Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) by Maria E Schneider

“There’s two or three other people here too.”
    “Is there a girl named Espy there? Her life force tried to come across, but I told her to stay. Something was trying to capture her on your side. I think that may be what happened to me. Something was after me, and I ended up here!” It all came out in a rush, confused. I had put the thoughts together but not organized them enough to be coherent. But the cat, maybe the cat could help anyway.
    “I haven’t seen her, but I haven’t checked around. Patrick recognized you as soon as he saw you. He’s one of the special nurses assigned to this ward a few times a week.”
    “The vampire? Do you think he could be stealing our lives by imbibing our life force?”
    Lynx shook his head, adamant. “’Trick is cool. He gets blood from the hospital bank. He doesn’t need to run around draining patients.”
    “But what if he does? Or what if it’s another vampire? I saw a female at the blood bank. What if they require more than just blood to stay alive? In Between the things that steal aren’t after blood. We don’t have any. They want the sparks of life. Maybe it works that way for vampires too!”
    His ears twitched then, followed by his eyes slanting towards the door. Without even a whisper of sound, he casually tucked himself along the wall where he wouldn’t be readily visible and if seen, he was nothing more than a tired visitor brooding over a dying patient.
    I had a bad feeling. It was going to be the vampire, I just knew it. What if he was the thing I felt calling to my life force, the thing I’d run from before they could save me?
    The door opened slowly. A single, bony hand held the edge of the door. A short person in a dark uniform backed partway into the room. The cleaning lady maneuvered a cart that was more than half full of dirty sheets. I recognized her gray head of hair and stooped shoulders as she scanned the room. The guy asking for sheets had called her Julia, but I couldn’t see her badge from this vantage point.
    She gave a short nod directed somewhere between the body on the bed and Lynx. She might have seen him or she might just be noting that there were no sheets to pick up. The body on the bed didn’t look as though it had done anything as ambitious as sweat in a long time. They probably didn’t have to change the sheets more than once a month.
    The cleaning lady pushed the cart back out, leaving the door hanging partially ajar as she exited.
    Lynx padded to the door, pushing it closed.
    Maybe the vampire was after Espy, maybe not. But whatever had come after me was still in this hospital. Espy was proof enough for me. Her fear had been a choking tendril of desperation, an echo of the bone chilling panic I’d felt when dying. “The girl. Her name is Espy. She’s probably in this ward now, in a coma like me. You need to get her out.”
    I stared at the near-corpse on the bed. It might be too late for me, but if we hurried, maybe we could prevent Espy from coming across.
     

Chapter 13
    Seeing my body had not been the victory I’d expected. The husk that remained on the side of the living was well past its expiration date. The whole experience had exhausted me and yielded little by way of answers to my questions. It was a long shot, but the only person I could think of who might be able to tell me about the blood I’d seen was Cinderspark. Maybe she had changed her mind and decided to dally here one more time.
    Once I determined my destination, it didn’t take long to puff myself there.
    Troy’s juniper was the same looming gray as always. The color that had appeared when he was nearby wasn’t evident now.
    Before I could drift any closer, Spook materialized in front of me. I tamped down my hunger, even though Spook would have already sniffed out my longing for energy. The tree had been a temptation ever since I’d followed Troy through, and it was embarrassing to be caught blatantly coveting what was not mine.
    Spook barked.
    I was