The dizziness of the spirit world melted away, revealing a very handsome man in his late twenties with dirty blond hair, chiseled features, and half-hooded eyes with a hint of bags underneath, making him look worn out from intense partying. Under the dark eyebrows and black lashes were the clearest blue eyes I’d ever seen. All he needed was a cigarette dangling from his full lips and grease in his hair and he’d be James Dean.

In life, this guy was supposedly a middle-aged man and probably run-down. In spirit, he could be anything he wanted. The guy had good taste, I’d give him that.

He waved his hand in front of his face, as though reacting negatively to the incense. It struck me as odd, though I honestly couldn’t remember if a spirit had ever done that before. Of course, Bria usually didn’t help me when I called someone, so most of the time there wasn’t any incense.

“Now, Alexis, that’s just not right.” My shoulders tightened of their own accord at the sound of Frank’s voice. He’d made it back. “Tit for tat isn’t how these things are supposed to go. You can’t just call a man in to get back at Kieran. Listen, I told you, men like—”

I shoved Frank away for the second time, careful not to take my eyes off the new spirit when I did so. As Frank torpedoed out of the yard, the new spirit gave a sexy sort of smirk and a husky little laugh. “He’s all right. He didn’t mean any harm.”

Bria murmured from where she crouched, raising a bell. A single toll filled the yard, the sound much louder than it should’ve been for such a small item.

The spirit’s form wobbled. His brow furrowed for a moment and he glanced down at Bria. Adrenaline surged in my body, but before I could decide what to do, he was looking at me again. The sexy smirk was back.

He jerked his head, indicating Bria. “A Necromancer, right? She’s strong. That little trick would’ve brought a lesser spirit to heel nicely. But for me, it was just a prod. She’s telling me to mind my manners.” His eyes sparkled devilishly. “Is that what you want from me? Me to mind my manners?”

I stared at him stupidly. He was a helluva lot more confident and…present than any other spirit I’d dragged back. It was almost like he hadn’t been there long.

Except it had been fifty years.

“You have my pocket watch,” he said, hooking a thumb into his jeans pocket. He didn’t take his eyes off me, and it was doing weird things to my belly.

“Haven’t you heard the saying ‘can’t take it with you’?” I asked, bending to retrieve the watch from the grass where I’d dropped it.

“You got him by the soul, Lexi?” Jack asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“They care about you.” The man jerked his head at the guys. “They think of you like family.”

“They are like family.”

“They’re worried for your safety.”

I barely kept from gulping. Tingles worked through my limbs. I tried to play it cool, like the new spirit was doing. “They don’t realize I’m not in any danger.”

His sexy smirk changed ever so slightly, like he knew a secret that I didn’t, and it was tickling him to no end.

Vertigo overcame me. The floor dropped away, but I didn’t move. The sky spun. My stomach swirled, and suddenly something was grabbing me. Digging into my chest. Scrabbling to get at my most precious commodity. My soul.

Power blistered through me, mine and Kieran’s and the Line’s, slamming into the spirit and shoving him back to his hidey-hole. But before I could disengage, I was ripped away with him, dragged deep, deep into the spirit world. It felt like I’d lost my body. Like I’d lost my sense of self. My whole awareness consisted of a presence, my own and another.

It seemed eerily familiar.

Something pulsed in my spectral body. A familiarity that grasped my very soul. A lifeline.

Panicked, I clutched it with everything I had. My connection to the soul who was dragging me severed, broken in two and swished away into the ether. Floating, terrified, I stopped in the nothingness, deadly alone.

6

Kieran

Terror ran through Kieran’s body. Not his terror, Alexis’s.

He sat forward on the couch, spilling his drink and then dropping the glass entirely. She had winked out of his mind’s eye, like the other times she’d somehow drifted into the spirit world.

“What’s the matter?” Nancy asked, her shoes on the floor and her legs curled up under her, nearly facing him on the couch.

He pushed to standing and grabbed his phone out of his pocket. While he waited for it to power up, he jogged to the door and pulled it open, seeing Maureen sitting at her desk and Thane sitting at Red’s. Red must’ve gone home.

“Did anyone call for me?” he asked in a rush.

Thane stood from Red’s chair, his face a mask of concern. Zorn bent around the far corner, from which he’d been watching Nancy’s people down the hall. The rest of his guys in this building would be running toward his office, having felt his alarm.

“Did anyone call for me?” he demanded again, impatience gnawing at him with each moment Alexis stayed off his radar.

“What is the matter?” Nancy walked up behind him, fixing her clothes as though she’d just put them back on.