Because I was out; I was almost out!
The power that gripped me had been so focused on finding Mircea that I had slipped away from it little by little. But it realized that at the same moment I did, and the fire that had been flaring in anger was suddenly burning everywhere. I saw it like an impenetrable wall, blazing all around me. Felt it like acid, etching into my soul. Heard it in my voice as I screamed and screamed and screamed—
And fell, as heavily as if I had a body again, slamming into something that I vaguely recognized as a floor.
For a moment, I just lay there, stunned and whimpering, barely conscious.
“Mircea?” I whispered, after a long moment.
But I couldn’t hear him anymore. No more than I could that other voice, or feel its talons. I couldn’t feel much of anything, except for aching loss, the memory of terror, and overwhelming confusion.
None of which I had the strength to do anything about.
So I just stayed there, feeling wet tile against my face, because the overhead sprinklers were still on. Eventually, I noticed that the water was pattering down on the rest of me, too, tiny drops hitting my body and face and rolling down my cheek. I lay there some more.
I didn’t have a cheek.
I didn’t have a hand, either, although there was one on the floor in front of me.
It was getting wet, too.
I swallowed, trying to focus, trying to think. But that was a mistake, since all my mind could focus on was that thing I’d just fought. On the feel of it eating my soul, tearing it away in great chunks, the darkness wolfing it down. Did you get it back? I wondered. Did you rebuild it like blood that was lost or skin that was shed? Or was part of you, a precious, irretrievable part, simply gone, gone for good, gone to feed the creature that had ripped you to shreds, that had raped your soul, that had—
Stop it! Just stop it!
After a moment, I did.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Start with what you know.
I was on a floor.
A floor with boots. And mud. And men walking over me as if I weren’t there, which made sense. Only, if I wasn’t there, why were they avoiding me? Why weren’t they stepping through me, like they’d done before? And why was one kicking me—
And yelling: “Get this bastard out of the way!”
I didn’t see the speaker, but a second later, someone was dragging my legs to the side and cursing. And then kicking me again, when he dropped me with a thud. But it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt.
Of course it didn’t; you’re a spirit, some still slightly rational part of my mind said.
But if I was a spirit, how had he been able to move me?
And why was my hand all bloody?
My eyes had adjusted slightly, allowing me to see it better. Or, rather, to stare at it, because it wasn’t my hand. It was too big, too tan, too covered in clumps of dark hair on the knuckles when I didn’t have any there at all.
I stared at it some more. And then at the arm connected to it. And then at the hole in the torso next to the arm, which was big and jagged and went all the way through, bisecting red meat and blackened ribs and—
And it looked like someone had thrown a fiery basketball through me.
No, I realized. Not a basketball. A spell.
And not through me.
Through the body—the very dead body—I was currently inhabiting.
For a moment, I didn’t believe it. I watched the hand move and flex under my command, and I still didn’t. I kept listening for a heartbeat I didn’t have, for breaths I wasn’t taking, for all the signs of a living body that weren’t there because I hadn’t ended up in one of those; no, no, I’d ended up inside a corpse.
So why was it moving?
Because it was. Slowly, sluggishly, my unshaven cheek scraping across the rough wooden boards of the sidewalk next to me, which should have hurt except dead, I was dead, so I couldn’t be moving because it takes blood pressure for that, right? And . . . and air and . . . things. I didn’t know much about magic, but I knew that, I knew that. The only creatures who could move around without those kinds of things were ghosts and vamps and—
Zombies.
I stared at the hand, and okay, yeah, it was looking a little zombiefied right now. Bloodless and dirty and blood-speckled, and if I saw that in a movie, I’d be like, yep, zombie. But it wasn’t in a movie, or on TV. It was at the end of my arm, and I was in a body, somebody else’s dead, disgusting, still slightly sizzling body and—
“Augghh!”
And, okay, I was definitely moving now.
“Augghh! Augghh!”
And people were noticing, and turning, and looking a little freaked out, maybe because I was screaming and thrashing around, or maybe because of the big hole in my chest, or maybe because of the gun in my other hand.
Because there was one.
A big one.
And the leader was right in front of me, his barrel just off the edge of the sidewalk I was spazzing out on, and he was turning along with everyone else within earshot, eyes widening, mouth opening, probably to tell someone to shoot the freaking zombie already—
But too late.
I was already dead.
And the next second, so was he, because he hadn’t bothered with shields this far behind the lines. He fell off the barrel, blasted backward from the force of double barrels to the chest at almost point-blank range, and landed in the middle of the street, still twitching. I looked at him, everybody else looked at him, and then everybody looked at me.
And then I was staggering backward, riddled by bullets and spells and—
And zooming up out of the now useless body, scanning the crowd.
For my next one.
Because, okay, yes. This was a thing that was happening. Thanks to dear old Dad, who I knew less than nothing about because what I did know didn’t make sense. But one thing almost everyone agreed on was that, before he hooked up with a goddess on the run, he’d been a necromancer—and a powerful one. And a weird one, because he hadn’t dealt with bodies—he’d dealt with ghosts.
It was why, I strongly suspected, I’d been a ghost magnet all my life. I walked down the street, and ghosts came over to say hi and to tell me their life story—whether I wanted to hear it or not. I picked up a necklace in a junk shop and out popped a nineteenth-century cowboy. I went anywhere, did anything, and if there was a ghost around, it would probably come running.
Which was why the whole shifting-outside-your-body part of the Pythia job hadn’t weirded me out too much. I’d dealt with ghosts all my life; being one had almost felt familiar. Zombies, on the other hand . . .
Zombies were new.