“My turn,” the dark spirit hissed.

“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “Harry, you idiot, when will you learn not to victory gloat?”

The spirit’s skull mouth dropped open wider and wider and—

—a sudden stream of candle-flame-colored energy coalesced into Bob the Skull’s human form, right behind Evil Bob.

My Bob lunged forward and snaked his arms beneath the dark spirit’s. Bob’s fingers locked behind the fractured skull of my enemy, gathering the dark spirit into a full nelson. He wrenched Evil Bob violently to one side and the dark spirit screamed, a sudden torrent of energy ripping through the wall of the trench and about fifty yards of earth as he pivoted, vaporizing spirit matter into an enormous pie-slice-shaped acre of ectoplasm.

Then Evil Bob spun, letting out a shriek of fury, and slammed his attacker back into the opposite wall.

“Harry!” Bob shouted, his face pale and his eyes wide. There were chips of broken concrete in his hair. “Take the spooks and go help Butters!”

“No!” I shouted back. “Let’s take him!”

Evil Bob took two bounding steps, the second one on the trench wall about five feet up from the ground, and whirled, falling back to the ground with my Bob on the bottom. More concrete shattered, and Bob the Skull did something I’d never heard him do before: He screamed in pain.

“You can’t!” he shrieked, panicked. “I can’t! Not with everything here!”

The dark spirit twisted like a snake and broke Bob’s grip. Evil Bob nearly got out of it entirely, but my old lab assistant managed to get a lock on one arm, and the pair of them whirled and twisted on the ground, almost too quickly to be seen, pitting dozens of escapes and counterlocks against each other in only a few seconds.

“Go!” Bob shrieked, gut-wrenching, bone-deep terror in his voice. “Go, go, go! Once you’re gone I’ll shut the Way behind you and bail! Hurry!”

A shadow appeared at the top of the trench, and a weary, batteredlooking Sir Stuart held out his hand to me.

“Dammit,” I snarled. “Don’t make me regret this, Bob!”

“Go!” Bob howled.

I took Sir Stuart’s hand, and the big man pulled me out of the trench with a grunt of effort. Up on top, I found the spooks waiting for me in their typical silence.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s go, double time.”

I gripped my staff tight, put my head down, and sprinted for the Way into the Corpsetaker’s stronghold.

Chapter Forty-five

The Way hung in the air in the middle of the trail, maybe fifty yards back into the forest, an oblong mirror of silver light. Its bottom edge was maybe six feet off the ground, and a wooden staircase had been built to allow access to it. Behind us, back over toward the beach, I could hear low drumbeats of impact, the crackling scream of shattering concrete. The two Bobs were going at it hammer and tongs, and I desperately hoped that my old friend was all right.