Haunted (Otherworld 5)

"Okay, here it comes."

The woman leaned toward the television. Her eyes glowed. Another jolt as I recognized the same rapturous expression I'd seen on the woman at the grave-site.

"Come on, turn it up," she said, socking the man in the arm.

He laughed and raised the volume. From where I stood, I couldn't see the screen, but I could hear the tape. The voices on it were distorted. Home-movie quality.

I cast a blur spell and crept across the carpet until I could see the screen. It was blocked by a light green shirt. Someone with his back to the camera. Typical. The shirt moved aside. A shot of flesh. A naked female leg. Oh, yeah. A very typical home movie, the kind video recorders were made for. This I did not need to see.

I started to turn away when the camera pulled back and I saw the full image. A girl, no older than Savannah, naked and bound to a bed. Bloodstained bedding.

"Here it comes." The woman's voice rose a few notches, and she imitated the girl's sobs. "I want my mommy!"

With a roar, I launched myself at the woman on the sofa. My hands flew for her throat, nails out. I hit her, passed right through, and tumbled into darkness.

3

I LANDED HARD ON THE MARBLE FLOOR OF THE throne room. It didn't hurt. I wished it did. I even slammed my fist into the floor, hoping for a jolt of pain to knock the rage from my brain, but my hand only bounced off as if I'd socked a pillow.

I scrambled to my feet. The middle Fate stood there, watching me.

"Send me back," I said.

"Eve, you--"

"Send me back now! You can't show me that and then rip me out of there before I can do anything about it."

"You can't do anything about it," she said softly. "It's over. Long over. What you saw was a memory."

I rubbed my face. A memory. A glimpse into the past. I stared at the white wall, let it clear my mind. I didn't have a clue who the people had been. Obviously serial killers and probably infamous, but I'd never been one to follow crime. In my world, the killers I had to worry about were the ones in my little black book, not the ones on the eleven o'clock news.

When I glanced up, the elderly Fate was at the spinning wheel, and I braced myself, sure she'd jump on me for an answer. Yet she didn't even look up. Just clipped off the length of yarn the middle Fate had measured out for her, then handed it to a wraith-clerk. Then the child Fate took over and threaded the spinning wheel. She lifted her eyes to mine, then quickly looked back down.

So what was the connection between the two sets of murders? Or were they two sets? There was only one spirit missing from the nether regions. Two women, similar in appearance, both killing teens. So they had to be the same person. To a human, such a thing would be impossible, but supernatural minds are more open to other possibilities.

I knew I should think through those possibilities, and come up with the most likely one, to impress the Fates with my astounding capacity for logical reasoning. I knew that...and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"Vampire," I said.

The youngest of the Fates glanced around the spinning wheel, her face screwed up in a look every mother recognizes as "Huh?"

"Two sets of murders, both committed by the same woman, who doesn't age between the time of big hair and miniskirts and, well, big hair and miniskirts. Similar fashion styles, but definitely a twenty-five, thirty-year gap without so much as a wrinkle. She must be a vampire. Most vamps stick to their necessary kill quotas but there are always those who get a taste for it and--"

The crone took over. "It's not a vampire, Eve. We have our own ways of dealing with vampire spirits, which you would know if you took any interest at all in the world around you. Try again."

The old Fate's bright eyes pinned me like a butterfly to a mat. In school, I'd had very little respect for my teachers, and for grown-ups in general. Only one teacher had ever been able to make me squirm. Grade six. Mrs. Appleton, the kind of sour old woman whose very gaze is acid to your self-confidence, who always looks as if she expects very little from you, and is never disappointed. The old Fate had that look down pat.

"Uh, I, well..." I straightened. "Okay, well, I don't know a lot about time-travel"--I caught her look--"but I do know that's not what's going on here. So the explanation must be..."

I studied her gaze. No clues there. Forge ahead.

"Reincarnation," I said.

The crone morphed into the middle-aged woman. "How much do you know about reincarnation, Eve?"

A lightning-bolt switch and the old woman cut in. "Not nearly enough, considering she's been here three years." She fixed me with one eye, squeezing the other shut. "Well? Let's hear it. Everything you know about reincarnation. Should take a good five, ten seconds."

"I know it's possible," I said. "Rare, but possible."