"You want my help, Eve?" Jaime said. "Make sure he doesn't come back. Ever."
I smiled. "Be glad to."
Massachusetts/1892
THE NIX SNIFFED THE AIR. IT REEKED OF HORSE AND human, the sweat and shit of both. That hadn't changed. She stood in the intersection of a street wide enough for four or five buggies to pass. Metal rails were embedded in the road, and a strange horseless carriage glided along them. Wooden poles lined the street, with wires strung from pole to pole, crisscrossing over the rows of brick buildings three, four, even five stories high.
Gone were the bustling markets, the narrow cobbled streets, the pretty little shops she remembered. The last time she'd walked the earth, this New World had been nothing more than a few bleak settlements on a wild continent, a place to send murderers and thieves.
The Nix rolled her shoulders, twisting her neck, trying to get used to the feel of this new form. In all the years shed inhabited Marie-Madeline, shed never quite grown accustomed to the stink of it, the pain and tedium of a mortal existence. Still, there had been a freedom there that she'd never known in her natural form-the freedom to act in the living world and wreak her own chaos. But now she was in another shape, somewhere between human and demon, a ghost.
A horse and coach veered toward her. She reached out, fingers curving into claws, ready to rip a handful of horseflesh as the beast ran past. The horse raced through her hand without so much as a panicked roll of its eyes. She hissed as it continued down the road. Even a human ghost should be able to spook a horse. Once, her very presence would have put such fear into the beast that it would have trampled anyone who came near. She closed her eyes, and imagined the chaos she could have created. And now what? After two hundred years of damnation, had she escaped only to moan and lament what she had lost? No, there had to be a way-there was always a way.
The Nix took a few steps down the road, sampling the passing humans, tasting the thoughts of each. The men's minds were now closed to her. She'd learned that soon after her escape. Having died in the form of a woman, her powers were now restricted to that gender.
Her gaze slid from face to face, looking for the signs, searching the eyes first, then the mind. Sometimes humans hit on a moment of profundity more complete than their dim minds could comprehend, and they took that nugget of truth and dumped it in the refuse for the bards and the poets to find, and mangle into yodeling paeans to love. The eyes were indeed the windows to the soul. Clear eyes, and she passed by without pause. A few wisps of cloud behind a gaze, and she might hesitate, but likely not. Storms were what she wanted-the roiling, dark storms of a tempest-tossed psyche.
She made it halfway down the street, finding nothing more than a thundercloud or two. Then she had to pause before a woman with downcast eyes. In her late twenties with a plain, broad face, the woman waited on the sidewalk outside a store. A man exited the store, swarthy and rough-skinned, dressed in the clothes of a working man. As he saw the woman, a smile lit his face.
"Miz Borden," he said, tipping his hat. "How are you?"
The woman looked up with a shy smile. "Fine, thank you. And how are you?"
Before he could answer, a tall man with white whiskers strode from the store, his eyes blazing. He grabbed the woman by the arm and propelled her to the street without so much as a glance at the other man.
"What were you doing?" he hissed.
"Saying hello, Father. Mr. O'Neil greeted me, so I-"
"I don't care what he did. He's a farmhand. Not good enough for the likes of you."
What man is good enough for me, Father? None, if it means you and she would have to hire a second servant to replace me. The thought ran through the woman's mind, spat out on a wave of fury, but only the barest tightening of her lips betrayed it.
Her gaze lifted enough for the Nix to see eyes so clouded with hate they were almost black. The Nix chortled to herself. So she wished her father dead… just like Marie-Madeline. What an appropriate start to this new life.
The Nix reached out and stroked her fingers across the woman's pale cheek. Would you like me to set you free, dear one? With pleasure.
Chapter 6
AN EARTH-SPOOK. THOUGH I'D NEVER HEARD THE term, I understood the concept. When we die, most of us go on to an afterlife, but a few stay behind. Some are what the headless accountant purported to be-spirits trapped by unfinished business. Only they aren't really trapped. Like the crying woman in Savannah's house, they're stalled, thinking they have unfinished business.
This could have been the headless accountant's problem, but I'd lay even money that he fell into category two of these "earth-spooks," those who were sentenced to this limbo for a period after death. If so, he wasn't going anywhere until the almighty powers decided he'd learned his lesson. At this rate, he'd be pestering necromancers into the next millennium. But I was about to strike one off his calling list.
Since my quarry was trapped in this plane and couldn't teleport out, following him was easy enough. Although I followed less than fifty feet behind, he never noticed me. I'd changed into a baggy windbreaker and blue jeans, put my hair in a ponytail, and slapped on a ball cap. I kept a cover spell readied, with my blinding power as a backup, though I wasn't sure how well either worked in this plane. I had a lot to learn.
I gumshoed him halfway across the Windy City, taking two city buses plus the el train. Then he marched across the lawn of the ugliest building I had ever seen. It looked like my high school, which-to me-had always looked like a jail. Part of that was my own feelings about formal education, but I swear the architect of that school had a real grudge against students. Probably spent his teen years stuffed inside a locker, and vowed revenge on every generation to follow. This building was that same shit brown brick, that same looming bland facade, those same tiny windows. It was even surrounded by a similar ten-foot fence.
My first guess was, of course: jail. Seemed like a good place to keep Mr. DUI. But when I passed the ancient sign out front, I read: DALEWOOD PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL. So the headless accountant was hanging out in a psych hospital? Didn't seem to be helping.
In the parking lot, I waited behind a minivan until my ghost went in through a side door, where a half-dozen staff members stood getting a quick nicotine fix, huddled against the bitter chill as the sun dropped below the horizon. I crossed the grass-free strip of lawn, skirting past the smokers. Two steps from the door, a beefy bulldog-ugly orderly stepped into my path. I didn't slow, expecting to pass right through. Instead, I hit a solid wall of fat and muscle. Another ghost. Damn.
"Where you think you're going, boy?" he rumbled.
As I lifted my head, he blinked, realizing his gender blunder. "Look, lady, this is private property. You wanna join, you gotta talk to Ted."
I looked him full in the eyes, and switched on my blinding power.
"You deaf or something, hon?" he said. "I know I'm good-looking, but you ain't my type. Stop staring and start walking or I'm going to introduce my boot to your pretty butt."
As quick as I am to correct an insult, I'm just as quick to recognize an obstacle when I see one. Sure, I could probably just kick his ass the old-fashioned way, but that might tip off my quarry. So I murmured an insincere apology and trekked back down to the end of the laneway.