What would be left of her grandfather after ten years?
“I’ll handle this,” Jakob said, pulling his bandolier of holy water over his head and shoving it at Hel. He tossed Sam his iron chain and she caught it, the chains clanging against the ground in a symphony of metal. “Keep him busy.”
Jakob stood braced, holding out his silver crucifix in one hand and reading from his exorcism book in the other. The Latin echoed off the odd angles of the ceiling.
Her grandfather snarled, his yellowing teeth somehow animalistic in his face, as if his skin didn’t quite fit his body. It was strange how different a man might look depending on whose spirit was animating it. He vaulted over the stone table with an athlete’s grace, his knobby, liver-spotted hands out like claws, but Hel shoved herself between them, shattering a vial of holy water on his face. He hissed, recoiling, fingernails tearing rents down his fragile skin.
Seizing his distraction, Sam raced across the room, drawing the chain across the chamber. Realizing what she was doing, he lunged at her, his teeth bared. Sam shrieked, stumbling back. But her grandfather was too late. He fell short, hissing as he tried to cross the iron chain. She’d done it; he was trapped. Sam blew an errant curl out of her face.
The thing inside her grandfather howled, throwing books and bones and beetles that scattered in a spray of wings and dirt, but the barrier was of iron and not salt, and he did not have the power to break it. Nor could he flee the relentless assault of Latin. Her grandfather whined, trying to block his ears with his hands, to scrabble at the walls, before finally collapsing to the ground, coughing and retching.
The spectral form of a young man burst from his throat, his face twisted, his hands outstretched as if he’d tear their hearts from their chests, before winking out like a blown light as Hel shot him. The bullet embedded itself in the wooden board, the silver bells ringing as if in mourning.
Her grandfather moaned in a heap on the ground.
“Grandfather!” Sam cried, rushing over. If he’d hit his head, if he’d been hurt?—
Sam fell to her knees, cradling his head, taking off his blood-spattered spectacles. He opened his eyes?—pale blue and troubled, as if he could see something the rest of them couldn’t, which, Sam supposed, he could?—and they were just as she’d remembered. Recognition lit in his eyes.
“Sammy?” he mumbled, sitting up and blinking blurrily.
“Yes,” Sam said, choking back tears.
His eyes widened as he took in the scene: the knife, gory with gristle; the partially dismembered corpse; the blood on his hands. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“It’s all right,” Sam said, patting his hand. “You’re all right. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“He’s gone, I can’t see him anymore,” her grandfather cried. “Where has he gone?”
Hel and Jakob exchanged a meaningful look.
“What?—what do you mean?” Sam stumbled, trying to understand.
“The spirit that was possessing me,” her grandfather said urgently, grabbing her shoulders. “What did you do with him?”
“We dispersed him,” Sam said gently. “He can’t hurt you anymore.” Not for three days at least.
“You silly girl,” her grandfather groaned, burying his face in his hands. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Then explain it to us,” Hel said flatly. “Use small words, if you must.”
But Sam’s grandfather wasn’t listening. He was digging through the strange junk on the bookshelves, holding each item up to his ear and listening the way one might a shell at the beach. Shaking them as if to get out the sand and muttering to himself.
“I have to have another spirit around here somewhere, with his skills, his particular proclivities...” her grandfather mumbled, and the pieces of the puzzle rearranged themselves in her head, into a terrible new picture.
“You?—you were possessedon purpose?” Sam said. It hurt, the idea that he would choose such a thing, that he continued to choose it, over being there for his granddaughter. “But why?”
“What are you still doing here?” her grandfather said, looking startled to see her. He moved toward her, as if to shoo her out, but Hel stepped forward and Jakob scowled, and her grandfather cringed back. “You can’t be here. It isn’t safe.”
Sam shook her head. “Was it even you, listening to”?—she couldn’t sayAunt Lucy, not with Hel and Jakob listening?—“the ghost you set on me?”
“Oh, Sammy, of course it was,” her grandfather said, his face crumpling. “Is, I mean. Yes, is. I only use him for the things I can’t bear to do. I love you. You must believe that.”
“Then you have to help us,” Jakob said. “Something is killing everyone haunted by one of your ghosts, and Samantha?—”
“Oh, that’s easy. She just has to take off her?—” His eyes searched her neck, and his expression fell. “Your necklace... you’re not wearing it. But you’re still haunted. Oh no, oh dear.”
“What does that mean?” Sam demanded. “What’s happening to me?”
