Page 48 of Tempt the Stars (Cassandra Palmer 6)

“Yes, but it’s not going to come back, then, is it?” Roger countered. “Once the golem—its prison, essentially—is destroyed, its sentence is over. And it doesn’t usually waste any time getting out of there. Unless it decides to get . . . testy . . . with its former master. But either way, you’ve lost your servant.”

Pritkin glowered at him, but he didn’t refute it. Which I supposed meant Roger’s account was pretty accurate. He enjoyed an argument even when he liked someone, and I didn’t think he liked Roger.

“And then there’s the way they feed,” Roger continued, oblivious. “Ghosts and demons are both spirits, yes?”

; “Well, some demons . . .”

“And they both gain strength by feeding off living energy.”

I nodded.

“The difference is that demons can only hold so much. They’re like humans that way, or vampires. They feed to satisfy their current needs, and to store up power for later. And, of course, with the elder demons, the amount they can hold can be very, very large. But even they have limits, although they don’t like to admit it. Whereas ghosts . . .”

“What about ghosts?”

“They’re eternal sponges: they never get full. You can feed them and feed them and feed them, and they just . . . soak it up.”

Daisy nodded her substitute for a head, and the eyelash fell off again.

I frowned. “How do you know? No ghost has access to that kind of power.” For most of the ghosts I’d known, the problem was finding enough energy to keep going, not in seeing how much they could store up.

“They do if someone provides it.”

“But why would anyone—”

“You’re making indestructible soldiers!” Pritkin accused.

I looked at him, faintly surprised, but not as much as Roger. Who seemed amazed that a magical jock could put two and two together. But he shook his head.

“Not indestructible. You discovered that much tonight. Not that that model was designed for combat, mind you, but any of them can be destroyed under the right circumstances. But that isn’t really the issue.”

“Then what is?”

Roger looked thoughtful. “I suppose the best analogy would be your Spitfires in the Second World War.”

Judging by his confused expression, that didn’t clear up much for Pritkin. It didn’t for me, either, but I was a little distracted by the sick feeling that had opened up in the pit of my stomach. Because it wasn’t the why of Roger’s weird hobby that interested me.

It was the how.

“During World War Two, the Nazis planned to invade the British Isles,” he told me. “But to do so, they first needed control of the skies, and that meant wiping out the RAF—that’s the British Royal Air Force.”

I nodded numbly.

“But the RAF held on, mainly because their airplanes, the Spitfires, were damned good little planes, and because their factories could churn them out in a seemingly endless supply. Every time a plane went down, there were two more waiting to replace it. There was just one problem.”

“Factories couldn’t churn out pilots, too,” Pritkin said, narrowing his eyes at Daisy. Who was poking around in her apron for the lost lash.

“Exactly,” Roger said. “The RAF kept running out of pilots, and couldn’t train more fast enough to meet the demand. They only held out because of an influx of qualified personnel from abroad. And even then, it was a close thing. But imagine if you could train someone once, yet use him over and over. Imagine if, when one’s vehicle was destroyed, one’s body remained unharmed and could merely flit back and pick up another. And another after that, and another after that—”

“You’d never run out,” I said, watching Pritkin. Who’d started out angry and was closing in on furious.

Roger nodded. “Think of it: an army of soldiers who can’t die—they already did. Or be captured and forced to answer questions by their enemies. Or be prevented from returning to base. After all, what can trap a ghost?”

I could think of something, I didn’t say, because Pritkin had reached apoplectic. Maybe he was thinking about the destruction such a force could wreak on the Corps. Or maybe it was Roger’s attitude that bothered him. It was like he’d forgotten who his audience was and was happily holding forth on his favorite subject.

“Of course, there were problems,” Roger told me. “Most annoyingly that the ghosts said the bodies didn’t feel like theirs.”