"Try harder," Nick urged. "He's no longer in a position to make demands. If you can contact him, he may be willing to tell us something."
"If he's here, Billy will find him. If he isn't—" I shrugged. "I don't do anything to attract ghosts, so I can't ‘try harder. They just tend to show up when I'm around."
"We can't afford to stay much longer." Nick spoke quietly, but there was a warning note in his voice that I didn't like. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder why the place wasn't overrun with war mages. It was their job to investigate murders in the supernatural community, and there looked to be enough bodies here to occupy them for a while. I'd just spied a foot—of a much more human golden brown—sticking out from behind the bed. I didn't look to see if it was still attached to anything.
"How long before anyone else shows up?" I asked uneasily. Pritkin and his fellow mages weren't exactly on good terms, and I would just as soon miss the reunion.
"There's no way to know. But Saleh was under interdict by the Council." Nick saw my expression. "It's like parole," he explained. "And when he doesn't show up for his weekly meeting, someone will be sent to check on him."
"Crap." I started for the door, but Nick grabbed me.
"What if you were to touch the corpse itself? Would that make for a stronger connection?"
I stared at him in horror. "I'm not touching that thing!" The very idea made my skin crawl.
"What about something he owned, then?" Before I could stop him, Nick crossed the room to tug at the dead man's shirt. I think he intended to rip a piece of fabric off for me, but the dead flesh peeled away with the cloth, flaking off the bone like a well-done fish. The shirt gaped open where he'd grasped it, giving me a glimpse of a belly that moved on its own. When I realized I was seeing maggots teeming beneath the skin, I gagged and almost lost it.
"That's it. I'm done." I staggered through the door and bumped into Pritkin coming up the hallway. "Is there a bathroom?"
"Two doors down to your left. There's no one in there."
For a second, I didn't know what he meant. There were only three of us along on this crazy errand to interrogate a dead man—unless you counted Billy, and he hadn't needed to use the facilities in quite a while. Then I realized that he was implying that the bathroom was free of corpses. I got a mental image of the bloated body behind me, choked and fled.
The dress seemed to like the bathroom better than the bedroom-turned-morgue. The mirror reflected back to me a hesitant pale rose, like the sky just before dawn. But although I stood over the sink for a long minute, trying not to heave up lunch, the sun didn't rise. I didn't blame it.
I'd just finished washing my face and hands, trying to get what felt like a greasy film off them, when a fine mist floated up from the drain on a cold silver glow. It resolved itself into a face, wavering in front of the mirror like a mirage made out of steam. It was vague and indistinct, not almost solid the way I usually see ghosts. I blinked at it, but it didn't go away. "Is it safe?" a tremulous voice demanded.
"Uh," I said stupidly. There really was no good answer. On a few memorable occasions in the past, I'd encountered spirits who weren't yet aware that they were dead. And no one ever appreciated being brought up to speed.
The misty eyes started moving around the bathroom. They detached from the rest of the head to float off, poking into things. One slipped under the door, and I winced, only too aware of what was coming. A few seconds later, the mouth opened in shock, but no words came out
"I know it's bad," I babbled, "but you're going to a better place."
The sightless head turned in my direction. "I'm a demon," it snarled. "I don't think so."
Okay, he had a point. The other eye returned from looking out the window and settled in the middle of his forehead. It gave him a weird Cyclops vibe, but under the circumstances, I didn't think that worth pointing out. "Who did this?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, surprised.
"I was asleep!" he said, sounding outraged. "I heard someone break in, got halfway