“Escape?”
He smiled sardonically. “Now you’re getting it. Ghosts aren’t bound by the same rules as you or me. They can transition here and back again, if they have enough power. And here’s where it gets fun: they can take us with them.”
“Us?” I grabbed him.
“Us in the generalized sense. Not us as in you,” he clarified, prying my spectral hand off.
“But I told you, I have to get out of here!”
“Then use your own ghost. What am I, a charity?”
“But he’s weak. He almost faded saving me—”
“Then lend him some energy.”
“I can’t spare any! You have to help—”
“I told you: I don’t have to do anything. But you have to get back to your body.”
“Why?” I shot back, pretty sure he was just trying to scare me. “You said there’s no time here. So I can’t die, can I?”
“Maybe not. But you’re still outside—”
“So?”
“So spirits without the body’s protection are what again? Oh, that’s right. Big wads of energy, free for the taking.”
“And who’s going to take it?” I demanded. “Some old ghost remnants?”
“Um, excuse me,” Daisy said.
“No, little girl,” Roger said testily. “But they’re not the only ones out here, are they?”
“Aren’t they? You just said—”
“That ghosts who fade can lose their tether to time and end up here, but it’s by accident. Others come on purpose.”
“For what? Why would anyone—”
“To hunt. All those territory-less ghosts—or what’s left of them—might not be much individually. But together they form a nice, big pool of energy, and one with no awareness left to fight back. No hungry ghost is going to turn that down—”
“No way,” Daisy interjected. “I mean, just look at them all.”
“—and as a living being, you’re more tasty than a thousand faded spirits.”
“A human is still more powerful than a ghost,” I pointed out.
“Than a ghost, certainly,” Roger agreed. “But you forget—there’s no time here. So you’re not dealing with one era’s ghosts but with all of them!”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s all, but it sure is a lot,” Daisy said as I wondered why the air had started shaking around us.
And then I knew why.
“Fuck!” Roger said, and dove for the side of my cell, which was currently the nearest.
I just stayed where I was, rooted in place by the sight of an army of ghosts, thundering at us across the horizon. Like the entire horizon, because there had to be . . . I didn’t even know. Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands, centuries’ worth of predatory ghosts, the strongest ones, the most successful ones . . .
The ones that were almost on top of me, I realized, and dove back inside my cell.