It also wasn’t helping with the dizziness, or maybe that was me. I didn’t know; I only knew I had to get up, to find out where my acolytes had gone, to warn them about what was about to go down in the arena. And to hope they still had the power to do something about it, because I didn’t.
I didn’t have the power to do anything except lie there, trying to will myself back onto my feet. But my feet weren’t listening, and neither was anything else. I was alive; I was breathing; my eyes were focusing, more or less. But that was as good as it got.
And that wasn’t enough.
I thought I’d become thoroughly familiar with exhaustion these past few weeks, thought I knew every desperate description and pooped permutation. But I’d been wrong. So, so wrong. I was bone tired, wearier than I’d ever been in my life, to the point I honestly thought I could go to sleep, right now, right here, with no trouble at all. And for a split second, I wondered if it mattered. What good could I be to anybody like this? I was half-dead, my power utterly spent, and the battle hadn’t even started yet.
Which meant there was still time to stop it, if I could get my lazy butt off the floor.
I tried rolling over, to use my hands as leverage, and was quickly reminded that one was still stuck to the ice. So I rolled back the other way, toward the chasm this time, tugging and yanking on a hand that felt less like it was trapped by the skin than by the flesh underneath. I started prying it up anyway, feeling like cursing—
And then felt like it a lot more when I looked down.
At Johanna’s body still frozen in place. At the clawed hand still raised, the fingers stiff and pale as marble. At the frost-covered face now a ghostly oval, framed by hair like a spectral halo. And at the eyes—
Which weren’t nearly as dead as I’d thought.
I hung there, panting and exhausted, trapped by my own abused flesh, watching something boil behind Johanna’s dead eyes. Something black and terrible. Something that burst free of the ice a second later, hurtling through the air like a striking fist.
And then it was on me.
I didn’t have time to move. I barely had time to acknowledge what was happening before she hit like a ton of bricks, and then kept on coming. Because death to a necromancer is a malleable concept, and Johanna wasn’t ready to go.
But she was very ready to make sure that I did.
In seconds, I felt the tethers to my body thin and slip and start to falter. Because she was trying to tear me loose, like she’d done when she knocked me into the Badlands. She’d lost her body, so now she was trying to take mine.
And I didn’t think she planned on giving it back.
But she’d already pulled this trick once, and it didn’t have the element of surprise. And she was a ghost, fresh and filled with power, but a ghost, and this was my body, and that carried certain privileges. Like exorcising . . . stubborn spirits . . . who needed . . . to die already!
I hurled Johanna out with a gasp, using up power I couldn’t afford—but then, neither could she. Without a body, ghosts run out fast, and there was only one way for her to replace hers. If I drained her enough, it would force her into the Badlands to hunt.
Where, if I was lucky, something might just finish the job for me.
And a second later, she did take off, an amorphous black cloud streaming across the wide expanse of the room. But she wasn’t headed for the Badlands. She was headed for—
Shit, I thought, watching as she dove straight into a fey who’d just run in the door. And not just any fey. A Svarestri warrior armed to the teeth who began shaking and convulsing as she fought him for control.
I stared at them for a second, and then started frantically trying to pry my hand off the ice again. It hurt like hell, the pain white-hot and startling. I ignored it. I’d have more than torn flesh to worry about if she managed to—
And then she did.
The Svarestri’s head suddenly shot up and turned my way. And the next time I blinked, he was coming at a dead run. So I left my hand alone and finished the job Johanna had started, bursting out of my skin and into his, just before the sword in his hand could slice through my throat.
The sword stopped midair, quivering; my soulless body collapsed behind me; and my spirit and Johanna’s fought a last-ditch battle for control. And she was fighting hard. But here’s the thing, Jo, I thought, gritting teeth I no longer had. Everything is harder when you’re a ghost. Everything. To the point that even beat-up clairvoyants can be a real problem.
Especially if they happen to be necromancers, too.
Slowly, slowly, the sword began to waver. Slowly, slowly, I moved more toward complete control of this body. Slowly, slowly, I started to force her out—
And then everything happened at once: Jo fled, her power all but gone; the sword clattered harmlessly to the floor, barely missing my head; and I breathed a small, cautious, please-let-this-be-the-end sigh of relief.
But of course not.
*
A screaming bolt of red tore through the air, exploding in a mass of sparks that set the stones above my head on fire. “Damn witches,” someone cursed as I jerked back out of the way.
And wondered why the very male voice had sounded like it was coming from me.
“That wasn’t a witch,” someone else said as I looked up at a high-arched doorway, at a tunnel splashed with fire and spell-light, at two huge torches flaming on either side illuminating a small area of well-trodden dirt. And at the stadium wall rising high above that, with bright pennants flapping in the wind, despite the rain that was still pissing down.
Because I wasn’t in the great hall anymore.
There were a thousand questions crowding my mind, because I’d never possessed a fey before, and trust them to make it freaky. But only one really mattered. I tried turning my head, to look down the tunnel at the duel, but it didn’t want to go. It was looking outward instead, at dark figures highlighted by flickers of spell-fire in the distance. And searching for the one that had just gotten a whole lot closer.
“Who is it, then?” I heard myself ask. “We were told there were witches—”
“Oh, they’re out there, some of Morgaine’s creatures. But there’s a mage with them, too. He’s the one you’ve got to—” My companion cut off, and I glanced around to see a Svarestri warrior staring at me curiously.
Probably because my hair was on fire.
“Here!” My companion shoved me around. And did something that resulted in my head feeling lighter and a great length of burning silver hair landing on the dirt at my feet. “It’s spelled,” he hissed.
I felt myself lick my lips. “Right.”
“And watch out for the mage,” he added. “He’s said to be good with glamourie, so don’t trust anyone.”
“Including you?” I heard myself joke.
My companion smiled slightly.