Chapter 45
“You,” Chapman snarled. One eye had burst since Hazel had seen him, replaced by a glaring yellow light in the blackness of its socket. His face flexed in strange places as his mouth twisted with rage. “You trespassing whore.”
He lowered his head and charged her.
Fear expanded Hazel’s perception, slowing down time enough that she could hear each time his feet hit the floor and the obscene liquid sounds his body made on impact.
Shadows and candlelight broke up his run like a low-rent strobe, giving her distinct flashes of his raised hands, his open mouth and missing teeth.
She caught herself before she could step back. The thing coming toward her couldn’t die again, was wrong on every level, didn’t belong to her world. Every human instinct Hazel had screamed at her to run.
But she knew more than her world, and death wasn’t the only option.
Iron lay cold in her hands. The earth was solid beneath her feet. The ethereal world shimmered around her. Hazel squared her shoulders, stared directly into Chapman’s eyes, and quietly spoke. “He’s here.”
Confusion slowed Chapman for a moment, though Hazel knew it wouldn’t buy her much time. “He? ” the dead sheriff demanded, breath like three-day-old hamburger washing over Hazel’s face. “Who? ”
A translucent blue fist caught him in the stomach.
Hazel heard bones snap. “She wasn’t talking to you, asshole,” said the ghost of a young man, hiking his knee into Chapman’s crotch.
Whatever rotted there still had feeling, apparently; Chapman doubled over.
“Bet you don’t think the junkie’s so pathetic now. ”
He moved forward, but Chapman had some of his old instincts too. He ducked the next punch and grabbed the ghost of Jerold Lane by the wrist. “Maybe I do.”
“Dumbass,” said Jerold. He brought his head down into Chapman’s face, and while the contact made him grunt with pain, the rotting man roared with rage and agony. Releasing Jerold’s wrist, he stumbled backward.
With sweaty fingers, Hazel spun the top off the iron jar. The smell of myrrh cut through both Chapman’s scent and the basement’s. She wet her lips. “Clarence John Chapman—”
“NO.”
Pus-yellow light flared through Chapman’s body, and a wave of power pulsed through the room like a thunderclap. He dodged desperately around Jerold and shot forward, a malignant arrow aiming itself at Hazel’s hands, until another ghostly form appeared to block his path.
“I had kids, you son of a bitch,” screamed Pamela, just before sinking her fingernails into Chapman’s cheek. He’d barely started turning when she yanked downward, and she didn’t stop there.
The man deserved everything he was getting, but sheer physical sympathy made Hazel wince, especially when Chapman managed to pull away only to have Jerold grab him by the throat.
She didn’t think even living flesh would have put up much resistance.
The undead stuff grew back, at least enough to keep Chapman in existence, but the way he howled sounded like it wasn’t a fun time.
Hazel looked away from the scene, down into the jar she’d prepared.
The cloth doll there was just a lumpy shape in the darkness.
“Clarence John Chapman,” she began again.
“I bind you to cloth. I bind you to your sweat. I bind you to your skin.” Stephanie had been too busy to get rid of Chapman’s old clothes, including a convenient, if repulsively stained, undershirt. “I bind you by—”
She read out a sequence of names, some long and twisting, others only thumping syllables. Chapman’s screams began to sound hollower as she went on. The jar got heavier at the same time, pulling at Hazel’s wrists, and the doll inside started glowing red.
At some ethereal cue Hazel couldn’t sense, the ghosts let Chapman go. As they moved away, he lunged blindly forward—
—and beams of red light streamed out of the jar, catching him in a translucent net.
He hung immobile in front of Hazel. His uniform had been shredded in places, and she could see clear to his bones. Half his face was gone. He glared at her all the more intensely for it, as though the ghosts had stripped him of everything but hate, and he managed to move his mouth at the last.
“You’ll die.” The words floated out of his throat like a distant echo. “You’ll die, and the world will burn.”
“Eseru! ” Hazel snapped out the final command.
The net closed around Chapman, covering his face with lines of red light.
The jar hummed with a sudden jolt of energy.
As Hazel tightened her grip, the power inside the container yanked the net toward it, taking Chapman along for the ride.
He both shrank and became transparent in almost no time, flickering from a rotten man-size corpse to a humanoid mote of light as short as Hazel’s forefinger.
“…burn! ” she heard him say again.
Then the light took him into the jar, and Hazel slammed the lid down. All at once the light and most of the power vanished; the jar hummed slightly in Hazel’s grasp, but that was it. She stood in a bloody basement, half her candles out, exhaustion already starting to set in.
So was satisfaction. “You won’t know if it does or not,” she told the jar.
The pair of ghosts hovered nearby when she lifted her head. “Thank you,” she told them. “That really helped.”
“My pleasure.” Jerold smirked, thumbs hooked in the waistband of his jeans. “Really.”
“I’ve been waiting awhile,” Pamela agreed, brushing her hair back into place. She’d gone back to looking like somebody who’d make brownies for the historical society, not somebody who’d just had vital organs between her fingernails, but Hazel would have a hard time shaking the latter image.
Just another one for the scrapbook, and there’s no therapist who’d believe me.
Professionalism kicked in. “Will the two of you be okay for a while?”
“Yeah,” said Jerold. “It’ll be…good to look around a little bit. How about you?”
“I’m all right to get home. I can figure out my next step from there.
” Hazel set the jar down carefully, dipped her fingers into the water, and started drawing the figure that would separate the ethereal and physical worlds again.
It was a chore to go slowly, just as she knew it would be to pack up her supplies and get back to the car.
If she never saw Chapman’s property again, that would be just fine with her.
* * *
Maxwell sat on the porch and watched Hazel drive up.
If the day’s events had a bright spot, it was that he no longer had to worry about how much time he spent in Hazel’s house. He’d tried to keep taking notes for her, been unable to concentrate, then picked up a paperback mystery. Halfway through, he’d forgotten who’d been murdered.
After that, he just stared off across the yard.
The vial of poison, for that was really its nature, lay heavily in the pocket of his robe.
All of his thoughts sank down to join it.
Maxwell had taken it out a few times, stared at the liquid as though it held a solution, then tucked it away again. It still danced before his eyes.
Seeing the car turn in to the driveway, he felt as he imagined men did when approaching the gallows, mingling terror and relief in almost equal parts. What came next would be terrible, but the waiting would be over. As Hazel parked, he stood up and went down to greet her.
She got out slowly, bracing herself on the seat, and the face she turned to Maxwell was pale and drawn. Her smile was wide, though—wide and triumphant.
“Hail the conquering hero,” she said, coming toward him. “Or at least get the conquering hero a plate of nachos and a long bath.”
Unable to stop himself, Maxwell took her in his arms for what might be the last time.
Hazel made a surprised, questioning sound, but she barely hesitated before slumping against his chest, wrapping her own arms around him and holding tight.
“God, that’s nice. I didn’t realize how much I appreciated body heat. Not that it’s your only good quality.”
He forced a chuckle. He suspected he didn’t do it very well, because Hazel drew back, tilting her head up to search his expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Nothing, Maxwell wanted to say, or I was worried about you, that’s all. If it meant holding her a moment longer, it was an appealing prospect.
“Bad news, I fear,” he said, and stepped back. He spoke quickly in case his courage failed him. “My master knows we’ve been talking. It’s taken steps. More precisely, it’s ordered me to take steps.”
Hazel darted a glance at the house, visibly measuring the distance. It stung—really, it hit him like a kick in the belly—and Maxwell was glad to see it.
He held up his hands. “I don’t have to attack you, not yet. It thinks our friendship is an opening.”
Even weary, his medium was sharp. “Poison?”
“More or less. It’ll speed up your”—Maxwell made himself say it bluntly—“disintegration and the opening of the worlds.”
Hazel closed her eyes and bent her head, pressing finger and thumb against the bridge of her nose.
Whatever she’d done had drained her strength both physically and mentally, Maxwell knew, and now she was keeping herself together with the same will that had let her face Perthrux for far longer than the demon had anticipated.
He wanted to put his arms around her again, or to cry out in anger at the injustice of her situation, and he knew that neither would help.
“Your boss didn’t just say you have to stick the stuff in my lunch, did it?” she finally asked, and Maxwell could tell she was keeping herself from hoping for an easy answer.
He hated that he couldn’t give her one. “It didn’t make the order very detailed,” Maxwell said, “but if you don’t drink the elixir in three days, it’ll…take an interest. That might mean another attack like you faced earlier or giving me more precise directions. It trusts me less than it once did.”
“Three days.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If I’d kept my distance, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“I didn’t exactly thrust a crucifix at you and scream avaunt, did I?
” Hazel straightened up and met his eyes again.
Hers held none of the hatred Maxwell had feared and, astonishingly, none of the despair he’d dreaded.
“I’m guessing the demon will know if you lie.
And since the poison just makes my condition worse, a nonlethal dose might be out of the question. ”
Maxwell nodded. “It might prolong matters, but my master would also expect to sense the barrier weakening. I’d wager it’ll only ask in order to get itself and its servants into position.”
“Okay,” said Hazel. She started to go on, then abruptly stopped herself. New life entered her face, though only a little—Maxwell thought she was holding back. “Where would they get into position? The other side of the weak point?”
“Yes, I’d imagine so. I wouldn’t wonder if they took the same route I generally do. Why?” He didn’t dare hope either, couldn’t pay attention to the sudden surge of excitement that lightened his chest.
Hazel’s smile was very slight, but it hit Maxwell like the sun burning through fog. “I might have a plan.”