Gilbert stepped out into the sunlight and blinked his yellow, slit-pupiled eyes. A snake-like tongue poked out of his mouth and flickered, as if he was sampling the air. When his reptilian gaze alighted on Deegie, his lips stretched into a cold, cruel smile.
“Deegie … lussst … come here …” Gilbert’s voice sounded like he had a mouthful of gravel and venom. The forked tongue danced and waved.
Deegie felt small fingers digging into her upper arm, and Nix’s voice was harsh in her ear as she said: “Gods, Deegie, what is that thing? That’s not my Gilbert! Should I blast it? Should I?” Nix took a defensive stance and raised her wand.
“No!” Deegie caught her arm and yanked it down. “Don’t! You’ll kill him!”
“That thing is inside of him, Deegie! Get out of him, you asshole!” Nix’s cry was ferocious, but ineffective. The horrid yellow eyes didn’t even look her way.
Zach stepped forward with his mouth agape and his hands clenched into trembling fists. “Oh shit, Gil … oh shit, buddy … what happened to you?” He whirled around to face the women, who stood in a tight cluster behind him. “Get that thing out of him!” His voice was thick with emotion, and he spread his arms beseechingly. “Do something! You gotta help him!”
“We will!” Deegie replied, but her mind, frantically reviewing all her past experiences and areas of expertise, drew a complete blank. “Flower, what do we do, what do we do?”
Flower appeared calm despite the horror that stood grinning at the entrance to the covered bridge. Her fingers worked at the knotted thong closure of her belt pouch, and she took out the upgraded ghost trap. “The first thing we do is try to stay calm, no matter how bad things look right now,” she said. “That’s still Gilbert up there, remember, and if we’re going to save him we need to keep our wits about us, don’t we?”
A hot rush of air blew past Deegie and almost knocked her off her feet before she could reply. A diaphanous something rippled in front of them, like a sheet of clear plastic waving in the wind, and then Tiger was there, fully materialized. His orange and black stripes glowed against the stark gray backdrop of the wooden bridge, and he roared a deafening challenge to the being in front of him.
Tiger rarely showed his true form, and he was magnificent to behold, but Deegie could not admire his beauty just now. She lunged forward and grabbed the white ruff around his neck with both hands. The image of the bloody and shredded Envy flashed through her mind; Tiger would not hesitate to annihilate anything that threatened her safety. “Tiger, no! It’s Gilbert! Don’t hurt him!” The great guardian beast tossed his head, shaking off Deegie’s grip, but he did not advance any farther. Deep, threatening growls rumbled in his chest as he eyed the transmogrified Gilbert.
Gilbert’s stretched and unhuman grin widened, but he stayed where he was. Not even the most obnoxious of supernatural beings dared to cross Tiger. “Deegie … LUST! Come to me, Deegie! To me!”
Gilbert’s face contorted again, and a violent shudder ran the length of his body. An agonized cry tore from his mouth, and he covered his eyes with his hands. When he pulled them away again, his eyes had returned to their normal icy-blue color, but they were huge and filled with terror. “Help me!” he screamed, reaching out to his friends with madly trembling hands. “I can’t fight it! Get it out of me! Get it—
—Lussssst! Deegie! Need Deeeegie!” The lustful entity in Gilbert’s body gained the upper hand again, and its triumphant laughter resounded through the trees. He convulsed again, and Gilbert’s real self vanished once more.
With a bellow of rage, Zach charged at the thing on the bridge. Drawing on the natural ability in its host’s body, Lust utilized Gilbert’s hand to fire off a sizzling blue-white bolt that raked a black, smoking furrow down the length of Zach’s arm. He ducked in time to avoid a second blast that zipped overhead and detonated against a tree.
“Zach!” Deegie watched as Zach dropped to the ground, rolled, then got to his feet again. He retreated backwards a few paces, slapping out the small flames on his shirt sleeve.
“I’m okay,” he said, “it just got my shirt!” Smoke still rose from his sleeve as he pointed to the giggling, capering thing on the bridge. “Now get that thing out of my brother!”
Flower pushed the ghost trap into Deegie’s hands. “Go,” she said. “It has to be you. You’re the one it wants. If any of the rest of us try, it’s likely to use Gilbert’s powers to blast us.”
“Me? Flower, I’m … defective! You know that!”
“It doesn’t matter!” Flower assured her in an urgent whisper. “It wants you! You’re the only one who can approach it without getting killed! Trust me!”
“Do it, Deegie! Please!” Nix’s face was streaked with tears as she watched Gilbert try to fight off his invader again. “It’s killing him!”
“Okay …” Deegie gulped and unscrewed the lid from the trap. “Okay …” She stepped forward, but Tiger immediately blocked her path. She shoved at him, unable to move his enormous bulk. “Tiger, please! Let me go! It will be okay, I promise!”
Tiger roared at her, confused, but moved aside. He slipped into invisibility again, but she could feel him close to her, walking beside her as she stepped up to Gilbert. Deegie knew her spirit guardian would not leave her side until all danger had passed.
“Aaaah …” The thing inside Gilbert ran its forked tongue over its lips in anticipation as Deegie drew near. “Lust? Lust? Deegie … MY Deegie!” It reached for her with Gilbert’s hands. Drool pooled in Gilbert’s mouth and ran down his chin.
“Um … H-hi, Gilbert,” Deegie said. She clutched the open trap close to her side and held tightly to the lid with her other hand. “I have something for you. You’ll like it.”
“Ha!” Lust scoffed. “NOT a Gilbert! Want you … need you … LUST!” Gilbert’s body stiffened as the creature inside him noticed what Deegie held in her hand. The yellow eyes widened.
Gilbert rose to the surface again, gasping and struggling as though he were drowning. She stared once more into his blue eyes, so very much like her own. “Deegie,” he whispered, “do something, please! It hurts!”
Lust took over again, and its eyes widened with excitement when it saw the jar in her hand. The forked tongue whickered out and tasted the air around Deegie. “What isss …? Lust? LUST?”
“It’s for you. Have some.” She held out the jar, but tightened her fingers around it in case Lust tried to snatch it from her hand.
Lust took in deep, rapturous breaths of the intoxicating scent, and the eyes in Gilbert’s head flashed yellow to blue, yellow to blue. His entire body trembled as if in ague, and a greenish mist began to issue from his nose.
“Yes, that’s it!” Deegie urged, and she shook the jar, releasing more of the scent. “Come on … come on …”
Gilbert’s face twitched and quivered, as if there were bugs crawling under his skin. His mouth opened to an enormous width; Deegie heard the creak of over-strained tendons. More of the sickly green mist seeped from his mouth, and it formed into the familiar funnel shape.
Deegie held the jar closer to Gilbert’s staining mouth. “Get in the jar,” she whispered hoarsely. “Get in the jar!”
Lust complied. The creature that had possessed Gilbert now left his body in a spinning column of mist that poured into the jar. Once it was completely inside, Deegie replaced the lid with a whoop of triumph.
Gilbert collapsed and fell to the splintery gray boards of the bridge. He curled into a fetal position, gasping raggedly. Deegie dropped to her knees beside him, holding the wildly vibrating jar tightly.
“Gilbert! Are you okay? Are you hurt?” With her free hand, she tried to turn his head so she could see his face. He mumbled something unintelligible and shook his head.
Zach was there next, then Nix, both of them trying to examine Gilbert for injuries at the same time. Flower stood over all of them, and her loud, authoritative voice trumped them all. “Move aside, please! Nix, Deegie, send me white light!” She raised her cupped hands above her head, indicating where she wanted the light sent.
Without a thought to her Witch’s Cramp, Deegie summoned all the light she could muster and sent it into Flower’s waiting hands. Nix followed suit, and a ball of pure white light began to grow between Flower’s hands. When it was roughly the size of a beach ball, she nodded at Deegie and Nix, signaling them to stop.
Deegie fell back against Zach, and she felt his arms go around her. Her head boomed and throbbed with the familiar pain that came from her magical over-exertion. Her eyes wanted to squeeze shut in response to the agonizing onslaught, but she forced them to remain open so she could observe what was happening to Zach’s younger brother.
Flower lowered the ball of pulsating light. Her face was grim with concentration as she rolled it over Gilbert’s still body, beginning with his head. As his body absorbed the healing light, the ball grew smaller and smaller until all that remained was a dried husk that soon crumbled into dust.
Gilbert lay motionless, still curled into a rigid ball.
“He’s not dead!” Nix insisted, and she reached out to prod her pale, still boyfriend. “Gilbert, you get up right now, damn it!” She swiped the sleeve of her sweater across her tear-streaked face. “Gilbert, please!”
Deegie turned her face away and buried it in Zach’s chest. She could not bear to look anymore. She heard Zach’s heart slamming wildly against his ribs. Too late, she thought. We were too late. He’s gone, he’s dead, he’s—
“Potato chips ...” said Gilbert.
A tremulous giggle provided odd counterpoint to Nix’s tears. “Gil? What did you say?”
“Potato chips,” he said again, his voice muffled against his arms. “I taste … potato chips … in my mouth. How weird.”
Deegie lifted her head from Zach’s chest. Despite her tremendous pain, she had to smile. Gilbert was sitting up, wearing a perplexed expression on his face. His red hair, normally groomed to impeccable standards, stood out around his head in tufts and wild corkscrews. He made eye contact with her, and his frown deepened.
“What’s the matter with you, Deegie?” he asked. “Are you having another one of your headaches?”
She shook her head in reply, unable to speak for the moment, but she did manage to keep the smile on her face long enough for him to see it.
With Zach supporting Deegie and Gilbert propped up between Flower and Nix, the five of them made their way back down the path to Deegie’s van. Zach drove, the burnt smell from his charred shirt filling the van’s interior until he finally stripped it off and flung it out the window.
They arrived at Deegie’s house just as the van ran out of gas; it died with a lurch and a chug in the driveway. Once inside, they settled Gilbert on the couch, covered him with blankets, then pulled up chairs and sat around him like he was some sort of interesting museum exhibit.
“So you really don’t remember anything about it? Nothing?” Nix had asked the same question three times in the last twenty minutes. She was perched on the very edge of the couch next to Gilbert, and she held tightly to both his hands.
“No,” Gilbert said patiently. “Not a thing.”
But Deegie had a feeling this wasn’t true. She’d seen him look sidelong at the ghost trap sitting on the coffee table, she’d seen the fear misting his eyes, and the way his mouth tightened in revulsion. She was convinced that he remembered all too much about his ordeal.