keep their consumption to a minimum. Before the witches took me, they’d invited me into their pack—ghouls ganging up was a rare thing. It still is. Anyway, I was momentarily tempted to join them, even though I’d decayed into this form you see now. If I ate a few souls, to begin with, I’d recover and go back to being an original ghoul. From there on, if I kept my soul consumption to, say, one per century, I’d be okay. That was their… policy, let’s call it.”
“Geez…”
“Don’t judge!” he retorted. “Not until you’ve been one of us for long enough to understand what it’s like. Anyway! The witches took me, so I never got to join them, but I’m pretty sure they’re still active. I picked up their scent back on Calliope. I didn’t tell Ibrahim about it because I knew they had precious knowledge of Death and her condition, not so much her whereabouts, which I did give to Ibrahim, just so you know.”
“That’s decent of you,” I muttered.
“Thank you, little Miss Judgy. Now, like I was saying, I caught their scent and was surprised to find them here, in the In-Between. They were natives of the Supernatural Dimension, but this wouldn’t be the first time a ghoul found his way into another dimension. They usually sneak through portals made by witches, which was what I assumed had happened here, as well.”
That made sense. With all the portals now open between The Shade, the Supernatural Dimension, and the In-Between, and given that ghouls were able to conceal their presence from the living, I could easily see them jumping from one plane to another, through any of these points of entry.
“You said they have knowledge about Death and her condition. What do they know?” I asked.
“I’m getting there, hold on. I’ve been following their scent from the moment I took you in. I traced them to the cliff, and from there, I tracked them to… here. I think they’re close to our original destination, which makes the detour we’re about to make a lot less inconvenient.”
“Doesn’t make this any less terrifying,” I croaked, bracing myself for this encounter.
“They’re over there,” he said, pointing at a cluster of three moons I instantly recognized. They were Neraka’s moon and… Neraka was within our reach now! I was so close to my body, my entire being zinging with longing.
The suns shone brightly, three bodies in peculiar balance—one large and two smaller ones, orbiting it with silent reverence. A few planets away, Neraka spun, joined by its triplet moons. And somewhere beneath the surface of Neraka, my body awaited.
“Ugh. I might not have my body back, but damn, I’m getting goosebumps. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“Harper. My darling. Please, do not despair. It’s only for a little while. I’m taking you with me because I want you to hear what they say. They know about Death; they know things most of us don’t. Yes, I’d learned where she was, ages ago, but I did my best to keep my distance. These fellas know more, though—specifically, why Death retired to Mortis in the first place. Don’t you think that’s an important piece of information?”
“Well, yeah, but couldn’t you just tell Ibrahim?”
“I thought I’d made myself clear. I didn’t want Ibrahim to send witches out to hunt them. I had no leverage in that conversation to demand that they be left alone, if I told him about them,” Herbert explained. “I was too busy trying to get myself free.”
Dread began to seep through, freezing my spirit and slowing down my thought processes. “What do you hope to get from them?” I asked, my voice wavering.
He sighed. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll keep you safe. I won’t get too close to them. I just need to find out what they know about Death. From there, we’ll go straight to Neraka and get you back into your body. You will retain your memories of this entire conversation, and you’ll be able to pass that information back to Ibrahim. By then, I’ll have made sure that those ghouls are gone from Neraka’s moons.”
It sounded like an easy plan. Or at least, he made it sound easy. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something might go wrong, and that my mission to return to my body would soon be imperiled.
Less than an hour later, Herbert descended upon the white moon, his clawed feet sinking into the pristine white dust as he landed. The gravity here