“Lady Amunsdale. You will come here and speak with me.”
Talia reached with her mind and parted the shadows like a curtain. The child sat on a wooden crate in a dark storeroom, legs pulled up under her dress. The smell here was dusty and old, but dry, cut out of bedrock. A place built for preserving things. Foodstuffs and spirits. The child looked over her knees with resentful eyes.
“I’m not leaving!”
“Where are we?” Talia asked. She felt Adam take hold of her again. He was planted firmly at Segue, looking across the expanse of time with her. She had the feeling that if he let go, she would float away like a ship without mooring and be lost to time and shadow. Her hands gripped his forearm at her waist.
“I’ve got you. We’re in the hotel,” Adam murmured in Talia’s ear. “This is the Fulton, in the past. In her time. We’re the ghosts here.”
“I won’t go!” The child clasped the ropes around a crate, settling in for a fight, as stubborn as Adam.
“Go where?”
“Across. Away. I won’t die. You can’t make me.”
“I’m afraid I could.” Talia was literally afraid of what she could do.
“I don’t think so. The dark, mean man couldn’t. He can’t find me now anyway.” The child was solid defiance, with a cruel, adult twist to her mouth. Something was perverted about her, as if the person that was Lady Amunsdale was gone, and all that was left was her will. Her will was to stay.
“What mean man?” Talia dreaded the answer.
“The one from the other side. The one who wants me to cross.”
Death? Shadowman? Or something else? “Why can’t he find you?”
“He’s stuck. Trapped.” The little girl grinned a too-adult smug smile of satisfaction.
Had to be Shadowman. “Trapped how?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me!” Talia’s command rippled through the air.
The child’s voice whined through the layers of shadow. The sound deepened, broadened, and matured to the wail of a woman, but produced from the little girl’s mouth. “I don’t know!”
This was too frustrating. Like squeezing water from a stone.
Adam increased his pressure on Talia’s stomach briefly. Right, they had to hurry.
“Tell me about Spencer.” She voiced Adam’s most pressing question.
“I don’t know that name.” The child turned her head away, bored.
“He works here, with me. At the hotel. Have you watched him? Can you see us in our lives? Doing things?” The thought made Talia shiver. “Answer me!”
The girl gripped the rope cords as Talia’s shock wave warped through her. The child’s face grimaced with effort. “I can see you, but I can’t see anyone else. Just you and the one that is all empty skin. His belly is like a bottle with little firefly spirits trapped inside. So many little fireflies that can’t get out. I stay away from him.”
Talia felt Adam go rigidly still as her own heart lurched. Poor Patty. “What happens to the spirits then?”
“Ask him yourself,” the girl sang. “He’s coming.”
Talia looked wildly over her shoulder to the door. Adam drew a gun. “Ask her what made him.”
The girl giggled. “He’s coming He’s coming He’s coming.”
“Ask her!” Adam shook her sharply.
Talia trembled. She didn’t want to know, but Adam’s hold was too tight. He squeezed the question out of her. “What made the Empty Skin?”
The child stretched and shimmered. Morphed. She became a woman before Talia’s eyes, her hair growing wildly, curling out of her head, each strand alive. Her dress lengthened with her body, white fabric upon lace and cotton. Stockinged feet in heeled shoes momentarily peeped out from her skirts as she settled herself into a straight-backed repose. Her chin tipped up just enough to cast her eyes down her nose at Talia.
“A demon, the Death Collector,” the woman said in a rich, cultured voice, as if speaking to Talia was distasteful to her.
Did she mean Shadowman? Shadowman killed wraiths, he didn’t make them. The demon must be something, someone different. Must be the source of this madness.
A loud crash sounded down the hallway.
“Damn it,” Adam said in her ear. “We’ve got to go. Jim, we’re leaving. This is your last chance.”
“I’m staying,” he said, backing blindly in the dark. “I’m staying with Lady Amunsdale.”
“She’s no lady,” Talia said. “She’s twisted. Insane.”
The ghost sneered and patted her hair.
“Jim, I can’t fight Jacob, protect Talia, and drag you. This is your last chance.” Adam ducked his head out the office door, glanced both ways, and returned for Jim’s answer.
“Staying,” he said. “Staying forever.”