Free Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor Page A

One of them, a woman, came over to us. She said she found me and my host attractive and wanted to have sex with us right there, in the restaurant. I … I can’t begin to describe what I felt just then. I told my host to get up and walk out of the restaurant and he did. We did. We got into a car and I told him to keep driving until he was so far from Cedar Key he couldn’t even remember the name of the place. And … and then I leaped out of him and returned to that pub.
    I leaped into that bruja’ s host, so two of us shared the woman’s body, and drove the ghost out. Then … then I leaped into one of the men and he fell back into the lantern that was on the table and … and it broke and … I guess the brujo inside of him shot out the top of his head and straight into the lantern’s flame, and was obliterated.
    “Hold on a minute,” Gogh said. “You’re saying the brujo intentionally shot into that lantern flame?”
    I don’t know.
    “No ghost would do that,” Whit added. “It’s suicide.”
    “Go on, Von,” Dominica said. “What happened next?”
    Von’s essence swayed from side to side, like a curtain blowing in the wind.
    I leaped into the second man and he was so freaked out with two ghosts inside of him that he ran … out onto the balcony and jumped over the railing and … and he drowned before the brujo escaped and—
    “And Joe had just entered the pub and saw everything and brought you the fuck down.”
    They all turned to see Joe, hosted by Bean, the hotel owner. Tall, much too thin and lanky for her taste, he reminded Dominica of a disheveled scarecrow. Right now, he looked like a pissed-off scarecrow, his eyes obsidian black as Joe peered from them, his muscles tight, fists clenched. “That was my wife who came on to you, Von. Jill. Her name’s Jill.”
    And her host’s name is Marion, she’s the island librarian, and your wife has no business inside her. And what do you care about your wife, Joe? When you two were alive, she was screwing some other guy and you shot her and killed him and then turned the gun on yourself. You’re the fucks who should be on trial here. That night in February when you screwed your brains out in the hotel bar, you compromised your goddamn tribe. That’s when people around here started realizing that something was really wrong on Cedar Key.
    Jill’s host, Marion, propped her hands on her narrow hips. “Are you kidding me, Von? You wanted me that night in the pub.” She laughed, a quick, mocking laugh, then she marched right over to the whiff of discolored smoke that Von was and poked her finger into it, into him. “You. Wanted. Me. You’re a hypocrite of the worst kind.”
    Von suddenly dived through Marion’s skull, so that she was now possessed by both him and Jill. He somehow drove Jill out of Marion’s body and then spun Marion around and raced for the door. Jill, reduced to nothing but a puff of smoke, shrieked and streaked after them. Dominica shot to her feet, her chair tipped over and crashed to the floor, and she raced after Marion.
    The woman exploded through the side door and moved so fast it astonished Dominica. How had Von managed to exert such perfect control over Marion? Dominica was vaguely aware of the pandemonium in the barracks kitchen, of Jill’s wails; her host was gone, stolen, and none of the brujos had any idea what to do. Even though Dominica’s host, Maddie, had been a runner she couldn’t close in on Von. Desperation fueled him, and the more desperate he became, the faster Marion ran. Now he tore through the courtyard, headed toward the gate that led to the main road through downtown.
    Dominica knew she had just one choice. “Whit, cover me,” she hollered, and leaped out of Maddie and into Marion the librarian.
    Von leaped out of Marion and shot up into the sky and Dominica soared after him, hating him for reducing her to this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game, ghost chasing ghost. Von saw himself as morally