Gail fired her shotgun into the specter and its body flickered into a dark cloud. An instant later, it was gone.
The professor dropped to the carpet and gasped for air.
Gail stood and handed me a box of salt from her pack. “Make a large circle in the bathroom, big enough for two.”
“Got it,” I said and rushed into the bath.
A large furry rug covered a portion of the bathroom’s floor. I grabbed an edge of the bath mat and tossed it into the Jacuzzi tub. Opening the salt, I poured a thick stream around the center of the floor in a circle about three feet across. Then I closed the container and shoved it into my backpack.
Gail had Professor Nichols and his wife by the arms and was dragging them into the bath. “Trust me on this, Professor, if you don’t want to end up like your two compatriots. Just get inside the circle and stay there.”
“Are you saying this ghost is what killed them?” the man stammered.
“Most likely,” Gail said. “There’s probably not two specters trying to kill you, are there?”
“Well, ah, no, that’s not likely.”
“Great, that’ll make things easier for us. Now get in the circle and don’t scuff the salt.”
Professor Nichols and his wife stepped gingerly over the line of salt and Gail released their arms. “Excellent, you may survive the night after all.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” she told me. “It might be back any second.”
“Gotcha,” I said and brought my shotgun to the ready.
Gail transferred her gun to her left hand and drew her hunting knife with her right. Taking the point of the blade, she jabbed herself in the thumb and a bead of blood welled up. She bent and let the first drop of blood fall onto the salt as she said something under her breath. I felt something I’d never felt before. It was almost as if we were in an enormous guitar and someone had just strummed the bass string. The air above the circle shimmered like heat above the asphalt on a summer day.
“What was that?” I asked as Gail rose to her feet.
She holstered her knife and stood with her back to the Nichols. “A little extra protection, salt is good, but a spell of protection will make sure nothing other-worldly crosses the circle.”
“A spell? Seriously?” I asked.
Gail shrugged. “What can I say? I told you magic was real.”
“Yeah, but—”
Without aiming, she fired at something behind me. I flinched and turned in time to see the black vapor disappearing.
“Shit! How long do we have to keep blasting it?”
Gail jacked a fresh round into her shotgun and shrugged. “No telling, either the specter will run out of juice and have to rest up or the sun will come up. Most spooks can’t maintain a form in daylight hours.”
I glanced at my watch. It was just before midnight. “Dawn is a long time coming.”
“Yeah, hopefully, it’ll give up when it can’t get to Nichols.”
“I don’t understand. Why is it after Paul?” Mrs. Nichols asked. Her voice sounded a lot calmer than I would have thought.
Gail shrugged again. “I can’t say for certain, but my guess is that your husband and his friends opened a grave site and released a genus loci—a protector spirit—or activated an old curse.”
“That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing as curses,” Nichols said.
I spared a glance his way. “Seriously professor? That’s where you draw the line? A ghost tries to strangle you in your bedroom and you can’t believe in curses?”
“I … I don’t know. I didn’t believe in spirits an hour ago.”
His wife shivered and then said, “Paul, if the young woman who saved your life says it’s a curse then I suggest you believe her. She seems to know more about it than you do.”
The professor sputtered, but then closed his mouth without further objection.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned, raising the shotgun as I did. The specter was coalescing in the bedroom. I fired a quick shot and it dissipated again with no apparent damage. There was a crash and a large LED television fell off the bedroom wall.
“Oops, sorry,” I said.
Nichols groaned. “I just bought that.”
Okay, I felt bad about busting the man’s TV, but what the hell. “I said ‘sorry.’ I can’t help where the thing shows up.”
“You can bill us,” Gail said. She looked from side to side, but the spirit wasn’t visible. “Jesse, cover me, I’m going to try something new.”
“Okay, I’ve got you covered,” I said, stepping closer to her.
Gail knelt, slipped out of her backpack, and fished around inside it.
I motioned for the Nichols to get down and they crouched in their circle.
Gail’s hands emerged from the backpack with a can of spray paint and a baby food jar. The jar had the label peeled partially off and some kind of translucent green fluid sloshed around inside it. She shook the paint can and I could hear the rattle of the little metal ball inside it.
Standing, Gail started spraying a pattern on the bedroom carpet. I almost let my attention fix on her but snapped my gaze back up in time to see the spirit coalescing by the bedroom door. I snapped off a shot from the waist and the shotgun bucked in my hands. The ghost changed back to mist and disappeared again.
Gail finished what looked like a pentagram and then drew a squirrelly loop inside the center. She tossed the paint can to one side and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. She raised the jar over her head and stopped.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked. I didn’t know what the hell she was doing, but I figured she shouldn’t be hesitating.
“I want to see the results.”
“What? You don’t know what’s going to happen? Then why are you doing it?”
“There’s
