the beacon.
The pit was full of wraiths.
They swirled round and round in steady, mindless motion, each of them overlapping with dozens of others, so that it looked less like a group of beings moving in a circle than some bizarre stew with the occasional recognizable portion of human anatomy appearing above the mix. The hollow not-scream of the empty-eyed wraiths was a huge and hideous sound, one that surged in time with the beacon.
Maybe two dozen lemurs were scattered around the room. They’d lowered their hoods, and without their faceless menace to back them up, they just looked like people. Some were standing. Some were sitting. Another group was playing cards. Still others just stared at nothing, bemused.
A group of Big Hoods was gathered around the pit, all but two of them on their knees and chanting. They bowed at regular intervals and clapped their hands together at others. A gallows that looked like it had been constructed out of a driveway basketball goal hung over the pit, with a pair of Big Hoods holding one end of the rope.
Morty dangled from the other end, trussed up from his hips to his neck. He was swinging back and forth on the end of the line and slowly spinning. Gasps and broken sobbing sounds came from him.
Standing in empty air directly before him, moving as he did, was the Grey Ghost. The figure looked at least as menacing as it had the first time around. When it spoke, its voice was liquid, calm—and feminine.
“You need not do this to yourself, Mortimer,” the Grey Ghost said. “I take no pleasure in inflicting pain. Yield. You will do it in the end. Save yourself the agony.”
Mort opened his eyes. He licked his lips and said in a cracked, thick voice, “G-g-go fuck yourself.”
The Grey Ghost murmured, “Tsk.” Then nodded and said, “Again.”
“N-no,” Morty choked out, beginning to twist against his bonds. He accomplished nothing other than to start spinning more rapidly. “No!”
The two Big Hoods holding the rope calmly lowered Mort down into the swirling pit of insanely hungry wraiths. They collapsed in on Morty, as if the surf could choose where it wished to crash—and it all wished to crash on the little ectomancer. The cauldron of mad ghosts boiled and congealed onto him, all but hiding him from sight.
Mort began to scream again, a horrible, humiliated sound.
“One,” counted the Grey Ghost. “Two. Three. Four.”
At the last number, the flunkies hauled him up out of the pool of wraiths, and Morty hung there, swinging back and forth and sobbing again, gasping for breath.
“Each time you refuse me, Mortimer, I will add another second to the count,” said the Grey Ghost. “I know what you’re thinking. How many seconds will it take to drive you mad?”
Mort tried to regain control of his breathing, but it was a futile effort. Tears marked his face. His nose had begun to run. He opened his eyes, his jaw clenched, his bald pate scarlet, and said, his voice cracking, “Go watch the sunrise.”
“Again,” said the Grey Ghost.
The Big Hoods lowered Morty into the pit once more. I didn’t know what happened to a living mortal attacked by a wraith, but if Morty’s reaction was any indicator, it wasn’t good. Again he screamed. It was higher pitched than a moment before, more raw. The screams all but drowned out the calm, monotonous count of the Grey Ghost. She went to five, and then the Big Hoods hauled him up again. He twitched in spasmodic motion, as if he’d developed a simultaneous charley horse in every muscle and sinew. It took his screams at least ten seconds to die away.
“It’s more art than science,” the Grey Ghost continued, as if nothing had happened. “In my experience, most minds break before seven. Granted, most do not have your particular gifts. Whatever happens, I’m sure I will find it fascinating. I ask again: Will you help me?”
“Go jump in a river, bitch,” Morty gasped.
There was a moment of silence. “Again,” the Grey Ghost snarled. “Slowly.”
The obedient Big Hoods began to lower Mort slowly toward the wraith pit again.
Mort shook his head vainly and twisted his obviously battered body, trying to curl up and away from the swirling tide of hungry ghosts. He managed to forestall his fate by a few seconds, but in the end, he went down among the devouring spirits once more. He screamed again, and only after the scream had well and truly begun did the Grey Ghost start counting.
I’d never really had the highest opinion of Morty. I had hated the way he’d neglected his talents and abused his clients for so long, back when I’d first met him. He’d gone up in my estimation since then, and especially in the past day. So maybe he wasn’t a paragon of virtue, but he was still a decent guy in his own way. He was professional, and it looked like he’d had more juice all along than I thought he had.
That said a lot about Morty, that he’d kept quiet about the extent of his ability. It said even more about him that he was standing in the lion’s den with no way out and was still spitting his defiance into the face of his captor.
And the Grey Ghost was destroying him, right in front of my eyes.
Even as I watched, Morty screamed again as the wraiths surged against him, raking at him with their pale, gaunt fingers. The Grey Ghost’s calm voice counted numbers. It felt like a minor infinity stretched between each.
I couldn’t get Mort out of this place. No way. Even if I went all-out on the room and defeated every single hostile spirit in it, Mort would still be tied up and the Big Hoods would still be looming. There was no percentage in an attack.
Yet standing around with my thumb up my ghostly ass wasn’t an option, either. I didn’t know what the Grey Ghost was doing to Morty, but it was clearly hurting him, and judging from her dialogue (straight out of Cheesy Villain General Casting, though it might be), exposure to the wraiths would inflict permanent harm if Morty continued to refuse her. And there were the murderous spirits back at the ruins of Mort’s house to think about, too.
And as if all that wasn’t enough, sunrise was on the way.
Dammit. I needed an edge, an advantage.
The fingers of my right hand touched the solid wooden handle of Sir Stuart’s pistol, and I was suddenly keenly aware of its power, of the sheer, tightly leashed potency of the weapon. Its energy hummed silently against my right palm. I remembered the fight at Morty’s place and the havoc Sir Stuart’s weapon had wreaked among the enemy—or, rather, upon a single enemy.
The Grey Ghost had feared Sir Stuart’s gun, and I couldn’t imagine she’d done so for no reason. If I could take her out, the other spirits who followed her would almost certainly scatter—the kind of jackals who followed megalomaniacs around rarely had the stomach for a confrontation without their leader to stiffen their spines. Right?
There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.
But there was still merit in the idea: Kill the Grey Ghost and then run like hell. Even if the lemurs came after me, at least the main voice who appeared to be guiding the Big Hoods would be silenced. It might even get all the malevolent spiritual attention entirely off of Morty.
All I had to do was make one shot with Sir Stuart’s pistol. No problem. If I missed, I probably wouldn’t survive the experience, sure, but other than that it should be a piece of cake.
I gritted my teeth and began to move slowly toward the Grey Ghost. I didn’t know how close I could get before my half-assed veil became useless, but I had to do everything I could to maximize the chances of a hit. I wasn’t a marksman, and the pistols of the eighteenth century weren’t exactly precision instruments, but I couldn’t afford to miss. Of course, if the Grey Ghost sensed me coming, she would have time to run, to dodge, or to pull some sort of defense together.
I had to kill her before she knew she was under attack. There was some irony there, considering the way I’d died.
The Grey Ghost finished her count, and the Big Hoods hauled a sobbing Morty out of the pit again. He hung there, twitching, suffering, making involuntary sounds as he gasped for breath. The Grey Ghost stood in front of
