“Alive as you but without breath, as cold in my life as in my death,” Jonah said. His voice tried to stick in his throat, but he forced it out as he waded forward through the slow, thick air. “Never a thirst though I always drink, dressed in mail but never a clink. What am I?”
It was an old riddle, but that didn’t matter. The only thing the dead ever learned was that they were dead, and the knowledge of it gnawed at them. Philosopher’s debate or a children’s riddle, they couldn’t resist. Just in case they could work out how to undo whatever had been done.
The thing raised its head. The spill of old vomit dried up as it gagged it back down, a dark stain that bulged against the see-through walls of its hollow throat. Through the knotted hair, Jonah saw a gash of red—lipstick? Blood?—open.
“I’ve always been the weirdo, with flowers in my hands,” it sang in a shivery, sour, minor tone that made Jonah’s teeth itch. All the dead had were the memories of their life. To communicate, they had to unravel and spend those memories, every word a little bit of the spirit hollowed out. Take away enough and all that was left was a hag. There wasn’t much of a person left in this thing to start with, and a lyric less now.
What they meant to say was down to interpretation, but it pretty clearly hadn’t gotten the answer to the riddle. Which was good. If it had—the theory went—it could have switched places with Jonah.
Alive again. Sort of. They weren’t really very good at it anymore, no matter how much they wanted it.
“No,” Jonah said. “Try again.”
The thing tilted its head too far toward its shoulder as it picked through what it had for round two. A pallid, puffy tongue darted between broken teeth as it thought.
Jonah was nearly close enough to touch Luke. He had no idea what to do after that.
OK, that was a lie. He had lots of ideas about what to do, but none that were acceptable.
On the floor, Luke stirred. He tried to move, groaned, and then choked on whatever had poured into his throat. Bile came down his nose and dribbled from the corners of his mouth. That was when he registered the nightmare that squatted on him—the taste and the smell and the grotesque wrongness of it—and started to scream. He lashed out frantically in a desperate effort to get it off him. He slapped at it with both hands as he kicked at the ground to try and scramble away.
The thing just grabbed his face again. It ignored the thud of fists against its shoulders and stomach. Or maybe it just didn’t notice them. It was possible to hurt a ghost, but not like that.
No. Jonah glanced around and checked out the refreshment table, still scattered with bits of sugar and used coffee cups. To hurt a ghost, you needed salt, iron, or something else that was… anathema to it.
“Are you going to try again?” Jonah snapped his fingers to get the hag’s attention back. It didn’t let go of Luke, but it did swivel its head around like an owl to look at him. “What am I?”
It dropped its jaw open like a snake and hissed out a jumble of noises—chimes and bells and a bright, careless cackle of laughter.
“Not that either,” Jonah said. “Third time’s the charm.”
It was a turn of phrase. That was all. The hex still clamped down on his tongue like a vise when he said it, sealed it with his own blood. His jaw seized up, and his teeth clamped together so that he couldn’t pull a fast one.
Shit. That was all he needed.
Jonah ignored the claustrophobic clatter in his head and scuffed forward another inch. The hag watched him with blank white eyes through the trash-locks of its hair. Its mouth opened and closed as it scrabbled for one last answer, and Jonah didn’t even let it cross his mind how much it looked like a fish.
He could feel the hexed hook in his tongue quiver with the desire to pull him over, dunk him back into the stagnant water of magic. It would get him killed, but that didn’t matter. The unnatural would rather have a dead Carrow in its pocket than a living one free.
It was going to have to wait for that, though.
“It’s going to be hot today. 101. Maybe they’ll call it off?” There was an aftertaste of sweetness to the hag’s thinned-out memory, cut through with the rancid present.
“Three strikes,” Jonah said as his jaw released. “You’re out.”
He lunged forward, grabbed Luke by the ankles, and yanked him backward unceremoniously. The groggy dark-haired man yelped in confusion as he skidded along the floor, jeans and hoodie slicked with the filth that had dripped out of the hag. A wild swing caught Jonah on the nose, hard enough to make Jonah stagger briefly at the flash of pain.
No good deed goes unpunished, the memory of his gran reminded him sharply,so make sure it doesn’t go unpaid for either.
He ignored her as he grabbed the collar of Luke’s hoodie and hauled him to his feet. The hag hunched over, limbs tucked awkwardly under a bone-and-dried-meat torso, and squalled in awful bone-rattling rage as it scuttled after its prey.
“Wha… what the fuck?” Luke managed. He retched and doubled over to spit out bile-yellow puke. He got it on his shoes as Jonah dragged him through it and made a disgusted noise at the squelch. His breathing was ragged and uneven, halfway to a panic attack. “What’s… whatisthat?”
Jonah didn’t have time to go through that particular primer. He hung on to Luke with one hand and grabbed one of the carafes of coffee with the other. The lid was already off, coffee-stained plastic laid out on the cheap paper tablecloth. Jonah gripped it by the mouth and swung it up and round.
The hag lunged for him—broken, filthy hands outstretched—and the arc of lukewarm black coffee splashed into its face. It recoiled as its skin blistered like it had been hit with battery acid, withered away in ragged black-stained patches that you could see bone through. The skin around its bloodred mouth split in two long, dry wounds that ran nearly to its ears.
It wasn’t iron or salt, but what better repellent for a creature that stank of piss and sour liquor than black coffee from an AA meeting? Enough people believed in it, prayed to it every morning as they tried to exorcise the regrets and the headache of the night before.
