I looked anxiously up at the tiled ceiling; it was only a foot away. I slashed the knife against the thread—maybe I could break his bond—but the knife slipped through it as if it didn’t exist. Then the thread yanked again and the wind rushed past me as I streamed through the red-blackness of wherever.
Chapter Thirty
The stench of putrefying flesh invaded my nose as skeletal fingers squeezed my throat, choking me, and a heaviness compressed my chest. Pain and blackness were eating at the light in my mind. A brief thought flickered in the encroaching darkness: being dead wasn’t much different to being alive; there were still some who could hurt you if they wanted to badly enough.
‘Have you managed to get her into the locket yet?’ A woman’s voice, far away.
‘I told you I’d let you know, Hannah.’ Anger and frustration, and something fervent in the male’s voice.
‘Hurry it up,’ the woman said, ‘there’s less than an hour to midnight.’
A tug on my hand. ‘Into the locket, Ms Taylor. Now!’ The command came again.
‘No—’ I whispered, the same answer I’d given him before. The fingers squeezed my throat tighter, squeezing out the light.
‘We wouldn’t be having this problem if you’d waited for me in the first place, Hannah,’ the voice said curtly.
‘Why don’t you put her in the Fabergé egg with all the others?’ the woman asked.
‘Because if I open the egg to put her in, I’ll let the rest of them out again.’ The voice was scathing this time. ‘You stick to your spells, Hannah, and leave me to worry about the shades and souls.’
‘I would do, if you could handle your side of things efficiently.’ She was closer, sounding suspicious. ‘You’ve been trying to persuade her for so long that I’m beginning to wonder if you’re not enjoying this a little too much.’
The light narrowed to a pinhole and panic fluttered in my mind like a terrified flock of garden fairies. The skeletal hands weren’t going to—
‘Stop.’ I heard the command and the pressure on my throat eased up.
Relief flooded through me, pushing back the darkness, letting the light in, and though the weight on my chest still pressed me down, I drifted like a feather, the voices rising and falling around me, indistinct and unimportant.
Gradually I settled back into myself.
I kept my eyes closed. There was no point opening them, not when it would only encourage fucking Necro Neil to get his tame ghost torturer to have another go—and if I didn’t open my eyes, I didn’t have to look at my torturer’s plague-eaten face—its missing nose and rotten black stumps of teeth were still freaking me out. I lay there, trying to ignore Scarface the ghost sitting on my chest, pretending to be more dead than I was, thankful that at least the ghost’s pain-inflicting skills were limited to strangling and suffocating me; he hadn’t enough personality left to implement Necro Neil’s more inventive—and considerably less wholesome—ideas.
Never mind giving myself nightmares from trying to posses my own body, as Moth-girl had predicted: if I got out of this I would have more than enough of them to last until I hit my third century.
Of course, that was if I got to see another dawn.
And that was looking less likely every time Scarface’s bony fingers closed round my throat.
‘Well, Ms Taylor,’ Necro Neil’s eager voice was accompanied with a tug on my hand, ‘you look like you’ve recovered enough for me to ask you again: will you go into the locket?’
‘No,’ I croaked in a whisper, not entirely sure why he couldn’t force me.
The ghost shifted his position on top of me and I braced myself ready for the next attack.
‘That’s our guest,’ Hannah said, excitement colouring her voice. ‘Come on, leave her for now. She can’t escape again, not with the added Containment spell I’ve put on the place.’
‘I thought you said you could handle him on your own.’ Necro Neil’s words carried a sullen edge.
‘I can—but better to be safe than sorry. We don’t want anything going wrong at this late stage, do we?’
‘No,’ he said, and their voices faded into nothing.
I felt carefully around for the ghost knife. It had still been in my hand when Scarface and half a dozen other ghosts had jumped me when the red thread deposited me back at Necro Neil’s shiny black shoes. No one had tried to take it away from me—but then, no one had needed to, not when there were ghosts enough to sit on every limb ... but now only Scarface was left, perching on my chest like some malevolent spirit.
A bony finger poked me in the cheek and I flinched, but kept my eyes closed. The reek of rot made my stomach give a dry heave. A voice rasped next to my ear, ‘Grab ... go.’
Grab go. The words didn’t make sense.
‘Wake,’ the voice rasped again. ‘Ghos ... grab ... go.’
Ghost-grabber? Was he saying Necro Neil was gone? Why? Warily, I opened one eye and squinted up at Scarface. ‘What?’ I whispered.
His lipless mouth opened wide, the scar on his cheek splitting like a second pair of lips to reveal the glistening bone.
‘Up.’
Was he telling me to get up? ‘Can’t,’ I croaked, ‘you’re sitting on me.’
One dried eyeball rolled in its socket. ‘Sor ... ry,’ he rasped, and shuffled off me.
Relieved, I lifted my arm and rubbed my throat; being strangled had hurt at the time, but it didn’t appear to have left any lasting injuries to my ghostly form.
‘Up ... help.’ Scarface was crouched beside me now. A bony finger poked urgently at my shoulder. ‘Grab ... back ... soon.’
Mystified at being let go, but not enough to question it, I rolled over and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. The knife was still there. I picked it up. The handle felt warm and solid, almost comforting, even if it only worked against other ghosts. I scrambled to my feet and looked around. Scarface was shuffling away into the distance, just the same way he had when I’d watched him during the ghost survey ...
And it was in the same arched tunnel—the same tunnel where all the ghosts had been gathered ... Only the place was brightly lit now, and the ghosts were gone; all that remained was the Fabergé egg, which sat in solitary splendour in the middle of a large circle marked out in red sand. Curled up next to the egg was the florist’s lad, still tied hand and foot, a fresh black eye decorating his tear-stained face.
It looked like the demon welcome mat was laid out, all ready to go.
I headed over to the circle and stopped at its edge. The boy’s chest rose and fell; he was either unconscious or asleep. I was betting on the former. I stuck out my hand, but my palm flexed against an invisible wall and when I looked down, there were flecks of green and chunks of grey dotted with rusty stains mixed in with the red sand: yew, to stop the dead from passing, and consecrated bone splashed with sanctified blood to contain the demon.
Not a circle I could pass in my ghostly form. I’d have to find some way to come back for the boy before midnight.
Who was the guest? Maybe whoever it was could help, or at least provide a distraction. I headed for the breeze-block wall at the end of the tunnel, keeping close to the side and carefully skirting round the pile of cordoned-off old bones, I eased through the open doorway and peered into the room beyond. It was the one with the wall painting of the barren landscape, where Hannah had performed her kamikaze ritual and taken over my body. There were people inside, live ones, and I ducked back, then mentally snorted at my stupidity. I was a ghost, and Necro Neil was the only one who could see me—and without his ghostly minions he couldn’t touch me, not until midnight. I crept inside, then stopped, keeping my eye out for him.
Hannah was walking towards me, sweeping the long train of a ballgown in burnt-orange and black—her Hallowe’en fetish was still showing—with her hair piled up in some sort of beehive style that sported a coronet-thing sparkling with amber and diamonds. For a second I almost didn’t recognise my body under the dress, new hairdo and make-up. At least she hadn’t managed to give me a boob job in the last few hours. When I finally dragged my eyes away from my own body, I realised who was walking with her.