And a ball of pissed-off energy that stopped just above my drooling face, resolving itself into a disembodied head wearing a Stetson and a scowl.
“You rang?” Billy demanded dryly.
“Nngghnh,” I said, which was the best I could do with frozen vocal cords and a lolling tongue.
“Would you mind repeating that?”
“Nngghnh, nngghnh!”
“Very funny,” Billy said.
“NNGGHNH!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” he said, disgusted, and merged with me so we could actually have a conversation. “Now, you want to tell me why you can’t move?”
“I got hit with a spell.”
“And why those guys wanted to kill you?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“And what the hell ‘nngghnh’ means?”
“It means we’re running out of time!” I said, and cursed. Because nothing worked. And damn the acolytes! And damn the dark mages! And damn everybody who had magic but me! I was supposed to have more magic than everyone else, to be able to do things other people couldn’t, not to get caught in a—
My thoughts screeched to a halt as my eyes fell on the golem. Which had just collapsed, probably because spells don’t outlive the caster, including containment spells, and the mage had just departed for the other side. I hadn’t been paying much attention to it before, but I was now.
And maybe I did have some magic that would work, after all.
• • •
“This isn’t going to work,” Billy told me a couple minutes later.
“It is working,” I said, twitching a finger.
It was fat and orange, without a nail or a hair or the freckles common to a human. It looked more like an uncooked hot dog than a finger, but it was moving. Which was more than I could say for my broken doll of a body still sprawled in the stairway.
Billy remained in house, so to speak, because my body would die without a soul in residence. Which is why I was currently getting a death glare out of my own blue eyes. He could blink them now, and had managed to mostly pull my tongue back where it belonged, although my voice slurred like an old drunk’s.
But it was an improvement. And hopefully an indication that the mage’s spell was weakening. But not fast enough.
“I wish you could help me up,” I told Billy.
“I wish you’d stop using that voice,” he told me back. “It’s . . . disturbing.”
“Sorry.”
I kind of liked it. Deep and powerful and scary, it matched the body—and the body’s former occupant, whom I could still smell as a pervasive stench. As if evil had permeated the very pores this thing didn’t have.
Or maybe ancient demons just didn’t wear deodorant.
“Isn’t that freaking you out?” Billy demanded as I settled more comfortably into my temporary skin.
“Yes,” I said, but it didn’t sound convincing even to me.
But I was freaking out; of course I was. I was a disembodied soul trying to wear the shed skin of an evil demon, which I was controlling through the very illegal magic known as necromancy. Or was trying to, I amended, as I started to get up.
And had a ghostly-looking girl leg poke awkwardly out of the golem’s massive shin.