Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [78]
“Murder.” He didn’t say it like a question. “They couldn’t have, I don’t know, called up a ghost from someone already dead?” Sergei offered the possibility without any real sense of optimism.
“Maybe. Hell, I don’t know a damn thing about raising the dead, or using spirits in magic at all. Not exactly in the playbook, if you know what I mean.” Not in the playbook at all. Not any one Neezer had ever told her about, anyway. Then again, Neezer had been a pretty straight arrow. That didn’t sound like anything he’d want to talk about—or want her to know about. Admirable, but a real pain now when the info would be useful.
Wren got up, pacing the length of the room and then back again, gesturing with her hands while she thought her way through the problem, like a professor lecturing before a class. “Okay. Work it through. According to most magus theories, spirits are pure energy tied to flesh for the duration of a life. Where that energy comes from, you’re moving more into religion than magic, and a whole different headache. Now, I was taught that at the moment of death, the energy, or spirit, dissipates, goes back to the elemental flow.”
“In which case, no ghost.” Sergei leaned back into the chair, managing to look totally relaxed even though she could feel the alert tension in his half-lidded gaze.
“Normally, yeah. But that’s why I think this person had to be alive. When the spell was cast, anyway. I’m not sure exactly when they’d have to kill him. If they could catch the spirit as the flesh died, and trap it then—” Wren shuddered. “That’s nasty. That’s really, really nasty. Killing’s one thing. Trapping something like that—what if it was claustrophobic? Ick.”
“It gets worse,” Sergei told her. “According to our client, we were hired to retrieve the entire cornerstone—the spell contained within the stone, as well as the stone itself. We failed. He is therefore refusing to pay the final installment of the fee.” That fact clearly angered him more than the fact of a generations-dead murder victim, however tragic.
Wren stared at him, thinking it through as quickly as she could. “And if they used the energy of the death to create the spell, somehow, or activate it, or whatever…which means it’s probably tied to the ghost…”
“Then if the ghost isn’t recaptured, our contract is technically void, and they have every right not to pay us.”
Wren threw up her hands in disgust. “Christ on a Popsicle. You couldn’t have told me that little detail before?”
Sergei met her eyes squarely, not a little irritated. “I didn’t know that little detail before. And even if I had, what could I have said? I’m not the one who’s the expert on magic here, am I?”
Wren ran her hands through her hair, pulling at the ends in her frustration. He was right. Damn him. That was one real and dangerous flaw in their system. Sergei didn’t know enough, couldn’t, for all his reading and questioning, know enough about magic, or current, to know when he was being yanked around in negotiations. “Okay, new rule number one. We know all the facts before we take a job. No reconnoitering after the fact. Even if that means you have to put them on hold and call me if something—anything—seems hinky. Okay?” He hesitated. “Okay?”
They stared at each other for a long, drawn-out moment. Then Sergei exhaled, nodded. Wren snorted. Great going forward. But for now…
“I suppose bowing out of the contract is a no-go?” His glare was answer enough. Screw up one job, and your reputation was shot. Especially when the screw-up was through your own stupid fault.
“Right. All we have to do is figure out how to track down a ghost and shove it back into the marble, and we can collect our paycheck. Piece of freaking cake.”
As though to mirror the mood inside, the day turned overcast early on, and before midday, the faint patter of rain began hitting the roof and windows. It was a mild front, nothing brewing in the clouds,