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I draw up short with a sharper hitch of my pulse. She knows about the murdered noblewoman—she saw me there. Is this blackmail?
The voice continues on, unfazed by my silence.Not that I can blame you. I wouldn’t have wanted to dally around that scene either. Although it’d have been nice if you’d at least stayed close enough to check whether the villain who murdered me came by to gloat.
My jaw goes slack for a second before I snap my mouth shut again. The words snag in my throat before I force them out. “Yourmurderer…?”
Yes. Let’s keep up. Some ruthless miscreant had me slaughtered in a gods-forsaken alley, you ever-so-heroically if futilely raced to my rescue, and somehow or other when my soul left my body, it ended up in yours.
Her way of speaking does sound like a noble. Would it really make sense for there to have just happened to beanothernoblewoman, one with telepathic magic, hanging around in Slaughterwell to watch me stumble on that body and then managing to follow me all across the city for the rest of the day?
I press my free hand to my forehead. What sense does it make that a dead woman’s soul could have taken up residence in my head? I’ve never heard of that happening to anyone.
No matter how I look at this situation, it’s a whole lot of fucking impossible.
“How could your soul have ended up inme?” I demand.
I haven’t got a clue. I promise you, this wasn’t my idea.
“Well, gods be sure it wasn’t mine.”
I stare through the dimness, my stomach still listing uneasily. Am I really going to believe her story?
Wait. There’s a simple way to test whether she really is inside my body and not simply watching me.
I back up until my ass brushes a stack of boxes and tuck my hand behind me, still clutching my knife in the other. In the cramped space where no one could possibly see, I press two fingers against my spine. “How many fingers am I holding out?”
The voice in my head snorts derisively, but after a few seconds she must realize I do expect an answer.Two. Must we really play this game? There are more important—
My skin has chilled, but it could have been a lucky guess. I adjust my hand to extend all four fingers, including the partial stump of my pointer. “And now?”
Four. Look, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been here in your head while you’ve roved all over the city, so it’s rather difficult formeto doubt what’s going on. And that I can’t do much of anything about it.
Something about those last words sends a deeper jab of ice through my veins. What was it she said earlier—that she wanted to talk because she couldn’t ‘get things done’ otherwise?
I’ve really got a ghost in my head, and she’s been there for hours. Hours in which my head hasn’t always felt entirely normal.
Those dizzy spells that came out of the blue…
“Did you try to makemedo things for you?” I have to ask. “To… to take over my mind?”
There’s a moment of silence that’s almost sheepish. Her voice returns as brashly nonchalant as before.Who wouldn’t have? Here I am, trapped in a body that’s not mine and that I don’t know, with no way of reaching out to anyone who could help unless it’s through you—how could Inottry?
Somehow she makes it sound totally reasonable and not like she attempted to hijack my life.
I grimace, picturing the chestnut-haired girl in her silk dress like she must have been before someone jabbed a knife through her neck. I can practically see her arching her eyebrows and tilting her head with measured coyness.
I force myself to return to my bed, sitting down on the heap of fabric. Tension stays coiled all through my frame. “Why didn’t you just talk to me?”
You mean since that’s going so well right now? I couldn’t imagine how you’d react. It would have been much simpler if I could have borrowed you for a day or two to get my affairs in order… I promise I’d have returned you in the same state I found you in, or possibly better.
Her tone implies thatbetterwouldn’t be too hard. I find myself clenching my jaw again.
“Considering that all I know aboutyouis that you managed to get yourself murdered, forgive me for being skeptical.”
Well, I’m talking to you now. You do know I was murdered, so surely you can agree that justice should be done?
“I expect the powers that be will investigate whether I get involved or not. It’s not as if anyone could imagine you tripped and accidentally fell on that knife.”
That’s not the only—She pauses with a sigh of exasperation. I have the sense of her gathering her temper.
