Right. It was working. I just had to keep the Corpsetaker busy until the wild rumpus got finished tearing apart the defenses.

I called up my Sight and vanished to a point twenty feet below the Corpsetaker’s position, reappearing inside solid stone. My eyes couldn’t see a thing, but my Sight wasn’t impaired. I could see dark, violent energy swirling around where I’d last seen the Corpsetaker; nasty stuff. I felt my lips stretch into a snarl as I hefted my staff again and growled, “Fuego!”

Ghost fire roared up through solid matter. In an instant, the dark energy had gathered to oppose my spell, but I sensed more than heard a cry of surprise and pain. The psycho hadn’t expected that one.

Then the dark energy vanished.

I scanned around me wildly and found it reappearing behind and above me. I vanished again, flicking out another strike at the Corpsetaker’s location—only to find that the Corpsetaker had blinked to a new one.

The next sixty seconds or so was a nauseating blur of motion and countermotion. We exchanged spells in solid stone, parried each other hovering in open air above the wraith pit, and leapfrogged each other’s positions throughout the sleeping quarters of the Big Hoods. It was all but impossible to aim, since it required us to correctly guess the next position of the opponent and then hit it with a spell, but I clipped her once more, and she landed a strike of pure kinetic force that slammed into my hip and missed my ghostly genitals by about an inch.

Twice she darted into the hallway to attack the Lecters, but I stayed on her, forcing her to keep moving, keep defending, allowing her only time enough to throw quick jabs of power back at me.

I wasn’t her match in a straight-up fight, but this was more like some kind of hallucinatory variant of Whac-a-Mole. Maybe I couldn’t take her out, but I could damned well keep her from stopping the Lecters. If she turned her attention from me, I was wizard enough to take her out, and she knew it. If she went all-out on me, I could stand up to her long enough to let the Lecters finish their project—and she knew that, too.

I could feel her rage building, lending her next near-miss a hammering edge that jolted my teeth right through my shield—and I laughed at her in reply, making no effort whatsoever to hide my scorn.

I shrugged off another jab, letting it roll off my shield. And then Corpsetaker vanished and reappeared at the far end of the hallway, at the door to the old electrical-junction room. The very last of the ward flames burned there, at one final, unspoiled shrine. The Corpsetaker faced the Lecters, who were already moving toward her, lifted her hand, and spoke a single word filled with ringing power: “Stop.”

And the Lecters did. Completely. I mean, like, statue-still.

“Screw that!” I called out and raised my staff, drawing upon my own will. “Go!”