Anna Dressed in Blood

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Carmel won’t stop chattering at me as we stomp quickly down the gravel of Anna’s unkempt driveway. She’s asking a million questions that I’m not paying attention to. All I can think is that Anna is a murderer. Yet Anna is not evil. Anna kills, but Anna doesn’t want to kill. She’s not like any other ghost I’ve faced. Sure, I’ve heard of sentient ghosts, those who seem to know that they’re dead. According to Gideon they’re strong, but rarely hostile. I don’t know what to do. Carmel grabs me by the elbow and I spin around.

“What?” I snap.

“Do you want to tell me exactly what you were doing in there?”

“Not really.” I must’ve slept longer than I thought I did — either that or I was talking to Anna longer than I thought I was, because buttery shafts of light are breaking through the low clouds in the east. The sun is gentle but feels harsh to my eyes. Something occurs to me and I blink at Carmel, realizing for the first time that she’s really here.

“You followed me,” I say. “What’re you doing here?”

She shifts her weight around awkwardly. “I couldn’t sleep. And I wanted to see if it was true, so I went over to your house and saw you leaving.”

“You wanted to see if what was true?”

She looks at me from under her lashes, like she wants me to figure it out for myself so she doesn’t have to say it out loud, but I hate that game. After a few long seconds of my annoyed silence, she breaks.

“I talked to Thomas. He says you…” She shakes her head like she feels stupid for believing it. I’m mostly feeling stupid for trusting Thomas. “He says you kill ghosts for a living. Like you’re a ghostbuster or something.”

“I’m not a ghostbuster.”

“Then what were you doing in there?”

“I was talking to Anna.”

“Talking to her? She killed Mike! She could’ve killed you!”

“No she couldn’t.” I glance up at the house. I feel strange, talking about her so close to her home. It doesn’t feel right.

“What were you talking to her about?” Carmel asks.

“Are you always so nosy?”

“What, like it was personal?” she snorts.

“Maybe it was,” I reply. I want to get out of here. I want to drop my mom’s car off and have Carmel take me to wake up Thomas. I think I’ll rip the mattress right out from under him. It’ll be fun to watch him bounce groggily on his box springs. “Listen, let’s just get away from here, okay? Follow me back to my place and we can take your car to Thomas’s. I’ll explain everything, I promise,” I add when she looks skeptical.

“Okay,” she says.

“And Carmel.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t ever call me a ghostbuster again, all right?” She smiles, and I smile back. “Just so we’re clear.”

She brushes past me to get into her car, but I grab her by the arm.

“You haven’t mentioned Thomas’s little blurt to anyone else, have you?”

She shakes her head.

“Not even Natalie or Katie?”

“I told Nat that I was meeting you so she’d cover for me if my parents called her. I told them I was staying at her place.”

“What did you tell her we were meeting for?” I ask. She gives me this resentful look. I suppose that Carmel Jones only meets boys secretly at night for romantic reasons. I run my hand roughly through my hair.

“So, what, I’m supposed to make something up at school? Like we made out?” I think I’m blinking too much. And my shoulders are stooped so I feel about half a foot shorter than she is. She stares at me, bemused.

“You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“Haven’t had a whole lot of practice, Carmel.”

She laughs. Damn, she really is pretty. No wonder Thomas spilled all my secrets. One bat of her eyelashes probably knocked him over.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll make something up. I’ll tell everybody you’re a great kisser.”

“Don’t do me any favors. Listen, just follow me to my place, okay?”

She nods and ducks into her car. When I get into mine, I want to press my head into the steering wheel until the horn goes off. That way the horn will cover my screams. Why is this job so hard? Is it Anna? Or is it something else? Why can’t I keep anyone out of my business? It’s never been this difficult before. They accepted any cheesy cover story I made up, because deep down they didn’t want to know the truth. Like Chase and Will. They swallowed Thomas’s fairy story pretty easily.

But it’s too late now. Thomas and Carmel are in on the game. And the game is a whole lot more dangerous this time around.

“Does Thomas live with his parents?”

“I don’t think so,” Carmel says. “His parents died in a car accident. A drunk driver crossed the line. Or at least that’s what people at school say.” She shrugs. “I think he just lives with his grandpa. That weird old guy.”

“Good.” I pound on the door. I don’t care if I wake up Morfran. The salty old buzzard can use the excitement. But after about thirteen very loud and rattling knocks, the door whips open and there’s Thomas, standing before us in a very unattractive green bathrobe.

“Cas?” he whispers with a frog in his throat. I can’t help but smile. It’s hard to be annoyed with him when he looks like an oversize four-year-old, his hair stuck up on one side and his glasses only on halfway. When he realizes that Carmel’s standing behind me, he quickly checks his face for drool and tries to smooth his hair down. Unsuccessfully. “Uh, what are you doing here?”

“Carmel followed me out to Anna’s place,” I say with a smirk. “Want to tell me why?” He’s starting to blush. I don’t know if it’s because he feels guilty or because Carmel is seeing him in his pajamas. Either way, he steps aside to let us in and leads us through the dimly lit house to the kitchen.

The whole place smells like Morfran’s herbal pipe. Then I see him, a hulking, stooped-over figure pouring coffee. He hands me a mug before I can even ask. Grumbling at us, he leaves the kitchen.

Thomas, meanwhile, has stopped shuffling around and is staring at Carmel.

“She tried to kill you,” he blurts, wide-eyed. “You can’t stop thinking about the way her fingers were hooked at your stomach.”

Carmel blinks. “How did you know that?”

“You shouldn’t do that,” I warn Thomas. “It makes people uncomfortable. Invasion of privacy, you know.”

“I know,” he says. “I can’t do it very often,” he adds to Carmel. “Usually only when people are having strong or violent thoughts, or keep thinking of the same thing over and over.” He smiles. “In your case, all three.”

“You can read minds?” she asks incredulously.

“Sit down, Carmel,” I say.

“I don’t feel like it,” she says. “I’m learning so many interesting things about Thunder Bay these days.” Her arms cross over her chest. “You can read minds, there’s something up there in that house killing my ex-boyfriends, and you—”

“Kill ghosts,” I finish for her. “With this.” I pull out my athame and set it on the table. “What else did Thomas tell you?”

“Just that your father did it too,” she said. “I guessed that it killed him.”

I give Thomas the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he says helplessly.

“It’s okay. You’ve got it bad. I know.” I smirk and he looks at me desperately. As if Carmel doesn’t know already. She’d have to be blind.

I sigh. “So now what? Can I possibly tell you to go home and forget about this? Is there any way that I can avoid us forming some peppy group of—” Before my mouth can finish, I lean forward and groan into my hands. Carmel gets it first, and laughs.

“A peppy group of ghostbusters?” she asks.

“I get to be Peter Venkman,” says Thomas.

“Nobody gets to be anybody,” I snap. “We are not ghostbusters. I’ve got the knife, and I kill the ghosts, and I can’t be tripping over you the whole time. Besides, it’s obvious that I would be Peter Venkman.” I look sharply at Thomas. “You would be Egon.”

“Wait a minute,” says Carmel. “You don’t get to call the shots. Mike was my friend, sort of.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to help. This isn’t about revenge.”

“Then what is it about?”

“It’s about … stopping her.”

“Well, you haven’t exactly done a great job of that. And from what I saw, it didn’t even look like you were trying.” Carmel has her eyebrow raised at me. The look is giving me some kind of hot feeling in my cheeks. Holy shit, I’m blushing.

“This is stupid,” I blurt. “She’s tough, okay? But I have a plan.”

“Yeah,” Thomas says, rising to my defense. “Cas has it all worked out. I’ve already got the rocks from the lake. They’re charging under the moon until it wanes. The chicken feet are on backorder.”

Talking about the spell makes me uneasy for some reason, like there’s something that I’m not putting together. Something that I’ve overlooked.

Someone comes through the door without knocking. I barely notice, because that makes me feel like I’ve overlooked something too. After a few seconds of prodding my brain, I glance up and see Will Rosenberg.

He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. His breathing is heavy and his chin is lolling toward his chest. I wonder if he’s been drinking. There are dirt and oil stains on his jeans. The poor kid’s taking it hard. He’s staring at my knife on the table, so I reach up and take it, then slide it into my back pocket.

“I knew there was something weird about you,” he says. The scent of his breath is sixty percent beer. “This is all because of you, somehow, isn’t it? Ever since you came here, something’s been wrong. Mike knew it. That’s why he didn’t want you hanging around Carmel.”

“Mike didn’t know anything,” I say calmly. “What happened to him was an accident.”

“Murder is no accident,” Will mutters. “Stop lying to me. Whatever you’re doing, I want in.”

I groan. Nothing is going right. Morfran comes back into the kitchen and ignores all of us, instead staring into his coffee like it’s super interesting.

“Circle’s getting bigger,” is all he says, and the problem that I couldn’t think of snaps into place.

“Shit,” I say. My head falls back so I’m looking at the ceiling.

“What?” Thomas asks. “What’s wrong?”

“The spell,” I reply. “The circle. We’ve got to be in the house to cast it.”

“Yeah, so?” Thomas says. Carmel gets it right away; her face is downcast.

“So Carmel went into the house this morning and Anna almost ate her. The only person who can be in the house safely is me, and I’m not witchy enough to cast the circle.”

“Couldn’t you hold her off long enough for us to cast it? Once it was up, we’d be protected.”

“No,” Carmel says. “There’s no way. You should have seen him this morning; she swatted him like a fly.”

“Thanks,” I snort.

“It’s true. Thomas would never make it. And besides, doesn’t he have to concentrate or something?”

Will jumps forward and grabs Carmel by the arm. “What are you talking about? You went in that house? Are you crazy? Mike would kill me if anything happened to you!”

And then he remembers that Mike’s dead.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to cast that circle and do that spell,” I think out loud. “She’ll never tell me what happened on her own.”

Morfran finally speaks. “Everything happens for a reason, Theseus Cassio. You’ve got less than a week to figure it out.”

Less than a week. Less than a week. There’s no way I can become a competent witch in less than a week, and I’m certainly not going to get any stronger or more able to control Anna. I need backup. I need to call Gideon.

We’re all standing around in the driveway, having disbanded in the kitchen. It’s a Sunday, a lazy, quiet Sunday, too early even for churchgoers. Carmel is walking with Will to their cars. She said she was going to follow him home, hang out with him awhile. She was, after all, the closest to him, and she couldn’t imagine that Chase was being much comfort. I imagine she’s right. Before she went, she took Thomas off to the side and whispered with him for a few moments. As we watch Carmel and Will walk away, I ask him what that was all about.

He shrugs. “She just wanted to tell me she was glad that I told her. And she hopes that you’re not mad at me for spilling, because she’ll keep the secret. She just wants to help.” And then he goes on and on, trying to draw attention to the way that she touched his arm. I wish that I hadn’t asked, because now he won’t shut up about it.

“Listen,” I say. “I’m glad Carmel’s noticing you. If you play your cards right, you might have a shot. Just don’t invade her mind too much. She was pretty creeped out by that.”

“Me and Carmel Jones,” he scoffs, even as he stares hopefully after her car. “In a million years maybe. More likely she’ll end up comforting Will. He’s smart, and one of the crowd, like her. He’s not a bad guy.” Thomas straightens his glasses. Thomas isn’t a bad guy either, and someday maybe he’ll figure that out. For now I tell him to go put some clothes on.

As he turns and walks back up the drive, I notice something. There’s a circular path near the house that connects to the end of the driveway. At the fork of it is a small white tree, a birch sapling. And hanging from the lowest branch is a slim black cross.

“Hey,” I call out, and point to it. “What’s that?”

It isn’t him who answers. Morfran swaggers out onto the porch in his slippers and blue pajama pants, a plaid robe tied tight around his extensive belly. The getup looks ridiculous in contrast to that braided, mossy rock ’n’ roll beard, but I’m not thinking about that now.

“Papa Legba’s cross,” he says simply.

“You practice voodoo,” I say, and he hmphs in what I think is an affirmative. “So do I.”

He snorts into his coffee cup. “No, you don’t. And you shouldn’t, neither.”

So it was a bluff. I don’t practice. I learn. And here is a golden opportunity. “Why shouldn’t I?” I ask.

“Son, voodoo is about power. It’s about the power inside you and the power you channel. The power you steal and the power you take from your goddamn chicken dinner. And you’ve got about ten thousand volts strapped to your side in that bit of leather there.”

I instinctively touch the athame in my back pocket.

“If you were voodoo and channeling that, well, looking at you would be like watching a moth fly into a bug zapper. You would be lit up, 24/7.” He squints at me. “Maybe someday I could teach you.”

“I’d like that,” I say as Thomas bursts back onto the porch in fresh but still mismatched clothes. He scampers down the porch steps.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“Back to Anna’s,” I say. He turns sort of green. “I need to figure this ritual out or a week from now I’ll be staring at your severed head and Carmel’s internal organs.” Thomas turns even greener, and I clap him on the back.

I glance back at Morfran. He’s eyeballing us over his coffee mug. So voodooists channel power. He’s an interesting guy. And he’s given me way too much to think about to sleep.

On the drive over, the high from the events of last night starts to wear off. My eyes feel like sandpaper, and my head is lolling, even after downing that cup of paint thinner that Morfran called coffee. Thomas is quiet all the way to Anna’s. He’s probably still thinking about the feel of Carmel’s hand on his arm. If life were fair, Carmel would turn around and look into his eyes, see that he’s her willing slave, and be grateful. She’d lift him up and he wouldn’t be a slave anymore, he’d just be Thomas, and they’d be glad to have each other. But life isn’t fair. She’ll probably end up with Will, or some other jock, and Thomas will suffer quietly.

“I don’t want you anywhere near the house,” I say to snap him out of it and make sure he doesn’t miss the turn. “You can hang in the car, or follow me up the driveway. But she’s probably unstable after this morning, so you should stay off the porch.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he snorts.

When we pull into the driveway, he elects to stay in the car. I make my way up alone. When I open the front door, I look down to make sure I’m stepping into the foyer and not about to fall face-first into a boatload of dead bodies.

“Anna?” I call. “Anna? Are you all right?”

“That’s a silly question.”

She’s just come out of a room at the top of the stairs. She’s leaning against the rail, not the dark goddess, but the girl.

“I’m dead. I can’t be all right any more than I can be not all right.”

Her eyes are downcast. She’s lonely, and guilty, and trapped. She’s feeling sorry for herself, and I can’t say that I blame her.

“I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen,” I say honestly, and take a step toward the staircase. “I wouldn’t have put you in that situation. She followed me.”

“Is she all right?” Anna asks in a curiously high voice.

“She’s fine.”

“Good. I thought I might have bruised her. And she has such a pretty face.”

Anna isn’t looking at me. She’s fiddling with the wood of the railing. She’s trying to get me to say something, but I don’t know what it is.

“I need you to tell me what happened to you. I need you to tell me how you died.”

“Why do you want to make me remember that?” she asks softly.

“Because I need to understand you. I need to know why you’re so strong.” I start thinking out loud. “From what I know of it, your murder wasn’t that strange or horrific. It wasn’t even that brutal. So I can’t figure out why you are the way you are. There has to be something…” When I stop, Anna is staring at me with wide, disgusted eyes. “What?”

“I’m just starting to regret that I didn’t kill you,” she says. It takes my sleep-deprived brain a minute to understand, but then I feel like a total ass. I’ve been around too much death. I’ve seen so much sick, twisted shit that it rolls off my tongue like nursery rhymes.

“How much do you know,” she asks, “about what happened to me?”

Her voice is softer, almost subdued. Talking about murder, spitting out facts is something I grew up around. Only now I don’t know how to do it. With Anna standing right in front of me, it’s more than just words or pictures in a book. When I finally spit it out, I do it quickly and all at once, like pulling off a Band-Aid.

“I know that you were murdered in 1958, when you were sixteen. Someone cut your throat. You were on your way to a school dance.”

A small smile plays on her lips but doesn’t take hold. “I really wanted to go,” she says quietly. “It was going to be my last one. My first and last.” She looks down at herself and holds out the hem of her skirt. “This was my dress.”

It doesn’t look like much to me, just a white shift with some lace and ribbons, but what do I know? I’m not a chick, for one, and for two, I don’t know much about 1958. Back then it might have been the bee’s knees, as my mom would say.

“It isn’t much,” she says, reading my mind. “One of the boarders we had around that time was a seamstress. Maria. From Spain. I thought she was very exotic. She’d had to leave a daughter, only a little younger than me, when she came here, so she liked to talk to me. She took my measurements and helped me to sew it. I wanted something more elegant but I was never that good at sewing. Clumsy fingers,” she says, and holds them up like I’ll be able to see what a mess they can make.

“You look beautiful,” I say, because it’s the first thing that pops into my stupid, empty head. I consider using my athame to cut my tongue out. It’s probably not what she wanted to hear, and it came out all wrong. My voice didn’t work. I’m lucky it didn’t do the Peter Brady and crack. “Why was it going to be your last dance?” I ask quickly.

“I was going to run away,” she says. Defiance shines in her eyes just like it must have then, and there’s a fire behind her voice that makes me sad. Then it goes out, and she seems confused. “I don’t know if I would have done it. I wanted to.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to start my life,” she explains. “I knew I would never do anything if I stayed here. I would’ve had to run the boarding house. And I was tired of fighting.”

“Fighting?” I take another step up closer. There’s a tail of dark hair falling down her shoulders, which slump as she hugs herself. She’s so pale and small, I can hardly imagine her fighting anyone. Not with her fists anyway.

“It wasn’t fighting,” she says. “And it was. With her. And with him. It was hiding, making them think I was something weaker, because that’s what they wanted. That’s what she told me my father would have wanted. A quiet, obedient girl. Not a harlot. Not a whore.”

I take a deep breath. I ask who called her that, who would say that, but she’s not listening anymore.

“He was a liar. A layabout. He played love to my mother but it wasn’t real. He said he would marry her and then he would have all the rest.”

I don’t know who she’s talking about, but I can guess what “all the rest” was.

“It was you,” I say softly. “It was you he was really after.”

“He would … corner me, in the kitchen, or outside by the well. It was paralyzing. I hated him.”

“Why didn’t you tell your mother?”

“I couldn’t…” She stops and starts again. “But I couldn’t let him. I was going to get away. I would have.” Her face is blank. Not even the eyes are alive. She’s just moving lips and voice. The rest of her has gone back inside.

I reach up and touch her cheek, cold as ice. “Was it him? Was he the one who killed you? Did he follow you that night and—”

Anna shakes her head very fast and pulls away. “That’s enough,” she says in a voice that’s trying to be hard.

“Anna, I have to know.”

“Why do you have to know? What business is it of yours?” She puts her hand to her forehead. “I can hardly remember myself. Everything’s muddy and bleeding.” She shakes her head, frustrated. “There’s nothing I can tell you! I was killed and it was black and then I was here. I was this, and I killed, and killed, and couldn’t stop.” Her breath hitches. “They did something to me but I don’t know what. I don’t know how.”

“They,” I say curiously, but this isn’t going any further. I can literally see her shutting down, and in another couple of minutes, I might be standing here trying to hold on to a girl with black veins and a dripping dress.

“There’s a spell,” I say. “A spell that can help me understand.”

She calms a bit and looks at me like I’m nuts. “Magic spells?” A disbelieving smile escapes. “Will I grow fairy wings and jump through fire?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Magic isn’t real. It’s make-believe and superstition, old curses on the tongues of my Finnish grandmothers.”

I can’t believe that she’s questioning the existence of magic when she’s standing before me dead and talking. But I don’t get the chance to convince her, because something starts to happen, something twisting in her brain, and she twitches. When she blinks, her eyes are far away.

“Anna?”

Her arm shoots out to keep me back. “It’s nothing.”

I peer closer. “That wasn’t nothing. You remembered something, didn’t you? What is it? Tell me!”

“No, I — it wasn’t anything. I don’t know.” She touches her temple. “I don’t know what that was.”

This isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to be damned near impossible if I don’t get her cooperation. A heavy, hopeless feeling is creeping into my exhausted limbs. It feels like my muscles are starting to atrophy, and I don’t have that much muscle to begin with.

“Please, Anna,” I say. “I need your help. I need you to let us do the spell. I need you to let other people in here with me.”

“No,” she says. “No spells! And no people! You know what would happen. I can’t control it.”

“You can control it for me. You can do it for them too.”

“I don’t know why I don’t have to kill you. And by the way, isn’t that enough? Why are you asking for more favors?”

“Anna, please. I need at least Thomas, and probably Carmel, the girl you met this morning.”

She looks down at her toes. She’s sad, I know she’s sad, but Morfran’s stupid “less than a week” speech is ringing in my ears, and I want this over with. I can’t let Anna stay for another month, possibly collecting more people for her basement. It doesn’t matter that I like talking to her. It doesn’t matter that I like her. It doesn’t matter that what happened to her wasn’t fair.

“I wish you would leave,” she says softly, and when she looks up I see that she’s almost crying, and she’s looking over my shoulder at the door or maybe out the window.

“You know I can’t,” I say, mirroring her words from moments ago.

“You make me want things that I can’t have.”

Before I can figure out what she means, she sinks through the steps, down, deep into the basement where she knows I won’t follow.

Gideon calls just after Thomas drops me off at my house.

“Good morning, Theseus. Sorry to wake you so early on a Sunday.”

“I’ve been up for hours, Gideon. Already hard at work.” Across the Atlantic, he is smirking at me. As I walk into the house, I nod good morning to my mother, who is chasing Tybalt down the stairs and hissing that rats aren’t good for him.

“What a shame,” Gideon chuckles. “I’ve been waiting around to call you for hours, trying to let you get some rest. What a pain that was. It’s nearly four in the afternoon here, you know. But I think I’ve got the essence of that spell for you.”

“I don’t know if it’ll matter. I was going to call you later. There’s a problem.”

“What sort?”

“The sort that no one can get into the house but me, and I’m no witch.” I tell him a little more about what’s happened, for some reason leaving out the fact that I’ve been having long talks with Anna at night. On the other end I hear him cluck his tongue. I’m sure he’s rubbing his chin and cleaning his glasses too.

“You’ve been completely unable to subdue her?” he asks finally.

“Completely. She’s Bruce Lee, the Hulk, and Neo from The Matrix all rolled into one.”

“Yes. Thank you for the entirely incomprehensible pop-culture references.”

I smile. He knows perfectly well who Bruce Lee is, at least.

“But the fact remains that you must do the spell. Something about the way this girl died is imbuing her with terrible power. It’s just a matter of finding secrets. I remember a ghost that gave your father some trouble in 1985. For some reason it was able to kill without ever being corporeal. It was only after three séances and a trip to a Satanic church in Italy that we discovered that the only thing allowing it to remain on the earthly plane was a spell placed on a rather ordinary stone chalice. Your father broke it and just like that, no more ghost. It will be the same for you.”

My father told me that story once, and I remember it being much more complicated than that. But I let it go. He’s right anyway. Every ghost has its own methods, its own bag of tricks. They have different drives and different wants. And when I kill them, they each go their own way.

“What will this spell do exactly?” I ask.

“The consecrated stones form a protective circle. After it is cast, she’ll have no power over those within it. The witch performing the ritual can take whatever energies possess the house and reflect them into a scrying bowl. The scrying bowl will show you whatever you seek. Of course it’s not as simple as all that; there’s some chicken feet and an herbal blend which your mother can help with, then some chanting. I’ll get the text to you via e-mail.”

He makes it sound so easy. Does he think I’m exaggerating? Doesn’t he get how hard it is for me to admit that Anna can take me anytime she wants? Toss me like a rag doll, give me noogies and atomic wedgies, and then point and laugh?

“It isn’t going to work. I can’t cast the circle. I’ve never had the knack for witchcraft. Mom must’ve told you. I messed up her Beltane cookies every year until I was seven.”

I know what he’s going to tell me. He’s going to sigh and advise that I get myself back to the library, start talking to people who might know what happened. Try to figure out a murder that’s been cold for over fifty years. And that’s what I’ll have to do. Because I’m not putting Thomas or Carmel in danger.

“Hm.”

“Hm, what?”

“Well, I’m just thinking over all the rituals I’ve done in my years of parapsychology and mysticism—”

I can actually hear his brain turning. He’s got something, and I start to get hopeful. I knew he was worth more than just bangers and mash.

“You say you have some adepts at your disposal?”

“Some what?”

“Some witches.”

“I’ve got one witch, actually. My friend Thomas.”

On Gideon’s end, there is an intake of breath followed by a pleased pause. I know what the old scone is thinking. He’s never heard me use the phrase “my friend” before. He’d better not be getting emotional.

“He’s not that advanced.”

“If you trust him, that’s all that matters. But you’ll need more than him. Yourself and two others. Each must represent a corner of the circle. You’ll cast the circle outside, you see, and move into the house ready to work.” He pauses to think some more. He’s very pleased with himself. “Trap your ghost in the center and you’ll be completely safe. Tapping her energy will also make the spell more potent and revealing. It might just weaken her enough for you to finish the job.”

I swallow hard and feel the weight of the knife in my back pocket. “Absolutely,” I say. I listen for another ten minutes as he goes over the particulars, thinking the whole time about Anna and what she’s going to show me. At the end of it I think I remember most of what I’m supposed to do, but still ask that he e-mail me a set of instructions.

“Now who will you get to complete the circle? Those with a connection to the ghost are best.”

“I’ll get this guy, Will, and my friend Carmel,” I say. “And don’t say anything. I know I’m having some trouble keeping people out of my business.”

Gideon sighs. “Ah, Theseus. This was never meant to keep you alone. Your father had many friends, and he had your mother, and you. As time goes by, your circle will get larger. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

The circle’s getting bigger. Why does everyone keep saying that? Big circles are more people to trip over. I have got to get out of Thunder Bay. Away from this mess and back to my routine of move, hunt, kill.

Move, hunt, kill. Like lather, rinse, and repeat. My life, stretched out in a simple routine. It feels empty and heavy at the same time. I think of what Anna said, about wanting what she can’t have. Maybe I understand what she meant.

Gideon is still talking.

“Let me know if there’s anything you need,” he says. “Even though I’m just dusty books and old stories from an ocean away. The real work is for you to do.”

“Yes. Me and my friends.”

“Yes. Smashing. You’ll be just like those four chaps in the movie. You know the one, with the oversized marshmallow.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.