They Sold Me to the Ruined General, Now His Ghost Won't Let Go novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Rules for Haunting

On the cold planet Tarn, Idris sets three rules for the ghost on a napkin. At dawn the general's silent body looks straight at him for the first time in two years.

"You bit me," Idris said.

He said it to the empty air above the shuttle's second seat, with his hand clamped over his neck.

The air said nothing back.

Then the air shimmered, and the other Dain sat down in it, long legs folded, looking pleased with himself.

"It was a small bite," the shade said. "You're already healing."

"I'm healing because I'm good at it."

"Then you won't mind a second one."

Idris moved to the far end of the bench.

The body sat across the aisle with its hands on its knees and its eyes on the bulkhead.

An aide had strapped it in, and he had not dared look at the Marshal's husband since the dining room.

The wolf lay along the floor with its chin on Idris's boot.

The shuttle left Orsa's dark side behind and ran for three hours toward the grey planet called Tarn.

Idris spent them going over the facts.

He was twenty, married, and an Omega, which he had not been at breakfast.

Nobody at that table had asked whether he wanted to go, and he had signed anyway, which was the part he liked least.

That man was in two pieces.

One piece was strapped in.

The other had put its teeth in his neck.

And nobody else could see the second piece.

He knew that, because the pilot had walked straight through the shade on the way to the cabin.

The shade had let him, glaring at the back of his head.

"Can they feel you?" Idris asked, very low.

"No."

"Can I make you stop?" Idris asked.

"No," said the shade.

"Can you at least wait to bite me until I've eaten?"

The shade looked at him a while.

"You didn't finish your soup," he said.

Korrigan Keep stood on a cliff over a grey sea, a long wall of black stone with every window dark except one.

The steward met them at the landing court and bowed to the Marshal's body, then to Idris.

Then he looked at the wolf, who showed him every tooth.

"Your rooms are ready, my lord," the steward said.

"There's one bed in them," Idris said, looking at the plan the steward handed him.

"The Marshal's room has one bed, my lord," the steward said.

"The Marshal's room has a Marshal in it," said Idris.

"He sleeps in the chair, my lord. He has slept in the chair for two years."

Idris looked at the body, which stood where the aide had set it down, waiting to be told to move.

His chest went tight and hot, and he did not think it was the new gland.

He took the plan, folded it, and walked up the stairs.

The kitchen on the second floor was the only warm room in the Keep.

The cook had already put a bowl of stew in front of an empty chair.

"For the Marshal," she said. "In case."

Idris sat down in the chair and ate the stew.

It was brown and thick and had a bone in it, and it was the best thing he had eaten in either of his lives.

The cook stood and watched him clean the bowl, and then, shyly, she refilled it.

That was how Idris decided he could stay.

Upstairs, in a room with far too much floor, he found a pencil on the desk.

He had a paper napkin from the kitchen in his pocket.

The shade sat on the end of the bed with his arms folded and watched him write.

"What is that?"

"The rules."

Idris held it up so the shade could read it.

"If you're going to haunt me, you're going to haunt me by the house rules."

The first rule said: Do not watch me bathe.

The second said: Do not stand over the bed while I sleep.

The third said: No biting.

The shade read all three.

His mouth went flat.

"You already broke the third one," Idris said.

"That was before the rules."

"The rules are retroactive," Idris said.

"They are not a legal document," said the shade.

"They're signed." Idris signed the napkin. "Your turn."

For a moment he thought the shade would tear it in half.

Then a pale hand reached out, and the pencil lifted, shaking a little, and drew a crooked D.

"I will keep them," the shade said, "until I can't."

"That's not how rules work."

"It is how I work."

Idris lay down on the far side of the great bed with his shoes still on.

He had been a cultivator once, the kind with no sect and no master, who slept in caves and ate whatever he could catch.

And he had come out of it married.

He would think about that tomorrow.

Across the room the body sat in its chair with its eyes open.

The wolf was a heap of cold light across Idris's feet.

Idris fell asleep in less than a minute.

When he woke the window was grey with dawn.

The shade was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, close enough to touch, not touching.

"Rule two," Idris said into the pillow.

"I'm not standing."

Idris opened his eyes properly.

Over the shade's shoulder, across the room, the body had turned its head.

For the first time in two years, Dain Korrigan's real eyes were looking at someone.

They were looking at Idris.

And the shade, who feared nothing in that house, went white and rigid on his knees.

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