Ghost Story (42 page)

“As you wish,” Lea said.

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to clear my thoughts. Asking questions of inhuman entities can be a tricky and dangerous business—with the fae more than most. You almost never got direct answers from one of the lords of Faerie, the Sidhe. Asking them direct questions, especially questions touching on information relevant to a conflict of some sort, was likely to elicit obscure and maliciously misleading answers. I was on good terms with my godmother, as human-Sidhe relationships went, but that was no reason not to cover my bases.

So I thought over recent events for a while and looked for the blank spots, but I kept getting distracted by the memories of that night in the convenience store. They chewed at me and refused to be pushed aside—especially the conversation with He Who Walks Behind.

“Priorities,” I said out loud. “This is about priorities.”

“Oh?” Lea asked.

I nodded. “I could ask you a lot of questions about my past—and you'd answer them.”

“That is true.”

“Or I could ask you about what is happening right now in the city. I could find out how I could best help Murphy.”

Lea nodded.

“But I was sent back here to find my killer,” I said. “I'm supposed to be hunting down whoever killed me, and yet I've been doing a whole lot of everything but that.”

“In point of fact,” Lea said, “you've been doing little else.”

I blinked.

She gave me an enigmatic, feline smile.

“Oh, you bitch.” I sighed. “You just love doing that to me.”

Lea demurely lowered her gaze. She fluttered her eyelashes twice.

I scowled at her and folded my arms over my chest. Lea had been involved in my life since I was born, and probably before that. She could tell me any number of things I'd been quietly dying to know since I was old enough to ask questions at all. She was up on all the current events, too. All of the high Sidhe are fanatic gatherers of information, and my godmother was no exception. Of course, they tended to guard their knowledge as ferociously as a dragon guards its gold—and they parted with it almost as reluctantly.

The Sidhe aren't dummies. Information is a great deal more valuable than gold, any day of the week.

So I circled back to my earlier question. Where
did
my priorities lie? What was more important to me: Digging up secrets from the shadowy bits of my past? Getting the information I needed to move on to my future? Or helping my friends and loved ones right now?

Yeah. No-brainer.

“What can you tell me about the Corpsetaker, her resources, and her goals?” I asked.

Lea considered the answer for a moment before nodding to herself. “The creature you ask about is motivated purely by self-interest. After the body she possessed was killed by a brash, impulsive, and dangerous young wizard, her spirit remained behind. It took a score of moons for her to gather enough coherence to act, and even then she had precious little power to exert upon the mortal world.

“She was limited to speaking with the few mortals who can perceive such things. So she found them and began to manipulate them, guiding them together into the group you have already encountered. Her goal was to assemble her followers, spiritual and material, and then to abduct a body of appropriate strength.”

“Clarification,” I interjected. “You mean a body with magical capability?”

“With significant capability,” Lea replied, stressing the phrase. “When Corpsetaker's spirit still dwelt upon the mortal coil, even bodies with latent talent were hospitable enough for her to exercise her full power. But thanks to you, and like you, my dear godson, she has passed beyond the threshold between life and death. Now she requires a body with a much greater inherent talent in order to use her gifts once she is inside it.”

I tapped my lips with a fingertip, thinking. “So you're saying Mort is a major talent.”

“In certain respects, he is more potent than you were, Godson. And he is a great deal more practical—he avoided the notice of the White Council almost entirely and hid his abilities from them quite neatly. The Corpsetaker wants him. She doubtless intends to make some use of the city's dead and establish herself as the city's dominant practitioner.”

I blinked. “Why? I mean . . . she's just going to attract attention from the Council if she does that, and she's still on their Wanted Dead or Alive but Mostly Dead list.”

“Not if she looks like the little ectomancer,” Lea countered. “She will simply be a concealed talent unveiling itself in a time of dire need.”

“But why risk it in the first place? Why Chicago?”

Lea frowned, golden red brows drawing together. “I do not know. But the Fomor are dangerous folk with whom to make bargains.”

I lifted my eyebrows. Considering the source, that was really saying something.

“In my judgment,” she continued, “the only reason Corpsetaker would deal with the Fomor would be to establish her presence here—probably as a loosely attached vassal of their nobility.”

I found myself scowling. “Well. She isn't going to do it. This is my town.”

My godmother let out another silver-chime laugh. “Is it? Even now?”

“Course,” I said. I rubbed at my jaw. “What happens if she gets Morty?”

Lea looked momentarily baffled. “She wins?”

I waved a hand. “No, no. How do I get her back out of him?”

Her eyelids lowered slightly. “You have already utilized the only method I know.”

“So I gotta get her before she gets to Morty,” I said quietly.

“If you wish to save his life, yes.”

“And from the sound of the conversation with Creepy Servitor Guy, I'd better break up the Corpsetaker-Fomor team before it gathers any momentum.”

“It would seem to be wise,” Lea said.

“Why the Fomor?” I asked. “I mean, I barely know who they are. Why are they all over Chicago now? Who are they?”

“Once, they were the enemies of my people, Winter and Summer alike,” she said, lifting her chin as her emerald eyes grew distant. “We banished them to the sea. Now they are the exiles of myth and legend, the outcasts of the gods and demons of every land bordering the sea. Defeated giants, fallen gods, dark reflections of beings of light. They are many races and none, joined together beneath the banner of the Fomor in a common cause.”

“Revenge,” I guessed.

“Quite. It is a goal best served by gathering power, an activity that has been made attractive by the fall of the Red Court. And I have been more than generous with my answer to your question.”

“You have. I am grateful, Godmother.”

She smiled at me. “Such a charming child, betimes. Two questions have been answered. Your third?”

I thought some more. Somehow, I doubted that asking
Say, who killed me?
would yield any comprehensible results.

On the other hand, what the hell? You never know until you try.

“Say,” I asked, “who killed me?”

T
he Leanansidhe looked down at me, her almond-shaped green eyes distant, pensive.

“Oh, my child,” she breathed after a moment. “You ask such dangerous questions.”

I cocked my head to one side. “You agreed to answer.”

“And I must,” she agreed. “And I must not.”

I frowned. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“Of course, child. You are not Sidhe.” She crossed her ankles, frowning, and I saw a distinct spark of irritated rebellion enter her eyes. “I'm of a mind to tell you and end this charade.”

Eternal Silence's voice wasn't quite the same mind-destroying artillery shell it had been the first time the verdigris-encrusted statue had thought-spoken to me, but that might have been a function of me being sheltered in what amounted to a foxhole. The force of it blew Lea's long hair straight back, and her head snapped to one side as sharply as if she'd been slapped on the cheek. A shadow fell across my grave, and I looked up to see the statue looming overhead.

In broad daylight.

Which meant . . . which meant that whatever the thing was, it
wasn't
a ghost like me. I'd have been withered and blasted into the scraps of what I was now if I'd ventured out of my grave. The lingering power of the dawn wouldn't destroy me, but it would hurt, a lot, and it would cripple and weaken me.

Eternal Silence was apparently having no problems with it.

Lea turned her head back to the statue, her eyes and expression cold. “I am perfectly aware of the situation,” she spat. Then she tilted her head to one side and paused, as if listening to a speaker I couldn't hear. She sighed. “Fear not, ancient thing. I have no intention of depriving either of you.”

What?
What!?!
Either of
who
?

It was one of those questions to which I knew damned well that no one would tell me the answer.

Crud.

Clearly I should have haggled for seven questions.

“Child,” Lea said, “I will tell you an answer that is true. But it is not the answer that you desire.”

“Three true answers,” I shot back immediately. “The bargain was made in good faith.”

Lea puffed out a little breath and made a very contained and elegant gesture that somehow managed to convey the same meaning as if she had thrown her hands up. “Will you never cease pushing?”

“Never, ever,” I said.

“Impossible child. Oh, very well. If it will fill that bottomless well you call curiosity.” She shook her head, glanced again at Eternal Silence, and said, “The first truth is that you are acquainted with your killer.”

I swallowed. The single truly redeeming factor of the Sidhe, Winter or Summer, is that they can't knowingly speak a lie. They are, in fact, completely incapable of it. That's not the same thing as saying that they can't deceive—they are past masters of deceit, after all. But they can't do it by directly speaking words that aren't true.

Which meant that, assuming Lea's information was good, I had just eliminated better than six billion possible suspects—and Lea's information was always good.

Lea nodded at me, the gesture so slight that I almost thought I imagined it. “The second truth is that your murder was but one of thousands at the killer's hands.”

I took that in as well, trying to look at it from all angles. I knew some people and things who were stone-cold killers, but beings who had killed thousands of mortals were few and far between. Famous snipers in the World Wars hadn't accumulated more than a few hundred kills. Serial killers working for decades hadn't done any better. But supernatural predators, especially the long-lived ones, could add up that kind of count in a particularly active century or two.

Oh, and I had done my best to shut down pretty much every one of them I actually knew. The suspect pool was rapidly growing smaller.

“The final truth,” Lea said. She suddenly looked very tired. “Your killer was but the proxy of another being, and one mightier and more dangerous than he.”

He
. Male. The pool dwindled by half, give or take.

So. . .

So, aside from the dick who killed me, I also had his boss to worry about.

Super.

“I can say no more, Godson,” Lea said.

Lea lifted her hand as if to shield her face from a sudden wind and scowled in Eternal Silence's direction. “Your knowledge of mortals is relatively scarce. It is done. Desist your howling.” Lea paused to look to one side again, stiffened her back a little, and added a belated and unenthusiastic, “If you please.”

The silent figure looked from my godmother to me, and though it didn't have lungs with which to draw breath, I somehow sensed that it was about to speak.

“I know,” I said hurriedly. “I know. Know my path. No need to blow my brains out repeating yourself.”

Eternal Silence seemed faintly, vaguely annoyed. There came a purely psychic sensation, something that . . . that really reminded me of an unsatisfied grunt. Then the statue turned away and vanished from my sight.

“Huh,” I said, after the figure had gone. “What the hell was that about?”

“Proxies,” the Leanansidhe muttered, barely audible. “Always proxies. And respect.”

“What?”

She gave me a direct look, and I had the impression that she was saying something with particular meaning. “Proxies, child. Those who appear to speak on behalf of another who cannot be present. Much as I have served as a proxy for my queen over the years, or she for me.” Lea shook her head and said, “I must go, child.”

“Wait,” I said, reaching up to touch her foot with my hand.

My ectoplasmic flesh did not sink through hers. My hand felt nothing, yet met an odd resistance to its motion. I didn't pass into her as I had Mort or Molly. I blinked a little at that.

“I am of two worlds,” she said, her tone slightly impatient. As she often did, she had evidently guessed at my thoughts. “Of course I don't feel the same as mortal flesh.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh. Listen. I just want . . . I need to know that you're going to take care of Molly.”

She tilted her head and studied me for a moment. “But . . . child. It was never your responsibility to care for the young woman.”

“Yes, it was,” I said. “She was my apprentice.”

“Indeed. Someone whom you had pledged to teach—not to care for. Child, did you miss the entire point of the exercise?”