“Who is waiting?” Emily murmured sleepily, as dawn light seeped through her eyelids.
The Sons of the Earth.
Emily sat up with a gasp, knocking her head against the low ceiling. Groaning, she rubbed her forehead. Her arm felt like it was five hundred feet long.
She felt all out of proportion; everything around her was so narrow and close, but she felt so large and diffuse and rubbery. Tendrils of the dream spun away from her, and she felt a desperate desire to clutch at them. In that gleaming shimmering place, she had been so large. She had been Ososolyeh—a living thing with memories that stretched beyond the void of infinity. Now she was trapped, returned to the small sore breathing hungry confinement of a body that could die—circumscribed, imprisoned.
She jerked the curtain aside, desperate to escape the feeling of sudden, smothering enclosure.
The first thing she saw was Rose.
The girl sat on the seat directly across from Emily’s berth. She was leaning forward, elbows resting on splayed knees. Her eyes were wide and glittering, unfocused. Her dress was rumpled, her blond hair all askew.
The second thing Emily saw were Rose’s guns.
A revolver was clutched in each of her dainty white hands. Pulling the hammers back, Rose lifted the guns and leveled them at Emily.
“Buon giorno, Miss Edwards,” Rose said, her voice accented in lilting Italian. “Pleasant dreams?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rose’s Thorns
Emily’s eyes darted around the compartment. Stanton stood with his back to the door, as if he were holding it shut with the weight of his body. His head was drooped; he stared at the floor. His green eyes were narrowed slits.
“Mr. Stanton?” Emily ventured. She looked at the girl. “Rose?”
“Not at the moment,” Rose drawled, the strange new accent making her words lazy. “I have her body for the time being.”
Emily narrowed her eyes.
“This body belong to Rose Hibble. Indeed, most of the time it is inhabited by that silly little girl. Except when I need to use her.”
Emily still stared.
“I see you are confuse. It is a common reaction.” Rose stood, giving the courtliest bow possible in the limited space. “My name is Grimaldi. Antonio Pietro Grimaldi. Or at least, that was my name, when I have a body of my own. But that was many years ago, and there have been so many names and bodies since then.” Rose—or Grimaldi—separated each word carefully, seeming to take pleasure in the act of speech. The girl touched a pendant that hung at her throat, a smooth brown nut that looked like a buckeye mounted in an ornate gold setting. “This, actually, is all there is of me. Here, in this uchawi pod, is where my spirit is remain attached. But I have learned to ride the bodies of humans. They are my mounts, my steeds. I use them to hunt.”
“What do you hunt?” Emily said, knowing the answer but wishing she didn’t.
“People.” Grimaldi’s voice caressed the word lovingly. “People for who other people will pay money.”
Emily swallowed hard. She looked past Rose at Stanton. She watched desperately for any sign of a reaction, but he just stood, eyes fixed on the floor. Emily looked back to Rose. The cheerful spark in the girl’s blue eyes had been replaced with distant coldness and a formless malice.
“You’re a Manipulator.” Emily suddenly remembered what Stanton had said about emancipated spirits who jumped from body to body, losing more of their moral compass with each transference. He’d said they were rare. Leave it to their luck to run into one.
“If you like to call me that,” Grimaldi said. “But I prefer to be called what I am. Bounty hunter.”
“What have you done to Mr. Stanton?”
“It is nothing. A minor compulsion. Compulsions, they are my specialty. It is so much easier to transport people when they don’t even know they are being transported. When they are bind by chains they do not see or understand.” Grimaldi paused. “You remember the Eye-Opener I give him? I hid in there a skeleton key that unlocks the will of the one who drinks it. Once I have him, I have you.” Rose’s lips curled into a sneer. “Because you will do whatever he tell you to do.”
Emily pressed her lips together tightly.
“Carissima mia, how disapproving you look.” Grimaldi laughed. “But I hear what you do to that man in Lost Pine. Forcing him to love you—what is this but a kind of compulsion?”
Rose’s body shuddered from head to heel. She was fighting to regain control