“She’s right at the kitchen door, literally pressed against it,” I said, my words leaving me breathlessly.
“I’ll call Adrian,” Charles said. “He’ll advise us on what to do. In the meantime, stay away from the windows and don’t look the mort in her eyes.”
Thank my lucky stars that Charles knew how to keep calm when I did freak out, though I much preferred my usual state of numbness over such events.
The only room in the house with no windows was the bathroom. I settled down in there and had Charles bring me every magical references book I owned.
“Would smudging help?” I called out into the hallway.
Charles popped his head into the bathroom. “Smudging?”
“Burning pine needles and sage.”
He looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Why would that help?”
“We could use mint or salt,” I offered next.
Charles just laughed. “I thought you went to school for history.”
“I did.”
“Think about it, Sophia.”
Ah. Right. Mint and salt kills bacteria and germs. That would have helped keep people from getting sick, which would have made them less likely to hallucinate. That might help if I were sick, but not in dealing with actual Morts.
Adrian arrived shortly before midnight. “She’ll need to do this under nightfall,” he said to Charles. “If you try moving her to another location at night, you’re more likely to draw attention from the Cruor than if you just attract the Ankou to come here.”
“This is less than ideal,” Charles replied. There was a weight to his voice that unnerved me. “This could risk our location entirely.”
Adrian frowned in a way that seemed almost apologetic. I could marvel for hours at how that man’s expressions could be so nuanced, how something as simple as a frown could evoke so many different things.
“There’s no other way.”
Charles raked his hand through his hair. “Then we better get started.”
Their genius plan was to use me for bait for all the Morts in the area. Then call the Ankou to come exterminate the problem. My anxiety over the whole ordeal was mounting more and more by the second.
I kept mostly to the bathroom, but I did peek occasionally to see what was going on. The backdoor kept wrenching open and slamming shut, and I couldn’t help but cave to my curiosity. The thought reminded me of what Marcus had said, that it was my dad’s curiosity that got him killed.
Had he been somehow involved in this other world?
Adrian went outside ahead of us and set up a circle of wooden poles in the yard. He returned inside to retrieve a chair from the kitchen, which he placed in the center of his circle.
I leaned into Charles. “Why did he paint the poles blue?”
“It’s lime, milk, and pigments that make a blue paint. It’s supposed to look like water.”
“Ghosts don’t like water?”
Charles didn’t answer me. Increasingly, the stress in the pit of my stomach could be more readily attributed to Charles’ demeanor, rather than any knowledge that would lead me to feel afraid.
The spirit of the young woman wandered over to Adrian’s structure, concern etched into her features. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Within moments, two more spirits joined her: a young boy with blond hair and, with him, a tall, thin woman with short, dark-red hair.
“There’s more than one,” I said nervously.
Charles wrapped his hand around mine and squeezed.
A few moments later, Adrian had attached wind chimes to each blue pole. He came inside and wordlessly ushered me out. I opened my mouth to ask what would happen next, but he whispered harshly, “Don’t speak.”
He seated me in the chair surrounded by the poles and started walking in circles around me, dragging a stick along the wind chimes. He was chanting something in a language I hadn’t heard before. My heart rate picked up, and I couldn’t decide if I was too afraid to close my eyes or too afraid to leave them open.
Then something blurred the spirits and they burst into black particles that flurried to our feet. Their remains coated the ground in ash that quickly dissolved to smoke and floated off on the breeze.
Was that it?
I started to stand up but Adrian shook his head at me as though the simple movement were a reprimand for my actions. I froze, then inched back into my seat. He handed me a chalice full of rose water and I took the hint to drink it.
“Now we wait,” he said, and he walked inside, leaving me there. He and Charles watched me through window, unmoving. I wondered if my face revealed my fear as much as Charles’ revealed his concern.
How had my life turned to this?
Perhaps I’d always had one foot in the supernatural world, but over the last few months, things had been shifting. Now here I was, being thrust further into the darkness, my fingernails gripping helplessly to hang onto these last threads of the world as I’d known it.
All I could think was how much I wanted to leave the supernatural world behind.
All of it.
***