This Side of the Grave (#5 Night Huntress)

more pressing concerns,” he said once he’d controlled his chuckles. “Ask our mate what can help repel ghosts. Can’t have you stopping to do that
same speech every few hours, and while New Orleans might be one of the world’s most haunted cities, it’s not the home of every spook on the
planet.”
I shook off my guilt and frustration over Fabian’s sudden lack of willpower enough to absorb Bones’s point. New Orleans did have an unusually
high ghost population, which I’d always attributed to its history of disease, war, malaria, natural disasters, and native predators. But Bones was
right. If Marie’s blood called to ghosts—and obviously it did, judging from my new popularity with the living-impaired—then the Big Easy should
have tons more spooks than it did. Here’s hoping the dampener to Marie’s spectral siren song wasn’t just a natural geographical perk, like an
overabundance of alligators. That would be cause for even more notice than a huge posse of ghosts trailing me everywhere.
Even though Fabian would have heard Bones, he didn’t offer up any information on the topic. Just continued to look at me with an eager
expression. I sighed, thinking Ghost Dominatrix probably fit me better than Ghost Whisperer with my new condition.
“Fabian, if I wanted to try to keep ghosts from following me everywhere, what could I use?”
He looked worried. “You want to get rid of me?”
“No, of course not,” I replied, mentally cursing Marie once more. “You’ll always have a home with us; I told you that. This is only for a short time
until the situation with Apollyon is fixed. You need to get back to Dave in the meantime, anyway. He’s in danger without you.”
I assuaged my conscience by reminding myself that Fabian had agreed to accompany Dave before, when he had control over his own actions.
This wasn’t ordering him to do something against his will; it was just sticking to the plan.
I still felt like a heel.
“Ah, I understand,” Fabian said, smiling again as he stroked one of his sideburns in contemplation. “I can think of two things that, when
combined, are hard for many ghosts to be near because they make the air feel bad. One of those is garlic. Not just a few cloves, but many.”
My mouth sagged at the irony. The plant most fabled to repel vampires was actually part of a ghost’s kryptonite?
“The other is the plant some people smoke,” Fabian went on. “When large quantities of that and garlic are present in close proximity, most
ghosts can barely stand to be near it.”
“You mean tobacco.” Wow, guess cigarettes weren’t healthy for anyone, living or dead.
“Not that plant,” Fabian said, frowning. “The other one that makes people act silly when they smoke it.”
“Weed?” I burst out. “You’re telling me marijuana is part two of the ghost repellent formula?”
I couldn’t be more shocked, but Fabian nodded serenely. “Yes. If you have a lot of garlic and marijuana on you at all times, it should help keep
most ghosts away from you, though I am strong enough to withstand it,” he added with obvious pride.
I couldn’t stop shaking my head. Who would ever guess that garlic plus ganja equaled ghosts-be-gone? On reflection, I had smelled a lot of pot
and garlic while in New Orleans, but I thought the latter was from the Cajun and Creole cooking, and the former was just a reflection of the city’s
party atmosphere. Who knew it was Marie’s way of keeping the ghost population from becoming so large that vampires and ghouls would have to
realize something was going on? She must have a pot and garlic field surrounding wherever her house was.
“Smashing, I’ll get right on procuring both of those,” Bones said, appearing not at all thrown by the idea. “Kitten, tell him he’s to report to
Mencheres from now on. Shouldn’t be us anymore, not with all the herbs you’ll soon be sporting. He says he’s strong enough, but we can’t risk the
possibility of delaying an important message from him.”
I repeated that to Fabian, still feeling weird over how he seemed to wait for me to say the same thing before reacting to it. Now I knew how
Sigourney Weaver’s character must have felt in Galaxy Quest. “Computer, do we have a beryllium sphere on board?” I muttered under my breath.
“What’s that?” Bones asked.
“Nothing.”
“I will return to Dave now. It shouldn’t be hard to locate him. He said he wouldn’t change hotels again until I came back,” Fabian said.
I stared at him, wishing I could give him a hug goodbye and once more hating how everything I said hijacked his free will. “This won’t be for long,”
I told him, brushing my hand over his face even though it went right through him.
An incandescent palm covered my hand, no weight or pressure in the gesture.
“I will not fail you,” Fabian said, and then he disappeared from sight.
I stared at the spot where he’d been with a sort of grim resolve. Damned if I’d fail him, either. I would find a way to give Fabian his free will back,
beat Apollyon without martyring myself—which would also get the ghoul hit men off my tail—and then talk some sense into my senselessly stubborn
family.
I just had no idea how I’d do all those things.