Chapter Eight
Chapter
Eight
The drive to the clients’ house is beautiful, all early-autumn leaves and rolling hills and bright blue skies with perfect, puffy white clouds. I follow the directions on my phone, but my mind is everywhere it shouldn’t be.
Elle’s hand sliding up my arm as my magic rippled through her. The soft moan that the boneless calm pulled from her throat. Her fingers around my wrist. The worry she spoke to life between us.
At a stop sign, I pinch the bridge of my nose, my eyes squeezed tight. I need to get this woman out of my head. She’s paying me for a job. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Alex said it’s one of your favorites.
A honk blares behind me, and I refocus on the road.
I continue past the stop sign, where no other cars are waiting except the one behind me.
My GPS leads me through the final few miles, and I force my attention back where it belongs.
On the couple waiting for me. On the possible poltergeist terrorizing their home.
Before I left the B&B, I packed everything I thought might be useful. There are the usual tools—bundles of dried lavender for cleansing and tumbles of peridot, obsidian, and amethyst that I’ll leave behind for continued protection—but also a few…unorthodox options.
Ground cinnamon and a cypress-scented candle to hopefully entice the spirit to speak with me.
An hour-long playlist of music centered at 417 hertz.
Most important is the fist-size orb of lepidolite that I’ve covered in my modified containment sigil. Lepidolite is useful for all kinds of transitions, and though I’ve never used it to literally transition a spirit from one location to another, it should work to transfer the ghost back to the B&B.
Elle’s right that a poltergeist doesn’t belong at Midnight Manor, but using one to test the strength of the bedroom barriers will be useful.
Having the strength to move objects means they also have the highest chance of being able to break through magical barriers.
And once I know whether the sigils hold, I can banish the ghost as easily from the B&B as I can from the couple’s home.
Win-win.
“The destination is on your right.”
I pull into the driveway of a cute craftsman-style home, and the moment I step out of the car, I can feel it.
A wrongness to the energy at odds with the cozy home and its pillow-covered porch swing.
Whatever has taken up residence here doesn’t harbor positive intentions.
I gather my supplies from the back seat, a twist of nerves souring in my stomach as I approach the house.
Even though I’m prepared for whatever is inside, my nervous system screams danger at me.
Before I can knock, the front door sweeps open. A Latine woman in her late thirties smiles at me and rests a hand on her heavily pregnant belly. “Pippa Ainsley?”
I nod. “I’m glad you agreed to let me help with your ghost problem.”
“Jackie! The exorcist is here!”
“Oh, I’m not—”
“Same difference, though, right?” The woman motions for me to come inside.
“I’m Marisol. My wife and I have tried everything to get rid of this thing.
Her brother-in-law is a witch, and it seemed like his clearing had worked at first. Things were quiet for a couple weeks, but then the damn thing came back with a vengeance. ”
“Reggie doesn’t normally deal with ghosts.
He works as a healer at a clinic downstate,” a white woman—Jackie, presumably—says as she enters the room.
Her salt-and-pepper hair is short, and she presses a kiss to her wife’s head before turning her full attention on me.
“We can’t risk pissing this thing off worse with the little one coming in a few weeks. ”
“Healing and dealing with the dead are skills that rarely go hand in hand. It makes sense that your brother-in-law struggled.” I let my gaze sweep over the living room, which is scattered with baby paraphernalia. “Can you show me where most of the activity occurs?”
“It happens everywhere, but it’s the worst in the kitchen,” Jackie says, then she and Marisol lead me into a large eat-in kitchen. “Like we wrote in our post, it started with cabinets opening and closing. Plates getting knocked off the counter. Lately, though, it’s started throwing knives.”
“Really?” The energy in the space is heavy with anger that borders on rage, but the specificity to throw cutlery is new for me.
Marisol crosses her arms over her pregnant belly. “I think it’s homophobic. I’ve lived here for ages. It didn’t become a problem until Jackie and I got married two years ago.”
“You’ve been dealing with this for two years?” The shock must show on my face, because the women share a sheepish look. “Why didn’t you cleanse the space sooner?”
“At first, it wasn’t anything bad. Pockets of cold air. That prickly feeling of not being alone. We thought it was neat, living in a gently haunted house,” Marisol admits.
“Things didn’t get scary until Mari’s baby bump started to show.” Several of the cupboard doors open and slam in quick succession. All three of us jump. “See what I mean?”
I reach out to trace a revelation sigil in the air like I did when I cleansed Midnight Manor, but then I pause. If this spirit is as strong as it seems, I don’t need to give it any extra magical oomph. And it’s certainly not hiding.
Changing tactics, I draw an amplification sigil over my third eye, sharpening my ability to see energy. Thick swaths of deep gray, like violent thunderclouds, hang heavy in the room. It seems to gather around the couple, but especially Marisol. “It’s a good thing I found your post when I did.”
“Can you get rid of it?” Jackie reaches for Marisol’s hand, worry thick in her voice.
“Absolutely.” There are a lot of things I doubt about myself, but this isn’t one of them.
While I’d never wish a dangerous haunting on anyone, it’s nice to face something I know I can handle.
“I recommend you leave the house while I work. Things could get a little…heightened until the spirit is fully trapped.”
“Of course,” Marisol says, but Jackie’s brows furrow. “What do you mean ‘trapped’?” she asks.
“I intend to trap the spirit and remove it from the premises.” I pull out the lepidolite—a gorgeous crystal with swirls of purple and white—and set it on the dining room table. “It was all in my email.”
The women share a look, a silent conversation passing between them, until Jackie finally nods. “If that thing stays gone, we don’t care how you do it. Especially since this is free.”
A drawer leaps out on its tracks. Silverware flings toward us. We duck, and a spoon buries itself in the wall. “Now would be a good time to leave.” I usher both women back toward their front door. “You’re welcome to hang around outside or go get coffee, whatever you want.”
“We’ll stay close,” Marisol says, casting a final look into her kitchen. “I have a pork shoulder in the oven.”
“I’ll try to be quick,” I promise, and close myself inside their house.
Time to get to work.
I firm up my energetic barriers, sigils humming in the air around me.
They’ll act as a shield to keep the ghost from siphoning my energy or impaling me with a knife.
The gray mass of crackling energy contorts itself into new shapes as I approach the kitchen again.
Hands behind my back, I draw barrier sigils as I walk the perimeter of the room, keeping the spirit trapped inside with me so I won’t have to chase it all over the house.
Rather than begin my usual banishing ritual, I open my bag and address the spirit directly. “Your time in this home is about to be over.”
The floor rumbles with a distorted echo of deep-throated laughter, like the spirit is amused by my confidence. Gotta love being underestimated by the dead.
“You don’t get a choice in whether you go,” I say as I dig through my bag of supplies. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as the cloud collapses in on itself, the energy coalescing into the approximation of a body near the oven. “But you can decide whether you come willingly or by force.”
As my fingers graze the jar of ground cinnamon I brought with me, a chill stretches from my right shoulder down my back to my left hip.
I fight to keep the tremor out of my voice.
“Touch me again, and you don’t get an option.
” I pull the cinnamon and a cypress candle from my bag and rest them both next to the lepidolite.
“I read that spirits enjoy these kinds of scents.”
That laugh again. The cinnamon flies across the room, spilling all over the floor. A frigid presence clamps hard over my hand.
The cold pressure only lasts a second before the sigils flare to life and throw the spirit back.
It tsks at me, shaking its head as the shadows become denser, more tangible.
Thank god the ghost at Dea’s apartment all those years ago wasn’t this powerful.
I would have been screwed. Now, though, it’s the poltergeist before me who should be afraid.
“Okay then, the hard way it is.”
Cabinets rattle. A glass shatters on the tile floor.
I trace containment sigils with lightning speed, boxing the spirit into the center of the room, where it can’t reach anything else to throw at me.
Digging into my bag again, I pull out four pyramids of black obsidian and set them outside the barrier, trapping the six-foot shadow.
The obsidian pulses with grounding energy.
The spirit thrashes against the barrier as the black crystals leach away its malevolent power.
I stumble as I return to the table, my knees suddenly watery and my head spinning.
I close my eyes, firming up my connection to all the different bits of magic I’ve cast, each demanding a portion of my attention.
A painful throb starts at the base of my skull. I’m pushing the limits of my focus.
Just a little further, I tell myself. We’re almost there.