room, the noise and stink of spilled beer rising through the floorboards. “You want me summoning ghosts in your inn?”
He didn’t budge. “You’re a professional, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t argue with that either. “Fine. But you’ll not breathe a word of anything we hear to anyone. Not even the Roses. Neither of you,” she added, glancing at Dahlia, who had curled into the shadows of the opposite corner. The girl was very good at staying silent and still.
Mekaran nodded slowly. “My oaths don’t require me to report all the details. If it will help find Lori’s killer.”
Isyllt studied the room. She could cast a circle and go for theatrics, but it would be ridiculous given how the floorboards gapped. Instead she shed her cloak, leaving it puddled across the foot of the bed, and removed the exorcist’s kit from her skirt pocket. It served just as well for summonings.
“Latch the shutters,” she told Dahlia, sinking cross-legged onto the floor between the bed and table, “and douse the lamp.” A tiny bit of theatrics never hurt.
Darkness filled the room as the flame died, broken only by the light slivering between the floorboards and through the shutters. It retreated again as she conjured witchlight, settling in the corners thick as tar.
“Sit facing me,” Isyllt told Mekaran. “Since you’re so eager to be my focus.” She opened the kit and drew out the scrap of silk tied around the lock of yellow hair. The cold light didn’t flatter Forsythia’s shade of blonde.
He sank to the floor, the creases on his brow drawn stark and black. “What do I need to do?”
“Keep still, and hold this.” She set the lock of hair on his palm, and his fingers convulsed around it. Next she laid her mirror between them, directly under the floating light.
“Ilora Lizveteva. By flesh and memory I call you, and by the name of your birth.”
A shiver answered; the woman’s soul wasn’t yet lost. But neither did she respond. Isyllt repeated the invocation. This time the shiver was stronger, a wordless denial. Something opposed her, something that smelled of sorcery and cinnamon, rust and copper. Blood, and blood magic.
Despite many superstitions, necromancy and haematurgy had little in common. Blood had just as much to do with life; Isyllt’s magic began when the last red pulse slowed and cooled. But any street witch or charmwife knew how powerful blood was in spellcasting. She slipped a scalpel from her kit and stripped her gloves off with her teeth.
The blade traced a cold line down her palm, beside the scar of the wound that had broken bone and severed tendon. Heat followed a heartbeat later, and crimson raveled across the creases of her palm.
“Ilora Lizveteva, I call you with blood, with flesh and memory and the name of your birth.”
She shuddered with the force of the conjury, and still Forsythia resisted. The magic and her recalcitrance were separate-the former weakened while the latter grew.
Isyllt realized her error then, and bit back a disruptive curse. She clenched her bleeding hand and hissed as pain spread up her arm. “Forsythia. With blood and pain and the name of your heart, I call you.”
The magic stretched like a wire and snapped. Isyllt’s head whipped back with the force of it and Mekaran hissed. The light in the mirror splintered and scattered as the ghost burst through the glass with a wail. Isyllt’s ring pulsed bright as a star.
In the echoing silence that followed, Isyllt heard the chaos below still, imagined the cold chill that rushed down a dozen spines simultaneously. Then the song resumed, louder than ever.
Forsythia stood in front of Isyllt, arms folded miserably across her stomach. Her ethereal form shimmered softly, pale and drained of color. Death dulled her brazen hair and turned her low-cut dress a drab shade of grey. Her slender throat was unmarred, but when she spoke it was a ragged whisper.
“What do you want?”
“L–Lori?” The steel had left Mekaran’s voice, replaced by grief and fear. “Is it really you?”
The wraith turned, and the brush of her skirts chilled Isyllt’s legs to the bone. “Meka?”
Mekaran scrambled to his feet, one hand reaching for his friend. He recoiled before Isyllt could warn him away-the embraces of the dead offered no comfort, only a sepulchral chill. “It’s me, Lori.” Tears shimmered silver in the ghostlight and left streaks of kohl down his cheeks.
“I told you not to call me that.” She twisted away, hair coiling around her face as she tilted her head.
Isyllt pushed herself backward and onto the bed. “Forsythia.” Now that she knew its power, the name rang in the air. The ghost turned to her, and her eyes were puddles of shadow threatening to spill down her cheeks.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Isyllt. I’m trying to find the person who killed you.”
One white hand flew to her throat, then knotted in the neck of her gown. She shook her head, and her other hand clenched in her skirts. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can,” Isyllt said. “I have to stop them, and you’re the only one who can help me.”
Even the dead could be coaxed. Forsythia drifted closer. “I was-I was waiting for Whisper.” Her hands kept fretting with her dress, and she lowered her face and hid behind the veil of her hair. “I can’t. It’s gone.”
“You were waiting for Whisper,” Isyllt said, low and soft. “In the alley off the Street of Thistles. It was sunset, and the sky glowed. Birds flew past the rooftops.” If the witness had been alive, she might have taken her hands and sat her down, but this memory-walk would have to be done without a soothing touch.
“Birds,” Forsythia whispered, fingers twitching. “Birds watching me, following me for days. Whisper promised to meet me. We were going to disappear, leave the Garden and the tunnels and find somewhere safe. But he didn’t come.”
“What happened next?” Isyllt prompted when the silence stretched.
“Someone else came. Another vampire-his hands so cold and strong. I couldn’t see, and then he pressed a rag to my face.” She shook her head, hugging her shoulders. “It smelled awful, sharp and sickly sweet, and then there was nothing.”
“Sweet vitriol,” Isyllt muttered. A physician’s drug, or a slaver’s. “This other vampire-you’re sure it wasn’t Whisper?”
“Of course! He would never hurt me. And when this one grabbed me, he was taller than Whisper.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
The ghost nodded miserably. “I woke again later. I don’t know how long. My eyes were still covered.”
“What else did you notice?”
“It was cold. The air was stale and I could still smell the stink of the drug. I lay on stone-my leg was numb from it. They were talking. Arguing.”
“They?”
“The vampire and a woman.”
“What did they say?”
“He said… I was a distraction, and I had to be dealt with. That Whisper was endangering the tunnels with his visits and gifts.” Her hand rose to the neck of her dress again, and Isyllt wondered if that was where the ring had been sewn. “She said-” She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I was cold and scared and confused, and I couldn’t concentrate. I’m not remembering it right.”
“You’re doing fine.” Isyllt stood and took Forsythia’s cold ephemeral hands in hers after all. Her bones ached by the time she eased the dead woman onto the edge of the bed. “Everything you can think of will help me.” Behind them, Dahlia scrambled away from the spreading chill. The room was too small for four people, even if one was less substantial than the rest.
“I couldn’t concentrate,” the woman said again, calmer now. “I felt sick, and I was sure if I moved I would vomit. My head ached. And even worse, my skin crawled like I was covered in insects. Everything felt… wrong. Not only me, but the air, the stones under me. I couldn’t even be frightened, it was so terrible. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Isyllt frowned; she had, only days ago. But she couldn’t trust too much in the memories of a woman blind and sick with drugs. “What did the woman say?”
“I don’t remember.” She sounded regretful now, not defensive. “I was too busy trying not to be sick. But at first I thought she didn’t want to kill me. Then she was standing over me and she was angry.
