“Bowman?” I asked. “No, you’re trapped in the circle.”
“Too slow,” he said, his words a final verdict that meant we were fighting four ghosts with an exhausted alchemist, me at half power, a few handfuls of salt and a fire poker.
The odds weren’t in our favor.
Luckily for everyone involved, I was never very good at math, so I didn’t turn tail and run like I should have. Instead, I threw a little salt at his face and started pulling out handfuls bones from the now-broken circle.
I expected him to tackle me and winced when I heard the impact of flesh on flesh. But when I looked up, it was King holding him back, the fire poker against his partner’s throat. If Bowman had possessed himbeforewe’d put her in the circle, then all we needed to do was get him into a circle, and that should cut off her oxygen.
I continued yanking out the bones, because I figured we needed to take care of everything at once. If I was going to expend my energy on a binding circle, I might as well make a big one.
When I dragged the last skull free, I noticed a stillness in the air. It felt tense, something uncomfortable and dangerous. I was a mouse in the jungle, and there was a snake that I didn’t want to see me through the leaves.
“King,” I said. “Come here.”
Shoving Richmond back until he hit the wall, King took a long step towards me.
“Wha—” he said. I held up a hand.
The three ghosts were coming out of the literal walls. The two men reached inside Richmond and yanked, as if the man was just tissue paper around a gift. A piece seemed to come free, then another, then another as they pulled at Bowman’s soul.
Screaming, Richmond reached out. To my shock, his hand knocked the ghosts back. He grabbed one of the men, lifting the spirit off the ground and holding him aloft.
I looked down between the bones and the ghost and then back to the shattered circle.
“Great. We havemorebones?” King said. “We need those in a binding circle.”
“Give me a second,” I said. I squeezed my eyes shut for half a moment. “Okay, so, tell me if this tracks. Bowman is so desperate to get her street cred back that she makes some ghosts.”
“You think she killed them?” King asked, frowning.
I gestured to where the two other ghosts were circling Richmond/Bowman like lions waiting for the water buffalo to show weakness. Richmond whipped around and smacked the female ghost but loosened his hold on the ghost he was holding by the neck.
It slithered out and reached into Richmond’s chest, pulling out a handful of whatever ghosts were made of. Ectoplasm? Glancing at King, I raised my eyebrows.
“Okay, so she killed them, bound them with a circle, and then?” King said.
“I think they were free when she was dead,” I said. “Or bound to the house, or wherever ghosts go when they’re dead. But once the drunk wedding party called her back...”
“It called them back, too,” King said, nodding. “I don’t know the details of her spell, but that makes sense. When you?—”
He broke off, finally getting a look at the wood, the twisted attempt at a trunk, the planks that had returned to their branch-shape.
“Broke Bowman’s circle,” I said, drawing back his attention. “Yeah, I think that freed them. I don’t know how long it’ll last, though. The circle remade itself once already. So we have a short window.”
“What do you need?” King asked.
“I’m going to start the binding circle,” I said. “And then we need to get Richmond inside it.”
Nodding, King positioned himself between me and the ghosts as I pulled a piece of chalk from my bag and started sketching the spell. I went with a full circle this time, instead of a triangle which meant I had to put down five spell points, each to reinforce the other. It felt a little Russian nesting doll by the fourth, but I kept going.
The ghosts were still picking at each other, but something appeared under the bones in the circle. The spell was coming back, a charred bit of Latin, the tail of a shape that held the power sigils. I was working with borrowed time.
I didn’t want to close the spell like I had the first one because as soon as I did, our ghostly attackers would disappear, and then it would be just us and Bowman. She’d escaped once into Richmond, I couldn’t take the chance that she’d get into King. He might have depleted his magic, but he was clearly a powerhouse, and that meant that if she possessed him, she’d have his strength at her disposal.
As I stood, hand hovering over where I needed to draw the last sigil, I saw King bend low, swinging the poker at Richmond’s knee when he turned his back to King. It was a practiced, fluid move, maybe one that King had learned in training.
Richmond went down with a groan, and then pitched forward, twitching. He rose awkwardly, like a marionette that had strings lifting it up, his head tilted at an odd angle from his body. He turned to King, a glare that ate away at his face.
