“Where were you this afternoon?” he asked.

“On the Fortune with Phaelan. So I’ve got a fine alibi—a Benares pirate vouching for an accused Benares murderer.” I snorted. “That’ll carry weight in court.”

Right around my neck.

Nachtmagus Vidor Kalta’s pale, long-fingered hand hovered above the dead man’s lips. “His memories were the first thing taken, then his conscious mind, his soul, and finally what little remained of his life force. The ritual . . . the act that resulted in this is called cha’nescu, and the victim was conscious and fully aware while it happened.”

“Shit,” Vegard muttered from behind me.

Kalta nodded without looking away from the body. “Quite.” The nachtmagus regarded the general like a lab project. “A complete absence of life,” he murmured as if he were the only one in the room. “Not one flicker remains. It’s as if he never lived. Grisly work, yet truly astounding in its complexity.”

I remembered Nukpana’s “bravo.” Kalta’s comment was just as chilling.

Vidor Kalta was tall, thin, and seemingly born to wear funeral black. His dark hair was cropped close to his head. I guess when you chased down ghouls and banshees for a living, short hair was a safety precaution. Kalta’s features were sharp, and his face had the pallor one would expect of someone who worked mostly nights. But it was his eyes that gave him away. Black and bright as a raven’s, Vidor Kalta’s eyes were a reflection of a quick mind, a keen intellect, and, if what I felt coming off of him was any indication, an incredible power. Power that was all the more impressive because of his restraint. It was like the man had Death on a leash, and it was following him around like a puppy.

“Do you know how it was done?” Mychael asked.

Kalta nodded. “Everything was consumed that made General Aratus who he was.” He took a small towel from beside the table and carefully wiped his hands. “Once the entity that did this began the process, it continued to feed until there was nothing left. Pausing at any point would have negated the ritual.”

My stomach did a slow, nauseating roll. “Feed?”

“Not a pleasant procedure—nor painless. Though the act itself is said to be done through mouth-to-mouth contact.”

That did it; I was going to be sick. “A kiss?”

“Not one you would ever want to receive, Mistress Benares. Or be able to survive.”

“What or who could have done it?”

“Greater demons are the most common culprits.”

“What are the uncommon culprits?”

“A nachtmagus with enough power could have done this.” Vidor Kalta smiled at his macabre joke in a flash of small teeth, white and even. “But considering Mid’s present predicament, I believe the response you seek is a spiritual entity—one of those previously imprisoned in the Saghred, perhaps?”

“We have a suspect,” Mychael told him. “Could a spirit have done this?”

“That would depend on who the spirit was in life, and how long they had been imprisoned inside the Saghred.” Kalta’s bright, black eyes were on me. “From what Mistress Benares reported from her most enviable journeys inside the stone, most of those inside would have been too weakened to perform the ritual. Do you know the ages of the escaped spirits?”

Mychael hesitated a moment before answering. “We do. The youngest is approximately forty years old; the eldest is more than four thousand.”

“Fascinating. Since you have only captured one, may I ask how you know this?”

“We have a source.”

“May I ask—”

I spoke. “Sarad Nukpana took my soul inside the Saghred not long after he was imprisoned. Generally villains only share their evil master plan with you when they don’t think you’ll be getting away. He told me who his allies were; I gave the names to Paladin Eiliesor.”

And I’d just given Nachtmagus Vidor Kalta a bald-faced lie. Hell’s hounds could have been snapping at my heels and I wouldn’t have told anyone that a seventh soul had escaped from the Saghred.

Our information source was my father. A Guardian and protector of the Saghred since its capture from the goblin king almost nine hundred years ago. Nearly continuous contact with the stone had stopped my father from aging. About a year ago, the Saghred had turned its protector into its dinner, imprisoning my father’s soul inside the stone with the thousands that had been previously consumed by the Saghred, or sacrificed to it. Now his soul occupied the body of a young Guardian who had been killed by the demon queen moments before she opened the Saghred.

Dad was also still a wanted criminal. He had fled Mid nine centuries ago and had taken the Saghred with him to keep the stone’s power out of the hands of some of the Conclave’s top mages, but as far as the Conclave was concerned, there was no statute of limitations on Saghred stealing. If he was discovered, he’d be executed; it didn’t matter whose body he was wearing.

“Our primary suspect had only been inside for a month,” Mychael told Kalta.

“You refer to Sarad Nukpana.”

“I do.”

“Last winter I had the unique opportunity to meet him. The high priest of the Brotherhood of the Khrynsani. A most ancient and—among the goblin aristocracy—a most venerable order. Being a human, I do not share their belief that goblins are the superior race and all others should be subject to their whim and rule. But I valued the chance for an extended discussion with their leader. A most prodigious intellect, eager to learn, to experience. Not surprisingly, he expressed a keen interest in my calling.”

“The Sarad Nukpana I saw tonight wasn’t an entity, spiritual or otherwise,” I told him bluntly. “Could doing that”—I indicated the corpse—“help Nukpana . . . regrow his body?”

“You said he was wearing a cloak.”

“Yes, and a hat.”

“Did you see his hands, or was he wearing gloves?”

I gazed at a point on the far wall, recalling the street, the coach, the horses, and the hands of the coachman who held their reins. “Gloves. Only his face was exposed.”

Kalta’s eyes flickered with what looked like doubt. “It was dark.”

“It was light enough,” I snapped. “I couldn’t see through him. And he had enough of something in those gloves to control four horses.”

“I don’t dispute your account, Mistress Benares. I am merely attempting to gauge the extent to which Sarad Nukpana has regenerated.”

The bottom dropped completely out of my stomach. “It’s possible, then.”

“Oh, yes. Most of my colleagues still consider such an accomplishment to be theory. But a very few have actually witnessed the phenomenon; unfortunately, I was not one of them.” He flashed his teeth in an anticipatory smile. “It appears that’s about to change.”

“If you ran across Sarad Nukpana now, I hardly think he’d want to chat over drinks.”

Mychael’s expression was hard. “If he’s not completely regenerated, how do I stop him from going further?”

I spoke. “Better yet, how can we make him go back?”

“You can kill him, Mistress Benares,” Kalta told me point-blank. “According to the notes of one of my colleagues, Sarad Nukpana will become almost corporeal every time he feeds. But as his regenerating body absorbs the life force of his victims, he will fade again.”

“Feeding and digesting,” Mychael concluded.

Kalta nodded. “And then hungering once again. Though each time he feeds, the fading will become less, until he has consumed enough life to qualify as a living being himself. Only then will you be able to kill him like any other mortal.”

Mychael glanced down at the general’s corpse. “Nachtmagus Kalta, I can’t wait until Nukpana gorges himself on the citizens and guests on this island, so there’s enough of him for me to kill.”

“You may not have long to wait for that opportunity,” Kalta said. “If he has been free for nearly three weeks, and was strong enough to drive a team of horses, then General Aratus was hardly his first victim.”