Oh, good, it worked,” Archer said, his ghostly face relieved. Unlike Elodie, his voice came in loud and clear, and so familiar that my heart broke all over again.<br />I stood frozen, my back against the door. Even though he was faint, I could see him smirk.<br />“Um…Mercer? Haven’t seen you in nearly a month. I was expecting something like, ‘Oh, Cross, love of my heart, fire of my loins, how I’ve longed—’”<br />“You’re dead,” I blurted out, pressing a hand against my stomach. “You’re a ghost, and you think—”<br />All the humor disappeared from his face, and he held up both hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not dead. Promise.”<br />My heart was still hammering. “Then what the heck are you?”<br />Archer almost looked sheepish as he reached inside his shirt and pulled out some kind of amulet on a thin silver chain. “It’s a speaking stone. Lets you appear to people kind of like a hologram. You know. ‘Help me, Sophie-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.’”<br />“Did you steal it from the cellar at Hecate, too?” Archer had collected all sorts of magical knickknacks back when we had cellar duty at Hex Hall.<br />“No,” he said, offended. “I found it at a…store. For magical stuff. Okay, yes, I stole it from the cellar.