Chapter Eleven
Finn’s screams woke me from a dead sleep, sending icy shards of terror straight into my heart.
I was on my feet, all but sprinting in his direction before I realized that the sexy nightie I’d worn to bed with Andre wasn’t exactly something I wanted my son to see me in.
But I also didn’t want to pause. He needed me, and I needed to be there.
I compromised by grabbing a blanket to curl around my shoulders.
Even that short delay felt like a betrayal.
I ran even harder, pelting down the hall double-time to make up for the pause.
Andre was close on my heels. His stride was almost double mine, so he reached Finn’s door first. He was the one to fling it open.
What we saw inside locked us firmly in place, both of us staring in horror.
Finn’s room was in shambles. The small bookshelf stuffed near his closet was overturned, and his bedside lamp was smashed against the far wall.
It had been thrown with enough force to leave a dent in the wall.
The posters he’d plastered to the walls had been peeled like the skin off a kiwi.
As we watched, the wallpaper split open and burst outward like an overstretched balloon.
Finn had pressed himself flat against his bedcovers, hands over his head as more objects went flying.
Ouire was right beside him, his ribbon tail between his legs as he cowered in front of Finn.
As to my son, he was pale and trembling, barely keeping himself from crying out as his math textbook rose off his bedside table and ripped itself neatly in half.
The homework inside was reduced to confetti that rained down on him.
The familiar hunched posture reminded me so viscerally of his eleven-year-old self that memories of that awful time came back to assault me all over again.
“Mom!”
Finn’s desperate cry had me bolting up from my loose-limbed tangle on the couch. I’d tried to stay up, hoping to outlast the ghostly intruder. I must have nodded off, and Frank had finally taken the opportunity to make his move.
Damn it. I was always too late. The screams mocked me, leaving me feeling a hollow, desperate ache in my gut. The one person I was meant to keep safe was suffering. I had to stop this. But how?
“Poppy!”
Andre’s crisp British accent drew me out of my panicked haze. I turned slightly, trying to keep him in view while the world went to hell around me.
“It’s a poltergeist,” I said, starting forward so I could reach Finn. That was all that mattered.
But Andre’s hand around my upper arm stopped me.
I turned to face him, not understanding why he was stalling me.
Seeing him standing there, clutching a slim length of dark wood between his fingers, made my heart ease, just a little, because it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t in this alone.
He was here. He could help Finn and so could I.
Andre flicked the wood between his fingers like a conductor’s baton.
Upon closer inspection, I saw it was shaped like a wand.
Not the white-tipped plastic I was used to magicians wielding, but a genuine wand inlaid with sigils I couldn’t make out.
His movements weren’t theatrical—more like he was fencing with something just out of sight, each arc and jab met with resistance that made his sleeve jump or his shoulder jolt.
“I don’t think it’s a ghost,” Andre said, stepping up in front of me.
His eyes were narrowed on the room, darting this way and that, as though he could see something in the dimness that I couldn’t.
His shoulders twitched at odd moments, like something was yanking at the edge of his shirt, and he grimaced as though bracing against a force I couldn’t see.
The wand jerked once in his grip, and he tightened his fingers until his knuckles bleached white.
“How can you be sure?”
He shrugged. “I can’t. This just doesn’t have the… feel of a ghost, if that makes any sense. I feel energy, but it’s not the cold of the grave.”
I looked forward, trying to ascertain what he was feeling, but all I could feel was panic that Finn was still in the middle of it. “Whatever it is, I have to get to him.”
Andre nodded. The air around him shimmered with tiny, angry motes of golden light, as though whatever-invisible-thing was trying to wrap itself around his wrists.
He swept the wand through the air and the motes snapped back like elastic.
His jaw clenched, breath hissing between his teeth.
“You get Finn away, and I think I can hold it—whatever it is—off until you get your potions.”
Potions! How the hell had I forgotten the potions I kept in my nightstand?
Ever since Frank had haunted our house in Silver Lake, I’d kept a stash of potions next to my bed, including Fiery Command Oil, Mystic Veil, and various uncrossing potions.
The rest of the limited stock I kept in the house was downstairs.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, half-shouting over the continuing din.
Finn had finally stopped screaming, but his eyes were still wide as unseen hands raked the covers off him, leaving him trembling in the bed.
He had one arm wrapped around Ouire as if he was trying to figure out when to make a run for it.
I tried again to go to him, but Andre held me back.
Sweat had beaded at his temple, and the muscles in his forearm corded as he wrestled with forces my eyes refused to track.
“Not yet, Poppy. I’m going to strip the bastard of the shield it’s hiding behind.”
“The shield?”
He nodded. “Do you see the flashes all around the room? It materializes every time it has to fling something heavy. Watch.”
I scanned the room, just like Andre said, and I saw it.
There was a small flicker of yellow sparks in the corner of the room as the thing picked up the potted plant on Finn’s windowsill.
My heart started pounding like a drum, and I ripped myself away from Andre, running and jumping forward at the same time.
I managed to wedge myself over Finn and Ourie before the terracotta could smash into his headboard.
Covering him and my face, I could feel the shards raining down against my back seconds later, scoring painful lines into my skin.
Better my back than Finn’s face, I thought fiercely, even as the wounds began to throb.
I felt something sticky near one shoulder blade and tried to feel around for a broken pottery shard that was probably embedded in me. Agony rippled out from the point of contact as soon as I touched it, but I was relieved when I found only blood.
“Mom, are you okay?” Finn said as he shoved at my shoulder, half-rolling me away before my weight could settle firmly onto him.
I went with the motion, even though twisting sent a fresh wave of pain swirling through me.
My gut swayed in time, sending my supper shimmying back up my throat.
I swallowed thickly, trying not to throw up.
It was then that I saw Andre, and he appeared to be battling something I couldn’t see. He was being thrown this way and that, and by the looks of it, he was losing.
“Mom, you’re bleeding!”
Finn’s voice sounded distant and warbling, like it was coming through an old TV speaker.
That should have been alarming, but I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than sit up and breathe.
The pot must have hit me with more force than I thought it had.
In fact, the ringing in my ears was getting louder with every second that I tried to concentrate on my son’s concerned expression.
Finn got an arm around my waist and tugged me upwards because I started to fall forward. The desire to be sick receded a bit, but it took me a few seconds to blink past the spots in my vision. When I did, I caught a glimmer of something golden in my periphery.
“Come on,” Finn said, voice tight as he stood up and gripped me under the arms. Ouire was right under our feet. “Mom, you gotta get up.”
Get up. Yes, that’s what I’d been doing.
It took a lot more concentration than it should have to move my feet.
I ended up half-collapsed on Finn’s shoulder and was barely aware of him leading me away from the room.
All I could concentrate on was Andre and how he was still battling whatever this thing was.
When we reached the hall, I rolled off Finn, and he had to steady me against the wall.
He didn’t release me until he was sure I could stand on my own.
When I shifted my hand from behind my head, smears of red decorated my fingers.
So the pot must have hit me on the back of the head. I hadn’t even realized it.
“Stay here, Mom,” Finn said. “I have to go help Andre.”
“You are not going back in there,” I snapped, my voice louder and more forceful than I felt.
Finn’s jaw set in a stubborn line. “Mom, I have to help him. You saw how he was struggling.”
“Finn…”
But his expression was resolute. “I can use my magic. I brought the coin.”
He shoved his hand toward me, extending his fingers to reveal a small, silver coin. I’d watched him cure a classroom full of cursed children with it. I knew he had power. And I knew Andre probably needed help, but not this way.
“If you want to help, go to my nightstand. I have potions stashed there. At least one should do the trick against...”
Whatever the thing was. I hesitated to call it a ghost now that I’d seen the flickers of campfire sparks that shot up when the thing made contact with something large.
Ghosts didn’t let off energy. If anything, they could drain it from the room, leaving it colder than it should have been.
They could also use that energy to move things.
But they didn’t emit their own energy. The creature had to be flesh and blood, which meant it could be hurt or compelled to leave.