It cast a dim light—just enough to see the objects on the surface in front of us, but not much beyond. The room was deep in shadow and the muted music from the taproom drifted in, giving the impression that we were far from civilization but not entirely removed.
“We should take hands with the people on each side,” Stymak said, but as soon as he touched Carlos, he jerked his hand back, taking a hard breath through his nose. “Ugh! Uh . . . maybe we should just put them on the tabletop . . . unless you guys think I’m cheating. . . .”
“We would know,” Carlos said.
“Oh. Well. Good. We can trust each other, then.”
I saw the energy around Carlos flicker slightly brighter than usual—I took that as amusement.
“We’ll trust each other,” I reiterated and put my own hands on the tabletop.
Carlos chuckled but did the same, and Stymak, looking spooked in the dim light, followed suit. His aura had gone a bit green ever since touching Carlos and it was clear that he was very uncomfortable with the vampire. I wondered if he knew what Carlos was. He hadn’t said anything. I would have to wait to find out.
Stymak closed his eyes and started off with a nondenominational prayer for assistance and protection. It reminded me of magical ceremonies that called on the four directions—the magical equivalent of a politically correct hedge on religion while at the same time getting the attention of whatever magical thing might be around to do the work required.
In the near dark, I let my Grey vision open as wide as possible without my slipping away. The energy around Stymak had begun expanding, brightening and spreading in all directions. The light it shed into the Grey was white, just like my own had appeared when I sank away from my body. But he wasn’t just bright; he was reaching out mentally, concentrating and casting his net outward, trolling for spirits.
Stymak spoke in the same quiet but bell-like voice I’d heard him use at the Goss house as his consciousness ranged outward. “We ask for the attendance of those spirits who have been drawn to Julianne Goss and others like her. Those spirits who have spoken through our friends. Come to us and speak. We are ready to hear you.”
He was unnaturally still and very quiet as his energy continued to expand and seek, growing brighter until, to my eyes, the room was awash in white light. He waited for a while, and then repeated his invitation. “Come to us and speak. We are waiting to hear you.”
The sand in the dish stirred and a few particles rose into the air, then more, making a small cloud that spread upward in a thin column. I heard a distant rattling and a roar that grew closer, like a train hurtling toward us. The sound reminded me of the rattle and roar the Guardian Beast made when it was bearing down, but here there was an added element: a howling keen that cut me through with dread and raised a churning in my gut that was more nauseating than Carlos’s presence nearby.
The cloud of sand hovering over the dish began to spread sideways, growing thicker in some places, thinner in others, taking on form and shadow in the pale light of the electric lamp. The cloud began to resemble a face. The face opened its sand-pale eyelids, the grains rolling away to reveal dark pits containing distant points of fire that dwindled toward more distant stars. It split into several faces, each turned in a different direction, the mouths moving out of sync.
“We come . . .” the faces whispered. “We are gathered.”
Something swooped in, screaming and clattering, and dragging a tail of the floating sand across the table to swirl around the edges of the room. The remaining sand billowed upward, coming back together into one large face that glared at us.
“Why do you trouble me?”
Even with his eyes closed, Stymak was frowning and looking slightly ill. Carlos glared at the apparition, his hands rigid and digging into the tabletop, but he didn’t move or speak. The sand outside our circle continued whirling around the room, drawing into the shape of a skeletal wolf that stalked the table, watching us.
“We wish to speak to those who are crying out for help. You aren’t one of them. Who are you? What is your name?” Stymak said, his voice now choked and rasping as the white energy in his corona faltered and flickered. He’d begun sweating and I saw a slight tremor in his hands on the table.
“Why should I tell you?” the ghost demanded, firming within her shell of sand and rising higher above the table. She was tall, almost stately, and angry, her scowl reddening the hazy world of the Grey.
Stymak was struggling, having difficulty speaking, the far-reaching clouds of his aura diminishing and pulling inward. I didn’t think this was how he’d intended the seance to go, but I wasn’t sure what to do aside from distracting the ghost’s attention from him.
“I know who you are,” I said, recognizing her now. “You’re Linda Burfield Hazzard. We don’t want to talk to you, Mrs. Hazzard. We want to talk to the others—”
“
The skeletal wolf howled in chorus, stalking around us faster, hunching closer to the ground.
“Doctor. As you like,” I said, letting my disdain for her unwarranted title color my voice.
She turned all of her attention on me. Stymak remained as he was and the circling wolf-thing nipped at him as it passed. He shuddered and made a gagging sound, but nothing more.
“I thought you would be useful,” Hazzard said, looking me over. “So thin, so pretty . . . You should be mine, for all I’ve done.” She put out a hand to touch my face and I saw a thin streamer of ghost-stuff rise off my chest and yearn toward her—this must be the tie Carlos had seen. The skeletal wolf rushed toward me from behind her. I ducked aside and felt the strand between Hazzard and me pull uncomfortably tight.
The two forms clashed in a spray of white grit and a crash of bones. The tugging sensation in my chest broke off. Stymak and the sand collapsed to the table, leaving the ghost behind. Hazzard’s face deformed, twisting and tumbling, then re-formed as a skull more like the wolf’s than the woman’s, the illusion of flesh clinging in melting strands over it. The terrifying creature spun and scattered the items remaining on the table, then turned back to me, snarling.
“You disturbed the tribute. Had I known you before, you would have been mine,” the monstrous thing said. This was no ghost. It was something else—something much more dangerous. “Perhaps you still shall be, when the wheel turns, when the hunger of the damned is sated.”
The creature took another bite at Stymak, who twitched and jerked away, eyes still closed, uttering a small cry of distress. His energy collapsed toward him and he writhed as if it were crushing him, forcing a word out on his expelled breath. “Who . . . ?”
“I am Limos, the Insatiable! You shouldn’t meddle in my affairs!” the creature spat, biting at me, now, too.
I ducked again, but not fast enough and the ghostly teeth ripped loose a shred of light from my shoulder. I cried out from the rending pain that seemed to tear deep into my gut.
Carlos pushed hard against the table and stood up, knocking the furniture over. Notebooks, pens, and the recorder scattered around the room and the dish of sand shattered on the floor. “Enough!” he roared. “It is time for you to go back where you came from.” He put one hand out toward me as he kept his eyes on the dreadful thing between us. “Give me your hand,” he ordered.
I didn’t want to touch him, but if I didn’t do something the monstrous, incorporeal thing would tear more pieces out of me or Stymak, and I could see Stymak’s light dimming with every nip the creature took. I grabbed Carlos’s hand, shuddering at the touch.
“Push!” he commanded. “We cannot tear it apart, but we can force it back. Push!”
I felt rocky and sick, my feet unstable on the shifting sand that covered the floor, but I reached down toward the grid, trying to anchor myself to the energy of the Grey and draw it up through me like I had before. I pulled with mind and will and thrust the rising energy toward the horrifying thing. I could hear Carlos, dimly through the ringing in my ears, muttering words that bled and sparked in the Grey, sending growing ripples outward that tore through the phantasm before us. The power I shoved upward became a tsunami carrying the barbed, coruscating words into the creature, tearing it in two and tumbling the parts away into the blackness between the hot lines of the grid.
The world collapsed on us, bearing me to the floor. Carlos knelt beside me, peering into my face. His touch made me cold and I imagined black coils of stinging vines curling up my arm and digging at the torn part of my shoulder.
I stifled a sob of pain and tried to pull away from him. He stared at me a moment longer, then let go. Heat flooded back into my body as soon as his hand left mine. I gasped in air that tasted of dust and spilled beer as the
