to roll the body over.
The three stared down into the face of Teddington Fullmer.
Dearlyn exhaled audibly in relief, then seemed ashamed. Gheevy made a little grunting sound of surprise, then looked away. Only Pryce continued to stare directly at the visage in confusion. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel relief. On the contrary. In a distant, annoying way, he was glad that the blackmailing blackguard was no longer around to make his life miserable. He would have preferred that he had simply moved miles away of his own accord, but there it was.
‘Teddington Fullmer,” he said aloud slowly. ‘Teddington Fullmer?”
The halfling looked at the woman, then turned to the seemingly mesmerized Pryce. “What is it, Blade?” Gheevy said with concern.
Pryce looked wonderingly at Wotfirr. “I was attacked earlier tonight,” he said thoughtfully. “I thought it was by him.” He pointed at Fullmer.
Dearlyn had leaned in to listen to the hushed conversation. “It still could have been,” she reminded him.
Gheevy looked worriedly at Pryce, but Covington already knew that he couldn’t say everything he was thinking in front of Dearlyn. Silently he pursued the evasive mental clue that was even now trying to form in his brain. “Well, I suppose he could have had accomplices.”
“Or maybe he followed you,” Dearlyn suggested. “And someone followed him.”
The body groaned.
They all leapt back.
“I thought he was dead,” Gheevy said in alarm as he cowered on all fours.
Pryce was also on his hands and knees. “I thought so, too,” he said truthfully. He looked down at Fullmer carefully, but the body hadn’t moved. “No discernible marks that I can see. No signs of violence…”
‘There’s no look of fear or anger on his face,” Dearlyn pointed out. It was true. Fullmer looked positively placid.
The halfling and the impostor stared directly at each other, silently acknowledging that Teddington Fullmer’s face looked as composed as Darlington Blade’s dead countenance had.
Dearlyn interrupted their moment of realization. “All you can see is his face and hands. What about the rest of him?”
It was true. Pryce had been struck on the head. Maybe Fullmer had been as well, and the thick cowl had soaked up all the blood. “Good point,” Covington acknowledged. “We had better do a thorough examination.”
“Use your magic,” she suggested. Gheevy looked up in a near panic.
“Don’t be absurd!” Pryce flared, restraining his own dismay. “Whoever did thishe struggled to find a way out of the sentence, then rushed to finish it with triumphant relief”is a master magician! He… or she,” he stressed, getting into the spirit of his anti-casual-use-of-magic diatribe, “would be sure to use obscuring spells to make me believe whatever he or she wants me to believe.” He grumbled, walking on his knees so he could get closer to Fullmer’s head. “Soon you’ll be using magic for the simplest of things, and then where will we be?”
“All right, all right,” Dearlyn muttered back, walking on her own knees toward Fullmer’s head from the opposite direction. “It was only a suggestion.” She certainly wasn’t going to use her own illicit teachings… not with Gheevy there as a possible witness against her.
The three huddled around Fullmer’s head. Pryce wiggled his fingers in preparation. He moved them like spider legs over Fullmer’s cranium, preparing to pull back the cowl. “We’ll look for any contusions and I’ll check for a pulse,” he told them.
Nobody argued with him, and they found themselves holding their breath. Pryce carefully gripped the fur cowl and started to pull the material back. As it receded, they all leaned closer until they were no more than six inches from Fullmer’s face.
That’s when the trader’s eyes popped open and he sprang upward with an ear-shattering scream.
The reaction couldn’t have been any more severe had someone thrown a basketful of poisonous snakes into the room. Pryce literally did a backward somersault in midair, slapping his hands on the floor and springingfeet first, belly downover a floating stone tabletop. Gheevy leapt from all fours to the side, slamming into a pillow-cushioned stone chair. And Dearlyn cried out, using her staff as a pole vault to push herself up onto her feet, then slid back until she hit the side wall.
They gripped whatever they were close toa table, a chair, and a wallto keep from fleeing as Fullmer continued to screech, shriek, groan, and gurgle, his feet slapping the floor and his arms swinging wildly. His cowl fell back, and they all could clearly see the deep, wide, awful gash on the side of his head.
Sante says the side means death! Pryce remembered with a sinking sensation.
All three began to realize that something beyond the obvious was terribly wrong. On his feet now, Fullmer wasn’t waking up, nor was he fighting an imaginary assailant. He was acting like a marionette controlled by an amateur puppeteer. He was like a newborn hippogriff trying to control its limbs and wings.
“What’s the matter with him?” Gheevy called, cowering in the chair.
“I don’t know,” Pryce said, studying Fullmer carefully. ‘Teddington!” he called. ‘Teddington! It’s me, Pry, uh, Darlington Blade.” He glanced nervously at Dearlyn, but she only had eyes for the lurching trader. “I’m over here, Teddington… Darlington Blade, remember?”
The staggering man showed no specific reaction. Instead, he just kept jerking and jabbering.
“A haunt!” Dearlyn suddenly cried.
“A what?” Pryce couldn’t prevent himself from asking.
“A haunt,” she repeated more urgently. She looked directly at Pryce. “Don’t you feel its presence?”
He looked away from her to stare with calculated determination at Fullmer… or whoever he now was. “Of course,” he snapped with authority, as if grading her. “Good call.”
“A haunt?” Gheevy wailed. “What’s that?”
‘The restless spirit of a person who died leaving some vital task unfinished!” Dearlyn said in a rush.
“So Fullmer still has to be alive,” Pryce realized, but barely, by the look of his wound.
“Yes,” Dearlyn replied breathlessly. “A haunt can’t take over a body of the dead.”
“Fullmer!” Pryce cried, knowing they didn’t have much time. “What is it? Who is it?”
“The possession must be incomplete,” Dearlyn warned. “It’s struggling for control of his body!”
“What then? What then?” Gheevy moaned, practically crawling into the chair’s pillow.
“It will use the body to complete its task and to gain final release from this world,” she shouted over Fullmer’s increasing commotion.
Fullmer suddenly took an awkward step toward the chair. Gheevy let out a squawk, and Pryce used the floating tabletop as a bar to swing himself over to where the cowering halfling sat. Covington stood in front of the chair, protecting arms wide, just as Fullmer bent, veered, and finally rose to his full heightto face the woman.
“D-D-D-Dearlyn,” it managed to mumble through rubbery lips, “my… my… my… d-d-daughter…”
Pryce leaned back. Gheevy leaned forward. The woman’s jaw dropped open.
“F-F-Father?”
“Dearlyn, my child!” the haunt howled, then stumbled back, its arms flailing, until it hit the far wall of the workshop. Glass shattered, dust flew out in a multicolored cloud, and parchment scattered like autumn leaves in a stiff breeze.
“Father!” she cried, leaping toward him. Pryce intercepted her, wrapping his arms around her waist and swinging her back just in time to prevent the clutching fingers of the haunt from closing on her hair.
“Wait!” Pryce cried, struggling to hold on to her fighting form.
“He’s my father, curse you!” she said, pummeling him on the head and shoulders. She was kind enough to keep her palms open, however.
“Ow! He says he’s your father, blast it!” Pryce insisted. “Are you going toouch! run into the arms of everything that calls you ‘daughter’?”
She took careful aim and hit him again. “Darlington, he’s a haunt! Not a groaning spirit, not a specter, not a ghosta haunt! What sort of mage are you, anyway?”
He let her go instantly, stung by his own guilt. She turned, but by the time she returned her gaze to Fullmer, her expression wasn’t so certain. “Father?” she called with a quaking voice, suddenly keeping her distance. “Father? Is that you?”
The voice that answered was a far-off lament. “Dearlynnnnn… ”
