Page 156 of The Ghost and the Graveyard (Knight Games 1)
"I agree. Rick, can you carry him up the stairs?" I asked.
"What? I don't want that guy touching my body," Logan protested.
"You should have had such qualms when you possessed me, you insolent ball of gas!" Rick threw up his hands in disgust.
"Rick has a point, Logan. And furthermore, there is no way Michelle and I are making it up those stairs with this gurney. If we're going to do this, we need Rick's help."
Logan frowned, placing his hands on his hips and pacing around his body. "I don't look good. Are we sure I'm not going to die anyway?"
"Logan! Are we going to try this or not?"
"Okay, okay. He can carry me up the stairs."
"Good. Let's go."
Rick lifted Logan's body in his arms and carefully moved toward the attic. Michelle and I followed with the liquid nutrition and his IV fluids. As we turned the corner at the second floor landing, Logan's head bumped into the banister. I didn't think Rick did it on purpose. I really didn't. But Logan was not happy.
"Hey! Do you mind?"
"Sorry," Rick said, but I caught the tiniest of smiles flash across his face. I gave him my best death stare.
We all spilled into the attic, and I conjured a hospital bed for Logan's body. Once he was settled in with his fluids safely hung, I hurried to the Book of Light. I started with P for possession, but the only spells in my book were to force a ghost out of a living body. I found some promising spells under H for healing, but while they would make Logan's body stronger, they wouldn't bind his soul to it. After an hour of searching, I slammed the thing shut and turned toward Rick.
"Before I die, I'm upgrading this thing into a searchable database. I can't find anything useful. What do you know? Any caretaker magic that can put him back?"
"No. Caretakers usually exorcise ghosts, not the other way around."
"Maybe we're making this harder than it needs to be." I moved to the hospital bed. "Logan, try to possess your body."
Logan floated to himself and placed a hand over his body's heart, but before he proceeded he looked at me with something close to panic in his eyes. "I don't think I want to do this. Look at me. Will I ever be normal again? I don't even know if my limbs work. Did I break anything in the crash? Will I be in pain?"
Michelle piped up. "You have a broken femur and collarbone. They should heal eventually, but you've endured a nasty bump on the head."
"The bottom line is that we don't know, Logan," I said. "There are no guarantees, but it's your life to live, whatever there is left of it."
"Maybe I don't want to live it. Maybe it would be better if I let this body die and didn't have to go through the horror of seeing myself waste away every morning. I'm not sure I want to grow old and crippled. I'm not sure I want to live again."
Fear is a poor decision-maker. I saw it strangle all of the logic out of my friend, felt the weight of it on my shoulders. The terror of crawling back into a broken body was a feeling I would never want to experience, but the worst part was doing it alone. Logan was a chef, a restaurant owner, an avid biker. But the one thing he wasn't was a husband and father. His next of kin was a cousin who lived in Albuquerque. Recovery was bad enough when you had a support system, but when you were alone, every day could be a struggle.
"Logan, I know you're scared. I'm not sure what condition your body is in right now or how long it will take for you to get better. But I can promise you this. I'll be there for you. I won't let you do this alone. I'll help you with your recovery."
Michelle had known me long enough to pick up on when to chime in. "Hey, when Grateful promises something, she does it. I'll help too. We'll be your support system."
Hovering over his body, he seemed to consider this. He looked from me to Rick as if weighing the costs and benefits of what it would mean to have his body back, his life back. I couldn't help, in that moment, but to question what my life would be like without Logan. I'd quickly become accustomed to his presence in the house and wondered how empty it would feel without him. But like a lost dog, his life did not belong to me. I couldn't keep him.
"I'm going to hold you to your word," he said to me and then sank his hand into his heart. His body jerked as if we'd hit it with a defibrillator. Logan sank in deeper until there was no more ghost. The body's green eyes fluttered open.
"How do you feel, Logan? Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?"
I saw his finger twitch and then the sheet over his feet move. He opened his mouth. No sound came out.
"That's good," I said.
Logan sat up out of his body. "It's not that bad in there. I think I can move everything, but my throat feels weird and, obviously, I'm not sticking. I mean, I can't just possess my own body, right? I need to somehow join with it."
"Yes, of course," I frowned and rubbed my chin. "Let's try one more thing-although, I have no idea what will happen. I've never done this before."
"What the hell. It's just my soul."
