Free Black Heart Loa by Adrian Phoenix Page B

and/or unthreading of their personalities.
    The images he’d caught from Valin—a rain-blurred truck, an anxious-looking Siberian husky, the sliding Harley, lambent-eyed wolves—told Augustine that they’d been in an accident. And, given the dubious presence of the animals in Valin’s vision, that the nomad had thumped his thick skull dangerously hard.
    Several questions pinged through Augustine’s mind in rapid succession: How serious were Valin’s injuries? Had the driver of the truck stopped to render assistance? And ifhe/she hadn’t, how could help be summoned? Only one way to find out on all accounts—he would have to leave Valin’s body and assess the situation.
    Augustine hesitated, a conversation nearly twenty-four hours old swirling through his mind, a conversation between a just-murdered man and an unoccupied (and determined to stay that way) Vessel.
    Permission isn’t required, and Vessels aren’t supposed to be capable of resisting. At least, that’s always been my understanding.
    Most can’t. But I’ve learned how, and you ain’t getting in.
    I believe you’re bluffing. You’re a Vessel for a reason, Valin. You are a natural and needed resource. And, since I don’t believe in coincidences, your arrival here when you were needed most shouldn’t be wasted.
    But in the end, a gun strategically placed against the head of Valin’s fierce pixie of an ex-wife had produced the result that Augustine’s calm, rational arguments hadn’t—Valin had stopped resisting.
    While it was a shame the gun had been necessary, Augustine had no regrets. The nomad hadn’t been harmed and their arrangement was only temporary.
    However, given what he now understood about the nomad’s strength and force of will, Augustine suspected that Valin hadn’t been bluffing when he’d claimed that he’d learned how to keep from getting shanghaied by desperate ghosts.
    So what if Valin awoke while he was outside of his body and refused to let him back in? What then?
    Augustine thinned his static bubble, then erased it entirely. A risk he’d simply have to take. Valin’s injuriescould be critical. He could even be dying. Of course, if that was the case, he didn’t really know what he could do to help. But he had to try.
    Which presented another very important question: How does one leave a body? Wish upon a star? Snap one’s fingers three times? Click one’s heels?
    Ghosting into the nomad had been like pulling on a crisp new shirt, a cool and irresistible glide into silken flesh and rippling muscle. Valin’s presence had radiated a magnetic, magical quality, like a human ley line, like a curved Hey, sailor finger, and even if Augustine had decided to cross over after his unexpected murder, he would’ve been quite helpless against the nomad’s allure.
    Would that magnetic lure make it difficult to free himself from Valin’s unconscious body? Only one way to find out.
    Drawing in a breath—a figurative one, anyway, a mental girding of the (also figurative) loins—Augustine visualized sieving out of Layne Valin’s body, imagined streaming out of his pores, mouth, and nostrils, in countless curls of pale mist.
    Or smoke, he amended, thinking of his much-missed cigarettes and yearning for the taste of vanilla-spiced dark tobacco.
    Right. Here we go, then.
    Augustine snapped his fingers three times, then tossed in “Olly, olly, oxen free” just for good measure.
    A Velcro ripping sound, then Augustine felt himself peeling away from the nomad’s familiar and comfortable flesh. He blinked. He was out and standing in a mudpuddled dirt road in a pouring rain he couldn’t feel as anything more than a generalized cold sensation.
    Well, that was bloody easy.
    Had it been the visualization, the finger snaps, or the childhood chant? All three? A puzzle to ponder another time, he reminded himself. Otherwise you and Valin both might be without bodies and utterly homeless.
    Augustine looked down. Valin lay crumpled on his