Book 3 - The Spy Who Haunted Me by Simon R. Green Read Free Book Online Page A

heavy lenses. His gaze moved slowly along the great stone wall rising up before us, he started to say something, and then he suddenly fell down dead again. The Dancing Fool swore loudly, Big Aus made a frustrated sound, and Strange Chloe kicked Coffin Jobe in the ribs.
    “I don’t believe it!” she said. “He’s done it again!”
    “Stop kicking the dead man, Chloe,” said Big Aus. “Major bad karma. It isn’t really his fault, after all.”
    Strange Chloe sniffed. “Makes me feel better.”
    We gathered around Coffin Jobe’s body again, and waited and waited, but he didn’t come back. We finally did kneel down beside him and tried slapping his cheeks and calling his name, but there was no response. All the colour had dropped out of his face, and his open eyes were fixed and staring. Finally everyone looked at me, because I’m supposed to be the one with all the answers. So, very reluctantly, I pushed my Sight all the way open and Saw ghosts.
    They were everywhere, hundreds of them, men and women and even children, walking on the ground and in the air, stumbling and gliding out of Traitor’s Gate, most still carrying the memories of their death wounds on their insubstantial bodies. Some had heads; some didn’t. The horrible trauma of their violent deaths had carried over into how they thought of their bodies. Some were still bleeding from wounds that would never heal, while others bore the torture marks of rack and wheel and fire. Traitors all, condemned to suffer long after their deaths.
    They were screaming and howling and crying out, ghostly voices from far away, thick with rage and despair and horror at what had been done to them. And some wept, never to be comforted, troubled forever by their crimes and betrayals. They burst out of the high stone wall like maggots from a wound and crawled headfirst down the cracked gray stone like shimmering lizards.
    Half a dozen of them had grabbed hold of Coffin Jobe’s soul and were preventing it from returning to his body. Jobe looked quite different in spirit: a large, even muscular form. The man he remembered being before his affliction ate away at him. He fought the ghosts fiercely, his soul blazing brightly on the night, stronger than it had any right to be, but still he was no match for the ghostly defenders of the Towers of London. They seemed more like beasts than men, tearing at his soul with hands like claws. And more ghosts were coming. Coffin Jobe looked right at me and cried out for help, and then the ghosts Saw me too.
    A great astral shout went up as the ghosts all looked in my direction and Saw me Seeing them. The closest ones surged right for me, mouthing ancient curses, though their voices seemed to echo from miles or years away. Their eyes burned with more than human hatred and misery, their horrid forms radiating menace. I stood my ground and reached into my coat pocket for the weapon the Armourer had provided for just such a situation. I took the jade amulet out and showed it to the ghosts, and another great shout went up. They knew what it was.
    I said the activating Word in a loud carrying voice, and the mellow bomb detonated in my hand. And for fifty feet straight ahead of me, the world was full of happy thoughts, good intentions, and positive emotions. Enforced mellowness saturating the night. I was immune, of course, but it hit the ghosts like a hurricane, driving them back. They just couldn’t stand the happiness. They fled, shrieking horribly. Some were crying. Even the ones holding on to Coffin Jobe fled back to the safety of the Towers, and he looked at me, smiled briefly, and then dropped back into his body. I shut down my Sight, slamming all my mental barriers back into place. I’d Seen enough for one night.
    I bent down over Coffin Jobe as he started breathing again and surreptitiously hit him with a nerve pinch. He’d sleep for a good hour or more now. I smiled inwardly. One down, more or less unhurt. Three to go. I shut down the