JASPER WALKED ALL THE WAY through town, just as he had yesterday. But this time he walked alone, without Sir Dad in the lead. He hoped no neighbors would notice him, try to strike up a conversation, or ask why he lugged a large candle around.
Most would probably take issue with what Jasper meant to accomplish with that candle.
He left the sidewalks and struck out through the northern foothills. No one ever came this way. Jasper hiked without a clear path or trail. He pushed through brush and scratching branches.
The bracelets grew cold against his wrists. He tried singing “The Ballad of the Hapless Highwayman” just to distract himself. It was one of Sir Dad’s favorites, and Dad’s voice made panic impossible. Jasper’s voice cracked a little. Dad would have relished the chance to ride off on a knightly errand. Jasper felt more and more foolish the farther he climbed. He tried to embrace that foolish feeling. He sang louder about the misadventures of the very worst robber to ever rob highways. But the song dwindled and fizzled by the time he reached Barron’s circle and the roiling wall of fog.
A motor rumbled close by. Jasper heard wheels on Barron’s track, and froze. It’s him, he thought. Crap, crap, crap. Dead man Barron is riding this way on his motorcycle. But it wasn’t Barron. Four mopeds came racing around the bend instead, all four ridden by festival folk.
Englebert the stable boy rode in the lead. He held a guisarme—a big spear with extra hooks and spikes all over it, clearly forged by Mr. Smoot. The guisarme balanced awkwardly against the handlebars.
Humphrey the Victorian rode with his ornate flamethrower strapped to his back.
Two spear-carrying members of the royal guard brought up the rear.
The ghost-hunting militia braked their mopeds and dismounted. All of them wore lumps of copper on necklace chains. All of them looked twitchy with rage that they didn’t understand.
“We know what you’re doing,” Englebert said. He practically shouted the words. “We can’t let you do it. We have to defend Ingot from the dead.”
Rosa stood beside the copper barrier, her toes almost touching it. “Lethe,” it said, over and over again, etched into metal.
She scratched Aλήθεια into the side of a wooden match with the point of a needle. Probably unnecessary. The word was already all over the candle itself. But she wanted to be sure. This was the place closest to the copper mine, the part of the circle that had broken yesterday. This would take extra care.
Rosa took the travel mug and used her salty compass to pick the precise spot. She lit the memorial candle, held it sideways, and dripped hot wax over fused copper bathroom fixtures. Then she stuck the base of the candle to the dribbled pool of molten wax.
Mist swirled in darker colors behind it.
“Come in,” Rosa said. “We’re inviting you in. We’re inviting you home.”
The wick burned orange, and then it burned green.
Rosa let herself believe that this might work.
A wind rose up around her. The temperature dropped.
Bartholomew Theosophras Barron came riding up the path. He dismounted from his motorcycle. Green candlelight reflected in his eyes.
“You will not do this, child,” said Barron’s ghost.
Rosa drew her sword.
Jasper set the candle on the ground and stood beside it.
The militia fanned out around him. He was the center of their vengeful attention.
He hated being the center of attention.
I don’t know how to handle this, he admitted to himself. Dad would know, but I don’t. He felt a brief, bright flash of resentment for his father and the easy way he seemed to handle every kind of scrutiny. Jasper wasn’t sure how much of that resentment was his own, and how much he borrowed from behind the wall.
I’m not my dad, he thought. But I can play him. I can borrow some confidence that isn’t really mine.
Jasper shifted his posture to stand like Sir Dad.
Look at me. Listen to me. It is right and fitting that I should have your attention.
“You’re trying to defend our town,” he said to the other boys. “Good. Thank you. But you have this whole entire situation backwards.”
“We stood safe for a hundred years inside this circle,” Englebert said. He clearly meant to sound brave, but his voice whined and undermined him. “The town founder told us so. Now some girl swoops in from the city to say we’ve been doing it all wrong?”
“She knows her business,” Jasper said simply.
“But she doesn’t know ours,” Englebert insisted. “A haunted Ingot won’t be Ingot anymore.”
“Then we will mourn what it used to be,” Jasper said, his father’s cadence in his own voice. His imaginary confidence started to feel solid and real. “We will also live to recognize what else it might become.”
“Stop that!” Englebert shouted, spit flying. Jasper heard something else riding alongside that rage. “Stop pretending! You’re not a knight. You aren’t doing anything noble. We are. We’re noble. And we’re not going to let you do this.”
Jasper watched the others who stood behind the stable boy. They looked both determined and uncomfortable.
He glanced at the wall, where fog rolled, roiled, and pushed against the line it could not cross. Dried leaves crackled near the copper barrier as frost covered them.
Maybe I can reach it, he thought. If I run. Maybe I can dodge between them, get this massive, awkward candle where it needs to go, and then light the Zippo. Sure.
He knew that he couldn’t, but he gathered himself up to try it. Then his sense of time shifted.
Everything happened slowly, each action distinct and separate from every other action.
Humphrey pointed a gear-encrusted hose at the sky and let loose a warning burst of flame.
Englebert held up his weapon in a menacing way. He held it entirely wrong.
Behind their posturing the copper barrier cracked. Mist leaked though the breach. Cold air tickled at the back of Jasper’s teeth and made his breath catch.
Too late, he thought.
He whacked the ground hard with the tip of his staff, drew a wide circle around himself, and threw down salt.
Then the dead broke through.
Rosa stood with her back to the wall. She used her sword to draw a hasty half-circle around the candle and herself.
She had only enough room for a half-circle.
“An incomplete shape will not hold, child,” Barron said. He said it kindly, as though offering her helpful advice. Then he blew the candle out from several feet away.
Her left hand fumbled at her belt pouch for a handful of salt. She got the clasp open and scattered the stuff in front of her. “You still can’t step over this.”
Barron drew a rusty fencing foil from the mess of scrap metal in his sidecar. “I have no need to step across your awkward line in the dirt. I only need to reach over it to dismember that ungainly memorial candle. Please stand aside.”
Rosa took up a fighting stance instead.
“Ah.” Barron smiled. His smile looked grotesque. “To the death? No. Redundant. To your honor, then, and my own.” He offered a formal salute with his rusting sword.
Rosa returned the salute. She wanted to say something brave and clever, but she didn’t have time. He attacked. She parried in a quick, panicked reflex.
You know how to do this, she insisted to herself. Remember how to do this You used to duel with Mom all the time. But she had never crossed swords with a dead banishment specialist before.
Barron attacked again. She parried again, moving hastily as though trying to swat a zigzagging fly.
“Surrender,” he said. “Your art is made of compromise and embarrassment. Mine reshapes the world and its possibilities according to my stronger will. And I will not yield. I will not be appeased. I will maintain the wall around Ingot Town.”
He struck high, low, and to the center. He moved in straight lines. Ghosts often do.
Rosa offered parry, remedy, and counter. She moved in arcs. The tip of her bronze blade marked the outer circle of her farthest reach, and she shifted her stance to expand that reach.