by Cady Vance
“So,” Laura said, spreading a towel across the bed. “What exactly do we do here?” She hopped up and sat cross-legged facing me.
I sprinkled the crushed sage—for healing—between us, its light piney scent tickling my nose. “I’m not one hundred percent on this. Mom told me about it, but we never practiced. Said it wasn’t necessary.” I rolled my eyes, then immediately felt bad about being ungrateful. “Anyway, this spell should be straightforward. Mom said it was pretty beginner stuff.”
“Well, that would be you and me, my friend, so I hope you’re right.”
After placing the blue candle for protection in the center, I brought out matches and lit the wick. As soon as the flame sparked to life, the blood in my veins began to tingle. Power filled the room, and I heard Laura let out a light sigh. My skin prickled, and the green of Laura’s comforter became more vivid, more green, like the world had gone from standard-def to HD. I could hear my heart thumping as if it were inside my eardrums instead of inside my chest. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. It was as if I were more alive than I normal.
“This reminds me of how…” I sighed and stared hard at the blue wax dripping down the side of the candle. “It reminds me of how the house used to feel every time Mom was home, especially after she’d been on a case. Like she still had shaman magic in her hair or something.”
“Stop it,” Laura said. “I’m not going to let you go down that path right now, not when we have to cast a rune neither of us has ever done before. No fear, no sadness, remember? That’s our motto when doing this stuff.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Safety first. No fear, no sadness, no strong emotions.” I repeated the words in my head and smiled at Laura. “What would I do without you?”
“For one thing, you wouldn’t have anyone to discuss the pros and cons of superhero secret identities with.”
I flipped open the rune book, the pages crackling between my fingers, and shook my head. “I still say Bruce Wayne is the secret identity and Batman is the real man.”
“But he has to put on a costume to be Batman.”
“Who’s to say that your t-shirt and jeans aren’t a costume? You could be using them to pretend you’re a normal girl, in order to hide the shaman underneath.” I glanced at the clock. “Anyway, as tempted as I am to get into this argument again, let’s get going on this or we’ll be late.”
I found the right page in the book, cut a piece of parchment from the notebook and began to draw the rune in broad, black marks. Two vertical lines with a big X between them. After I placed the parchment on the sage leaves, I met Laura’s eyes. It was time for my least favorite part—the knife. My skin stung when I pricked my thumb, drawing an instant pool of blood. Quickly, I handed the knife to Laura and she did the same.
“According to my mom, we have to mix our blood. That’s how the magic binds us together.”
“Okay, kind of weird,” Laura said, holding out her hand. “But it makes sense.”
I reached over the flame and pressed my thumb against hers, squeezing tight so our blood would mingle, binding us and our magic as one. Then, we each placed a thumb on the parchment, directly over the black marks I’d drawn. Red spread in random patterns across the paper.
“Do you think your dad is snoozing in his recliner?” I asked. “We have to do the song.”
“Is it a weekday afternoon?” Laura nibbled on a fingernail and glanced at her bedroom door like she wanted to check.
“If he hears us, then we can just say we were watching a wonky video on YouTube.”
“Okay,” Laura said, pulling her eyes away from the door. “Let’s do this.”
I dropped the parchment onto the candle and pressed my thumb back against Laura’s over the licking flames. I could feel us take a deep breath together, centering ourselves. And then we both opened our mouths and sang. The song was nothing more than vowels strung together in an easy, melodic tune, but I could feel the intensity of those sounds with every beat. I ignored the heat of the flame under my palm, too focused on what was passing between Laura and me.
It felt like my blood was rushing into her veins, our magic mixing together. The volume of our voices rose. What had started in soft whispers became a belting song. I suddenly didn’t care if her dad heard. I was too wrapped up in the magic. I missed how it made me feel like I could take on the world.
And then our voices stopped, and all I could hear was our ragged breathing and the beating of both our hearts in the same steady rhythm. Bound together by shaman magic. I felt ready for anything, bigger, taller. And because of the spark I saw in Laura’s eyes, I knew she did, too. But I quickly sobered up when I remembered what we were about to face. Kylie needed us to banish a spirit from her bedroom, and if we didn’t do this right, it would suck our life away.
***
As we walked down the winding street lined with perfectly manicured lawns and sprawling mansions, my shaman magic raced through my bloodstream, intensifying every sense. The scent of freshly cut grass and baking apple pie surrounded me and clogged my nostrils. In the distance, I could hear the whoosh of a basketball sweeping through the hoop hanging over the Lyons’ garage door. The shhhhhhh, shk, shk, shk, shk of a sprinkler rushed into my ears, and enveloping it all was the humid ocean air, so thick it was as if my skin sliced Holly-shaped holes through it.
The world just seemed so surreal, like I wasn’t totally connected to it. Or, actually, maybe it was that I was more in tune with it than normal.
Laura was quiet as our flip flops slapped the pavement. I could tell she finally realized what we were about to do. Any shaman in her right mind hated spirits. Probably feared them a little even though we had to bottle that up real tight. Because if we gave in to the fear even a little bit, a spirit would attack us and feed on our life. I’d only been attacked by a spirit once, but that loss of control, of feeling the days of my life slipping away from me…I knew I never wanted to let it happen again.
As we turned into Kylie’s long driveway, a breeze blew off the ocean, lifting my long, brown hair off my shoulders and blowing it behind me. I handed Laura some supplies, and she disappeared into the plants lining the drive. No one at school knew she had anything to do with my cases so we’d decided she should stay tucked inside the bushes where she couldn’t be spotted. As long as she was nearby, we’d stay bound.
Kylie was waiting for me on the front porch, just standing there with hands clasped around a thick white pillar. Her face was pale, and her body was as stiff as a corpse, but she still managed to look like a supermodel.
“Thank god you’re here,” she said when I shuffled up the stairs. “I don’t want to be alone anymore. I asked Nathan if he’d come over, but he had to work.” She pulled off her cotton headband and picked at invisible frayed ends. “It’s been doing it again today.”
“Doing what?” I asked, following her inside. The entry opened up into the highest ceilings I’d ever seen in a house, and I felt like I needed to whisper to keep my voice from echoing all around me.
“Throwing things. Turning the TV on and off. Pulling the blankets off my bed.” She shuddered.
“And this is just in your room, right?” I eyed the big living room and the wide staircase. A lot of space for a spirit to wreak havoc.
“Yeah, is that bad?” she asked. “Please tell me it’s not bad.”
“No, no,” I said. “That’s a good thing. It would be a lot harder for me to get rid of it if it was all over the place in this huge house.”
She just stared at me, fingernails in her headband and terror in her eyes. More terror than I would have expected with even a real spirit.
“You okay?” I kept my voice quiet and calm, hoping that if I seemed relaxed then she would stop freaking out. “This is no big deal you know. I’ll get rid of it, and then everything will go back to normal.”
She just kept staring at me, not blinking her eyes. I wondered how long she could go on like that before her eyeballs got so dry her lids would get stuck lik
e that.
“Something else is wrong,” I said. “What is it?”
Her eyes shifted to a long stretch of flowery carpet. “It…this is going to sound so weird.”
“You know who you’re talking to, right?”
“Yeah.” She spoke in a whisper almost too low to hear. I moved a step closer. “It touched me. Freezing cold hands on my arms and legs. And on my neck.”
I stepped back, instinctively. Kylie didn’t seem to notice, still staring at the carpet and shuddering as if she were being touched right then. This was so over my head. Spirits were nasty things, but I’d never dealt with one that had gone so far as touching a human. Never dealt with one that could. That showed a level of strength that shamans like my mom were specially brought in for. Not a teenager who had banished spirits only twice before.
I should leave. Tell Kylie she needed to call someone more experienced. But what would I say? Sorry, you need a more powerful shaman, but I don’t know the names of any because my mom kept me sheltered from that life? Somehow, I didn’t think that would help her at all.
“Show me your room.”
CHAPTER 3
I stood motionless outside Kylie’s bedroom door. Once I went inside, I couldn’t turn back. Mom had taught me three important rules about being a shaman. The most important one: show no fear. No matter what. If I went into her room and couldn’t see this thing through, I would be showing weakness. Spirits somehow communicate with each other. They know who to fear. And they also know who they can defeat.
I took in several slow and steady breaths to center myself and empty my mind, using the trick my mom taught me. Focus on one image. I always pictured a single sage leaf with its shade of silver-green and web of veins crawling across its surface. And then I focused on it until it was the only thought in my head, the only thing I could see, the only object in the world. As the leafy image took over my mind, all the tension and fear fell away. I could do this. And then I stepped inside.
I spun to take in the room. It was so big that my bedroom, my mom’s room and our living room combined could easily fit inside it. Everywhere I looked there were clothes. They were tossed across the bed, draped over a desk chair and piled on the floor by an open door leading to walk-in closet holding racks of shoes. Sunlight streamed in from the large, bay windows, beams highlighting the corkboard covered in photos of Kylie’s friends and family.
Without the heavy chill in the air, I never would have believed a spirit was here—it was a bedroom fit for a movie set. But I couldn’t ignore the icy breeze. It was the kind of cold that raises the hair on the back of your neck because it shouldn’t be there.
Kylie hurried in after me. “There’s the marking.”
“What?” I asked, striding over. “There are markings?” No markings should be here. That was only what Laura did to have a little fun. Spirits showed up in random places, scared people, got what they wanted and then disappeared leaving no evidence behind them. A spirit wouldn’t carve a rune. No markings should be in Kylie’s room unless…
Unless another shaman had drawn it. To summon the spirit here.
My stomach flipped over fifteen thousand times. Another shaman, here in Seaport. Summoning a spirit. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I had to stay calm, had to keep my emotions under control.
“Are your parents here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
Kylie’s eyes went wide. “No. Why?”
“This spirit is a little…stronger…than others. It’s going to be hard to get rid of it. Probably a good idea your parents aren’t here. They might wonder what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?” She dropped onto the edge of her bed, picked up a ratty teddy bear and clutched it to her chest.
“Stay calm,” I said. “I’m going to take care of it. Just don’t get worked up. Anyone been in your room lately?”
“No,” she said, frowning. “Why?”
“Just wondered.” I’d expected as much. I was pretty sure no other shamans lived in this town. With our instant recognition, I’d know one from the moment I laid eyes on him, by tugging in my forehead. Whoever had summoned this spirit was an out-of-towner and had probably broken in to do it.
Kylie sat watching as I pulled a sheathed knife out of my backpack and leaned over the marking carved into the hardwood floor.
“You said spirit,” she said. “So, it is a ghost? Are you going to be able to figure out who’s haunting me?”
I shook my head and sat back on my heels. It’d be easy to let her believe she was being haunted, but I felt like she needed to hear the truth. “Not a ghost. These things were never living people.” I held my knife over the marking and studied it for a moment. It looked like an upside-down A. My heart thundered. This rune was only used for summoning spirits. It had been etched deeply into the wood and surrounded by an almost perfect circle. Someone had taken their time to get this right.
“If it’s not a ghost, then what is it?”
I pricked my thumb with the dagger and dragged the blade across the rune, forcing the sharp edge into the floor. My muscles groaned, and by the time I was done crossing out the rune to cancel its power, sweat dripped down the back of my neck, along with the fear slithering down my spine.
“They live in a place called Lower World, and it’s like a plane of existence right on top of ours. We’re their food, and we need to stay calm. Somehow fear is like a lifeline or something. They do things to freak us out, and that’s how they feed on us.”
The air in the room chilled as if the temperature had dropped fifty degrees. I looked down at my fingers curled around the dagger. The blade was shaking. No, my hand was shaking.
“Feed?” Kylie whispered, one hand now clutching her polka-dotted comforter, while the other had a death grip on her teddy bear. She stared at where I’d scratched out the rune. “Are you done?”
“No, not quite yet.” I tried to keep my voice bright. Maybe if she saw me acting normal, she’d stop clasping onto everything in sight. Starting the ritual had brought me even more in tune with my magic, and I could smell her fear myself. Sharp and bitter. A tangy, lemony scent. And if I could smell it, so could the spirit.
I needed to work faster.
After moving into a cross-legged position by the rune, I pulled out the rest of my supplies. I had to start with the sage again, which would protect my incantation from anything the spirit would try. I sprinkled it on the floor and moved on to the candle. Black this time—for moving into the Borderland so I could interact with the spirit. Next, I drew the banishment rune on my parchment. It was a backward S, with the curves turned into sharp, jagged points. My thumb was still bleeding from the dagger’s cut, so I quickly plopped a couple drops on top of my rune.
A deeper chill swept across the room, a gust of wind threatening to snuff the candle’s flame. The air swirled, particles of dust forming gray clouds. The wind knocked a picture frame off the dresser and sent it skittering across the floor. My hair lifted from my shoulders and slapped me in the face. I ground my teeth together to brace myself. Darkness fell over us, even though the sun still shone outside the windows. Shadowy ink blots danced around the room and surrounded Kylie on the bed.
“Holly, what’s happening?” Her body shook, and I bit the inside of my cheek, struggling to slow my racing pulse, trying to close my throat on the scream that clawed its way up to my mouth. Kylie’s eyes were wild, the whites veining into red. “It feels like something is sucking at me. Make it stop.”
“Oh no,” I whispered. That could only mean one thing. The spirit was feeding on her. Her life was slipping from her body and into its mouth, days of her existence stolen away.
“Holly, it hurts.” She thrashed on the bed.
“Don’t be scared,” I whispered to her. And to myself. Part of her was dying, and I was just sitting there watching Kylie shake, paralyzed by my own fear.
The flickering flames licked the parchment, and I snapped out of my stupor. I had to stop the spiri
t from sucking away more of her life, stop it from consuming more of her allotted time on earth. Why had it gone after her? I’d thought it would attack me. I was the real threat here, the one who could send it away.
I closed my eyes and felt the tug of my binding with Laura, like a rope bound tight around my belly. She was out there and could feel everything that was happening in this room. And she was afraid, too. It was like her fear was seeping through me. Like I was channeling it.
“Please help me.” Kylie’s voice came out as a whimper.
Focus.
My shaman song came out softly at first. A slow chant much more melancholy than the one I’d done with Laura. I pushed aside the fear, focused on saving Kylie, and let the song and shaman magic wash over me. My shoulders relaxed, and my body felt light, tingly and full of life. The buzzing of power filled my head, and I knew then I could do this. Face this spirit. Stop it from hurting Kylie even more than it already had. Because if I didn’t, she wouldn’t have much of her life left to live.
When the song was over, my breaths came out in rough puffs, as if I’d ridden my bike for hours. I opened my eyes and blinked at the swirling reds, greens, yellows and blues rolling across my vision. The curtains, the bookshelves and the bed looked smudged and distant, along with the strange colorful splotches, the dark shadows, and the small balls of light drifting lazily in the air. But the room stunk of staleness, like the waiting room of a hospital. Like something was dying in here.
“Kylie, it’s almost over,” I called out. “Hang on.”
“Please hurry.” Kylie’s voice was weak; her face was as white as the walls. She wiggled in her jumbled polka-dotted sheets, and one of the vague blobs I’d seen before was now a dark human-like shape, full of shadows and black shifting sand. Its body rose to eight feet in height, and its long arms and legs were skinny, misty vines that wrapped around Kylie’s form. Its head jerked when it realized I was there, in the Borderland watching it.
