Lu escorted us through the living space to the room where Coach Phil had been wrapping Michael’s foot. Going into that basement, even with all the lights on, filled me with trepidation. The hopeless way the wraith made me feel was something I was loath to experience again.
My glimpses of the shadowy creature hadn’t prepared me for its appearance. It had gray, waxy skin, blue-black hair, two slits formed a nose, and its toothless mouth was wet with something that looked like crude oil. The most disturbing thing about the wraith was the depressions in the skull where the eyes should’ve been. Instead, there was stretched skin, a shade darker than the rest of its coloring.
Its skeletal fingers grasped at Jordan’s hands as he held the creature down on his table by the throat.
“How?” I asked. “How did you capture it?”
“I let it take what it needed,” Jordan said. His expression was haunted, and I felt sick to my stomach. What heartrending sorrow had the creature pulled from him?
“Are you okay?”
He nodded. “I won’t be able to hold it for too long. If you have any questions, now is the time to ask. I’ll destroy it after.”
Someone had conjured the wraith. They’d summoned it and sent it after me. “Who is its master?”
Jordan’s eyes shined silver, then the light of his eyes fanned out and covered his body until he was coated in the glow. The wraith shrank, turning its head away from his brightness.
“Whoa,” Michael said.
I forgot he didn’t know about his coach being a demi-god. “I’ll explain later.”
Jordan, who was lit up like the North star, leaned down close to the wraith. “Who sent you?”
The monster moaned, its limbs thrashing hard enough it knocked over supplies from the coach’s medical cart.
“I thought wraiths were ghosts,” Michael whispered.
Keir had said they weren’t, but the way the thing moved through shadows and was able to disappear had made me think it didn’t have a physical body. This was proof that it did.
“Tell me,” Jordan commanded. “Tell me who made you.”
Gray dust scattered from the wraith’s parted lips on a raspy wail. “Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaahgmaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllll.”
I looked at Lu, and her eyes had narrowed to slits under her furrowed brow. “Did that thing say what I think it said?”
She nodded, her jaw flexing as her face reddened with rage. “She’s back,” Luanne said. “Bogmall is back.”
And she was still trying to wreck my life.
I moved closer, expecting the wraith to smell as bad as it looked, but instead, I detected hints of allspice and something slightly nutty. “That’s amaranth,” I said. “Bogmall must’ve used it to summon the wraith. She used fire magic to conjure this wretched thing. Which means she’s become what she wanted. She’s a sorcerer.”
Luanne let out a string of curses. “I’m going to fucking kill her.”
“You’ll have to beat me to it,” I muttered. Then louder, I added, “Why would she come after me then? For revenge? I’m the one that got away?”
“I’ll track her down to the ends of the Earth if I have to,” Luanne swore. “She won’t get away with this. Not again.”
“Who’s Bogmall?” Michael asked.
Crap. One more thing I’d kept from him that I was going to have to explain. “Later,” I told him. “Promise.”
My simultaneously scared and irritated son didn’t argue with me.
“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it fast,” Jordan said. “I can destroy the wraith if you’re done asking questions, which is preferable because, in about two minutes, there is going to be a bunch of teenagers coming in here to find out about the food situation.
“Michael and Luanne, can you two go out and head the boys off?” I asked.
Luanne’s expression went from venomous to relaxed in the span of a blink. She put her hand on Michael’s shoulder. “It looks like it’s you and me, kid. Let’s head ‘em off at the pass.”
Michael shook his head but didn’t argue. He’d bravely faced the wraith, but I think he was more than ready to leave its presence. “Don’t mess around,” he said to me. “If it can be destroyed, then destroy it.”
“I will,” I said.
He gave me a hard stare. “Be safe.” Then he left the room with Luanne.
Jordan, who was still lit up, asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Where is Bogmall?” I moved closer. Maybe if I could find out from where the wraith had been sent, it would help Luanne and the Iron Grove find the rogue ex-druid and end her terror on me for good. “Where is your master?”
The gray shadow beast writhed and squirmed, its fingernails digging rips into the vinyl padding on the coach’s treatment table. “Ennnnnnnnndmeeeeeeeeee,” it cried.
“Where is your master?” Jordan pressed his shiny, glowy hand onto the creature’s chest. “Tell me, and I will end this misery of yours once and for all.”
“Heeeeeeeerrrrrrre,” it rasped out. “Sheeeeeeeeeeeissssssssssheeeeeeeere.”
The answer stunned me. “In Southill Village?”
“Yessssssssssssssssss,” the wraith hissed.
“Where in Southill?”
“Doooooonottttknowwww. Chaaaannnnnnnnged.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The wraith wriggled more. “Ennnnnnnnndmeeeeeeenowwwww.”
I heard laughter and joking bravado coming from the outdoor kitchen area. Luanne was badass and sexy as hell. I’m sure the boys were all trying to vie for her attention.
“Are you done?” Jordan asked. His expression was pinched as if he were in pain. “I don’t know if I can hold it much longer.”
I met his mercurial gaze and nodded. “Do it,” I said. “Destroy the wraith.”
“Avert your eyes,” he said. “I don’t want to blind you.”
I turned away, and the entire room was bathed in concentrated white light. When the light extinguished, I pivoted back to him. The only remnant of the wraith’s existence was a dark stain on the torn-up tabletop.
“It’s gone for good?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’ve dispatched it. It won’t return again.”
That was a relief. Literally. With the wraith gone, I felt lighter than I had in weeks. The sense of dread had been steadily increasing since I’d come into my aero-craft. How long had the wraith been stalking me? Had its presence interfered with my ability to adapt? Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, I’d learned two seriously important things as a result of this encounter. Bogmall hadn’t moved on from me, and the bitch was somewhere in Southill calculating her next move.
“You really didn’t come to Southill because of me?” I asked Jordan.
He shook his head. “I really didn’t. I just want to live a quiet, normal life.”
“Yeah?” I chuckled. “What’s a quiet, normal life look like?”
He grinned and shook his head. “One that doesn’t involve witches and wraiths.”
“Hah, you moved to the wrong town, buddy.”
“No kidding.”
Luanne peeked her head around the door. “I could use some help out here. My training hasn’t prepared me for forty football players.”
Jordan asked, “What has your training prepared you for?”
“Disarm, dismemberment, death. You know the three Ds.”
His eyes widened for a moment. “How about if I just go handle the burgers?”
I nodded. “Good idea.”
My phone dinged. I dug it from my pocket. There was a message from Keir. U ok?
I texted back. Better now. Coming home soon.
K. C u soon.
I sent back a half dozen heart emojis and a kissy face.
Lu snapped her fingers at Jordan. “Look, Dude. I didn’t sign up to be the lunch lady. I’d rather fight another Redhat and his army of leprechauns than deal with a bunch of horny teenagers, so get your ass in gear and go take over out there.”
Jordan raised his hands in surrender, but I could see a glint of humor in his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
I looked at Lu. “What about Michael?”
She shook her head. “I think he’s safer here, but you’re his mom.”
Jordan said, “I swear on my life that no harm will come to Michael in my care. We might not be friends, Ms. Everlee, but I hope we can be allies.”
“It’s Iris,” I told him. “My friends…and allies call me Iris.”
He nodded, then flashed a smile at Luanne as he moved past her and out of the room.
I arched my brow at the druid warrior and smirked. “You like him.”
“Shut up,” she said. She punched me in the arm as I crossed in front of her.
It nudged me sideways, but otherwise, I hadn’t felt a thing. The air magic had taken over my upper arms. “It’s getting worse,” I told her.
She nodded, her face pensive with worry. “Then we better get it figured out. My brother won’t be able to take it if you turn to dust in the wind.”
“More like wind in the wind.” I wanted to reach out to Thomas again. Whenever I talked to the old tru-craft witch, it gave me a sense of security. His instruction made me feel like I wasn’t just freestyling magic and hoping for the best. “I’m going to go say goodbye to Michael,” I told her. “Meet you in the car.”
“I’ll go get him for you.” Lu gestured to my arm and neck, both of which looked far from normal. “You don’t want to go out there looking like that.”
There was a mirror on the wall, and I checked myself out. Cripes. The skin on my neck looked like dried mud. I absently touched it, but the ability to feel anything through my fingertips was gone. I sucked in a breath. At least my lungs were still working. If the wild magic continued, I wasn’t certain how much longer that would be the case.
“It’s going to be alright, Iris,” Luanne said.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re a badass bitch who knows how to get shit done,” she told me. “Besides, it’s the only option I’m willing to entertain.”
I rewarded her with a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. I wished I saw myself the way she did. At the moment, I felt as far from badass as I could get. The wraith was gone, thanks to Jordan, but I had a bigger problem to solve. Bogmall was a power-hungry sorcerer, and I was sitting on a powder keg of magical possibilities. It was impossible to know what the wraith had reported back to its master, but chances were good that the blonde bitch knew about the pixies. I wouldn’t let her have them.
I flexed my fingers made from dust.
All I had to do was figure out how to protect the pixies, take Bogmall down, and keep myself from disappearing. Easy as riding a bike…if that bike was being driven through five feet of mud in the middle of a hurricane.
I said my goodbye to Michael, and after a spirited debate, which I won, he agreed to spend the night at Doug’s after the team bonding.
The ride home was quiet and contemplative as I tried to figure out how I was going to fix things. Michael still had most of his senior year to complete, and he deserved to be able to do it safely. The only other option was to send him away to live with his dad, and neither of us wanted him to leave.
“What the hell happened here?” Luanne asked as she pulled into my driveway. The garden gate was on the ground in several pieces, and there was a crater where the gate had been.
Son of a bitch. I beat Lu out of the car when she parked, and I jumped over the wide hole and rushed into the garden. It looked as if a bomb had exploded. Pixies and gnomes worked side-by-side to repair the damage, but it was a lot.
Keir came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. When our eyes met, he shook his head and said, “Welcome home.”