I’d instructed—the same baggage claim door where Warton had picked me up two days earlier. When I pulled up, he was sitting on his suitcase, looking bored, but he brightened like a puppy seeing a treat. “Lex!”
As I climbed out, Tobias scrambled off the suitcase and came forward to throw his arms around me. “Ow!” I yelped as his shoulder bumped my cheekbone.
“Sorry, sorry!” The werewolf stepped back, looking crushed. “I’m so sorry . . . damn, that is a hell of a bruise.”
“Yup.” I fought the urge to touch it.
“I’ll load my bag and then you can tell me everything.” And he scurried back to the suitcase.
Tobias and I had met three years earlier, when I needed information about werewolves. Back then he was spending all his time in wolf form, hanging out at a preserve for displaced wolves. He wasn’t really a prisoner—it wasn’t like normal chain-link fences could hold a determined werewolf—but his former alpha had seriously fucked with his head, using pack magic to more or less drive him insane.
I’d come back to the preserve later with Sashi, who had supernatural healing powers, and because the ley lines were boosted at the time, she’d been able to heal most of his psychic damage.
I’d done it because I needed his help, but Tobias still treated me as his personal hero, and no matter how many times I tried to explain that Sashi had done everything, not me, he was eager to help me in any way he could. According to my text from Maven, he’d volunteered for this trip, but she was also making sure he was well paid. I didn’t know who was picking up the check, but it didn’t really matter to me. As backup went, Tobias was a good choice. He had enhanced strength and senses, but he would be able to stay awake during the day in case I needed help.
And he isn’t Simon, a tiny voice in the back of my head whispered. I was wearing my mahogany obsidian again, so it was just my conscience speaking, not Sam. Simon was a great friend, but there was a certain awkwardness between us, something that had wriggled into our relationship after I brought him back from the dead. I didn’t really want to spend twenty-four hours a day dealing with that.
“So,” Tobias said, buckling his seat belt. “Where are we going first?”
“We’ll grab something to eat, and then we have to meet Beau at the museum,” I told him.
“Great!” he exclaimed. “Who’s Beau?”
Traffic had picked up, so I had plenty of time to fill Tobias in on what was going on in Atlanta. When I finished, I glanced over, expecting questions, but he was just squirming in his seat. “What?” I asked.
“I just . . . there’s more than one kind of ghost?”
I chuckled. “I know of four—well, five now. Wraiths are the really bad ones, they’re full of violence and hate.” Tobias shot me a knowing look, and I nodded. He’d been with me in the tunnels under Cheyenne. I hurried to continue. “Remnants are the most common, and they’re like a short recording of the person’s death, not sentient or anything. There are ghosts who connect to people instead of places—I actually don’t know much about those—and Beau’s missing ghosts, the Unsettled.”
“That’s four,” Tobias pointed out. “What’s the fifth kind?”
“Boundary witches,” I said. “When we die, we leave behind a fully sentient ghost.”
“Always?”
“Well, no, not always.” Nellie, the boundary witch I knew, deliberately chose not to cross over to the other side.
Tobias thought about that for a moment. “Still, if boundary witches leave behind a sentient ghost, and Beau is from a family of boundary witches, could there be a ghost who can help answer some of your questions about what’s happening?”
“That . . . is a very interesting question. Beau made it sound like nobody in his family actually took up boundary magic, but there could have been a black sheep.” I shrugged. “We can ask him.”
We dropped off Tobias’s bag in my new hotel, where I’d been able to get him the room right across the hall. Then, at his request, we stopped at a cafe-style BBQ joint near Georgia State University. I watched him eat two enormous meal platters of pork while I picked at a meatless salad and corn bread. It still hurt if I opened my mouth too far to chew.
By the time we finished, the sun was dropping below the horizon, and I asked him