The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

shoes. She ranted while I filled the bathtub, and when I slid my clothes off and stepped into the water she shimmered in the steam filling the air. The blood crackled angrily off her hands, and when she flung them around to accentuate certain points, the droplets winked out of existence with tiny red sparks.

I settled back in the water and closed my eyes. The Seal pulsed reassuringly against my chest. Finally, silence ticked through the bathroom. A drop of water plinked from the faucet. For the first time in days, I was thoroughly, blessedly warm.

“Are you finished?” I wiggled my toes. Water rippled.

I cracked an eyelid. She was staring at me, her irises gone muddy, the jaundiced whites bulging, and her lips even more purple. The charring had spread. Her breasts sloped a little, the implants sagging, and there was absolutely no dignity in her nakedness. Not like during college, when she could have walked the length of the entire campus stark naked as a jaybird and nobody would have even sniggered. Her raw, blood-drenched hands hung at her sides, and sudden shame bit me high up in my throat, right where the bitter copper taint of mute rage and failure had lodged since childhood.

“He invited me out to the house on Sunday.”

“Georgie—” A faint horrified cricket whisper.

I felt nastily, faintly glad that she was the one looking horrified, instead of me. “We’re supposed to drain some of the charge off the Seal so he can use it in his—”

“Georgie—”

“Shut up, Moira. You brought this to me, I’m going to fucking fix it. The way I fixed every other problem you had in college. I cleaned up after you for years and I’m still doing it. I thought I’d gotten away from it.” I wiggled my toes again, for punctuation. “Anyway. If I can make you go away, I can make you more solid, right? It’s elementary logic.”

“I can borrow mass,” she whispered. “Yes. For a short time.”

This is why I wrote all your papers. You just don’t think, do you? Well, of course not. She never had to. Everything just fell into her arms or her lap. Fell – or was sucked in by her sheer unconscious voraciousness.

I made a restless movement. Water slopped against the sides of the tub. “Well, OK then. Between now and Sunday you’re going to teach me more about using this thing. Just quit fucking riding me, Moira! I’m not in the mood. The man makes me feel dirty. If you can’t bring me a glass of Chablis then at least shut up and let me enjoy my bath.” I heard the bitchy whine, softened it up a little by habit. “I mean, Christ. I’ve pulled you out of the fire every other time, right? Why don’t you trust me now?”

She was motionless, even the crackles of vanishing blood oddly muted.

“Georgie?” She spoke faintly, almost in a whisper.

If she dropped one more thing on me . . . “What?” I shifted again. Water lapped. I tried not to think of the charring spreading all over her, the faint reek of burning that was beginning to permeate the bathroom, or the things Ryan Hannigan had told me. I wanted very hard not to think at all for a little while. Ten minutes, twenty if I was lucky.

“Thank you.”

For the first time, Moira sounded like she meant it, not just like it was the thing to say when you’d twisted someone’s arm. My eyes opened fully just in time to see her drift through the door to the hall, slipping through it like smoke. The steak I’d managed to choke down rose in a hot wad, but I set my jaw and swallowed hard again.

I’d earned every bite. And I was going to keep earning it.

The limousine arrived precisely at twelve-thirty. Long, sleek, and black, and I only had a moment’s misgiving before climbing in. The newspaper said Moira had died in a silver MG.

The chauffeur was a slightly tubby blondish man in an uncomfortable-looking suit. “New hire,” Moira sniffed. The seat didn’t dimple under her, and the blood crackled away before it reached the upholstery. “He probably fired Enrique. I liked Enrique.”

I wanted to ask how well she’d liked him, but kept my mouth shut. Settled back on the seat and watched the city slide by.

“We can go over it again.” Was she nervous? She was back to that uninflected flatline, it was hard to tell. “Once you’re in the circle, you’ll be insulated, but you won’t be able to get out. You’ll have to concentrate really hard to get me the mass I need while he’s distracted.”

I nodded, slightly. The smoked-glass partition between me and the driver was half-open, but I could see his dark eyes in the mirror. They were fixed front, and looked dilated.

That was not a good sign.

Both Ryan and Moira swore I couldn’t die as long as I had this thing on. I found out I was playing with it again, running my fingers over the fluid curves, the chain sliding warm and soft against my nape.

“Bastard,” she hissed, softly. “You know, I probably bought this for him. He’s nothing without the Seal. He’s scared. Good.”

It was the only time she didn’t sound monotone, when she was telling me how much she hated him. I nodded again, half-closing my eyes. I was glad I’d worn jeans and a T-shirt for this. The boots had good grippy soles, too, and as the limo turned uptown I propped one on the seat and imagined the limo was mine.

The house reared up in a grey wave under an overcast sky. The English gardens were clipped and lifeless, winter settled in to stay for a while. The driveway was pitch-black and newly sealed, and an honest-to-God butler offered to take my coat. I declined, clutching my purse to my side with one elbow as if it might wriggle away, and Ryan Hannigan came down the great sweeping staircase like he was in an MGM musical. I expected to hear the voice of God telling Moses what the hell to do, or for Hannigan to bust out a cane and start tap-dancing, at any moment.

“Thank you, Chilton. I’ll take Miss Parkes from here. If you could just leave the week’s menu for Cook before you go? Good.” Hannigan arrived at the bottom and surveyed me as the butler glided away. “Hello, Georgia. I trust the drive was pleasant?”

“I think your chauffeur’s stoned.” My palms were hot and slick.

“He’s temporary.” He’d just stepped out of some European version of Vogue – charcoal and black, cashmere pullover and sharply-creased slacks, his dark hair perfect and his smile a white slash. A chunky silver watch gleamed on one tanned wrist. “Especially if you don’t like him. We are, after all, going to be working together.”

I made a noncommittal noise. All of him was so impossibly vivid, burning with stolen life.

Just like Moira. Two of a kind, both high aces. And what was I? A two or a three of spades. Maybe I could graduate to joker, though, when all this was done.

“He got rid of my grandfather clock,” Moira noted, ripples passing through her in bursts. “Probably my dinnerware too, before my body even got cold. Bastard.”

I only saw a little of the house, but I liked it. Despite the Eastern thing Hannigan had going on – cushions and Zen hangings, at least two huge stone Buddhas, and various poor village tchotchkes re-made so rich people could play at being peasants. I searched for something to say. “So, are you a Buddhist and a sorcerer? How does that work?” It sounded stupid, like cocktail-party conversation, and I wished I could rub my palms against my jeans to dry them off, and get rid of the pounding in my head too.

“Buddhism’s a technology, Georgia. Not a religion.” He liked educating dumb females, his tone said. He liked it a lot. He continued, and I quit listening, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. The pendant quivered against my skin, nestling close. I could almost see its outlines shifting under my shirt as the lion-dragon-thing moved, flowing in a circle.

“Oh, Christ.” Moira rippled some more, drifting after him. “I hate that tone of his. And look at him. Hasn’t missed a workout, I can tell you that much. In between getting rid of all my— oh, no, my O’Keefe’s gone!”

Shut up, I wanted to tell her. You’re distracting me. I followed him through a library, suspecting that most of the leather-bound spines filling the glassed-in shelves were fakes. Interior decorators can do that, books by the yard. I wondered if some of them were magic books, decided not to ask.

“And here is where we make the magic, Georgia.” He swept open a pair of heavy mahogany doors, and I