“So don’t let her hug you.”
“Yes, obviously. You’re not a hugger anyway, right?”
“I’m socially awkward.”
“Excellent. See? You were made for this gig.”
I got the feeling she was making fun of me, but she was so deadpan that I couldn’t really say.
“She has a couple forms, and she has her wail. The wail cannot hurt you. The creature cannot hurt you from a distance. But she is a glider. A fast glider. Not as fast as a vampire, but faster than you. She’ll launch herself at you, wrap her hands around your head, and muscle you out of this life.”
A shiver skittered across my skin before punching cold through my middle. “What other forms does she take?”
“Young woman, stately middle-aged woman, and an old crone. She’ll be in a lovely dress, twisted sheets that have no place in this century, or some sort of robe. Oh, and occasionally she poses as a washerwoman trying to get stains out of bloody clothes.”
“Uh-huh.” Adrenaline pumped through me. “How do we kill it?”
“How do you kill it? I have no idea. Magic, is my guess. As for me, I will stab my sword through its middle. Or yank its head off and set it on magical fire. Or maybe crush it. I haven’t tried to use my other form of magic on one of these, so that might be fun. I’m anxious to try it out. But worst case, my sword. Ol’ trusty.”
She fell into silence, clearly thinking about the battle to come. I blinked at her.
“So.” She slapped my knee and I jumped. “Ready?”
“But…”
Reagan was up and walking again. “She apparently likes to hang out around the fountain back here. If she’s in the world of the living, she will be visible. But she can cross over, so be prepared for her to wink out. Oh, and keep moving around. I don’t think the crossing is a quick, easy affair, but just in case, you don’t want her disappearing from one spot and popping up right next to you. That’s a sure way to die.”
Adrenaline soaked my body and set my heart to beating at unnatural speeds. Sweat covered my forehead and upper lip, giving me a chill in the nighttime air. Tremors and tingles and all manner of fear-induced issues racked my body.
“Why did you let me come?” I asked with numb lips.
Reagan was a badass powerhouse who’d lived this life for a very long time. I was a goober who bumped around blindly, swimming in the deep end when I wasn’t prepared.
What had possessed me to think I could hang out on the same playing field? To think I could actually help her if we came face to face with danger?
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” she said, blasé. “I’ve dealt with ten times worse. Remind me to tell you about the aswang one day.”
We finally reached the rear corner of the house and got a view of the large, circular fountain, currently turned off. Little patches of trees and shrubs marked the corners of the larger concert area, surrounded by a series of smaller trees and bushes. Beyond those lay the wilder grounds. No other houses or establishments existed for miles.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Reagan said quietly, pulling out her sword.
I collected magic and half wished I had a sword of my own. If nothing else, it would be a great prop to let the creature know I meant business.
“Don’t think about which spell you’ll use,” she said quietly, walking to the center of the concrete area. The back door was behind us, the fountain directly in front of us.
My mental Rolodex stopped spinning.
“Do that balance thing,” she said. “You know, the witch thing.”
My legs trembled and my chest felt strange, heavy and anxious but also desperate to expand. It was like waiting in line to enter a horror house on Halloween, only the horror house had real haunts.
“Training exists to commit spells and combat into your muscle memory,” she said, even now training. How did she have the mental capacity?
Leaves rustling to the right stopped our forward movement.
Reagan didn’t brace herself like I expected she would. Like I had. Her body stayed loose and at ease, holding her sword a little drooped. She didn’t even clench her teeth in anticipation of an attack.
I pried my jaw open.
Silence lay over the scene like a heavy film, suspending us in time, keeping us put while the banshee circled her prey, licking her chops and clicking her claws.
My imagination was in overdrive again. Nothing had happened but a little rustling.
I took a shaky breath as Reagan started forward, each step soft and strategic. Her knees bent. Her eyes darting this way and that. Totally calm.
Next to her, my feet scraped the concrete. My legs moved in jerky fits and surges and my nails were picked to nubs.
The oppressive darkness pressed on us, crushing us to the ground. Pushing against us.
A soft sound, like a footfall, had Reagan stopping again.
“Are you doing that balance thing?” she asked softly, her hand drifting through the air toward me.
I collected my ingredients, stuffing them in the air around me. That part was extremely easy. I did it constantly, often without intending to. But the soft feeling of the world around me was interrupted by my heightened senses, screaming at me that something was here. Watching our progress from the shadows. Her eyes itched the skin between my shoulder blades, and I imagined her poking my temple with a long, pointed claw.
Was that my intuition or my imagination? In times like this, I could never tell.
“Are you doing the balance thing?” Reagan asked again, her tone like a spring day near a tranquil pond.
“It pisses me off that you are so damn calm.”
“Yikes. So that’s a no. Listen, getting worked up isn’t going to help anything. In fact, it’ll slow you down in the long run. It’ll lead you to bad decisions. You need to relax and take in the night. Open up that intuition that I know you have in spades and listen to it.”
My breath came too fast, and trying to slow it down only reminded me of how much I was shaking.
“I’ve never been a fan of the unknown,” I said.
“Yeah. This waiting bullshit is the pits. I hate it.” She looked to the left, then swept her gaze in front of us as we reached the edge of the fountain. With a firm hand, she pushed me to the right while she drifted left.
“No, no, no,” I whispered furiously, not moving any farther. “What are you doing?”
“It’s too quiet, don’t you think?” She kept going. “No animals skittering about, no angry bird calls, no insects.”
“Yes, I do think. I definitely do think. So we should stay together.”
“We are together. You’re right there. Now pay attention in case something darts out at you from that side.”
26
I spun in that direction, squinting through the darkness.
“Dang it,” Reagan muttered.
“What? What is it?”
“We don’t see anything yet. Give us a little more time.”
“What?” I chanced a look over at her. She was dropping her hand from her ear, having advised the others to hang back. “Won’t more people be merrier?”
“Not those clowns. The captain is all right, but he’s seen his day. He usually hangs back, and then Garret gets all up in my business.”
I hurried along the periphery of the fountain, slowing down at the halfway point to be level with her. The sooner we met up, the better. In the meantime, I eyed the murky water separating us. If I had to, I’d sprint across that without a problem. I wouldn’t be fazed in the least.
A twig cracked, startling me, and movement caught my eye. A woman with an hourglass figure and long, flowing hair moved through a gap in the foliage beyond the cement enclosure. Colorful streams of magic flowed around her, wispy but bright. Gleeful intent that should have been paired with cackling beckoned us near, drawing us in.
“She wants us to follow her,” I said, cold flowing over my skin. My impulse was to run back the way I’d come, refusing the magic’s invitation.
“What? Where?” Reagan hopped up on the lip of the fountain.
“There.” I pointed. “Just through there. I saw her meander by.”
“Meander, huh.” Reagan gracefully jogged along the lip, not at all concerned about losing her balance on the half-foot-wide surface and falling into the dirty pond. “She thinks she has nothing to fear, does she?”
I picked up the pace and met Reagan as she hopped off the fountain at the far end. “How do you know?”
She shook her head. “Where did you see her, exactly? And in what form?”
“Lady form. I couldn’t tell if she was young, but she wasn’t old. Right through there.” I pointed. “But she was moving that way.”
“Time to rock.” And Reagan was off at a fast jog, heading in the opposite direction of the banshee.
“This is where we need a plan,” I said, not knowing what else to do other than run after her. I certainly wasn’t going in the direction the thing was going. I might get tucked into the chariot of death before Reagan could save me.
“Never do what they want you to do. We don’t follow the rules.” Reagan did a circle in the air with her finger. “Circle around.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” I said desperately, crashing through the bushes into a small opening with a bench off to one side and a small path running through it. Leafy trees and bushes blocked off my visibility beyond the opening, making me a prime target for a banshee ambush.