A faint sound, like that of a door panel sliding back, drifted down to my ears from the top of the stairs. And then heavy, measured footsteps started coming this way. I couldn’t see who it was, but it didn’t matter since a determined five-year-old could kill me in my current state and—
And then a flashlight beam hit me in the face.
“What the hell?”
The voice came from behind, but the mage in front of me heard it and spun. Leaving me sandwiched between two dark magic workers with the only question being which one would curse me first. And I guess it was Flashlight, because Bootheels’ hand didn’t even twitch before the area erupted in light.
But not in the shape of a spell.
Not unless the mages had crafted one that looked a lot like a genie rising from a lamp, if the lamp was an ugly ruby necklace and the genie was a pissed-off, transparent cowboy whose evening slumber had just been ruined by two thoughtless mages. Who were now no longer staring at me, I realized. But at my ghost buddy Billy Joe, who was glowing like the Aurora Borealis, with the sickly, neon green ghost light few humans ever get a chance to see.
And then with a whiter, brighter sheen, as the long, jeans-and-ruffled-shirt-clad body collapsed into a ball of pulsing ghost energy, throwing crazy shadows on the walls. And letting off a sound that felt like a knife in the brain.
If they ever wanted a sound effect for a scary movie, I had one for them, I thought, wishing that my hands worked so I could cover my ears. Or shut my eyes, which were starting to seriously dry out, but not so much that I couldn’t see Billy Joe swoop up the stairs, with a psychic scream that sounded like a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards and sent horrible shivers running over my skin.
The mage didn’t seem fond of it, either, because he cursed and stumbled back, falling into the stairwell.
But it didn’t stop him from drawing a weapon, and when Billy swooped around him and came barreling back down the stairs, a hail of bullets followed.
That would have been very bad, except for the fact that I was lying down. So they flew over my head and hit the other mage, who had been standing there with his mouth hanging open. And his shields down, judging by the fact that he shuddered and fell over just as the other mage tore down the stairs.
And straight into Bootheels’ last spell.
It looked like the dying mage had had a split second to get off a final curse, which caught his counterpart halfway down the short flight and sent him tumbling the rest of the way. Until he kicked me in the head, tripped, and sprawled out on the shiny ballroom floor, lying still. Leaving me with two dead mages, and a golem that suddenly lost interest in the attack in favor of nudging his old master with a clay-like toe.
And a ball of pissed-off energy that stopped just above my drooling face, resolving itself into a disembodied head wearing a Stetson and a scowl.
“You rang?” Billy demanded dryly.
“Nngghnh,” I said, which was the best I could do with frozen vocal cords and a lolling tongue.
“Would you mind repeating that?”
“Nngghnh, nngghnh!”
“Very funny,” Billy said.
“NNGGHNH!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” he said, disgusted, and merged with me so we could actually have a conversation. “Now, you want to tell me why you can’t move?”
“I got hit with a spell.”
“And why those guys wanted to kill you?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“And what the hell ‘nngghnh’ means?”
“It means we’re running out of time!” I said, and cursed. Because nothing worked. And damn the acolytes! And damn the dark mages! And damn everybody who had magic but me! I was supposed to have more magic than everyone else, to be able to do things other people couldn’t, not to get caught in a—
My thoughts screeched to a halt as my eyes fell on the golem. Which had just collapsed, probably because spells don’t outlive the caster, including containment spells, and the mage had just departed for the other side. I hadn’t been paying much attention to it before, but I was now.
And maybe I did have some magic that would work, after all.
• • •
“This isn’t going to work,” Billy told me a couple minutes later.
“It is working,” I said, twitching a finger.
It was fat and orange, without a nail or a hair or the freckles common to a human. It looked more like an uncooked hot dog than a finger, but it was moving. Which was more than I could say for my broken doll of a body still sprawled in the stairway.
Billy remained in house, so to speak, because my body would die without a soul in residence. Which is why I was currently getting a death glare out of my own blue eyes. He could blink them now, and had managed to mostly pull my tongue back where it belonged, although my voice slurred like an old drunk’s.
But it was an improvement. And hopefully an indication that the mage’s spell was weakening. But not fast enough.
“I wish you could help me up,” I told Billy.
“I wish you’d stop using that voice,” he told me back. “It’s . . . disturbing.”
“Sorry.”
I kind of liked it. Deep and powerful and scary, it matched the body—and the body’s former occupant, whom I could still smell as a pervasive stench. As if evil had permeated the very pores this thing didn’t have.
Or maybe ancient demons just didn’t wear deodorant.
“Isn’t that freaking you out?” Billy demanded as I settled more comfortably into my temporary skin.
“Yes,” I said, but it didn’t sound convincing even to me.
But I was freaking out; of course I was. I was a disembodied soul trying to wear the shed skin of an evil demon, which I was controlling through the very illegal magic known as necromancy. Or was trying to, I amended, as I started to get up.
And had a ghostly-looking girl leg poke awkwardly out of the golem’s massive shin.
“Told you,” Billy said as I frowned at it.
I drew it back in, but when I tried to move the leg again, the same thing happened. I moved mine, instead. Or, you know, what would have been mine, if I’d still had one, and damn it!
Okay. Okay. This wasn’t my first time at the possession rodeo. I should be able to figure this out.
Technically, my father had been the necromancer in the family, although he hadn’t made zombies. He’d made something like this. Not golems; he wasn’t a warlock. He couldn’t summon a demon if his life had depended on it, which was just as well because it would have kicked his ass. So he certainly couldn’t trap one.
But then, he didn’t have to. Because he already had plenty of spirits around. Dad, it turned out, had been a ghost magnet.
It was something he’d passed on to me, along with his blond hair and blue eyes and tendency to fall over his own two feet. I’d grown up with the ability to see and talk to ghosts, which I’d assumed was just a clairvoyant thing. But apparently not.
Because ghosts didn’t just like to talk to me, they hung around. And I guessed they liked to hang around Dad, too, because he’d amassed his own little group. Which he’d eventually realized would be more useful if they had bodies like the golems some of his warlock buddies made.
Crazy, right?
But then, so was Dad, or he gave a good impression of it sometimes. Like in this case, because nobody dealt with ghosts. Necromancers made zombies because they did as they were told. Ghosts would give you the finger before mugging you for energy and going off to the strip club. At least, they would if they were Billy Joe. Ghosts did what they damned well pleased.
But Dad had preferred them anyway, and so he’d decided to make prosthetic bodies for his ghosts. And yes, he was a weirdo, but that didn’t mean he was wrong, because it had worked. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the spell he’d used.
&
nbsp; He’d told me that he’d managed to infuse the spell for making golems with his own necromancy, but he hadn’t mentioned how. At the time, it hadn’t seemed important. It was kind of feeling important now.
“Cass—”
“In a minute.”
The whole point of it had been to mesh a spirit with a body. That was what necromancy did—use a little of the necromancer’s soul to animate a body that wasn’t his. It was why they could only make a handful of zombies at a time; there was only so much soul energy one person could spare.
So Dad had taken some of his soul, merged it with a ghost’s, and then just . . . stuffed the resulting combo into a premade body. And Dad’s bit o’ soul had acted like glue to keep it there.
But if that was the case, then why did I need a spell?
I didn’t need to bind another soul. I was the soul. And, according to Dad anyway, I was also the necromancer.
So why wasn’t this thing working?
“Cass—”
“I said give me a minute.”
“I don’t think we have a minute,” Billy said, rolling my eyes toward the door, where a couple more mages had just come in.
Damn.
I started thrashing around, trying to force the issue, and managed only to flip myself over. And apparently this thing was heavier on the front or something, because I couldn’t seem to get upright. Which left me crabbing about on the floor, half crushing my own prone body and vulnerable as hell.
“Cass—”
“I’m trying!”
“Cass!”
“Damn it, Billy!”
And then something abruptly snapped.
Namely, my left leg into the same leg of the golem. And then my right arm into its arm. And then the rest of my body, which a minute ago had been trying its best to float up out of this thing, was now comfy cozy. And what the hell?
The only difference I could see was that my necklace had become partly imbedded in the clay thanks to my gyrations on the floor. Only it wasn’t just a necklace, was it? It was a talisman. Like the control crystals the golems had but mine hadn’t, because it had shattered and broken when the demon left.
I was so proud of myself for figuring this out that I forgot there were two dark mages headed my way, until I saw the utter panic on my own half-frozen face.
Shit.
I grabbed the necklace off my body and shoved it harder into the clay. And then tried to draw my wayward left leg, which was still trying to do its own thing, back inside my smelly suit. And felt it click back into place.
And this time, it moved under my command, although my coordination left something to be desired. But I managed to get my new big feet under me anyway, and stood up. And found the body to be amazingly light, no heavier feeling than mine, maybe even less so.
Maybe clay was a decent choice, after all.
“What happened?” one of the mages demanded, advancing with his hand on a holster.
“Nothing,” I said as my leg tried to poke out the side again. “Don’t—don’t come any closer.”
“Why not?”
“Uh, it’s a trap,” I said, feeling around inside the golem’s leg with my wayward one, which didn’t seem to fit. Maybe because the golem was something like seven feet tall and I wasn’t. But no, no, no, you’re a soul, I reminded myself. You don’t have a size anymore.
But my brain didn’t believe it, and my brain kept insisting that I didn’t fit. And the second mage had now joined the first. And both were looking at me suspiciously as I juddered around, doing the golem equivalent of the hokey pokey.
“What kind of trap?” the second mage demanded, from beside his buddy.
“That kind,” I said, and knocked their heads together.
It felt like I’d barely touched them, but their skulls sounded like melons hitting pavement, and they went down in a heap. I swallowed, feeling sick, but then my head jerked up at the sound of fighting coming from the main hall.
And damn it, Armageddon had just broken out, and I had to go.
There was no doubt at all that another me and a trio of dangerous witches were now in the house, and would soon be thundering through the second-floor hallway somewhere over our heads. And a moment after that, they would be gone, when the girls escaped and the past version of me disappeared. And a moment after that, the house was set to blow up.
I grabbed Billy and ran.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I stumbled into the stairwell and over the mage’s body, up the stairs and around a bend. And damn, this thing didn’t corner well! But it was fast, like, faster than I was, if you didn’t mind hitting the wall a couple dozen times on the way. And right now, I didn’t, despite the fact that my lolling body was starting to look a little worse for the wear by the time we burst out into the hall.
And straight into a bunch of mages tearing out of Agnes’ old rooms, weapons at the ready.
Because, of course—they’d heard the commotion, too, hadn’t they?
For a second, everything stopped. I looked at them and they looked at me, and nobody said anything. I would have swallowed, but I couldn’t currently do that, or frozen in fear, but that hadn’t been working so well lately, either. So after a moment, I just straightened my massive shoulders.
And walked right through the middle of them.
Because we were on the same side now, weren’t we?
It might not have worked under other conditions. But with the chaos from downstairs as a backdrop, they didn’t stop to question me. They took off again, flooding by on either side, heading for the fight. Forcing me to wade through a leather tide to reach the door of the suite again, only to stop and stare.
At the last thing I’d have ever expected.
My time spell was gone, along with maybe half the mages. The rest were clustered over by the safe, where one of their number was hard at work on the wards. Rico was by the sofa, frozen, with a hand raised and a snarl on his features. Fred was still missing.
And Rhea, little Miss Meek Voice, little Miss Whatever-You-Say-Lady, little Miss We-Wear-Grandma’s-Nightgown-and-We-Like-It, was standing in the middle of the room, wand out and leveled on the redhead. And screaming, “Did you know?”
“Oh, look,” the acolyte said. “The coven witch is going to curse us.”
“Did. You. Know?”
“About dear, departed Agnes? Of course we knew. The power ages Pythias fast, but not fast enough. If we hadn’t acted, she might have lived another twenty years or—oh,” she said, smiling gently. “You are going to curse me, aren’t you? Well, go ahead. Show us the power of the covens, witch. If you can break through my shields, I deserve to—”
She may have kept talking; I couldn’t tell. Because the French windows behind Rhea abruptly slammed open, and a gust of rain and wind swirled in, powerful enough to rip one of the curtains down. A lamp teetered on a table, one of the last standing, and then fell, shattering into a thousand pieces against the floor. And a great flash of lightning flew through the open doors and hit the raised wand, splitting into a triple strand that targeted all three acolytes at once.
And blew the redhead off her feet and back through the damned wall.
I just stood there for a second, smelling ozone and seeing afterimages. And then three things happened at once: the mages targeted Rhea, I jumped in front of her with my broad orange back, and the brunette acolyte snarled and jumped back to her feet.
And was backhanded by a suddenly animated Rico.
Because nobody plays dead—or frozen—like a vampire.
“Get the safe!” I told him, in my scary demon voice. Which did not have the intended effect, because he turned his attention from the acolyte to me, probably because I was clutching my own apparently lifeless body.
But then I got help from an unexpected source.
“The golem,” t
he blonde screamed. “She’s in the golem!”
She hadn’t even gotten all the words out when what felt like a dozen spells slammed into me, all at once. They didn’t hurt, and they didn’t seem to work as intended, I guess being designed for flesh and bone instead of enchanted clay. But they rocked me and slowed me, and when I tried to move again, a big crack appeared in the huge expanse of my thigh.
“The safe! Get the safe—” I shouted as Rhea threw another spell from behind me, blasting several mages off their feet and causing several more to abruptly shield, because nobody was laughing at coven magic now.
But several more got off spells that caused my damned left leg to go dead, and sent me lurching into Rhea. And caused her last spell to go askew and hit the chandelier, exploding it into a thousand glittering shards. And then kept going, running around the room, popping recessed lights, and raining down glass and electric sparks. Followed by a veil of darkness that didn’t bother my golem eyes much but seemed to seriously freak out the mages.
Because, suddenly, spells were flying everywhere.
“The safe! The safe!” I kept repeating, I don’t know why. Probably because I was a little freaked-out, too, having the unique experience of being taken apart piece by piece while Rhea threw spell after spell and Billy cursed and Rico—
I didn’t know what the hell Rico was doing.
I was facing the other way, trying to shield my body and Rhea’s, too, and couldn’t see him. Until my big orange head got blown off my big orange shoulders and went rolling, and the eyes ended up facing the metal box that was still in the wall, although not for long. Because the next second, Rico threw aside the mage who was still working on the safe and plunged his arm through the ward. And through the front of the thick metal door.
And then jerked the safe out of the damned wall.
“Go!” he yelled, lurching toward us, but I was already going. Surging back into my own form, I got hit with the disorientation of a body swap, a rush of pain from a dozen new bumps and bruises, and blindness from the almost utter dark that my human eyes couldn’t handle. And a body that still wasn’t enthusiastic about following my commands.