Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(65)

“Rosemary’s Green,” said Finstern. “The gate we entered is on a mound in the northeast corner. One of their friends is keeping it open. I think he’s some kind of half-breed. I heard the detective call him Seelie when he thought I wasn’t listening.”

An uneven smirk pulled Morwen’s lips taut. She clasped the second stone on her necklace. “Autoch, dispose of the little nuisance at Rosemary’s Green for us, please.” The second hulking elemental stalked off into the forest, back the way we had come.

“No!” Jackaby managed to wheeze.

“What’s that? You’d suddenly like to cooperate?” Morwen called up to him.

Alloch loosened his grasp ever so slightly and Jackaby gasped. “Leave Charlie out of this,” he rasped. “He’s done nothing to you.”

“That’s not how it works, Detective. You had your chance to play along. Now your friends are going to die. You can watch, if you like—before we kill you, too.”

“I’ll do it,” Jackaby groaned. “I’ll cross over willingly. It’s the only way to do the thing cleanly. Just ask your brother. If he tries to force the sight out of me, he’ll pull me out right along with it. He’s seen what two souls can do to a body.”

Finstern nodded, scowling. “It’s true. It is unpleasant.”

“I’ll let him have the sight,” said Jackaby. “Just call off your elementals and let Rook and Jenny go.” The machine was still humming beneath him. “Please. They’ve been through enough.”

Morwen scowled for a moment, and then a wicked grin spread across her face. “Rook and Jenny?”

“The girl,” Finstern explained. “Her soul went underground, but they travel with a ghost. The dead woman has taken control of the girl’s body.”

“Jenny Cavanaugh?” The woman’s skin glistened like rippling water, and she changed. Her blonde locks relaxed and darkened to a soft brunette, and her face transformed. She looked exactly as Jenny had in life. “Not sweet, innocent Jenny Cavanaugh?” she mocked, her voice becoming a perfect match for Jenny’s.

She tapped my body’s frozen forehead with a fingernail. “Are you really in there? This is rich. I heard rumors, but I had no idea . . . You can’t get free of my little hex, can you? Oh, this is delicious. I’ve killed a lot of people in a lot of ways, but I’ve never had the pleasure of killing the same person twice. Did you get my little anniversary present? I carved it myself.”

Jenny’s eyes all but screamed from within my frozen sockets.

Morwen reached up to take my knife from my frozen hand, but the moment she touched the silver she cried out and pulled away. Her palm was blistered. It looked as if she had grabbed hold of a glowing coal.

Morwen swore under her breath. “Awfully ostentatious, aren’t we? Who carries around a silver knife? Fine. That’s fine. If we’re going to do this again, let’s do it right, anyway.”

With a ripple like a breeze over a still lake, her hair darkened further to a deep black and her dress became a crisp skirt and white blouse. A new face emerged, one I had seen before over the top of a clipboard. She was Mayor Poplin’s secretary. She had been there ten years ago, hiding in plain sight. She reached to her belt and drew the long dagger from its sheath. The metal was as black as midnight and curved slightly, like an Arabian scimitar. She was hardly one to complain about ostentatious weapons.

“There we go. Remember this one? Just like old times, isn’t it?” she taunted. “Better, even. Last time I killed you I was in such a rush. I’ll be sure to savor it this time.”

She drew the black blade down Jenny’s cheek—down my cheek. Her brother’s threats had only been for effect, but Morwen did not hold back. The edge pierced my skin and cut a line of deep crimson from the corner of my eye down toward my jaw. Jenny’s eyes screamed from within my frozen sockets. My head swam. I couldn’t watch. I felt sick and trapped and helpless.

Abruptly, the ebony blade shot backward. It landed in the dirt behind Morwen, glowing red hot at the tip as though just plucked from a forge fire. She clutched her already injured hand and snarled with indignant rage. “What?”

I didn’t understand it myself. Blood ran down my body’s unmoving face, but what force had stopped her blade was beyond me.

On the other side of the clearing, Jackaby grunted. He wrenched an arm free and, with a flick of his wrist, flung a little red stone—the last of the Cherufe’s tears—toward his captor’s rocky arm. It hit the inside of Alloch’s elbow, and at once the giant’s granite flesh boiled. Alloch bellowed. The stony arm glowed red from the curve of his shoulder to the steel brace around his wrist. Great gobs of charred molten rock were sloughing off and dropping to the earth.

“Do it now!” Morwen commanded her brother. “Turn it on!” Her secretary fa?ade slipped away, and she was herself once more, strawberry blonde with furious panic playing across her eyes. She retrieved the black blade with her uninjured hand.

Finstern had scrambled to the machine. “I can’t!” he said. “His soul needs to leave his body first!”

“Alloch!” Morwen clasped the gray bead on her necklace with her free hand. “Throw him over the line! Now! Ouch!” The little stone bead was glowing like a hot coal.