Thistle was last. “I call upon the power of the west. Bring anger, retribution and hate.”
Landon jerked, the last incantation confusing him. Shades were unhappy souls. They were angry, and we needed the anger.
“Now,” Aunt Tillie instructed.
I pressed my eyes shut and extended my hands. “Come,” I intoned, allowing the magic to roll off me.
I felt resistance straight away.
No.
We won’t come.
You can’t make us.
I was in no mood for games. “Come,” I repeated, expelling more magic. “You don’t have a choice.”
“What’s happening?” Landon demanded. “Why isn’t it working?”
“Chill out, drama queen,” Aunt Tillie instructed, closing her eyes. “They’re resisting.”
Hannah spoke from somewhere behind me. “I thought she was in control.”
“It’s different,” Clove said. “They’re not normal ghosts.”
I pushed the voices out of my head and focused on my task. The shades resisted, but they sounded fearful enough that I knew I would be able to maintain control of them if I exerted a little more effort. “Now!” I yelled when I felt another tug on my magic.
A bright swirl of light appeared in the trap, four forms struggling against taking shape. Aunt Tillie lent her magic to mine and we trapped two of the shades. The other two escaped.
“Oh, holy ... .” Hannah was breathless. “There are ghosts here.”
Not ghosts, I wanted to tell her. What we had in front of us were different.
“Hello,” I said as the shades struggled against the invisible cage we’d conjured. “It’s nice to see you.”
“Oh, good grief.” Aunt Tillie made an exaggerated face. “Don’t play nice with them. Smack them around some.”
I ignored her and glanced between the faces of the dead. One of them — the female — looked familiar. “Do I know you?”
“Let me go!” She struggled mightily against her constraints but lacked the strength to break free.
“That’s Sandy Strawser,” Landon said. “You remember. I worked her case about six months ago. You saw the photos of the crime scene.”
I searched my memory. “You’re the woman who killed your children.” I vaguely remembered the story. “You said you thought they were possessed by demons.”
“That was a lie,” Landon insisted. “She drowned her children in the tub and claimed mental illness. We uncovered the fact that she was having an affair with a married man and he didn’t want to deal with children. She thought he would leave his wife if she killed her kids.”
Now it was all coming back to me. “She went in for an evaluation,” I said. “She tried to fool the professionals by acting out multiple personalities.”
“Yeah.” Landon’s lips twisted into a sneer. “When we questioned the guy she was seeing, he admitted to the affair. He said he was never going to leave his wife. He only said the thing about the kids in the first place because he thought it would get her to back off. He feared she would say something to his wife, so he tried to appease her ... and it backfired.”
“She died in prison?” I was trying to remember.
“The county jail,” Landon corrected. “She was found stabbed to death in her cell.” He grew quieter. “There was some mystery as to what happened to her. Some assumed one of the guards allowed another inmate into her cell to kill her. More than half her blood was missing.”
“She was killed by someone who used her blood to feed,” I said. “Another shade.”
“Pretty much,” Landon confirmed. “Knowing her, she probably volunteered for it because she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in prison.”
That made sense. “What happened to the guy she was having an affair with? He died under mysterious circumstances a few weeks later.”
Landon rolled his neck until it cracked. “He had a farm accident, fell on a thresher.”
“Which means someone could’ve killed him the same way and tried to cover it up,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Is this him?”
Landon shook his head. “I don’t know who that is.”
Honestly, it didn’t matter. I understood the sort of people we were dealing with. Only dark souls agreed to become shades. And they attracted other shades.
“I guess it doesn’t matter.” I folded my arms across my chest and regarded the male shade with a thin-lipped grimace. “We would like to chat with you.”
“I don’t answer to you,” he growled, throwing himself against the walls of the trap in an attempt to break free.
“It won’t last long,” Aunt Tillie noted, stooping to study the lines on the ground. “They’re either too strong or the trap is too weak.”
“Maybe both,” I acknowledged, wetting my lips. “Who is your master?” I asked.
“We don’t answer to you,” the male shade repeated. He threw himself against the wall, barely taking a moment to regroup before doing it again, eliciting sparks.
Landon moved closer to me. “Is that normal?”
Nothing about this situation was normal. “Not really.”
“Then let them go.”
He had to be joking. “Why would I do that?”
“So nobody gets hurt.”
“It will be fine,” I reassured him, returning my focus to the shade. “You have a master. I want to know who it is.”
“Did you hear that?” Sandy cackled. “She wants to know who our master is. Like we’re just going to tell her.”
“You will tell me.” I generated a gust of magic and sent it toward her. She went rigid when it hit. “You’re living under different rules than I am,” I said. “I can do whatever I want. You’re trapped.”
“Not for long.” The male shade threw himself against the cage walls again. This time I saw the trap flicker. It held, but another blow or two and the shades would escape. I stepped into the cage with the shades and caught the man by the throat, using my left hand to exert control on the female and pin her against the cage walls.
“What’s happening?” Sandy whimpered as she fought against the magic. “What is this?”
“Witches,” the man barked. “They’re unholy witches.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Aunt Tillie drawled.
I ignored the banter. “Who is your master? Show me!” I burrowed into the shade’s mind, forcing my way through layers
