“What is it?” Chase stopped short when the little girl came into view. “Oh no.”

“He’s tied her spirit to his. Can you do anything?” I had no idea why I thought he might be able to help, but something inside urged me to let him try.

Chase licked his lips as he stared at the girl. “I might. But you have to be ready.”

“Ready to do what?”

“When I give the word, throw yourself between the spirit and her. Are you willing to do that? It could be deadly.” He looked frightened, but I could read the determination in his eyes. Chase hated it when anybody hurt a child—be the attacker corporeal or spirit.

I nodded. “Yeah. Go for it.”

Chase reached out to the little girl. A flicker of energy oozed out from his hands, and the girl turned toward him, eyes wide. She reached out to him, then opened her mouth. A haunting scream echoed through the room.

The spirit, startled, whirled around. When he saw what Chase was doing, he roared—his anger shook the room, and pens and pencils and the cookie plate and anything else that wasn’t nailed down started flying through the air.

Camille and Morio began a low incantation, driving forward as if they were plowing through a whirlwind or hurricane, one step at a time, their palms out, energy crackling before them.

A shriek caught me off guard. I stumbled back, turning to see Roz, still pinned to the wall, but now a knife was lodged in his shoulder.

I raced over to him and levitated up to eye level. As I grabbed the hilt—it was a kitchen knife, like a serrated tomato knife—and yanked, he let out a curse and I stuck the knife in my belt, not wanting it to become airborne again. I tried to pry him off the wall, but to no avail. Blood fountained from his wound but it wasn’t in a vital area and, while it might sting, right now it didn’t put him in danger. But if anything else aimed itself for him, he could be spitted like a rotisserie chicken.

Torn—Roz needed me to protect him, but the spirit was bearing down on Chase—I tried to weigh where I was needed most.

“Go, Chase needs you!” Roz struggled to move his head. “Menolly, you know he can’t fight that creature!”

I glanced around. Things were still flying through the air, but Roz was right. Chase was the most vulnerable. I nodded and, wishing I could be in two places at once, raced back to Chase’s side.

He and the ghost were playing tug-of-war with the girl’s spirit, dragging her back and forth. She was crying, but no sound escaped her lips. I landed by Chase just in time to see a chair come flying across the room at him. I couldn’t intervene directly—the legs were pointed in our direction and one wrong placement and I’d have a stake through the heart. So I dove for the detective, taking him down to sprawl on the floor.

His grasp on the girl broke and the spirit reared up again, his laughter shaking the walls. He lunged for the girl, a lecherous look in his eye, but at that moment, Camille and Morio sent a bolt of energy into him.

Spirits dance and spirits writhe,

spirits toil, spirits tithe,

Fire and ice, and spinning wheel,

let your life to this sign be sealed!

A fiery glowing sigil appeared in the air, crackling as it burned with a bright purple flame. A thousand howls of anger came rushing through the rune, and then a black, shadowy arrow broke through, aimed for the heart of the spirit. It pierced his back, driving through to the other side.

Camille made a sign with her free hand. The arrow developed barbs and as she jerked her hand backward, the barbs caught hold of the spirit’s ethereal body and dragged him away from us.

Morio, grinning fiercely, drew another rune in the air with his right hand and it circled around the little girl, severing her connection with the spirit. She went rebounding back, hiding her face.

The arrow quivered and sparkled with the violent flames. And then—as the spirit let out an angry, frightened roar—the arrow exploded, taking him with it. A shower of sparks rained over the room, and the smell of ozone hissed and popped.

Our opponent was gone.

We stood there, staring at the devastated living room. Roz fell to the floor, along with everything else that had been hovering in the air.

The little girl looked up, fear filling her face, but then she saw that the man was gone and slowly walked forward. She cocked her head, looking first at Morio and Camille, then at me. Then she turned to Roz and regarded him with a serious look.

“You’re okay now, honey.” Chase knelt and opened his arms.

A smile broke out on her face. The closet opened and out stepped the little boy. The girl ran over to him and caught him by the hand, bringing him back to stand in front of Chase.

Chase waited, his arms wide, looking so sad and weary that I wanted to take him in hand, put him in his jammies, and tuck him into bed with a cup of hot cocoa. He continued to kneel as the girl and boy slowly walked into his embrace.

Tears were falling down his face now, as he slowly closed his arms around them, murmuring something I couldn’t hear. And then, as they leaned against his shoulders, they slowly began to fade. In another moment, they had vanished in a shimmer of cleansing light, and we were alone in the house.

Camille and Morio dropped to the sofa, mute and spent. Roz was hurt. Chase looked weary beyond belief. And I…I was confused and had a horrendous headache.

After a moment, I slid to the floor. “What the fuck just happened here?”

Chase lifted his head. “Abby and Fritz—are they okay?”

“They took off for the FH-CSI in my car. They should be there by now. There were…there was a vortex on the front porch that almost caught Fritz. Arms reaching through to pull him down.” I looked around at the destruction and mayhem. “Was it all just that one spirit causing problems?”

Camille shook her head. “No. We cleared him out, but there are more things here. Evil things, lurking. I can feel them. They’re just biding their time, and we really should get the fuck out of here before they come after us. Because I don’t know how much magic I have left in me tonight. That freaking perv was hell on wheels to get rid of. Thank you, Chase—you distracted him long enough for Morio and me to build our spell.”

Chase stared at his hands. “He hurt them. When they were all alive. He hurt both of them and I think he killed them, too. He bound the girl to him and was chasing after the boy all of these years.”

“How do you know?” I cocked my head. Chase’s abilities were opening out. After he’d been injected with the Nectar of Life to save his life, abilities had been coming to the surface. We’d known Chase had psychic potential, and the nectar had thrown down the gauntlet.

He shrugged. “She told me. What can I say? I could hear her in my head—not so much in words, but I could…I know what he did to them.” It was all he said, and it was all he needed to say. The tone of his voice told us the rest.

We struggled toward the back door. I didn’t want to take another chance on meeting whatever was haunting the front porch. Somebody was tunneling up from a nasty-assed place, and right now the last thing we needed was another battle.

We came around the front and I looked back at the house. “Shit. Forgot to lock the doors.” I grimaced.

“Hell, okay, I’ll go back.” Morio started back, but I shook my head.

“You guys stay right here. I can get across the porch without putting a foot on it.” I hated levitating—I was by no means an expert, and more often than not, I ended up running into a wall. But it was better than trying to turn into a bat. My bat-girl abilities had a better chance of flubbing than Camille’s Moon magic. A lot better.

As I floated up and over the porch, I glanced down. All I could see was floorboards, but they wavered and rippled. The vortex hadn’t sealed itself. I slowly levitated through the front door and touched down, turning to slam it behind me and lock it.

The house creaked and moaned. I had the uneasy feeling the sounds weren’t just from the floorboards settling. The pseudo-blood was still streaming down the walls, and while no knives hurtled through the air at the moment, as I walked through the living room, muffled moans and cries assaulted my ears.

“I should just get Ivana Krask down here,” I mumbled to myself.

It would be a gamble—forming deals with the Elder Fae was risky business—but she did eat up ghosts. Sucked them right up in that bizarre vacuum cleaner of a staff she carried, and then took them home to plant in her spirit garden for torturing.

Frankly, as long as she didn’t take innocent spirits, like the little girl and boy, I no longer cared what she did with the freak shows of the Netherworld. This was getting old. We’d been fighting spirits for too long, and I was getting really tired of playing ghostbuster to the demonic world.

As I neared the kitchen, the sound of a door slamming stopped me. I didn’t want to turn around. I really didn’t. But the door was right behind me. Either the front door, or a side door to what had been the parlor. Slowly, I peeked over my shoulder.

Mother pus-bucket…Instead of a closed door, I was staring at a demon. It had to be a demon, because it had coiling horns and dark blistery skin, and a feral grin on its face. And it was leaning against the doorway, watching me. This was no ghost.

I paused a half beat, trying to recover my senses, and then bolted for the door. The demon came after me, and he was fast. He was as fast as I was.

I screamed as I crossed the kitchen in two leaps and tripped out onto the back porch. I scrambled up, grabbing for the knob to pull it shut, but he was right there. His hand covered my wrist and he yanked me inside again.

I let out another scream and kicked him in the balls, landing a solid hit. He groaned and bent over but kept hold of my wrist. Good, he was corporeal. I could at least attack this freak.

He snarled, closing his grip on my wrist again, but seemed confused when I didn’t scream. Instead, I tensed my arm and whirled around, dragging him with me to smash him against the wall. He let go as his horns pierced the drywall, entangling him. I laughed and pulled my arm away, spinning to kick him again, this time shoving my stiletto heel into his ass. I yanked it back, satisfied when blood began to pour out of his butt cheek.

“Home run!” But I knew when to back away. He was as strong as I was, and I had no clue what kind of powers he had or what kind of demon he was. I dashed out the door, slamming it behind me. As I jumped over the steps, landing in a crouch, I turned, sure he’d be hot on my heels, But he was standing there, staring at me through the window, making no move to follow me.

It occurred to me that maybe he couldn’t follow me. Maybe he was somehow trapped within the house. If so, score one for us. If not, we’d find out sooner or later. I dashed around the front, back to the others.

“There’s a freaking demon in there. I have no clue what kind but he’s big and horny—literally—and I left him with a nice hole in his ass thanks to my heel. He’s mean, though. Tough sucker.”

As I leaned against Camille’s car, we turned back to watch the house. The lights were running wild inside, strobing on and off in a dizzying cycle.

“I’d hate to have the electricity bill for that,” Camille whispered. But as we moved to leave, there was another sound—a popping, or hissing, or something of that sort, and we slowly looked back.

The house was on fire, burning with a brilliant flame.

“Shit.” Chase pulled out his phone and began to dial 911.

“Wait.” I looked at him. “We can’t let the firefighters go in there—the ghosts are in there, and the demon. Best thing is to just let it burn to the ground. Hopefully, the insurance will pay off and Fritz and Abby can find another house. Because they’re never going to reclaim that one. It’s too far gone.”

Chase gave me a long look, then glanced at the house again. “You know that I can’t…” He stopped. “Yeah…and if anybody asks, we weren’t here to see it start, so we couldn’t report it.”

We waited, watching the house, for another ten minutes and then Roz edged across the street and, taking out one of his little specials, tossed it into the flames, then ran back to us.

“Duck!”

We turned to cover, just in time to miss the explosion. As the house roared to life with an increase in heat and flame, I knew there would be nothing left. Whatever Roz had used had magnified the flames. And there would be nothing to prove that the ghosts had been there, or anything else.

The fire marshal wouldn’t find any concrete reason—so faulty wiring would most likely be blamed. So many of the old houses needed rewiring, and that had been a project on Fritz and Abby’s list. Insurance would chalk it up to accident. And they would get their money and be able to move on.

After another five minutes, Chase called Yugi. By the time the fire trucks got there, the house had imploded and there was nothing left but gutted timbers and a burned-out shell. The basement was open to the rain, the main floor vanished among the flames. Chase talked to the fire marshal, and I’m not sure what he told them, but within a few minutes, we were ready to head out.

“Go home,” I told Camille and Morio. “I have to get my car from headquarters anyway. I’ll meet you later. I may stop in at the Wayfarer to see what’s shaking there.”

They nodded and wearily drove off, taking Roz with them. As I climbed into the prowl car with Chase, I glanced over at him.

“Okay, truth. What the hell were you doing with that little girl’s ghost? I know you were trying to free her from the spirit, but how did you know what to do? And what were you doing?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, really. I don’t know much of what I’m doing lately, especially when it comes to…magic? Psychic stuff? I really have no clue. I just feel this prompting inside and I can’t ignore it till I do what it wants. I knew that I could untangle her from him, if I only had enough time. But it turned into a tug-of-war match. And then, after he vanished, I knew that I could help those kids over to the other side. All I had to do was hug them, pull them in, and they’d be free.”