Free Possession by Kat Richardson Page A

orange filaments.
    “I just went to the door, like you told me to.” Olivia sounded defensive and I could see her energy colors shifting toward red. It appeared that Olivia’s resentment burned on a short fuse and I wondered if this uncomfortable relationship was a symptom of stress from Sterling’s lingering state or if it had been this way before he was injured.
    “You should have come right back. What took you so long and who were you talking to?”
    I thought I could hear the eye roll that came with Olivia’s reply. “Mom,” she whined, making the word three syllables long. “Don’t get all over me. This lady was at the door and she said she might be able to help Dad, so I let her in.”
    I figured that was my cue to step into the room.
    Once through the door, I could see the room wasn’t much different from Julianne Goss’s—the space that had been a large bedroom was now a sickroom filled with machines—except that instead of paintings, drifts and piles of scrawled paper occupied every vertical space that wasn’t filled with equipment or plumbing. Stacks of yellow notepads and boxes of cheap pens lay on one of the rolling tray tables pushed near the large hospital bed. An emaciated form made barely a lump in the blankets on the bed, and had become the focus around which all else flowed, including the churning darkness-and-silver boil of ghosts.
    A live middle-aged woman sat alone beside the bed on a desk chair that made her look waifish—not because the chair was so large but because she was so thin. I guessed from her pallor and the way her skin seemed loose over her bones that she’d been much plumper not long ago and her weight loss had been swift and unhealthy. Everything about her had gone dull. As there was no one else in the room, I assumed she was Olivia’s mother.
    She looked at me as if she couldn’t imagine where I’d come from. “Who are you?”
    “My name’s Harper Blaine, Mrs. Sterling. I work for a woman whose sister is in the same state as your husband.”
    She frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”
    “I’ve had information that Mr. Sterling has episodes of strange behavior—writing, talking—as if he were awake, but he remains in a vegetative state—”
    Mrs. Sterling jumped to her feet and surged toward me. “Who told you that? It’s not true! My Kevin isn’t faking being sick!” She slapped me with all the strength she could muster. Her bony hand felt like a giant bird’s claw striking my cheek, her fingernails leaving tracks on my skin.
    I flinched away from her. She shoved me backward, screaming, “Get out! Get out!”
    I’m not easy to move, but her anger added force to her efforts and I took an involuntary step backward. Olivia hopped out of our way and for a moment I could see the man in the bed clearly. Most of the ghosts had drawn aside as if disappointed in their efforts, while two foggy forms lingered, pressing inward until the darker of the two had flowed over the man and covered him like a shroud.
    The man shivered and his left hand started scrabbling at the covers. “No soup today,” he said.
    I stared. Olivia and Mrs. Sterling turned around, frozen for a moment. Then they rushed to the bed. Olivia tried to put a pen in the moving hand, but Mrs. Sterling knocked it aside and clutched her husband’s hand. “It’s just a spasm,” she said, as if she were reassuring herself. “It’s nothing. Just muscles twitching. It means nothing.”
    “No, Mom!” Olivia cried, pulling at her. “He’s trying to write. Let go!”
    She turned a furious expression on her daughter. “Shut up! Shut up. It’s not true. And you get that woman out of here, Olivia Pearl Sterling. You get her out! Now!” Then she cast a look at me, saying, “Leave us alone! Go the hell away!”
    I was already backing into the hallway. I’d seen what I needed, and Mrs. Sterling wasn’t going to be any help, even though the situation seemed the same as at the Goss house: A seeking