He crossed his arms. "Make me."
I slammed my open palm into his ear. His head flew off the table, rolled across the floor, and settled in front of a seeing-eye dog. The dog lifted its muzzle, and its nostrils flared as it picked up the whiff of decay.
"Yum," I said. "Go on, boy. Take a bite."
The ghost's body flew across the restaurant, plowing through tables and diners. Beside me, Jaime made muffled snorting noises, stifling laughter. She mouthed, "Thank you."
The decapitated ghost stomped back to the table. Only he was decapitated no more, having apparently decided his head was safer attached to his shoulders. He'd also freshened up his wardrobe. This would be his normal ghost self. The headless accountant look was a glamour, a trick some ghosts used to revert to their death body--the condition they'd been in when they'd died--either to play on a necromancer's sympathy or to scare the bejesus out of humans with a little necro blood.
"Now, doesn't that feel better?" I said.
"Oh, you thought that was funny, did you?" he said, advancing on me. "It's always funny to pick on those less fortunate than yourself. Maybe when you're done here, you can go back to paradise, and have a good laugh, tell them how you abused the earth-spook."
"Earth-spook?"
"I'm a spirit in torment," the man said, his voice rising like a preacher at the pulpit. "Condemned to tread the earthly realm until my soul finds peace. For five years--five unimaginably long years--I've been trapped here, unable to move into the light, seeking only a few minutes of a necromancer's time--"
Jaime thudded face-first onto the table and groaned. The elderly woman at the next table inched her chair in the other direction.
"See how she treats me?" the man said to me. "She could set me free, but no, she's too busy going on talk shows, telling people how she helps tormented spirits find peace. When it comes to an actual spirit, though? In actual torment? Who only wants to avenge himself on the driver who ended his life, left his wife a widow, his children orphans--"
"You don't have any children," Jaime said through her teeth.
"Because I died before I could!"
I leaned toward Jaime and lowered my voice. "Look, the guy's a jerk, but if you helped him, you could get him off your back--"
She swung to her feet and strode toward the door. When I jogged up beside her, she said in a low voice, "Ask him how he died."
The ghost was right behind me, and answered before I could ask. "I remember it well. The last day of my life. I was happy, at peace with the world--"
"There's no Oscar for death scenes," I said. "The facts."
"I was driving home after a business meeting," he began.
"A meeting held in a bar," Jaime added as she turned into an alley.
"It was after office hours," he said. "Nothing wrong with a drink or two."
"Or five or six." She stopped, out of earshot of the sidewalk now, and turned to me. "Coroner reported a blood-alcohol level of at least point two five."
"Sure, okay, I was drunk," the man said. "But that wasn't the problem. The problem was a seventeen-year-old kid joyriding in my lane!"
"You were in her lane," Jaime said. "Got a police report to prove it. Who killed you? The idiot who got behind the wheel of his convertible, so pissed he couldn't even fasten his seat belt. That kid you hit will spend the rest of her life wearing leg braces. And you want me to help you exact revenge on her?"
I turned on the man, eyes narrowing. He met my gaze and took a slow step back, then wheeled and stalked away.
"Don't think this is done!" he called over his shoulder.
"I'm coming back. And next time you won't have your ghost-bitch bodyguard to protect you."
"You want my help, Eve?" Jaime said. "Make sure he doesn't come back. Ever."
I smiled. "Be glad to."
Massachusetts / 1892
THE NIX SNIFFED THE AIR. IT REEKED OF HORSE AND human, the sweat and shit of both. That hadn't changed. She stood in the intersection of a street wide enough for four or five buggies to pass. Metal rails were embedded in the road, and a strange horseless carriage glided along them. Wooden poles lined the street, with wires strung from pole to pole, crisscrossing over the rows of brick buildings three, four, even five stories high.
Gone were the bustling markets, the narrow cobbled streets, the pretty little shops she remembered. The last time she'd walked the earth, this New World had been nothing more than a few bleak settlements on a wild continent, a place to send murderers and thieves.
The Nix rolled her shoulders, twisting her neck, trying to get used to the feel of this new form. In all the years she'd inhabited Marie-Madeline, she'd never quite grown accustomed to the stink of it, the pain and tedium of a mortal existence. Still, there had been a freedom there that she'd never known in her natural form--the freedom to act in the living world and wreak her own chaos. But now she was in another shape, somewhere between human and demon, a ghost.
A horse and coach veered toward her. She reached out, fingers curving into claws, ready to rip a handful of horse-flesh as the beast ran past. The horse raced through her hand without so much as a panicked roll of its eyes. She hissed as it continued down the road. Even a human ghost should be able to spook a horse. Once, her very presence would have put such fear into the beast that it would have trampled anyone who came near. She closed her eyes, and imagined the chaos she could have created. And now what? After two hundred years of damnation, had she escaped only to moan and lament what she had lost? No, there had to be a way--there was always a way.
The Nix took a few steps down the road, sampling the passing humans, tasting the thoughts of each. The men's minds were now closed to her. She'd learned that soon after her escape. Having died in the form of a woman, her powers were now restricted to that gender.
Her gaze slid from face to face, looking for the signs, searching the eyes first, then the mind. Sometimes humans hit on a moment of profundity more complete than their dim minds could comprehend, and they took that nugget of truth and dumped it in the refuse for the bards and the poets to find, and mangle into yodeling paeans to love. The eyes were indeed the windows to the soul. Clear eyes, and she passed by without pause. A few wisps of cloud behind a gaze, and she might hesitate, but likely not. Storms were what she wanted--the roiling, dark storms of a tempest-tossed psyche.
She made it halfway down the street, finding nothing more than a thundercloud or two. Then she had to pause before a woman with downcast eyes. In her late twenties with a plain, broad face, the woman waited on the sidewalk outside a store. A man exited the store, swarthy and rough-skinned, dressed in the clothes of a working man. As he saw the woman, a smile lit his face.
"Miz Borden," he said, tipping his hat. "How are you?"
The woman looked up with a shy smile. "Fine, thank you. And how are you?"
Before he could answer, a tall man with white whiskers strode from the store, his eyes blazing. He grabbed the woman by the arm and propelled her to the street without so much as a glance at the other man.
"What were you doing?" he hissed.
"Saying hello, Father. Mr. O'Neil greeted me, so I--"
"I don't care what he did. He's a farmhand. Not good enough for the likes of you."
What man is good enough for me, Father? None, if it means you and she would have to hire a second servant to replace me. The thought ran through the woman's mind, spat out on a wave of fury, but only the barest tightening of her lips betrayed it.
Her gaze lifted enough for the Nix to see eyes so clouded with hate they were almost black. The Nix chortled to herself. So she wished her father dead...just like Marie-Madeline. What an appropriate start to this new life.
The Nix reached out and stroked her fingers across the woman's pale cheek. Would you like me to set you free, dear one? With pleasure.
6
AN EARTH-SPOOK. THOUGH I'D NEVER HEARD THE term, I understood the concept. When we die, most of us go on to an afterlife, but a few stay behind. Some are what the headless
accountant purported to be--spirits trapped by unfinished business. Only they aren't really trapped. Like the crying woman in Savannah's house, they're stalled, thinking they have unfinished business.
This could have been the headless accountant's problem, but I'd lay even money that he fell into category two of these "earth-spooks," those who were sentenced to this limbo for a period after death. If so, he wasn't going anywhere until the almighty powers decided he'd learned his lesson. At this rate, he'd be pestering necromancers into the next millennium. But I was about to strike one off his calling list.
Since my quarry was trapped in this plane and couldn't teleport out, following him was easy enough. Although I followed less than fifty feet behind, he never noticed me. I'd changed into a baggy windbreaker and blue jeans, put my hair in a ponytail, and slapped on a ball cap. I kept a cover spell readied, with my blinding power as a backup, though I wasn't sure how well either worked in this plane. I had a lot to learn.
I gumshoed him halfway across the Windy City, taking two city buses plus the el train. Then he marched across the lawn of the ugliest building I had ever seen. It looked like my high school, which--to me--had always looked like a jail. Part of that was my own feelings about formal education, but I swear the architect of that school had a real grudge against students. Probably spent his teen years stuffed inside a locker, and vowed revenge on every generation to follow. This building was that same shit brown brick, that same looming bland facade, those same tiny windows. It was even surrounded by a similar ten-foot fence.
My first guess was, of course: jail. Seemed like a good place to keep Mr. DUI. But when I passed the ancient sign out front, I read: DALEWOOD PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL. So the headless accountant was hanging out in a psych hospital? Didn't seem to be helping.
In the parking lot, I waited behind a minivan until my ghost went in through a side door, where a half-dozen staff members stood getting a quick nicotine fix, huddled against the bitter chill as the sun dropped below the horizon. I crossed the grass-free strip of lawn, skirting past the smokers. Two steps from the door, a beefy bulldog-ugly orderly stepped into my path. I didn't slow, expecting to pass right through. Instead, I hit a solid wall of fat and muscle. Another ghost. Damn.
"Where you think you're going, boy?" he rumbled.
As I lifted my head, he blinked, realizing his gender blunder. "Look, lady, this is private property. You wanna join, you gotta talk to Ted."
I looked him full in the eyes, and switched on my blinding power.
"You deaf or something, hon?" he said. "I know I'm good-looking, but you ain't my type. Stop staring and start walking or I'm going to introduce my boot to your pretty butt."
As quick as I am to correct an insult, I'm just as quick to recognize an obstacle when I see one. Sure, I could probably just kick his ass the old-fashioned way, but that might tip off my quarry. So I murmured an insincere apology and trekked back down to the end of the laneway.
As a kid, when my mother had harangued me to get involved in extracurricular activities, I'd signed up for track-and-field. Was pretty damned good at it, too. Got to the city finals. I can still remember that moment, poised at the starting gate, before a crowd that had included my mother and all the Coven Elders. I crouched, waiting for the starter pistol, then leapt forward...and snagged my shoelace in the gate. Fell flat on my face. And that was pretty much how I felt now. My first job in the ghost world, and I was sucking dust at the starting line.
The worst of it was that, like forgetting to tie my shoe, my mistake was inexcusable. That earth-spook bouncer had clearly known I was a ghost--that's why he'd stepped into my path. How had he known? I'd been careful not to walk through anything. And why hadn't I recognized what he was? Basic afterlife skills. Time to admit I needed help.
My house was in Savannah's historic district. Before my daughter had been born, I'd scoured the supernatural world for greater sources of power, and a few of those stops had been in Savannah. I'd loved the place. I don't know why. Savannah was the epitome of genteel Southern charm, and there wasn't an ounce of gentility or charm in my body, nor did I want there to be. Yet something about the city struck a chord in me, so much so that I'd named my daughter after it. After I died, and had my pick of places to live, I'd chosen Savannah.
My house was a two-story antebellum manor, both levels decked out with verandahs and thin columns looped with ivy. A squat wrought-iron fence fronted the tiny yard, which was filled with so many palms, ferns, and rhododendrons that I had yet to see a blade of grass.
Kristof calls this my "Southern Belle" house, and laughs each time he says it. When he teases me, I remind him of where he's ended up. This is a man who has spent his life in ten-thousand-square-foot penthouses, with every possible modern convenience at his fingertips and a full staff ready to operate those conveniences for him, should he not wish to strain said fingertips. And where had he chosen to live in the afterlife? On a boat. Not a hundred-foot luxury yacht, but a tiny houseboat that creaks as if it's about to crack in half.
Kris wouldn't be at his houseboat now. He'd be in the same place he'd spent almost every evening for the past two and a half years. At my house. He'd started coming by as soon as he'd realized we shared the same ghost dimension. Less than a week after his death, he'd showed up at my door, walked in, and made himself comfortable, just as he used to do in my apartment thirteen years before.
At first, I hadn't known what to make of it, chalked it up to death shock, and told him, very nicely, that I didn't think this was a good idea. He ignored me. Kept ignoring me, even when I moved on to less polite forms of rejection. After a year, I couldn't be bothered objecting with anything stronger than a deep sigh, and he knew he'd won. Now I expected to see him there, even looked forward to it.
So when I peered through the front window, for a second, I saw exactly what I expected to see: Kristof sitting in his usual armchair before a crackling fire, enjoying a single-malt Scotch and his evening reading material--a comic book or a back issue of Mad magazine. Then the image vanished and, instead, I saw an empty fireplace, an empty chair, and a stoppered decanter.
I blinked back a dart of panic. Kristof was always here, as reliable as the tides. Well, except on Thursdays, but that's because on Thursdays we--Shit! It was Thursday, wasn't it?
I raced through a travel incantation, and my house disappeared.
A blast of cold air hit me. The bone-chilling cold of the cement floors seeped through the soles of my sneakers. In front of me was a scarred slab of Plexiglas, so crisscrossed with scratches I'd need my Aspicio powers to see what lay on the other side. To my right rose a wave of bleachers, wooden planks so worn that I couldn't guess what their original color had been.
I moved past the Plexiglas to an open section of the boards. Two teams of ghosts ripped around the ice, skates flying, their shouts and laughter mingling with those from the stands. I scanned the ice for Kris's blond head. The first place I looked, I found him: the penalty box.
Hockey had always been Kris's secret passion. Secret because it wasn't a proper hobby for a Nast, especially a Nast heir. There were two sports a Cabal son was expected to play. Golf, because so many deals were brokered on the greens, and racquetball, because there was nothing like a kick-ass game to show your VPs why they should never cross you in the boardroom. Baseball and basketball were good spectator sports for impressing prospective partners with skybox and courtside seats. But hockey? That was little better than all-star wrestling. Nasts did not attend hockey games, and they sure as hell didn't play them.
As a child, Kristof had never so much as strapped on a pair of skates. Not surprising for a native Californian. At Harvard, he'd had a roommate on the hockey team. Get Kristof close to anything that sounds like fun, and he has to give it a shot. Once back in L.A., he'd joined a league, using a false name so his father wouldn't find out.
When we'd been together, I'd gone to all of his games. Yet I'd waffled about it every week, telling him maybe I'd show up, if I had
the time, but don't count on it. Of course, I'd never missed a game. I couldn't resist watching him play, beaming behind his face mask as he whipped around the ice, grinning whether he scored, missed, or got knocked flat on his ass. Even sitting in the penalty box, he could barely manage to keep a straight face. How could I miss out on that?
He'd joined this ghost-world team about six months ago, and by then, we'd been close enough that I'd made sure I was always in the stands to watch.
I checked the scoreboard and wondered whether I should wait for the period break or head back to the hospital and try to muddle through on my own. I was about to teleport back to the return marker I'd laid, when Kristof hit the boards beside me, hard enough to make me jump.
"Hello, gorgeous," he said.
He pulled up to the side and grinned, his smile so wide it made my heart do a double-flip. Impossible for a ghost, I know, but I swear I still felt it flip, as it had since the first time I'd seen that grin; the gateway to "my" Kris, the one he kept hidden from everyone else.
As he planted his forearms on the boards and leaned over, a shock of hair flipped up from the back, mussed out of place by his slam into the boards. I resisted the urge to reach out and smooth it down, but let myself move a step closer, within touching distance.
"I thought you were in the box," I said.
"They let me out every once in a while."
"Silly them."
Our eyes met and his grin stretched another quarter-inch. Another schoolgirl flip--followed by a very un-schoolgirl wave of heat. He leaned even farther over the boards, lips parting to say something.
"Hey, Kris!" someone yelled behind him. "If you want to flirt with Eve, tell her to meet you in the penalty box. You'll be back there soon enough."
Kristof flashed him a gloved middle finger.
"He's right," I said, shaking it off as I stepped back. "Time to play, not talk. I just wanted to say I'm sorry for being late. I was busy and completely forgot."
A soft sigh as the grin fell away. "What did Savannah need now?"
"Sav...?"
Having spent days in the time-delayed throne room and that wasteland dimension, I'd forgotten that only hours had really passed since I'd last seen Kristof.