a ball of light whipped out and blinded me.
“What the—” I began.
“Shhhhhh.”
The light fell in a shower of sparks. I blinked, then saw only darkness. The same voice continued to shush me, a long-drawn-out monotone of a breath that, after a moment, I realized wasn’t a voice at all, but the rush of air past my ears.
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, willing my night-vision to kick in. Like all my visual abilities, this one came supercharged, the legacy of having the Lord Demon Balam, Master of Sight, as a father.
A sharp wind whipped through my clothes. Something tickled my fingers. I grabbed it, and with a tug, the thin strand broke free. I lifted it to my nose. Grass.
My sight began to clear. The first thing I saw was waves, the rhythmic rise and fall of waves rippling toward shore. But I didn’t smell water. Didn’t feel the spray of it or the weight of it in the air. Instead, the wind was dry and smelled of…grass. I blinked again and saw waves of grass, rising and falling on hilly soil, bowing in the wind. An ocean of grass.
Once upon a time, this would have surprised me, but after three years of traveling around the ghost world, I’ve seen some pretty strange geography. In the unoccupied areas, plains are common, vast empty stretches of rock or sand or grass. I’d even popped into a plain of lava once. Not pleasant…especially when I realized it wasn’t as empty as it appeared. At that thought, I peered into the long grass. It didn’t look like there was anything down there, but you could never be sure.
I looked up. Sky. A night sky, overcast.
“Okay,” I called to the Fates. “You can skip the detention. I’ll do my homework.”
A high-pitched laugh answered me. Now, I’m sure the child Fate would get a giggle out of their trick, but the voice sounded too old to be hers, and neither of her sisters was the giggling type.
When no one answered, I headed in the direction of the laugh. If there was someone else in this ghost-world wasteland, it probably wasn’t someone I wanted to meet, but a little danger would at least liven things up.
The wind picked up to a whine that cut right through my thin shirt. I thought of willing myself a jacket, but didn’t. In the ghost world, you could pass weeks, months, even years without ever feeling temperatures that went beyond pleasantly warm or pleasantly cool. Once in a while, discomfort wasn’t so bad.
I walked into a deep dip that sheltered me from the wind. I rubbed my ears. As they thawed, my hearing improved. Not that there was much more to hear, just the whistle of the wind overhead. No, wait, something else. I cocked my head to listen. A thump, then a swish. Silence. Thump, swish. Silence. Thump, swish.
I readied an energy-bolt spell.
The thumping sound could be slow footsteps. But the swish? I didn’t really want to think about that. The next thump brought a nails-down-a-chalkboard screech. A muttered oath. An exchange of words, one voice male, one female. A grunt. A thud. Then it resumed. Thump, swish. Thump, swish.
I cast a blur spell—if it worked in this dimension, it should distort my shape enough to let me sneak past anyone who wasn’t looking for me. Then I climbed to the top of the knoll. Less than twenty feet away stood a young woman holding a flashlight. I quickstepped back down the hill, then sharpened my sight.
I peered over the hill. The woman was shining the flashlight on a man digging a hole. That was the noise—the thump of the shovel digging in and the swish of the dirt as he tossed it aside.
The couple were both in their twenties. The man was small and skinny with a greasy mop of hair. The woman was blond, with her hair piled high in a god-ugly outdated do. Her clothing was equally out-of-date—miniskirt, high boots, and a car coat. That wasn’t surprising. In the ghost world you get used to seeing a historical fashion show. Most ghosts stick with whatever style they enjoyed in life. Well, unless that style included corsets or other instruments of torture.
Here we had two ghosts, circa the sixties…or the seventies. Being my “growing-up years,” the two decades merged into a shapeless whole of miniskirts, tie-dyed tees, go-go boots, and disco.
“Deep enough?” the man said, rubbing his hands together. “Bloody cold out here tonight.”
The