The pug-faced man’s eyes were permanently trapped in a glare, but they seemed to narrow even more as he very slowly raised his right hand again.
Now we were getting somewhere. “Okay,” I said, looking at all of them, “here’s what we’re going to do.”
In my head, I added, Sammy, I need a favor . . .
A few moments later, without really taking my eyes off the wraiths, I stood and shuffled backward ten feet so I could raise my head into the cave entrance. I could see one of Declan’s paws still hanging from his perch, where he was probably on guard duty, but the others weren’t visible. “Keith!” I called.
He stepped into my sight line, holding my revolver loosely by his side. He must have been standing near the cave’s side wall. “Is it done?” he demanded, a tremble in his voice. “Did you exorcise them?”
“Where’s Morgan?”
He flapped a hand. “Upstairs, talking on her phone. No reception here. What about my ghosts?”
“They need you to apologize,” I said flatly.
“What?”
I chose my words carefully, and kept my voice as even as I could. I needed to sell this, because Keith would likely be able to tell if I outright lied. “Most of them moved on, but five of them aren’t regular ghosts—they’re wraiths. I don’t really know how to explain it, but they’re superpowerful and full of hate and anger. My theory is that they’ll only move on if you get involved.” There, that was actually the truth. “I want you to come down here and apologize. You have to mean it, though,” I added.
Keith stared down at me, and I could tell he was having a hard time figuring out if I was messing with him. “You’re joking.”
I sighed. “Look, I’ve never tried to lay a wraith before. I think this will work, but if I’m wrong, what have you lost?” I asked. I wanted to change the subject before he could think it through, so I went on, “Did Morgan get the cassiterite I asked for?” I wasn’t sure how long I’d been talking to the ghosts, but I estimated about ten or fifteen minutes.
I didn’t have much time before sunrise. I was not going to let them leave Katia and Mary in a hole for a full day.
“Yeah . . .” Keith fished in his pocket and pulled out the chunk of cassiterite. “Will it work on me?”
“I’m not sure, but it might—it’s gravitational magic, not witch magic,” I said. “Theoretically anyone could do it.”
Keith tilted his head, thinking, and finally said, “Throw the knife up here.”
“One second.” I went back to where I’d made the circle, the wraiths still watching me from the other side, and picked up my pocketknife. I tossed it up through the hole.
“Now back away,” Keith demanded. I obediently backed away from the entrance, scuffling my feet to make noise. I stopped about five feet away from the circle.
After a moment, Keith’s head finally appeared in the hole. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the wraiths were already going nuts—snarling silently, their lips moving as if cursing him out.
Turning back to Keith, I held up my empty hands to show I was unarmed. He still looked suspicious, but he hopped down and approached me. No sign of my gun, but he had the chunk of crystal with him.
I showed him how to open and close his hands several times to activate his chakra, then had him hold the cassiterite with both hands. I wasn’t sure why I felt like this was important—maybe to close a loop, like with electricity. I was sort of going with intuition here.
Keith suddenly went very quiet. “Did it work?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. I couldn’t see his face with the camp lantern just behind him, so I went over and picked it up, half expecting him to warn me away. He was silent. When I moved next to him and lifted the lantern, I saw that he’d gone completely white, his eyes wide. His lips moved, but if he was actually speaking I couldn’t hear it.
I followed his gaze to the wraiths. They paced the short distance of the barrier, silently snarling at him. Every few seconds one of them would throw himself against their side of the circle, but it held strong.
“I think they recognize you,” I said mildly.
Next to me, Keith’s head jerked up and down. I eased him a few steps closer to the wraiths. “They can’t cross the circle of blood,” I told him, honestly. “Tell them what you came to tell them.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Keith blurted, eyes fixed on the wraiths. “I didn’t know there was a gas line there!”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the wraiths seemed to get more agitated. “I’m sorry you died!” Keith wailed. “But I got my punishment, don’t you see? I’m stuck being a werewolf forever. You got your justice, so just . . . move on!”
Wow. I’d thought I hated this guy before. “You think being a werewolf is the same thing as burning to death?” I said in disbelief.
His head snapped toward me. “You don’t know! You have no idea what it’s like, feeling this itching inside your head, like the wolf is pawing at the door twenty-four seven. Nobody takes me seriously—Mary doesn’t take me seriously—and I’m just . . . stuck! No one deserves this!”
“The wraiths don’t seem to agree.”
Keith turned his whole body toward me, flinging the chunk of cassiterite down the dark tunnel. “I did what you asked! Now get rid of them!”
This was my only chance. As much as I disliked Keith, I didn’t feel good about this. But if I wanted to stop Morgan, it was the only play I had.
I put my hands up in surrender. “Okay. You win. I’ll get them to cross over.”
“How?”
“Well,” I began, taking one tiny step forward—then shoved him as hard as I could toward the circle and the still-open doorway within it.
Chapter 44
I had never put a living person through a blood circle—it hadn’t even occurred to me to try—so I didn’t really know what would happen. It was perfectly possible that Keith would stumble over the circle, come through on the other side, and turn around to attack me. Or that his feet would scuff up my blood circle and the wraiths would be able to rush past it and get to me.
At the same time, I sort of . . . had a feeling. The wraiths wanted me, but they wanted Keith more. One way or another, this seemed like my only chance.
Keith stumbled into the curling smoke of my doorway, and he automatically reared his upper body backward to avoid the wraiths, which left him standing inside my circle. Acting on instinct, I quickly went into my boundary mindset—just in time to see the glow of Keith’s life essence abruptly . . . drop.
I came out of my mindset, trying to process what was happening. Keith’s body was in the process of crumpling to the ground. He landed with a sickening slap on the cold floor. His arms and legs flopped over the edge of my circle, but it didn’t seem to matter.
I looked at the wraiths, who were staring at the circle with indescribable rage. “Well?” I asked.
The pug-faced leader looked up just long enough to snarl silently at me.
“Yeah, I know. You want me, but you want him more. Right?”
I held my breath. After one more moment of indecision, the leader crouched like an Olympic diver and dove into the doorway, the others crowding each other to follow him.
The second the last wraith disappeared, I scrubbed my foot against the blood line, breaking the circle. The door vanished, and I collapsed against the side of the tunnel, panting. I’d been tired and achy before, but I suddenly felt winded. I’d never held a door open for that long.
When I could move again, I reached over and touched Keith’s wrist, just to be sure. No pulse. I patted him down, but he’d been smart enough not to bring my revolver with him. Crap. Then the rush of using boundary magic hit me, flooding me with adrenaline and exhilaration, and I jumped to my feet.
“Sammy, do it now,” I muttered under my breath.
I vaulted back into the main chamber and ran toward the hole where Katia and Mary were being kept—but a two-hundred-pound wolf touched down six feet in front of me. Declan had leaped down from the shelf, probably to investigate why Keith’s heartbeat had abruptly vanished.
I skidded to a halt on the dirt floor. I’d hoped to make it to Mary and Katia before he got between us, but he’d reacted faster than expected. He crept toward me, teeth bared, a low growl thrumming from his chest.
He was big, as big as Barlow had been. His head was taller than my waist, and he moved with the same tireless grace I’d seen in the other werewolves. It was menacing in a way that triggered hopelessness, like he would never tire, never stop, never get too hurt to keep coming. I swallowed, feeling my fear spike and knowing he would be able to smell it. That really pissed me off.
“Nice doggie,” I said. “You know you’re not supposed to kill me if I don’t do anything.” I held out my hands to show they were empty.
The werewolf intentionally looked past me to the waist-high exit. I made a show of following his gaze. “Oh, Keith? He’s fine. He decided to go for a walk.” I lowered my voice. “I think he didn’t want you to see him crying.”
Declan obviously didn’t believe me, but he hesitated, uncertain. There was no blood on me, and I had touched only Keith’s clothes, so I wouldn’t smell like him either. Declan couldn’t go look for Keith without leaving his post, and he couldn’t do anything to me without evidence that I’d actually done something wrong.
Then, behind him, there were two terrible crunch sounds, one right after another, and a short scream of pain. Declan reared around, loping back across the room toward the hole. “Lex!” came Katia’s hoarse voice, and a second later two silver handcuffs, no longer connected to each other by a silver chain, came sliding between Declan’s paws, headed straight for me.
Through Sam and Valerya, Katia had gotten my message.
I pounced on the broken handcuffs, and although he was miles faster than me, Declan was slow to respond, probably nervous about getting too close to the silver. I winced when I saw that the cuffs were smeared with blood—Mary had lost some skin when Katia had broken her thumbs to get them off—but I picked them up anyway, looping one over each fist and clicking them closed until I had a nice double set of silver knuckles.
Ignoring the pain in my shoulder and elbow, I got my hands up, boxer-style, and let out a little whistle. “Here, doggie,” I said. “Come here, boy.”
Declan turned to snarl at me then, and I had his full attention. I needed to keep it, so I continued to taunt him. “Nice puppy,” I said. “Sit.”
The werewolf began to circle me, probably wary of the silver. I let him circle, but kept my body turned toward him. I had never fought a werewolf before, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to enjoy the experience. But I didn’t have to win—I just had to stay alive long enough for my backup to heal her broken thumbs.