what? I drew in a breath.
No.
The ability to do just what I had been doing--controlling a ghost.
If she'd stuck around, I'd have asked her a dozen more questions.
But she wasn't the only ghost around here.
"Hey," I said softly.
"She's gone now.
You can come out." He smelled a little differently than she did, though mostly they both smelled like stale blood.
It was a subtle difference, but I could discern it when I tried.
His scent had lingered as I'd questioned the old woman, which was how I'd known he hadn't left.
He had been the one in Amber's house.
The one who'd almost killed Chad.
He faded in gradually, sitting on the open cement floor with his back toward me.
He was more solid this time, and I could see that his shirt had been hand-sewn, though it wasn't particularly well-done.
He wasn't from this century or the twentieth--probably sometime in the eighteen hundreds.
He pulled a bucket free of the pile and rolled it across the floor, away from us both, until it hit the oakman's empty cage.
He gave me a quick, sullen look over his shoulder.
Then, staring at the remaining buckets, he said, "Are you going to make me tell you things?" "It was rude," I admitted, without really answering.
If he knew something that would help me get Chad, Corban, and me out of there in one piece, I'd do anything I needed to.
"I don't mind being rude to someone who wants to hurt me, though.
Do you know why she wants blood?" "With blood, freely given, she can kill people with a touch," he said.
"It doesn't work if she steals it--though she might do that just for spite." He waved a hand, and a box tipped on its side, spilling packing peanuts on the tabletop.
Five or six of them whirled up like a miniature tornado.
He lost interest, and they fell to the ground.
"With her touch?" I asked.
"Mortal, witch, fae, or vampire: she can kill any of them.
They called her Grandmother Death when she was alive." He looked at me again.
I couldn't read the expression on his face.
"When she was a vampire, I mean.
Even the other vampires were scared of her.