Spooky Business (The Spectral Files #3) - S.E. Harmon Page 0,106

our merge and more on finding that elusive energy trail. I spotted it briefly and grabbed the tail end, making Joey growl. My rising panic made it hard to maintain my focus as it slipped through my hands. It was like battling goo—every time I got a hold of the energy, it oozed right out of my hands, and I knew without confirmation that he was winning the battle.

“God, I think he’s dying!” Tabitha’s cry made me lose the trail of energy altogether.

I searched frantically, trying to find it again. My breathing grew labored as the pressure on my chest intensified. I could almost see my strength ebbing away before my very eyes as the flow of energy went Joey’s way.

Carol shouted for help as I went to my knees. “Something is wrong with Rain, too!”

“I should’ve known this was some supernatural shit,” Nick snapped somewhere near my ear. “Don’t touch him. Let him do his thing.”

If only I knew what “my thing” was. I couldn’t spare a moment to reassure anyone. Instead, I focused on staying calm and searching for that light. I almost collapsed in relief when I finally found the glow somewhere around Joey’s stomach. I grabbed on to it with both hands, pulling it my way. I pulled so hard that my arms ached, but it wouldn’t budge. I might as well have been battling concrete.

Without conscious thought, I formed a lasso with the energy. Okay, that’s nowhere in the rule book. Neither was my next move, dropping it over his head like he was a Brahman bull. I pulled the loop tight and, wonder of wonders, it started to work.

Joey seemed to realize it too. He snarled and tried to snatch the cord out of my hands, but I wasn’t letting go. “We could’ve had something special,” he growled. “If you weren’t so damned stubborn.”

I remembered the words Dakota had given me to say, and I wasted no time saying them. “Et dimittere de,” I said breathlessly. “I release you.”

“I can be anyone you want me to be,” Joey pleaded.

I blinked as he shape-shifted in front of my very eyes. He was suddenly a foot taller, with swarthy skin and brilliant blue eyes. And then he changed again into a man who was blond and delicate with angular cheekbones. He shifted between three or four looks, each one vastly different from the last.

“I release you,” I said again.

A smaller woman appeared with long, blonde hair in her trademark braid down her back. Her hazel eyes were warm and soft. “Rain, honey. You don’t want to do this.” She held out a hand, and I swore I could smell her distinctive scent drifting toward me—lemongrass and herbs. “Would you do this to your mother?”

I shook my head slowly. I couldn’t listen to that voice. It was just glamour—granted, a very good glamour, but that wasn’t my mother. “No,” I said firmly. “I release you.”

And then I was looking at a familiar face with dark blue, beautiful eyes. He blinked at me for a few seconds and then smiled. My hold on the tail of energy faltered.

“Danny,” I breathed, taking a half step toward him even though every brain cell I had told me to not to. My heart wasn’t hearing it, though.

I knew it wasn’t him. I knew that, just like I knew he’d probably run out of time in Joseph’s suffocating grasp. But just seeing him in front of me, hale and hearty, had me choking on words that I’d left unsaid. I love you. I need you. Yes, I want to marry you.

“Baby. You did good.” He smiled and that was off, too. It wasn’t that half smile that he reserved just for me. There was malice in his expression… malice on a face I trusted more than anyone in the world. The dichotomy of an unfamiliar smile on a familiar face was enough to freeze me in place.

“Don’t do this,” I said to Joey. “Anyone but him.”

“Baby,” he said pleadingly.

Joey didn’t know it, but he’d picked precisely the wrong thing to say. Reminding me of what he’d done to the most important person in my life was an excellent way to get fucking vanquished.

I finally spotted the yellow glow, faint and pulsing, right below his ribcage. I yanked on it, hard. He screamed a shrill scream, and I took yet another step back. Joseph lost control of his little parlor trick and his appearance flickered between Danny and himself as he struggled to