Of Spirits and Superstition

by Nyx Halliwell

  I step back once, twice. Persephone is a shade of white I’ve never seen, not even in a ghost. “Heaven save us.”

  “What have you done with Ronan?” I demand of the very human-looking man, standing only a few feet away.

  He glances down, hands out, as if giving his body the once-over. His grinning face comes back up, gaze meeting mine. “What, you don’t like the meat suit? I thought my other form might be a little…horrifying…for you.”

  Again, the booming makes me want to cover my ears., even though I’m not in a physical body, and I’m not sure it would do any good.

  The master has taken over Ronan’s body. I can’t figure out how, as it’s at Tala’s in the physical plane.

  This is not how my plan was meant to play out. I was supposed to save Ronan first, while my mother and sisters fixed the ley line magick. Taking on this demon before any of that has happened is a very dangerous and stupid idea.

  “What do we do now?” Seph mutters.

  For a spirit guide, she needs to work on coming through at critical moments.

  I wish I had Spring’s ability to freeze things, or Autumn’s telekinesis. I’d take some of Summer’s crystals, big ones, if only to hurl at the guy.

  He’s not human. I remind myself.

  “Why did you choose that body?” I ask. “Why not my mother’s or one of my sisters’?”

  He chuckles and I feel the vibration like a gong throbbing through my noncorporeal self.

  “Your mother already belongs to me, and your sisters, while blocking my advances, will soon as well. This is special. I like him, and his magick tastes so good.”

  “Hey, that’s my body.” Out of thin air, Ronan appears, his ghostly-self indignant at seeing his flesh-and-blood anatomy walking and talking.

  I throw my hand out toward him. “Ronan, we have to go, now!”

  The demon reaches for him, but I give a tug on the cord to bring me back to my cabin. At the same time, Persephone jumps between the master and Ronan’s ghost.

  The moment Ronan looks at me, I throw a circle of magick around him, focus on Dad, and say the spell I’ve prepared, the words ringing through the trees.

  “Spirit of mine

  Take us where we must be

  Through time and space

  Over land and sea

  Transport us

  So mote it be.”

  In a heartbeat, Ronan and I are in the physical world, looking at his body on the bed in Tala’s bedroom.

  “Now!” I yell at Dad.

  In the next second, all the people gathered shift in a burst of sparkling white light.

  19

  “What’s happening?” Ronan asks, looking at me with no small amount of fear in his eyes. Or maybe it’s wonder. He glances at his form; sees the way it’s shaking. Power running through it, it arches. The eyes flick open.

  “Shapeshifting,” I tell him. “With any luck it’s going to pull you back into your—”

  His spirit begins to shake, and his eyes roll up. The whole room is filled with shifters, mostly wolves but a few other animals, such as eagles and snakes, as well.

  “I… can’t…”

  “Yes, you can,” I tell him, sending my love and protection into his heart. “It’s safe for you to, and your mother needs you. Hale needs you. Shift, Ronan! Shift!” His ghost is suddenly sucked away from me, the human figure on the bed morphing before my eyes.

  Dad and I are the only non-shifters in the room. We exchange a worried glance.

  For a long, tense moment, Ronan’s wolf lays unmoving. His chest doesn’t inflate, his beautiful eyes stare unseeing. All around, the rest whine.

  By the goddess, have I killed him?

  Tala, now as a striking white wolf, nudges him with her nose. Ears pricked, her tongue licks Ronan’s wolf face, a mother cleaning her cub.

  I can’t think, can’t move. With my mind, I send a mental message to Persephone, hoping she’s okay. She may be a pain in my backside, but I don’t want the master to get her. Besides, she may be the only spirit guide I have left at this point.

  Add saving Coyote to my list of things to do.

  “Come on, Ronan.” I hover over the bed. “Wake up!”

  He doesn’t, and I look at my dad again. “Is there anything you can do?”

  Tala stops and backs away. As if in grief, she raises her muzzle and howls.

  The other wolves do the same, and the space is filled with such pain and sorrow, I feel it in my chest where my heart should be beating. I want to cry, but my ghostly form refuses to shed tears. Maybe you have to be human to do that.

  My father hangs his head. The howls increase, and I start to float backward, horrified that I’ve killed Ronan instead of saving him.

  I bow my head and close my eyes. My plan has gone so far askew I don’t know how to get it back on track.

  Maybe I can reverse time, prevent this from even happening.

  Playing with history is a dangerous game and could result in worse consequences than this, if that’s even possible. But I want to. I want to so bad, that I don’t even care what they might be.

  And then, above all the other wailing and howling a new wolf song rises.

  My head snaps up and I see an amazing, beautiful sight.

  The wolf on the bed stands on all four feet, looking at me. I know those eyes, and when I start to smile, one of them winks at me.

  The howls change from grief to celebration. The eagle in the corner screams a welcoming call. The snake on the counter hisses and slithers.

  I rush forward to wrap my arms around Ronan’s scruff, and he accepts the embrace, although I doubt, he can actually feel it. He reaches out with his tongue and licks my face, and I laugh as it goes right through my cheek.

  Tala shifts back to her human form, some of the others follow. My reaction is to hold my breath to see if Ronan can shift into human once again, but there’s none in my chest.

  He leaps to the floor, as those around pat him, laughing and happy.

  I’m laughing, too, and Dad gives me a wide grin and a thumbs-up gesture. Tala, hand on Ronan’s head, says, “Okay, son. Don’t think about it, just let it happen.”

  With a glance at me, wolf-Ronan seems to nod, his big head nudging his mother’s touch. He closes his eyes and bares his teeth, and in the next second…

  Yes! He becomes a man again.

  Another cheer goes up, a mix of human voices and animal. He hugs his mother and accepts more pats on the back and shoulders. Then he turns to me. “Thank you.”

  I nod, wishing I could stay here and celebrate with them. “I have to go. There’s a lot more to do before midnight.” The clock on the wall shows me that while I stopped time before I left, it has restarted here. It’s eleven minutes to midnight.

  He reaches for me, realizes he can’t actually grab me, and his hand drops to his side. “You can’t take on the master, Winter. He’s too strong. And if you get stuck on the other side of the veil…”

  My smile turns weak. “It’s enough for me that you’re safe. And don’t think I won’t be haunting you so…take care of yourself and your family. No matter what happens. Promise me.”

  “There has to be something we can do.” He glances at all the people in the room.

  My dad steps forward, shoulder to shoulder with me, “There is. We don’t have time to get back to Winter’s cabin, so we’re going to work from here.”

  He glances at me. “Go. Do what you need to do. We’ll be sending help from here.”

  I’m not sure what he has planned, but I’ll accept all the magick I can get. “I need to release the souls the master controls.” I’m hoping with all my might that Mom and my sisters have at least some of the lines repaired. “Tap into the ley lines. That’s the best way to send me what I need.”

  Tala slides up next to Ronan, Hale with her. The three of them face me. “Nobody messes with my children and gets away with it,” the she-wolf in human form says. “You better believe we’ll be sending eve
rything we’ve got to you.”

  There’s nothing else to be said, so once again, I tap into that thread Spring and Ava are grounding for me, and wing through time and space to my cabin in the woods.

  20

  Autumn is at the loom, Summer with her, holding the mirror. Mom’s face is in the oval, giving earnest instructions as Autumn’s fingers fly over the new emerging tapestry.

  “It’s not going to be exact,” Mom says to me. “The ley lines may be in flux compared to what you’re used to.”

  “That’s okay.” I remember Seph’s advice about thinking outside the box—or tapestry, in this case—and weaving a new form of magick. I glance at Summer and Autumn. “It’s time.”

  “You saved Ronan?” Summer asks, hope lighting her face.

  “I did. But he’s too far away to help us, so it’s all up to Mom.” I take a moment to steel my nerves. “Now it’s time for the next step.”

  Autumn keeps working, but Mom gives me a quizzical look. “What’s that?”

  I project myself to the demon’s dimension, and I’m standing next to her. She’s holding the matching mirror, gray in this world, and startles as I materialize near her. “Winter, is there something else I need to do?”

  On the other side, Summer and Autumn begin to chant. My mother looks between me and them confused.

  “It’s time for you to go home,” I tell her. “I love you, Mom.”

  Before she can say anything, I close my eyes and whisk myself through time and space so I’m standing outside the cabin.

  As if frozen, Persephone and the master are still in the midst of their fight. I’ve stepped through a pocket of time to take Ronan home and return here, to this moment. I moved through multiple dimensions to come back to this one, as if no tick of the second hand has passed at all.

  Here time doesn’t actually exist, and I can pop in and out at will, thanks to Ava and Spring being my anchor.

  The master, still sporting Ronan’s face, is reaching for him, although Ronan’s ghost is no longer present. Persephone’s arms are raised like a basketball player trying to block a layup. As I return to the scene, they begin to move again.

  “You can have me,” I yell at the demon, “in exchange for my mother’s soul.”

  For the blink of an eye, he glances, surprised, between the spot where Ronan was and where I now stand. Seph completes her block but bounces off the demon’s body as if he’s a wall.

  “What the…?” She seems as confused as he is, her eyes darting between me and him. She’s not sure what just happened, but my words register and she points a finger at me. “No, no, no. You can’t exchange your soul for someone else’s.”

  “Sure, I can. I’m a witch and a shaman. My sisters will tell you, I do whatever I want.” I switch my attention to the master. “You want me? You got me. No fight. All I want is for you to let my mother go. You don’t need her anyway, if you have me.”

  He’s still sporting Ronan’s grin and it makes me sick. “You’ll all be mine soon enough,” he says. Ronan’s left hand rises and makes a flicking noise.

  My mother’s soul is no longer here.

  She died in the physical world; there’s no going back to that body. But maybe now, Ava can help her find the light. She can cross over and be at peace.

  Persephone floats toward me. “What have you done? You don’t mess with your soul. This is bad. You can’t let him—”

  The Master sends another flick in her direction and with a sharp cry, she disappears.

  Ronan’s grin turns on me, that deep, booming voice, sending ripples through the trees again. “Finally, we’re alone.”

  I refuse to let him see how scared I am. I don’t know how to save the other innocents, and there’s not time—no way for me to jump them through the dimensions I had planned—now.

  It’s just me and the master, and whatever I do now determines the fate of so many.

  I raise my chin and give him a bored look. “I’ve always wanted to take over the world.”

  This stumps him for a moment and the grin falters. “What are you talking about?”

  I try not to flinch, not to show any reaction at all. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? This world, then others in the cosmos?”

  He expected a fight. Instead, I’m agreeing to become a partner of sorts. “What game are you playing, little witch?”

  One he doesn’t see coming, I hope. “I can show you all kinds of different dimensions, if you’re interested. Different places, planets, whatever. No one understands how much power I’ve tapped into. But it’s yours if you want it.”

  He still looks surprised, but interested. His eyes narrow in calculation. “At what price?”

  I’ve wondered what his real form is a million times since I found out about him. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know, but it’s pissing me off that he’s using Ronan’s body. “I thought that was obvious,” I say. “I want to do the same, take over everything. Together, we can be gods.”

  “I am a god. You’re nothing but a mortal with a few fancy gifts under your belt.”

  I turn my hands up and motion at the forest and my cabin. “And yet here you are, stuck in a pentagram inside the earth that’s locked by my power.”

  This reminder makes his eyes turn red with rage. “You belong to me now. It won’t hold.”

  Even in my noncorporeal body, I feel the rising power, the surging magick. As if in a very distant place, I hear the second hand of a clock tick.

  Farther behind that, the very faintest sound of people chanting a spell.

  There’s a meow near my legs, and Shade arrives.

  Godfrey emerges from the cabin.

  Snow is with him.

  They form a half-circle at my feet, sitting and flicking their tails.

  The magick in the ley lines is returning to its power. Those joined with the bindings I’m mentally weaving, as Autumn continues to do so with the physical threads, are forming the container I’m going to shove this monster into.

  There’s a slightly sticky feel to it, the magick in the lines like sap rising in a tree in spring. Syrupy and slow, but beginning to warm. The flow quickens with every chant, every connection of thread to thread. The loom is singing, I can hear it. Sweet music that has thrummed and expanded since the bygone days of magickal Ireland and Gwrtheryn ancestors.

  But shadows move in the woods toward us. Ghosts. The night in this dimension draws closer, heavier, trying to suppress the rising tide of white magick returning. The ripple of translucent colors flutters here and there.

  I give a tug on that cord connecting me to Ava and Spring, feeling it strengthen, charged with a new kind of power.

  The master narrows his eyes even more. His voice booms out; the ground shakes. “What have you done?”

  “Screwed up big time,” I admit. “But a wise spirit guide told me sometimes you have to re-write magick.”

  “There’s none that can save you.”

  He could be right. “Magick isn’t something to toy with.”

  The rage in his eyes is fiery red. I sense the evil rolling off him, and even Ronan’s body can’t suppress it. He snarls at me.

  Magick surges, the chanting fills my ears. Ava tugs on the cord on her end.

  The signal I was waiting for.

  “Another thing you shouldn’t mess with?” I meet his gaze, and move toward him, even though it’s the last thing I want to do. I stop in front of him and smile, lowering my voice and giving a wicked grin. “Is the Whitethorne sisters.”

  21

  As expected, he raises his hand, the magick in those five digits deadly.

  I don’t know what he’s about to do to me, but I know it’s not good, so I do what I do best and become invisible.

  Again, it’s simply a trick. What I’m actually doing is dropping into another dimension where time doesn’t exist.

  I’ve laid the breadcrumbs, ignited the anger in this evil entity, and now I’ve disappeared.

  But those breadcru
mbs are a trail. Since Samhain, I’ve been practicing at finding this little pocket of nothingness. This space that is actually timeless, existing between two ticks of the clock.

  This is a container, not created so much as found by people who didn’t know any better.

  And Autumn, on the trail of Quinn’s presumed dead brother, stumbled upon it.

  She and I have been working on ideas to trap the demon here. There’s no way to send him back to where he came from, but this will end his threat. Once we get him here, we can close it for good. No one can ever get in, and he will never get out.

  Walking between dimensions is usually fun, but this is different. I’ve never had to leave a magickal trail so someone could follow me. I wait in this dark void and wonder, did it work? Is he upset and angry enough to stop and not think before he follows?

  I no longer feel the ley lines, no longer hear the chanting. What’s going on in the earthly dimension? In the master’s? Without time to direct me, I have no idea how long I’m in the container before I feel the shift in the energy.

  With a swift punch, I feel evil all around me. The blackness, already complete, deepens somehow. Although I’m not in a physical body, I feel sick to my stomach. My head throbs. The energy that covers me is equal to a fifty-pound blanket, suffocating in a way that has nothing to do with air or oxygen.

  It’s the death of a spirit.

  The snuffing out of a soul.

  But if this is what it takes—losing mine—to save the world? So mote it be.

  The evil invades every part of me. I let it. I have to make sure each tiny particle that carries this demon’s power comes into this container, even if that means it claims my spirit, before I close the dimension portal.

  The master is in my head. I hear him say, “You’re mine now. I will use your powers to conquer this world and all the others I desire.”

  The light inside me dims. I send love to my family, asking the goddess to bless them and ease their grief when I’m gone. And then an apology to my spirit guides, thanking them—even Persephone—for their guidance and support.