“Look at him,” said another voice, higher-pitched and inhuman. “He will make such a meal.”

“Our orders are—”

“Orders,” said a third voice, filled with scorn. “She is not here. We shall share him, the three of us, and none shall be the wiser.”

“Agreed,” said the second voice eagerly.

After a pause, the first voice said, “Agreed.”

I turned and saw three of the dark-robed forms from the night before during the attack on Casa Lindquist. Lemurs. Their clothing stirred with lazy, aquatic fluidity at the touch of an immaterial wind. From this close, I could see the faint images of pale faces inside their hoods, and the sheen of gleaming, hungry eyes.

“Take him!” said the first lemur.

And three of the hungriest old ghosts of Chicago blurred toward the new guy.

Chapter Sixteen

The lemurs pounced, and I vanished, straight up.

I stood in empty air a hundred feet above them, furious, and called down, “You mooks picked a really lousy time to start up with me!”

Hooded heads searched upward, but I was an indistinct shape in a darkened sky already blurred by snow, while they were sharp outlines against a field of white.

I started throwing a punch, vanished again, and reappeared right behind lemur number one. My fist drove into the base of his neck just as I shouted, “BAMF!”

There isn’t much honor in a rabbit punch, but it’s a pretty darned good way to down an opponent. Whatever rules governed the world of spirit, there must have been some kind of analogue to a human nervous system. The lemur let out a choking gasp and fell to the ground as the other two panicked at the sudden assault and vanished. I kicked the downed guy in the head and neck a few times to help him on his way to Analogue-Concussion Land, screaming in pure and incoherent rage all the while.

I had a fraction of a second’s warning, a cold breath on the back of my neck, a rippling wave of ethereal pressure against my back. I vanished, to reappear five feet behind my original position—and this time, I meant to be facing the same way when I arrived.

I got there in time to see one of the other lemurs swing a freaking hatchet at the space my skull had recently vacated. He stumbled, off balance from the miss, and I kicked his ass—literally. I leaned my upper body back a bit and pretended I was using my heel to stomp an aluminum can flat. It’s a powerful kick, especially with my full body weight behind it, and the lemur flew forward and into the snow.

“Who’s the man?!” I screamed at the sprawled lemurs, fear and anger and excitement pitching my voice about an octave higher than usual. “Who’s the man?!”

The hood had fallen from the face of the second, and an unremarkable man of middle age goggled at me in complete incomprehension—which made sense. Who knew how many decades of pop culture the lemurs had missed out on. They’d probably never even heard of Will Smith.