"What's he saying?" Dobby repeated.

"I don't bloody care." Badger's hand closed around my shoulder and he wrenched me away from the body. He fumbled with the front of his trousers again. I had only seconds.

"Get back into your body," I told the spirit. I no longer kept my voice low. He needed to hear me, and it didn't matter who else did now. The die was already cast.

The spirit didn't move. "How?"

I wasn't entirely sure. When my mother had done it, she'd simply floated back down into her body when I'd asked her to. "Lie on your…self," I told him.

Badger's fingers gripped my jaw, smashing the inside of my mouth into my teeth. "Shut it," he snapped. "I don't want to hear no lunatic talk. Do ye hear me?"

"He's soft in the head." Dobby bent to get a better look at me. If Badger hadn’t been holding my jaw, I would have smashed my forehead into his nose.

"Bloody hell!" The other prisoner leapt off the bed, his eyes huge. "He's still alive!"

Badger let me go. He stumbled back and stared at the now standing body. It wasn't alive, but the spirit had re-entered it and was controlling it. Even though I knew what was happening, the sight still made my blood run cold.

The body turned to Badger. The insipid, blank eyes of the dead man were as lifeless as they had been moments ago, and I wasn't certain how the spirit could see through them.

The third prisoner crossed himself. Dobby mewled. Badger continued to stumble backward until he fell over his own feet and landed heavily on his backside.

"What…me…do?" The brittle, thin voice coming from the corpse startled me as much as it did the prisoners. It was nothing like the spirit's smooth one. It was as if he labored to get the dead vocal organs working.

"I don't know," I said.

"Jesus christ," Dobby muttered. He joined the other prisoner in the cell corner, as far away from the body and me as possible.

"You…control…me." The body bent over the cowering, sweating Badger. The brute looked like he'd pee his trousers if the dead man got any closer. "Kill?"

"Can you?" I asked. It wasn't a request but an honest question, since the gentleman hadn't been able to so much as punch Badger when he'd been alive. As the color drained from Badger's face, I realized how it must have sounded. I didn't correct myself.

"Constable!" Badger screamed. "Constable, get this madman out of here!"

Was he referring to the reanimated corpse or me? I laughed. I couldn't help it. Perhaps I was mad, but seeing the cruel Badger frightened out of his wits was the most gratifying experience of my life, and I was going to enjoy it while it lasted.

Unfortunately that wasn't long. The constable's face appeared at the slit in the door. "What's all this noise about?"

"Get it out! Get it out!" Badger threw his arms over his face, like a child hiding under the sheets at night.