The bark caught fire.
Not normal fire. Cold fire. Blue and white, flames that gave off darkness instead of light. That made the temperature drop instead of rise. That burned without consuming.
The smoke got thicker. Ramona’s eyes watered. Her throat closed. She kept speaking through it, coughing, choking, forcing the words out.
The curse was still there. Still holding. Still?—
The air split.
The temperature dropped twenty degrees in an instant.
Then, thirty. Forty. Ramona’s tears froze on her cheeks. Her breath stopped fogging and started crystallizing, tiny ice particles that hung in the air and caught the ethereal light from the cold fire.
Then, the ghosts came.
Not metaphorical ghosts, or echoes or impressions. Actual spirits. Full manifestations. Pale and translucent andscreaming.
The sound was inhuman. High-pitched and endless and it went straight through Ramona’s skull into her brain and rattled there. She wanted to cover her ears but her hands were locked in ritual position, held in front of her as if she were holding an invisible ball of power. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t protect herself.
The spirits poured into the clearing like smoke. Like water. Like something thick and viscous. They swirled around Kashvi.
Surrounded her.
Reached for her with spectral hands that looked almost solid.
“What—” Kashvi stumbled backward. “What’s happening?”
“The ritual!” Ramona shouted over the screaming. “It must be pulling in these spirits. The dissolution energy is too strong. It’s opening holes between planes.”
The ghosts pressed closer to Kashvi. One of them — a woman’s shape, vague and shifting — reached for her throat.
Kashvi’s scream joined the ghosts’. High and terrified and human.
Gerald shrieked.
Not cooed. Not the soft sounds Ramona was used to. A full-throated pigeon shriek of anguish and terror.
He launched off Felix’s shoulder, flying wildly toward Kashvi, toward the ghosts, and dove straight into the woman reaching for Kashvi’s throat. The ghost disintegrated instantly, but Gerald bounced back as if hitting a wall, one wing at an unnatural angle. Bent wrong. Broken. He spiraled through the air, out of control, and hit the ground hard.
The sound of impact was small. Soft. Terrible.
Gerald lay still. Too still. One wing spread at that awful angle. His small body not moving.
“Gerald!” Felix dove for him, breaking the circle, hands scrabbling at the ground. “No, no, no. Gerald, please.” He scooped up the pigeon with shaking hands. Gerald’s head lolled. Limp. “He’s not breathing.” Felix’s voice broke. “He’s not… Gerald, please, please wake up.”
The ghosts were getting denser. More solid. Another one of them had its hands — if Ramona could call them hands — around Kashvi’s throat. She was gasping, clawing at something she couldn’t touch.
Her lips were turning blue.
“Kashvi, stay with us.” Ramona was frozen in place, her feet rooted in place. She cast a panicked look toward Zara, who was watching Kashvi with the same level of terror.
Posey tried to stand, still gray-faced, still weak. She got halfway up and her legs gave out. She crumpled back to the ground with a cry of frustration and pain.
“We have to stop—” Cammie was sobbing. “We have to stop the ritual?—”
“We can’t.” Zara’s voice cut through the chaos. Sharp. Commanding. Desperate. “If we stop mid-ritual, the convergence point could collapse entirely. It would take the whole park with it, maybe more.”
The ghosts pressed closer to Kashvi, bringing her to her knees. She was making sounds now as she writhed against them. Choking sounds. Dying sounds.
