“Okay.”
“The invitation tells you three things, longitude, latitude, and height, only it puts it more like ‘corner of Eighth and Elm, fifth floor,’ right?”
“Okay.”
“Could you get to that party?”
“I . . . guess so.”
“Really? Then you should have no problem getting out of here. Most people would need a fourth direction. Or to be more precise, a fourth dimension. Most people would need to know when the damn party was!”
He took off again, and I followed, getting pissed now. I grabbed his arm. “That doesn’t tell me anything!”
“On the contrary; it tells you everything. That party only exists as a destination at those coordinates and at that time. Otherwise, it doesn’t exist at all. We don’t live in three dimensions; we live in four, the fourth being time. Only most people never think about it.”
“Okay, fine. But what does that have to do with this place?”
“You asked where we were. I told you nowhere, because we’re not at the party. We can’t be when time doesn’t exist here. That damn Pythia shifted me outside it. No time means no time spells to let me get away from her. And I assume she put you out here for the same reason.” He raised a brow. “You must have really pissed her off.”
He took off again, which I’d pretty much come to expect at this point. And it looked like he was coming to expect things, too, because he stopped before I even managed to grab him again. “What now?”
“If my power won’t work, how do we get back?”
“That way.” He nodded to where Daisy was bouncing along, following an erratically moving sparkle until bip. It was gone. She glowed a little more brightly in her housedress and galoshes for a moment, before turning to grin at us triumphantly. “Got it!”
“Great,” Roger said sourly. “Now go get one with some damn oomph behind it!”
She made a face and flitted off. I just stood there, looking at him. “She’s hunting ghosts because they help you get out of here?”
“It’s more of a hobby,” he said sarcastically. “And they’re not ghosts.”
“Then what are they?”
“What remains of ghosts after they fade. This is the Badlands.”
“The what?”
He looked at me in exasperation. “How do you not know this? You have a ghost.” He looked pointedly at Billy’s necklace, which I guessed he could see because Rosier still had my chameleon. Or because if there was one thing Dad knew, it was ghosts. “Don’t you talk?”
“Not about this!”
“You sure? It’s not exactly . . . but then, I suppose he doesn’t need it, does he?” He picked up the necklace as easily as if it were solid. “That’s what I thought. Talisman, right?”
I just nodded.
“With this he can go, what? Forty, maybe fifty miles away? And still make it back to soak up all the energy it collects for him. And since you’re wearing it, that radius constantly changes, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but—”
“So he gets fed and doesn’t get bored. Unlike all those poor souls stuck in some overgrown cemetery somewhere, the kind nobody visits anymore. Ever wonder what happens when the weeds come but the visitors don’t? Ghosts live off shed human energy, but if there’s no humans—ever wonder what happens then?”
“I—”
“Well, I’ll tell you.” He sat on an insubstantial-looking rock and watched Daisy stalk another victim. “First, the ghosts begin to starve. But they’re not all equal, are they? So pretty soon, the newer, stronger ones start cannibalizing the older and weaker. Until, eventually, they either eat them all or drive them off to the Badlands. That’s where we are now.”
I looked around. No wonder this place was giving me the creeps. “So this . . . is like a cemetery . . . for ghosts?”
“In a manner of speaking. Only there’s no visitors. The only way to feed—as those who arrive with any sort of mind left quickly realize—is to consume the scattered remains of the less fortunate. If they do it enough, they might even mange to escape—”