Page 9

A lphonse took point since he was the only one with a convincingly masculine voice in case we were questioned. Zara and I brought up the rear because I was the weak link here, and she was in the cloak that hadn’t cured properly and had to stay in the shadows. Not that that was hard, with the entire open area near the river splashed with light and dark.

That was partly because of the torches in half of the hands here, streaming red-gold banners behind the mages as they ran through the magic-distorted haze, and partly from the explosions of spell-fire that those without guns kept setting off. It was starting to look like New Year’s Eve, with pinwheels of white sparks here and shooting stars in every color imaginable over there. Which was why it took me a little while to notice that other things were moving in the air.

At first, it was merely a few scattered shadows almost lost among the rest. Just odd in that they weren’t going in the same direction as those near them and seemed to have no obvious source. I tried to follow them with my eyes, but they slipped away before I could focus properly, skittering outside the edge of my vision.

But as we moved further into the center of the action, the strange shadows became thicker, and while I still couldn’t catch them visually, I could feel them, brushing against me like the tattered edges of my cloak. Some were almost human-warm, like the brief touch of a hand; others were as cold as ice, like the slap of winter rain. But all of them, every single one, was familiar.

And unwanted, especially now.

“What is wrong with you?” Alphonse hissed when I flinched for maybe the fifth time.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Then why are you acting like you have ants in your pants?”

I didn’t answer because we’d just broken through a mass of partying mages and entered what I guessed was the heart of the celebration, since there were a lot more people here. Not to mention a lot more light, not that I needed it. I knew what I’d been feeling and what I was now seeing; I just didn’t believe it.

“Cassie?” Alphonse stopped, his borrowed face looking worried. I didn’t know what was on mine, but I was suddenly grateful for my complete lack of control. Because if my avatar’s face had been linked to my expression, it would have given the game away.

I just stood there, but I wasn’t staring at the fireworks or the mass of torches or what looked like a giant Guy Fawkes celebration. The furniture that remained in the burnt-out houses was being dragged out and piled into what would be a hell of a celebratory bonfire whenever the mages finished it. I didn’t care; I’d seen bonfires before.

I hadn’t seen this.

Ghosts, I thought blankly. So, so many ghosts. Some were pale and low enough on power to be mere suggestions on the wind, impossible to see as distinct shapes and only discerned as ripples across the night; others were huge, powerful, and scary, with glowing eyes and amorphous forms that hadn’t bothered to take on human shapes because why would they?

There was no one to see.

No one except me, and I didn’t understand it, not any of it! Ghosts were usually solitary creatures and fiercely territorial, jealously guarding whatever house they haunted or graveyard they’d ended up in, and the scraps of living energy shed by human visitors there. They didn’t mingle much, even with others of their kind, who might as soon cannibalize them for whatever power they had left as look at them. They definitely didn’t party, and they didn’t do whatever that was, I thought, looking up.

Flock, my numb brain finally kicked up the right word.

They didn’t flock.

Only they did here, with a mass of what had to be several hundred ghosts screaming by on the wind so close that I staggered back abruptly.

Alphonse grabbed my arm even though we weren’t supposed to do that, but he didn’t look much like he cared. “Tell me,” he whispered, “right now, or I swear—”

“Tell you what?” Gray Curls demanded.

“What’s going on?” Topknot added. “Why’d we stop?”

“’Cause she sensed something. Didn’t you?” Alphonse shook my arm a little.

“Sensed what? What happened?” Butch Cut asked.

“A ghost goosed me,” I didn’t say because I couldn’t seem to speak. There was something wrong with these ghosts.

There was something very wrong.

“Cassie?” Zara said, looking from me to what probably seemed like just a raucous party to her.

“Ghosts,” I finally managed to get out.

Alphonse swore.

Purple Hair stared around like she might see one, too, and maybe she did. The direction she was looking in didn’t matter, as they were everywhere. Just everywhere.

“How many?” Alphonse demanded. And when I didn’t immediately answer, he shook me again.

“I... all of them. Just all of them.”

And that’s exactly what it looked like. Only I’d been wrong before; there were other eyes to see, weren’t there? And I finally understood why so many ghosts were congregated in one area and playing nice, more or less.

They didn’t have a choice.

“Cassie—” Alphonse hissed.

“Bokors,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Necromancers! They’re all over the place!”

I saw one off to the far left with three feral-looking, prowling ghosts on a spectral chain, leading them around like guard dogs. I saw another, flying overhead, born aloft by a horde of spirits—something I hadn’t even known we could do—and probably looking for interlopers. But he didn’t see us; the cloaks proved their worth.

But many more of his kind were moving through the throng with groups of enthralled spirits in tow and their eyes glowing yellow, red, or sickly green, depending on what type of necromancy they practiced. And there seemed to be no end to those! The old prohibitions on the art, which had kept people like me from sharing information or even living at times, had apparently been lifted, and there were no rules anymore.

None at all, I thought, as a horde of decaying zombies suddenly shoved past us.

“What is this place?” Alphonse whispered, watching them go, the tattered remains of their bodies in no better shape than their clothes.

“Hell,” Topknot rasped. “It’s why we stopped coming. After they caught us trying to slip in here, along with some of the Silver Circle who were running raids on the place, they got protection.”

“And you didn’t feel like mentioning that ?”

She shrugged. “Thought you knew. It’s common practice to guard the living with the dead these days.”

“But not in our day.”

“No, I suppose not.”

She didn’t sound too concerned, and I saw Alphonse’s fist curl. But he didn’t do anything else, maybe because he was busy watching the zombie of a little girl savaging some piece of meat on the ground nearby, like a feral dog. Her decaying body was hunched over it protectively, her half-rotten face showed the chewing going on inside the eaten-away jaw whenever she looked up for a second, and her dead eyes darted around suspiciously. I looked away, feeling sick, but there were more horrors everywhere, and not just in the human range of sight.

Spirits dashed among the trees, clustering in some of the charred branches like strange birds. Others hovered over groups of mages, probably eavesdropping for their masters, while one was bolder, slipping inside a distracted mage’s skin as Billy Joe, my one-time ghost companion, had occasionally done. Only Billy had never made anyone run straight into a fire that someone had lit because I guessed the bonfire was taking too long, and then writhe in the flames as mage and ghost fought it out for dominance.

The mage won, but not before suffering heavy burns that left him half moaning, half cursing, as others ran to his aid. For its part, the ghost flitted back to a necro standing a little way away and chatting with several others of his kind, although the man gave no sign that he noticed. Except for a small quirk of the lips that might have gone unseen, except that someone had been looking for it.

The group the burned man had come from suddenly called up their own proxy army. A bunch of golems, their outer shells composed of various shades of red, brown, and gray-blue clay, broke off from their masters and ran forward. And unlike the more plain-looking type from my era, these were glowing with runes and strange inscriptions to make them more powerful—as if they needed it!

They didn’t since golems weren’t just animated, robot-like creatures. They were housing for something far more dangerous. I thought I saw flashes of the demons their masters had imprisoned inside as they threw themselves at the necros, strange light glinting in their eyes, or maybe that was all the sparks flying around.

Either way, this should be a short contest.

But I was wrong. The necromancers sent a mass of zombies into the demons’ path from those clustered around them, which, predictably, didn’t go well for the zombies. But I guessed the horde was only meant to buy a little time because a powerful necro swept in a moment later with a tattered cloak of spirits streaming out behind him.

It was at least a couple dozen yards long, and if I focused, I could see the ghostly faces and outstretched hands, pale and severely elongated, reaching out in supplication to anyone, everyone. Until their master detached a group of them, who flew into the attacking golems, sending them veering off crazily, their bodies twitching, falling, and rolling as they and the ghosts fought for control. And to my surprise, in some cases, the ghosts won.

A bunch of the clay shells suddenly sprang back up and chased their former masters into the night, while none of the surrounding mages did a thing about it, despite there being plenty of them. Instead, they gave the necromancer with the spirit cloak a wide berth, who ignored them with aristocratic disdain. Maybe because that’s what he was, I realized.

His clothes weren’t the ratty garb that most of the rest were wearing. Instead, he was clean and dressed in a new-looking, if rather showy, outfit in yellow and red that reminded me of a circus ringmaster: ruby trousers tucked into shiny black boots, a bright canary topcoat, and a pristine white shirt with red stitching along the seams. It looked like styles had changed since we’d been gone, or maybe stuff like that didn’t matter anymore, and everyone just wore whatever they pleased.

I noticed other well-heeled types in the crowd, standing out from the scruffy mass because of medieval-style robes in luxurious velvets highlighted by silver or gold embroidery; others looked like country squires in expensive tweeds and suedes and with fat bellies that didn’t look like they were missing many meals; and still more had on modern clothes topped with satin capes thrown over their shoulders as if they’d just finished a set at a local magic show.

But none compared to Mr. Circus over there, with his cloak of howling spirits, or another who was so engulfed by a group of beautiful girls with pale, dead faces that his clothes couldn’t be seen. A hierarchy had clearly developed among the mages, and many of those on top appeared to be necromancers, the former outcasts of the magical world, who had finally come into their own. But not all of them had dressed to impress.

I spotted an Indian sadhu wearing only a loincloth and a lot of ashes, the latter having turned his limbs and long, matted dreadlocks almost as pale as the ghosts flitting about. Or as his entourage, which consisted of a group of skeletons held together with a little sinew and a lot of magic. A whole lot, I thought, as it took a great deal of power to keep bodies that far gone operational.

And he was keeping a lot of them. I watched in awe as more than twenty skeletons passed by the dead tree under which we’d taken refuge, their bones softly clacking as they moved. A few had a little dried meat still discoloring their bodies in places, but more were a bright white that bones rarely reach unless bleached by years in the sun. I stood there, wondering how long it had taken them to turn that hue when what I should have been doing was making sure they didn’t do that, I thought, when one of their hands brushed Gray Curl’s cloak—

And it latched hold.

The tattered garment had been whipping slightly in the wind, or possibly with a mind of its own, becoming more animated with all the dark magic in the air. And it had just grabbed the skeletal zombie arm with its flat, tanned digits and wasn’t letting go. The zombie stopped abruptly, and up ahead, the sadhu stopped with it.

Of course he did, I thought savagely. That thing probably felt like an extension of his body as he animated it with a bit of his soul! How he’d animated so many when, in my time, a necro was lucky to manage three, I didn’t know, but then, the old rules seemed to have gone out the window, hadn’t they?

And now, he was walking back this way.

Alphonse tensed beside me, but I didn’t think his patented eat-‘em-before-they-can-yell routine was going to work this time. “Stay put,” I hissed and stepped out in front of Gray Curls before the sadhu reached us.

I bowed low before him, mainly because it kept my less-than-convincing face toward the ground.

“My apologies,” I said hoarsely. “My servant is new and too feisty for his own good—or mine.”

I reached out and pulsed enough necro magic through the misbehaving cloak to get it to release the zombie’s hand, and to my surprise, it worked. Even more surprisingly, it didn’t pop my own disguise, something I hadn’t even thought about until the magic had already left my body. And then all I could do was hold my breath and wait for whatever was going to happen next, only nothing did.

Except that I seemed to have caught the sadhu’s attention.

“You are new?” he said after a pause. “I do not recognize you.”

“Just came in tonight,” I deepened the bow by going down to one knee. Because it was either that or stand up, and I couldn’t stand up!

“And all these are yours?” I felt him send a little tendril of power around my group, touching lightly, almost politely, but enough to confirm that, yes, they were indeed dead. Or at least, the things they wore that obscured their magic were.

“Yes, your... Grace,” I replied because I had no idea what to say, and groveling seemed to be working.

“I care nothing for titles,” he told me loftily, but his voice sounded pleased. “But your arrival is well-timed. You should join us for dinner after the entertainment.”

“You are too kind,” I rasped.

“Not at all. The demonologists grow too many and seek to challenge our authority. A new, powerful practitioner is welcome. Come, I will introduce you.”

“I—you honor me,” I said, furiously thinking. Because if I stood up, he was going to notice my slack-jawed face, but if I didn’t, he was going to find that suspicious, too! But no way could we fight him without drawing the attention of everybody in the vicinity, and that was likely to get us—

“Boned,” Alphonse muttered from above my head. But he didn’t do anything because something happened at the same moment, only I didn’t know what. Power rippled across my skin, enough to cause a shudder to go through me, and I guessed the sadhu felt it, too, because he spat something in another language that sounded like a curse.

“What is he doing here?” he snarled and turned away before snapping his fingers at me like a dog. “Come along, and hurry. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

He and his skeleton army swept off, and before I knew it, I was back on my feet and being hustled along behind him, but not because some of his boys had caught me. But because one of mine had. “Put your game face on,” Alphonse hissed, dragging me along while our group crowded close around us.

“What?” I stared around in confusion.

“You used necromancy back there,” Topknot said rapidly from my other side, where she began puffing a bit from the pace. “Don’t tell me you didn’t!”

“Of course I did. I had to! And what the hell—”

“Well, that’s dark magic , isn’t it?” she demanded. “It’s control over the dead! So, do it again and fix your face! You look like your skin is sliding off your bones!”

Probably because it was, I thought, sending a tendril of necromancy into the cloak and feeling it almost immediately firm up around me. Which was less than pleasant as it suddenly felt like I was wearing a dead skin facial mask. But I barely noticed, being too busy paying attention to what had just appeared in the sky overhead.

Shit.

“ Demon! ” the call rippled through the crowd while I stared at a golden chariot worthy of a god but not being driven by one that was tearing through the skies. It was drawn by a group of snarling, snapping, crimson creatures I couldn’t name, but that looked a little like dragons if they were composed of fire instead of breathing it. They were constantly writhing and changing appearance, like dancing flames.

But they weren’t the main show, at least as far as I was concerned. No, not even close. Because the man driving that whole monstrosity, which lit up the skies like a small red sun, was another familiar figure.

Very familiar, I thought, my stomach knotting, although whether in hope or fear, I wasn’t sure.

I had never been with him.

“Who the hell is that?” Alphonse whispered. “And why does he look like Pritkin?”

I swallowed and accepted that things had just gotten a lot more complicated. “Because that’s his father.”