Slowly he raised his head and I saw his eyes, incandescent with flame.
Now I needed to do my part.
Gripping the ghost knife, I plunged it into my body’s back—
—and a screech of rage shattered the quiet. Hannah’s ghost stumbled backwards, then swung round to face me. I stabbed her again, under the ribs and up into her heart, as she’d stabbed herself when she’d stolen my body. I used the knife and my hand to push her back until she was wedged between me and the stone altar behind her. She clawed at my face and yanked at my hair as I thrust the knife higher, then buried my face in her neck, biting and tearing at her throat, going for the carotid. She might not be living flesh, but neither was I, and Moth-girl and Scarface had taught me that while ghosts couldn’t touch the living, they had no problem killing those already dead. Hot blood spurted over me, blinding my sight, filling my mouth with its salt-copper taste, and I fed, mindless, desperate, insatiable, drinking it down, as some instinct told me I had to take it all and let not one drop remain in her body, not if I wanted her truly dead.
The blood slowed and thinned, turning as liquid as water, and her flesh dissolved under my hands until the taste was faint, almost insubstantial, and I held nothing more than wisps of air. And still I reached out, to trap each fleeing wisp and shred it with my fingers, until even the scent of her vanished into the darkness.
I slid down and huddled against the side of the stone altar, feeling sated, bloated with power that writhed around my bones, like snakes slithering in ecstasy through my body.
It was not an easy feeling, and yet it was seductive, and with a promise of more, if I would just let it in—
‘Genevieve?’
My murmured name intruded on my languor and slowly I raised my head. Tavish was frowning down at me, his delicate black gills flaring at his throat.
‘I am calling her back to her shell, kelpie, but I no longer sense her presence.’ Malik’s voice attracted my attention: he was kneeling over my limp body, his hands pressed to my bare chest. ‘Is her soul still here?’
‘Aye, she’s here, vampire,’ Tavish said softly, crouching down in front of me. His eyes shone dark pewter in the candlelight, the same colour as the beads on his green-black dreads. Apprehension and concern crossed on his face. ‘But the sorcerer’s darkness has tarnished her brilliance; it weighs her down, it swims like polluted eels in her consciousness, and still it tries to lure her away with it.’
The snakes flicked out their tongues and slithered down my arm, eager to taste. I reached out my hand and pushed it deep into his chest and he jerked back, snorting, his nostrils flaring and a rim of white fear showing round the edge of his dark silver eyes. And I tasted him: oranges, cut tart with terror and sweetened with yearning.
I smiled, and the snakes twined with lazy satisfaction as Tavish straightened and backed away.
‘What if I give the body an injection of adrenalin?’ a new voice said hesitantly. Joseph, his brown eyes blinking owl-like behind his glasses, stood in the doorway, hugging his black medical bag to his chest. ‘It’s what worked last time.’
Malik looked up and said, ‘Joseph, my friend, I thought we agreed that you would wait outside until this matter was settled.’
‘I couldn’t.’ He looked nervously round and moved towards Malik. ‘I want to help, after what that—what that womanmade me do.’ He stopped, gazing down at my body. ‘I have to try and help.’ He crouched down, put his bag on the floor and pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘I feel so awful about it all, as if it was my fault.’
The snakes hissed in unease and I tilted my head, puzzled; something was not right about the doctor.
‘You are not responsible for what the sorcerer made you do,’ Malik said quietly, sorrow lacing his words. ‘It was a spell she laid on you. The guilt is all hers.’
Joseph nodded, quick, anxious bobs of his head. ‘I understand that in my mind, but—’ He opened his bag. ‘At least let me try.’
I shifted anxiously and started to crawl towards him.
‘It canna hurt any, vampire,’ Tavish said, still wary as he followed me.
Malik removed his hand from where it rested on my body’s chest and leaned back. ‘Then please try, Joseph.’
Joseph gave him a quick smile, but the shape his mouth made was wrong, triumphant, instead of pleased to help. He dipped his hand inside his bag and pulled something out, pointing it at Malik. There was a snick!and a quivering dart lodged at the base of Malik’s throat. Then Joseph turned and shot Tavish, the dart going straight into his chest.
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. ‘Genny, I think you and Joseph have already met.’ She beckoned him over. ‘But I don’t think you’ve been properlyintroduced.’ She held out her hand and somehow managed to take hold of his.
‘Genny, this is Joseph. My son.’
‘Your son?’ Stunned, I scrambled up to my feet.
‘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 Hannah managed to dig up from somewhere.’
‘Sit down, Genny,’ Joseph said, using that same quiet casual tone, fixing his owl-like gaze on me.
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, Hannah’s idea of usurping your body for herself is really too great an opportunity to be missed.’
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.