CHAPTER ONE

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Where the hell was Elliot? I stared at the inoffensive painted wall as though that would hold the answer. I was one of the doctors who’d chosen that particular color. Eggshell blue. It was a calming influence on patients who had gone through an operation, or who maybe lost a loved one.

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I should have chosen ice-white because that would match the chill that frosted my blood. Elliot had vanished through the wall after a monster—and he hadn’t come back.

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A soul-eater had ripped George Campbell’s soul from his body, and Elliot had gone after it. Not that George deserved to be saved, but I wasn’t worried about George. He could rot in hell for all I cared.

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No, the man... the ghost... was who I waited for, but no matter how hard and long I stood in the middle of the hospital corridor in my ‘robe’ and nightgown, staring at the wall, he didn’t return.

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“Doctor Hunter? Cassie?”

 

I barely noticed a blonde nurse as she took my elbow and steered me back to my room. She could have taken me anywhere. My chest threatened to cave in as my bones turned to sleet.

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“Dr Hunter, are you ok?” the nurse asked as she sat me in the hard-leather chair in the corner of. I didn’t recall her name. She wasn’t a part of the surgical staff at The Alfred, the hospital that had me under investigation about the death of my patient, Henry Davis.

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“I...” Bile rose in my throat and choked my words.

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Henry hadn’t left me alone after he’d died, giving me one hell of a fright when his ghost nagged me to help him with the business of his will. Between Laura, Elliot and me, we’d tracked the person who’d murdered him and faked his will. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a son he had no knowledge of.

 

Raised by his mother Lucy, Paul had been brainwashed from birth that his father had abandoned him and left them to live in poverty. Over the years, Paul’s resentment had festered. It had been all too easy for George Campbell to dose Henry with a massive amount of valium and fast-talk Paul into doing his dirty work.

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At least Henry’s spirit had found eternal peace with his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, the same peace hadn’t followed me.

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“I’m okay. Just a bit tired.”

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The nurse didn’t look as though she totally believed me, but she left my room, shutting the door behind her, leaving me blissfully alone to worry myself senseless.

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One problem Henry’s death had brought about was the re-awakening of my ability to see spirits by a beautiful angel. It was something my mother had stifled when I was young. I’d been unaware of the dead until my gift unlocked again. It was also the reason I’d fallen wholly, totally, stupidly, and completely in love with Elliot.

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With a man who’d died seventy-eight years ago.

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A man who I hadn’t told how I really felt. God knew there was an attraction on both sides, but I wouldn’t tell him the extent of my feelings. Three little words that could trap him in the physical plane. He had a wife. A child. He deserved to find her in the afterlife. No matter how painful that would be for me, I couldn’t stand by and trap him here. It would ruin me when he left, but what future could a ghost have with a mortal? My love was doomed.

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Elliot also thought he was an evil man. A crooked cop who had somehow killed his partner, but I knew the real Elliot. Even if he refused to see it about himself, I knew he was a good man. Before he left me, I would make it a personal goal to uncover the truth about himself.

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The same man who now caused me to stalk the width of my hospital room because he’d disappeared through the wall chasing the soul-eater who had George’s soul. The man who I’d just accused of engineering Henry’s death, along with who-knew-how-many others.

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George was scum, but he didn’t deserve to be the victim of a soul-eater. Whatever they were, was pure evil. They tore souls from the bodies of the dead who weren’t yet ready to depart.

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I was a patient in my own hospital after nearly being ripped apart by a soul-eater in the grey-mists. It was only that I managed to somehow ‘imagine’ myself away that I escaped. I still wasn’t sure how I’d done it.

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The grey-mists were a confusing place to exist, a plane between planes, with nothing but indistinguishable shapes, and the ability to manifest. Who knew what could be created? How big or small the things that could be imagined into existence. I’d only gone there when Henry had assisted me after I’d somehow been able to astral travel. Elliot had been stranded there for seventy-eight years after his death, and now he could be lost there for eternity after going after George.

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The soul-eaters were stronger in the grey-mists. Even too strong for Elliot to fight. It had taken both of us to free ourselves when Elliot was taken. I’d seen Elliot nearly consumed into non-existence, becoming nothing as the soul-eater had sucked the very essence out of him. It’d been a fluke we’d gotten away.

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My gut hit my toes with that thought. The rebound threatened to empty my stomach of the little I’d eaten.

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I was still healing from my assault with the soul-eater. The wounds that’d been inflicted on me in the grey-mists, had also affected my physical body, possibly because a gossamer-thin silver cord tethered my psychic self to my body. It bound my soul to the physical. The ghosts I saw didn’t have that tether. Elliot didn’t have that tether.

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That tether let me know I still lived—and that I could not truly be with Elliot.

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I had to get back into the grey-mists to find Elliot. What if he fought another soul-eater? What if, at this very moment, his life essence was being sucked away?

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I needed Laura, my sister. She’d guided me out of my body before. She could do it again. I’d go after Elliot again. I’d do whatever it took. I paced the small room again, tapping my bottom lip with my fingertips.

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Laura was with Mum, who was not letting either of us out of her sight. Mum wouldn’t allow Laura to help me into the quasi-relaxed state I needed to separate my soul with my body. And Henry, who’d led me into the grey-mists, had now well and truly moved to his next life. I spun on the balls of my feet, pacing and coming up with nothing. Each second moved with agonising, empty slowness. I bit a fingernail clean off, the stinging pain bringing clear thinking back. God, I had to bring him back. Somehow. Some way. Think, Cassie!

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Ariel. The angel.

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She’d shown herself when Elliot brought me back to my body and told us we’d asked for all of this nonsense to happen. Strange, since I didn’t remember asking for my life to completely shatter.

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Ariel told Elliot that he’d asked to come back to right his wrongs instead of moving to his afterlife. She also told me we were linked and that we had a teeny-tiny job to do. What was that again? Oh, yeah, save the human race. Easy-peasy. She told us we were a part of a ‘Grand Plan.’ Well, Elliot MIA wasn’t a piece of any plan I wanted to belong to.

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Ariel also told us to call her when we needed her help, but only if it didn’t go against free will. There had to be some sort of catch to getting untapped angel-power I guess.

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She was the angel responsible for my latent capability to see dead people, or spirits, as they preferred to be called. Mum always had the gift, but it had gotten the best of her and she moved into the middle of the outback to cope with it when my sister and I were just kids. In the outback, there were little to no ghosts, or anything else for that matter, and as soon as we were old enough to leave home, Laura and I had moved to the city.

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When I was a baby and had shown Mum that I could also see spirits, Mum worked hard and ‘turned off’ my gift. With one swipe of her angelic wing, Ariel had totally upended my nice, peaceful, well-run life within a few short weeks. Professionally and personally. The thing is, I didn’t think I’d ever get it back again.

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If there was one person I needed now, it was my angel. She didn’t exactly give me a telephone number. How the hell was anyone meant to contact an angel? Then again, people had been doing it for years. The power of prayer was a powerful connection. Hopefully, with better reception than that of a cell phone.

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I closed my eyes, drawing my attention inwards, imagining Ariel’s golden hair, flawless features and calming presence. I thought of Elliot. Of how he centered me. Of how much I was in love with him, even though I had no right to be. It was selfish of me, but God help me if I didn’t want him at my side. I’d take what I could get and no soul-eater or grey-mists would take him from me. When he left, it would be for the right reasons. I’d deal with the fallout after he left, because if one thing was a certainty, I was going to help Elliot remember who he really was and get him to the afterlife he deserved.

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I clutched my hand to my chest and whispered out loud, “Ariel, if you can hear me, I need Elliot here with me. Please bring him back to me. Now!”

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