My breath froze as still as the rest of me as I stared at the dim outline of the gothic arch. The room outside was lit only by a little moonlight, but it looked bright as day compared to the gloom of the stairs. And my jean-covered legs and the gaping maw of the staircase were going to be hard for anyone to miss.

If the boots were coming this way, that is.

They echoed loudly on all that marble, making it hard to tell, but it sort of sounded like it.

Of course, I thought desperately, and stuck out my tongue.

It was the only thing I could currently move, along with my lips slightly. It wasn't much, not even enough to keep me from drooling. More like the feeling a couple hours after visiting the dentist, when the Novocain begins to wear off and you start looking for your pain pills.

I didn't have pain pills. But I did have a pain. In the form of a guy who crashed in my necklace when he wasn't off ogling the casino's hoochie-coochie dancers. Which with my luck was where he was tonight, because he was never around when I- There.

My tongue finally managed to find something other than the fuzzies off my shirt. Namely the chain of the necklace I wore, which had slid onto my shoulder next to my chin when I fell. I grabbed it with my lips and tongue and started trying to pull the main cluster of ugly, consisting of a ruby red stone surrounded by a lot of tacky gold filigree, toward me.

But the damned thing kept sliding on its chain, and the footsteps were definitely coming closer, and when I tried to shift a little farther back into the stairwell, nothing happened.

Except that Bootheels finally came into view.

He was a war mage, all right, in black commando gear paired with steel-toed boots, and an incongruous floor-length cape. Like a soldier of fortune crossed with a medieval monk. The boots were familiar from Pritkin's workaday wardrobe. Something else he had was familiar, too.

The elegant ballroom with its crystal chandeliers, velvet curtains, and highly polished marble floor was an incongruous backdrop for the crude creature standing beside the mage. Naked, taller than a man, and made out of dull orange earth, it looked like a piece of bad claymation that an artist needed to spend a little more time on.

It wasn't.

When I first met him, Pritkin had had one of the creatures called golems by the medieval rabbis, who had been the first to make them. And who hadn't bothered overmuch with looks, because that wasn't the point. The point was to create a mobile prison for the malevolent creature inside it, one of the nastier demon species that were trapped by the crazier mages to be used as servants.

Pritkin had used his mainly as a decoy and an added layer of shielding. The clay body absorbed spells and bullets equally well, keeping them from landing on him, and was also useful as a pack mule for carrying extra hardware. But they could attack, too, with a liquid speed that I'd rarely seen outside of a vamp.

And they were virtually unstoppable, since, unlike us flesh-and-blood types, they didn't feel pain.

I was so screwed.

Master and slave had their backs to me at the moment, staring out of the French windows. Because the only thing supposed to be over here was wall. But they'd see me as soon as they turned around, which meant that I didn't have- Any time.

A faint sound, like that of a door panel sliding back, drifted down to my ears from the top of the stairs. And then heavy, measured footsteps started coming this way. I couldn't see who it was, but it didn't matter since a determined five-year-old could kill me in my current state and- And then a flashlight beam hit me in the face.

"What the hell?"

The voice came from behind, but the mage in front of me heard it and spun. Leaving me sandwiched between two dark magic workers with the only question being which one would curse me first. And I guess it was Flashlight, because Bootheels' hand didn't even twitch before the area erupted in light.

But not in the shape of a spell.

Not unless the mages had crafted one that looked a lot like a genie rising from a lamp, if the lamp was an ugly ruby necklace and the genie was a pissed-off, transparent cowboy whose evening slumber had just been ruined by two thoughtless mages. Who were now no longer staring at me, I realized. But at my ghost buddy Billy Joe, who was glowing like the Aurora Borealis, with the sickly, neon green ghost light few humans ever get a chance to see.

And then with a whiter, brighter sheen, as the long, jeans-and-ruffled-shirt-clad body collapsed into a ball of pulsing ghost energy, throwing crazy shadows on the walls. And letting off a sound that felt like a knife in the brain.

If they ever wanted a sound effect for a scary movie, I had one for them, I thought, wishing that my hands worked so I could cover my ears. Or shut my eyes, which were starting to seriously dry out, but not so much that I couldn't see Billy Joe swoop up the stairs, with a psychic scream that sounded like a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards and sent horrible shivers running over my skin.

The mage didn't seem fond of it, either, because he cursed and stumbled back, falling into the stairwell.

But it didn't stop him from drawing a weapon, and when Billy swooped around him and came barreling back down the stairs, a hail of bullets followed.

That would have been very bad, except for the fact that I was lying down. So they flew over my head and hit the other mage, who had been standing there with his mouth hanging open. And his shields down, judging by the fact that he shuddered and fell over just as the other mage tore down the stairs.

And straight into Bootheels' last spell.

It looked like the dying mage had had a split second to get off a final curse, which caught his counterpart halfway down the short flight and sent him tumbling the rest of the way. Until he kicked me in the head, tripped, and sprawled out on the shiny ballroom floor, lying still. Leaving me with two dead mages, and a golem that suddenly lost interest in the attack in favor of nudging his old master with a clay-like toe.

And a ball of pissed-off energy that stopped just above my drooling face, resolving itself into a disembodied head wearing a Stetson and a scowl.

"You rang?" Billy demanded dryly.

"Nngghnh," I said, which was the best I could do with frozen vocal cords and a lolling tongue.

"Would you mind repeating that?"

"Nngghnh, nngghnh!"

"Very funny," Billy said.

"NNGGHNH!"

"Oh, for God's sake!" he said, disgusted, and merged with me so we could actually have a conversation. "Now, you want to tell me why you can't move?"

"I got hit with a spell."

"And why those guys wanted to kill you?"

"It's Thursday."

"And what the hell 'nngghnh' means?"

"It means we're running out of time!" I said, and cursed. Because nothing worked. And damn the acolytes! And damn the dark mages! And damn everybody who had magic but me! I was supposed to have more magic than everyone else, to be able to do things other people couldn't, not to get caught in a- My thoughts screeched to a halt as my eyes fell on the golem. Which had just collapsed, probably because spells don't outlive the caster, including containment spells, and the mage had just departed for the other side. I hadn't been paying much attention to it before, but I was now.

And maybe I did have some magic that would work, after all.

"This isn't going to work," Billy told me a couple minutes later.

"It is working," I said, twitching a finger.

It was fat and orange, without a nail or a hair or the freckles common to a human. It looked more like an uncooked hot dog than a finger, but it was moving. Which was more than I could say for my broken doll of a body still sprawled in the stairway.

Billy remained in house, so to speak, because my body would die without a soul in residence. Which is why I was currently getting a death glare out of my own blue eyes. He could blink them now, and had managed to mostly pull my tongue back where it belonged, although my voice slurred like an old drunk's.

But it was an improvement. And hopefully an indication that the mage's spell was weakening. But not fast enough.

"I wish you could help me up," I told Billy.

"I wish you'd stop using that voice," he told me back. "It's . . . disturbing."

"Sorry."

I kind of liked it. Deep and powerful and scary, it matched the body-and the body's former occupant, whom I could still smell as a pervasive stench. As if evil had permeated the very pores this thing didn't have.

Or maybe ancient demons just didn't wear deodorant.

"Isn't that freaking you out?" Billy demanded as I settled more comfortably into my temporary skin.

"Yes," I said, but it didn't sound convincing even to me.

But I was freaking out; of course I was. I was a disembodied soul trying to wear the shed skin of an evil demon, which I was controlling through the very illegal magic known as necromancy. Or was trying to, I amended, as I started to get up.

And had a ghostly-looking girl leg poke awkwardly out of the golem's massive shin.

"Told you," Billy said as I frowned at it.

I drew it back in, but when I tried to move the leg again, the same thing happened. I moved mine, instead. Or, you know, what would have been mine, if I'd still had one, and damn it!

Okay. Okay. This wasn't my first time at the possession rodeo. I should be able to figure this out.

Technically, my father had been the necromancer in the family, although he hadn't made zombies. He'd made something like this. Not golems; he wasn't a warlock. He couldn't summon a demon if his life had depended on it, which was just as well because it would have kicked his ass. So he certainly couldn't trap one.

But then, he didn't have to. Because he already had plenty of spirits around. Dad, it turned out, had been a ghost magnet.

It was something he'd passed on to me, along with his blond hair and blue eyes and tendency to fall over his own two feet. I'd grown up with the ability to see and talk to ghosts, which I'd assumed was just a clairvoyant thing. But apparently not.

Because ghosts didn't just like to talk to me, they hung around. And I guessed they liked to hang around Dad, too, because he'd amassed his own little group. Which he'd eventually realized would be more useful if they had bodies like the golems some of his warlock buddies made.

Crazy, right?

But then, so was Dad, or he gave a good impression of it sometimes. Like in this case, because nobody dealt with ghosts. Necromancers made zombies because they did as they were told. Ghosts would give you the finger before mugging you for energy and going off to the strip club. At least, they would if they were Billy Joe. Ghosts did what they damned well pleased.

But Dad had preferred them anyway, and so he'd decided to make prosthetic bodies for his ghosts. And yes, he was a weirdo, but that didn't mean he was wrong, because it had worked. Unfortunately, I didn't know the spell he'd used.

He'd told me that he'd managed to infuse the spell for making golems with his own necromancy, but he hadn't mentioned how. At the time, it hadn't seemed important. It was kind of feeling important now.

"Cass-"

"In a minute."

The whole point of it had been to mesh a spirit with a body. That was what necromancy did-use a little of the necromancer's soul to animate a body that wasn't his. It was why they could only make a handful of zombies at a time; there was only so much soul energy one person could spare.

So Dad had taken some of his soul, merged it with a ghost's, and then just . . . stuffed the resulting combo into a premade body. And Dad's bit o' soul had acted like glue to keep it there.

But if that was the case, then why did I need a spell?

I didn't need to bind another soul. I was the soul. And, according to Dad anyway, I was also the necromancer.

So why wasn't this thing working?

"Cass-"

"I said give me a minute."

"I don't think we have a minute," Billy said, rolling my eyes toward the door, where a couple more mages had just come in.

Damn.

I started thrashing around, trying to force the issue, and managed only to flip myself over. And apparently this thing was heavier on the front or something, because I couldn't seem to get upright. Which left me crabbing about on the floor, half crushing my own prone body and vulnerable as hell.

"Cass-"

"I'm trying!"

"Cass!"

"Damn it, Billy!"

And then something abruptly snapped.

Namely, my left leg into the same leg of the golem. And then my right arm into its arm. And then the rest of my body, which a minute ago had been trying its best to float up out of this thing, was now comfy cozy. And what the hell?

The only difference I could see was that my necklace had become partly imbedded in the clay thanks to my gyrations on the floor. Only it wasn't just a necklace, was it? It was a talisman. Like the control crystals the golems had but mine hadn't, because it had shattered and broken when the demon left.

I was so proud of myself for figuring this out that I forgot there were two dark mages headed my way, until I saw the utter panic on my own half-frozen face.

Shit.

I grabbed the necklace off my body and shoved it harder into the clay. And then tried to draw my wayward left leg, which was still trying to do its own thing, back inside my smelly suit. And felt it click back into place.

And this time, it moved under my command, although my coordination left something to be desired. But I managed to get my new big feet under me anyway, and stood up. And found the body to be amazingly light, no heavier feeling than mine, maybe even less so.

Maybe clay was a decent choice, after all.

"What happened?" one of the mages demanded, advancing with his hand on a holster.

"Nothing," I said as my leg tried to poke out the side again. "Don't-don't come any closer."

"Why not?"

"Uh, it's a trap," I said, feeling around inside the golem's leg with my wayward one, which didn't seem to fit. Maybe because the golem was something like seven feet tall and I wasn't. But no, no, no, you're a soul, I reminded myself. You don't have a size anymore.

But my brain didn't believe it, and my brain kept insisting that I didn't fit. And the second mage had now joined the first. And both were looking at me suspiciously as I juddered around, doing the golem equivalent of the hokey pokey.

"What kind of trap?" the second mage demanded, from beside his buddy.

"That kind," I said, and knocked their heads together.