Page 31 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

Two clunky steps out, she stopped in place, blinking.

The dog wasn’t wet. The dog wasn’talive. A translucent blue canine shape, floppy-eared and feather-tailed, sat on the edge of Hazel’s porch, not letting his lack of physical lungs or vocal cords get in the way of a good solid ruckus. It was a purposeful ruckus too, because the ghost dog stopped barking as soon as Hazel came out the door.

“If somebody’s fallen down an old well,” she told him, “I’m going back inside and ordering a crate of vodka.”

Her visitor whined, pawed at an object on the porch, and then whined again as his paw went right through its target. He’d gotten Hazel’s attention, though. She saw the leafy end of a long vine, which hadn’t been near the porch this afternoon, just before the plant lifted itself a few feet into the air.

Getting her attention had evidently been a team effort.

Just looking at first, Hazel followed the vine out through the wet mud and over to the tree line. It joined others there and became a version of the many-legged shape she’d bargained with, but this time the figure was taller and more bipedal. It had to be, because it had made itself into a cage.

Hazel drew her knife again—clearly she wasn’t fated to leave it sheathed for more than five minutes that day—and started across the yard with the ghost dog at her heels. She didn’t want to keep the bramble-thing waiting, but caution made her stop as soon as shecould get a better look at the creature it was holding for her. It didn’t seem able to hurt the brambles, but that was no reason to assume it was safe for humans.

The being inside the cage was just a dark shape at first, one standing so still that Hazel wondered if it was dead or pretending to be. A couple steps forward showed her that it was a little taller than her and roughly human-shaped. A couple more revealed that it was wearing a dark robe with a hood.

That was a pretty common wardrobe choice, especially among humanoids who weren’t entirely human, but Hazel didn’t even bother trying self-delusion anymore. As she neared the tree line, she knew what her ally had caught, and her heartbeat sped up.

Glowing red eyes met hers from within the hood. It had fallen back slightly, giving her a glimpse of the face underneath: roughly human, but silver-skinned, with dark red figures twisting paths along the high, sharp cheekbones. The thin lips quirked sideways as Hazel approached, and the figure arched dark eyebrows.

“Congratulations,” they said in a low voice with an accent that reminded Hazel of Shakespeare plays. She recognized it from her dream, and her raincoat suddenly felt too hot and tight. “Now, what exactly do you intend to do with me?”

Part 2

Chapter 16

The medium was almost as completely concealed as Ligat when she finally faced him, swathed in a dark green waterproof with a hood that shadowed most of her face. If her clothing had been lighter and her coat a little longer, they might have resembled a very odd pair of chess pieces.

He knew what she looked like below the coat, of course, and she had no idea about him. That advantage would have shamed an honorable man, but he’d lost his honor long since. Even the brief memory of it startled him. Ligat brushed it away, prepared to fully benefit from the most pleasant advantage he’d had in a while. He could have drawn most of Hazel Lewis’s alluring form from memory alone, had he been any sort of artist. He could even picture it in his sleep, if the scraps of his dream were any guide.

Now he was the one who couldn’t move. The reversal was…intriguing.

The medium didn’t seem to share his mix of emotions, at least not if the flat tone of her voice was any clue. “You’ve been spying on me.”

“Yes,” Ligat said. It wasn’t as though she’d believe he was the postman.

“For the demon I fought?”

“Yes,” he said again. No reasonable person could have drawn another conclusion, and therefore neither he nor Perthrux lostanything by his admission. “Do you have some sort of punishment in mind?”

He thought he heard the woman inhale sharply, though the damned rain meant he couldn’t be sure. She did raise her knife. “I could kill you now.”

The idea drew laughter from places in Ligat so deep he’d almost believed them gone, and he let his head fall back, watching the knife the whole time. It wasn’t the blade she’d stabbed him with originally, but he suspected this one was silver too. “Try it,” he said. “Please.”

Miss Lewis stopped. The half grown, translucent puppy at her side whined. Her minion’s vines tightened around Ligat, and the faint pain as the thorns pierced his flesh washed over him like a lover’s touch.

“I’ve hurt you before,” she mused, keeping the knife raised. Water rolled down the blade and along her tense wrist, the raindrops making her skin shine in the gray light.

“You have. Though you’ll have alongway to go before you can match my master in torture, especially with only the one weapon to hand.”Thatwas a thought to quench some of his desire.

“Ah—” Shehadn’tbeen going down that road, though she covered her surprise decently. “We’re very inventive. Mortals. I hear it’s one of our better qualities.”

Ligat’s mouth twisted. “You can’t bethatinventive.” He would have liked to see her face, to know whether and how he was getting through, even to find out how well she could mask her reactions. He would have liked a number of things. “So, then. You can try and kill me with that blade. We can wait out here until your…ally tires.”

“And you can’t free yourself?”

“Let’s say I don’t want to take the trouble.” The dryad was strong, hardy in the way of weeds and wasteland plants. Freeing himself would have involved calling on Perthrux. “Did you trap me to accuse me?” he asked. “If so, you have your answer. If you want an apology, you’ll be a long time getting one.”

“No,” said the medium slowly. “I want answers.”