by Lee French
“We’ve fought them before,” Kay said. “I know their signatures well enough to do a kind of general radar thing. It won’t be precise, but we’ll find them.”
Drew repeated this for Claire and rubbed his shoulder. He could get used to the chill she caused. When she turned solid, if it still happened, he’d find a way to live with it. The way she kept touching him, though, made him realize how much contact they shared in a normal day. She nudged him, he patted her shoulder, she hugged him, he wiped her tears away.
Part of him still wanted to die so he could become a ghost with her. Except Iulia, Avery, Justin, and even Claire herself had made her uniqueness clear. When he died, he wouldn’t have the same clarity and memories. Besides, despite how much they argued and how much Drew hated him being there, Kay was starting to grow on him. In the same way moss grew on trees and rocks.
He jogged through downtown Portland with Claire floating beside him. They reached the bronze Teddy Roosevelt statue on the green strip running down the middle of Park Avenue before Kay piped up to say they’d find at least one nearby. While Claire poked around to find it, Drew dropped onto a park bench to catch his breath.
Flashing red and blue lights from a police cruiser two blocks away reflected off the windows of nearby buildings. Claire ran her hand over the surface of the block under Roosevelt without touching it. She circled it. He wondered what memory it sparked. Her color patches covered most of her form and grew every time he checked them.
As she emerged on the other side with a bemused grin, gunshots rang out from the police cruiser. Still panting, Drew leaped to his feet and forced himself to lope toward the cop. Claire kept pace with him instead of surging ahead.
They rounded a corner and found a police officer shooting at an ant on the sidewalk. Yellow liquid formed acid puddles on the sidewalk, burning away the concrete. Drew saw a bullet skim down the ant’s body without doing more than scratching its exoskeleton. The ant advanced on him.
“Stop shooting!” Drew spun mist around the cop, moving him to the other side of the street. He stared and blinked, stunned he’d moved the guy without also moving himself. He’d never done that before. Had his witch powers augmented Kay’s power, or did he and Kay just manage to do something new out of necessity?
“Neat,” Kay said.
Claire swooped in to stab the ant. It spat acid at her. The stream sizzled and stripped a layer of mist away, leaving behind the appearance of raw, ragged flesh. She squealed in surprised pain. “It can affect me,” she gasped.
“Then dodge the acid?” Deep down, part of Drew found her lack of immunity gratifying. She faced as much danger as him. That made them equal. Besides, he saved someone’s life. Except, he noted with dismay, the cop ran back toward them, waving to get their attention.
“This area isn’t safe,” the cop said as he sighted on the ant again.
“Yeah.” Claire snorted. “No kidding. Especially for you.”
The cop’s eyes popped wide and he pointed the gun at Claire. “What are you?”
“Come on,” Kay said. “Really? That’s the best he can do? Send him someplace much farther away this time.”
Claire sneered and turned her back on him. While she danced with the ant, avoiding its acid streams and waiting for an opening to stab it, Drew raised his arms and ducked into the cop’s way.
“We’re people with more capability than you in this situation. Stand down, officer. You’re causing more danger with the threat of ricochets. Go help some people who need it and stop shooting bulletproof monsters.”
The cop blinked and looked past him. Drew checked over his shoulder and saw Claire dodge more acid. She spun around the thing’s head and swept her dagger through the connection between its thorax and abdomen. Its back segment fell, spewing thick, blue-black blood. The ant staggered forward on four legs, giving Claire an opportunity to sever its head.
Though he wanted to provide more help than this, Drew snapped his fingers to get the cop’s attention. “Officer, you can’t deal with this. Get into your car and see about helping people who need it.”
“Leave him,” Kay said. “Move on. If he wants to be stupid, that’s his prerogative.”
“Is it dead?” The cop stared at the three-piece corpse oozing dark sludge.
Claire plunged her dagger into the ant’s head. “If it wasn’t before, it is now.”
Drew walked away from the cop and pointed north. “We should keep going toward the bar. Most of them probably haven’t foraged farther away from it than this, and they don’t seem to be sticking together. If they act like normal ants, we’ll find others following its trail. We should also find single ants in every other direction.”
“She’s floating,” the cop said.
After a lazy blink, Claire looked down at herself. “Oh my gosh, he’s right! I’m floating. I told you we’d lose those weights holding me down. Let’s go find them.” She drifted across the street, leaving Drew behind.
Kay exploded into laughter. Drew stared after her, not sure how to react. He wanted to laugh with Kay, but he also wanted to scream. Instead of doing either, he trotted after her. A glance behind showed him the cop approaching the ant’s corpse warily. Some poor entomologist would have to examine these things and explain how they shrugged off bullets and spat acid without referring to it as magic. He wished them luck.
He could see through her mist. Even with that challenge, Claire had the skills to use the tool at her disposal. Drew… could direct traffic. “Maybe I should go home. You don’t really need my help now that you know what to do.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Claire snapped. “The buddy system is really important.”
“What?” As they rounded a corner to head north again, Drew stopped. “Is this all a giant joke to you?”
Claire spun in place and planted her fists on her hips. “Yeah, being dead is a hoot. It’s almost as much fun as being slapped with a heated spatula. But, you know, not quite. Let’s not get too crazy.”
“Iulia was wrong,” Drew spat. He stalked past her. “You’re not really Claire.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Shut up, Kay.” His Claire, the one he’d known for years, would never— He didn’t know what she’d done, but that didn’t matter.
Frigid air stole his breath. He gasped and clutched his chest as Claire floated through him. Shivers wracked his body.
She thumped his hand with the hilt of her dagger. “I don’t know what Iulia said or didn’t say, and I kind of don’t care. I mean, I do, but not right now. What I want right now is to be really clear about this.” Her hand hovered close to his face without touching him. “I remember you telling me my family had turned into fairies. I remember you holding my hand to help me calm down after nightmares. And I remember sitting with you at lunch when no one else would.”
Cold radiated from her fingers. Drew wanted to take her hand in his and rub them to warm her. He’d done that too. He sagged and leaned against the nearby wall. “It’s not fair.”
“I’m painfully aware of that. But I’m definitely me. And you know what? I keep uncovering memories, but none of them have my family. Everything starts with their funeral. And what happened right after that?”
Drew shook his head, afraid of whatever might come next.
“I met you, dumbass. All I’ve got of them is their names on tombstones. You? Six years of stuff.” She shrugged. “Do I need your help to kill one ant? Not really. Is how useful you are the only reason I want you here? Nope. I wanted you with me when we fought Caius because I wanted you with me. That hasn’t changed.”
Wiping his face, Drew nodded. “Okay.”
“On the bright side, I might be dead, but I’m not gone. Kind of stuck at sixteen forever, but that’s not the worst thing imaginable. Being stuck at ten forever would suck a lot more.”
Drew covered his mouth and nodded again. He didn’t trust himself to say anything else. Not yet.
“C’mon.” Claire beckoned for him
to continue with her. “We still have a bunch of ants to deal with. And while we’re looking for them, you can tell me why you were chatting with Iulia and what she said.”
“I don’t see a downside to answering those questions. If you’re going to stick with her instead of chasing Sophie, you might as well tell her what’s going on.”
Following her as she floated backward, facing him, Drew sighed and told her everything he’d been up to, though he chose not to mention Sophie. The way he told it, he’d had an accident behind Anne’s house that turned him into an untrained witch.
“Let’s skip over most of the obvious questions I might ask for now and go straight to the most important thing Iulia said. If her new seal affects all existing ghosts, then it’ll affect you.”
Drew blinked at her. Kay stayed quiet.
“Because you and Kay are stuck together, right? If her seal affects Kay, it’ll probably kill you.”
Kay whispered, “Why did I not think of that?”
“I don’t know,” Drew muttered, “but neither did I.”
“I’m not really excited about how she’s so keen to use my locket, either. Something about it bothers me. I mean, she’s nice and pleasant, and the reason she decided to trap me made sense. The seal sounds like a positive thing, but I can’t help wondering if there are things she’s just not saying. Like, side effects or something. I feel like she’s leaving stuff out.”
“She bothers Kay too, and he can’t put his finger on why.” Drew noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see three ants spewing acid at a door. People probably cowered in fear on the other side of it.
He pointed toward the ants. “I’ll distract, you stab.”
“Good plan.”
Chapter 24
Claire
“Stay inside until the TV says the bugs are gone,” Drew told someone through the damaged, cracked-open door. Three ant corpses in multiple pieces littered the sidewalk and front stoop of the building.
Claire stayed out of sight. The fewer people who saw her as a ghost, the better. She waited while Drew suggested a barricade to protect the bottom half of the door, then they continued on their way, using Kay’s vague ant radar to find more. Overhead, she noticed an explosion of fire. They’d reached Burnside Street again.
Checking all around, she spotted Justin and Tariel down the street, battling a cockroach with the help of five dragons. He and Avery had split up, she guessed. With plenty of dragons to go around, it made sense. She pointed for Drew to keep going in a different direction. Them interfering had more chance of throwing Justin off than helping.
A large dragon overhead roared in wordless frustration. Claire checked above in time to see it and its prey plummeting to the ground. She tried to knock Drew out of the way, which did nothing, of course. Despite that, he saw the danger and dove aside anyway.
With a mighty crash, the dragon and its cockroach slammed into the street. The pair cracked the asphalt and made a crater. Pieces of the roach’s wings scattered. Its legs flailed in the air while the dragon staggered aside, one limb not working properly. Claire thought the dragon was Rhubark.
Wary of the electricity that might affect her, Claire drifted in. She had no idea if mutant cockroaches could regrow their wings and didn’t want to find out. Best to stab it before it recovered. She surged into the shallow crater, floating through the cockroach. If her passing through Drew caused him pain, it should do the same for a bug.
“Ants,” Rhubark whimpered. He favored his leg as he shuffled to the side. With a flash of silver, he shrank to his tiny size and hid on a high ledge.
Claire watched in horror as five ants crawled over the roach’s head and spat acid at her. Though she dodged two streams, the other three sizzled her mist, burning parts of her away. She screamed. A jet of fog slammed into the ants, driving them back.
“Buddy system!” Keeping the jet going, Drew stood and stepped closer.
“See! You’re not useless.” Holding her side while it filled back in, Claire jammed the dagger into the roach’s underbelly, determined to deal with the thing she could reach. Using the blade like a saw, she dragged it up the roach’s body. She stopped before reaching the head to avoid crossing Drew’s line of fire.
The roach’s antennae flailed. One zapped a bus stop sign, the other set a leafless tree on fire. Drew turned his fog on the tree, putting out the fire. Claire raised her dagger to stab the roach again. The tip of an antenna snapped through her, jolting her mist. She spread apart, losing definition, and dropped the dagger.
“Claire!”
Two ants recovered and spat acid at her, hitting her legs and dissolving them. The remaining ants faced Drew’s renewed attention. He surrounded them with a sphere of fog and flung it upward. While it rose, he snapped his other hand out and sent another ant flying at the nearby building.
Waiting for her mist to coalesce again, Claire watched in wonder while Drew used some kind of telekinesis to lift a different ant. He clenched his fist and crushed the ant from fifteen feet away. Its legs crumpled, it shrieked, and its exoskeleton split. Tossing it aside, he reached for the next ant and repeated his assault.
His fog sphere crashed to the ground, the mist spreading out to reveal two stunned ants, their legs unable to hold them up.
“Look out!” Claire pointed at the two ants while Drew scooped up the one he’d thrown aside.
Somehow, in a moment of necessity, he’d stepped up and found the ability to do things he didn’t think he could. Through the pain of her mist reconstituting itself, she kept watching him slam these stupid things around and crush them one by one.
The roach’s antennae still flipped in the air, but too feebly to be a threat. Once Drew dispatched the last ant, he used his power to pick up the dagger and bury it in the roach’s eye. Then he stood back and looked at his handiwork.
Breathless and holding his stomach, Drew sagged. “I…I did that.”
“Yeah, you did. You picked up my slack.” Claire drifted to his side, wishing she could hug him.
He grinned with a touch of hysteria in his eyes. “I might throw up, but I can do this.”
“Yep, you can.” Beaming at him, Claire resisted laughing. She doubted he’s take it as she meant it.
Tariel charged around the corner with Justin on her back. Fresh bug blood spattered both of them, and Justin held his sword ready for battle. Dragons, all in their large size, lumbered in his wake. They all slowed and stopped, Justin lowering his blade.
“Good job. Avery took a bunch of dragons to deal with the last roach, so that should be that. They’ll probably be finding ants for the next week, but I’m pretty sure we dented the population significantly tonight. The dragons really made a big difference.”
“Dragons good helpers,” Enion said with a proud nod.
“Dragons are really good helpers,” Claire agreed.
“Yes.” Justin wiped his blade on his jeans and sheathed it. “It’s got to be getting late. If you two want to beg off for tonight, go ahead.”
“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” Drew asked.
Justin chuckled. “No, I’ll ask Tammy to call you in sick. I still don’t know what to do about you, Claire, but I’ll call you in sick too.”
Claire shrugged, not sure what to say. “At some point, you’re going to have to admit I ran away or something.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. For now, Drew looks like he’s going to drop as soon as the rush wears off. We’re going to start jogging every day, Drew. Get you some endurance and strength.”
“Yeah.” Drew giggled.
“Enion,” Claire said, “stay with Justin and make sure he gets home. All the dragons too. Rhubark got hurt. He’s up there.”
Enion straightened his neck and snapped a nod at Claire. “Enion make sure everybody goes home.”
“I appreciate that, Enion,” Justin said. “Let’s go find Avery in case he needs to be rescued.”
“Thank you,” Tariel sai
d. Before Claire could do more than smile at her, the horse reared, pivoted, and bolted down the street.
Enion sent one dragon to collect Rhubark and take him home, then led the rest into the air to follow Justin from above.
Alone with Drew again, Claire checked him over. He stared blankly at the roach corpse and swayed on his feet. She agreed with Justin about him needing training. Poor Drew. He had a lot of work to do. By Christmas, though, he’d be able to keep up with them.
Behind him, she saw that demented ghost turning a corner and heading for them. Taking care not to show any fear or concern, she smiled at Drew. “Can you get us home?”
“Yeah, pretty sure.” He spun mist around them, moving them to a dark room. With a flick of his hand, Drew made a small, blue-tinted light. They’d arrived inside his bedroom. Mutt snored on the bed. “He was right. I’m about to pass out.”
Claire wanted to take his glasses and help him with his shoes so he could fall over and sleep. Instead, she took the dagger from his hand and set it on his nightstand. When she left the room, she wouldn’t be able to take it with her. The dagger couldn’t pass through walls. “Then get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning.”
“Yeah.” He sat on the edge of his bed and kicked his shoes off. “I’m glad you’re here. Even though you’re not really here.”
“Me too. Come to my demesne whenever you’re ready tomorrow. I think I’m going back there for the night, since I know Iulia will let me leave now.”
“You’re almost completely in color now, you know. Solid will probably come soon.”
“I hope so. Good night, Drew.”
“Night.”
She left through his wall, gliding into the woods. Before returning to her demesne, she wanted to wait for Enion and the dragons. The crunch of leaves and twigs attracted her attention. She leaned through an evergreen tree to see a dragon in its large size.
“Claire! Iulia says come now.”
“Leeloo? What’s going on?”
“Claire and Drew come now. Iulia says. Seal.”
Iulia had said the seal would take years, hadn’t she? Claire furrowed her brow and shook her head. “It’s too late tonight. We had to work too hard to deal with the bugs in Portland.”
