The Cold Kiss of Death

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The red-blackness was as before: empty, silent, scentless ... nothingness. This time the mist that circled the blackness was no longer pale and far away, but pressed close, and shot through with hot golds and coppers and reds, like the rays of the sun that backlight the dark side of the moon. I didn’t want to think what that might mean. The black silk cord I tailed down and away below me.

Hand grasped tightly round the blood-slick silk, I continued to fall ...

Where was I, some sort of limbo place for the soul?

And how was this supposed to get me my body back, let alone save virgins and kidnapped ghosts? Use my connections, Cosette had said, which was fine, except she’d hadn’t told me how, thanks to Neil the necro turning up.

What I needed was help—but how, when the only ‘people’ I could talk to were other ghosts, or my local not-so-friendly neighbourhood necro? Of course, if I could make my way to a graveyard, I could talk to anyone living—whoever happened to be around at midnight. I could even touch them, since I’d be corporeal again for the hour between one day and the next—except that midnight on All Hallows’ Eve is traditionally when demons made their house calls, so midnight was going to be way too late.

But I was falling the same way I had after Malik skewered me with the sword—only then I’d tumbled back to my wedding night. No way did I want to relive that memory; one return visit was around a hundred times too many for my liking. I shuddered in the darkness as I kept on sliding down. Malik had called to me the last time, as if from above and below, but still I’d kept dropping, until I’d come round in the hallway the morning after—so did that mean down was the past? But in the past, when I’d been fourteen, I’d never picked up the Autarch’s sword, I’d never decided to go hunting, hadn’t even met Cosette, so it had been less like a memory and more as if my adult self had travelled back to that time. Could I do that again? Could I pick a time where I could step into my own body and change things?

But when?

My descent slowed, as if the silken cord wanted to give me a chance to think.

The last time I’d revived seemed to be the most obvious point, when Malik had called my soul back to my body and I’d awakened to the realisation it was Malik who had chased me on my wedding night, Malik who had sunk his fangs into me, not the Autarch. I felt my hand slip, almost as if the black silken cord was reacting to my thought, and I dropped faster again, the air rushing past me as if heralding an approaching train—

—and the black silk cord frayed to nothing within seconds. Stunned, I hung in the red-blackness spinning slowly, clutching the thin red thread that was hooked through the knuckles of my left hand. Frustration sliced into me, sharp and painful, like the bronze sword of my memory. Damn. Whatever bond Malik had tied my soul with was broken—so now what? Did I hang around waiting to see if Necro Neil was strong enough to haul me back so I could be part of Hannah’s demon debt? Or ...

I looked at the red thread dangling below me. Necro Neil said he had hooked into my soul at HOPE—

I took a deep breath—not that there seemed to be any air to breathe—and loosened my tight hold on the thread ...

... and beige vinyl floor tiles rushed up to meet me. Blurry peach-coloured walls and bright orange chairs jarred in my vision and in the distance I saw myself talking to Necro Neil. Thaddeus, the monster Beater goblin, was standing next to him, his high horse’s tail of red and grey hair fanning over his shoulders—

I slammed into something solid and cold, something I couldn’t see. I stared into Necro Neil’s blank, mind-locked face, and our tiny shared past stretched out behind him like a stack of freeze-frame photos, right up to the point where he handed me his handkerchief and I pressed it to my bleeding hand.

That had to be when he’d hooked me.

‘I bin lookin’ for you, sidhe,’ a girl’s shrill voice broke in. ‘I got somethin’ to give you.’

I turned towards the voice and the girl pointed her foot-long carving knife at me. Her hip-length white hair floated in a nonexistent wind and scraps of washed-out grey lace, satin and velvet fluttered like hundreds of wings against her anorexic body. The faint scent of liquorice and blood clung to her like day-old smoke.

The fact that Moth-girl could see me didn’t bode well for either of us.

I looked behind her.

Bobby, a.k.a. Mr October, huddled against the lift door, hands clutched to his stomach, a dark pool of blood beneath him. Malik, a fine line creasing between his black brows, watched the Glamoured blonde-bimbo me as I stared down at Grace, who was kneeling, checking for a pulse on Moth-girl’s unconscious—or more likely dead body, judging by the girl standing next to me. The two security guards hovered nearby.

It looked like I’d arrived in the middle of Malik’s mass mind-lock—was that why I couldn’t go any further?

The red thread in my hand gave a slight tug.

‘Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, sidhe,’ Moth-girl shouted in my ear. ‘Can you ’ear me?’

‘Yes, I can,’ I said, flinching as I turned back to her.

‘Good, I’ve got sumfing to give you.’ She waved her carving knife at me, then plucked at the white ribbon tied round her throat. ‘D’you know wot this is?’

‘Yes.’ I pursed my lips. ‘You’re supposed to be a gift, from one vamp to another.’

Her own purple-painted lips grinned. ‘That’s right; well, see, my Daryl, you knows ’im as Darius, ’e said to tell you—’

‘Darius?’ I interrupted. ‘The vamp that’s shacked up with the sorcerer?’

‘Yeah, that’s ’im. ’E did ’is dance for you.’ She gave a little wiggle of her hips. ‘Well, ’e’s my Daryl, ’as bin since we was kids togevver at school.’ Her fingers toyed with the ribbon again. ‘And ’e said, if I come an’ show you this, then it means ’e can ask for your ’elp.’

I held my hand up to stop her. ‘Wait a minute, Darius sent you as a gift, not some other vamp?’

‘Course ’e did! Anyways, Daryl said as ’ow you’d understan’, an’ you’d get ’im away from the old devil-witch, seein’ as you’ve got that spell-fing on your hip for the ovver vamp, Rosa’s ’er name. Daryl says the devil-witch were on the blower to sumone an’ they tole ’er you’d be ’ere tonite.’ Her grin widened and she waved the knife again. ‘So ’ere I am, all wrapped up an’ ready.’

It sort of made sense. Darius had been there in my flat, listening and watching whilst Hannah had been talking to me about Rosa and the Disguise spell. He must’ve decided that having a sorcerer for a master wasn’t for him—not that I blamed him—and as Hannah and Neil were in it together, Neil was probably the one who’d told her I was at HOPE. Darius, no doubt doing his impression of Big Ears, had overheard, so he’d followed vamp tradition and tied a ribbon around Moth-girl’s neck and sent her to me/Rosa with his ‘request’.

But once Moth-girl had got to HOPE, not only could she not find me—because I’d been wearing the blonde-bimbo Glamour—but it looked like she’d died even before we tried to save her and Bobby. And sad as I was that Moth-girl hadn’t made it, I needed someone who could communicate with the living world, not with the dead. Right now another ghost was about as much use to me as—

‘Oy!’ She jabbed the knife at me. ‘You needs to pay attention ’ere.’

... well, the ghostly knife Moth-girl was jabbing at me. Not that it didn’t stop me jumping out of its way. Someone points a knife at you, even a ghost one, and instinct takes over.

‘Okay, you’ve got my attention,’ I said, indicating the knife.

‘Sorry,’ she said unrepentantly, ‘but you gotta listen. Don’t fink I got much time, the stupid twit pumped me up wiv too much vamp-juice again, fink he might of nearly killed me this time, so I ain’t wantin’ to be out too long.’ She looked at Grace administering to her body and gave a disdainful sniff. ‘’Ope that doc knows what ’er’s doin’.’

I frowned, surprised. ‘You’re not dead?’

‘Not yet.’ Her Pierrot-whitened face glared down at her prone body. ‘Not s’long as the doc does ’er stuff right.’

An idea started to form in my mind. ‘So you’ll be able to wake up again and talk to people?’ I looked down as the sharp pull of the thread across my knuckles caused an anxious flutter inside me.

‘Hope so! It’s what we Mofs do all the time; gettin’ necked on ’urts like a blinder if yer don’t make yerself step away from the pain.’

I blinked. ‘You mean you leave your body like this all the time?’

‘’Course—ain’t that wot I just said?’ She jabbed the knife at me again and it nicked my palm.

‘Ouch!’ I jerked my hand back and peered at the bead of blood. I was a ghost, and so was the knife. Why was I bleeding? I shook my head. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I want you to do something for me—’

‘No, you look, sidhe.’ She pointed to my hand where she’d nicked it with the knife. ‘See, I can still ’urt you as a ghost, and if you don’t listen, I’m gonna come an’ haunt you an’ make your life a bleedin’ hell. So, you gonna help my Daryl or not?’

‘Depends if I can ...’ I paused as an idea struck me. ‘Do you know where the devil-witch lives?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, Lunnon Bridge way, underneef it, I fink.’

The arched-roof tunnels of the bridge’s foundations! Of course—where I’d done the ghost survey with Finn; no wonder the place looked familiar.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘if you want me to help Darius, then you have to help me.’ I turned her round and pointed at Malik. ‘See that vamp?’ I said. ‘His name’s Malik al-Khan. When you wake up, or whatever it is you do, you get Darius to tell him what you’ve told me, and tell him he’s got to come to the devil-witch’s place before midnight tomorrow night, Hallowe’en, and he’s got to kill me.’ I squeezed her arm; her bone felt as thin as a bird’s beneath my hand.

I decided that I needed more than one basket if I was going to have a chance at saving the souls destined for the egg and the demon. I pointed at Bobby. ‘Tell him the same thing; tell him if he does this, Rosa will be his master.’ Then I pointed at Grace. ‘And tell the doctor everything too—then tell her to go to the police. Got it?’

‘Yeah, gottit: you wants ’em all to come an’ kill yer tomorrow—but ain’t you already dead?’

‘Yeah, I think so, but my body isn’t,’ I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. ‘The devil-witch is in it.’

‘Ah, now I got you.’ She nodded sagely.

The red thread yanked my hand high into the air.

I pulled it down, then turned back to the blonde-me again. I could see ghosts—but the blue eyes of my Glamoured self were still staring fixedly at Grace kneeling next to Moth-girl’s body; I didn’t appear to notice the ghostly me at all. I tried tugging the blonde ponytail, then pinching my cheek, but my fingers touched nothing, felt nothing. Could I take over my body, as I’d done when I’d picked up the Autarch’s sword?

‘You’ll give ’er nightmares like that,’ Moth-girl sniffed. ‘’Er spirit’ll know sumfing’s wrong, even if it don’t know what.’

I pursed my lips, then walked round the back of the blonde me and stepped forward, merging myself with ... myself. Still nothing. I stood and looked out of my eyes and tried to lift my hand; my ghostly hand moved, but the blonde-me hand didn’t.

‘How do you know about the nightmares?’ I asked, sticking my head out of blonde-me’s face to talk to her.

‘I ’ad it done it to meself once.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘Couldn’t sleep for a week, an’ I know it was me pal as done it, seeing as I asked ’er to. Awful it was.’

‘Were they like picture nightmares, as if someone was telling you a scary story?’

‘Nah,’ she shook her head. ‘I just kept fallin’ into this big black ’ole all the time.’

Disappointment settled like an iron ball in my stomach. So much for getting inside the blonde-me and trying to communicate, by dreams or otherwise.

The thread jerked me out of blonde-me and slammed me back into the cold, invisible barrier, and back to staring into Necro Neil’s blank, mind-locked face.

Damn. He was getting impatient.

‘Oy!’ Moth-girl ran over to me. ‘Yer gonna save my Daryl, ain’t yer?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, not wanting to promise something that might be impossible.

‘Okay,’ she chewed her lip, then held out the knife. ‘’Ere, take it. You ain’t gonna ’urt no one livin’ wiv it, but it can hurt the dead all right.’

‘Thanks.’ I grasped the knife—for a ghost blade it felt warm and heavy and very real in my palm.

She sauntered back to where her body was lying. ‘Watch out for my Daryl, won’t yer?’

‘Yeah, I will. Oh—’ I realised I didn’t know Moth-girl’s name, but the thread jerked again, and the next second I was airborne. ‘Don’t speak to him’—I pointed down at Necro Neil—‘or let him see you out of your body. He’s a necromancer, and he’s in league with the devil-witch.’

Her lip curled with disdain as she looked at Neil. ‘Gotcha: ’e’s a fuckin’ ghost-grabber.’ And with that she fell apart into hundreds of tiny moths that disappeared into the patchwork of lace and satin and velvet her body was wearing.

I looked anxiously up at the tiled ceiling; it was only a foot away. I slashed the knife against the thread—maybe I could break his bond—but the knife slipped through it as if it didn’t exist. Then the thread yanked again and the wind rushed past me as I streamed through the red-blackness of wherever.