Modern Pantheon: Ghost Read online

  Chapter 11

  Ingram got right out after me. Maybe I convinced Bree not to kill me, but her blood-lusting partner tasted my blood and wanted more. The street was relatively narrow, and since it was not business hours, the right lane allowed parking. I ducked between two cars as I ordered the ghost to depart.

  Yet the mist still remained, as did the shimmering man several yards away. The ghost was staring at me the whole time as the fog thickened around the cluster of buildings. Even as I demanded him to leave, nothing happened, which meant that either that ghost had another mage there to focus him, or he’d become a completely sentient, self focused spell. If it was self-focused, I was in a lot of trouble.

  There were other ways to rid myself of it – I could doom Ingram by turning it against him, for example. Sure, he deserved it more than I did, but I doubt the council would take kindly to me killing one of their members on my quest to prove my innocence. Especially if I kill him using the same spell that killed Emmitt Cane.

  Oh, I also have these morals holding me back.

  It probably wouldn’t work anyway since this ghost would go after the man he thought to be sleeping with his daughter. I was naked. Paul Ingram wasn’t. If you were a homicidal ghost looking to kill a womanizer, what would you think? I kept my head down as Ingram ignored the ghost and hurried forward.

  I looked around for something – anything – that I could grab and turn into a focus. However, there wasn’t anything around. I was limited to the materials I knew extremely well. As far as the buckle went, I got extremely lucky until I stepped out of the car, but I wouldn’t find any metal in arms reach. I could find a stray pebble, perhaps, but I didn’t have a clue as to how to determine the elements within it, let alone imbue them with magic.

  The car I hid beside rocked, and on mostly instinct I stepped between it and the one behind it. It was fortunate that I did, since it let me see the nearest lamppost rip itself out of the ground. Sparks sprayed from the disconnecting wires inside the post. With an adrenaline-fueled thrill, I spun to the opposite side of the car as the lamp whisked down like a giant’s pickaxe on the spot I’d been moments before.

  A second set of tires then squealed to a stop directly beside me. At first I thought it was to avoid hitting the ghost right in front of the car, but as the door flung open I saw Lara. “Get in!”

  Her car, and the relative safety if offered, was only three steps away. I bolted toward it, but my foot flattened down on jagged rock on the second step. With my balance unstable, I was barely able to throw my upper body across the seat. I yanked my legs inside as Lara slammed the pedal, and the sudden burst of speed slammed the car door shut.

  “How’d you find me?” I said, adjusting myself into a sitting position.

  “Are you kidding?” she said, as I looked back.

  I suppose I did leave a trail of crumbs. A car door. A puddle of milk. A streetlamp, and of course, a ghost. My relief at the rescue faded when I saw the ghost hovering back there.

  “I think it’s sentient,” I told her. “I can’t unsummon it.”

  “Great.” she said. “And you’re naked with a girl. The worst possible conditions for bringing about the ghost of Gregory Scythe.”

  “Could be worse. At least you’re not naked,” I said, holding my hand toward the ghost and willing the magic within him to die.

  “You’re not helping,” she hissed as she drove on, turning abruptly onto a bridge. “Hold the wheel.” Her lips were muttering at a hare’s pace, and I realized she was casting something.

  This time, the ghost attacked Lara’s minimobile directly, pounding a heavy force onto the rear of the car. The ghost then hovered up beside us as a metal signpost ripped free of a barrier along the side of the bridge. Lara’s gaze locked onto the signpost as the sharp end turned toward me.

  I tried to do something, but with no focus, the only thing I could do was gawk. The ghost, whose smile revealed complete insanity, clawed toward the hovering street-sign. The metal speared into the window, passed inches from my head and out of the back seat window on the far side as the ghost moaned in rage outside the door.

  “Good job!” I said, knowing that Lara’s spell had simply changed its trajectory in much the same way she’d done this morning when she threw her keys into my pocket.

  “I can’t keep doing this!” Lara said with a terror-stricken voice.

  The mist following the car loosened up a bit.

  I gritted my teeth and shouted, “Just drive.”

  We were only halfway across the bridge, and I saw my only chance. Pressing my hand against the window, there was only one thing I could think of to do. I threw my willpower into the air outside – specifically, the hydrogen and oxygen. Grabbing the seatbelt buckle, I focused that, putting an energy conversion spell that focused on temperature. Then, with my eyes locked onto the ghost I said the words I choose to activate the spell.

  “Freeze, jackass.”

  Within seconds, the seatbelt hook became fiery hot. Feeling a sudden blur as I used most of my mental reserves, I couldn’t help but grin upon seeing my success. Outside, the water particles in the air around the ghost became tiny chunks of sleet. His anger-contorted face fell, literally, as his body became solid and gained weight. Starting in the center, the mist surrounding the ghost condensed into frost, which then fell into the Mississippi River below.

  I sighed in relief.

  For the next mile after the river, I searched behind us, scanning the cityscape for signs of the ghost as we drove. A sentient being, like anything else, can only do things in which it knows how. It seems strange to think of losing a ghost by driving quickly, but as we sped over the bridge and left, the spontaneous fog disappeared.

  Satisfied to a point, I cooled the seatbelt.

  Maybe Gregory Scythe was gone for good. Maybe not, but so long as I closed my mind off to it, it couldn’t track me, and within a matter of minutes we were safe. Relatively.