And that was when I remembered I’d anointed myself with Fiery Command Oil. This potion was designed to help influence others—if your own will was strong enough. And right now, I needed to influence Barbra—to drop the gun. But, I also had to be careful, because whatever power I wielded over Barbra, was power that was sucked out of myself. You could actually kill yourself by draining your own life essence using Fiery Command Oil, if you weren’t careful.

  And seeing as how I was already incapacitated, I would need to be very careful.

  I held up my hands before me and imagined the oil reaching out from my pulse points and traveling through the air, encircling her. “Drop the weapon, Barbra,” I said, enunciating each word. My body was still drained, owing to my concussion, and the added concentration was definitely difficult. But, it appeared to be working because she hesitated and in her eyes, I could see her self-doubt. She was frightened—that much was obvious by the tempo of the rise and fall of her chest.

  I could feel her energy sparking against me, trying to break the cage of my magic, so I focused even more deeply, clenching my eyes shut tight.

  “Release the gun,” I said again.

  Barbra dropped the firearm, and it rattled as it hit the ground. I could see her fighting to break my control, but I kept my arms raised towards her, keeping her spellbound. Marty looked at me with shock in his eyes, apparently realizing it was my mojo that was influencing her.

  “That’s good,” I said as I took a few hobbling steps forward and then reached out with my leg, kicking the gun away from her. Then I faced Marty. “Record this with your phone.” So we could take it to the police later—I could just imagine this turning into a breaking-and-entering story gone awry.

  I faced Barbra again and called on the potion to do its work, pulling the oils from my skin and ordering them to penetrate the air as they encircled Barbra. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep her under my spell. “Why are you here?”

  “Waiting for you,” she said simply, her eyes narrowed and angry as she brought a hand to cover her mouth, as if to stop herself from speaking.

  “We’re here to help,” Marty started.

  “We only want to make contact with Danny,” Henner added. “To find out why he’s haunting you, your sister and your girls.”

  Barbra shook her head, dropping her hand. I could feel the pull of my magic continuing to surround her. Just as surely, the energy was leaving my body and I was starting to tire.

  “You think you’re helping but you’re not!”

  “Why are you here, Barbra,” I began again.

  She never took her eyes off Marty, who was now recording her. Her eyes screamed murder, but she was still under the thrall of my potion. “I overheard your conversation with my sister and knew you planned to have the medium channel Danny tonight. And that… can’t happen.”

  Her thin smile crept up an inch, and a light touched her eyes. The feverish, frightening sort of light that crept onto a zealot’s face when they talked about a divine plan.

  “Why can’t that happen?” I asked.

  “Because,” she answered. “No one can know the truth.”

  “The truth about what?” Henner asked.

  “You haven’t figured it out yet?” She glared at me and I could feel her pushing against my magic, trying to defeat it. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep the power going, especially when I could feel my own energy dwindling.

  “I want you to tell us,” I answered, and it was then that the light caught the red of a large jewel she was wearing around her neck, attached to a silver chain. The gem was deep red, and I’d seen it before… in my nightmare visions. “Where did you get that necklace?” I demanded.

  “I…” Barbra started, but then swallowed the words as she fought against my control. I had to close my eyes and concentrate even more deeply, sending my magic to ensnare her will. “I… took it from my sister.”

  “It was you,” I said, breathing in a gasp. “You were the creature from my dream. You were the one who killed Danny… it was never Layla.”

  “I’m not a creature,” she hissed, apparently not wanting to defend herself from any of my other accusations, probably because they were true. “I’m a Wendigo.”

  “The same thing I saw in my vision?” I demanded as my mouth went dry.

  “Yes,” she hissed.

  “And… you were the woman I first saw in the graveyard? You turned into the Wendigo.”

  “Yes.” She laughed, and it was an acidic sound. “And I was waiting in the crawlspace for you.”

  My hand flew up to my mouth as I realized the furry thing I’d seen in the crawl space had been the monster. And then I remembered the tug on my ankle. The ghostly tug. Danny hadn’t tried to kill me. He’d been trying to save me.

  “Barbra, things don’t have to go this way,” Henner said and his tone was one of… familiarity?

  “You were after something in the ceiling… whatever was in that white bag,” I said. “And you were the one who was responsible for all the holes in the backyard and throughout the house? You were searching for something.”

  She nodded.

  “What was in the bag, Barbra,” Marty asked.

  “Gold,” she answered.

  “Gold that belonged to Danny?” Henner continued. Marty looked at him with drawn brows, as though he was just now realizing Henner knew more than he’d been letting on all this time.

  “Guess you could say I found the Leprechaun’s treasure,” Barbra answered with a snicker.

  “The Leprechaun’s treasure?” I repeated, shaking my head because I was lost.

  “Do you want to tell them, Tayir? Or should I?” Barbra demanded of Henner.

  I looked at Henner, who just shook his head. Then I faced Barbra again and called on the Fiery Command Oil, hoping I had enough mojo left—just for a little while longer. “You tell us, Barbra,” I said.

  “Danny was a Leprechaun,” she answered. “A conniving and cheap son of a bitch.”

  Leprechaun? Gold? To think, I didn’t imagine this night could get any stranger. Maybe I was having a very elaborate nightmare. Or maybe I was in a coma. Sad that it was actually a comforting thought at the moment.

  Barbra pursed her lips and examined each of us in turn.

  “Tayir will report me to Ophelia without batting an eye, the obnoxious little toad,” she spat and I felt her power building. The claim I had on her through the Fiery Command Oil was waning.

  “Tayir?” I repeated, wondering who the hell she was talking about. And then I remembered that was Henner’s last name. So, Henner was going to report her to Ophelia?

  “I don’t have to tell the council anything, Barbra, if you come with us peaceably,” Henner answered.

  “Go with you?” she cackled and shook her head. “No. I’ll claim you burst in and startled me. Of course, in the wake of Danny’s death, I was distraught and not entirely in possession of my faculties. I think I can get away with justifiable homicide, don’t you?”

  “You forget I’ve captured everything,” Marty spat back at her, holding out his phone as proof.

  “You were subduing Danny, weren’t you?” I demanded as I glared at her. “You wouldn’t allow him to come through to Bailey or me.”

  She just nodded with an especially evil-looking smile as she faced me.

  None of us had an opportunity to say or do anything more, though, because the door snapped inward with another sharp crack and missed Barbra by inches. She skittered back with a yelp and swung around toward the intruder.

  Bailey immediately walked inside.

  “Danny-boy,” Barbra sing-songed in response. It was at that moment that I realized Bailey had been successful in channeling Danny. Apparently, Barbra realized it too. And that was the exact moment when I lost my hold on Barbra. Seeing or feeling Danny again provoked a rage inside her that was spilling into the air. It was a rage that was too much for me to contain with a potion.

  “So the little spirit-tamer managed to summon you, after all,” Barbra said.

  Bailey-Danny grimaced. “You never had to do any of this.”

  Barbra let out another cackle, though the shrill noise sounded more like a scream in close quarters. “Didn’t have to do this? If you’d given me the damn gold in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to come after you!”

  Danny-Bailey nodded. “Turn yourself into the council quietly and I’m sure Layla will gladly take care of the girls.”

  “No one but me will take care of my girls!” Then her expression grew even angrier. “As if you even care about them! You nearly killed Hannah!”

  Uncertainty and guilt tangled in Bailey’s expression. “I never meant to hurt the girls, Barbra. I was aiming for you. Come quietly and this can be resolved…”

  Barbra’s arms began to spasm, jerking like they’d just been hit with a thousand volts each. A guttural howl wrenched itself from her throat, building into a resonant ululation that made my knees weak.

  “Go!” Henner yelled as he turned to face us, dropping the equipment none-too-gently on the ruined hardwood. His arms were shaking almost as badly as Barbra’s. “We need to go!”

  He seized Marty by the hood of his coat and began dragging him as Marty gripped me and Bailey took my hand. Henner led us through the kitchen and the back door. I felt absurdly like one of the plastic monkey pieces being dragged out of the barrel.

  I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder as we hit the back door. Barbra’s spine had stretched, her torso lengthening, clothing falling in tatters to the floor as fur rippled over her skin. Twin antlers thrust, like spears, from either side of her head.

  Our eyes locked, hers smoldering with hate.

  She opened her mouth and let out a primal scream.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Marty scooped me into his arms, wisely determining that I’d only slow them down if I had to run on my own. I could barely even walk. I felt like an especially uncoordinated drunk already, between the concussion, lack of sleep, and the exhaustion after using too much of my life energy with the Fiery Command Oil.

  It was all I could do not to faint dead away as Marty sprinted across the backyard, hung a sharp left, and began running around the side of the building, past the pergola, trying to reach the hearse. Henner and Bailey were right behind us.

  We’d just rounded the corner when the wendigo exploded out of the back door.

  My arms constricted in fright and I pulled myself as close to Marty as I could. He made a choked sound, breath heaving with exertion, and I had to make a conscious effort not to accidentally strangle him as the wendigo loosed another hair-raising shriek.

  Henner reached the hearse before we did and threw open the back door. He started for Marty, taking me from Marty’s arms, and then all but shoved me into the back with the casket. Bailey climbed in beside me. Then Marty started rounding the hearse, clambering inside the driver’s door as fast as physics would allow. The engine rumbled to life, thankfully not sputtering or dying on us at a crucial moment.

  “Go to Roy’s,” Henner shouted to Marty over the roar of the engine. Then he faced Bailey and me. “If the wendigo gets close, knock three times!”

  “Knock?” I began, but Henner slammed the hearse door shut as he turned around and ran back towards the Clemmons’ house.

  “Henner!” Marty yelled after him.

  “Go!” Henner called back, not bothering to face us as he started for the Mazda. “I’ll be right behind you!”

  Marty gunned the engine, sending us peeling down the driveway in reverse before fishtailing onto the road at top speed. I was thrown forward, half my torso splayed out on the casket’s smooth surface. Bailey reached forward and pulled me back again.

  Knock three times.

  Did Henner mean on the casket?

  There really wasn’t anything in the back of the hearse to knock... except the casket lid. But that couldn’t be right. The coffin was empty, so what good would knocking on it do? There was no way Lorcan would actually have Marty ferrying a corpse around. Right?

  On the other hand, I’d just watched a single mother of two transform into a shaggy monster from Native American myth. So maybe the corpse in a box theory wasn’t as Twilight Zone as I thought. But even if there was a corpse in the coffin, how in the hell was it going to help us?

  Marty blew through two stop signs on our way back to town, yelping in fright when he spied something in the rearview mirror. When I dared to peek through the back window, my shrill scream made Marty’s yelp sound tough.

  “It’s right behind us!” I yelled.

  “Henner said knock three times if we need help,” Bailey started, looking at me with concern in her eyes.

  “So knock three times!” I yelled back, figuring we definitely needed help.

  The wendigo was only about a mile behind us, scuttling along the road like a shaggy, overgrown tarantula. As I watched, it seemed to wrap itself in shadows and when it reappeared, it was much closer, landing only a few yards away. At its current momentum, it wouldn’t take any time to catch us.

  Bailey didn’t just knock. She pummeled the casket lid. And then I knocked on the hearse itself, just in case she was wrong about the casket.

  The absurdity of the situation suddenly dawned on me. We were going to be killed by a rampaging wendigo, and she was knocking on someone’s casket for help. How could I have been so irresponsible with Finn’s safety? What if this thing came after him when it was done with me?

  When it was done with me…

  I was about to leave my little boy alone and motherless…

  No! I thought back immediately. I won’t do it! I’ll fight using everything I’ve got and I’m a Traveller Gypsy which means I’ve got a lot!

  Marty took a turn in the road too quickly and the tires squeaked out their outrage as I went hurtling back onto the coffin.

  “Mind leaning off the lid, lovely? You’re making it exceptionally hard to get out,” a voice sounded from within.

  With an undignified sound, I took Bailey’s outstretched hand and scrambled into the bench seat along the wall. All the while, I looked at her in horror as she returned the expression. Then we both faced forward as the lid of the coffin creaked open and a figure rose, Lugosi-style, from the interior.

  Lorcan Rowe seemed a little rumpled, but no worse for wear, after spending who knows how long in the casket. He brushed the hair from his face with a frown as he peered around.

  “What are you doing in there?” I demanded and then shook my head, not really sure what Lorcan was going to be able to do to help the situation. I mean, he was just a man…

  Or was he?

  “What was I doing in there?” he started. “Well, I was sleeping!”

  “Nevermind that!” Bailey started as she motioned to the rear-view window.

  “Henner told us to knock on your coffin if we needed you!” I yelled at him.

  “Would either of you, lovely ladies, mind filling me in on the details, hmm?” he asked, seeming completely unconcerned about the particulars.

  “There’s a wendigo after us!” I blurted, not knowing how else to say it. Then I pointed out the back to the rapidly encroaching shape of the creature.

  Lorcan blinked once, but showed no other outward indication of surprise. “Ah. So there is.” Then he turned to face me. “I suppose you want me to do something about it?”

  I wasn’t sure what he could do, but I nodded mutely, watching with a rising sense of awe as he tugged himself free of the coffin. The dentist was apparently a Star Wars fan, because he’d been bundled up in a Death Star fleece.

  “All this time I thought Danny was the poltergeist,” Bailey said, shaking her head, her eyes filled with guilt.

  “We all did,” I answered.

  “Offending the dead should be the least of your concerns presently,” Lorcan quipped as he stood, as best he could, in the interior of the hearse and shuffled to the back, hunched over all the while.

  “What are you going to do?” Bailey demanded.

  “Why, I’m going to ask the bloody creature if it would like to join me for tea,” he answered with a frown. “What the hell do you think I’m going to do?”

  “Um, I’m not sure,” Bailey answered.

  Then Lorcan began fiddling with the rear door, before pulling it open. Immediately, a rush of freezing air entered the void, and I shivered in spite of myself. Lorcan stood in the gap, clad only in a pair of black silk boxers, cutting an impressive figure. His pale skin glowed like alabaster in the splashes of street light we passed and his light, wild hair seemed to take on a life of its own in the night wind.

  Then, casual as you please, he dove off the back of the hearse and onto the street, taking the brunt of the fall on one shoulder before rolling to his feet. There was a stripe of bloody red where the asphalt had turned his shoulder into hamburger.

  “I think I’m losing my mind,” Bailey whispered.

  “Well, then, that makes two of us.”

  Marty brought the hearse to a screeching halt and Bailey had to hold me back from going flying forward. It was then that I realized where we were—right in front of the Half-Moon Bar and Grill. Lorcan was maybe halfway down the street and just beyond him, I could make out the wendigo in the darkness.

  I looked up through the glass and found Marty looking back at us. His eyes were showing a lot of white. “Get inside, both of you!” he directed. “Find Roy. Ask him if he’s got a gun or an acetylene torch. Maybe Lorcan and I can slow her down. Go! Hurry!”

  My legs felt numb, and I was on autopilot as I accepted Bailey’s help, and together we started up the outside stairs leading to the closed and locked door. She pounded on it, as I prayed someone was there to hear us. There were a few cars parked in the lot…

  In my periphery, I saw the wendigo take a vicious swipe at Lorcan, who dodged it with a laugh. Far from looking hurt, he seemed positively giddy to be fighting a monster.

  “Oh come now, Babs! I know you’ve got more spirit than that!” he yelled out. “Try harder this time!”