I let it all sit and thought of Troy. ‘He could access your memories?’
‘Yes, to a degree. I could fight him on it, make it harder for him to access in a split second … but he threatened my ma when I did it, so I didn’t make it harder for him after that.’
‘Why does he change hosts?’
‘The bodies, if he stays in them for longer than a decade, they start to degrade, but he … he always wants to leave sooner than that anyway. He likes bodies in their prime. He’ll take over others, if he must, but if they’re ugly or weak he’ll discard them quickly. Like he did me.’
My heart was hammering. We’d reached the crux of the issue. Keeping my voice friendly and light, I asked, ‘That’s right. He left your body, but tell me … how did you survive, Vance?’
He picked at his nails. ‘I’m not sure.’
He was lying.
I hardened my voice. ‘Yes, you are. Tell me.’
He chewed on the stubby remains of his fingernails. ‘I … I … he attacked his next host. I knew it was coming. I didn’t want to die,’ he whimpered. ‘I wasn’t ready to die. Jingo has to leap, to leave the body just before death. Too soon and he’ll get pulled back in and risk being stuck in the body at the moment of death. He must leap at the last breath, and it must be timed perfectly or he perishes too. It’s why there are so few doppelgangers. He doesn’t need a prepared host though,’ Broadlake said hoarsely. ‘Not if he’s desperate. He can latch onto the nearest soul with enough life in it. A passerby. A stranger. Anyone breathing. They don’t even need to be Other, though he prefers it.’
Given how long he seemed to have lived, I’d say Jingo had his extraction down to a fine art. ‘How many doppelgangers are there?’
‘He knows of two others in the whole world.’
I kept the shockoff my face, and leaned back. I’d expected more, far more. ‘How do they reproduce?’
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t care about kids. He can live forever, swapping bodies for eternity. What use has he for a child?’
I swallowed that titbit, imagining the monster who tortured me living forever. I struggled to reboot my brain and focus on the here and now. ‘How old is Jingo?’
He shook his head. ‘Old. Older than time. His memory is broken, faulty. He can’t remember all that has gone before. Another reason for a second – one who can remember where the gold is buried.’
I leaned forward. ‘You’ve told me how he behaves. You’ve told me what he’s done. Now I need you to tell me what matters.’ I let the silence stretch uncomfortably. ‘How did you survive, Broadlake?’
He licked his lips. ‘I was desperate. I knew what he was going to do. Knew he was going to kill another wizard to take over – wizards are his favourite. He gets the power of the body he’s inhabiting, and he’s always loved the IR.’
‘Vance,’ I pressed. ‘How?’
‘I … I used the IR. I gathered the intention to …’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘… to sever my soul from my body. It doesn’t kill you right away,’ he whispered, eyes wide. ‘Not instantly. You’ve still got … momentum. Minutes,sometimes. But you start to fade. But I’ve heard souls can cling if they die with purpose.’
My gut dropped like I was on a rollercoaster ride, only I didn’t have my hands in the air and I wasn’t saying ‘Wheee!’ I did feel nauseous though.
‘When he leapt from me, I leapt too. He had goaded the wizard into strangling me to death, and that was it. I was dying. I was sure of it. But as I took my last breath, Jingo leapt into the wizard, and a human came around the corner. He shouted at Jingo and ran to me. Turns out, he was an ambulance driver. He did CPR, got me breathing, and I dived right back into my body. When I woke … I got arrested. Slung into Wraithmore for your abduction and torture. And you’d better believe I’ve wished every day since that I’d died that day.’
‘I’m sorry that happened to you,’ I said, and it wasn’t hard to put empathy into my voice, because I was. Iknewwhat it was like to have someone else do something to your body that you didn’t want. Albeit my trauma had involved being sliced to pieces rather than possession.
Sliced to pieces by fucking Jude Jingo. I still couldn’t believe it. I was numb now – had to be, had to keep my cool – but later I would rage and scream, or perhaps cry.
‘Where would he run to? Who would he run to?’ I asked. ‘Give me a place. A person. Anything else you heard that he thought was private.’
Broadlake flinched. ‘He … he had a place he went to when he needed to breathe. A house by the sea. Not his, not in his name. Reed’s.’ He shook his head hard. ‘I never saw it. I just … felt it in his thoughts when he longed to go. Salt air. Cold stone. The waves. The sea is important to him. He was born aquatic.’
Jingo had told me he fell on the creature side of things, but I’d had no idea he’d been born in the water. How on earth had he ended up on land?
He’d possessed a mermaid, I realised, or a merman. Used their legs to get onto land and start a life of possession and theft.
Was there more to his subsummation of Troy than I knew? More than showing two fingers to me and Kate? More than power or money? Was an ancient revenge still driving him?
I’d have to tell Ji-ho to focus on a coastal bolt-hole.
I tapped my fingers on the metal table. ‘Tell me more about what it’s like being controlled by him. When he’s inside someone, can the host hear? See? Do they know what he’s doing or are you focused inwards on his thoughts?’
