Wraith Read online

  Leaving her body, and finding danger…

  One of the perks of astral travel is the inability to smell, especially when I glide into restaurants that haven’t thrown out their raw meat in a day or two. Now that’s an odor that sticks to the back of your tongue like a hairy sock.

  My name is Zoë—that’s with a long e. Not the pronunciation like “toe.”

  As strange as this may sound, I astral travel for a living, gathering up information that people pay good money for. I can’t give you the mechanics of how I do it, only that I can. I’m not sure there’s any real official name for what I am or do. I’ve sort of labeled myself a Traveler for want of a better name. Telling a new client I travel to locate the information they pay for is easier than saying, “Oh—I go out of body and tootle around in my altogether to snoop on people.”

  Ever tried explaining the astral plane to any average Joe? They get that whole MEGO look—you know—My Eyes Glaze Over.

  Where was I? Oh. Yeah.

  Smell.

  The smell problem wasn’t what brought me into the biggest case of my life—the one that sent me down a road of no return.

  It was sound—the sound of a gunshot.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: The Mental

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10: The Astral

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19: The Ethereal

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28: The Abysmal

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  EPILOGUE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2007 by Phaedra Weldon.

  Cover art by Christian McGrath.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Edition: June 2007

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Weldon, Phaedra.

  Wraith / Phaedra Weldon.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-4295-3874-0

  1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Astral projection—Fiction. 3. Witnesses—Fiction 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.E4647 2007

  813'.6—dc22 2007003769

  IN APPRECIATION…

  Much of my gratitude goes out to my parents, DeLois and Leonard Weldon, whose gift of a typewriter when I was twelve definitely set the bar high. And to my siblings Amber, Tara, and Marc, for not making fun of me too much, as well as Sarah Milligan-Weldon, the best sister-in-law a girl could have.

  A powerful thank you goes to Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, for without whose guidance and evil red pen (as well as Dean’s “grumpy face”) my plans of becoming a writer would have tanked. Several times. I miss those weeks in Oregon, but I’ll never forget the lessons learned.

  I owe the following for their support and friendship: Ken “Evilboy” Gunter (Best Friend and First Reader), Dr. Ilsa J. Bick (my voice of reality), Dayle Dermatis (the other half of my brain), Ken Cooper (Mr. Mischievous), “1000 Marietta Blvd” (Ken Gunter, Rachelle Udell, Roy Wilson, Jr., Joe Yost, Blake Sorensen, J. P. Rhea, and Maylon Walker), The Oregon Writers Network—especially the Omega Master Class, Loren L. Coleman and the gang at BattleCorps, Chris and Steven York, and Darren “Dags” McKinty (yes, that’s you behind the bar, mate—skoshi bukimi!).

  A special thanks to my editor, Ginjer Buchanan, for taking a chance on me and a wacky idea and having faith in Zoë. To Jodi Reamer, for taking on a new writer with a wacky idea and being the best agent ever.

  Last, but by no means least, Dr. Ernest C. Steele, Jr., husband and accidental supporter, and to my daughter, Indri, for bringing me the happiest moments of my life.

  1

  The Mental

  ONE of the perks of astral travel is the inability to smell, especially when I glide into restaurants that haven’t thrown out their raw meat in a day or two.

  Now that’s an odor that sticks to the back of your tongue like a hairy sock.

  My name is Zoë—that’s with a long e. Not the pronunciation like “toe.” Martinique. Irish mother, Latin American father. Which means I have darker than usual skin for an Irish Catholic, a mass of brownish hair, very light brown eyes, a wicked mean temper, and love of bawdy pub songs.

  My mother insists I look like my father, whom I’d always sort of imagined as resembling Antonio Banderas. Okay—so Antonio’s not Latin, but Spanish. He’s still one beautiful man. But you know how it is, how a daughter always imagines her father as being the most beautiful man in the world. A hero. A legend.

  But according to my mom, the only legendary thing my dad did was vanish from my life. As to the whereabouts of one Adiran Martinique, can’t help you. Haven’t seen him since I was four. Mom refers to his absence as necessary.

  Try explaining the word necessary to a teenager with raging hormones and the want of a daddy.

  As strange as this may sound, I astral travel for a living, gathering up information that people pay good money for. I can’t give you the mechanics of how I do it, only that I can. I’m not sure there’s any real official name for what I am or do. I’ve sort of self-labeled myself a Traveler for want of a better name. Telling a new client I travel to locate the information they pay for is easier than saying “Oh—I go out of body and tootle around in my alterego to snoop on people.”

  Ever tried explaining the astral plane to an
y average Joe? They get that whole MEGO look—you know—My Eyes Glaze Over. Where was I? Oh. Yeah.

  Smell.

  The smell problem wasn’t what brought me into the biggest case of my life—the one that sent me down a road of no return.

  It was the sound of a gunshot.

  The first step was walking out of the Fox Theatre on a Tuesday night. It was mid-November, one of my favorite months. I’d been hired to look in (okay, snoop—satisfied?) on a meeting between the owners of some dot-com company in Buckhead, one of the more upwardly urban areas of Atlanta, Georgia.

  My client had wanted to know if they were discussing his dismissal. Like I was going to find this out while they watched a musical? I mean—who actually talks in the middle of Chicago? This is Atlanta for crying out loud, the third largest Gay-Mecca in the States.

  Talking? Not likely. Singing? Definitely.

  These guys hadn’t uttered a word in the first half hour, and I didn’t feel like sitting through the show a third time. Not to mention I didn’t really have a seat and I felt a bit uncomfortable standing in front of them, waiting, even though no one could see me.

  So I left the gig, confident they weren’t going to talk about my client during the production. They’d mentioned tentative after-show plans for a coffee at Café Intermezzo over in Buckhead—so I figured I’d step outside and wait for them to leave and resume my snoopiness then.

  It was early, and I had time to kill. I’d only been incorporeal for about forty-five minutes (I have a neato-kazeeto watch a friend gave me that actually keeps astral time—I have no idea how it works, but it does). The longest I’d ever remained out of body, without too much physical lethargy later, was four hours. I didn’t know if there was some mystical time limit or witching hour for being astral, but there did appear to be various physical reactions to being gone longer. The body did not like having the soul/astral presence/spirit (pick one) away for too long.

  It was kinda like having a cat that pushes the plant off of the fireplace mantel when you don’t come home and feed it at the pre-appointed time. Or a dog that piddles on the carpet. Seems the body resents being left alone.

  Oh—but don’t worry. Nature has a way of getting back what’s hers. Trust me. Ever heard of near-death experiences where they mention that silver cord? It’s real.

  Of course it’s a great tether, but as for acting like a bungee cord?

  Nada. I haven’t had the need to snap back into my body. You can travel back along it, but the end result isn’t as peaceful as just stepping back in normally.

  But then again, this really isn’t normal, is it?

  Let’s see, I’ve had an achy back, stiff joints, migraine, loss of vision (that only happened one time and it wasn’t my fault though Mom’s certain I was faking it), and numbness. Those are the nasty things that’ve happened when I’ve been out of body longer than my personal best of four hours.

  I’d been gone much longer. Once. The first time out. It’d been a traumatic experience (one I don’t feel like talking about right now). Mom said it was nine hours.

  Nine.

  My body wouldn’t respond to me for nearly six hours after I returned. So for the world, and the doctors at Crawford Long, I lay dormant, in a coma, for fifteen hours.

  I never wanted to repeat that again. What if I’d been away longer? Would I have remained like this forever? A ghost? Spook? Spectral entity?

  Something for some paranormal society to capture on film?

  The feeling when out of body is kind of hard to explain. The closest I can come to is powerful. Well, not at first. Takes about five minutes before the powerful part kicks in. In the beginning it’s like finding yourself out on a tightwire strung across two buildings with no net. Actually—no wire either. You have no idea what it is you’re doing. And all you can think about is becoming a pile of goo on the pavement below.

  And then you discover when you fall off that wire (and you will fall off) you float in midair instead of crash. There’s no goo. There’s no real danger (none that I’d seen till that point).

  And then you think, this is great! No one can see me. No one can tell me not to do something. The world is my playground. No rules!

  Or so you think. Because reality has a posse that does nothing but bring the old smack-down on the young and stupid.

  That would be me.

  And that would be this night, of all nights.

  I stood outside the Fox Theatre, the humming and pulsing bulbs from the marquee above me gave the evening a sort of surreal feel. I was invisible amidst the crowds of night people. I thought about jumping into a cab with someone and taking a ride.

  One of the drawbacks of astral traveling is you can’t pop here or pop there.

  Ghosts, spirits, ethereal bodies—pick a name—don’t have teleportation skills. So finding a means to get from point A to point B is still a necessity.

  Even ghosts have to take the bus.

  And then again, I didn’t want to end up in East Suburbia in case my targets for the evening did end up having coffee and I couldn’t get back in time.

  Atlanta has a unique design in that it’s shaped like a huge wagon wheel. The city, with its skyscrapers and mainstream pulse (that whole nexus, center-of-the-universe thing), is the wheel’s hub. Roads spin out in all directions, leading to the smaller suburbs like Decatur, Chamblee, Tucker, Doraville—these are the spokes. Then just beyond them is Interstate 285. The “perimeter” as it’s called by most natives and residents. It encircles the entire city like the outer tire.

  Gobs of people live outside the perimeter, or OTP. Cheaper houses and more land for sale. Worse traffic though, in my opinion. I live inside the perimeter, or ITP. I like the city, the diversity of people, and the convenience of having a Target and a museum in less than a ten-minute drive.

  I’d been to several of the large cities, like Boston, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. And if there was one thing I enjoyed most about living in Atlanta, it was the trees. All shapes and sizes. I’ve seen crews knock out areas just to plant trees (and not always peach trees) or divert sidewalks to preserve a long-standing granddaddy of an oak. We are the greenest city I’ve ever been in.

  I moved along the sidewalk with people passing back and forth, bundled in their fall coats. Another good thing about being a Traveler is I don’t feel temperature. If anyone could see me, I’d be wearing my usual uniform of a long-sleeved, black spandex cat-suit with my black bunny slippers. They have white nylon whiskers and soft pink noses—and are starting to look a bit frayed, come to think of it. I keep my hair in a long braid that usually truncates at the small of my back.

  It’s the costume I put on before I go out of body. I found out by accident that if I lay down naked, then I appear outside of my body naked as well, and though technically no one could see me that way, I really didn’t want to take any chance I’d run into a kid who saw naked dead people.

  Know what I mean?

  I didn’t have any standard utility belt à la superhero. Couldn’t use one. Another of the drawbacks of being incorporeal, other than being sat on, is that I haven’t been able to manipulate anything physical. I always figured ghosts who could move things around had something up on me—though maybe it was the upside to really being dead.

  If there was an upside.

  I knew a few really dead people. And they could move things, albeit not well at times. But as for other people that do what I do?

  Nada. I’d been doing this for six years and never met another Traveler. Which is kinda lonely.

  After a block or two of walking, I found myself standing in front of one of the more impressive buildings down from the Fox. During the daylight the Bank of America Plaza was made of rust-colored marble and gleamed when the sun shone.

  But at night, the polished surface reflected the moon and stars from the November night sky. I liked looking around inside of buildings like this.

  Most floors had their cubicle farms. Dozens of feet of blue or gray bu
rlap squares, each containing a snapshot of an individual’s life. The concept appealed to the artist in me. Sometimes I would wander through the cubes and look at pictures, mostly of children. Happy families.

  Normal families.

  Wives and their husbands.

  It could get damned depressing too. Especially for a single woman in her late twenties with no prospects for marriage, kids, or normality.

  I’d almost talked myself out of heading inside when something touched the edges of my awareness. As a Traveler, I’m a bit sensitive to astral-plane happenings. Stirrings. Much like standing in a quiet meadow and feeling a breeze move the hairs on my arms. Sometimes it was just a shiver, though not from the normal definition of cold but from one that reached deep down inside.

  This happens sometimes in my physical body as well. And if I were in my body at that moment, I’d say someone had just walked over my grave.

  And that was exactly the feeling I was getting from this building as it loomed in front of me, painted against a comic-book sky.

  Something pretty oogy was inside. Something, in hindsight, I should have avoided.

  Unfortunately I’d worked myself into a rut over the past few weeks and found the prospect of oogy exciting.

  Mental note: oogy is not exciting.

  Okay, so I’m not the brightest lightbulb in the sign. But I was in some need for outside stimulation. And since a normal, sexual relationship was out of reach at the moment, adventure seemed the most natural outlet.

  The front doors of the building stood seven feet in height. Two urns the size of small horses held mounds of multicolored pansies whose petals moved with the night breeze. The black mat leading up to the building said Bank of America in blue, red, and white lettering. The whole package seemed pretty imposing. Especially for some young gun just out of college and looking for a job. Might even make them turn tail and run.

  But not me. I could go anywhere.

  Slipping through glass wasn’t as easy, or pleasant (not that any type of sieving was pleasant) as wood. Wood was more porous, not as taxing on the ethereal goo that comprised my astral body.