Possession (5 page)

“They
could imprison me.” I knew it was more likely that Darla would make good on her
threat and have me killed.

He
walked over and stood in front of me. After a moment of scrutinizing me, he
reached out his hand. I put the bag containing
all my remaining money into it.

He looked
at the pouch and bounced it up and down in his palm. His eyes twinkled with
delight. “You’ve been through the three rituals?”

“I have.”

My
answer seemed to please him. “How much training have you had?”

“Very little,” I admitted.

That
brought a frown to his face. “I’m planning on leaving tomorrow.” He tucked the
bag into his waistband. “Are you ready to travel?”

“I’m
ready.” And I was. I’d survived so much, but
there were many obstacles ahead of me. I stood up and took a deep
breath. I had to be ready for whatever challenges lie ahead. I had to stay
focused, had to do whatever was asked of me. The only thing that mattered now was
bringing Luke back. Every terrible action that led to Luke’s death had happened
because of me—I’d brought back the dead and raised a demon, and death
dealers were paying for my foolish actions.

I could
fix all of this. First, I would bring Luke back. I wanted and needed him by my
side; he was the one person I could trust and count on. And, by bringing him
back, maybe I could find a bit of redemption for the things I’d done.

* * *

The
old mage’s name was
Walter.
He’d promised
to take me with him and teach me magic, but so far he had only come through on
part
of his promise. We’d traveled north, making
various stops, and once we settled into a place it took less than a week for
him to find a use for my skills. I could cross over stuck spirits, the ones
that couldn’t see the light, the ones who didn’t want to move on, which meant I
was the perfect tool for getting rid of pesky ghosts.

The town where we’d
landed was filled with old neighborhoods and creepy old houses that seemed chock-full
of spirits. The spirits here were different. They all seemed stuck in between—the
place trapped its honored dead without any rhyme or reason. A town literally
crawling with ghosts. Walter said the reason so many spirits weren’t able to
move on here had something to do with an electromagnetic anomaly. He went into
great detail about how the town was built on granite, and a natural spring
running below caused the trouble. Whatever hid below the shady streets, it was
a combination that drew spiritual powers like a magnet and didn’t let them go.
A situation that made the spirits trapped here especially strong and angry.

The mage made it clear he expected me to sing for
my supper, so I went along with his plans, hoping that he would start to teach
me the magic I needed to bring Luke back.

I’d suddenly been thrust into a career as a
ghostbuster.

My first month of ghostbusting had its challenges.
There was no one who could guide me in this crossing-over magic. Walter had
been excited about what I could
do,
and
he spent much of his time poring over books, trying to figure out how I was
doing it. He knew I
would only stay
long
enough to get what I
wanted,
and I suspected
he hoped to stumble onto the secret of the magic so he could do it himself.
Ghostbusting was apparently a lucrative business.

Hardly any of the
spirits I’d dealt with had been pleasant. The spirits who could go to the light
did so on their own. The ones lingering behind, caught in between, were
sometimes hesitant about moving from our plane of existence into the next. Some
needed a bit of coaxing. Others, the ones destined for the darker places,
fought the hardest to stay.

To get the evil ones off
of the human plane of existence, I had no choice but to rip open the very
fabric of the veil between this world and the next. Through trial and
error,
I’d figured out how to open a portal to
the other side and how to control the spirits and force them over. I couldn’t
even look through to see what was on the other side of that portal. I had a
sense that if I ever looked, ever allowed myself too close to the rip in
the
veil, I
would be sucked in myself. It
seemed to me at times that something was on the other side, waiting for me. Every
so often, from within the tear, I would hear voices calling my name.

Those first dozen
attempts had not always ended in success, but now, after doing it for a while,
I could dispel the spirit and make the customers happy—at least, most of
the time. It sometimes took more than one try for me to get the spirit across,
even if the spirit was willing. With an angry, violent ghost, it usually took
several tries, each one a battle of wills that left me with soul-deep
exhaustion. Once I had given up entirely, advising the family to move out and
cut their losses.

They had understandably
refused to pay.

Otherwise, we had mostly
happy customers, which made a happy old mage. But now, a month after we’d
started this weird partnership, my patience with Walter was running out. He swore
he was spending hours poring over old magic books looking for a spell that
would help transfer Luke’s spirit into a living, breathing body. It had been
done before, he told me, just not by him.

On this particular night,
I
was standing alone in a former haunted house, having just forced the reluctant spirit
through the veil I’d created. I stumbled, exhausted, toward a chair when the
front door burst open. It was Walter. His eyes were twinkling with excitement.
“Colina, there you are.” He stopped a few inches from me and looked around the
room. “Did you cleanse the house?”

“I did,” I answered, trying
to keep the exhaustion from my voice.

He rubbed his hands
together. “Good. Good. Since this was a particularly nasty
spook,
they’re paying double the normal asking
rate.” He gave me a long look. “Did you have any trouble crossing the spirit
over?”

I didn’t have the
patience or strength to give him a play-by-play. “It all worked out. The spirit
is gone.” I leaned back against the cushions. “Where to next?”

He usually had another
appointment set up before I had even finished the last.

“We’re leaving town,” he
said, trying his best to look nonchalant and failing miserably.

What was going on? We’ve
only been here a few days. He usually tried to milk as much work out of me as
possible before we headed to a new town.

“I have some news,” he
said, a sly smile on his face.

I waited for him to
continue. When he didn’t, I prompted, “Another job?”

“No, no,” he said as he
began pacing back and forth. “As you know, I’ve been looking for a spell that
would transfer Luke’s spirit into a body.”

I sat up. He had my full
attention. Without looking at me, he continued. “I think I’ve found it. I
actually found it a few days
ago,
but I
didn’t want to get your hopes
up—” When
I started to talk, he raised a hand and stopped me. “It’s not just the
spell
you need, but a body to use. It
can’t be just any body. It has to be a death dealer. Someone who has already
started the training.” He stopped and gave me a hard stare. “I was hoping for
someone who finished the full initiation—someone who was skilled in the Death
Arts—but I fear our time might be running out.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t felt the
connection between you and Luke fade a bit?”

I shook my head. “He’s
still here with me. I would know if he crossed over.” How long did I have
before the ties that bound me to Luke faded? If he drifted away from me, he
might cross over, or worse, lose himself in the ether sea. He would become an
angry and lost spirit, just like the ghosts I crossed over. Just like my
mother. Ripe for a mage to corral and enslave into his or her service as a
banshee. The thought of Luke being turned into some death dealer’s slave sent
panic racing through me, and I felt my frustration with Walter hit a breaking
point.

“He
is
still with me, and as long as you come through with what you
have promised, he will stay with me.” I did everything Walter wanted, but was
he just leading me on? Was he even looking for a spell to transfer Luke’s
spirit? Gone was the panic, and in its place I felt only anger. Was the old man
going to help me, or was he just using me? Was all of this just a venture to make
money? I had to take several deep breaths to control the rage that threatened
to overwhelm me. Blue flame flickered between my fingers, magic flaring up
despite my efforts to control it. I looked at the flames, forcing them back,
and then looked meaningfully at Walter.

He watched me warily and
rushed his words out. “Calm yourself. As I
said,
I think I’ve finally found a solution to your problem.” He rubbed his hands
together again. “Though I will admit, I’ll miss this partnership we’ve formed.”

Partnership? So far, I’m the only one doing anything
.

“I found a possible
body,” he said.

His words got me to my
feet. “Someone we can transfer Luke into?”

He nodded his head. “If
all goes well. If the spell I found works. But…there is a problem.”

I felt a sudden,
all-encompassing desire to strangle the old man
.

As though reading my
thoughts, Walter gave me knowing smile.
“You
young people are so impatient.
The boy I’ve found is in a place that’s
not so easy to
access,
and it could be
dangerous. The Phoenix Guild may have an informant there—someone who
would pass
on
your location to their
people.”

“I don’t care how
dangerous it
is.
If there’s a chance, I’m
willing to risk it,” I answered.

“The boy’s consciousness
was lost. He’s a blank slate. An empty vessel.” Walter reached into his pocket
and pulled out a large gray coin. He held it in the palm of his hand. “With
this medallion and the spell, I think it may work. But I can’t make any
promises. This spell is not one that I’ve used before. It was hard to find.
Something forbidden.”

“Where’s the body?” I
asked, staring at the medallion in his hand.

He flipped the coin in
the air and caught it between his fingers. “An insane asylum. And I’m afraid
the only way to get in is to be admitted.”

* * *

“You
understand this may not work. There’s no guarantee,” Walter said. We stood at
the front of a large fence. Beyond it was the insane asylum. It was a huge old
building, built at a time when the most common treatment for the insane was to
lock them away from society. It was several stories tall, an angular and ugly
gray mass dropped in the middle of large, forested grounds. The landscaping must
have looked beautiful at some point, but now the forest was reclaiming it, and
it looked overgrown and neglected.

Overall, the asylum was
an imposing place. At the thought of entering the stark, old madhouse, my
stomach clenched with anxiety.
Once I got
in, could I get out?

I put my hand in my
pocket
and my fingers touched
smooth
metal. I’d spent a couple weeks learning
how to power the gray medallion with magic and how to say the
spell
I needed in Latin. I’d repeated the spell
over and
over
until I could say it
without any hesitation. I turned to Walter with a tight-lipped smile. “Thank
you for your help.”

Walter reached out, his
expression a little sad. For a moment I thought he might hug
me,
but instead he dropped his arms and took a
step back. “I’ve enjoyed your company. I’ve been alone for a long time. I
forgot what it was like to train someone.”

I hadn’t been Walter’s
apprentice. We had plenty of time, but he hadn’t taught me the basic magic that
all new death dealers learned. He’d mostly used me to gain money, and I was
fairly certain he was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to learn from
me
how to cross over reluctant spirits. But
he’d taught me the one spell I needed to try and get Luke back, when others
might have turned me over to the Phoenix Guild. He wasn’t a bad old man, and he
had lived up to his end of the bargain.

“Don’t forget, you must
keep up the act until you get Luke transferred. They must think that you’re not
right in the head,” he said, pointing toward a guard shack by the gate. “They’ll
watch you—I bet they are right now. I told them I was dropping you off.
There will be a nurse waiting for you at the front entrance.”

“Walter, if this doesn’t
work…” My words petered off.

“Then you make your way
back to me. I’ll look for another spell. You can come and work for me anytime.”
He gave an uncharacteristically wide smile. “Crossing over spirits made me a
tidy sum. When this is all over, I’d be happy to make our partnership
permanent. I would cut you in. Give you half the take.”

“I’ll…think about it,” I
answered. If I did one day go back and work for him, how long before word got
around about the magic I was doing? I was lucky no one had caught up with me
while I was with him. If I spent my life ghostbusting, it would only be a
matter of time before Darla and her people tracked me down.