it for a little while.
I didn’t have any choice.
I had to fight back.
“What happened next?” asked a fascinated voice.
I shook my head and snapped out of the reverie, looking up to the sunlit sky outside my grave. Winter’s hold was definitely weakening. The sky was grey clouds interspersed with streaks of summer blue sky. There was a lot of water dripping down the edges of my grave, though the snow at the bottom was still holding its chill.
The Leanansidhe sat at the edge of my grave, her bare, dirty feet swinging back and forth. Her bright red hair had been bound back in a long tail, and she was dressed in the shreds of five or six different outfits. Her head was wrapped in a scarf that had been knitted from yarn duplicating various colors of dirty snow, and the tattered ends of it hung down on either side of her head. It gave her a sort of lunatic-coquette charm, especially considering the flecks of what looked like dried blood on the pale skin of her face. She looked as happy as a kid on Christmas morning.
I just stared up for a moment and then shook my head faintly. “You saw that? What I was thinking?”
“I see you,” she said, as though that explained it. “Not what you were thinking. What you were remembering.”
“Interesting,” I said. It made a certain amount of sense that Lea could discern the spirit world better than I could. She was a creature who was at least partly native to the Nevernever. I probably looked like some kind of pale, white, ghostly version of myself to her, while the memories that were my substance played across the surface.
I thought about the wraiths and lemurs that Sir Stuart had put down on my first night as a ghost, and how they had seemed to bleed images as they faded away.
“Yes,” she said, her tone pleased. “Precisely like that. My, but the Colonial Knight put on a display for you.”
“You knew Sir Stuart?”
“I have seen him in battle on several occasions,” Lea said, her eyes somewhat dreamy. “He is a worthy gentleman, in his fashion. Quite dangerous.”
“Not more dangerous than the Corpsetaker,” I said. “She destroyed him.”
Lea thrust out her lower lip and her brow furrowed in annoyance. “Did she? What a contemptible waste of a perfectly doughty spirit.” She rolled her eyes. “At least, my godchild, you have discerned your foe’s identity—and that of her pet.”
I shivered. “Her and Evil Bob.”
She waved a hand. “Evil is mainly an aesthetic choice. Only the spirit’s power is significant, for your purposes.”
“Not true,” I said mildly. “Though I know you don’t agree.”
Her expression was pensive for a moment before she said, “You have your mother’s Sight, you know.”
“Not her eyes?”
“I’ve always thought you favored Malcolm.” The serious expression vanished and she kicked her feet again. “So, young shade. What happened next?”
“You know. You were there.”
“How do the mortals say it?” she murmured. “I missed that episode.”
I coughed out a surprised little laugh.
She looked faintly miffed. “I do not know what happened between the time you left Justin and the time you came to me.”
“I see.” I grinned at her. “Do you think I just give away stories for free? To one of the Sidhe?”
She tilted back her head and laughed, and her eyes twinkled. Like, literally, with little flashes of light. “You have learned much. I began to despair of it, but it seems you may have acquired wisdom enough, and in time.”
“In time to be dead,” I said. “But, yeah. I’ve worked out by now that the Sidhe don’t give anything away. Or take anything for free. And after however long, I realized why that might be: because you can’t.”
“Indeed,” she said, beaming at me. “There must be balance, sweet godchild. Always balance. Never take a thing without giving such a thing in return; never give a favor without collecting one in kind. All of reality depends on balance.”
I squinted at her. “That’s why you gave Bianca Amoracchius years ago. So that you could accept that knife from her. The one Mab took from you.”
She leaned toward me, her eyes all but glowing with intensity and her teeth showing in a sudden, carnivorous smile. “Indeed. And such a treacherous gift it was, child. Oh, but if that deceitful creature had survived you, such a vengeance I would have wreaked that the world would have spoken of it in whispers for a thousand years.”
I squinted at her. “But .