Ghost Perfume | ✔

Chapter 14: Remember the Rules (Part 2: Lukas)

The ghosts that hung around the Bridge of Lotus Flowers were creepy as fuck.

Fluttering, half-present, glaring and sullen.

At least they were quiet here. They didn't shout obscenities, they didn't beg for help no one could give. Most of them had learned to shut up, especially since these were the ones who'd taken up a post near the bridge, which probably signaled that they'd given up on the living; these were the very old ones, and I could see a few staring down at the water as if they wanted nothing more than to become a part of it.

I imagined the years of their existence slipping by as they stared down at the water, and quickly shoved the horrible thought out of my head. I strode faster over the bridge.

I always felt a lightening, an ease in my shoulders, as I crossed in the direction of the humans' world, and it had nothing to do with the momentary cessation of duty and the promise, however fleeting, that I was my own man now. It was because the ghosts disappeared. Well, they didn't disappear, but they disappeared from my view.

And that counted well enough - out of sight, out of mind.

I ducked through the silver portal and stepped out into the forest. It was dark and freezing. My armor was heavy on my back. My boots crushed snow and leaves underfoot. A great emptiness yawned out of the gaps between the trees, an emptiness I loathed, an emptiness that normally had me rushing to Laura, to Vi, to Caroline, fuck, to the arms of anyone, but lately ...

I didn't examine too closely the pathetic eagerness that urged me to move faster.

I found my bike were I'd left it, waiting silently, icy to the touch. I stripped the gauntlet off my right hand, started the engine to warm it up, and fumbled for my phone.

No new messages in the group chat with her. I frowned. That meant she hadn't been alone since I'd left. She never took the initiative to text if someone else was with her. Alexander was still cleaning up the skirmish at the Lotus Gates, so who stayed with her at his house? Had Michael gone yet? I opened the app. Ah, she was at our house, with Gabriel.

I wasn't sure whether I was more pleased or displeased. Pleased, because it would take no time at all to reach her. But Gabriel had been growing ...

I got on the bike and began driving. I didn't like to leave her alone with him.

How could Michael not see it? Gabriel, by some magic I hadn't known he was capable of in so short a span of months, now looked like the best of us, but he was still the worst. He was amoral. He was a loose fucking cannon. Alexander's words were burned in my brain, how she'd had her arms thrown around him with tears standing in her eyes. And that she'd put her head on his shoulder and clung to his side. He must have really milked his sob story for all it was worth.

Michael had shrugged, the stupid bastard.

"Rose is softhearted,'' he had said. "It doesn't mean Gabriel is going to take advantage of her, or break our agreement.''

"You don't think it means something that she'll touch him this easily? She still won't meet anyone's eyes for longer than two seconds at a time.''

"She hugs you, I hear,'' he said with a curl of the lip.

His jealousy was so obvious it was funny. I just barely held back from mocking him.

"She's known me for nearly a year,'' I reminded him.

"If you're hoping to win points with me on that front, you're not succeeding,'' he snapped.

He was never going to let it go that I'd been talking to her. Fuck's sakes. I held my tongue, again, from reminding him how much of Rose's well-being we all owed to my actions.