Like the others, he disappeared in a flash of light. If I had secretly hoped that the awful darkness that swallowed the bad guy in Ghost would come and haul him down into the abyss, well, that was a disappointment I’d just have to live with.

Fingers numbing, I went back to catching ghosts. I’d lost count somewhere—or maybe Frost had gotten another one when I had been preoccupied. But when I finished with the woman in the cocktail dress and turned to find the last one, there were no more.

The fighting had gotten more uncontrolled and violent as the combatants lost their footing on the ice and slid into spectators, debris, or walls with equal force. I slithered, slipped, and twice fell off my original perch after I finally reached it.

Shivering miserably, I shoved my hands in my pockets. I’d take forty degrees below zero any day over this miserable, wet, slick stuff. I could dress for forty below, but the wet went through whatever clothes I wore. My jeans were clinging to my thighs like an icy lover, and my coat, shoulders soaked through, was losing the war to keep me warm.

Something grabbed me by the back of my coat and tossed me onto the ground. Taken totally unaware, I tumbled over and landed flat on my back. My head slammed the floor hard, and I saw stars and little birds. I rolled anyway, tasting blood as I tried to get out of easy reach of my attacker.

Above me was the dead fae assassin I’d all but forgotten about. Her head bobbed at an unnatural angle, and weirdly, there were two of her crouched on the place I’d been perched. She jumped at me, and I pulled my cold hand out of my pocket and Zee’s sword slid into her like a hot knife through ice cream. I was nearly as surprised as she was because the move had been instinctual and not planned—and I hadn’t called the sword out.

Her body landed on me hard, and she was a lot heavier than she looked. Thankfully, impaled by the sword, she was also a dead weight. Only her head seemed to still be mobile and she couldn’t turn it. The odd double image was making my head hurt. If I hadn’t been worried about her doing something like biting my throat out, I might have closed my eyes. I got my left arm up and between her mouth and my neck.

But she didn’t try to attack again.

“Hunger”—her voice sounded lost—“you have the sword. Where is my Sliver if you have his Hunger?”

She kept talking, but she’d forgotten to breathe, and I couldn’t see her mouth, just feel her jaw moving against my arm. She could have been cursing me or telling me she loved me for all that I understood. I bet on the first rather than the last.