“What for?” Elmo asked,

“I’ll put it in his mouth so he doesn’t chew his tongue.” One-Eye matte the weirdest sounds I’ve ever heard, and I have heard plenty on battlefields. Wounded men make noises you would swear could not come from a human throat.

The seizure lasted only seconds. After one final, violent surge, One-Eye lapsed into a peaceful slumber.

“Okay, Croaker. What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know. The falling sickness?”

“Give him some of his own soup,” somebody suggested. “Serve him right.” A tin cup appeared. We forced its contents down his throat.

His eye clicked open. “What are you trying to do? Poison me? Feh! What was that? Boiled sewage?”

“Your soup,” I told him.

Elmo jumped in. “What happened?”

One-Eye spat. He grabbed a nearby wineskin, sucked a mouthful, gargled, spat again. “Soulcatcher happened, that’s what. Whew! I feel for Goblin now.”

My heart started skipping every third beat. A nest of hornets swarmed in my gut. First the Limper, now Soulcatcher.

“So what did the spook want?” Elmo demanded. He was nervous too. He is not usually impatient.

“He wanted to know what the hell is going on. He heard the Limper was all excited. He checked with Goblin. All Goblin knew was that we headed here. So he climbed into my head.”

“And was amazed at all the wide open space. Now he knows everything you know, eh?”

“Yes.” Obviously, One-Eye did not like the idea.

Elmo waited several seconds. “Well?”

“Well what?” One-Eye covered his grin by pulling on the wineskin.

“Dammit, what did he say?”

One-Eye chuckled. “He approves of what we’re doing. But he thinks we’re showing all the finesse of a bull in rut. So we’re getting a little help.”

“What kind of help?” Elmo sounded like he knew things were out of control, but could not see where.

“He’s sending somebody.”

Elmo relaxed. So did I. As long as the spook himself stayed away. “How soon?” I wondered aloud.

“Maybe sooner than we’d like,” Elmo muttered. “Lay off the wine, One-Eye. You still got to watch Zouad.”

One-Eye grumbled. He went into that semi-trance that means he is looking around somewhere else. He was gone a long time.

“So!” Elmo growled when One-Eye came out of it. He kept looking around like he expected Soulcatcher to pop out of thin air.

“So take it easy. They’ve got him tucked away in a secret sub-basement about a mile south of here.”

Elmo was as restless as a little boy with a desperate need to pee. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

“A bad feeling. Just a bad, bad feeling, Croaker.” His roving gaze came to rest. His eyes got big. “I was right. Oh, damn, I was right.”

It looked as tall as a house and half as wide. It wore scarlet bleached by time, moth-eaten, and tattered. It came up the street in a sort of shamble, now fast, now slow. Wild, stringy grey hair tangled around its head. Its bramble patch of a beard was so thick and matted with filth that its face was all but invisible. One pallid, liver-spotted hand clutched a pole of a staff that was a thing of beauty defiled by its bearer’s touch. It was an immensely elongated female body, perfect in every detail.