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“No! You need to stay here.”
“Why? Am I not merely a spirit here? What could happen?”
I looked nervously at the thousands of ghosts quietly observing us and wondered whether I should tell him. Normally, spirits don’t frighten me. There are rare examples who, like Billy, can feed off the energy of humans to a limited degree, but I have always been able to repel them at will. Besides, most find that it requires more energy to attack a human than they get from the process, so they usually don’t bother unless you irritate them. But things had changed. Here, I didn’t have the protection of a body and all the defenses that went along with it. I was a foreign spirit on their turf, and if they decided to be annoyed about it, I might be in big trouble. Billy had told me that ghosts can cannibalize one another for energy—apparently it’s a lot easier than using human donors. He’d been mugged more than once, and one time it had been so bad that I’d had to donate some power quickly or he might have faded too far to come back. Now here I was, facing several thousand hungry ghosts who had every reason to be steamed that I was intruding on their territory. So far they hadn’t made a move, but they might not like us roaming around their castle. I didn’t intend to find out.
“You don’t want to know,” I told him shortly.
He didn’t argue, but his brows drew together as he surveyed the woman. He appeared genuinely concerned about her, which thawed my attitude towards him a little. It also made me wonder whether he was in equal danger himself. Billy Joe was back in our time, babysitting my body, but Tomas currently had no spirit in residence—which was another way of saying he was dead. Of course, he died every day when the sun came up, but this wasn’t the usual way. I hoped we weren’t going to find a permanent corpse when we got back.
“Let’s get her loose,” I said, to distract myself as much as him. We began trying to pry the woman off the rack, but it was harder than it sounds. Although I tried not to hurt her, I did some damage. The ropes had eaten into her flesh, and blood had dried around them almost like glue; when I pulled them away from her wrists and ankles, bits of gory tissue came off, too.
I glanced around the room, hoping to see another source of water, but there was nothing except the men chained to the walls. One was hanging from a lip of stone about nine feet off the ground. His arms were bound behind him, pulled up at a terrible angle, and weights had been attached to his feet. He wasn’t moving but swung there like a limp doll. Another was lying in the straw below, moaning softly. I did a double take; he actually looked like he’d been boiled. His skin was a horrible mottled red and was peeling away in strips. The other emaciated men showed signs that the torturers had already had some time with them. Backs were beaten raw, hands and feet were missing here and there, and pieces of flesh had been gouged out. I turned away before I was sick.
Something nudged my elbow and I looked down to see a flask floating in the air beside me. I took hold of it gingerly, eyeing the watching crowd with some suspicion. But none of them made any threatening moves, and the container smelled like whiskey. I’d have preferred water, but the alcohol might dull her pain. “Here, drink this.” I knelt by the woman’s head and held the flask to her lips. She swallowed a little of the contents, then mercifully passed out.
I left Tomas tending to her and went to try to free the men, but it soon became obvious that it wasn’t going to happen. The woman had been tied with ropes, I guess because chains don’t stretch well, but the men were in iron. I glanced at Tomas. I didn’t want to talk to him, much less ask for help, but there was no way I could get them free on my own. “Can you break these?” I finally asked.
“I can try.” He came over and we both gave it our best, but nothing happened. It was all we could do to lift the heavy chains, much less manage anything as strenuous as breaking them. We seemed to have lost a lot of strength in the transition. Just pulling the woman loose had felt like I’d spent three hours on a treadmill set on high.
Overall, I decided, things weren’t looking good. I didn’t know where I was, how I was going to get back or when the torturers were likely to show up. A rat in the corner twitched tiny whiskers at me and I kicked the ladle at it. Oh, yeah, and if I did get back where I belonged, I’d be in the middle of a fight that I wasn’t completely sure we were winning. Even for me this counted as a really bad day.
“This is useless, Cassie,” Tomas said after a few minutes. “I am as weak as a human here, and my strength is fading quickly. We should help the woman while we can. There is nothing to be done for the rest.”
I reluctantly agreed. It seemed to be my night for rescues. I eyed the ghostly army that was staring at me patiently. “Um, does anybody know how to get out of here?”
The ghosts looked at me, then at each other. Some shuffling was done until one was pushed out of the throng. It was a young man, maybe eighteen, dressed in an outfit that looked like a poor relation’s version of Louis-César’s. It was blue wool and he had a brown hat in his hand with a jaunty yellow feather sticking out of the broad brim. I guessed he’d been a dandy in life, since his cravat was very frothy, his wig was long and curled to within an inch of its life and his buff leather shoes had comical, big yellow bows on them. Pretty colorful for a ghost; based on experience, I guessed he’d been dead a year or less.
He gave a bow, and although it wasn’t as courtly as Louis-César’s, he used the same phrase. “A votre service, mademoiselle.”
Great, just great. I looked at Tomas, who was kneeling by the woman, checking her pulse. “I don’t suppose you speak French?”
He shook his head. “A few phrases, but nothing that would help here.” He looked bitter. “I am rarely allowed at Senate headquarters.”
“Since when do they speak French in Vegas?”
He looked at me impatiently. “The European Senate is based in Paris, Cassie.”
“I didn’t know you were with them.”
“There are a great many things you don’t know.”
I didn’t have time to figure out what he was talking about. I regarded the young ghost with some annoyance. As grateful as I was not to be back in Louis-César’s body, I missed having access to his knowledge. “We don’t speak French,” I told him.
The young man looked confused, and some more shuffling was done. Another man, older this time and dressed more plainly in simple fawn-colored knee pants and a navy blue coat, was pushed forward. He hadn’t bothered to cover his bald head with a wig, and he looked like the no nonsense type. “I was a wine trader in life, mademoiselle. I often had reason to visit Angleterre; perhaps I may be of service?”
“Look, I don’t know what I’m doing here. Or where this is. Or what you want. Some information would help.”
He looked puzzled. “Your pardon, mademoiselle, but we also are at something of a loss. You are spirits, but not like us. Are you angels, sent at last in answer to our prayers?”
I snorted. I’d been compared to a lot of things in life, but never that. And Tomas sure as hell didn’t qualify, unless fallen angels counted. “Um, no. Not really.” The younger man said something and the older one looked shocked. “What’d he say?”
The man seemed embarrassed. “He fears for his lover’s life, that she will die as he did, as we all did, in this place of everlasting suffering. He said that he would not care if you were from le diable, from Satan himself, if you come bearing hope of vengeance. But he did not mean it.”
Looking at the anger on the young man’s face, I doubted that. “We’re not demons. We’re…it’s complicated. I just want to get her out of here before the jailer gets back. Can you tell me where I am?”
“You are in Carcassonne, mademoiselle, the very gate of Hell.”
“And that’s where? I mean, is this France?” The man looked at me as if I’d asked him what year it was, which had actually been my next question. Screw it. I didn’t have time to explain to a ghost that, no, I wasn’t actually crazy. At least, I didn’t think so. “Never mind. Just tell me where to take her. They’re going to kill her—she’s got to escape.”
