The man looked up at her with a small smile. He nodded, then reached out of the hole and grabbed the wrapped body. As he dragged it, the other end flapped open in the breeze. A young boy's dead eyes stared up at the night sky.
The scene disintegrated into darkness.
I've seen dead bodies before. Sent many into the ghost world myself. You screw with dark forces, you have to accept that an early grave may be your reward. But by "early grave" I mean dying before you're old and gray. The murder of anyone too young to defend himself is the only act that is unforgivable under any circumstances.
So this woman was the murderous spirit the Fates wanted me to find? Consider it done. The only reward I wanted was to be there when they cast her back into her hell dimension. The darkness lightened, and I looked up, expecting to see the throne room. Instead, I stood in front of a frost-covered window. I touched my fingers to the glass. Cold and slick, but my fingers left no marks on the pane. When I peered through a clear corner, I could see sunlight shimmering through falling snow. Strange. Like seeing sunbeams through the rain.
A woman's laugh made me jump and my mind jumped with it, right back to the grassy plain and the laugh I'd first heard out there.
"Oh, wait!" a woman said. "This is the best part. Slow it down."
I turned from the window. On the other side of the room, a young couple was curled up on the couch, watching television. The man had a remote in his hand, pointed at the VCR.
Did they have VCRs in the sixties? No, wait. It was a different man. So I was someplace else. Or was I? My gaze snagged on the young woman. A blonde, early twenties, round face, marginally pretty. Same woman. Or was it? The hairstyle was still overdone, but in a style I remembered from high school. And her skirt was still mini but, again, a modern mini. I tried to zoom in on her face, but it was turned to the television, giving me only a quarter-profile.
"Okay, here it comes."
The woman leaned toward the television. Her eyes glowed. Another jolt as I recognized the same rapturous expression I'd seen on the woman at the grave-site.
"Come on, turn it up," she said, socking the man in the arm.
He laughed and raised the volume. From where I stood, I couldn't see the screen, but I could hear the tape. The voices on it were distorted. Home-movie quality.
I cast a blur spell and crept across the carpet until I could see the screen. It was blocked by a light green shirt. Someone with his back to the camera. Typical. The shirt moved aside. A shot of flesh. A naked female leg. Oh, yeah. A very typical home movie, the kind video recorders were made for. This I did not need to see.
I started to turn away when the camera pulled back and I saw the full image. A girl, no older than Savannah, naked and bound to a bed. Bloodstained bedding.
"Here it comes." The woman's voice rose a few notches, and she imitated the girl's sobs. "I want my mommy!"
With a roar, I launched myself at the woman on the sofa. My hands flew for her throat, nails out. I hit her, passed right through, and tumbled into darkness.
3
I LANDED HARD ON THE MARBLE FLOOR OF THE throne room. It didn't hurt. I wished it did. I even slammed my fist into the floor, hoping for a jolt of pain to knock the rage from my brain, but my hand only bounced off as if I'd socked a pillow.
I scrambled to my feet. The middle Fate stood there, watching me.
"Send me back," I said.
"Eve, you--"
"Send me back now! You can't show me that and then rip me out of there before I can do anything about it."
"You can't do anything about it," she said softly. "It's over. Long over. What you saw was a memory."
I rubbed my face. A memory. A glimpse into the past. I stared at the white wall, let it clear my mind. I didn't have a clue who the people had been. Obviously serial killers and probably infamous, but I'd never been one to follow crime. In my world, the killers I had to worry about were the ones in my little black book, not the ones on the eleven o'clock news.
When I glanced up, the elderly Fate was at the spinning wheel, and I braced myself, sure she'd jump on me for an answer. Yet she didn't even look up. Just clipped off the length of yarn the middle Fate had measured out for her, then handed it to a wraith-clerk. Then the child Fate took over and threaded the spinning wheel. She lifted her eyes to mine, then quickly looked back down.
So what was the connection between the two sets of murders? Or were they two sets? There was only one spirit missing from the nether regions. Two women, similar in appearance, both killing teens. So they had to be the same person. To a human, such a thing would be impossible, but supernatural minds are more open to other possibilities.
I knew I should think through those possibilities, and come up with the most likely one, to impress the Fates with my astounding capacity for logical reasoning. I knew that...and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"Vampire," I said.
The youngest of the Fates glanced around the spinning wheel, her face screwed up in a look every mother recognizes as "Huh?"
"Two sets of murders, both committed by the same woman, who doesn't age between the time of big hair and miniskirts and, well, big hair and miniskirts. Similar fashion styles, but definitely a twenty-five, thirty-year gap without so much as a wrinkle. She must be a vampire. Most vamps stick to their necessary kill quotas but there are always those who get a taste for it and--"
The crone took over. "It's not a vampire, Eve. We have our own ways of dealing with vampire spirits, which you would know if you took any interest at all in the world around you. Try again."
The old Fate's bright eyes pinned me like a butterfly to a mat. In school, I'd had very little respect for my teachers, and for grown-ups in general. Only one teacher had ever been able to make me squirm. Grade six. Mrs. Appleton, the kind of sour old woman whose very gaze is acid to your self-confidence, who always looks as if she expects very little from you, and is never disappointed. The old Fate had that look down pat.
"Uh, I, well..." I straightened. "Okay, well, I don't know a lot about time-travel"--I caught her look--"but I do know that's not what's going on here. So the explanation must be..."
I studied her gaze. No clues there. Forge ahead.
"Reincarnation," I said.
The crone morphed into the middle-aged woman. "How much do you know about reincarnation, Eve?"
A lightning-bolt switch and the old woman cut in. "Not nearly enough, considering she's been here three years." She fixed me with one eye, squeezing the other shut. "Well? Let's hear it. Everything you know about reincarnation. Should take a good five, ten seconds."
"I know it's possible," I said. "Rare, but possible."
"Three seconds? I overestimated you again."
The middle Fate appeared. "Yes, it's rare, Eve. Very rare. It's allowed only under special circumstances, when a spirit meets certain criteria that lead the Creator to decide that the soul should be allowed another chance at life."
The old Fate cut back in. "And murdering children doesn't qualify."
Again, the middle Fate pushed her sister aside. "What we want you to find is called a Nix. Do you know what that is?"
I expected the hag to pop back and needle me again, but she didn't.
"Demi-demons," I said slowly, as my memory banks creaked open. "In German folklore a Nix is a mischievous temptress spirit. A cross between a siren, an imp, and Mae West."
"That's the mythical version," she said. "And the reality?"
"I--I'm not sure. I've never run into one, or anyone who has." I thought harder, then shook my head. "I don't remember reading any references to a real version."
"Probably because it's very obscure knowledge. In folklore, as you said, they are considered mischievous spirits, water pixies, actually..."
The Fate continued, giving me the condensed version of Nixen mythology. Some humans believe a Nix is a siren who lures humans to watery graves. In other words, an excuse for idiots who dove into deep water and discovered the
y couldn't swim. Mythological Nixen were both male and female, but the females were more successful at capturing their victims, maybe because guys are more likely to stand on a riverbank and yell, "Hey, watch this dive!"
The truth is, Nixen have nothing to do with water. When early folklorists learned that Nixen were temptresses, they'd probably jumped to the conclusion that they were a form of siren. Nixen are also all female...or that's the form they manifest in, as full demons manifest as male. It's probably more an aesthetic choice than a gender difference. Finally, Nixen aren't truly temptresses at all. Instead, they are sought out by those who already are tempted--by wealth, power, or sex--and looking for a delivery shortcut. What a Nix provides is the resolve they need to carry out an act they lack the courage to perform, murder being most common.
"Okay," I said when she finished. "Nixen help people kill, and those scenes you showed me were obviously murders, but where's the connection? Those women were humans. How would they have conjured up a Nix? Even if they did, you sure as hell can't want me to chase down a Nix. They're demi-demons, not ghosts, so they wouldn't be in one of your hells."
The youngest Fate cut in. "Don't worry. We didn't expect you to see the connection. It's all very strange." She leaned around the wheel, her eyes aglitter. "See, what happened was--"
Her middle sister took over. "This particular Nix is quite different from her brethren. In the seventeenth century, she made a deal with a witch who wanted her father dead."
"And gave her the guts she needed to do it."
"That's the usual process. However, in this case, it didn't work. A Nix's power has one significant limitation--she cannot compel a person to kill. The will and the intent must still be there. Conscious will and conscious intent. This witch was conflicted over her wish. Yet Nixen thrive on chaos, and they don't appreciate being summoned without that end reward, so the Nix made a suggestion. She told the witch where to find a spell that would allow the Nix to take over the witch's body, temporarily, and commit the act herself. The witch agreed, and the Nix--"
The girl leapt in, bubbling with the enthusiasm of a child who simply must tell the rest of the story. "--takes her over, and kills the woman's father. And then she's supposed to give the body back. Only she doesn't. She uses the body to cause all kinds of trouble."
The middle sister cut in. "And many people died...including the Nix herself, eventually. Trapped in a corporeal body, she died the death of a corporeal being. Having been in a witch's form, she was brought here, to the supernatural realms. Although we aren't equipped to handle a demi-demon, we managed to trap her in a hell dimension. For a while."
"She escaped."
"And that is a serious problem because this Nix isn't flitting about the living world as a spirit. Having moved into a human body once, she is now able to do it at will."
"So that's the connection. It's not the same woman. It's the same Nix in different women. She takes them over--"
"Not exactly. Being a dead spirit, she can no longer fully take over a living body. Instead, she must cohabit, giving them resolve to carry out their desires."
"So she doesn't jump into innocent women and turn them into rampaging killers. Are the hosts always women?"
The Fate nodded. "Having first leapt into a host of that gender, she is now restricted to it."
I paused. "If you ladies know so much about how she operates, I'm guessing she's been out there for a while."
"A little over a hundred years."
"Uh-huh. I suppose that means I'm not the first person you've sent after her."
"There have been three who've gone before you. We took three different approaches with varying degrees of success. All three...ended badly."
"What did she do to them?"
The child Fate appeared, laughing. "Her first question, and it's the one none of the others even thought to ask. When we told them that the others had failed, they only asked how the Nix got away. That's what they figured she'd do--give them the slip and run. But you know better."
"Common sense. The best way to stop being chased is to stop the person doing the chasing. But that's a problem here, isn't it? Can't kill a ghost. Can't even hurt one. So how the hell do you force one to stop chasing you?"
The middle Fate returned. "There are worse things than physical torture."
"Not if it's done right."
The eldest one popped in, glower already in place.
"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"
"No, I was just pointing out--"
"You want to know what she did to one of your predecessors, Eve? Let me show you."
4
THE TRAPPINGS OF THE THRONE ROOM VANISHED. Even the floor evaporated, and I tensed, waiting to drop into some hell dimension. Instead, I found myself floating, naked, in gray nothingness.
Was I really floating? Beneath my bare feet a sheet of gray, as smooth as glass, stretched to meet the gray sky. I could see my feet planted on the floor, yet I felt nothing beneath them. I closed my eyes and lowered my hand. My hand stopped at floor level. I leaned forward, but still couldn't feel pressure against my palm.
Okay, that was creepy. Still, there were a thousand worse places that the Nix could have sent her last hunter, and if this unsettling illusion was the best she could manage, I was laughing.
I closed my eyes and wished for clothing. When I looked again, I was still naked. Hmmm. I guess nakedness was part of the torture. And for some people, maybe it was, but I'm not the type to be plagued by nightmares of walking through the shopping mall starkers, so it was really no big deal, especially considering there was no one else here to see me.
No one to see me, and nothing for me to see. Nothing to hear, either. Reminded me of the first hour I'd spent alone as a ghost. The most shocking thing about that hour was the silence. When we're alive, quiet is a relative term. Even if you manage to drown out all the background noise--the clacks and grunts and hums of water pipes and furnaces and refrigerators--you can always hear something, even if it's only the sound of yourself breathing. But when you're dead, all the sources of those noises, internal and external, are gone. Still, there's usually something, if you listen hard enough--the footsteps of someone walking by, a laugh from a neighbor, a bird chirping. Here, in this empty dimension, the silence was absolute.
I could see how this could become annoying after a while. Sensory deprivation, isn't that what they call it? I remembered reading that this kind of thing could serve as a form of torture. Pretty clever, actually. Didn't leave any marks, and you couldn't be accused of doing anything to your prisoner because you weren't doing a damn thing. Interesting, in a theoretical kind of way.
Right now, all that mattered was that I got the point. The Nix could send me someplace where I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time.
"Okay--" I stopped. I'd felt myself say the word, but hadn't heard anything. "Okay, ladies!"
The silence sucked up my words before they left my lips.
"Hello?" I tried to say. "Hello, hello, hello!"
Creepy, but not like it mattered. The Fates seemed to hear me whether I spoke aloud or not. When they were ready, they'd bring me back. I settled onto the ground to wait.
Still waiting.
At least a couple of hours had passed. Obviously the Fates wanted to give me a real taste of this wasteland. Like I had time for this. Well, if they weren't going to bring me back, I'd look after it myself.
I said the words of a travel incantation. I still couldn't hear myself, but I was speaking and, in magic, there's no bonus for blaring. I finished the incantation. Nothing happened. I tried a few more, but stayed where I was. Fine. I could wait.
Okay, now I was getting mad. I'd been here at least a few hours, tried every damned spell I knew, even ones that had nothing to do with transportation, and not one of them had worked. What the hell were the Fates doing? They had a murderous demi-demon on the rampage, probably planning her next atrocity against humankind at this very moment, but that didn't
stop them from sparing a few hours to piss me off.
The old Fate was behind this. She hated me. Like my teacher, Mrs. Appleton. I'd never known what I'd done to earn Mrs. Appleton's hate, but I hadn't been able to shake the feeling that she'd seen something in me, something bad, something waiting to emerge. When the old Fate looked at me, I felt the same thing.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, rested my chin on them, and tried to chase these thoughts from my brain. They clung like burrs, rubbing raw spots in my confidence. I needed to clear my head, needed to do something. But there was nothing here to do. Except think.
"Hello! Goddamn it, answer me! I get the point! Now open the fucking door!" It was nighttime. Here the light never changed, just a dull glow that came from nowhere, illuminating the emptiness, reminding you that there was no one here, nothing to see. My gut told me it was night, though. Kristof would be at my house, waiting to talk about that "temp job" he'd mentioned.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on a communication spell.
Hey, Kris? Think you can help me out?
Nothing.
My internal clock told me that night had come and gone. Hadn't slept. We could sleep, but I'd never been able to just curl up anywhere and drift off, not unless I was very, very tired. A ghost never tires. So, unless I was in my bed, I didn't sleep.
I'd been here for over twenty-four hours. I was sure of that. Okay, enough waiting around for fate to intervene. Time to take matters into my own hands...or onto my own feet. Maybe I couldn't teleport out of here, but I could still walk.
So I picked a direction, and started out.
Still walking. When I looked around, I saw the same damn thing I'd seen when I'd started, as if I were on a treadmill. But I was moving. I knew it. The lack of landmarks just made it seem as if I wasn't going anywhere. Every dimension I'd ever been in had come to an end. This one would, too, if only I walked far enough.
It was night again, and I hadn't reached the end. Hadn't reached anything. My legs didn't hurt, though. No pain means endless energy. I could walk forever, and I damned well would if that's what it took to get out--
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