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I jumped up, the snakes writhing in alarm, leaping for him—
‘Stop,’ Joseph said almost casually as he looked up. ‘Don’t move.’
—and I stopped, held in place like a fly trapped in amber. What the hell had he done to me?
Cosette flew into the centre of the room, her long dark hair whipping about her head, her small hands held out towards me. A wind blew from her hands and threw me back until I crash-landed at the base of Rosa’s stone altar.
‘Nicely done, Joseph.’ Cosette’s child-face split in an approving grin, then she came and stood over me. ‘Ge
‘Ge
‘Your son?’ Stu
‘Yes. He’s a fine figure of a man, isn’t he?’ She smiled up at him, pride in her eyes. ‘And a true necromancer, not like that piffling weakling Ha
‘Sit down, Ge
I was sitting on the floor, legs crossed Indian-style, before he’d even finished speaking my name. Fear and fury coursed through me in equal parts, and the snakes retreated uneasily, hiding under my skin. Cosette was right: Necro Neil might’ve managed to push me around a bit, but his commands had been nothingcompared to Joseph’s effortless control.
She puffed up with even more pride. ‘And if things had been different, I would have liked to see what sort of grandchild you two would have given me—but that’s not going to happen now—while I might trade with a demon, I still draw the line at incest.’ She patted Joseph’s hand. ‘After all, Ha
Fuck. Out of one sorcerer’s frying pan and straight into the other one’s fire.
What the hell was I going to do now?
Chapter Thirty-One
‘Come on, Mum, time to get you sorted,’ Joseph said. He walked over to my limp body and picked it up, grunting with effort as he lifted it—being a necro obviously didn’t give him any perks in the physical world. He laid my body gently on the sacrificial altar and started cutting away the remnants of the orange dress. ‘You don’t want to be still in spirit form when the demon turns up, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. She smiled up at him as she climbed up on the altar and sat herself down so she was half in and half out of my body. ‘Although the demon should be happy enough with the sidhe’s soul.’
‘Glad someone’s going to be happy,’ I muttered.
Joseph rummaged inside his black bag, laying things out on the trolley next to his machines. I briefly wondered if he’d had some sort of practise run, playing around with my soul and my body while I’d been out of it after the explosion at the bakery, when he’d supposedly been taking care of me. I shoved that deeply disturbing thought away. It was more important to figure out how to get my own body back before Cosette took up residence in it. Then I had to stop the demon gobbling up all the other ghosts, never mind the virgin sacrifice—because something told me that just because the sorcerer directing operations had changed, the treats on offer for the demon’s Hallowe’en visit hadn’t.
And now Malik’s and Tavish’s heroic rescue attempt had ended in disaster, Cosette probably intended adding them to her bag of demon treats too. I banged my head back against the stone altar in frustration and anger. With friends like Joseph, Malik really didn’t need any enemies.
‘So if I’m to be a demon snack,’ I raised my voice, waving at the unconscious bodies, ‘what’s going to happen to the two of them?’
‘Um.’ Cosette considered Tavish. ‘The soul-taster is a problem; he’s not dead, so I’m not sure the demon will take him, but we’ll see. But as for the vampire, he’s going to come in useful for Joseph here, much as Rosa was for you these last three years.’ She smiled up at him as he inserted a shunt into my body’s arm. I really wanted to wipe that saccharine look off her little girl’s face. Later, I promised myself.
‘Now I’ve perfected the Body Transference spell,’ she went on, ‘it seems wasteful not to use it again, doesn’t it, Son?’
‘Yes.’ He glanced over at me, then inserted a hypodermic needle into a clear glass vial and filled the syringe. ‘I understand it can be an interesting experience.’
So Joseph was going to walk around in Malik’s body, just as I had in Rosa’s. My heart lurched: I might have done the same thing myself, but it was unwittingly, and I’d never had Rosa do anything I wouldn’t have done myself. Somehow I didn’t think Joseph would take the same care of Malik’s body. Not that Rosa had taken that much care of her own body, if her memories were anything to go by. I looked up at her a little speculatively. Was there any way I could use her to get out of this? Cosette had said it wasn’t possible earlier, but she had her own agenda, and it wasn’t like sorcerers were known for telling the truth. I looked at my two captors, but they were deep in discussion about whatever evil nastiness they were pla
Slowly I got up, relieved that Joseph’s ‘sit down’ command must’ve negated his earlier ‘don’t move’ one. Holding my breath, trying not to catch his attention, I climbed onto the stone altar, wincing as my hands and knees sank inside Rosa’s body. I lay down, positioning myself so I merged inside her.
Nothing.
I stared up at the brick-arched ceiling, fists clenched like Rosa’s, willing it to work.
Still nothing happened. Damn. I’d really needed Cosette to be wrong on this one. Maybe if I concentrated, tried to think like Rosa, I could spark her into life. I closed my eyes and imagined Joseph tied up in chains. It was a great image; it fed my anger and frustration, but nothing else. Joseph was pleasant-looking—even if his intentions were anything but—but he wasn’t exactly eye-candy. Maybe what Rosa needed was for me to think of someone more—
‘Psst, I tole you, that don’t work, sidhe.’ The sharp whisper made me flinch. ‘All you go
My heart thudding with disbelief, and the tiniest touch of hope, I looked towards the voice.
Moth-girl’s white face gri
I rolled out of Rosa’s body and off the slab and crouched down next to Moth-girl, hoping that Joseph couldn’t see ghosts through stone. ‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Me, Daryl, an’ that ovver vamp I stuck wiv the knife, oh, an’ yer doctor pal.’
Anxiety spiked through me. Crap, what the hell was Grace doing here?
‘I couldn’t find that ovver vamp you wanted me to tell, y’know, the Asian-lookin’ one,’ she went on.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘He turned up anyway. What about the police? Did you tell them?’
‘Oh yeah, them’s coming too,’ she sniffed, adding, ‘well, maybe.’ The grey patchwork of her clothes fluttered with disdain. ‘That bitch-witch in charge weren’t too impressed wiv my story; ’er and yer doctor pal had a right set-to ’bout it all. So the coppers ain’t ’ere yet.’
Damn—did that mean the police would get here before the demon or not? Detective Inspector Helen Crane had to know that midnight was demon di
‘Hey, don’t look like tha’,’ Moth-girl’s eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘We don’t need no bleedin’ coppers, not when we got ghosts and shades. ‘Ere, ’ave a butcher’s.’ She peeked over the top of the slab, then rose up and rested her chin on her hands, gri
I joined her. Scarface shuffled silently in through the doorway. A woman carrying a bunch of withered flowers ambled behind him, then another man limped in; his head wrapped in a dirty bandage. The reek of putrefying flesh filled the air, but this time it was almost welcome. Then there were more ghosts, men and women, all moving silently: a boy with a flat cap leading a small tan and white dog on a string; two dark-haired little girls, about six years old, clutching each others’ hands and skipping in their charred frilly dresses; a soldier, his khaki-coloured uniform ripped and bloodstained, using his rifle as a crutch ... they kept coming.