The youngest Fate cut in. "Don't worry. We didn't expect you to see the connection. It's all very strange."

She leaned around the wheel, her eyes aglitter. "See, what happened was—"

Her middle sister took over. "This particular Nix is quite different from her brethren. In the seventeenth century, she made a deal with a witch who wanted her father dead."

"And gave her the guts she needed to do it."

"That's the usual process. However, in this case, it didn't work. A Nix's power has one significant limitation—she cannot compel a person to kill. The will and the intent must still be there. Conscious will and conscious intent. This witch was conflicted over her wish. Yet Nixen thrive on chaos, and they don't appreciate being summoned without that end reward, so the Nix made a suggestion. She told the witch where to find a spell that would allow the Nix to take over the witch's body, temporarily, and commit the act herself. The witch agreed, and the Nix—"

The girl leapt in, bubbling with the enthusiasm of a child who simply must tell the rest of the story. "—

takes her over, and kills the woman's father. And then she's supposed to give the body back. Only she doesn't. She uses the body to cause all kinds of trouble."

The middle sister cut in. "And many people died… including the Nix herself, eventually. Trapped in a corporeal body, she died the death of a corporeal being. Having been in a witch's form, she was brought here, to the supernatural realms. Although we aren't equipped to handle a demi-demon, we managed to trap her in a hell dimension. For a while."

"She escaped."

"And that is a serious problem because this Nix isn't flitting about the living world as a spirit. Having moved into a human body once, she is now able to do it at will."

"So that's the connection. It's not the same woman. It's the same Nix in different women. She takes them over—"

"Not exactly. Being a dead spirit, she can no longer fully take over a living body. Instead, she must cohabit, giving them resolve to carry out their desires."

"So she doesn't jump into innocent women and turn them into rampaging killers. Are the hosts always women?"

The Fate nodded. "Having first leapt into a host of that gender, she is now restricted to it."

I paused. "If you ladies know so much about how she operates, I'm guessing she's been out there for a while."

"A little over a hundred years."

"Uh-huh. I suppose that means I'm not the first person you've sent after her."

"There have been three who've gone before you. We took three different approaches with varying degrees of success. All three… ended badly."

"What did she do to them?"

The child Fate appeared, laughing. "Her first question, and it's the one none of the others even thought to ask. When we told them that the others had failed, they only asked how the Nix got away. That's what they figured she'd do—give them the slip and run. But you know better."

"Common sense. The best way to stop being chased is to stop the person doing the chasing. But that's a problem here, isn't it? Can't kill a ghost. Can't even hurt one. So how the hell do you force one to stop chasing you?"

The middle Fate returned. "There are worse things than physical torture."

"Not if it's done right."

The eldest one popped in, glower already in place. "You have an answer for everything, don't you?"

"No, I was just pointing out—"

"You want to know what she did to one of your predecessors, Eve? Let me show you."

Chapter 4

THE TRAPPINGS OF THE THRONE ROOM VANISHED. Even the floor evaporated, and I tensed, waiting to drop into some hell dimension. Instead, I found myself floating, naked, in gray nothingness.

Was I really floating? Beneath my bare feet a sheet of gray, as smooth as glass, stretched to meet the gray sky. I could see my feet planted on the floor, yet I felt nothing beneath them. I closed my eyes and lowered my hand. My hand stopped at floor level. I leaned forward, but still couldn't feel pressure against my palm.

Okay, that was creepy. Still, there were a thousand worse places that the Nix could have sent her last hunter, and if this unsettling illusion was the best she could manage, I was laughing.

I closed my eyes and wished for clothing. When I looked again, I was still naked. Hmmm. I guess nakedness was part of the torture. And for some people, maybe it was, but I'm not the type to be plagued by nightmares of walking through the shopping mall starkers, so it was really no big deal, especially considering there was no one else here to see me.

No one to see me, and nothing for me to see. Nothing to hear, either. Reminded me of the first hour I'd spent alone as a ghost. The most shocking thing about that hour was the silence. When we're alive, quiet is a relative term. Even if you manage to drown out all the background noise—the clacks and grunts and hums of water pipes and furnaces and refrigerators—you can always hear something, even if it's only the sound of yourself breathing. But when you're dead, all the sources of those noises, internal and external, are gone. Still, there's usually something, if you listen hard enough—the footsteps of someone walking by, a laugh from a neighbor, a bird chirping. Here, in this empty dimension, the silence was absolute.

I could see how this could become annoying after a while. Sensory deprivation, isn't that what they call it? I remembered reading that this kind of thing could serve as a form of torture. Pretty clever, actually.

Didn't leave any marks, and you couldn't be accused of doing anything to your prisoner because you weren't doing a damn thing. Interesting, in a theoretical kind of way.

Right now, all that mattered was that I got the point. The Nix could send me someplace where I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time.

"Okay—" I stopped. I'd felt myself say the word, but hadn't heard anything. "Okay, ladies!"

The silence sucked up my words before they left my lips.

"Hello?" I tried to say. "Hello, hello, hello!"

Creepy, but not like it mattered. The Fates seemed to hear me whether I spoke aloud or not. When they were ready, they'd bring me back. I settled onto the ground to wait.