Somewhere in the distance a bell rang. Was it three o’ clock already? But no, the bell tolled on past the count, each distant ring hanging in the air with an otherworldly clarity.
Arabella started.
The sounds came from the Shadow Lands.
Her fingers shaped a sign of protection. Saint Margrethe, she begged, help me.
Trey looked up sharply, brows drawn together. Arabella instantly dropped her hand.
If he suspected, if he’d seen, he didn’t say so.
He beckoned. “Come.”
Arabella glided around the bed and stood next to him, hesitant.
Trey turned to her. “This might sting, but hold still.” He placed his hands just above her shoulders.
He was uncomfortably close, his wards hissing a warning at her. Arabella didn’t know where to look, so she settled for a vague stare over his shoulder and tried not to squirm.
Her shoulders twitched as a tingle ran through her. Trey turned and leaned over her body again. More runes glowed in the air, then spun into three fiery points that sank into the motionless girl’s head, chest, and lower abdomen.
Arabella pitched forward as three invisible lines tugged at her. With a gasp, she braced herself, difficult to do without the traction of her feet against the floor.
“Anchor points to help you settle right in,” Trey explained. “Go on, then.”
“That’s it?” asked Arabella suspiciously. “No burning candles or eerie chants?”
“Should’ve called a necromancer if you wanted that,” he said tersely. “Let’s get it over with.”
Of course, he was looking forward to being nodding acquaintances with her once again. Well, so was she.
“I’ll see you with my own eyes in a moment,” she said and let herself fall forward.
Arabella had expected to drift down and sink into her body, letting her spirit flow out to the tips of her fingers and the soles of her feet.
Instead, she slammed into what felt like rock.
Arabella bounced off her body and spun crazily, misting through her bed, a chest, and finally, halfway through the floor. Her mouth was full of the taste and texture of wood shavings and her skin felt sticky with pine sap. With a groan, she pulled herself out of the floor and righted herself.
“What happened?” she demanded, feeling disheveled and bruised and put upon.
Trey stared at her, mouth open.
“That was,” he said, with wholly inappropriate awe, “the least graceful thing I’ve ever seen a ghost do.”
Arabella scowled at him. “Never mind that! Why didn’t it work?” She gestured crossly at the bed.
“At a guess? There’s something you need to do before you can return to your body.”
“Such as?” Arabella hovered a few inches above the floor, too agitated to align herself with the proper plane of existence.
“The answer is probably locked in your own memory.” Trey looked as tired of this whole affair as Arabella felt.
Arabella held back an exasperated growl, along with the words, Some help you turned out to be. “I spent most of the evening trying to remember, but nothing came back.”
Trey rumpled his hair. “There are ways to help you, but I’m afraid it’s beyond my ability.”
Her conscience pricked her. She knew he hadn’t had much sleep and with the Procession and Viewing on Saturday, all of the Foreign Office must be busy.
He’s taken his own time to help you, against the rules. Be grateful, Arabella.
She tried to be, but it was hard.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked, trying not to sound defeated.
“See if we can find any signs to indicate what went wrong.” Without warning, Trey flipped the covers back from her body.
Arabella stiffened in instinctive outrage. She opened her mouth to reprimand him, then stopped. There was something wrong with the pale hands modestly crossed over her breast, making her mortal form look like something that belonged in a crypt.
“My ring,” she whispered. “My ring is missing.”
“Tell me about it.” Trey’s eyes gleamed suddenly, weariness banished from his face.
Arabella brushed the bare place on her body’s right ring finger with a spectral hand. A pressure mark encircled the base of it. “It’s a sapphire, in a silver setting. I always wear it. It belonged to my mother.”
“Do you think your aunt removed it?”
“No, she wouldn’t have. She knows how much it means to me.”
“Stolen, then.” Trey gave a slow nod. “It makes sense, in an upside-down kind of way. It’s almost an extension of you. Without it, your body doesn’t fit right.”
Arabella looked down, her ghostly hair falling down like a curtain, her field of vision narrowed to those white hands and that thin face on the bed. The fingernails of her body were tinged slightly blue, and the skin stretched over her hands had taken on a fine translucent quality.
She didn’t need Trey to tell her she was dying
“How long?” she whispered. “How long do I have?”
She felt him assess her, to see how she would take the news, if she would transform into the hag he half-expected. She would’ve laughed at the thought if she weren’t so numbed already. It wasn’t worth it to prolong her own life or get vengeance by attacking him.
“Two days, I’d say. Maybe three. It’s hard to judge these things.”
A chill wind seemed to cut through her soul, raising a mournful howl. So it was already too late.
“It’s not too late.” Trey echoed her thoughts. “Come, Arabella. Let’s go back and see if we can prod your memory into giving us any further hints.”
Shadows crept around her, muffling his voice.
“Leave me,” she whispered. “Let me be with my body.” All she could think of was this barely-breathing girl, so small and waxen, like a goblin death doll. She couldn’t bring herself to leave her. Possessiveness took over her—the body was hers.
And he wanted to drag her away from it.
“Arabella,” Trey said, voice tight, stern. “You’re letting yourself be influenced by the other realm. Come with me.”
Through the fall of her hair, she saw him reach for her.
She flung herself away, crossing
