him, motionless and, I felt certain, gloating.
Ten feet. I knew my veil was shoddy and my aim only middling, but if I could close to ten feet, I figured I had a fairly good chance of hitting the target. That would put me on the near edge of the wraith pit, shooting across it to hit the Grey Ghost. Of course, if I missed, the Grey Ghost wouldn’t need to kill me. All she’d have to do was freaking
Then I’d get what Morty was getting. Except that as a ghost myself, they’d be tearing me into tiny, ectoplasm-soaked shreds. And eating them.
I tried to move steadily, to keep myself calm. I didn’t have any adrenaline anymore to make my hands shake, but they shook anyway. Dammit. I guess even a ghost is still, on some level, fundamentally human. Nothing for it but to keep moving.
Thirty feet.
I passed within a few yards of a lemur who was apparently staring into nothingness—though his eyes were lined up directly with me. Perhaps he was lost in a ghostly memory. He never blinked as I went by.
Twenty-five.
The wraiths wheezed out their starving, strangled howls in the pit a few feet ahead of me.
Twenty.
Why do I keep winding up in these situations? Even after I’m
Chapter Twenty-nine
Then the floor near the Grey Ghost’s feet rippled, and a human skull floated up out of it, its eye sockets burning with a cold blue flame.
The Grey Ghost turned to look at the skull, and something about her body language soured. “What?”
“A Fomor messenger is at the outer perimeter,” the skull said. It sounded creepily like Bob, but there was a complete absence of anything but a vague contempt in its voice. “He bears word from his lord.”
I got the impression that the Grey Ghost tilted her head beneath its hood. “A servitor? Arriving from the Nevernever?”
“The outer perimeter is the Nevernever side, of which I am custodian,” the skull replied. “The inner perimeter is the mortal world. You established that more than a year ago.”
The Grey Ghost made a disgusted sound. “Have a care, spirit. You are not indispensible.” She looked at the suspended Morty and sighed. “Of course the Fomor disturb me with sunrise near. Why must my most important work continually be interrupted?”
The skull inclined itself in a nod of acknowledgment. “Shall I kill him and send back the body, along with a note suggesting that next time they call ahead?”
“No,” snapped the Grey Ghost. “Of course not. Curb your tongue, spirit, lest I tear it out for you.”
“If it pleases you to do so. I am but a servant,” the skull said with another nod. The contempt in its tone held steady, though. “Shall I allow him to pass?”
“And be quick about it,” the Grey Ghost snarled.
“As it pleases you,” the skull replied, speaking noticeably more slowly than a moment before. It vanished into the floor.
I held very, very still. Motion was the hardest thing for a veil to hide, and I suddenly realized that the one- shot, one-kill plan had a serious flaw in it: I had forgotten to account for Evil Bob. The spirit was powerful, intelligent, dangerous—and apparently incapable of anything resembling fear or respect. I suppose that after a few decades of working with Kemmler, the most dangerous necromancer since the fall of the Roman Empire, it was difficult to take a lesser talent seriously.
Not that regular Bob was exactly overflowing with respect and courtesy. Heh. Take that, bad guy.
In any case, I had a chance to find out more about the enemy. You can’t ever get too much dirt on these cloaked lunatics. Frequently, learning more about them exposes some kind of gaping hole in their armor, metaphorical or otherwise. I’ve never had cause to regret knowing more about an enemy before commencing a fight.
Besides. If the Grey Ghost was a part of some kind of partnership, instead of operating alone, I had to know about it. Bad-guy alliances were never good news.
The Grey Ghost stepped away from the pit. In fewer than thirty seconds, the ground rippled again and a man appeared, arising from the ground a bit at a time, as if he were walking up a stairway. The skull came with him, floating along behind, just above the level of his head.
I recognized him at once: the leader of the Fomor servitors who had come after Molly. He was still dressed in the black turtleneck, but had added a weapons belt with a holstered pistol beneath his left hand and a short sword at his right. It was one of those Japanese blades, but shorter than the full katana. Wakazashi, then, or maybe it was a ninja-to. If it was, minus points for carrying it around out in the open like that.
Oh, there was something else odd about him: His eyes had changed color. I remembered them as a clear grey. Now they were a deep, deep purple. I don’t mean purple like the dark violet eyes that lots of Bob’s romance- novel heroines always seem to have. They were purple like a bruised corpse, or like the last colors of a twilit sky.
He faced the Grey Ghost calmly and bowed from the waist, the gesture slow and fluid. “Greetings, Lady Shade, from my master, Cantrev Lord Omogh.”
“Hello. Listen,” the Grey Ghost replied, her tone sour, “what does Omogh want from me now?”
Listen bowed again, purple eyes gleaming. “My master desires to know whether or not your campaign is complete.”
The Grey Ghost’s voice came out from between clenched teeth. “Obviously not.”
Listen bowed. “He would know, then, why you have escalated your search to a seizure of a second-tier asset.” The servitor paused to glance at Morty and then back to the robed figure. “This action runs counter to your arrangement.”
The eye sockets of the skull flickered more brightly. “We could still send the Fomor the message about calling ahead.”
“No,” the Grey Ghost said severely.
“It would be simple and direct. . . .”
“No, spirit,” the Grey Ghost snarled. “I forbid it.”
The skull’s eyes flickered rapidly for a moment, agitated. Then it bowed lower and said, “As you wish.”
The Grey Ghost turned to Listen and said, “My servant believes it would be logical to murder you and send your corpse back to your master in order to express my displeasure.”
Listen bowed again. “I am one of many, easily replaced. My death would be but a brief annoyance to my lord, and, I think, a somewhat anemic symbolic gesture.”
The Grey Ghost stared at him and then said, “If you weren’t speaking the literal truth, I think I should be satisfied with letting the skull have you. But you really have no sense of self-preservation at all, do you?”
“Of course I do, Lady Shade. I would never throw away my life carelessly. It would make it impossible for me to ensure that my death is of maximum advantage to my lord.”
The Grey Ghost shook her head within the hood. “You are a fool.”
“I will not contest the statement,” Listen said. “However, Lady Shade, I must ask you for an answer to return to my lord.” He added mildly, “Whatever form that answer may take.”
“Inform him,” said the Grey Ghost, voice annoyed, “that I will do as I see fit to acquire an appropriate body.”
Whoa.
The Lady Shade was looking for a meat suit.
Which meant . . .
