It’s like the you-can’t-see-me charms, but bigger. The cops are still coming, but as far as they and everyone else knows I’ve disappeared. A mage will see right through it, but it’ll keep the normals and any recording equipment from seeing me. As an added bonus it mimics whatever car it’s going past every few seconds just to make things more confusing.

It’ll only last a few minutes, but at this speed that’s all I should need. I come up onto the warehouse and brake too late, spinning into the parking lot. The only thing that keeps me from being road pizza is the fact that they opened the gate before I got there.

Three of her people run over with a gurney to help get Gabriela out of the car. Vivian’s a step behind them with an EMT trauma bag. She checks Gabriela’s pulse and goes pale. In a flash she’s on the gurney starting compression and it takes me a second to remember what I did in the car.

“Hang on, no, she’s not dead. Just really, really asleep.”

Understanding dawns on her face. She’s seen me do this trick before. “Got it,” she says. “Let’s get her upstairs. How long will this last?”

“Couple hours, but once I pull her out she’s gonna go downhill fast.”

“Then let’s hope a couple hours is enough.”

Chapter 14

Every day, over seven thousand people die in America. More than two thousand of them in hospitals. Trauma wards, ICUs, ERs, posh rooms with cable and internet and machines that sing one note dirges when you’re gone. Rich, poor, men, women, the just and the sinners. They all die eventually.

You want to find ghosts, you spend a lot of time in hospitals. Searching for the newly dead, waiting for the about-to-be-dead, hoping to dig up an old spook who’s been hanging around the site for the last fifty years.

I’m not a fan of hospitals. They’re like charnel houses. Sure, people die all the time, but in a hospital nobody dies easy. And all the rest of us can do is sit around and wait for it to happen.

I hate waiting.

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a hospital, but it might as well be. Some of Gabriela’s crew and I are all on the top floor outside her makeshift surgery suite waiting for her to die.

I’ve seen all the emotions on display here before. Pre-emptive grief, fear, anxiety, anger. More than a few throw glares in my direction, knowing that I got their leader, their hope, their protector hurt, if not killed.