She pulled out a piece of paper from the notebook, running her finger down it until she nodded. “Got it. Ulfur Hallursson. He’s on the list.”
“What list?” I asked, panicking slightly. I’d left Ulfur here because he’d assured me he’d be fine wandering around and watching the tourists until I could find a way to send him to Ostri so he could be with the rest of his village.
“The list of people whom Eve is supposed to raise. See?” She held out the paper for me. “It’s a group of about twenty folks. Ulfur got washed into the ocean a hundred and fifty years ago, evidently. That’s what I was asking if you could help me with-the Ilargi evidently had no idea exactly where on the coast the village used to be. I wondered if you’d go out with me to grill any spirits who remained.”
I stared at her in growing horror. “The Ilargi hired you?”
“No, not me. Eve. Technically, Eve should have hired me to find the essences, but I give her a break on large jobs, and she gives me a cut of her fees. It works out well,” she said, sipping her beer and reaching for more peanuts.
“But . . . Ilargis suck souls.”
“I know, and I don’t really like working for them because of that,” she said, giving me a sympathetic look. “But a girl has to live, and really, if the Ilargi has already sucked their souls-and Eve says he has-then the harm is already done. Raising them isn’t really going to make things worse for them, is it? In fact, it’ll be better, because they won’t be phantasms anymore.”
My mind whirled in a miasma of horror and disbelief. Spirits feared losing their souls-which turned them into hopelessly forsaken phantasms-more than anything. My heart wept at the thought of sweet, self-sacrificing Ulfur ending up as one. But if Siobhan was right, then perhaps there was still hope. “I had no idea there was a way out of being a phantasm,” I said slowly. “You’re sure that the Ilargi told you he’d taken the souls of the people on that list?”
She nodded, chewing for a moment before she answered. “I told you he’d been busy on the island. But he didn’t tell Eve where the village was.”
“The village . . . it’s south along the coast,” I answered absently, still trying to sort through the confusion in my brain. “But I sent the villagers on to Ostri. All but Ulfur.”
“That’s part of the problem. He’s the only one from that village on my list, so it’s almost impossible to find it. Will you help me?”
I was silent for a moment, my fingers rubbing the stem of the wineglass. “No.”
“Oh.” Her face fell.
“But I will hire you,” I said, making a decision.
“For what?” She set down her beer, clearly interested.
Dio!
“I want Ulfur. That is, I want his spirit or whatever is left of him returned the way it was.” What’s wrong?
“Mmm.” She frowned for a moment. “Can’t do it. The Ilargi has his soul now.”
This woman is a she-devil! She’s alerted the Dark Ones to me.
Wait a second. You’re tackling Kristjana without me?
“Leave the Ilargi to me,” I said with far more confidence than I felt. “You said your girlfriend can raise Ulfur, right?”
She was alone. I thought I could knock her out and take her out through the window. But she screamed before I could silence her.
“Yes, but the lich is bound to either the person who raised him or the person who holds his soul. So I’m afraid that means he’d be bound to the Ilargi.”
You’re supposed to wait for me so I can brain-zap her! I said, digging through my purse for a few coins. Hastily, I pulled out a pen and a receipt, scribbling our hotel name and room number on it before shoving it at Siobhan. “I’ll worry about that later. I just don’t want poor Ulfur in the hands of some clearly deranged madman. I’m sorry, but I have to go. My husband needs me. Here’s where we are, under the name Vincenzi. Call me in the morning and we’ll work out all the details.”
She took the paper, watching with raised eyebrows as I gathered up my things. “All righty, although Eve is going to be a bit touchy about two-timing her employer.”
“Her employer is an evil soul-sucking bastard who gets what he has coming to him,” I answered, pulling on my coat and waving as I dashed out of the club. On my way!
CHAPTER 9
“Boy, am I glad you’re . . . here. . . .” The sentence trailed off as I saw who it was knocking at my door. “Oh, hello. When I called the dial-a-reaper number, I hadn’t expected you two would be the ones to make the pickup.”
“The director thought it would be best if we limited exposure of Brotherhood members to one who so clearly does not embrace the true glory of the light,” Janice Mycowski said primly as she pushed past me into the hotel room. “You have Kristjana and Mattias here?”
“Yes.” I closed the door behind Rick, trying to summon up a welcoming smile.
“You look well,” Rick said politely. “Iceland must agree with you.”
“Thank you. No!”
Rick looked startled for a moment until he realized I wasn’t shouting at him.
Mattias, who had been forbidden to leave his chair, grabbed the seat and chair-hopped his way toward me. “Pia!” he called as I reentered the living room of our hotel suite.
“I told you to stay!” I said, pointing back at the corner where he’d been.
His face shifted into a pout. “But Kristoff is not here. You said I had to stay out of his way, but he is gone. Smooches!”
Rick and Janice looked at Mattias with obvious surprise, the former turning a bemused glance upon me.
“Er . . . he’s a bit . . . affectionate,” I said, blushing a little as I hissed to Mattias, “I told you there will be no kissing!”
“Piiiia,” he said, drawing out my name in a depressed sigh.
“You’ve light-bound him!” Janice declared after giving him a good long look. She turned her fierce gaze upon me. “You dare!”
“You bet your butt I dare,” I said, squaring my shoulders and looking like I would be prone to light-binding anyone who annoyed me.
She took a step back.
“It’s keeping him happy and me sane, so I don’t want to hear one word about that. Kristjana is through the bedroom to your left.” I gestured toward the appropriate door.
She marched to it with a glare that probably could have cracked cement. “I shall be sure to tell the director just how you treated our members!”
“Oh, I’m sure Frederic has a much worse image of me than as someone who dazzles a couple of troublesome reapers,” I said, following her into the room. I was braced for a scream of outrage, which was forthcoming immediately.
“What have you done to her?” Janice yelled. I stood in the doorway and smiled somewhat weakly as Janice fussed around the prone woman lying on the bed. “Goddess above! You’ve killed her!”
“No, no, she’s not dead. She’s just sedated. She was a wee bit upset when we got her out of the room she was being kept in, and the doctor thought it would be best if she had a little downtime to recover. I’m not quite sure why, but she was resistant to the light-binding, so we gave up trying to make her happy and just let her go to sleep instead.”
“Downtime!” Janice shot me a look of purest venom before she began patting Kristjana’s cheeks in an attempt, I assumed, to bring her around. “You have become one of the monsters you should be destroying.”
“She appears to be injured,” Rick said, peering over his wife’s shoulder.
“Not really,” I said quickly. “Not seriously, anyway. There was a little incident on the fire escape when she tried to break free, and Kristoff was slow in grabbing her, so she went over the edge, but we were at the bottom of the fire escape, so she didn’t fall very far. The doctor said it looks far worse than it really is. The black eye should fade in no time.”
Both of them gave me identical looks of horror.
“We had her X-rayed and everything,” I reassured them. “I managed to get her light-bound for the duration of the hospital visit, and she checked out fine, so really, there’s nothing to worry about.”