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“Hello, again,” he said kindly.

And the world disappeared in fire.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Kit slowly came around to what felt like the rocking of a ship at sea. For a moment, he thought he was back on his personal vessel, which he had outfitted before his lady began loaning him a portal for longer journeys. He had yet to sell his ocean going home, as he preferred the cleaner air on the water to his London accommodations and often slept there.

Yes, he decided vaguely, he was on a ship. There was the familiar creak and groan of wooden planks, the lap, lap, lap of water against the hull, and the smell of brine. But no flapping of sails when the wind hit them, although he could hear it howling outside.

A ship at anchor, then.

Which was odd, because the last thing he remembered—

His eyes flew open.

That didn’t seem to make much of a difference, with the darkness that surrounded him being all pervasive. Even vampire sight didn’t help. But after a moment, he realized that that had more to do with whatever had been draped over him than any absence of light.

He shoved aside something that felt like a heavy carpet, then another. Followed by a whole mountain of them that must have collapsed on top of him, many still wrapped in the coarse baling material used for transport. But he persisted and his head finally popped out of the heap, his lungs insisting that he should be gasping for breath.

But he found himself catching it instead, as he gazed about in wonder.

He was in the hold of a ship, half buried in a forest of bales, and across from a fortune in blue and white Chinese porcelain. It was peeking out of crates filled with hay to cushion the delicate stuff for transport, although it often didn’t. Which was why the few pieces that did make it intact were so expensive that they were referred to as white gold and encased in silver gilt frames to help preserve them.

Beyond that were sacks of costly pepper, with several torn open and the peppercorns leaking out; a magnificent piece of azure silk with golden flowers embroidered on it glimmering in a stray ray of light from somewhere; and piles of fine damask, exquisite gauzes, delicate taffetas, and more of the flowered silks of Canton, pulled out of bales and thrown about with little concern for their immense cost.

Finally, his eyes encountered the source of the light illuminating all of this treasure, in the form of a lantern held by a young man.

He had a levitating sledge of some kind beside him, with a fortune in carpets and silks piled on top of it. He didn’t look like a war mage, however, in their sleek leather capes and boots, or one of the Circle’s pompous leaders, who dressed like lords and sneered at everyone except the queen. He was wearing a plain outfit of dull brown, frayed about the edges, and stained enough that the marks showed up even in the poor light.

As he looked about a bit more, Kit noticed several other lanterns spread out around the hold, or this part of it anyway, with shadowy figures loading up similar conveyances amid a swirl of spice. It was thick enough to make his eyes water, and glittered like gold dust whenever a beam of lantern light cut across it. A fortune just floating in air . . .

“This was where it all began,” someone said, causing Kit’s head to jerk around.

There were no lanterns behind him, but he didn’t need them. The semi-transparent woman standing beside Gillian was shedding her own light. It was dim, but in the darkness was enough to define her hazy form, which was that of an attractive brunette with bright blue eyes.

Kit stared at her for a moment, caught completely off guard. He blinked and then shook his head, thinking that perhaps the spells he’d absorbed had rattled his brain. And that was certainly possible, as he did feel very strange.

But nothing visually changed. She was still there and still looking like a ghost, or what he’d always imagined one to be. Although that was absurd!

He couldn’t see ghosts.

He could see the slumped body of a portly mage, however, with a bushy brown beard and a slack, dead face, laying at her feet like a cast-off bit of clothing. Which perhaps he was. Kit was no expert on the supernatural realm, having had only a few years to absorb the fact that it existed at all.

But the uncanny blue eyes currently shining out of the ghost’s face had been in that man’s skull when he killed Rilda.

Kit started to get an itch up his spine.

It didn’t help that, when he tried to move out of his costly prison, his arms didn’t respond properly and his legs were almost useless. He started to struggle, trying to free himself, but Gillian saw him and shook her head, her eyes huge. Which he took to mean “don’t attack the ghost,” but wasn’t sure.

It was a moot point, since he didn’t know how to even attempt such a thing. And was a fairly useless lump at the moment in any case. Something that had to change!

He started trying to will strength back into his legs, as well as the new, shoeless foot his probing toes found at the end of a soft shank. It felt like a baby’s bottom, with skin that had never had a callus or a scar. And felt functional enough, if he could get the rest his body to cooperate!

He started massaging his legs as well as he could with only half functioning arms, keeping an eye on the ghost as he did so, although she didn’t appear to notice. She and Gillian were only about ten feet away, in a small walkway between mountains of trade goods. But her eyes were focused on the darkened hold with a strange intensity.

“This is where they laid their trap,” she continued. “The Corpsmen followed us for three days and waited until we’d sold our haul. They did not want to take us in London. Too many eyes there. Too many ears. They delayed until we went back to camp, far away from anyone. That is where they struck.”

“Morgan,” Gillian said, her voice shaky. “I feel for you. I do. But this . . .”