The head glanced around pleasantly, unaware of its airy isolation. It gazed admiringly down the length of the lean body beneath it. "Rather a nice job," it said proudly. "No foggy spots. Everything very flesh-and-bloody looking, I think."
"Bloody is right!" Marc croaked. "It all but drips with gore. For heaven sake complement that head with a neck before I scream."
George flushed prettily, closed his eyes and obliged. The missing neck sprang cooperatively into place. To Marc the spectacle was almost as repulsive as the disconnected head.
"Don't ever do that again," he breathed. "I'd never live through it."
"I'll try to be more careful in the future," George agreed.
Marc turned a quizzical eye on the ghost. He was being far too agreeable ... almost sickeningly so. In his face there was a sort of determined pleasantness that looked ill at ease in such unfamiliar surroundings. A suspicion stirred vaguely in the back of Marc's mind.
"If you think you're going to kill me with kindness, you back-stabber, just forget it. It won't work."
"How can you think such things?" George asked woundedly.
"It just came to me, all of a sudden, looking at your smirking face."
"You do me a terrible injustice," George replied. "You cut me to the quick."