Asshole,Ram accused in a voice that was maybe 10 percent sound and 90 percent marsh stink.You promised me.
Normal people didn’t talk to their ghosts outside, where the neighbors could see. They kept that behind closed doors. Besides, he hadn’t promised Ram anything.
There was an Amazon box on the doorstep. Jonah gave it a tap with his foot, and the cardboard dented wetly. Ram cackled, sour and wet, at the little bit of spite.
This better be important, he jeered.
Jonah closed his eyes for a second and rolled his neck from one side to the other. His vertebra made a noise like a key in a lock and made his eyes water.
“Go fuck yourself, Ram,” he told his brother as he unlocked the door. “God knows, you got no other options these days.”
Ram’s face twisted with bleak, black rage, further than would have been possible with flesh and bone. His skull split almost in half as he gaped his mouth open in a silent foul scream and flung himself at Jonah, fingers crooked into filthy green-nailed claws…
... and Jonah stepped across the threshold. Ram bounced off the invisible barrier and tore apart into a cloud of furious fly-shaped pieces of himself.
“Yeah,” Jonah said. “That’s right. You’re still not welcome.”
He slammed the door behind him and left Ram to scream out his tantrum on the lawn. It wasn’t that different from when Ram was alive, except the neighbors didn’t complain anymore.
Jonah tuned the screaming out as he shrugged his coat off and went into the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly hard to find what he needed. The Carrows weren’t fancy enough for esoteric shit. Anything his granny used in a spell, she’d use in a stew. In fact, most of Jonah’s childhood meals had been Revenge on a Cheating Husband soup and roast chicken seasoned with I Hate My Boss Touching Me.
Besides, for this, all he needed was some salt and a clean bit of countertop to put it on.
The pots went into the sink, the takeout containers into the trash, and the slow cooker he’d gotten on sale with his first legit paycheck and an abundance of optimism went onto the floor in the corner. Jonah swept his arm along the marble-effect Formica and brushed the crumbs into the sink.
His granny definitelywasn’ta ghost. That had been the last thing anyone had wanted. Jonah still felt his ear sting as if she’d grabbed it in a disapproving pinch.Cleanliness was next to godliness,she’d always said.Because dirty people died puking.
He gave her memory the promise of a lick and a polish when he was done and grabbed the carton of salt from the cupboard. Sea salt would work better, but table salt would do in a pinch.
Or, more accurately, a circle.
Maybe it was good advice to keep his distance from Deborah Slater. Jonah still wanted to know what she’d dropped him into before he made up his mind. If whatever had its hooks into Slater’s back had clocked him at the church… It worked when kids hid under their blankets from the bogeyman because kidsbelievedin the blanket. Jonah wouldn’t get the same grace if he just tried to stick his head in the sand. He didn’t believe in much these days.
Between Deborah and Shiloh’s visits, Jonah had been caught off guard enough times tonight to do him for the year. Whether he decided to help Deborah or not, he wanted to know what else might come and hammer on his door.
Jonah popped the tab and tipped the container up. The grains bounced off the surface and then piled up as he traced out the circle. Once it was complete, he pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and carefully dropped it in the middle of the ring.
If there was anything that needed… contained, it would be.
And it didn’t count as a hex. Anyone could make a circle with some condiments. It didn’t take any special knack.
He didn’t know what he’d expected from the paper that Deborah had pressed into his hand—a brittle page torn from a spell book, an onion skin thin letter full of secrets—but it was just a square cut out of a newspaper and folded up small. Jonah glanced at his palm and saw the smudge of black where the newsprint had come off. He licked his thumb and rubbed at it absently as he tried to work out what it was and why Deborah wanted him to have it.
Questions, he noted to himself, that would be easier to answer if he read the bit of paper.
Better safe than sorry, though. Jonah dumped a fresh pile of salt right on top of it.Somethinghappened when he did. He heard the pressure-pop of it when it went, like the release of a vacuum-sealed pickle jar. Pain prickled through Jonah’s hand, a quick electric jolt that made his fingers twitch.
OK. So that wasn’t so mundane. Whatever the clipping had started its life as, it was hard to say what it had been. It hadn’t held any intent that he could catch, so it might have just been… environmental. If there had been something in the shadows with their eye on Deborah last night, she’d have started collecting bits and pieces of magic like chaff.
Jonah flexed his fingers to dismiss the numb ache that lingered in the joints and brushed the salt away. He picked up the now-gritty bit of paper and started to unpick it one square at a time. On the last fold, Deborah had scrawled in a dull red pen.
THEY ALWAYS KNOW.
He opened the last fold. It was a university paper from Columbus. A student had been murdered, found in the Commons at the halls of residence. The photo that accompanied the article, faded down to shades of gray and smudged from wear, was of a man with his hands crossed under his chin. The only distinct feature that Jonah could make out was the blackXinked on one wrist.
The article didn’t say how the man had died and requested no one speculate out of respect for the family.
Yeah. That never worked. Jonah left the bit of paper in the salt circle and pulled his phone out of his back pocket. There were two messages from his work asking him to come in for a shift tomorrow. He ignored them for now as he opened up the search engine and typed in the identifying information hedidhave.
