Bone Dry: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 1) (21 page)

My back straightened. An idea sparked in my mind. It was crazy, but if the rune did what it sounded like it did, then it was genius. If I could just figure out how to cast the spell without accidentally throwing myself into the Borderland never to return.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. My stomach dropped fifteen stories when I saw it was already nine p.m. Where had the evening gone? I only had a few more hours of the day to summon Ananann to feed, and then I had to deal with those other spirits before someone else got killed.

There was so much to do and so little time. Thinking about it too hard made my brain feel like I’d sucked down ten gallons of milkshake.

Before I stood to go, I locked the trunk and slid it under the bed without the book inside. I clutched the new rune spells to my chest and shuffled back into the living room.

Mom still sat there the same. Her chest kept rising and falling, a clump of hair sticking to her damp forehead. As I turned to call Laura, I wished I could hear the clicking of her knitting needles. I’d never realized how good it felt to hear that noise. It made me know she was alright—still here. It made me know she was trying to get back to me.

***

I sat on my window ledge and stared at the neighbor’s yard, trying to decide who deserved the hand of fate I was about to deal. I had the screen open, my legs dangling outside, kicking the white panel of the house. I knew I was leaving scuff marks, but I didn’t care.

I had to take a part of someone’s life.

I tightened my ponytail and noticed my neighbor’s car wasn’t in his driveway. The house was dark, no lamps lighting up the windows. I froze and sat there breathless while I spun the knowledge of this through my head. He wasn’t home. And I barely knew him. Before I could talk myself out of it, I jumped down from the window and peeled toward his backyard, hopefully too fast for anyone to notice. The world was wet even though the dark, stormy sky had been replaced by an eerie golden moon. My sneakers squished on damp grass; trees shook water droplets onto my hair.

When I reached the edge of his yard, my toes dug into the ground as I paused. Could I do this to him? To Jeff Cline? I didn’t know much about my neighbor. He was divorced and lived alone although I’d seen a variety of women over there every now and then. (I didn’t think he was hurting in the romance department.) He’d always smiled when he said hello, but that was the extent of our acquaintance. And the fact he lived next door made it really easy to get in and out before he got home, whenever that would be.

I nodded once to myself and forced my legs to move again.

But even as I picked the lock on his back door, I had to repeat to myself,
For Mom. For Mom. For Mom
.

There are some lines I never thought I’d cross. When I was younger, I never thought I’d drink alcohol before I turned twenty-one. That line didn’t last long. I crossed it over a year ago, and now I thought it was a silly line. I also used to think I’d never steal. That I’d never be like my dad. I’d crossed the stealing line almost thirty times in the past year. Maybe conning people wasn’t technically stealing…yeah, maybe it was. And I did it with only a tinge of guilt and regret.

Sometime a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. I wasn’t going to beat myself up over taking a couple of Franklins from a bunch of rich kids.

But it was still a line I never thought I’d cross. And now, here I was, crossing another. Summoning a spirit into someone’s home so it could feed. It’s funny how you can never fully understand the need to make a bad decision until you’re at the crossroad of right and wrong yourself. The world may be a kaleidoscope of color, but lately I’d started seeing everything in shades of grey.

The lock clicked and the hinges squeaked as I stepped onto the tile floor. I’d never been inside my neighbor’s house before. The outside looked almost identical to ours. Small and quaint with chipped white paint and red trim. But, so far, the inside didn’t look anything like ours.

The back door opened into a small kitchen, and I moved past a sink full of dirty dishes and a Formica table holding nothing more than an empty bowl and a coffee mug. I flicked on my tiny keychain flashlight and strode quickly down a short hallway, slim beams lighting up the way. I wanted to get this over with ASAP.

The flashlight arced in front of me to show a bedroom just as messy as the kitchen with a floor littered with empty Chinese takeout boxes. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of two-day-old pizza and kicked aside an open box as I surveyed the room—no bigger than the one I had at home.

Bachelors sure could be messy.

I knelt on the floor, pushing back a faded flowery rug tossed over the hardwood. Those shamans had been stupid, and I'd learned from their mistakes. No scratching a rune where anyone could spot it.

After working through the spell and summoning the spirit, I walked to the bedroom door without saying a word.

Before I stepped into the hall, it whispered in its scratchy voice, “Twenty-four hours.”

I turned slightly, refusing to look at the spirit. “Fine. Twenty-four hours. But that's all I'm giving you.”

Twenty-four hours wasn’t enough time for the spirit to kill. Even though deaths were happening quicker than I’d thought possible, there was no way a spirit could kill within a day. That would give me enough time to get Mr. Cline out of the house again so I could banish the spirit. I’d trick him out of the house if I had to. I wasn’t going to take any chances and let more than a day pass with that spirit inside.

I may have discovered that I’d do almost anything for my mom, even take a part of someone’s life. But I wasn’t about to let anyone die. There were some lines I just wouldn’t cross. And that was one of them.

CHAPTER 22

I
turned another page in the new spell book, and a rat-a-tat sounded on the front door. I leapt up, slammed the book shut and ran to the door, my socked feet sliding on the hardwood in the hallway.

When I reached the front door, I saw Laura’s familiar bob of red-streaked blond through the tiny peephole.

“You okay?” she asked after I let her inside. She leaned to peer into the living room, nibbled on her lip and spun her nose ring. “Is your mom okay?”

I pointed to one of the rickety wooden chairs by the kitchen table. “Sit.”

She dropped into the chair and looked up expectantly, face full of concern. My breath caught in my throat, and I had to remind myself this was Laura. My best friend, Laura, who had been with me during lame school dances where we hung out on the side and watched all the “cool” kids cluster together. Who had kept me company when Mom rushed off to catch a plane to England, to Russia, to China. Laura had always been there, even when Dad disappeared. She was like family to me. And I had to tell her what was going on.

I slid into the chair across from her, relieved to be sitting. Today had been epically long, and I felt drained of energy. Like the spirit had sucked part of my life instead of someone else’s.

It was the magic. Taking its toll on me. I’d always felt kind of zapped and tired after banishing a spirit or doing small tricks like astral projecting myself a few inches in the air. What I’d done today had been powerful stuff, magic I wasn’t used to, and I was feeling the backfire from it.

I rubbed my hands across my face and yanked my ponytail tighter. “Mom has gotten worse. She isn’t pulling herself out of the Borderland like she usually does. Not even for a little bit. She's just sleeping. I don't know what it means, but I think she’s stuck. Or at least part of her is.”

Laura’s eyes went wide. “Did you try looking for her in the Borderland?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s like she’s fragmented. I see her aura around her body, but it’s in pieces or something.” My breath hitched, and I fought against the tightening in my throat. “It’s like only enough of her is left to stay alive. To keep her breathing.” I let out a shuddering breath and gripped the table, my fingernails digging into the wood.

“Shit, Holly.” Laura jumped up and threw her arms around me. I buried my face in her t-shirt, and a dam broke somewhere inside me. Tears inked out of my eyes, down my face and into the cotton. I heaved out choking sobs, my arms tightening around her neck.

We sat there like that for a few moments before my sobs turned to sniffles and I slowly pulled away. I snatched a napkin off the table and blew my nose, then another to wipe the wet streaks off my cheeks.

“Thanks.” I leaned back in the chair when Astral jumped into my lap. He buried his face in my shirt and purred. I nuzzled his head with my knuckles. Somehow, it relaxed me.

Laura moved back over to the other side of the table and met my eyes. They were watery and red, and she rubbed her fists across them, like she’d been crying herself. Then, I noticed the damp spots on her cheeks.

“Anything I can do to help?”

The chair creaked under me as I shifted. “Yeah, I got a lead. From that guy I looked for in Boston today.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What kind of lead?”

I took a deep breath and told her everything.

Once I’d spilled, I waited in silence for her to judge me. I knew what I would have thought about myself if I’d been her, but she just quirked a smile and cocked her head.

“You might just end up pulling this off after all.” She grinned. “Want me to go with you to scope out that building?”

I nodded. “Yeah. But only if you’re up for it. I don’t know what we'd be heading into. That shaman could be there. And I need his blood.”

“Consider me along for the ride,” she said.

“You aren’t going to tell me how much I suck for doing that to my neighbor?”

She glanced through the kitchen curtains at the darkness hovering outside. “I’ve been conning people for money this last year. I don’t need money. You know that, and you’ve never once asked me why I do it. You’ve never looked down on me.” Her smile faded. “This might not be the greatest situation, and sure it’s going to hurt the guy, but we’ll banish the spirit after it has its fill, before it can do any sort of super lasting damage. I can tell you've been beating yourself up about this, but you don’t need to.” She leaned on her elbows. “You know you could have asked me. I would have let the spirit feed on me.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

A beat passed before she met my eyes again. “Do you remember when I got that F on a math test in fifth grade?”

I nodded.

“I was freaking out and afraid to tell my dad. I was positive he’d hate me or something. Think I was stupid.” She fiddled with the jagged ends of her hair. “I came over here crying because I thought your mom wasn’t home. And when I saw her, I thought she’d yell at me just like my dad would.”

“But instead she gave you ice cream.”

“My favorite flavor. Strawberry.”

“She kept it in the house just for you,” I added, feeling a smile on my face for the first time since I’d found Mom. “I hate strawberry ice cream.”

“And then she sat me down and showed me how to make sense of math,” she said.

“You’ve been making straight A’s in everything ever since then.” I laughed. “You make me look like a bad student.”

“She’s like a mom to me, too, you know,” Laura said. “I miss her. I want her back. Maybe not as much as you do, but I want her back, too.”

I hadn’t ever thought about it before, and I wanted to kick myself for being so self-involved that I hadn’t noticed, that I’d never realized how much of a mother my mom was to Laura, too.

Another knock sounded at the door.

“That’s Nathan.” I pushed up from the table. “He’s going to help us tonight.”

Laura nodded, a lightness lifting her expression. “Help us or help
you?
”

I ignored her, answered the door and let him in. He grinned at me, and I gave him a small smile, leading them both into my bedroom. I didn’t want to have to sit in the living room by Mom’s chair and talk around her, like she wasn’t even there. Because I knew she wasn’t.

Nathan and Laura sunk onto my bed and waited for me to start.

“Okay, you guys. The spirit attacks have gotten worse for Megan and Jason. And I have a plan.” I picked up the rune book and held it in the air to show them. “There are three spirits that need banishing tonight if we count Mr. Baker, even though I haven’t been able to get ahold of him. And we have two shamans who will be pretty pissed if we get involved again.” I started pacing the floor, my bare feet brushing the brown carpet. “Now, I don’t give a rat’s ass what they threatened to do to us.” I stopped and saw the skepticism on Laura’s face. “Okay, maybe that’s a lie. I’m kind of freaked out about it. But people are dying in this town. I’ve known Jason all my life. We need to do something about this. I want to wait until Anthony Lombardi and the Congress meet so they can come busting in to save the day for the rest of the town. I just can’t wait that long for Jason and Megan.”

Laura raised her hand, a move she would never do in real school. “Yeah, I'm right there with you, but they have a tendency of showing up when we go somewhere. I’m kinda thinking they know when we mark out their runes.”

“I’ve thought about this.” I leaned against the wall. “And I think you’re right.”