Страница 68 из 80
Only I didn’t think she needed to. With a sort of horrified inevitability I looked down at myself. I might be sitting up, but my body wasn’t sitting up with me. It was laying stock-still, eyes closed, naked except for the electrodes and a fu
Okay, looked like the out-of-body experience had escalated to worse. I was dead—and not only that, I was a ghost too.
Fuck. I clenched my fists and built the wall higher against my panic.
My body was still there, and that meant I wasn’t truly gone, just separated.
So all I needed to do was to work out how to pull myself together again.
‘I told you, Janet,’ Ha
Use my body?
‘It’s bad enough I’m going to be walking round flat-chested’—Ha
‘Yes.’ He pushed his glasses back up his nose, his finger trembling.
My mind clicked into place: so Ha
Fuck.
Janet walked up to Ha
No way was I going to let this happen—only I couldn’t see how to stop it.
‘ Ge
I jerked towards the whisper, but couldn’t see anything.
‘Janet, dear,’ Ha
Her words registered in the part of my mind not panicking: Dumpy Janetwas Witch Wilcox’s granddaughter? The one who was staying with her?
‘Fairycakes kept on whingeing and crying. It was bugging me.’ Janet’s mouth turned down. ‘And it’s not my fault the dryads were waiting for the sidhe slut.’
‘Of course it was,’ Ha
‘ Ge
Did I? She’d helped me twice before, and sitting here wasn’t getting me anywhere, was it? I slid off the stone slab and followed her—stepping over a line of red sand that marked the edge of a circle—towards a dark corner.
‘Do you know how many strings I’ve had to pull to sort that murder charge out?’ Ha
‘I didn’t mean to,’ came Janet’s sulky reply. ‘It all just got a bit out of hand.’
We reached the corner and stopped. It was just a corner. I was a little taken aback that it wasn’t some sort of help, or an escape route. I frowned down at Cosette. ‘What happens now?’
‘Now we watch,’ she said, amusement lighting her eyes. ‘Oh, and Ge
Huh? I looked down and as I did, my missing jeans and T-shirt materialised around me.
Cosette patted my hand. ‘That’s a good girl.’ She didn’t sound like an eight-year-old, even one born a hundred years ago.
‘Start using your brain instead of worrying about who to let into your knickers,’ Ha
‘Trolls are not ugly,’ Janet huffed.
Ugly! Pieces of the jigsaw started slotting together in my head.
‘You’re the Ancient One, aren’t you?’ I said to Cosette, looking down at her. ‘So what happened to the old crone look?’
‘You have a phobia about ghosts, Ge
I shuddered. She was right; the chest wounds had been bad enough—if I’d met her ghost with its yellowed skull and maggot-filled eyes ...
‘I will explain,’ she continued, ‘but first we must watch the proceedings.’
‘Well, each to their own,’ Ha
‘I don’t want your cast-offs,’ Janet pouted.
‘Sure you do,’ Ha
‘She’s dead,’ Joseph said quietly, turning away to fiddle with a medical trolley next to his machines.
‘Right, now stay out the way, but don’tleave the circle, and remember what I told you. Make sure you do it, otherwise come midnight yours will be one of the souls going to the demon.’
Joseph crossed himself, his face pale.
It looked like he might be a goodie, which begged the question how in hell had Ha
Ha
Shock slammed into me as I realised she wasn’t just going to be borrowingmy body. She was taking it over.
Permanently.
Ha
‘It’s not an athame, Janet,’ Ha