Tamara stumbled up to the counter and leaned on it. Her full-body trembling rattled the items inside the glass case. “I cut school,” she panted. “Had to come and tell you right away.”
“You must be Tamara,” Flower said. “Are you all right, dear?”
“Y-yes. I’m okay, but …” she turned to look at Deegie. “Does she know about …?”
“She does,” Deegie assured her. “What happened?”
Tamara drew in a huge, whooping breath, pressed her hands to her temples, and said, “There’s a knight in shining armor riding a white horse around the softball field! It … it keeps yelling the school chant!”
“What in the world …?” Flower’s jaw dropped and her hand flew up to cover her wide-open mouth.
Deegie’s response was a defeated-sounding laugh. She knew right away what was galloping around the ball field. “You just can’t hide that Fiddlehead pride,” she said with a touch of amusement. “I knew I felt something weird last night. It’s Pride, the latest in our line-up of seven. This should be an interesting one.”
“A proud knight,” Flower said. “Imagine that. I bet it’s really something to see.”
“It’s scary!” Tamara wailed. “It’s creepy! We were running laps in gym, and I heard a horse galloping after me! I turned around, and I saw it! I was the only one who could see it, just like before.” A look of sudden realization passed over her face then, and her voice rose up a notch. “We’re the Fiddlehead Knights! Oh my gawd! It’s our mascot!”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Deegie said. “You were pretty proud of your team last night.” She had a brief flashback of the Envy-thing she and Tiger had battled the other night, and her face went grim. “It didn’t seem violent, did it?”
“No. I mean, like, it didn’t try to kill me or anything.”
“If you had been born a full-blooded witch, it might have,” Deegie said. “Luckily for you, these things are relatively harmless when they feed off of your energy. This one should be easy to take care of. I’ll do it tonight.”
“I don’t have to go, do I?” Tamara asked hopefully. “I mean, I’ll go if you need me to, but I’d rather not. I hate those things!”
“No, you don’t have to go. I’ve got this.”
“I think I’ll go with you if you don’t mind, Deegie,” said Flower. “Tamara says this thing is riding a horse. We might be dealing with a two-in-one entity.”
“Good thinking.” Deegie gave Flower a brief, grateful hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’ll put some traps together and I’ll pick you up tonight.”
“I will see you then,” Flower replied. She turned to Tamara and said, “Deegie and I make a great team when it comes to taking care of supernatural nasties. Now then—back to school with you!”
***
Deegie was preparing the ghost traps when Zach stopped by unannounced that evening. Yet her smile of welcome froze on her lips when she opened the door to let him in. His left eye was swollen shut and the skin around it was a ghastly purplish-black.
“Zach! Holy shit, what happened to you?” She stepped aside to let him in, and her hands fluttered hesitantly around his injury, afraid to touch.
The smile on his face was a sheepish one, and he looked down at the floor between his work boots. “I’m fine. I’ve had worse, believe me.”
“What happened?” she asked again. “Did you get hurt at work? I’ll get you some ice. Come to the kitchen with me.”
Zach stayed where he was, holding his cap in his hands and twisting it out of shape. “Me and Gilbert got into a little … scuffle. He hits a lot harder than I thought he would.”
“Oh shit. It was about me, wasn’t it? He was over here this morning, Zach. I should have told you.” She twined her arms around him and held him close. Her heart was an aching ruin. “I didn’t know what to do. He was just … nuts!”
“He’s been that way all day. It escalated when we got home, and … well …” He reached up to touch his bruised, swollen eye and winced. “I guess I’ll take you up on that ice offer.”
Zach held an ice pack to his eye while he described what had happened. Gilbert had been sullen and snappy all day, and when Zach had asked him the reason for it he’d detonated like an impassioned time bomb. He’d accused Zach of using Deegie for sex, said that he was a better fit for her, and finally ended his tirade with a physical attack.
“I really didn’t want to stay at the house with him tonight,” Zach said. “He even called Nix and yelled at her for some stupid reason or another. You don’t mind if I stay here with you tonight, do you?”
“No, of course I don’t mind, but I have to go up to the high school again. Tamara manifested another sin-ghost. It’s pride this time. Flower is coming along too.”
“Then I’m going with you,” said Zach. “I’m pretty good at kicking supernatural butt—for a Normal One, that is.” He tried to wink at her and winced. “Ow.”
Deegie looked at him skeptically. The last time he’d assisted in a paranormal dilemma, he’d been attacked by a deformed zombie crow, and the time before that, he’d nearly been eaten alive by a demon. “Okay,” she agreed after a moment’s consideration. “But just be careful. I don’t think this one’s dangerous, but you never can tell.”
Zach folded her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly before they left the house. “You don’t think I’m just using you, do you?”
Deegie shook her head and pushed back the image of Belinda that tried to work its way into her mind. “No,” she said. “I don’t think that at all.”
***
Under the cover of darkness, Deegie drove up the hill to Fiddlehead High once again. Zach sat beside her in the passenger seat, and Flower was in the back, adding some extra elements to the ghost traps and chanting something in a language Deegie didn’t understand. Flower’s methods were different from Deegie’s but she was a damn powerful witch, and Deegie trusted her unequivocally. She parked the van in the staff parking lot, and the three of them got out and made their way to the softball field.
A dense, knee-high mist carpeted the high-school campus. It swirled and coalesced into strange shapes as they passed through on their way to the ball field. Foggy faces and misty, reaching fingers seemed to appear and disappear. This bizarre but natural phenomenon was made even more peculiar by the sound of fog-muffled hoof beats coming from the softball field. Then a lusty, powerful voice shouted out the disjointed words of the school chant: “You can’t hide … can’t hide … pride. PRIDE!”
The three of them ducked under the bleachers and sized up this latest manifestation. A figure in full medieval armor sat astride a magnificent horse with proudly arched neck and billowing mane. Its hooves were the size of dinner plates, and brilliant yellow sparks flew from them every time they touched the ground.
The knight was enormous as well; although he was in a sitting position, it was clear that he was over seven feet tall. He held fast to the reins in one gauntlet-clad hand, and in the other he clutched a lance that reflected the light of the full moon. He rounded the bases on his gigantic horse, brandishing his lance and shouting out the school chant.
“Son of a bitch!” Zach whispered. “Look at the size of them! Are you girls sure you can take them on?”
“Piece of cake,” Flower replied under her breath. “I’ve taken Deegie’s traps and added bits of broken mirror and some dirt from consecrated ground. Believe me, once those beasties get a whiff of this stuff, they’ll be all over it like white on rice.”
Deegie recalled when Gilbert had suggested that she put pieces of broken mirror in her traps, but decided not to comment on it. Gilbert was the last thing she wanted on her mind right now; she would deal with him later.
Flower handed her one of the traps. “He will probably ride his trusty steed right into the jar,” she said, “but in case he dismounts, I’ll take the knight and you take the horse.”
“Got it!” Deegie took the jar and loosened the lid, ready for action.
“What do you want me to do?” Zach wanted to know.
“Deegie and I will wait at home plate with our jars open and ready,” Flower said. “If, for any reason, the horse balks and shies away, I want you to be a supernatural sheepdog, and herd him back towards us.”
“How?” Zach frowned in consternation.
“Hold out your hand.” A medicine pouch made from a wolf’s pelt hung from Flower’s belt, and she loosened the ties while Zack complied. She reached into the pouch with a thumb and forefinger and took out a pinch of something dark and granular. She sprinkled it into Zach’s open hand.
“What is this?” he whispered, squinting at it with his good eye.
“Dirt from consecrated ground,” Flower told him. “Or, in layman’s terms, graveyard dirt. It will help lure this thing to the traps. Don’t drop it.”
“Okay,” Zach gulped and nodded. “No pressure, right?”
The gigantic horse rounded third base, and the knight on his back shouted out random words of the school chant: “Pride! Pride! You can’t … can’t … hide the pride … hide …”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Flower said as she watched the horse’s progress. “What a magnificent and fascinating manifestation! Let’s catch it! Deegie, let’s take our places before he passes by again. Zach, you play shortstop.” Her eyes, shining with obvious excitement, cut from Zach to Deegie. “Ready? Let’s do this!”
Deegie and Flower ran out from under the bleachers with their open traps and took their places behind home plate. They crouched down, alert and ready, looking like a pair of bizarre twin umpires. Zach took his position between second and third base, clutching his handful of dirt. The moon ducked behind a cloud, as if it was afraid to look.
“Okay, here he comes!” Flower called out. “Get ready!”
The knight pounded around second base. Deegie could hear the sizzling sound of the sparks that flew from the horse’s hooves, and the metallic creak and screech of the knight’s armor. An aroma of sweat, horse, dust, and rusty metal filled her nostrils. The knight’s helmeted head swiveled in Zach’s direction, and he reined the gigantic beast to an abrupt halt.
“You can’t hide!” the knight rumbled. He turned his horse, lowered his lance, and then drove his heels into the horse’s sides. Zach had just enough time to duck out of the way and yell “Holy shit!” before he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground.
The lance passed through his body first, and the horse’s massive, sparking hooves trampled over him.