Immortal Souls (The Immortal Souls: Magic & Chaos)

Book 2 - Chapter 13

Danny jerked slightly with fright as the curtain around his hospital bed flew open. "You could have knocked," he mumbled, giving Jack his most unimpressed expression as he finished tying his shoelaces.

Jack glanced at Danny in amusement. "When have I ever knocked?" he asked rhetorically.

"When you were human," Danny replied, thinking that Jack must have had manners at some stage of his life, and had just lost them over the years he'd spent as a Ghost.

Jack smiled and shook his head. "I grew up in a house with five brothers . . . we McKenna men don't knock. We walk where we please and if people don't like it they can fuck off."

Danny sighed and rolled his eyes. "What did you do to the doctor?"

Jack pushed the curtain back all the way and pointed to the corner by the door where the doctor was sitting bound and gagged, staring up at Jack with an expression of fear.

"Jesus, Jack . . . couldn't you just subdue him or something?"

"I could . . . but that's not nearly as fun," Jack replied with a creepy smile.

"You're a psycho."

"Takes one to know one."

"Let him go," Danny ordered as he pushed himself off the bed, standing—unsteadily—on his legs for the first time in over a day.

"I will," Jack said. "Once you erase his memory."

Danny sighed as he looked from Jack to the doctor. "Why can't you do it?"

"Because," Jack said, "you need to get over it. You're not human and you should stop pretending to be. It's okay to have Powers, and it's more than okay to use them."

"No—"

"I'm not going to do it," Jack said stubbornly, folding his arms across his chest, speaking and looking at Danny as if he were a parent who was scolding his child. "And you are going to do it."

"N—"

"About three minutes to wipe his memory," Jack interrupted. "About five to make a portal. So I'll give you ten."

"What?" Danny asked, wishing he had never taken that potion.

"You have ten minutes to wipe his memory and make a portal to get you home."

Danny let a derisive snort. "You can't make me."

Jack smiled his slow, creepy, ghostly smile. "I'm going to go out there and call security. You have ten minutes to clean up and get out."

"But—"

Danny tried to protest, but Jack was already gone. Dematerialising before his eyes, and moving to somewhere else in the hospital.

Dannycursed and ran to the doctor, putting his hand to the man's head, starting theprocess of erasing his memory. The only sound in the room was the doctor'smuffled scream.