The rune managed to gather all the power it needed, and then it simply turned out the lights.
My mirror window into the real world started to go dark, taking my footing with it.
“You gave me your blood as penance? You gave me your power. This is me using it the way I think it should be used. Go against that, and you’re invalidating every act of contrition you made there.”
“Mags!” I said, raising my voice to be heard, in case this fading window wouldn’t carry sounds as well into the real world. “That isn’t her! You can go against it!”
Before the light could go out and maybe take me with it, I skipped to the next real bit of solid footing, about a five minute walk from the slope, Mags and Molly.
Once there, I collapsed, back to the wall.
Damn it.
We did not need this right now.
I turned over my options in my head, while double checking I was still in one piece. No substantial damage, beyond what I’d suffered fighting the three guardians of the mirror space. Ribs damaged in the tumble, now exposed. Feathers stuck out from the side of my stomach, where I’d scraped the skin, and poked out where and when my sweatshirt rode up.
I still had the Hyena, but that didn’t feel like an answer in dealing with Molly.
Just when I was preparing to go, Mags turned up. She held the backpack with the salt and rope in it in one hand, the adjustment straps dragging on the ground.
“What happened?”
“Ugh,” she said. “She tapped my power for the rune there. She’s right. I can’t fight her, not really. I’m getting more calls. Same people, and it’s getting more insistent. If they accuse me of not doing my job…”
It would bode ill.
“Bad day,” I said.
“Putting it lightly,” she said. “She disappeared again. She didn’t go to the memorial either. I’m assuming it’s the house.”
Not to the memorial?
“I don’t know if a ghost can have multiple haunts,” I said. “I sort of skimmed, when I read up on ghosts.”
“Right. Fuck. Okay. Next destination, Hillsglade House?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s a wraith, she’s shoring herself up and storing strength by feeding on negativity. It’s going to twist her into something else.”
“How do you stop a wraith?”
“Mostly, I think, wraiths stop themselves. They burn through whatever power made them. Maybe if a practitioner is skilled, they can infuse it with more spirits, and shape it, like the Shepherd in Toronto did.”
“I wasn’t in Toronto, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. Uh, the other way they stop is the way any ghost can theoretically be put to rest.”
“Yeah?”
“Help them resolve the issue that made the echo in the first place.”
“Great. How do we resolve hers?”
I paused.
“What?”
“For a wraith, that’s usually venting all that negativity at a person or a group of people. Getting revenge.”
“Balls,” Mags said. She leaned against the window, bringing her head back hard enough to make the glass rattle. “She’s a practitioner, but any power she draws on is going to be mine, because I established a connection.”
“She’s still growing. She’s finding her strength, but by all accounts, she was never a very offensive practitioner.”
“She banished you pretty well.”
“Her focus was on defense. Knowing that, we’ve got a sense of how she’ll operate. She wants to make you miserable.”
“She wants me to experience the same pain she did.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I believe that. But there’s a reason she disappeared and didn’t go right after you. You think she went to Hillsglade, but I’m not certain. What’s her agenda? How does that fit in?”
“Getting access to books?”
“If she tries, she won’t succeed. Rose put up barriers. I can’t get inside. I doubt an obvious threat like a ghost or a wraith could.”
“Another haunt, then?”
“Maybe,” I said.
Mags pulled a notebook out of the bag. She opened it to the first blank page.
Wraith of Molly Walker in the middle, circled.
Thorburn, defensive caster, middle child, first heir and custodian. Mags wrote the words inside the bubble.
Around the edge, she wrote more words inside bubbles. Hillsglade House. Molly’s Home. School.
“Places she could be?” I asked.
“Things she has a connection to, but mostly places.”
“Her little brother,” I said. “Her mom and Callan, who should be in the same place. Um. The goblins that killed her. Extended family. Laird. Sandra. Grandmother.”
Mags scribbled each idea down.
She switched to a different pen.
A line from Molly’s bubble in the middle to each of the bubbles ringing it.
Each line came out with a different strength.
The strongest, oddly enough, was ‘extended family’.
“More negativity to feed on,” I said. “More connections to her soul and her Self.”
“Right. I know where they are. Your aunt said when she was talking to Rose.”
She swiftly packed everything back into the bag.
I could see her nervousness, the agitation that made paper flutter as she seized it. Even the pens, when she put each one into a pocket for that pen alone- they wobbled.
I hated to have to tell her, but…
“I’m not coming,” I told her.
She froze, shifted position to look at me in the window.
“I’m not as useful here,” I said. “We can’t chase her. We’ve got to head her off, like we said before. We should split up. I’m… I’ll figure something out, and you give chase and distract her as well as you can, alright?”
“Damn it,” she said.
“You going to be okay without the bogeyman around for moral support?” I asked.
“I’m going to have to be,” she said. “Ugh.”
As if she wouldn’t have the courage if she didn’t set off right there, she sprinted out of my field of view, the backpack not even over her shoulders.
I headed in the opposite direction.
I felt trepidation of my own.
I walked over until I was at the very edge of the light shed by this row of houses.
I couldn’t make out the light, but I did have an open invitation.
I leaped, and I prayed I wouldn’t be intercepted, or wind up somewhere where I could get in trouble.
My feet came down on solid road.
Here, the wind blew. The sun shone, a sky overhead.
Faysal Anwar was sitting in the middle of the road, gleaming white.
“As per our arrangement?” he asked.
“Please,” I said.
“Will you walk with me?” he asked. “I rather like walks, and I would like to stretch my legs.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Because of my role as a Gatekeeper and a being that supervises travelers and forges paths, not because of my canine body.”
“Oh. Sure,” I said. Given the choice, I might have preferred to stay, so I might make a faster exit when the dealing was done, but I wasn’t about to fight for trivialities with a guy like him.
“You were in the midst of a crisis, the last I saw.”
“The crisis is ongoing,” I said.
“Ah. Then let me please see to my end of the bargain here first. I promised nourishment.”