Transportation is my afterlife specialty—my quest to help Savannah
meant I spent a lot of time tracking down sources. In other areas of
ghost activity, I’m not so good, though I didn’t think the Fates
really needed to send me through that damned orientation course three
times.
My afterlife world was a version of Earth, with some weird
sub-dimensions that we really tried to avoid. Everyone here was a
supernatural, but not every supernatural was here. When I’d died, my
first thought on waking had been "Great, now I finally find out what
comes next." Well, actually that had been my second thought,
after "Hmmm, I thought it would have been hotter." Yes, I’d escaped
the fiery hell my mother and many others had prophesied for me, but in
dying, I hadn’t found out what comes next, only what came next for
me. Was there fire and brimstone somewhere else? Were there halos
and heavenly harps? I have no idea. I only know that where I am is
better than where I expected to be, so I’m not complaining.
I dropped Kristof off on the courthouse steps. Yes, we have courts
here. The Fates take care of all major disciplinary issues, but they
let us handle disputes between ghosts. Hence the courts, where
Kristof. Not that he’d practiced law in real life. The day he’d passed
the bar exam, he’d gone into business with his family. But here he
was, playing lawyer in the afterlife. Even Kris admitted this wasn’t
his first choice for a new career, yet until they started a ghost
world NHL franchise, he was stuck with it.
Speaking of jobs . . . Kristof was right. I needed a break. I’d
known that for a while now, but couldn’t bring myself to admit it. I
knew Kris’s "odd jobs" wouldn’t be the kind of employment the Fates
would approve of, but that was more incentive than obstacle.
That thought had no more left my mind than a bluish fog blew in and
swirled around my leg.
"Hey, I was just—"
The fog sucked me into the ground.
The Searchers deposited me in the Fate’s throne room, a
white-marble cavern with moving mosaics and tapestries on the walls.
The Fates are the guardians of the supernatural layers of the ghost
world, and just about the only time they call us in is when we’ve
screwed up. So when the floor began to turn, I braced myself. When it
didn’t turn fast enough, I twisted around to face the Fates myself. A
pretty girl threaded yarn onto a spinning wheel. She looked no more
than five or six years old, with bright violet eyes that matched her
dress.
"Okay," I said. "What did I do?"
The girl grinned. "Isn’t the question: what did I do now?"
I sighed, and in less time than it takes to blink, the girl morphed
into a middle-aged version of herself, with long graying dark hair,
and light brown skin showing the first wrinkles and roughness of time.
"We have a problem, Eve."
"Look, I promised I wouldn’t use the codes for excessive
unauthorized travel. I never said—"
"This isn’t about unauthorized travel."
I thought for a moment. "Visiting Adena Milan for spell-swapping?
Hey, that was an honest mistake. No one told me she was on the
blacklist."
The middle-aged Fate shook her head, eyes twinkling. "Admittedly,
there might be some amusement to be had in making you recite the whole
list of your infractions, but I’m afraid we don’t have that much time.
Some time ago, you made a deal with us. If we returned Paige and Lucas
to the living world, you’d owe us a favor."
"Oh . . . that."
Damn. In the last eighteen months, they hadn’t mentioned it again,
so I’d hoped they’d forgotten. Like that’s going to happen. The Fates
can remember what Noah ate for breakfast on the morning of the flood.
My first instinct, as always, was to weasel out of it. Hell, what’s
the worst thing that could happen? Well, for starters, they could undo
their end of the bargain and bring Paige and Lucas back to the ghost
world. So no weaseling out of this one. Besides, I had been
looking for a distraction. Which made this all seem very coincidental.
"Did Kristof put you up this? Finding me something to do?"
The Fate morphed into her oldest sister, a hunchbacked crone with a
wizened face permanently set in a scowl . . . well, at least, whenever
I was around.
"Kristof Nast does not ‘put us up’ to anything."
"I didn’t mean—"
"Nor are we going to be doing favors for the likes of him. We
thought that lawyer job would keep him busy." She snorted. "And it
does. Keeps him busy getting into trouble."
"If you mean the Agito case, that wasn’t Kris’s fault. The
plaintiff started lying, so he had to do something. It wasn’t
really witness tampering . . ."
"Just a means to an end," she said, fixing me with that bright
glare. "That’s how you two think. Doesn’t matter how you get
there, as long as you do."
The middle sister took over. "An interesting philosophy. Not one we
share but, in some cases . . . useful. This particular job we need
done may require some of those unique skills."
I perked up. "Oh?"
"We have a spirit who’s escaped from the lower realms. We need you
to bring her in."
The lower realms are where they keep the ghosts who can’t be
allowed to mingle with the rest of us—the seriously nasty criminals.
Hmmm, interesting.
"So who is—"
"First, you need to do some research." The middle-aged Fate reached
into the air and pulled out a sheet of paper. "This is a list of
books—"
"Books? Look, I’m sure you guys are in a hurry for me to get this
job done, so why don’t we skip this part? I’m really more a hands-on
kind of gal."
The girl appeared, grinning mischievously. "Oh? Well, in that case,
let’s do it the hands-on way."
She waved a hand, and a ball of light whipped out and blinded me.
