CHAPTER 9
AN ODD CHOMPING NOISE CUT THROUGH MY SLEEP. My eyes snapped open.
Pieces of garbage lay strewn across my carpet, next to an overturned trash can. In the middle of it, the attack poodle methodically devoured my trash. As I watched, he tore a piece from a potato peel, raised his muzzle to the ceiling, chewing it with a nirvana-like rapture printed on his face, and bent down for more. A black substance stained his paws and muzzle. It had to be paint. Julie had gone Goth on me a couple of months ago. When she wasn’t at the boarding school, she stayed with me. She had picked the library as her bedroom and I’d let her paint it black. The poodle had gotten into her paint can.
“You’re so dead.”
Chomp, chomp, chomp.
The magic wave was still up and my apartment was freezing cold. I had a hard time sleeping in sweatpants—something about sweats under a blanket just didn’t agree with me—but this morning I definitely regretted my decision. My toes were so cold, it was a wonder they didn’t break off. I grabbed the blanket, stood up on my bed, and put my hand against the vent. Nothing. The building’s boiler was in its death throes. It had cut out twice in the past month. Even if all of the tenants pooled their money, we still couldn’t afford to replace the damn thing. Especially considering that we had already bought coal for the winter.
That left me with plan B. I glanced across the room to a small woodstove, half-covered by stacks of books. Building a wood fire right now seemed impossibly hard, so I bravely dropped the blanket and pulled on sweats as fast as I could.
Once dressed, I checked the head in the fridge. Still no decomposition. This whole investigation took the notion of “normal” undead behavior out back and blew its brains out with a sawed-off shotgun.
I walked the dog, sorted out the garbage, which took nearly twenty minutes, and tried the phone. Dial tone. No rhyme or reason to it, but one doesn’t look a gift phone in the mouth. I called to the Casino before the phone line decided to cut out on me. In ten seconds Ghastek came on the phone.
“I sincerely hope you have news, Kate. It’s been a long night and I was resting.”
This was likely the stupidest thing I could’ve done, but I had no idea who else to ask. “Are you familiar with the Dubal ritual?”
There was a tiny pause before he answered. “Of course. I’ve performed it on several occasions. However, I’m surprised you’re aware of it.”
He wouldn’t ask me how I knew about it, but he had to be dying of curiosity. Nobody except my guardian’s ex-wife knew I was able to pilot undead. The Dubal ritual required a great deal of raw power and a lot of knowledge. Ghastek viewed me as a thug. The idea that I was capable of it would never cross his mind and that’s the way I preferred it. “What would cause the ritual to fail?”
“Describe the manner of the failure.”
“Instead of the identity or location of the undead’s former navigator, the person performing the ritual saw themselves in the blood.”
Ghastek hummed to himself for a long breath. “The Dubal ritual lifts the imprint of the navigator’s mind from the undead’s brain. The blood streaming from the head isn’t central to the ritual; in fact, any dark surface will do. The dark background simply makes the image stand out more. If you stare for a few seconds at a lamp, then close your eyes or look at a dark object, you’ll see the glowing outline of the lamp. This phenomenon is called negative afterimage. The same principle applies here, except that the image is acquired from the mental footprint left on the brain of the undead.”
I filed that tidbit away for future reference. “Aha.” “There are two factors that could cause the practitioner to see themselves. One, too much time had passed or the undead had been unpiloted. How quickly was the ritual performed?”
“Within two hours of death.”
“Hmmm. Then the time lapse shouldn’t be an issue. I’ve been able to pull a reasonably decent image six hours after the termination of the undead. In this case we’re left with possibility number two: the navigator’s will was much stronger than that of the practitioner. If the navigator realized the undead was about to be terminated, he or she could shock it with a mental surge. We refer to it as searing. A seared brain is difficult to read. Lifting the image becomes a matter of raw power rather than skill. Is there a possibility that the navigator is much stronger than the practitioner?”
“Unlikely.” I had little skill, but in the raw power department, I would blow even Ghastek off the scale.
“What makes you say that?”
“I know how powerful the practitioner is.”
“So this is someone you know personally?”
Thin ice. Proceed with caution. “Yes.”
“Am I to understand that you were in possession of an undead head and you didn’t take it to me for identification?”
“Yes.” Oh boy.
Silence reigned. “There are four people in Atlanta, aside from the People’s personnel, capable of performing the Dubal ritual. I have their numbers in front of me. Of the four, Martina is the best, but she can’t match me in either finesse or power. Why would you use someone other than me?”
“I had my reasons.”
“I’m waiting to hear them.”
“I’d rather keep them to myself.”
“You disappoint me.”
I grimaced. “Why should you be any different?”
“Was it a vampire head?”
This wouldn’t go over well. “No.”
More silence. Finally he sighed. “Do you still have it?”
If I brought him the head, he’d lift my imprint from its mind. “It decomposed.”
Ghastek sighed again. “Kate, you had a unique undead specimen and you’ve denied me the opportunity to examine it. Instead, you’ve taken it to a hack, who’s obviously ignorant of the basic necromantic principles; otherwise we wouldn’t be engaged in this phone call. I trust you won’t make the same mistake in the future. Was there anything else?”
“No.”
A disconnect signal beeped in my ear.
I looked at the poodle. “I think I hurt his feelings.”
This petition was getting complicated in a hurry. On one side, the Steel Mary attacked the shapeshifters. On other side, undead mages tried to barbeque the Casino and the Guild. They didn’t seem connected, except that both the Steel Mary and the undead then attacked the Guild.
Maybe Roland had declared a free-for-all on the Pack and we were getting a flood of bounty hunters who thought they could take the shapeshifters on. But then the attack on the Casino made no sense.
The phone rang. I picked it up. “Kate Daniels.”
“It’s me,” Curran said. “I—”
I hung up.
The phone rang again. I unplugged it from the wall. Talking to Curran was beyond me at the moment.