“Louisa Bowman,” I said. “I bind you.”
My magic bubbled out of me, I could feel it spilling across the floor towards the ghost. It’d been too long since I’d used it for more than a basic glamour. For a moment, I thought it would work.
But instead of bending to my will, the ghost shrieked, a sound that left my ears ringing like I was in the front row at a heavy metal concert. She turned to me, and opened her mouth like she wanted to speak, but the words were beyond her. The black holes of her eyes narrowed and she lurched towards me, her teeth stained and sharp and ready to eat me alive.
“Well, that didn’t work,” King observed. “Any other ideas, Parker?”
“Grab her bones,” I said. “I’ll distract her.”
How do you distract a poltergeist? I called her name again. “Hey, Louisa? So, how’s the afterlife? Is it like you told your clients? Or, no, wait. You were a fraud. So this must be a surprise for you. Big shock that ghosts are real, huh?”
She hissed, moving with unnatural grace and came at me again. I saw King grab the bones and then look at me.
“Put them in the triangle!” I said, ducking as she swiped at me. I danced out the way. Dance like a butterfly, fight like someone who’s trying out for Jerry Springer.
He took long strides to the attic stairs and then he disappeared down them. Leaving me alone with the ghost. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I grinned.
“This is not going to go well for you.”
Four
Idipped into my magic again and felt for whatever was nearby. Outside, the rain pelted down, fat drops of water rejoicing at returning to the earth. It was a chant of delight as they hit the roof, slid down to the gutter, and then flowed down the drainpipe.
That didn’t help. I felt down below me. There. Something familiar, showing up in my mind’s eye like a lighthouse. Salt?
Alotof salt. If I could get it up here, that would be a weapon I could use.
It felt like it was in a container near water. A water softener? Of course my client would shell out for one. He probably just didn’t want to have to pay to have someone scrub hard water deposits off the showers.
I yanked the salt up, feeling it struggle, break something and thenflowupwards, shooting up into the attic from a water pipe in the bathroom under our feet. There was a spray of salty water and then a sluggish dribble of salt puddled on the floor. Great. What was I supposed to do with a salt slushy?
On its own, I might be able to work with the salt, but the water confused the whole situation. The ghost flickered and I took a long stride so that I was standing in the middle of the saltymess. It felt like being in a noisy bar. The salt was trying to talk, but kept being overwhelmed by the joyous shouting of the house water and the shriek of the rainwater hitting the roof.
The sludgy salt moved slightly as I forced magic into it. On the far side of the attic, the ghost circled me, trying to find a way past the salt puddle I stood in. More salt dribbled up through the pipe.
The salt wasn’t going to listen to me while all the water bogged it down. It was too heavy for the crystals and even when I managed to move them, they disintegrated into the water, leaving me with a puddle so salty that the Dead Sea would probably tell it to lay off the sodium. With one last heft, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to move this mess.
In the corner of the attic where a couple of loose roof shingles let in stray droplets, the rainwater called to me. It was a pure, high note in the chaos of noise. It gave me an idea.
If I couldn’t move the salt with the water, I needed to move the water first so that I was left with the pure sodium chloride.
“Hey, puddle,” I said. “It’s so warm in here, doesn’t it feel like evaporation temperature? I mean, you can hear the rain outside. Doesn’t it sound like it’s having fun?”
It took a shift of my magic, but I had plenty, an unused well of it in my bones. The water evaporated, leaving us with a steamy sauna of an attic, and me standing in a pile of pure salt.
The salt wouldn’t be as easy to move as the water that could shift forms with a suggestion—ice to water to vapor. Salt was a crystal, a solid form that didn’t move.But, I could definitely convince the salt that the wind was blowing it.
Bending low, I ran my fingers over the salty residue that the evaporated water had left behind. The ripple of my magic woke the salt, which was, hilariously salty at its position. It had enjoyed being brine and had some very choice words about being dry.
“Yes. In fact you’re so dry because it’s a windstorm,” I said. “Can’t you feel the wind? It’s blowing you everywhere. It’schaos.”
Some of the salt shifted. I saw a few granules float up and then crash down.
“Can’t you feel it? It’s so much wind! How’re you still on the ground?” I asked, feeding the salt more magic. Around me, a swirl of salt began to rise in the air. My own miniature salt tornado.
It spun across the room, salt spraying all over, in defiance of gravity and physics.
The ghost’s eyes went wide, and she shrieked.
