the tip of your tongue, which won't shape itself no matter how hard you try. But then, in another moment, her deadspeak signal strengthened and he focussed on her again. And:
You see, son, she said, we don't worry too much about you that way any more. It's no longer so painful to us to think that one day you might die. We know you will, for it comes to us all. And through you we've come to understand that death isn't really as black as it's painted. But between life and death there's another state, Harry, and we've been warned that you're straying too close.
'Undeath!' it was his turn to gasp, as suddenly his dream turned sharp as reality. 'Warned? By whom?'
Oh, she answered, there are many talents among the dead, son. There are those you can speak to and trust, without fearing their words, and others you should never, ever speak to! At times you've moved without caution, Harry, but this time... one... evil... lost to... dark as... forever!
Her deadspeak was breaking up, fading, dissolving. But what she'd been saying was important, he was sure. 'Ma?' he called after her, into the gathering mists of dream. 'Ma?'
Haaaaarrry! Her answer was the faintest echo, diminishing and... gone.
Then-
- Something touched Harry's face; he started and sat up a little in his armchair. And: 'Wha... ?' he gasped, as he came half-awake. Was that a fluttering just then? Had something disturbed the air of the room?
'Shhh!' Sandra mumbled from her bed somewhere in the darkness. 'You were dreaming. About your mother again.'
Harry remembered where he was and what he was doing here, and listened for a moment to the room's darkness and silence. And in a little while he asked, 'Are you awake?'
'No,' she answered. 'Do you want me to be?'
He shook his head before realizing she couldn't see him, then whispered, 'No. Go to sleep.'
And as he himself sank down again in dreams, once more he felt that faint fanning of the air. But sleep had already claimed him and he ignored it.
This time the voice came from the heart of a fog which rolled up out of Harry's dreams as dank and clinging as any fog he'd known in the waking world. It was clear, that voice; however distant, its signal was fixed and true; but it was dark, too, and deep and grinding and sepulchral as the bells of hell. It came out of the fog and seemed to surround Harry, pressing in on his Necroscope mind from all sides.
Ahhh! Beloved of the dead, it said, and Harry recognized it at once. And so I have found you, despite the misguided efforts of those who would protect you from a very old, very dead, very harmless thing.
'Faethor,' Harry answered. 'Faethor Ferenczy!'
And: Haaarry Keeooogh, crooned the other, his voice seething. But you do me honour, Harry, with this stress which you place upon my name! Is this awe which I sense in you? Do you tremble before the Power I once represented? Or is it something else? Fear, perhaps? But how so? What, fear? In one who was always so fearless? Now tell me: what has changed you, my son?
'No son of yours, Faethor,' Harry at once answered, with something of his old spirit. 'My name is clean. Don't try to taint it.'
Ahhh! smiled the gurgling, hissing, monstrous thing in his mind. But that's better. So much better to be on familiar termsss.
'What is it you want, Faethor?' Harry was suspicious, careful. 'Is it that you've heard the dead whispering of my fix and so you've come to taunt me?'
Your fix? Faethor feigned surprise, but not so much as to disguise his oozing sarcasm. You are in a fix? But is it possible? With so many friends? With all the teeming dead to advise and guide you?
Even dreaming, Harry was well versed in the ways of vampires - even the 'harmless', expired variety. 'Faethor,' he said, 'I'm sure you know well enough the problem. But since you've asked I'll state it anyway: I'm Necroscope no longer, except in my dreams. So enjoy my predicament all you can, for awake it's a pleasure you'll never know.'
Such bitterness! said Faethor. And there, I thought we were friends, you and I.
'Friends?' Harry felt inclined to laughter, but controlled it. Better not to antagonize one of these unduly, not even one as surely dead and gone forever as Faethor. 'In what way friends? The dead are my friends, as you've pointed out, and to