It roared again, more powerful, until . . .
Until the voices came.
Humans, and they were forcefully saying the prayer, getting closer and closer.
“. . . Into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world, seeking the ruin of souls!”
A line of my friends appeared from the tree-spindled darkness, gripping each other’s hands, their eyes wide as they locked onto the demon and took slow steps forward.
J.J., Eileen, Wendy, Gavin, Suze, McGlinn, Ruben, Sierra . . . And, in the middle, Amanda Lee. She must’ve run back there to get help.
They started the prayer over again as my voice joined theirs, louder, stronger.
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection . . .”
The demon faltered as the line kept advancing.
“. . . Against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O prince of the Heavenly Host . . .”
When J.J. and Sierra broke away from the ends of the line, running forward, he had that iron rod in hand, and she dug into her windbreaker pocket for the rock salt. She ran by me and, since she couldn’t see me even in my Dean body, I took charge, darting my hand into her pocket, making her lose a step as I took a handful of salt. But she didn’t stop.
The prayer continued behind us as we let loose at the demon with our tiny weapons. Hit by all of it, the demon screeched, sounding a lot like Dennis Smith when he was in blob form.
Hissing with salt and iron burns, it drew its fire limbs back into itself and rapidly shifted back into its huge clown form.
Roar!
When I turned to get more salt from Sierra, Amanda Lee met my gaze.
How’re we going to destroy this thing? I asked silently.
She had to understand me, and with her usual strange calmness, she backed out of the human prayer line and brought Gavin’s and Suze’s hands together in an unbroken link.
Another bad feeling struck me, and I didn’t know exactly why. “Amanda Lee . . . ?”
But when she smiled at me with a hint of sadness and a whole lot of stubbornness, I knew I was already too late for whatever she had planned.
She stood in front of the line as they continued praying, stopping them in their tracks well back from where the protective-spell area ended. Then she went to the boundary by herself and called to the demon over all the voices and the roaring.
“Do you want someone who is truly willing to serve? You shouldn’t merely attach yourself to a soul who might betray you like Dennis. You want to own a body, control it. Come into me! Take me over to do your bidding!”
“Amanda Lee!” I shrieked. She was offering herself for a possession.
Sierra dropped the next handful of rock salt she’d been about to throw. “What’re you doing?”
Amanda Lee glanced back and gave the girl the same fond, determined smile she’d given me, then faced the demon while spreading out her arms.
The prayer line had eased off under Amanda Lee’s insane invitation—until Eileen the cleaner raised her voice, still keeping on like a true believer, leading everyone else to continue in an even more fervent plea.
“Saint Michael the Archangel . . .”
Had Amanda Lee told them to continue, no matter what happened out here? Had she had this in mind all along, not knowing of another way to capture a demon?
The clown made one last attempt to smack the ghosts away, but only with the two arms it had now, and as it fixed its gaze on Amanda Lee, its eyes went white, its disgusting smile at full force, its body fading as it beamed its essence from it to her.
Amanda Lee stumbled back as the demon’s essence hit her, her eyes going white, her mouth open in a scream nobody but the demon inside her probably heard.
As the demon’s clown body disappeared, she managed to turn her head to look at me with an expression so distressed that a sob tore out of me. I couldn’t watch her go through this.
I got to my feet in my humanlike body and looked around. And just as I spotted the iron rod J.J. had thrown at the demon languishing on the ground ten feet away from where it’d exited the monster, I started to run for it.
I couldn’t let Amanda Lee go through with a possession. Even if I damned myself.
But a ghost flared out of nowhere, and it was Marg, gesturing toward that iron rod before I got there, sending it flying through the air.
As I hauled in a gasp, the rod impaled Amanda Lee in the heart.
The sudden silence was deafening. The ghosts only floated nearby, helpless. The humans’ prayer came to a choking halt.
Amanda Lee crumpled to the ground, flat on her back, her eyes still white, her mouth still gaping. Then a tiny sound emerged from her mouth, soft and eerie. A wretched screech.
The demon trapped in her body?
I glanced at Dean, who could only sit there and listen, but a tragic understanding weighed down his blind expression. I started to go to Amanda Lee, my legs giving out from under me, taking me to the ground, too.
It’d happened so fast.
It’d . . . happened.
Something flashed near Amanda Lee’s body. Her released spirit, mistily floating out of her like it was stretching toward a new day.
In the dead quiet, she looked around at all of us, smiling. Wendy had her hands over her face, like she couldn’t bear to look at Amanda Lee. McGlinn was down on his knees, one hand pushing back all his woolly hair to reveal a stricken face. None of the other humans—Suze, Gavin, Ruben, Eileen, J.J., Sierra—could see her spirit, so they’d walked forward, congregating over her body, just as useless as the rest of us.
I realized I had tears streaming down my cheeks—not that anyone but the ghosts and seers could tell. I hadn’t felt them until now, though. Hadn’t even thought I could cry them anymore, but with Dean nearby and me in this body . . . Yeah. I could.
It felt like hands were wedging me apart, prying at the center of me as Amanda Lee sent an affectionate glance at Sierra, who was weeping over her dead body.
“She truly wouldn’t have had all of me,” Amanda Lee said to no one in particular. “I still belong to Liz. And now I’m going to go find her in the glare.” She glanced around, witnessing Boo World for real, seeing what each ghost that she hadn’t been able to see before looked like now.
Her smile was even wider. “I’d like to stay longer, just to appease my curiosity about this place, but I think Liz is waiting.”
“I’m sure she is,” I whispered.
Eileen the cleaner was trying to pull Wendy and everyone back from Amanda Lee’s body, warning them about the demon still inside, even if it was trapped. She had her phone out, like she was going to call someone.
Amanda Lee looked satisfied. “Earlier, I told her what to do if possession happened to any one of us humans. It was a possibility.” She laughed wonderingly. “I can’t very much say us humans anymore, though, can I?”
She angled her head, going back to business as usual. “Eileen agreed to contact the higher-ups in her church. They’ll handle the demon . . . and Dennis.”
“What do you mean?”
“My hope is that since the demon consumed Dennis, your killer is actually inside me, too. I brought him into this dimension, and I’m his way out of it. My body is Dennis’s world until a wrangler can collect him. I’m his newest portal.” She laughed. “So I ended up taking him out, after all. Odd how things end up, isn’t . . . Oh!”
She was looking toward the sky, where a gray, shrouded, veiled wrangler was descending. The humans must’ve sensed it, because they backed off even farther from where Eileen had sent them, bewildered and traumatized. Gavin held Suze as they kept retreating, and Ruben joined Wendy and McGlinn.
The wrangler came over to ghostly Amanda Lee, bobbing with faceless, veiled patience.
“A moment?�
�� Amanda Lee asked.
It nodded.
She turned back to us. By this time, the ghosts had gathered around, all except Twyla, who was comforting Marg back by Amanda Lee’s body.
“She did what she had to do with me,” Amanda Lee said, “and since she was already damned by her X, she was the only one I trusted for this sort of favor. That’s why I didn’t tell you what I had in mind in a worst-case scenario, Jensen.”
I didn’t feel betrayed. Just beaten. Lost.
“What’ll happen to Marg?”
I looked down at Dean, who was sitting up now, his eyes still swollen shut.
“Dean?” I asked, hoping he’d freely share this information now that I’d made my deal with him.
A deal I’d been only too glad to take part in.
He sighed, resting his arms on his bent knees, as serious as I’d ever seen him. “She can’t be damned twice for directly killing another human, but her ultimate punishment could be worse, depending on where she’s headed in the after-afterlife.”
“She’s not going to her version of Valhalla?” I asked, even though I pretty much knew.
“I only know of my experience,” he repeated, “so I genuinely can’t say. But she can stay in this dimension forever if she wants to. Both of her killings were just and right. There’s not a wrangler in Boo World who’d pass harsh judgment on her for taking mercy on Amanda Lee.”
Comfort coursed through me. But I was back to worrying about Marg the next second.
“So, she has no choice but to spend eternity in Boo World?”
“Not necessarily.”
Did he mean . . . ?
His star place. Yes, there, if she ever got tired of Boo World, she could be put under by Loki, embraced for as long as she wanted to be in a comatose fantasy world of his creation, where every day was happy. She could have any after-afterlife she wanted, even if it wasn’t real. Maybe it was enough that she thought it was.
“I’d be honored to have her as a star someday,” he said.
But when he turned to me with those swollen-shut, poisoned eyes, I read the message on his face. If the gods allow it after what I’ve done tonight. . . .
That seemed to satisfy Amanda Lee, though, and she floated over to Marg, who wouldn’t look at her.
Amanda Lee dipped down, catching Marg’s gaze.
“Thank you, my friend.”
Amanda Lee must’ve forgotten that ghosts needed to harden themselves for a decent yet nonfeeling hug, and when she went to bring Marg into her arms, she passed right through with a fritz of electricity. It’s not like she’d even hugged anyone much in real life, so maybe it just wasn’t something she’d ever master.
But Marg hardened herself, showing Amanda Lee how it was done, then clasped her friend to her, whispering apologies.
“You gave me a gift,” Amanda Lee finally said after pulling away. “I needed redemption for bringing these monsters into this dimension and for what I did to Gavin. You gave it to me.”
That seemed to soothe Marg, even if the X was oozing blackness. “We’ll miss you.”
“Me, too.” Amanda Lee laughed again. “How about that? Me, missing more than just Liz. I never would’ve thought.”
The wrangler was getting restless, so I rushed over to Amanda Lee, Randy and Louis by my side. She looked us all over, especially Louis. She’d never seen him before, even though they’d connected personally.
Now that she knew how to hug, she indulged herself in the human habit, but when it came to me, she paused. I knew why. Now I was the one with the body, since I was still close to Dean, and she was the ghost. Like Amanda Lee said, odd how things end up.
She hardened her form to embrace me, and as we hugged, an electric frost seemed to float through me like the first snowfall you saw as a kid. Cold and energizing, but peaceful.
Maybe we could feel, if properly devastated.
“Be happy for me,” she said in my ear. “I totally did good, Jensen.”
Hearing her speak my language made me choke up even more. “You totally did.”
Her wrangler floated over, and Amanda Lee nodded to it. Without any more fuss, the reaper lifted its veil and took Amanda Lee underneath, and as she disappeared, I could swear I heard Dennis’s screams. Or maybe I just wanted to.
Then the reaper ascended toward the sky, taking its newest charge to a glare, where Dennis would be separated from Amanda Lee and put back where he belonged. I prayed Elizabeth really was waiting for my friend there, too.
She will be, I told myself. Because if this world was just, that was how it’d have to turn out.
I felt fingers on my face and looked over to see Dean on his feet next to me, still blinded, his expression tender as he stroked the tears from my cheek.
Then, with my shirt in hand, he wiped my eyes like I’d wiped his.
Taking his arm, I led him away, followed by one after the other of my friends, ghosts and humans alike, leaving our most awful, and last, case behind.
25
Days later, the June gloom had burned off, giving way to a lighter summer. But in Elfin Forest, it seemed that summer would always be the same—shrouded by leaves, no matter what color they were, the ground hidden from the eye of the sky, the burned corpses of trees always reminding anyone who came here that destruction could come at any time.
Wendy and I found a sunlit place away from the damage. A path where birds chirped and the trees seemed greener. That was where I asked her to put down the gift I’d brought for the witch of the woods.
She set down the braided gold necklace I’d gone with her to buy at a boutique near her condo. Sure, there’d been some weird looks at the cold air surrounding Wendy, but what was new?
“Just like 10’s hair,” I said about the necklace as it gleamed on the ground. “You think the witch will like it?”
Wendy covered the jewelry with leaves, so hopefully the witch would find it before hikers did. She stood up, the pink streak in her long dark hair catching the sunlight. “From what you told me about how much the witch loved playing with Ten’s braids, she’ll adore it.”
“And do you think she’ll know it’s from us?”
“Didn’t you say the witch sees all?” Wendy laughed softly, even though there hadn’t been a whole lot of laughs lately. “She’ll know.”
As the birds tweeted out blips of song, we took another moment with the necklace. The police had looked into 10’s death, but nothing had come of it for J.J. and Sierra. Actually, the Spirit Stalkers had retired altogether. They weren’t going to air the Web episode on Elfin Forest, and they weren’t even sure they would ghost hunt anymore, because of all the heartbreak and destruction they’d been through. That would suck, because Sierra and J.J. really were decent types who’d do Boo World more good than harm in the end.
I floated away from the sunny place, and Wendy stuck by my side until we arrived at my death spot, the oaks as twisted as ever, the shadows just as murky.
We’d bought another piece of jewelry, too. It wasn’t superexpensive, but it was perfect just the same. I’d spent a lot more time picking this one out, and finally found a turquoise necklace that resembled one Amanda Lee would’ve worn.
As my death spot pulled me in, I resisted it, letting Wendy go to it instead.
She laid the turquoise between the roots of an oak, and it looked like the tree was cradling it. After we whispered a prayer, she covered the stones in dirt, a loving burial, just like the one I was sure Amanda Lee’s body was going to get from the experts Eileen had contacted. I trusted her and her priests and exorcists so much that I hadn’t had the heart to browbeat her into tracking the demon’s ultimate fate.
Amanda Lee would’ve been pissed if I’d gone around that demon again anyway.
I rested near a tree trunk, liking that I could come and see something that reminded me of Amand
a Lee anytime I wanted. I’d first met her here, so it seemed natural to leave a thank-you to her also, for everything she’d sacrificed.
Since dusk was coming on, I could feel ghosts stirring nearby, too shy to approach. I could only imagine how soon enough there’d be a lot of them asking for my help again. I’d be here to give it, too, since I’d settled my own business on the earthly plane.
I wasn’t going anywhere, because Boo World was my place. It was where I’d always belonged.
Yeah, I didn’t have an Amanda Lee anymore, a liaison between me and the other dimension. But I had the feeling there’d be someone around who’d insist on taking her place someday, even if I was majorly reluctant to allow it.
Wendy looked over her shoulder, her dark hair and pink streak falling free. She smiled.
“You ready?” she asked.
I nodded, and we traveled to my cottage in the woods, the haven Loki—no, Dean; he wanted me to call him Dean—had given me. The absentee owner was never there, but a caretaker usually was during the day. I was always careful to avoid him, not wanting him to get all kirked out about a ghost being around.
But nighttime? Was the right time for me.
I could’ve stayed on at Amanda Lee’s casita, I guessed, but her lawyer had a will that’d left her assets to some very distant relatives, and I didn’t see a reason to bug them with my presence, not when I had a sweet little hovel of my own.
When we approached the cottage, which rested on a little hill in a more civilized, residential area near Elfin Forest, we climbed the driveway and went up the flowered paths. The cute swing on my lantern-lit porch creaked in a soft wind, the curtains blocking the windows.
Wendy opened the door, and I slid in quickly so she could shut the world out. Right away, the glare from a big-screen TV filled the room, casting light through the ghosts who’d been waiting for us.
They all knocked off whatever activity they had been engaged in. With Twyla, it was arguing with Randy about which movie we’d be watching—her Cure side was in full rage mode, demanding a showing of Sid and Nancy, but I could see that Randy had already manipulated a Bob Hope flick onto the screen. Louis was with Marg, inspecting a small Roku box connected to the TV—or, at least, that’s what Wendy called the entertainment device. There were so damned many in this new world, I couldn’t keep track.
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