to. You understand?”
“I understand,” Angel said. “Tucker, who taught you how to use your powers?”
“Now? You want my life history now?” Tucker unhooked his seat belt, then grabbed the knapsack and put it on his back.
“I’m just wondering. You did have a mentor, didn’t you?”
“Not anyone in particular. Now grab my shoulder and let’s get out of the car and see if anybody tries to possess me.”
“They can’t have you,” Angel muttered, feeling indignant. “You’re mine!”
For an electric moment, they stared at each other, Tucker’s brown eyes wide with surprise. Angel bit her lip, not exactly sure how she’d meant that, but the words were out and couldn’t be taken back. That same imperative Tucker—and Ruth—had felt when addressing ghosts seemed to have hold of Angel in this matter.
Tucker was hers.
“Careful, sweetheart, someone might take that the wrong way,” Tucker muttered, breaking the spell and sliding out of the car. He gave Angel time to slide too, carefully, so they were still touching.
They landed on the hard-packed dirt of the road, and Angel grunted. “Tucker, this is hard. Can I—you won’t feel my weight, but can I ride on your back?”
“What about the pack?”
“I’m not solid. It’ll pass right through me.”
Tucker scrubbed his face with his hands. “Just make sure you don’t go right through me, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You know, maybe I was wrong,” Tucker muttered, holding his hands behind his back so she could get up. It wasn’t necessary. She was already straddling him like a little kid looking for a ride, her dress—green—riding up her thighs in what would have been a wanton way for a human, and she was as secure there as Tucker was on the ground.
It was almost like she could feel his lean, rangy body between her thighs, almost like the heat of him was seeping through her entire being.
She was, perhaps, a trifle more secure than Tucker was on the ground.
The ghosts were backing up, a sickly DayGlo rainbow of spiritual energy parting as Tucker trekked from the untainted property where the truck was parked, across the rutted dirt road, and over the dry irrigation ditch at the shoulder. He clambered up the side to the property line and found the small gate—mostly a frame for the barbed wire and a rusty latch—that would let him onto Daisy Place proper.
Into the morass of the undead.
“God, it smells like swamp ass,” he muttered. “Can you smell that? Whole damned county is bone dry, and look!” He shook his wafflestomper as he lifted his foot, and clots of damp earth and vegetation flew off. “Can you believe that shit?”
Angel sniffed delicately and realized that her scope of human sensation was limited to Tucker. Tucker smelled very nice, actually—he used some sort of musky body wash, and of course his clothes were starting to smell like cedar from the closet, as well as pine-scented dust, because they were in Foresthill.
“I cannot smell the swamp,” she said, and even to her ears, her voice was a little dreamy.
“Lucky you,” Tucker grumbled sourly. “So, Angel, what does the graveyard look like to civilians? Can you see that?”
“Yes,” she said, squinting a little. Tucker grunted, as if she’d just become heavier on his back. “It’s… plain dead grass on hard dirt, random headstones. Not inviting but not….”
“Apocalyptic either. Here—let’s go check out the headstones. I want to see the difference between the ones mortals see and the ones we see.”
“Tucker, there aren’t any ghosts around the graveyard. Either version. Do you think I could jump off your back and help you look?”
The sound that came from Tucker’s throat was as close to fear as Angel had heard him make. “Can we not?” he asked reluctantly. “They are…. Angel, look how they’re looking at me.”
Angel looked over her shoulder and wished she hadn’t. The ghosts had closed in, standing in a loose semicircle behind Tucker, glaring at him as though he was to blame for all their ills.
Angel wrapped her arms around Tucker’s shoulders and held on tight. “You can’t have him,” she shouted. “He’s mine!”
The glow thinned just a tad, but Angel couldn’t stop the shudder that pulsed through her—and then through Tucker.
“I’m flattered,” he muttered, pulling his foot from the sucking swamp that kept trying to eat his boots. “But you’re actually under my skin, sweetheart—I mean, Angel—and it’s making it hard to concentrate.”
Angel pulled back a little. “Sorry, Tucker.”
“No worries. You know, I call men sweetheart too. You know that, right?”
“Out of bed?”
Tucker grunted. “Fine. Point