She could hear the voices before she reached the dining room. The party sounded drunk. She crept into the next room. The voices were muffled through the walls, but when she strained, she could still make out the conversation.
“It’s a ghost, I’m telling you. Holdfast has come back for vengeance. No other explanation,” came a loud slurred voice. “Straight through the damned walls.”
“Do shut up,” drawled someone. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, you fuck.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen Vidkun. He’d bricked himself up in his house with nothing but his thralls with him. A rat couldn’t get in there. How’d anyone kill him?”
“Just because you can’t transmute anything that isn’t half copper doesn’t mean the rest of the world can’t. Everyone knows the Holdfasts collected alchemists from
