Riordan really wanted to sleep as a honey badger, but it felt like he had an easier time calling on his badger in his spirit realm dreams if he was human in the physical world. He wasn’t sure if that was actually the case or just a mental hangup of his, but Riordan didn’t feel up to taking on another handicap at the moment. He’d slept on far worse than a motel floor before and honestly, the beds didn’t seem that much more comfortable.

“You don’t have to,” Mark started to object, reaching a hand towards Riordan. “The beds are big enough for two. It doesn’t seem fair to make you sleep on the floor.”

Riordan shook his head, grabbing the tarp and one of the pillows to lay out in his spot, choosing an area in the back of the room near the bathroom but out of the way. He didn’t want to get stepped on when Mark sleepily stumbled off to pee. He remembered how much of a zombie the man had been this morning before coffee.

“I don’t share space well,” Riordan explained, not wanting to insult Mark. The apprentice had been nothing but polite. And a bit odd, though Quinn took the crown for that title overall. It was the truth even. Riordan hated being vulnerable in sleep even without adding in having someone start that close to him. He wasn’t a big fan of being touched either. And then there was the fact he occasionally had nightmares that made him lash out physically. He might actually spend most of the night in the spirit realm just to avoid anyone seeing that.

Riordan set up his makeshift bedding, declining the offer of a blanket from either bed since the tarp would be plenty enough to reflect his body heat back. It wasn’t like it got that cold at night in summer and Riordan tended to run warm. They all settled down easily enough, despite the twilight sun outside. Maudy had set up the chair to the side of the front window and gotten comfortable, reading something on her phone in between periodic checks of their surroundings.

Lucinda and Mark each took a bed. Lucinda had changed into more comfortable clothing from the bag Maudy had brought, while Mark had just stripped to his boxers and passed out. The young man rolled in his sleep, tangling in the blankets and starfishing across the bed like sleeping was a combat sport. Riordan caught Daniel staring at Mark and snorted, amused by his friend’s casual ogling and relieved that Daniel did it to other people than just Riordan. There wasn’t much Daniel could do about his desires as a ghost, which made Riordan all the more determined not to fault the man for looking. He had to take his pleasures where he could, especially given he was still mourning his lost life.

He wasn’t as bone tired as he’d been the last few rough nights, but he had never fully recovered from being put through the grind of physical, mental, and magical trauma. Lingering adrenaline kept him alert longer than he expected. Then Riordan drifted off and woke up in a familiar meditation circle once again.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure how he felt about being there tonight. He’d spent the day hanging out with shaman, largely acting as one himself despite also drawing on his physical skills to a minor degree. Now he was away from that shifter culture yet back with his pack. He straddled too many worlds. Riordan wasn’t even sure which one he longed for anymore.

He still hated being a pack shaman. That much was definite.

With a sigh, Riordan pried himself off the ground where he was sitting and checked himself over. To his surprise, he’d manifested with the simple version of his badger mantle already active, all old-school leather and furs. He wasn’t sure if that was because he was getting better at spirit stuff or if he’d just been freaked out enough by Zeren earlier to want to hide the gateway in his chest automatically. Riordan ran a hand up his left arm, feeling the rope there, and hating the way he was getting marked up by magic. He hardly recognized himself.

There was nothing to do about his pathetic identity crisis at the moment, so Riordan shoved the thoughts aside and considered his agenda for the evening. He needed to check in with Duane first. Then he wanted to try practicing casting here, especially with the safeguards in place. Once he felt comfortable enough with that, he needed to see if he could check the flipside of this spirit space.

Riordan hadn’t gone back to the ritual space since he’d formed the pack and pulled them through to this side, hidden behind spiritual walls. He wasn’t entirely sure he could, but he thought it was likely, since his gateway contained the pathway. The tree was in both spaces, however that worked, and he was linked with that loop. He needed to check on the ghosts who had opted out and see if there were any new ones or other changes. As much as Riordan hated it, he was the only one in a position to monitor the ritual, even if he had no clue what to do about it.

Once again, Riordan encountered no one until he reached the central clearing. The avoidance of what was accidentally his area felt like a mix of fear and respect. Whatever the cause, it compounded with Riordan’s feelings of loneliness, leaving him wistful. To his surprise though, the same nervous young man from last time was there again and he smiled brightly at Riordan when he appeared.

“Hello,” the ghost called, his voice shy but friendly. Apparently Riordan hadn’t put him off too badly last time. “If you are looking for Duane, he’s by the waterfall again. He seems to have claimed that as his area.”

The unsolicited help brought a small smile of his own to Riordan’s lips. “Thanks. Ah, I didn’t catch your name last time.”

The man rocked back on his heels, apparently unable to stand entirely still, looking both surprised and pleased. “Cole. My name is Cole.”

“Is… Is everything okay here, Cole?” Riordan asked. “Is there anything I could try to do that would make it better? There’s a lot I can’t do, but I could try.”

Cole appeared to be giving this thought. He scratched at his still open wrist wounds as he considered. The injuries might not bleed here, but Riordan hated how these ghosts were left with the marks of their deaths for the rest of their existence. At least, he assumed they were. He wasn’t about to perform experimental magic on another soul, not with the amount of side effects that was sure to bring.

“Um, a lot of the guys are bored,” Cole offered, “The privacy has helped, but there’s only so long you can lay around unable to sleep or talk to the same group of people before you just burst. There’s been a few fights, though Duane cracked down on that pretty fast. Everyone could use a good distraction from… everything.”

From being dead, from being tortured, from being trapped and unable to control their own immortal existence at all. Right. Riordan could understand that need for distraction.

“What would work? I can’t exactly summon up a television and beer.”

Cole brightened as he offered his suggestion. His stained sleeves fell back over his wrists, though the material bunched oddly around the ropes binding both arms. “I always loved playing cards with the guys when we were at a job site. Or, when I was a kid, my grandma had these old board games. They were simple things, but we’d break them out late at night and spend hours playing. My sister and I always used to fight over who got to be the green piece.”

“Games,” Riordan affirmed, cutting Cole off before he went too far in a nostalgic tangent and made both of them depressed. He hated how much of a waste this whole ritual was. So many lost lives for what? A power trip? “I’ll speak to Duane and then see what I can do about making something like that. I should be able to manage a deck of cards at least. Thanks, Cole.”

“You’re welcome,” the young man practically beamed at him. “You do a lot for us, Riordan. We appreciate it. If we can help more--”

“You guys help a lot by being in a pack with me,” Riordan assured the young man and any other ghost who was listening. “It gives me enough power to fight back against our situation. Keeping ourselves safe is very important. That damned death mage was ready to drain every last bit of power from us. If I figure this stuff out better and find a way for you all to help more directly, I’ll let you know, but for now, just being open to supporting me and Duane while we tackle this is majorly appreciated.”

That was a longer speech than Riordan had intended and felt almost painful to say, skirting way too close to the spiritual support tasks for a pack shaman. He turned and didn’t quite flee as he headed towards Duane’s waterfall. It wasn’t the magic parts of being a shaman that he hated, he was realizing. It was the responsibilities and expectations of the pack towards their pack shaman. He didn’t want to be shoved into that box and placed up on a pedestal. He wanted to be down in the dirt and muck with the other grunts, getting shit done.

Ideally, with someone else in charge. If Riordan ever found someone worth a fuck to follow.

For now, he could at least work with Duane and that wasn’t nothing. The lumberjack of a man looked up when Riordan entered. He wasn’t alone, several other men casually hanging out in the space, but Duane was just relaxing this time, not being all leader mode on everyone. Riordan hated to interrupt that ease with more business, even if Duane wanted his updates.

Riordan struck a middle ground, plopping down on the black void grass next to Duane and watching the trickling waterfall tumble down into the small pool before running off to somewhere else. Duane acknowledged him with a nod, but didn’t rush into a conversation.

After a moment, Riordan surprised himself by starting with, “I ran into one of the men who kidnapped me today.”

Duane took his eyes off the waterfall and glanced over at him, expression unreadable and voice calm. “That so?”

Riordan wondered if Duane could sense how much the encounter had shaken Riordan, how much he needed the other man not to make a big deal out of what he was sharing. “Yeah. I convinced the two apprentice shaman to take me by Honor while we were out doing errands. To see the place I’d gotten hit with that tracking spell and bled magic all over. We stopped for ice cream and then there he was, just talking on his phone down the block. It was weird.”

“Because it seemed out of place to see someone like that acting so normal?”

Riordan wondered what caused Duane to be able to understand so well. He flopped back into the grass, watching the fairy lights twinkle against the endless void of the spirit realm. “Death mages get corrupt the more they draw power from pain and death. You can see it on them like a black stain, a sign that says, ‘this person has done terrible things for power.’ Yet, a normal human can do the same things, cause the same pain and death, and look so ordinary, just because they didn’t touch the magic of it.”

His thoughts moved from Jimmy to Quinn as he thought about death mages and Riordan frowned. “And even the death mage thing is more complicated than I expected. There had been another death mage with the guy who attacked me, part of the same group, though I don’t think she’s even the one behind the killing tree. She wasn’t that corrupt yet, but still attacked like it was nothing. Meanwhile, the Department of Magic’s specialist arrived and was able to help remove a blood spell from Mark, but he was so full of death corruption that it was amazing that he wasn’t dead or insane.”

“Okay,” Duane said after that. “You’ll have to go over most of that in more detail in a moment, but it sounds like what’s bothering you is that evil isn’t obvious. That people who could choose better don’t and that those who would find evil easy to do might choose otherwise?”