Also, she says murder victims are sometimes a little discomposed by the event.”
“Scrambled in the head” was what I’d actually said.
Bruiser watched Taylor with a deepening scowl. “What’s he talking about? What murder victim?”
“Focus on me,” I told the shade as he started to blur and waver. “Tell me what happened when you arrived at the dorm to pick up Alexis.”
His ugly face twisted in concentration. “It was my night to babysit the little princess. I texted her that I was waiting. When she came down, all tarted up for the club, I got out to open the door.”
With the returning memories came more of his personality, and it wasn’t a nice one. Hollow eyes raked over me. “She used to give me the same stare you’re giving me right now. I’m in big trouble if the little tease is dead, but I won’t miss her and her snooty looks.”
The agents were waiting expectantly, so I ignored that comment. For the others I said aloud, “So, you got out of the car to open the door for Alexis. What happened then?”
The shade’s face went blank. His eyes darted, looking for clues or answers. “I don’t know. How did I get here?”
Gerard ran out of patience. “Ask him who took Alexis Maguire. Was he in league with them?”
“No!” said Bruiser, who could hear the question perfectly well. “It’s my ass if anything happens to that little bitch. I’m not crossing Devlin Maguire for anything less than a private island and an army to protect it.”
“He says no,” I relayed.
“Could he be lying?” asked Chief Logan.
“No,” I said. “Spirits can’t lie.” They can misinterpret or misremember, but they can’t state an untruth.
“What do you mean, ‘spirits’?” demanded Bruiser, with way more insight than I’d have expected. “You mean me?”
Crap. Panic started to pull at him again, and I shook with the psychic strain of holding his shade together, my muscles burning as if they supported all his weight.
“Tell me what happened after you opened the door for Alexis,” I repeated, now that he was facing his end.
“Blackness,” said Bruiser, panting with fear, even though he had no lungs. “Snarling. And the black dog.”
“Dog?” I asked, totally confused. “What black dog?”
“What black dog?” echoed Taylor. Faintly I heard him ask Chief Logan, “There wasn’t any kind of dog bite on the victim?”
I lost the chief’s answer in the rising wail of Bruiser, the thug becoming one big terror-stricken tremor. “Ripping and tearing.” Then his gaze latched on to mine with a flare of hope. “You! You can send me where the dog can’t rip me up.”
His certainty about that rocked me as much as his desperation. I was already on my knees in the wet grass or my legs might have failed me. “How do you know?”
“I just do.”
He wasn’t lying. Somewhere in his scrambled mind, something told him I could help him, even if he didn’t know how.
Distantly, I registered the men talking behind me. “She doesn’t look so good,” said Chief Logan.
“She hasn’t given us anything useful yet,” snapped Gerard. “Why do I put up with this malarkey if it doesn’t get us anywhere?”
Then Taylor, crouched beside me, his voice reaching through the cold net of psyche that tied me to Bruiser. “Come on, Jailbait. It’s time to wrap this up.”
“Okay,” I said, through chattering teeth. When had my lips gone numb? I was barely upright. But I couldn’t leave the job unfinished.
Calling open the Veil wasn’t difficult. A whisper from me and it shivered into my view, ready to put things in their proper place. Our world was for the living. The dead belonged … somewhere else.
The threshold between here and eternity was only a waver in the air, like a curtain of liquid mercury. But Bruiser shrank away from it. “What is that?”
Whatever’s next, I told him silently. That was as much as I knew. I could See the Veil, but not what was beyond it. “It’s what you wanted. To get away from the black dog.”
Maybe. It was an empty promise when I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“I don’t want to go.” He swung around, pulling his gun from its holster and pointing it at me. “You can’t make me go.”
Probably not, but whatever lay beyond was happy to reach out and pull him in. I couldn’t See that, either, but Bruiser could, and his screams raked my bones.
I loosed my hold on him, my strength giving out. He dropped into the next world like a