Sylvie got Matteo’s second hand free, already saying, “Hurry, run, don’t look back—” and took a fist to the jaw that sent her sprawling.

She tasted blood, her lip split against her teeth, and her head reeled. The table jerked on the stone, Demalion fighting to save himself, Wright, her . . . unable to do anything.

Sylvie spat blood, fury at yet another bad decision fueling her. She’d read it wrong. The lieutenant’s lich ghost wasn’t translucent because he had been weakening. It was translucent because most of his soul had taken over Matteo’s flesh: She’d just freed a bad guy.

Odalys was laughing, as entertained as if she were watching a pratfall comedy.

Knees under her, Sylvie pivoted, got up in time to block the next sluggish blow with her forearm. Her sneakers slipped on the damp stone, the wavelets lapping over the edge of the pool.

Matteo—no, the lieutenant—twisted in her grip, dodged her blows at nose, neck, groin, knee, and she gritted her teeth and cursed. He was getting faster, learning his new body. And that was nothing but bad news. Matteo had been fit in body but soft in experience. Sylvie, who fought dirty, ugly, and for keeps, could have had Matteo down and restrained by now, but she was fighting an experienced soldier in a young man’s body; a man who’d killed before, full of desperation to stay alive. Experience told. Despite her best efforts, Sylvie took a punch to the collarbone that sent her reeling, gasping for air; then his hand was at her nape, at her waist, dragging her the two steps to the glimmering blue-lit pool.

“Hold her! Hold her!” Odalys shrieked. Sylvie got a quick glance of Odalys looking alarmed, a more disturbing glance of Strange making the scene, her ghost shape swelled nearly solid with stolen bits of soul; then Sylvie’s world was blue-lit water and the bite of chlorine in her nose.

She had a heartbeat of time to realize his intention, sucked in a thin thread of air, all she could manage before the lieutenant pushed her facedown into the water. He knelt on her hips, pressed her head deeper. Her hair streamed about her; her nails scrabbled at the stucco side of the pool, keeping him from slamming her head into the side wall of the pool. She refused to let out the air she’d taken, refused to give in and take a breath of water. She kicked, felt her heels hit his back, but too weakly.

One hand, her forearm on the wall of the pool, bracing her, she reached back with her other, clawing at his flesh, feeling the knotted muscle beneath the smooth skin. He flinched briefly, his grip on her nape slackening, and she got her head up, took a healthy gulp of air, caught a glimpse of something she hadn’t noticed before.

From this angle, so close to the concrete, Zoe’s chair was centered in a glimmering salt ring. Strange was pacing it, complaining in an incomprehensible fashion at an unbearable pitch.

Zoe’s soul and body apparently weren’t up for grabs.

The relief was sweet, if short-lived. Zoe, possessed by a dead woman or a slave to a necromancer—there wasn’t a win there. At best, there was a delay of game.

Sylvie gasped for air, for breath. Her attacker firmed his grip, fingers pinching tight on the back of her skull, and down she went again. Waiting for her to lose consciousness. To breathe in when she should be breathing out. To slacken her grip on her will, her body, and open a path for Margaret Strange.

She twisted, managed to get her mouth above water for the moment, an ear that popped with water flowing out of it. Margaret Strange complained, “You promised me a body, Odalys. I paid in advance.”

“A deposit’s not enough,” Odalys said. “Your estate is worthless. But I’ll give you a body, out of the goodness of my heart. Just not Zoe.”

Sylvie clawed at the coping, tried to claw him again, and he yanked her jacket up over her flailing arm. The grave-dirt package still left in her jacket—Lt. Charles Sorenson’s grave dirt—slid into the water and drifted downward in muddy clouds. Sylvie clawed at it, tried to catch it, but her fingers tipped it deeper in a slimy cloud.

Weight hit her back, and she coughed—water rushing into her mouth, choking her, her vision blurred by more than the dirty water—Sylvie went limp, praying, Let this work, let this work. . . .

And she found herself pulled out of the water, flung onto the limestone with jarring force; water burbled out of her throat, dark and gritty, and Sylvie couldn’t breathe for coughing. The lieutenant knelt on her outflung arms, kept her splayed and displayed. “Odalys. She’s ready now.”

Sylvie held back the laughter; oh, she was ready. Just give her the chance and she’d show them how ready she was. . . .

Strange peered down at her, the ghostly blur of her face sharpening. “This one?”

“It’s better for your purposes,” Odalys said, voice sweet, low, coaxing. “Zoe’s magically talented. A budding necromancer. Too much for you to take over, perhaps. But her sister . . .”

Zoe’s eyes were huge above her gag; her hands were nearly free. Blood streaked her wrists.

Sylvie coughed water, let her limbs stay limp as if the fight had been beaten out of her. “You think you’re going to keep Zoe? As an apprentice? After you kill her sister?”

Odalys came to the very edge of her salt ring, and said, “Zoe will remember you came here all hotfoot to keep her from her birthright. From her power. She’ll get over it. Her kind always does. What’s family compared to power? And if she proves recalcitrant? Well, there are spells for that.”

“She’s older,” Strange said.

“She’s legal,” Odalys said. “No waiting. I know you’re a woman of . . . appetites.” The coaxing tone dropped from her voice, became blunt. “Take it or leave it, Strange. You stiffed me my fee. I’m being extraordinarily generous here.”

“Generous with my body,” Sylvie snarled. “I don’t think—”

“Put her under again,” Odalys said. “She’s too lively.”

Sylvie twisted, fought, kicked, but it was mostly for show. After all, he was taking her back the direction she wanted to be. The pool. Still, she needed to—she managed to squirm away from him enough that he had hold of her hips when she went back into the water, instead of her neck. It allowed her the leverage she wanted.

Sylvie pushed forward, put her hands against the wall, pulled herself into the water, splashing free, ungainly as a beached dolphin. But she was in; she was free of his hands. She hit the bottom, pushed off, lunged upward, and caught the lieutenant around the knees, pulling him into the water after her.

He shrieked as he hit it and went utterly limp, as if the surface of the water had slapped him senseless. He sank past her, hit the bottom, and drifted back up again, limbs splayed. Foam splattered from his skin.

Grave-dirt soup, she thought, but was already moving past him. She surged out of the pool, toward Demalion. Zoe was safe enough for the moment, and Odalys was stuck in her circle.

Sylvie’s clothes were clammy, slapping and constricting her skin, and in the midst of that she missed the first cold press of Margaret’s barbed tongue lashing tight about her neck. But she couldn’t miss the muffled breathlessness of a pillow pressed tight to her face, even in the ghost’s memory, replaying the murder that gave her another chance at life. All the grave dirt on her skin, in her clothes, in the water streaming off her meant nothing to Strange. Just like the showdown at Invocat. An unbound lich ghost was more powerful than that.

Faintly, even as she clawed uselessly at the feeding tube, scoring her own skin, she heard Strange say, Acceptable. Keep your little would-be witch.

Relief seared her, weakened her just a little bit: Whatever happened here tonight, Zoe would live. . . .

As a slave. But you won’t. Demalion won’t. Wright won’t. Maybe they’re already gone, and you’ll miss it. As if to emphasize the voice’s point, she heard Demalion kicking at the table; it sounded entirely too much like death throes.