Page 83 of Time's Fool

I grinned, and it must not have been a very nice one, because she shrieked and tried to pull away, but I wasn’t having it. Wrapping my hand in her spirit form, as both Rhea and the ghost had done to me, I pulled. And out she came, a beautiful face emerging from the mage’s florid, bearded one.

“There you are,” I whispered, and pulled again. And, suddenly, I had help.

Louis-Cesare, the madman, had somehow thrown off the witch’s hex and come back for more. His face was terrible as he gazed at my corpse, sprawled on the cobbles as limp as a newly killed fawn. And then a change came over his features, and it was easily the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.

He started wailing on the witch’s borrowed form with his sword, and I don’t know what kind of power he was putting behind those blows, but they were carving great gouges into the war mage’s shields. The witch shrieked and sent every hex she could think of, only to have him dodge most of them and absorb the rest as if he didn’t even feel them. It was a marvel of a display, and if I hadn’t already guessed that he was a first level master, I would have then.

But finally, a single hex got through, blowing him off his feet and out into the middle of the road. And it must have contained everything that witch and mage both could muster, because it left him writhing on the cobbles as it did its best to consume him. If he’d been anyone else, it would have succeeded.

But it couldn’t seem to get past the power that he had flung outward to protect himself. It wasn’t exactly what mages did, it wasn’t a personal shield, not even the bought kind I often carried, and that Mircea had used to give us privacy in the tavern in Italy. But a huge amount of magical power was still a huge amount of magical power, and it was lashing at the spell that was lashing him, resulting in a stalemate that amounted to essentially the same thing.

If anyone could survive this, he would, but he was out of the game for the time being. But while he couldn’t assist me further, he had done enough. Morgan had been distracted at just the right time, and I had her now.

And I wasn’t letting go.

“Release me, whore!” she screeched, as I jerked her half out of her host.

“Now, is that any way to talk?” I asked, baring ghostly teeth at her. And jerked again, harder this time.

I could see the librarian hovering on the sidelines, the bomb in her hands and a clear path to throw it in front of her. But instead, she was just standing there with it clasped to her breast, her eyes wide and terrified. And then she was yelling something I couldn’t hear, but not because of the battle.

But because the struggling bitch in my arms had turned feral, like a cornered animal. I responded by plunging both hands into her incorporeal form, grabbing whatever I could, and yanking it out. Power flooded into me, strange and hot and peppery, and I realized that this was what the ghost must have meant about spirits stealing energy.

I could get on board with that, I thought, and did it again.

And I needed the boost, because she was incredibly strong. Moreso than me, I realized, as she got her second wind and began ripping off pieces of my power. Of my soul.

It hurt, like having burning knives thrust into me, or like red-hot animal’s claws tearing at me. But I held on, because if I let go, I didn’t think I would get this chance again. Although what I was going to do with it besides being shredded, I didn’t know.

But I still had one card to play.

“Mage,” I gasped. “If you can hear this, help me. If you want to be free of her, fight. This may be your only chance!”

I hadn’t really expected a response, hadn’t even been sure he could hear me with her still partly in residence, but he did. Abruptly, I felt a loosening of her grip, and an uptick in the movement of the man beside me. If he was one of their commanders, he was a powerful magic worker, and he was pouring everything he had into assisting me to oust his uninvited guest.

And she felt it, too. “I left you alive, when I could have killed you,” she panted. “Leave me now!”

“We both know you just didn’t want to fight me,” I snarled. “You were helping yourself!”

And I jerked again, putting my all into it.

“I’ll be helping myself to your life force in a moment,” she threatened. “Ghosts can devour each other, foolish girl! Or didn’t you know?”

I stared at her. What did she think we’d just been doing? And then the rest of what she had said registered.

“Ghosts?” I repeated, and suddenly, things made a great deal more sense. Because there were disembodied spirits, and then there were ghosts, and I had learned that they were not the same thing. “That’s how you’ve been doing it, isn’t it?” I asked. “The time spells that can tear a human apart can’t hurt a ghost—you’re already dead.”

The only answer I received was an animal-like growl, but it didn’t dissuade me.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” I said, suddenly sure. “You’re a time traveling ghost!”

In retrospect, pointing that out to her face was probably not the smartest move I had ever made. Because apparently, the answer was yes. The woman had been fighting with the mage, trying to sink back inside his skin, but at that, she turned her full attention on me. And her beautiful face melted into something far more terrible, something that made the skull I’d glimpsed on the fey looked positively benign.

“So clever,” she hissed in a different voice. “Mircea was clever, too. Why don’t you go join him?”

There was a sudden crack like thunder, only louder. And a blinding bolt of lightning, only this one was blue. And the next thing I knew, I was falling through darkness, cursing my own stupidity, and wondering where she’d sent me this time.

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