The mage looked over the pile of charred ash that used to be a woman. A pail faced monster looked over him from a nearby counter. The milky eyes of the pail lurker locked onto the mage.
"You dislike me using her?" asked Albie.
The skulls jaw didn't move. It only looked on swaying its boneless body in silence.
"I don't know how much of you was brought back from the other side but at least a part of your body remembers her," declared the mage. "She is to you what Cat was to me. I wouldn't use her body for this. Not knowingly anyway. But she is not what's left of Cat and I don't think even you know what you wanted from her corpse. Maybe something in you misses her. Your no wight but you still have a brain in your head. Both of you seem to have something of what you once were in your rotten brains. I have seen through Scabs eyes, touched his mind and I still don't know how much of that old priest is in there. One way or another she will be remade tonight. Your thoughts on this matter are unimportant."
The dead man just stared at the pile of soot on the counter. Its body twisting and moving but its head never moving, almost like it was floating independently from the rest of the body.
Albie pulled out the bag of binding trinkets from his cloak.
"Witch one is yours?" asked the mage holding the bag out to the dead man.
A long black finger stretched across the room and poked itself into the bag. It emerged with a pair of gold rings, made so perfectly to go together they looked to be the same ring, worn on the finger.
Albie reached out and grabbed one of the two linked rings. The ring resisted him with great force before coming lose. The mage placed it in the pile of ashes. He also separated a moonstone glowing with the pail light of a fool moon. The moonstone had been made from the heart of a woman named Sally. The last thing he placed into a blood stone. The mage channeled his magic into the objects on the counter causing the objects and ash to rise. The dust swirled in the air above the table taking the shape of a woman in a long dress.
The wraiths skin, cloths, and hair where ash grey the pigment of any patch of skin constantly changing. She had a nose but no eyes or mouth on her face. Her long hair floated behind her as if picked up by a wind. The pail lurker reached a hand into her disturbing the ash that made her skin showing the hollow inside. The dead man looked at the wraith the same way he looked at her when she was a charred husk on the first floor. The wraith looked down on the twisted shadow of a man. Her hand reached out to touch its boney chin only for it to disperse on contact and reform on the other side of the creature's skull. The pair of dead folks stared at each other.
"look you two you have a room," declared the mage. "how about you both go stair at each other outside the laboratory."
A near featureless grey face and the pail bony face turned to stair at the mage. The pair stared at the living man for a time before the crept out of the room. The lurker moving in its disturbed walk while the wraith floated through the air passing through any object that would get in her way. They turned down the hallway to the master bedroom leaving the mage to his experiments.
Albie wondered about the connection the two had to share and grabbed the moon charm around his neck. He was still connected to the lady waiting in the bed of ashes. He would have to go to her one day. For know more experiments and Bags needed to take a little trip.