The Cold Kiss of Death

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘Is she dead, Doctor?’ I heard Hannah demand. I opened my eyes and found myself looking into the masked face of Doctor Joseph Wainwright, a.k.a. the bastard who had just shot me with a tranq gun. I glared at him, but he didn’t appear to notice, just carried on shining a bright pencil light into my pupils. I squeezed my lids tight shut, then opened them again, struggling to see beyond the blinding spot of light into the candlelit darkness that closed in behind his head. I could make out a brick roof arching overhead. On one side there was a high bricked-up archway with an open wooden door at one end, on the other a mural of some sort. I squinted, and a painting of a barren landscape with a distant, rocky mountain came into focus.

I frowned as I recognised the place from Hannah’s big-screen memory of Rosa lying in agonised state while the Earl killed the Ancient One. I was in the sorcerer’s lair, wherever that was, and no doubt the stone slab I was lying on was her proverbial sacrificial altar.

How lucky could I get?

Of course, I’d be even luckier if I could figure a way off the table, preferably before the sacrifice bit happened.

I slowly winked at the doctor.

He ignored me.

I stuck my tongue out at him.

Still nothing.

I realised he really couldn’t see me; I was having some out-of-body experience. Panic started bubbling and I pushed it down. Panicking wasn’t going to help.

‘Doctor?’ Hannah’s imperious question came again. ‘Is Genevieve dead?’

‘No, not quite.’ He adjusted his mask and looked at something next to him. ‘There’s still some brain activity.’

I followed his gaze. He’d got me hooked up to his machines again. One showed a faint green line winging across its screen, the other, the heart monitor maybe—I checked; yep, more electrodes stuck to my chest—wasn’t flashing up any numbers.

Damn. My heart wasn’t beating. And nothing hurt any more.

Not a good sign.

It was beginning to look like Doctor Joseph’s diagnosis was wrong. Mentally, I cheered him on. I might not be sure if he was a goodie or baddie, but if he was saving my life, he had my vote—even if he was only trying to revive me so Hannah could reverse the situation at her leisure. At least that way, I had a chance.

‘Hurry it along, Doctor, we’re on a tight schedule here,’ Hannah said impatiently.

I turned towards her and she didn’t notice; apparently seeing ghosts or spirits wasn’t one of her sorcerous powers. She stood almost within touching distance, dressed in a floor-sweeping black velvet robe, heavily embroidered in red with symbols I didn’t recognise and tied at the throat with matching red cord that ended in foot-long tassels. The outfit had to be her sorcerer’s robe, but it looked more like she’d dressed herself up in a pair of swanky curtains.

‘I’m going as quickly as I can,’ Joseph said, his voice filled with nervous tension. ‘Her metabolism is faster and more resistant than a human’s. And I have to balance out the morphine with the tranquilliser, they’re working against—’

‘Oh, do shut up and get on with it,’ she snapped. ‘Time is of the essence here.’

‘Why don’t you just stab the sidhe? It would be quicker,’ said another voice from somewhere near my feet.

Stab me? Wasn’t the doctor trying to save me?

I sat bolt upright, staring at the plump, curly-haired woman who was standing there. She popped a liquorice torpedo into her mouth from the white bag she was holding. Her robe was identical to Hannah’s, but where Hannah looked almost regal, she just looked dowdy; something not helped by the sullen expression on her fat face. Ex-Police Constable Janet Sims: my favourite security guard in Covent Garden. No wonder she wanted to stab me.

Only I didn’t think she needed to. With a sort of horrified inevitability I looked down at myself. I might be sitting up, but my body wasn’t sitting up with me. It was laying stock-still, eyes closed, naked except for the electrodes and a funny-looking cap with a thicket of wires trailing from it back to the first machine. My face, neck, arms, chest and stomach were covered in scratches from my run-in with the dryads.

Okay, looked like the out-of-body experience had escalated to worse. I was dead—and not only that, I was a ghost too.

Fuck. I clenched my fists and built the wall higher against my panic.

My body was still there, and that meant I wasn’t truly gone, just separated.

So all I needed to do was to work out how to pull myself together again.

‘I told you, Janet,’ Hannah’s tone was long-suffering, ‘she might be sidhe fae, and she might heal quickly, but I can’t wait for that. I need to use the body straight away to get the Fabergé egg out of the bank.’

Use my body?

‘It’s bad enough I’m going to be walking round flat-chested’—Hannah grimaced—‘and looking like I’ve been attacked by a litter of angry cats without being incapacitated by a knife-wound in the heart. Although if this so-called doctor doesn’t hurry up, it’ll be his heart with a knife in it. Are you listening, Doctor?’

‘Yes.’ He pushed his glasses back up his nose, his finger trembling.

My mind clicked into place: so Hannah was planning on using the equivalent of my Disguise spell—except I was the one being evicted from my body, and she was gong to be the one walking round in my skin.

Fuck.

Janet walked up to Hannah and looked down at my prone self. ‘But I should be able to heal you now I’ve got Granny’s powers,’ she pouted. ‘Granny was always good at healing things.’ She rubbed her hands together eagerly. ‘That way I get to stab the sidhe slut here. I’ve always wanted to do that.’

No way was I going to let this happen—only I couldn’t see how to stop it.

‘Genny.’

I jerked towards the whisper, but couldn’t see anything.

‘Janet, dear,’ Hannah sniffed, ‘you’ve had Granny’s magic for a week now. So far, you’ve managed, what?’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘An invisibility shield that reflects in shop windows, an exploding flour-storm, and whatever that disgusting smelly spell was that you attached to Granny’s door—a spell which, incidentally, did nothing at all to stop dear Genevieve from getting into Granny’s flat while you were out buying children’s comics and nail polish.’

Her words registered in the part of my mind not panicking: Dumpy Janet was Witch Wilcox’s granddaughter? The one who was staying with her?

‘Fairycakes kept on whingeing and crying. It was bugging me.’ Janet’s mouth turned down. ‘And it’s not my fault the dryads were waiting for the sidhe slut.’

‘Of course it was,’ Hannah said briskly. ‘The only reason they were chasing her was because you couldn’t stop that addlebrained sidhe from killing your baker boyfriend. All you had to do was get her to bespell him, just enough to put pressure on Genevieve, but oh no, you decide to have your own little orgy, Genevieve ends up wanted for murder, London’s fae think she’s ready to break their curse and you put all my plans at risk.’

‘Genny,’ came the whisper again, closer this time, and a small, cold hand crept into mine and tugged. I looked down into the big dark eyes of Cosette, the ghost, and felt a shiver of fright crawl up my spine. ‘You need to come with me, Genny,’ she whispered.

Did I? She’d helped me twice before, and sitting here wasn’t getting me anywhere, was it? I slid off the stone slab and followed her—stepping over a line of red sand that marked the edge of a circle—towards a dark corner.

‘Do you know how many strings I’ve had to pull to sort that murder charge out?’ Hannah carried on. ‘And how many promises I’ve had to make? If you hadn’t made such an almighty mess of things, we’d have had this spell done days ago, instead of having to rush things at the last minute.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ came Janet’s sulky reply. ‘It all just got a bit out of hand.’

We reached the corner and stopped. It was just a corner. I was a little taken aback that it wasn’t some sort of help, or an escape route. I frowned down at Cosette. ‘What happens now?’

‘Now we watch,’ she said, amusement lighting her eyes. ‘Oh, and Genny, think some clothes on, please.’

Huh? I looked down and as I did, my missing jeans and T-shirt materialised around me.

Cosette patted my hand. ‘That’s a good girl.’ She didn’t sound like an eight-year-old, even one born a hundred years ago.

‘Start using your brain instead of worrying about who to let into your knickers,’ Hannah snapped at Janet. ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that you’re my little sister, I’d have offered your soul up to the demon long ago. And stop eating those bloody sweets; you don’t need them now. Granny’s magic is powerful enough without you adding sugar to it. You need to lose some of that fat you’re carrying round with you. Do that and you could have your pick of boyfriends instead of having to moon about after those ugly trolls all the time.’

‘Trolls are not ugly,’ Janet huffed.

Ugly! Pieces of the jigsaw started slotting together in my head.

‘You’re the Ancient One, aren’t you?’ I said to Cosette, looking down at her. ‘So what happened to the old crone look?’

‘You have a phobia about ghosts, Genny.’ Cosette gave me a knowing smile; it sat oddly on her little girl’s face. ‘I thought this would be a more acceptable manifestation with which to approach you.’

I shuddered. She was right; the chest wounds had been bad enough—if I’d met her ghost with its yellowed skull and maggot-filled eyes ...

‘I will explain,’ she continued, ‘but first we must watch the proceedings.’

‘Well, each to their own,’ Hannah was saying, drawing my attention back to the squabbling women, ‘but I’ll tell you what, after we’ve finished you can have a look at Darius, my pet vamp. I’m not going to need him any more after tonight, so you might as well have him.’

‘I don’t want your cast-offs,’ Janet pouted.

‘Sure you do,’ Hannah said firmly. ‘Darius is almost as big as a troll anyway, so he’ll be right up your street.’ She arched a perfectly drawn brow at Joseph. ‘Now, Doctor, are we done yet?’

‘She’s dead,’ Joseph said quietly, turning away to fiddle with a medical trolley next to his machines.

‘Right, now stay out the way, but don’t leave the circle, and remember what I told you. Make sure you do it, otherwise come midnight yours will be one of the souls going to the demon.’

Joseph crossed himself, his face pale.

It looked like he might be a goodie, which begged the question how in hell had Hannah got her claws in him?

Hannah loosened her robe and let it fall to the ground, leaving her wearing nothing but a gold locket on a chain around her neck. She stepped up to the altar and used a small step-stool to climb up and onto me, swinging a leg over until she was straddling my thighs. She stared down for a minute then cupped her own full breasts and sighed. ‘I’m going to miss my curves’—she gave my own smaller breasts a prod—‘but thank goodness for silicone.’

Shock slammed into me as I realised she wasn’t just going to be borrowing my body. She was taking it over.

Permanently.

Hannah lifted her arms and removed the gold locket, opened it and placed it on my stomach, where it sat like a frozen butterfly. She waved at Janet, who hurried over, holding out a black embroidered cushion like a tray. ‘Your athame, Mistress.’

‘It’s not an athame, Janet,’ Hannah rebuked her. ‘It’s a very special knife, forged by the northern dwarves from cold iron and silver.’ She picked it up and ran a finger carefully along the thin blade. ‘It was tempered in dragon’s breath. The handle is carved from a unicorn’s horn, and this’—she smiled as she stroked the oval of clear amber set in its handle—‘this is a dragon’s tear.’

‘A Bonder of Souls,’ whispered Cosette in awe. ‘Wherever did she discover that?’

I narrowed my eyes. The last time I’d seen the knife, other than my dreams, I’d been four years old. ‘She stole it,’ I said flatly. ‘From Malik al-Khan.’

‘Ah, of course—that is how he tied your soul to his when you were a child. I was curious about how he’d done so.’

I eyed her with suspicion. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘Any knowledge is available if you’re prepared to pay the price,’ she murmured, her gaze fixed on Hannah.

Ri-ght, the demon information service. Figured!

Hannah held up the knife and started chanting in the same guttural language I’d heard her use before. Then she leaned forward and carved three interconnecting crescent moons in the centre of my chest.

I recognised them at once: Cosette had the same marks on her own small chest—only now I was beginning to suspect she might have put them there herself, and not, as I’d always thought, had them inflicted on her.

I watched, tense and powerless, as blood, glinting like wet rubies in the flickering candlelight, seeped into the marks carved on my chest. Hannah offered the knife to my blood and it rushed up the silver blade, turning it crimson. Then she held the knife over the locket and I watched as the blood drained down and pooled inside its open wings.

‘Your soul to gold, Genevieve,’ she chanted, kissing the knife and leaving a smear of blood on her lips, ‘my soul to your flesh,’ as she bent and touched her bloody lips to my mouth, ‘your flesh and my soul to join.’ Then she gripped the knife in both hands, held it out in front of her and reversed the blade. She took a deep breath and plunged it into her body, under her ribs and up into her heart.

Screaming, she threw her head back as if in ecstasy, hands still clutching the knife as blood dripped down between her fingers, then, after a moment, she wrenched the knife from her chest and let it drop as she half-fell, half-lowered herself onto me to press her mouth to mine, her body twitching in its death throes.

Joseph turned away, his face pale.

Janet stared avidly, her mouth parted, her bag of sweets clutched in her fist, forgotten.

Beside me, Cosette watched just as avidly. ‘She always was a good student, that one,’ she said, her dark eyes lit with something almost like pride.

Anger flooded into me, washing away the shock and panic. I bent down to look her in the eyes. ‘Right, now that your erstwhile pupil is happily stealing my body, want to tell me what I’m supposed to do to stop her?’

‘You can’t stop her, Genny,’ Cosette said, holding up a hand to silence me, ‘but you might be able to reclaim your body.’

‘How?’ I demanded.

‘You’ll need to expel her soul and rebond your own into your body.’

‘And somehow I just know that’s going to be easier said than done. Any hints?’

‘Use your connections.’

‘Short, sweet and cryptic doesn’t do it for me,’ I said. ‘Want to tell me how in more practical terms?’

‘Let me show you something first.’ She gripped my hand again and even though I knew what she was—who she was—I couldn’t bring myself to yank my hand from hers. She led me past the wall with its painted mural to a small, dark alcove. Inside was another waist-high stone slab, on which was lying a woman’s body, half-shrouded in a white sheet. Her long dark hair curled around her shoulders and her mouth was drawn back in a rictus, showing her sharp white fangs. Another gold locket nestled between her full breasts. Rosa. Thankfully, the only wound she had was the one on her left hip, the one that corresponded with the spell tattoo on my own left hip. She’d obviously healed any damage done by having a five-foot sword run through her.

‘You’re not suggesting I use Rosa’s body, are you?’ I asked guardedly.

‘Sadly, that is no longer a possibility,’ Cosette told me, squeezing my hand. ‘The vampire’s body is bonded to yours through flesh and magic, not by soul or spirit. But I have more to show you.’ She put a finger to her lips and tugged. ‘Come on, we must be quiet. It is better if they do not see you.’ She led me to the open doorway in the bricked-up archway and motioned for me to look. ‘Stand here at the side,’ she murmured.

I peered around the door and into a big, dark, arched-roof space. I frowned as a feeling of déjà vu snagged in my mind, then the thought vanished as I saw the people—thirty or so of them, men, women and a few children, sitting in rows or standing in silent groups ... no, not living people, but souls, ghosts, shades.

I turned back to Cosette and whispered, ‘What are they all doing here?’

‘Hannah has gathered them to pay her demon debt; she has been collecting ghosts from all over the city.’ She pointed to the far side where a ghostly teenager was curled on his side, tears streaking down his face. Another ghost, a woman carrying a posy of wilted flowers, bent and ruffled his hair consolingly. The boy flinched and his head jerked up. He looked around, wide-eyed and scared. ‘Who’s there?’ he whispered, then sucked in the silver hoop piercing his bottom lip and huddled up again, more tears squeezing from his eyes.

Shock sparked in me as I recognised him: the florist’s lad. Then I realised something else and I turned back to Cosette. ‘He’s not dead, is he?’

‘The demon always likes a virgin sacrifice.’ Her thin little shoulders shrugged. ‘He qualifies. He’s also a witness they need to be rid of. With him and all the souls she’s collected, that’s an abundant offering. She’s hoping this will free her totally.’

‘But if she does that, she won’t be a sorcerer any more.’ I was missing something.

‘No, she will be sidhe fae—or at least her body will. And she will control its magic—just as you controlled the vampire’s magic when your soul inhabited that body.’

That made ambitious sense; I could see the advantage in upgrading to a body with its own magical power source, instead of owing a demon for every spell you cast. Didn’t mean I had to like it, or let it happen. Or that I was stupid.

I crouched down next to Cosette. ‘Okay, you’ve been haunting me for long enough, you’ve shown me a sacrificial virgin and a load of ghosts that need rescuing from the fiery pits of hell, so now you can tell me what you get out of all this.’ I smiled, knowing it didn’t reach my eyes, ghostly or otherwise. ‘And don’t try telling me you’re suffering from an attack of remorse or sudden altruism, because I won’t believe you.’

‘Of course not, Genny.’ She patted her chest. ‘I want you to save my soul from the demon too, but I appreciate you might not feel as charitable towards me as some of the innocents in there—look on them as an added incentive. Oh, and just to make it perfectly clear, Hannah intends giving your soul to the demon as well, in return for making her soul in your body a permanent transfer.’

‘Of course she does,’ I muttered. ‘So tell me about these connections.’

She waved her small arm at me. ‘Look and you will see.’

Great. More cryptic clues—

But as I looked, I realised I could still look, that I could still see the magic, and both my own body and Cosette’s were as transparent as a heat shimmer. Queasiness roiled in my stomach. I closed my eyes briefly, regaining my equilibrium, then looked again. This time I could see two ethereal threads attached to my ghostly form; the first was the black silken rope which dangled from my left arm, the rope I’d seen before, when Malik’s sword-trick at the Blue Heart had thrown me back into the nightmare of my memories. The other was a fine red thread joined to the knuckles of my left hand.

‘How do they—?’

A loud buzzing shattered the quiet as one of Doctor Joseph’s machines leapt to life.

‘Yes, it worked,’ Janet yelled loudly, and slapped Joseph on the arm. ‘C’mon, help me get it off her. You take the legs.’ She yanked at Hannah’s old body, jumping out of the way as it rolled and hit the floor with a loud smack, sounding like nothing so much as a side of meat. Joseph froze, his eyes wide above his face-mask, staring down at the blood-covered corpse.

Janet walked round and gave him a little shove. ‘C’mon, Doc, get on and do your stuff,’ she ordered.

Hands shaking, he trundled the small trolley nearer and reached for a swab. He cleaned the blood off my body’s left breast, then lifted what looked like an elephant-sized hypodermic. He held it up and pushed the syringe plunger until a bead of clear liquid appeared, then tapped the syringe until, finally appearing satisfied with his preparations, he felt along my ribs, and positioned the needle. He hesitated, and I could see his eyes blinking behind his glasses, then he pushed down hard until the needle was up to the hilt in my flesh. Then he injected the liquid.

‘Do you think that’s going to be enough?’ Janet hovered over him.

‘I’ve given her enough adrenalin to get a horse started; it’s almost three times what she needs for the body weight,’ he said quietly as he withdrew the needle and swabbed again. ‘It’s the equivalent of a massive build-up of venom, which is what I think brought her—it—the body round last time.’

We all stood and watched my body.

‘Give her another—’

My body’s spine arched and my arms and legs started spasming as if plugged into a live electrical socket. The machine beeped into life and numbers flashed red and began rising fast, and faster. My body opened its eyes; my mouth formed a wide, overjoyed grin and jerked upright.

‘Oh my goodness,’ my mouth yelled delightedly, ‘it worked, it really worked!’ My body lifted its hand and muttered and a ball of light glowed like the sun in its palm; my body threw it up and blew it a kiss. The light shattered into rainbow colours that rained down like a spring shower. ‘Oh, the power! It’s like driving a Ferrari instead of a cranky old rustbucket!’

Fuck. And I didn’t even know how to ride a bike.

I rubbed my hands over my face. I needed to work out how to get out of this, and I needed to get my own body back—before the demon appeared to claim all those poor souls, and mine—I clamped down on the terror that thinking of the demon brought and shoved it away. I looked up as my body threw another spell in the air and it showered me/it/Hannah with coloured light; and filled me with freaky confusion.

Okay, now I needed to think of my body as Hannah’s.

‘Get this stuff off me,’ Hannah said, flicking at the electrodes stuck to her chest. Doctor Joseph worked quickly, removing both the electrodes and the cap of wires that hatted her head. As soon as he was done, she fastened the gold locket around her neck.

‘Wow!’ she said, smiling at Janet. ‘You know what? I feel wonderful’—she held out her hand; it was shaking—‘if a bit quivery.’ She swung her legs off the altar and slid to the ground, reaching out to grab hold of Janet’s arm as she wobbled. ‘Time waits for no woman, or in my case, no sidhe fae. Shower first, then tidy up that mess you left at Granny’s. After that I’ll pay a visit to the bank. I still need to get the Fabergé egg.’

‘What’s the Fabergé egg for?’ I asked Cosette.

‘The egg’s a soul trap. Without it she can’t collect all those souls she’s gathered and hand them safely over to the demon, and that means the demon will take her own soul instead as payment.’

Ri-ight. So pretty much as Hannah had explained, except without the oh-so-relevant specifics.

‘What do you mean, tidy up round at Granny’s?’ Janet asked, her voice petulant. She popped another liquorice torpedo into her mouth.

Hannah gave her a disbelieving look. ‘Well, there’s Granny’s body for one, and that wood shaving mess in the hallway. The police will have found it all by now, won’t they.’

‘I s’pose so—but won’t the sidhe slut get the blame?’

‘Janet, little sister, I am the sidhe now—and if you ever call me a slut again—’ Hannah gave her a warning look. ‘And unfortunately, my stool-pigeon has flown the nest, thanks to you.’ She waved an imperious hand at Joseph. ‘Doctor, please shoot her and put her out of her misery.’

‘Shoot me?’ Janet’s mouth fell open as Joseph turned round, picked up his tranq gun and, without hesitating, aimed, then shot Janet in her ample chest—

She looked down, her eyes round with surprise. ‘But—?’ She dropped her sweeties.

‘Damage limitation, little sister dear,’ Hannah said briskly. ‘Someone’s got to get the police off my back, and since you’re actually guilty, you might as well take the blame for the baker’s, the boy’s and Granny’s deaths.’

Janet’s eyes fluttered, then she did a tree-topple and thudded to the floor.

‘Is Janet really her sister?’ I asked Cosette, stunned.

Cosette nodded.

Talk about dysfunctional families.

Hannah prodded the unconscious woman with her foot. ‘Don’t worry, if all goes well, I’ll try and get you out before they burn you at the stake.’ She looked up at Joseph. ‘Don’t just stand there; tie her up or something. You should enjoy that; after all, isn’t that what you like to do at that little club you go to?’

He pushed his glasses up his nose, lifted the tranq gun and pointed it at her.

‘Don’t be silly, Doctor,’ she sighed. ‘Just put it down, otherwise that DVD of you cavorting about in all that tacky leather and chains could still accidentally find its way onto the internet ...’

He did as he was told, his hand trembling.

‘You should be glad, you’re going to be labelled a hero for rescuing me from the dangerous sorcerer’s clutches.’ She smiled. ‘Which is much better than being labelled a pervert, isn’t it?’

His cheeks flushed with either anger or embarrassment and I remembered all the ‘clothes’ in his mirrored wardrobes—the ones he’d said belonged to a friend!

‘Compulsion spell tied to a nice bit of blackmail,’ Cosette muttered as Joseph pulled out the cord from Hannah’s discarded robe and started to tie Janet up. ‘She always was rather good at that.’

‘I see you started without me.’ A man strolled out of the gloom, his sun-streaked, gelled hair and well-trimmed van Dyke glinting blond in the candlelight, a red Souler cross pinned to the lapel of his smart grey suit. Neil Banner. Not totally surprising considering their supposedly separate but similar quests for the Fabergé egg. I wondered whether they were an established item, or if the egg had only recently made them soul-stealing mates. Not that it made any difference.

Cosette gave a small gasp and whispered, ‘That one is the necromancer who has been collecting the souls for her. I did not think he would be back so soon.’

‘Neil!’ Hannah held her arms wide and my body did a shimmy. ‘Look, it worked. Do you want a feel?’

His face twisted in disgust. ‘Not when you’re all covered in blood, Hannah.’

‘Genny,’ she snapped, ‘you must call me Genny, nothing else.’

He waved her anger away. ‘I will; it’s just that I still see your soul, not hers.’ He frowned, looking around. ‘Where is her soul, anyway?’

She patted the gold locket. ‘In here, of course.’

‘No, it’s not.’

She clutched at the locket in panic. ‘It has to be! I did the ritual perfectly.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Neil said calmly, ‘she can’t have gone far; she’s probably still disorientated from being cast out.’

‘You don’t understand—’ Hannah grabbed his arm. ‘I have to wear her soul close until tonight. What if it dissipates? Then this body will fade away and I’ll be left with nothing—’

‘Hannah, it’s you that doesn’t understand.’ He extricated himself, then with a self-satisfied smile he pulled out a bloodstained hanky from his pocket. ‘The sidhe’s hand was bleeding last night when I met her at HOPE. I managed to get a hook into her soul then.’ He touched the hanky to his nose, muttering as he turned a slow circle. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

I clenched my fists. Bastard.

‘You must go, now!’ Cosette grabbed my left hand, in as much panic as Hannah, and touched the thin red thread there—it was stretching out towards Neil Banner.

Crap.

I tried to break it, but it was like pulling at elastic; it just kept stretching. ‘Go where?’ I demanded.

‘There.’ Neil pointed straight at me. ‘She’s hiding in the corner with that stupid child. Open the locket and I’ll call her to it.’ Hannah fumbled with the catch as he resumed muttering.

Cosette pushed at me frantically. ‘Go!’ She indicated the ethereal black silken rope that wrapped around my left arm and dangled down around my feet. ‘Follow it, and pray that the necromancer is not strong enough to call you back.’

Neil’s muttering rose to a crescendo and the red thread yanked at my hand, dragging me towards him. I stumbled, almost falling, but my fingers closed round the black silk rope—

—the rope slipped through my fingers as if it was slick with blood, and I fell, spinning out in the red-blackness ...