There had been a festival going on. Some kind of celebration. Women in long dresses and headscarves gathered in groups of threes and fours. Children chased one another around the square. There was a circle of men who had been dancing, now forever frozen in the act, each of them having glanced over to see what had caused their wives and sisters and daughters to scream. The way they were situated, they all seemed to be staring right at Clay, at this monstrous earthen man who strode into the heart of their town.
Here, he thought, checking again the angle of the stone men’s stares and his own location. She stood right here.
If he closed his eyes on a quiet night, somewhere near the heavens such as a mountaintop or the dome of a cathedral, he could almost remember what it felt like to be touched by the hand of God. In moments such as this, he did not want to. There was only darkness here, though the sun still shone on the horizon.
This is your will? Clay thought, eyes pressed tightly closed. He shook his head and swore under his breath.
A cold sensation passed through him and he turned to see the ghost of Dr. Graves beside him. The specter had a hand on his shoulder and though Graves was insubstantial, Clay could almost feel the weight of those fingers, the comfort of a friend.
'We will catch her,' Graves assured him.
Beyond him, Clay saw Squire approaching. The shapeshifter shook his head.
'No. We won’t.' He looked at the ugly, contorted face of the misshapen little hobgoblin, but saw only the light of gentle grief in his eyes. 'I’m sorry, Squire. Sorry I made you go back and get the nets and all the rest of the equipment to take her alive.'
Once more he glanced around the square, met the stone gaze of two dozen men who died dancing, and who stared at him as though they expected him to avenge them.
'It’s too late for that now.'
Clay wandered away from them, needing a moment’s peace. A moment’s solace. At the far end of the square was a church. Heart torn by conflict, he forced himself to approach it, and then to step inside.
'All right, we’re with ya, big guy,' Squire said, hurrying after him with a scuffle of his weathered boots. 'But how do we find her? We could search forever now and not get any closer than this. Hell, she could be in one of these houses and we might never find her.'
Dr. Graves crossed his arms and stood beside Squire. It was easy to see why he had been considered so formidable in life. The ghost wore a grim expression.
'We will search for her until we find her. I have eternity to look.' The comment was meant to be halfway amusing but there was simply too much melancholy in it.
Clay was barely listening. He had glanced back at his companions but now he returned his attention to the church’s interior. Candles burned inside. Clay’s stomach churned. A warm breeze washed over him, causing the candles inside to flutter.
'We don’t have to search anymore,' he said.
'What’re you talking about?' Squire asked.
Clay gestured for them to come forward, to see what he’d seen. Sprawled just inside the entryway of the church was the corpse of an Orthodox priest, his robes spattered with blood, his limbs jutting out at odd, impossible angles. Broken. His face was black and swollen and there were dozens of small puncture wounds on his cheeks, forehead and throat. One of his eyes had been punctured as well and had dripped vitreous fluid like thick tears.
The ghost of Dr. Graves whispered past Clay, floating down beside the corpse as if he were kneeling. In the combination of the church’s shadows and the light from the doorway, Graves seemed only partly there, a mirage. He shook his head, studying the body, then glanced up. Through him, Clay could still see the candles up on the altar.
'I don’t understand,' Dr. Graves said. 'Why isn’t he stone?'
Clay lumbered deeper into the church, his flesh flowing and bones popping as he walked. Wearing the face of the dead priest, he knelt by the corpse. He traced his fingers along the corpse’s face, then reached up to his own eyes.
Once again he shifted his form, taking on the appearance of the man known back in New Orleans, and in Boston, and in other places around the world, as Clay Smith. Clay Smith, with a unique skill at solving murder. Not a detective, but often of help to police departments in whatever city he called home.
'He was blind,' Clay said simply. 'He could not see her, therefore her curse did not affect him. So she killed him, probably infuriated. The marks on his face — '
'Snakebites,' Graves interrupted.
'Yeah,' Clay said.
Squire strode across the small church, producing a stubby cigar from his pocket. He lit it from a candle and turned to face them.
'All right. But explain it to me. How come this means we don’t have to go looking for her?'
Graves studied Clay a moment, then looked at the dead priest, and finally gave his attention to Squire. 'Our friend Mr. Clay has more than one talent, remember?'
Squire’s face lit up and he puffed on the cigar. The hobgoblin gave a short cough and nodded eagerly. 'Right, right. The thing. The… the ectoplasm trail, or whatever. But you couldn’t see it before, because Medusa’s victims were all stone. It wasn’t working.'
'No,' Clay agreed. 'It wasn’t.' He looked upon the dead priest with sorrow, but also with grave determination. The souls of murder victims haunted their killers for a time, perhaps with intent but more likely simply because their lives have ended so abruptly that they cling to whatever’s nearest them when they die, afraid to go anywhere. To move on.
But the ghosts leave a trail, a kind of thin phantom line, a tendril that connected their ravaged bodies to their souls, no matter how far the souls traveled away from their husks. If he discovered the victim soon enough after death and he followed that link, that tendril, he could find the killer.
A faded pink mist clung to the dead priest, stretched like a rope out the front of the church and through the square, then farther up into the village. Into the hills.
Into the west.
'I’ve got her trail,' Clay said. 'It’s only a matter of time, now.'
Her bones ached.
Eve drifted slowly up into awareness and though her eyes were still closed, her brow knitted in discomfort. She lay on her side already, her body rocking with some unknown rhythm, but now she pulled her legs up tight beneath her and shuddered with the cold. Her lips drew taut, pressed together and then she shifted uncomfortably.
Her eyes fluttered lazily open and she saw her hands, crossed at the wrists over her breasts. A thin sheen of crystal frost had formed on her flesh and a chill mist swirled around her. The rocking motion continued but only now did Eve have the presence of mind to recognize that she was in a boat.
Memories stirred and she remembered her circumstances. Rage washed over her, warming her icy blood, and her upper lip curled to bare her fangs even as she sat up. They were in a small boat, Eve at the prow. Nick Hawkins was nearest to her, smoking a cigarette, and the moment she was in motion he began to shift toward her, hands coming up in a defensive posture.
Eve was thousands of years faster.
She sprang at him, lunging through the mist and ignoring the sway of the craft or the rush of the water beneath it. Hawkins snarled, clenching his cigarette between his teeth, but he had neither the strength nor the swiftness to fight back. Eve clutched his throat with her left hand, the right gathering up the fabric of his jacket, and she drove him down beneath her. The back of his head struck the wooden floor of the boat with a solid thump. A guttural curse issued from his lips even as the impact knocked the wind from his lungs. Eve held him down as he bucked, attempting to throw her off, but she was too strong.
Her vision was far more than human. Her eyes saw through gloom and mist with utter clarity, and when she looked up she saw every line in Nigel Gull’s hideous features. He had been sitting behind Hawkins — beyond him the girl, Jezebel, had her hands in the water, somehow using her weather magic to propel the craft — and now Gull shifted forward, raising his hands. The old mage did not dare to stand in the small boat for fear they would all spill
