Silence.

“Find my killer?” I asked him. “I don’t get it. How does finding my killer save the world?”

The deep voice repeated earlier phrases. “You must understand your path. It is more than necessary. It is essential to survival.”

“There’s a little irony in Eternal Silence being stuck on a looping sound bite.” I sighed.

A wraith’s moan drifted into the air, and I tensed, looking around.

One of those ragged-scarecrow shapes was rising from the earth of a grave, like something being hauled up out of deep mud. It moaned in mindless hunger, its eyes vacant.

Then there was another moan. And another. And another.

Wraiths were coming up out of graves all around me.

I started breathing harder, though I didn’t need to. “Yeah, okay, brilliant idea for a safe house, Harry. It’s a freaking graveyard. Where else are ghosts going to be?”

Eternal Silence only stared at me. There was an amused quality to its silence.

“I have to go,” I said. “Is that all you had for me? Understand my path?”

Silence. It lifted a green-shrouded limb in a gesture of farewell.

The first wraith finished with what was evidently its nightly routine of slogging out of the earth and moaning. Its empty eyes turned toward me and it began to drift my way, immaterial toes dangling down through the snow.

“Screw this,” I said, and vanished. One, two, three hops, and I was to the nearest brick wall of the cemetery. I gritted my teeth and plunged into it.

And slammed my face into cold stone.

Pain lanced through my nose, and I snarled at my own stupidity. Dammit, Harry. Walls are built to keep things out—but walls around graveyards are built to keep things in. I’d known that since I was a freaking kid.

I checked behind me. The wraiths were drifting after me in a slow, graceful horde, adding members as they went. They weren’t fast, but there were dozens and dozens of them. Again I was reminded of documentaries I’d seen showing giant clouds of jellyfish.

I gritted my teeth and thought fast. When walls are built, they are intended as physical barriers. As a result of that intention, invested by dozens or scores of builders, they took on a similar solidity when it came to the spiritual, as well. It’s why they held most ghosts inside graveyards—and it probably had something to do with the way a threshold formed around a home, too.

But where human intention had created a barrier, that same intention had also created an access point.

I turned and began vanishing in a line, straight for the gates of the boneyard.

I don’t know what I would have done if they had been closed. Shut gates and shut doors carry their own investment of intention, just as the walls do. But open gates are another matter entirely, and the gates of Graceland stood wide-open. As I went through them, I looked back at what seemed like a modest-sized army of wraiths heading for the opening.