I ran after her.
This place had weird static in the air that burst on my vision here and there, like tiny, too-close fireworks. It kept making me jerk my head back, and should have made her hard to see. But people were clearer than the walls, more solid—like Rosier, when I glanced over my shoulder, huddled near my collapsed form. His features were blurry at this distance, but his body was a solid chunk of off-white.
Like the figure who had just darted behind another cell.
“Wait!” I yelled. “Please! I need to talk to you!”
Only to find her gone when I rounded the corner.
Because she was hiding on the other side of the cell.
“I can see you!” I pointed out, and heard what sounded suspiciously like a giggle. “I can hear you, too!”
A hand came up to cover her mouth. And then she was off again, flitting across the barren landscape like a tissue blown on the breeze, and faster than me because she was used to this. I was only a temporary ghost, while she’d been at it for years.
I knew that because I knew her.
I put on a burst of speed, following her zigzag course between several more cells. And then abruptly reversed it, going around the other way on the next one, watching her parallel me on the opposite side. And keep checking behind her, but never once glancing across at me.
Until she ran straight into me.
Her head was still turned around, looking behind her, when we collided. And I got blown backward for my trouble, ten or twelve feet, because ghosts don’t take sudden scares any better than humans. “Aughhhh!” she screamed, staring at me as I lay there, looking up at her in confusion. “Aughhhh!”
And then she turned and fled.
Straight into a cell up ahead.
I scrambled to my feet and followed.
“Would you relax?” a man’s voice said as I stepped through the wall. “I told you they can’t follow us in— Shit!” That last was in response to his turning and seeing me. For a moment, we just stared at each other.
Well, I stared. He glared. It didn’t do his slightly horsey features any favors. And the rest of him wasn’t much more impressive, being tall and lanky, with a too-prominent Adam’s apple and a mane of blond hair that was getting dangerously close to a mullet.
But I stared anyway. Even though I’d half expected it, considering that I’d recognized the ghost. But it was still a surprise.
My father turned up in the weirdest of places.
And he never seemed happy to see me in any of them. “You!” he snarled.
“Me,” I agreed. “Look—”
“Save it!” It was venomous. “I’ve nothing to say to you people!”
“I—there’s no ‘you people.’ There’s just me—”
“Your bitch friend take the day off?”
“What?” I said, confused. And not just because I was talking to my long-dead father while one of his pet ghosts made little hissing noises at me from near the ceiling. But because he looked like he had no idea who I was.
And then I noticed his clothes: singed-knee pants, dirty white hose, a puffy shirt, and a pair of neatly buckled shoes—Pilgrim-style. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the sixteen hundreds. And then I saw the hat sticking out of his pack, a wide, floppy-brimmed number with a distinct bullet hole in it, one Agnes had given him at our first meeting.
And by the look of things, that had been pretty damn recent.
Well, recent from his perspective.
“Agnes . . . just brought you back here, didn’t she?” I asked slowly, remembering the first time I’d met my father as an adult.
It had been a few months ago, after I’d gotten the bright idea to seek out my predecessor for some much-needed training. Only to find out that that was a no-no. Agnes had not been happy to see me, partly because my very presence threatened the timeline, since I’d had to seek her out in the past. And partly because she’d been busy chasing down dear old Dad, to keep him from screwing up time before I got a chance to.
After a memorable series of events that included her shooting me in the butt, she’d left with him, something I hadn’t bothered to protest, since she still had the gun. And because I hadn’t yet known who he was. And because I’d had other things to occupy my mind than whatever kind of jail the Pythias were running.
It was occupying it now. Specifically, I was wondering how Roger and I both ended up in the same prison at the same time, despite being nabbed centuries apart. And by two different Pythias from two different eras.
This, I thought, was exactly why time travel gave me a headache.
Not that Roger seemed to care.
“Just? She left me here to rot while I ‘soften up.’ Only guess what, sweetheart. Not so soft! I’m not telling you shit, no matter how long you bitches leave me—”
“I’m not trying to leave you anywhere.”
“—in here, so tell your gun-happy friend she can shove that pistol where the sun don’t shine—”
“I’m trying to get out, too.”
“—because Roger Palmer doesn’t break!” He looked at me defiantly. And then what I’d said must have sunk in, because he frowned. “What?”
“I’m trying to get out, too.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is this some kind of trick?”
“No.” I sat down, or I tried to. His cell had a bed, a single bunk shoved up against one wall, but I was still new to this whole ghost thing, and I mostly just bobbed around.
His ghost giggled. He glared.
I sighed. “Look—”
“No, you look. If you think you can masquerade as a fellow prisoner and have me spill the beans, you can think again!”
I didn’t bother to deny it some more, since he wouldn’t have believed me anyway. I just gestured around. “So, what’s your plan? Stay here and rot?”
“Plan? Who said I have a plan?” He looked swiftly up at his ghost—Daisy, if I remembered right.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t tell her about the things,” Daisy said, in a stage whisper.
“What things?” I asked.
“The sparkly things. I’ve been—”
“Shut up, Daisy!” Dad said.
“—hunting them. Oh, and I caught another one,” she told him.
“Shut up!”
“—so we just need one more big fat one and I think—”
“Daisy!”
“—we might have enough. Or two or three of the smaller ones, but they’re faster and harder to—ummph.”
He’d snatched her down and clapped a hand over her mouth—which I hadn’t known we could do—but it was too late. “Sparkly ones?” I asked. “You mean those flashes of light outside?”
“I mean you’d better get back to your body,” he said nastily. “Or you may get stuck in spirit form permanently.”
“And you wouldn’t like that here,” Daisy said, through two of his fingers. “Then you’d sparkle, too—”
“Sparkle?”
“—and I might have to eat—ummph.”
“She’s eating ghosts?” I asked, looking up at Dad. Who shoved overlong blond bangs out of his eyes and glared at me some more, but the expression had an edge of panic to it.
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying! She’s old and a little—” He tapped the side of his head. “Or she was. And she drank a lot—”
“Mmump, mummh!”