of the big game room on the other half of the first floor.

Nick had managed to keep the number of people to a minimum; Britt was handling the crew pretty well, but all of them staring at her at once while she bared her soul might be a little much even for her.

Nick and Britt were sharing an oversized chair. Titan and Brock sat on one couch, Titan with a hand on Brock’s arm to bring him into the spirit world and make talking easier.

Kitty, Brandon and Remy were all on the other couch, also touching. Brandon was using a magical Draken talisman that Remy had bought off the black market a few months back, and as long as they were both touching him, the other two could enter the spirit world with him.

DB lurked in the corner—he didn’t need any magic but his own.

“Okay,” Brandon said. “Let’s get to it, in case I die from shock that one of my crew finally gave me a heads-up before they tried some kind of crazy-ass scheme that might involve death, mayhem or rips in the fabric of space/time.”

Kitty patted his arm. “He’s pretty excited about that, actually.”

“It’s a pre-Christmas miracle, is what it is,” Brandon said. “Usually you all fuck up first and tell me about it afterwards.”

He turned to Brittany. “Nick and Titan filled us in on your situation. The way I understand it, your unfinished business not only trapped you in the spirit world, but is beginning to affect the human world through the repetition of your last moments.”

Britt winced a little at that last, and Nick laid his hand on her thigh. “Pretty much. We need to figure out how to help her remember what it is that’s so important.”

Titan spoke directly to Brittany, in his most soothing voice. “Brock and I both think the trauma of the accident damaged certain memories, blocking out parts of your life and your death.”

Nick turned to Brock. “Your schtick used to be going into people’s minds, right? Helping them recover lost memories?”

Brock gave him a ‘seriously?’ look. “Yes. If you want to call inborn talent and years of healer experience ‘schtick.’”

Nick just grinned at him, and Brock shook his head. “But most of my experience is with shifters and their animals. Whether I can do it with a human who, technically speaking, doesn’t even have a brain anymore is another thing altogether.” He looked at Brittany. “No offense.”

Britt shrugged. “Hey, I’m dead. No sense in tiptoeing around that little fact. Ghosts is ghosts.” She was back with her brave face on, but Nick had seen the vulnerability underneath. Every time that damn prison reset, it hurt her a little more.

“Would you try?” Nick wasn’t fucking with Brock now. He needed his help. Britt needed it.

“Of course,” Brock said. “I’m Plan A.”

“So does that mean there’s a Plan B?” Nick asked.

“We’re Plan B,” Remy said. “Me and Brandon and Damien.”

He turned to Britt. “We’re private investigators, and if you want us to we can run down every scrap of information about your death and what you were doing in the weeks or months beforehand. Between my computer skills, Brandon’s secret agent skills and Damien’s love for following orders—” Brandon snorted loudly— “we’ll find out secrets you didn’t even know you had. Whatever you forgot or didn’t do, we’ll find it and make sure it gets done.”