“Hey, babe! Long time no see.”
My smile fell. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Wait—am I sorry? Is it my fault?”
She grinned. “That you’re having those dreams, and they’ve completely preempted my channel? No, of course not. I know you let those memories back in to help Charlie.” Her smile faded. “But you should really see someone about it. What about that shrink at the VA?”
I scowled. “Don’t Mom me, Samantha. I already have Mom for that.”
She held up her hands. “Sorry, you’re right. That’s not what we do. I’m just worried about you.”
I was never sure how much Sam knew about my day-to-day life. She wasn’t omniscient, but she seemed aware of things beyond my own experiences. She wouldn’t—or more likely, couldn’t—tell me how it worked. So I asked, “Do you know why I wanted to talk to you?”
Her face turned serious. “Yeah. Emil, right?”
I nodded. “Do you know anything about him? Should I trust him?”
She gave me a wry look, opened her mouth, closed it for a moment, and then said carefully, “Valerya talks about him sometimes.”
My mouth dropped open. Apparently my dead sister was communicating with my dead birth mother. That was huge. That was more than she’d ever told me about where she was and how she was doing.
“He hasn’t always done the right thing, historically,” Sam went on, “but she thinks he’s basically okay.”
Before I could ask any of my thousand follow-up questions, she shot me a warning look that I could understand as easily as if she’d spoken aloud. I can’t give you details. Watch what you ask or I’ll disappear again. Out loud, she said softly, “I can still listen, you know.”
Whatever I was about to say next got stuck in my throat, and I had to swallow several times to choke it down. Instead, I said the one thing that I could only say to my sister. “I’m scared, Sammy. I don’t even really know why. He seems nice, I guess, but it just feels really . . . big. And I’ve already got an awful lot of big on my plate right now.”
“I know, babe.” Something flickered across her face. “I am limited in what I can say here, you know that,” she said slowly. “But maybe being cautious isn’t such a bad thing. There are many things I can’t see from where I am, for one reason or another.”
I studied her, not understanding. Was she telling me not to trust Emil? Or was this about something else? “There’s some weird new animal disease going around,” I offered, but she just nodded. “And John is pissed at me.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “You know he’s not. He’s angry, period, because his kid’s been threatened. But he can’t be mad at Charlie because she’s a toddler, and he can’t be mad at me because I’m dead.” She gave me a rueful smile. “That’s one benefit to dying, I guess. He mostly only remembers the good stuff.”
That made me sad, somehow. I remembered childhood fights with Sam, her pulling my hair and me making her cry. I remembered the times we did what she wanted to do, because Mom and Dad treated her like the baby and she milked it. But that was all part of her: not a saint, not a martyr. A full person, with faults and mistakes and baggage.
“Should I tell him that I can talk to you?” I asked her. “I could pass along messages, I guess . . .”
She shook her head. “Thank you, but it would be too hard on him. He wouldn’t be able to move on, assuming he even can after Morgan.” She brightened. “But I liked what you told him before, about being able to sense that I was proud of him. That was perfect.”
I swallowed hard. She knew it, of course, but I had to say it anyway. “I miss you so much, Sammy.”
“I miss you, too.” She cocked her head for a moment, like she was listening to something, and then screwed up her face.
“You’re out of time,” I guessed.
“Almost.”
“Any advice? In the movies, spirit guides give advice.”
“How would you know? You haven’t been in a movie theater since the millennium,” she countered. More seriously, she added, “Remember the griffin, Lex. Remember why it’s yours. And don’t be afraid when you finally figure out your mission. I’ve got your back, and so will John.”
“Sammy, that’s so cryptic—”
“I know, but that’s how it has to be,” she interrupted, talking fast now. “You think I like speaking in riddles?”
“Hell, yes, I do.”
She didn’t even acknowledge that. “One more thing,” she rushed to say. “Emil, you have to ask him what he—”
Abruptly, she blinked away.
Chapter 9
“Son of a bitch!”
My eyes flew open and I grabbed the throw pillow beneath my head and flung it as hard as I could at the armchair, causing several dog heads to lift in confusion as they assessed the room for threats.
I threw a second pillow. Ask Emil what he what? What he wants from me? What he plans to do now that we’ve met? What he looks for in an ice cream topping? “Dammit, Sam!” I said aloud.
I’d done enough research on boundary magic by now to know that back in the day, it was mostly used for predicting the future or seeing things you couldn’t see from your own vantage point, like an event on the other side of the world. But how did talking to ghosts help if they only spoke in riddles that I put together after it was too late?