Chapter 6
The tall guy had buried himself against me like a human cannonball.
His head was shoved into my chest.
His arms were clamped around me.
And he was chanting in a trembling voice, “Evil spirits, go away. Evil spirits, go away. Evil spirits, go away.”
I nearly coughed up a lung.
“What is wrong with you?”
He clung harder.
“There’s something there! There’s something in the bushes! I saw it! Black, small, maybe… maybe a spirit infant—”
I was just about to tell him he was out of his mind when I heard it too.
A soft little sound.
Whining.
He was shaking so badly that half his body weight was leaning on me.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered desperately. “Do you hear that?”
“I do. So let me look.”
“Don’t look! If you make eye contact, it’ll attach itself to you!”
While saying this, he suddenly remembered something and started fumbling in his pocket. Then he yanked out a thick stack of talismans and hurled them into the bushes like confetti.
“Go away! Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!”
The papers fluttered everywhere.
Nothing happened.
I stared.
“You know littering is bad for the environment, right?”
He seemed confused too.
Slowly, he cracked one eye open toward the bushes.
At the exact same time, the grass moved again, and a small black thing shot out.
He screamed so loudly the trees probably shook.
I, meanwhile, looked at the man sprawled flat on his back and laughed so hard I almost cried.
He had fallen in a heap and was lying there with both eyes squeezed shut.
“I didn’t see anything,” he announced weakly. “I saw absolutely nothing. Do not haunt me.”
That only made me laugh harder.
It took a while before I got myself under control. Then I bent down and picked up the little black creature sitting by his ankle.
It was a puppy.
A tiny black puppy.
Probably not even weaned yet.
Soft. Warm. Fluffy beyond reason.
It was so cute my heart almost broke on the spot.
I lifted one of its little paws and murmured, “This big brother is so embarrassing, isn’t he?”
The puppy nudged me with its damp nose.
And the instant that cold, wet touch landed on my skin, everything clicked.
At the restaurant during the blackout—
The thing that had touched my face—
That had not been a person’s hand.
It had been a cold little nose.
“Puppy ghost?” the tall guy asked weakly from the ground.
I rolled my eyes.
“Hurry up and pick up your talismans.”
He got up carefully, still suspicious, and crouched beside me to study the puppy.
Then his expression changed.
“Wait. Open its mouth.”
I frowned.
The puppy wriggled slightly.
He held its little face as gently as he could and tilted its jaw.
I looked.
And my breath caught.
A loop of thin metal wire had been twisted around its tongue.
Sharp. Tight. Cruel.
No wonder it could only whimper.
No wonder it couldn’t bark.
“That’s vicious,” he said quietly.
For the first time that night, all the joking vanished from his face.
He took off his jacket and wrapped the shivering puppy up carefully.
I called a car at once.
By the time we reached the nearest emergency vet, it was late.
The doctor did a minor procedure and told us the puppy was lucky. Its tongue could still be saved, but the bark might sound strange later.
There were other injuries too.
External wounds.
And one old fracture that had healed badly.
I asked, frowning, “There’s no way a puppy this small did this to itself, right?”
The doctor shook her head.
“Very unlikely. Human abuse is much more probable. Also, a puppy this young should not be wandering around alone unless it ran away… or its mother is gone.”
I thought of that cold nose in the restaurant.
A little puppy ghost.
Did that mean its mother had already died?