“A part of you is. A little sliver. It’s here with us.” She laughed and zipped away.
I touched my wound. A little sliver of my soul was dead?
Fuck.
But there had to be more. “Dragan is dead, too, but you helped me. Why?”
The ghost slowly turned and laughed in a far too sweet trill. “He won’t be dead for long, my love. Not if he can bring back your god. The Dark God will give him a new form, and no one wants that—not the living or the dead.”
I swallowed, though it made no difference to my dry throat. “Then please, help me!”
She twisted her hair and came so close that my teeth began to chatter, and my wound screamed. “Help me. Then I’ll help you.”
Jaxson’s voice echoed through the woods. “Savannah!”
He was closer. I turned and shouted, “I’m all right! Give me a minute.”
When I turned back, the ghost was gone.
Damn it!
I spun, searching the trees. “I’ll help you—how?”
Silence. Then a voice whispered in my ear, “Bring me a gravestone. A beautiful one that will never fade.”
I yelped and spun around, finding myself once again inches from her.
My breath caught as she pulled down the high collar of her dress and held back her head so I could see the dark bruises ringing her pale, translucent neck. “They left me hanging in these woods—never gave me a proper burial. Left my bones to be taken by wolves!”
I raised my hand to my mouth. “I’m so sorry. Why—”
She unleashed a wail that pierced the depths of my mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut, as if that could block out the unearthly sound. “They accused me of witchcraft and threw me out of my town. Hanged me from a tree!”
The ghost slumped down at the base of an oak and began to sob gently with her hands over her face.
I wanted to reach out to her, but every instinct told me not to touch. “I’m so sorry.”
Quelling her tears, she folded her hands in her lap, straightened her spine, and spoke in a soft and controlled voice that burned with underlying intensity. “I showed them. I brought plague and disease and misery until they and all their children were buried. Until not one person remained. Now they are forgotten.”
My stomach tightened at her gentle smile. She rose and sashayed from tree to tree. “Now their headstones are rubble. Their graves are looted and forlorn. Bring me a gravestone that will never crack, that will never weather, and I will be able to rest knowing that of everyone who lived in that cursed town, I will be the only one remembered!”
I needed her help, so I nodded. “If you tell me what I need to know, I’ll bring you the gravestone.”
She shook her head. “A poor bargain. Bring me the stone first, and then I will tell you anything you want to know.”
“I can’t. I need the information now. It’s now or never.”
The ghost witch slowly started to stalk toward me. “Very well. I will give you three answers, but you must swear an oath to fulfill your part of the bargain.”
“I will.”
She suddenly vanished, and cold crept over my back. I didn’t move a muscle as she whispered in my ear, “If you betray me, I will hunt down that missing sliver of your soul and make sure you never sleep again. That every waking moment of your life is filled with cold and pain.”
Okay. Ghosts were bad.
But Dragan was slipping away. No ghost had ever talked to me before like this, so the witch might be my only shot. And she only wanted a headstone.
Muscles tense and aching, I turned to face the phantom. “I swear I’ll bring you a gravestone if you answer my questions. The ghost of Dragan possessed our friend. How do we stop him from taking control?”
The ghost cackled and drew back. “You didn’t need me for that. Kick him out with an exorcism, of course!”
I ground my jaw. “But how do I stop him from possessing someone else?”
She smiled. “This is a better question. You’ll need to get his bones. A ghost always wants their bones. I wish I had mine, but they’re long gone. They left me to hang like curing meat. The wolves took my flesh and bones.”
The way she looked at me every time she said wolves made my skin crawl. She’d given me an answer, but not enough of an answer. “You haven’t explained what to do!”
“Find someone who can cast a curse, fool girl. Draw him in! Trap him!”
“You’re a witch. You could do it.”
She pulled on her long, stringy hair. “I wish, but you’ll have to find yourself a living witch! Now get out of my woods and bring me my headstone, or I will make you suffer like you have never imagined!”
The ghost whipped through the air like a silver streamer and vanished through the trees.
I looked around frantically. “You haven’t answered all my questions!”
But there was no response.
I’d needed to ask where his bones were, or more about the wound caused by the Soul Knife, and what she’d meant when she’d said I was like them—the ghosts. But that opportunity was gone. Traitorous creature.
Somehow, I imagined she would still have no compunctions about enforcing her end of the bargain.
The pull of our bond led me easily back to Jaxson, though I still had to pick my way carefully through the downed trees.
He was waiting there in the shadows, a deep, warm presence that smelled of amber and moss and pine. Somehow, the darkness made every sensation stronger, bolder, and more enticing than ever.
His fingers ran over my skin.
“You’re frozen,” he said in low tones that sent a shiver down my spine.
I felt the cold so much more now that I was close to him. I nodded and pressed close, relishing the heat of his body. I realized I could see my breath, a faint plume in the warm summer night air.
Jaxson didn’t shy away or do anything except stand, letting me take his heat. Finally, he spoke. “Did you find what you were looking for in the woods?”
“Yes,” I said at last. “But to get the information I had to promise to bring the ghost an unbreakable headstone.”
“That’s going to be tricky. I hope the information was worth it. What did she say?”
“To catch Dragan, we need to collect his bones.”
Jaxson gave a low growl of approval. “Well done, Savy. Did the ghost know where he was buried?”
I gave a deep, forlorn sigh. “I didn’t have a chance to ask. But I think I know who might.”
Aunt Laurel.