Chapter 18
Ligat turned to face the demon. His front hall was less distinct than the rest of the lodgings he’d created for himself, a hazy memory of white walls and narrow stairs, but the mirror was always clear. He hadn’t had much to do with it.
On the other side of the glass, Perthrux crouched on its haunches in a dark cavern. Two of its hands picked apart a flattened, reddish shape, idly pulling out tendons. It seemed the demon had opted for simple pleasures.
“My deepest regrets,” Ligat said, bowing low.
Perthrux could make its wishes very clearly known at a distance if it wanted, so the demon hadn’t actually been waiting very long at all, but Ligat wasn’t foolish enough to push the issue.
“If I’d known you wished to speak, I’d have hurried more about my duties—and been more decisive with Chapman. ”
“Chapman?” Perthrux’s eyes glittered with sudden interest.
“He met me outside. It seems he’s taken quite an interest in our schedule.”
“Impatient. Or suspicious.” Perthrux focused on Ligat in a sudden moment of intensity. “Which?”
“Both,” Ligat answered quickly. At such moments, he turned to instinct and reasoned out loud.
Perthrux didn’t enjoy waiting for a response—the demon wasn’t the most patient being itself.
“He’s used to mortal time scales, and he doesn’t trust you to keep your word. It’s a foolish human sort of a view.”
“Human time. Yes.” The shape in Perthrux’s hands squirmed, and Perthrux cracked it absently in half. “I myself am curious about our progress. What does the human do?”
“She goes on,” said Ligat. Then he nearly froze with shock.
Perthrux’s power, which always lay heavy on him during those conversations, was almost gone.
He could still feel it when the demon asked a direct question, but the pull to simply open his mouth and tell all that he’d seen and done had stopped.
Looking at Perthrux’s complacent, expectant expression, he didn’t think the demon knew.
He went on quickly, before his master could sense his surprise. “She’s more skilled than I would have thought, and her will is stronger.”
“Yes,” said Perthrux, flexing one of its upper hands. “Now that I’ve considered it, a bit of resistance could be helpful.”
“Could it?” he asked, carefully neutral, realizing that the right statement from the demon could mean a great deal.
Perthrux chuckled. “Dam a river. When the dam breaks, the flood will be stronger.”
* * *
Summer was right. The day after meeting Ligat, when Hazel put down the latest batch of receipts and spreadsheets from Tiffany and went into the kitchen for lunch, the dog was lying there with sunlight shining through his transparent blue form.
He scrambled clumsily to his feet and bounded toward Hazel as she crossed the threshold, barking loudly and cheerfully.
“Whoa,” she said, holding up a hand and taking a step backward.
The dog ran in circles around her legs, tail waving, but didn’t jump.
Hazel wondered if he’d had some training before his death or picked up manners gradually from observing other dogs and humans.
Maybe the dryad had taught him—the ethereal had its own ecosystem, and Hazel hadn’t found information that went any deeper than the surface.
“Good boy,” she said, kneeling and petting the dog. Her hand skimmed along a head like a cloud of cool steam. “Good dog. I made an impression, huh?” A wisp of fog grazed her cheek as the dog licked her.
If Hazel could see and hear the dog without leaving the physical world, he felt strongly enough to manifest, even if it wasn’t a conscious choice.
Tactile manifestation meant an even stronger connection, maybe one only a dog could have felt after knowing her for fifteen minutes. He followed me home. Can I keep him?
She sighed. “I’m not the safest person to hang around with right now, pupper.”
The dog stretched himself out on the floor again and put his chin on her knee.
“Okay,” she said, “here’s the deal. Things might attack me, or I might start leaking a bad kind of energy.” Hazel tapped her hip in illustration. “If that happens, you vanish. Got it?”
The dog looked up at her with liquid eyes, a shade darker blue than the rest of his body, and thumped his tail.
Clearly he understood a little more than living dogs did, but Hazel had no idea how much, or indeed how much danger he’d be in—he might have been in the ethereal longer than she’d been alive.
She scratched him idly behind the ears, which seemed to work as well on ghost dogs as on living ones even though it felt much less solid. “Also, you need a name. Not a country and western singer. And a hound dog named Blue is just too cliché.”
“Arf,” he said, not very helpfully.
“Blackberry? Because of the company you keep? But that might get confusing.” She stared across the kitchen floor, which she needed to wash. “Casper? You’re definitely friendly enough.”
He showed no reaction to either of the names, and Hazel suspected he was just happy to have a human talking to him. “And it’s shorter. Easier to yell, not that I think you’ll need much yelling at.”
That was one of the good things about ghost dogs: She doubted she’d find a spectral puddle on her floor.
She patted Casper’s head again, then gently nudged him off her lap.
Hazel couldn’t get enough leverage for that to really work, but it was more of a warning anyhow, so that he wasn’t too startled when she stood up.
The top of her leg passed through the dog anyhow. He backed up, sneezed, and shook his head, and Hazel stifled a giggle. “Sorry, Casper. I did try.”
Casper didn’t really look convinced, but his wagging tail showed there were no hard feelings. He followed Hazel as she went over to the refrigerator, hopeful as any living dog she’d ever known, and sat down to watch the proceedings.
“How would I get ham into the spirit world?” she asked, addressing both Casper and the air. “The pig’s already dead. Eating it won’t work.”
She opened the fridge, wondering if one of her books covered it or Summer knew, and then flinched upright as she heard a knock at the front door.
The new shotgun was in its safe in her room. She still had her knife, and her cell phone in her pocket, though the police would probably take a while to get there. Hazel closed the fridge again, softly, and went to the door to look out.
Maxwell Redfern stood on her porch.