Ghost Silk (Ghost Perfume, Book 2) | ✔

1 - Tell me what to do - Part 3

I had so many questions.

"So the Inezchet have access to a portal," I said.

"Well, yes. They control their own death portal."

"I mean ... there's other portals, that's what you're telling me? Mine isn't the only one?"

He laughed. "There are many. I've seen three in my death - the one I originally passed through, which was in Texas; the one the Inezchet use; and yours."

We turned to look at the death portal, coruscating gold and lovely.

It had siblings!

But of course it did. People died everywhere, not just in small provincial Mount Kyllene.

"Yours is smaller and brighter than the rest," Jackal said. "The other two I saw were dim and difficult to sense from great distances. Yours is practically screaming ... it fidgets more, too - the other portals were very still."

"Mine fidgets?" I touched the side of my death portal. True, it glimmered and floated around like a bobble on a water's surface, never exactly still, but I had always taken its movements to be natural. They were soothing to me, they weren't anxious movements.

"That's the prime imperative of a portal, I should think. Be still. Its purpose is to transport you from one location to another. It should be stable, reliable."

"My portal is perfectly reliable! No one's ever had trouble going through it."

"It's got ADHD, maybe." Jane pulled an exaggerated pout and patted the side of the portal.

"Or it's a sign of something deeper wrong with it," Ellie muttered.

I ignored that. "Jackal, these portals are alone? Was no one guarding the one in Texas?" I asked.

"It was abandoned," he said. "They all are, as far as I know. The one that the Inezchet use, I guess it also lies alone when not in use."

I frowned. Shouldn't there be others like me, out there?

"I told you, princess, you die - " His face twitched as he tried to force the word out. "Ah, is that a fucking lie? Look, I don't know that you all died, but you disappeared off the face of the earth. I assumed you died."

"But you didn't tell me that there's other portals before," I said. "It doesn't - me and my portal go together. I don't know how to explain it. It doesn't make sense that there's portals without radiant ones guarding them."

"No, I suppose it doesn't."

I shook my head. "Let's go back to the Inezchet. You said they brought you over through a portal, but how?"

"When Belladonna and Ambrose got their hands on that portal, they also acquired a book that, I suppose, controls it - "

"What book? This one?" I raised the one through which ghosts could communicate with the living.

"No, another one."

"What's this book?" Jane asked.

"It's an epistol. I stole it from the closest tribe of Wischet ... We - they created epistols so the living could communicate with the dead. Human clients pay to use one for brief minutes. They pay huge sums of money." He laughed as if it was all ridiculous to him, far away from his concerns. I thought it strange he switched from we to they, as if those called his family could only include the dead.

"That's amazing," Ellie said.

Jackal shrugged.

"An epistol," I repeated the name, running my hand over its cover. "Should you return it? Where did you get it from exactly?"