“What did you do?” Roger yelled in my face as something crashed into the wall behind me. Followed by a couple hundred friends, rattling against the exterior like gunfire. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Bullshit! They don’t act like this—they never act like this!”
“Then maybe you did something!”
“I know the Badlands—hell, I used to live in the Badlands
! And the ghosts don’t act like this!”
“Well, apparently, they do!”
“Not even for a disembodied human who doesn’t have the sense to—”
I caught sight of my body sitting up, with my tits in my hands.
“—listen when someone with more experience tells her—”
“Are you feeling me up?” I asked Rosier, because I knew it was him. Even before I spotted his own small form, lying limp and lifeless on the floor.
“I give up!” Roger said, throwing his hands out.
“That’s what’s concerning you?” Rosier shrieked, over the gunfire sound effects.
“It’s not helping!” I glared at him. “What are you doing in there?”
“Trying to keep you alive!”
“We’re outside time! I’m not dying!”
“And I’m supposed to know this how?” he demanded, still clasping my breasts, as if for comfort. Until I knocked his hands away, although that probably would have happened anyway.
Because we’d just rolled over.
I fell from the floor to the new floor. Which had been the wall, until the number of ghosts hitting us all on one side sent us clunking over. And then over again, and again, until it felt like we were in a wacked-out dryer set on kill.
“What are they doing?” I yelled, falling into Roger. Who snarled and pushed me off. Only to get my body’s foot in his face, because it wasn’t like there was a ton of room in here.
“Trying to shake us loose,” he yelled back. “The cell walls are wards, to protect the living from spiritual attacks. Ghosts don’t have the power to break through!”
“Daisy did!”
“Daisy is bound to me, as your servant is to you. The wards see them as part of us, and let them in!”
“Oh, good,” I said, relieved.
“No, not good!”
“Why?”
“Because we need to get to the barrier in order to shift!”
And then Billy woke up.
“The fuck?” he said, materializing beside me and staring around. At Rosier’s discarded body tumbling like a sneaker in the aforementioned dryer. At Roger, trying to brace in a corner. At me, attempting to hold steady in the midst of it all, hovering near the center of the roll. Until I gave up and grabbed Billy around the neck, just as Daisy drifted over.
“Hello, I’m Daisy,” she said, sticking out a hand.