Free Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) by Simon R. Green

greater good, of course.”
    “Whose greater good?” said JC.
    “You see?” said Catherine. “You’re learning.”
    “It’s all right, JC,” Kim said quickly. “I went into this with my eyes wide open. I wanted to help. By helping her uncover the traitor, I’m helping you. I’m protecting her so she can protect you, and Happy and Melody, from the Flesh Undying and its agents.”
    “The main traitor has to be someone high up in the organisation,” said Catherine. “And it bothers me that I can’t tell who. That I can’t see it for myself, for all my knowledge and expertise and altered sight. It has to be someone I know, someone close to me. Someone I think I can trust. Working against me, undermining my decisions and sabotaging my operations . . . Trying to get me removed, so I can be replaced by someone who serves the Flesh Undying. Not only to stop me interfering with . . . whatever it is it’s trying to do, but because it knows I will eventually locate and destroy it. The Flesh Undying sees our world, our whole reality, as a prison. A cage. And it is perfectly ready to destroy everything if that’s what it takes for it to break free.”
    “Why do people serve it, knowing that?” said Kim. “I’ve never understood that.”
    “Presumably they have some plan to control the Flesh Undying; or at the very least make some kind of deal with it,” said Catherine. “Damned fools . . .”
    JC looked at Kim. “And you didn’t tell me about any of this because?”
    “You were safer not knowing,” Kim said steadily. “You couldn’t accidentally give away what you didn’t know.”
    “We don’t keep things as important as this from each other!” said JC.
    “Really?” said Kim. “Since when?”
    JC nodded, stiffly. Some conversations you know aren’t going to go anywhere good. “All right,” he said. “How’s it going, being the Boss’s superspy?”
    “Nothing useful, so far,” said Kim.
    JC wasn’t sure she was telling him the truth, or even part of the truth, but he didn’t want to challenge her in front of Catherine Latimer. So he turned back to the Boss and folded his arms tightly across his chest in a way he hoped suggested he’d put up with quite enough and had no intention of being pushed any further.
    “Talk to me,” he said. “Why are we here? What did you bring me all the way here, to tell me?”
    “I’ve been feeling . . . troubled,” said Catherine, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. “How do you think I’ve lived so long and stayed so vital? Because that’s what the forces from Outside wanted. They altered me for their own reasons because they have a purpose in mind for me. Just as they do for you, and probably all the others like us.”
    “But who, or what, are these Outside forces?” said JC. “What is it they want from us? What do they need us to do that’s so important and so dangerous we had to be . . . changed, transformed, so we could achieve it? And how do we know these forces are any better, any more trustworthy, than the Flesh Undying?”
    “I’ve spent most of my life trying to work out the answer to those questions,” said Catherine Latimer. “And I’m no wiser. Or at least, no better informed. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
    “Have they ever . . . contacted you?” said JC. “Asked you to do things, for them?”
    “No. I think I might feel happier if they had. At least then I might have some clue as to their wishes. Or true nature. That’s why I joined the Carnacki Institute in the first place, all those years ago. Why I worked so hard to become the one in charge of everything. So I could have access to all of the Institute’s records. All its official and unofficial resources. And much good that has done me.”
    “Then why have you stayed on as Boss for so long?” said Kim.
    “Because I decided it was a job that needed doing,” said Catherine. “A job important enough, and necessary enough, that I wouldn’t have felt right leaving it