much did he have to teach me before it was my responsibility to finish training myself? It had to take a lot of energy for the convergence to sustain a ghost. It probably wanted to send him back to wherever it kept him when he wasn’t teaching.
And wasn’t that just sick? Holding a dead man in a kind of stasis, refusing to let him move on, so he could serve your purpose? Maybe Jonathon McKinley was right, and the convergence, and arcane magic, were selfish and wrong.
Black spots filled my field of vision, and there was a soft voice in my ear. “—with me, Sage. In, one two three four. Out, one two three four. That’s right. Breathe with me.”
Beez was wrapped around me, her front to my back, arms around my chest. Fluke was curled around our legs, whining nervously.
“Sexy ghost,” I whispered. “Who’s leaving me. Just like everyone.”
Her arms tightened a fraction, but not enough to constrict the airflow. “Not me, baby. I’m never, ever leaving you. Nobody can make me, no matter what.” When my breathing had gone back to a normal rhythm, she sighed. “It’s been a long time since you had one that bad.”
Years. It had been years since I’d had a panic attack like that. “He might already be gone,” I whispered to her. “We got in a fight and he left.”
She didn’t say anything else, just continued holding onto me, cheek pressed against the back of my shoulder.
A while later, we moved to the couch, sitting there tossing a balled-up piece of paper back and forth as Fluke lazily tried to snatch it out of the air.
At some point I glanced to the front of the shop, and the window was getting dark. According to my phone, it was almost six. Almost closing time. “Didn’t you have classes?”
She shrugged carelessly. “I cancelled them. The undergrads won’t mind having a few days extra to finish their homework.”
“You didn’t have to do that for me.” No doubt the students would appreciate it, but Beez was scrupulously ethical. She didn’t call in sick just because she didn’t feel like going.
She reached out with a bare foot and prodded my thigh. “You don’t have to be a dumbass, but apparently you’re good at it. You’re my best friend. Of course I had to. But it’s not like it’s a bad-time-ugh responsibility. I want to be here. Now lock up so we can go get dinner.”
So I did. It didn’t take too long to count the register down, clean up the superficial messes left by customers, and flip off the lights, especially with two of us to do the work. I set the alarm, Beez locked the front door, and we turned to head for her car.
The swooping sensation in my stomach was a surprise as the convergence opened up inside me like a chasm in my chest. The magic flooded me like hot chocolate on a cold day, warming me from the inside out, and I looked down to see my arms glowing with magic.
Then there was a pull, as though the magic was all rushing in one direction. It went somewhere behind me, but most importantly, I had to reach for something to lean on, because the world started to spin around me as it went out and out and out and—
The world went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I woke to the sounds of Fluke whining and an obnoxious alarm blaring.
“I know,” I muttered. “The alarm sucks. But we’ve gotta get to the shop, buddy.”
But wait, it was supposed to be Wednesday, wasn’t it? It was my day off. Had I forgotten to turn my alarm off? No, in fact, I’d turned it off on Tuesday morning after it woke me, to be sure I could sleep in the next day.
“Dammit, Sage, wake the hell up,” Beez demanded, and at that, my eyes shot open. I loved my best friend, but we hadn’t had a sleepover since we were teenagers and her parents decided that even if I was gay, teenagers were prone to pregnancy, and they didn’t want to be grandparents just yet.
There was a man leaning over me, but he didn’t seem put off by my sudden consciousness. “Can you speak, Mr. McKinley?” An EMT. He was an EMT, unless he’d stolen an EMT’s uniform, and why would anyone do that?
“I think so?” I asked, and my voice came out rough and garbled.
He cleared his throat and glanced down at my groin, which was warm and heavy.