I don’t know how Zack had become a bone of contention between Libor and Bran—but I would bet all the money I didn’t have at the moment that he was at the bottom of their feud. Because there was no way that lady could look so much like Zack and not be closely related to him.

“There’s a ghost here,” said Libor.

I looked at him and sighed. “I try not to pay attention to them,” I told him. “There’s no good to be had from it.”

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Don’t tell him,” said the ghost, still sounding like she’d grown up in Aspen Creek, Montana, like I had. Some of the stronger spirits did that—they communicated so forcefully that I heard them without any distortion, as if death granted them a universal language, a quick conduit to my brain without language at all, maybe. I found it very disturbing when they did that. “It would hurt him to know that I watch over him still.”

But she didn’t, not really. This wasn’t truly the woman she resembled, just a skin of personality shed when she’d died however long ago and her soul had gone to wherever souls go. I didn’t know why some ghosts stayed fresh and strong while most others faded—though sometimes it was because the living paid too much attention to the dead. But that didn’t make the ghosts into the person whose face they wore; it just made them stronger ghosts. I’d seen souls tied to their ghosts once, and I’d never again made the mistake of thinking of a normal ghost as a real person. This woman’s soul had gone on a long, long time ago.

I was coming to believe that ghosts were something, though, something that could think and plan and do. Not living, precisely, but not inert, either. It was a belief that went against everything I’ve ever heard about ghosts—but I interact with them more than most people.

Still, even though she was not the person who had been Libor’s wife, she had once been part of her. She knew Libor, and I chose to follow her advice.

“I don’t know, and I’m not going to talk about it long enough to give it more power,” I told Libor. “Look, ghosts are like discarded clothing left behind when a person dies.” Of so much I was still sure. “I’m sorry to distract you from the matter at hand. I wouldn’t have if I weren’t tired.”

“Is it my wife?” he asked softly. “She was a tiny thing, but rounded where a woman should be rounded. Her eyes were blue as a Viking’s.”

“I don’t talk about ghosts I see,” I told him. “No good comes of it.”

The ghost of his wife smiled at me. “He doesn’t like it when people don’t do what he says. I’d watch my step if I were you.”

Another ghost had found its way out to the courtyard, attracted by the attention I was trying not to pay to Libor’s dead wife. This one wasn’t anything anyone would have called pretty. Werewolf killed, I’d guess from the damage. If I were a normal human, I’d probably have been more appalled. But my other self is a coyote. I might not take down humans (or any other large prey), but I’ve eaten a lot of field mice and rabbits. I let my gaze pass over that ghost.