Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) (7 page)

“I didn’t expect to see you in the target zone, Holly. We’re here tracking a dangerous spirit.” My dad’s face was as white as the snow cascading around us. “Reports said there were some rogue shamans in the area. Don’t tell me that’s you.”

“We’re not rogue shamans, Dad.” I lowered my hands, but the guns remained where they were. “Remember Jason here?”

Jason let out a nervous cough as the army—or whatever they were—shifted their attention his way.

“His mom got attacked by the spirit that’s inside his house,” I said. “We came here to banish it back to Lower World and make sure that no one else gets hurt. I don’t understand why you’re here now with some kind of SWAT team. I thought you were…”

Where have you been? Why did you leave me? Why didn’t you come back to help me when Mom got sick?

I didn’t voice any of my rampant thoughts. Instead, I just stared at the man who used to feel so familiar, but now only looked like a stranger. Someone from vague memories and dreams.

“Want to fly like Superman, Holly?”

I jumped up into his arms and squealed in delight. “Make me a superhero, Daddy!”

He spun me around and around until the world was just a blur far below.

Dad heaved out a heavy sigh and flicked his fingers at the five men behind him. “Lower your weapons. My daughter and her friends mean no harm. Get in formation around the house and ready to proceed toward the target.”

The men in dark armor lowered their weapons and strode toward the front of Jason’s house. They dropped to their knees and snapped glinting steel attachments onto the end of their guns. Items I couldn’t recognize in the darkness. Whatever they were, I didn’t understand how rifles were the appropriate weapon for banishing a spirit. Guns don’t work on the supernatural. Surely Dad would know something as basic as that.

When I turned back to my dad, he was standing just before me, his arms lowered to his sides, his face drawn. He looked both different and the same. More lines carved around his eyes, and the prickly hair on his face was thicker and paler, like a bristle brush that had been left out in the sun to fade. Tanned skin covered his cheeks like leather, matching the color of his hands.

“Dad. You have to tell me what’s going on. Where have you been? Who are these people?” My voice shook, expelling the emotion that was building up inside me like a dam ready to burst.

“That spirit in there isn’t what you think.” He glanced at Laura and Jason, who were standing uneasily off the the side, shivering against the snowy wind. “We’ve picked up some abnormalities in the veil between our world and the Borderland and traced it back to here. Dangerous abnormalities. The spirit must be destroyed, do you understand?”

“Destroyed?” Frowning, my gaze found the armored men gathering in a triangular formation around the rattling front door. Their eyes were trained on my father as if they waited for his command. “What do you mean? Aren’t you going to banish it back to Lower World?”

Dad took my chin in his hand. His skin was rough and warm, and he forced me to look squarely into his pinched eyes. I remembered that look. It was the expression he used to get when I really amped up his frustration level. It was the same look he’d had the day my mom told him to put a stop to his thieving ways. And it was the last look he gave our house when he took off from Seaport never to return. Until now.

“This is information you absolutely cannot share,” he said, voice low. “Do you understand me, Holly Bennett?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“The spirit is impervious to our powers. Not even the strongest protection spell can keep it out. It attacks whenever it pleases, and it cannot be banished back to Lower World. The only solution is to kill it.”

Dad dropped his hand from my chin and took a step back, leaving a vacuum of cold air in his wake. My mind struggled to translate his words into something I understood. It went against everything I’d ever known about the Lower World and about my powers. Shamanism developed naturally in response to the presence of spirits in our world, as a way to protect ourselves from their attacks.

If we could no longer control them, then what did that make us now?

“What?” I breathed the word. “How? Why?”

“I don’t know.” He crossed his arms over his thick chest. “I believe something in Seaport has caused this, and I mean to put a stop to it before it spreads.”

“I thought spirits couldn’t be killed.” Laura moved in to join our circle. She’d clearly been listening to every word my dad said despite his lowered tone. Her wide-eyed expression mimicked the thoughts and feelings swirling through my mind. Dad’s cryptic answers only led to more questions and one dangerous thought that I was desperately trying to fight back.

Dread pooled in my stomach. Killing Anthony, for that one tiny moment, had released dozens of angry spirits onto the world. Could that explain these recent attacks? Anthony’s spell had transformed those spirits into rabid versions of themselves. Despite what Mom had said, I wasn’t so sure it hadn’t caused more changes in their powers than that.

“Spirits can be killed now. Permanently.” Dad’s face twisted into a scowl. “And that’s what my team is here to do.”

Dad moved past me to join his team by the door, and I took a few steps to follow. His boots crunched into the rising snow as he paused to face me. “Stay out here and look after your friend.” His gaze landed on Jason, who had stayed rooted to the spot since Dad’s arrival, beads of sweat popping up on his ashen forehead. “I’m sorry for your loss, son.”

Frowning, I moved to Jason’s side and slid a supportive arm around his back. His body trembled underneath my touch, and I wanted nothing more than to burst into that house with my father and destroy the creature who had done this to him.

Just before my Dad joined his team, he gave me one last look. “Don’t tell your mother about this. She wouldn’t understand.”

And then he motioned his team into house. Laura, Jason and I stood on the lawn watching the silhouettes as they trod through the quiet rooms. Moments later, an ear-splitting shriek split the silent night, a scream of pain and death. Jason’s clammy hand squeezed mine as I murmured words of comfort into his ear. When the world fell silent once again, we waited for my dad and his team to return outside, but they never did.

When I finally poked my head into the house to make sure it was safe, everyone was gone.

***

“Have you gotten through to your mom yet?” Laura asked the next morning, blowing on the caffeinated liquid in a centuries old mug. She’d spent the night, to keep me company after the whole world fell on top of my head. Jason was camped out in Mom’s room, too shaken after last night’s events to be alone. His dad and his siblings were staying with his grandmother two towns away, and he wasn’t ready to face the mourning. Not yet.

I paced back and forth by the table, Astral belting at me each time I took a step near his food bowl. Now that it was winter, his hunger knew no bounds.

“No.” The hot mug in my hands warmed my fingers, but it did nothing to soothe the ice in my gut. “She’s not answering, which is freaking me out.”

“Okay.” Laura leaned on her elbows and peered up at me through her sleep-tousled hair. “Maybe we should tell my dad.”

“What’s he going to do about it?” I asked. Laura’s dad knew we were both shamans, but he was one-hundred percent human, since she’d been adopted as a child. He knew less about shamanism than we did, and that was saying a lot. Telling him about a new rash of spirit attacks in Seaport would only put prison bars on Laura’s bedroom window and a lock on her door.

“Yeah, bad idea.” Laura frowned and grabbed a cookie. The breakfast of champions.

“Mom really needs to know that Dad showed up again. Complete with a squad team of rifle-wielding shamans and a vendetta to kill spirits.”

“Something definitely seems off,” she said around a mouthful of cookie. “But I don’t know if there’s much we can do about it now. The spirit is gone, and your dad disappeared again. Maybe it’s best if we just let it go.”

“My dad just showed up out of nowhere, Laura. And then ran off without even saying goodbye.” My eyelids felt hot, my throat tightening. “I can’t just let that go. After all this time, I need to now where he’s been and why he decided to pop back up only to disappear again.”

Laura took another long gulp of her coffee before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and slamming the mug down on the table. “Well, I’m all caffeinated up. How do you want to tackle this?”

One day, I was going to find a way to show Laura just how great a friend she was. No matter what, she always stuck by my side, backing up my latest crazy plan. Today’s plot wasn’t all that bad compared to what we’d done in the past, but after the whole incident with George, I wasn’t sure how Laura would react to what I had in mind.

“I think it’s time we find out what Wanda’s deal really is.” I smiled when Astral meowed and jumped up on the table as if he approved of this approach. “She knows something about the supernatural. I don’t know if it has anything to do with my dad, but it couldn’t hurt to ask her a few questions.”

“I know what her deal is.” Laura said, ruffling Astral’s fur. “She’s bat-shit insane.”

“Come on, Laura.” Smiling, I tugged on one of the fading red stripes in her hair. “If you come along, I’ll help you redo your hair tonight.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.” She jumped up from the table and clapped her hands together. “What are we waiting for?”

***

Sunlight peeked through the gray clouds when we pulled up to Wanda’s shop. The sign said she was closed, but I could see her orange hair bobbing just inside the window. As I climbed out of the truck, she peered outside, tapping the glass with the tarot card deck. Like she’d known we were coming. For a moment, I paused, my hands clammy as I locked my truck. Wanda had always been strange over the years, but this was the first time she’d really creeped me out.

The door jingled when we pushed it open. Wanda waited behind the counter with rollers in her hair. Her normally bright red lips were pale from lack of makeup, and a steaming tea cup was perched atop the cash register, filling the room with exotic spices. In this light, Wanda looked fragile and frail, though there was something dangerous and fierce in her eyes.

“You’ve come back for your reading,” she said, shuffling the black deck of cards she’d used last night.

“No, I’ve come here to ask you some questions.” I cleared my throat when her fingers kept rustling through the cards at a warp speed that showed she’d done this many, many times. “You seem to know things.”

She nodded, her rollers bobbing against her skull. “Yes, I do know things.”

“Are you…I don’t know, a psychic or something?” I finally asked. There was no better way to put it, I figured. Just go ahead and throw the question out there.

She narrowed her eyes and paused in her shuffle. “Are you…I don’t know, a shaman or something?”

My breath caught. So, Wanda did know about shamans. During all of my visits into her shop, she’d been aware of my powers. And if that were true, what did that mean for
her
? I’d written her off, as well as all her witch supplies that had nothing to do with me, but had I been blind to an entirely different kind of magic this whole time?

“How do you know about shamans?” Laura asked, leaning forward. “What
are
you?”

Wanda finished shuffling the cards and placed them on the glass counter between us. “You may ask your question, and the cards will answer.”

Irritation bloomed inside my chest. “Oh, come on, Wanda. Just gives us some answers.”

“You’ll get your answers.” Her pointy fingernail tapped the deck as she took a dainty sip of her tea. “Touch the cards and ask one question each. Anything more than that will have to wait another day. As you can see, I haven’t opened my shop yet.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll play along.” My fingers tapped the deck, and I braced myself for the same magical onslaught as yesterday. But it didn’t come.
Strange
.

“Your question?” Wanda’s voice slithered into my eardrums.

“My question is…” I thought about my words carefully. I needed to know what my dad was doing here, where he’d been, and if he was coming back. I needed to know what was going on with the spirits in this town. And I needed to know if it was my fault people were dead. “What’s the most important thing about what my father said to me?”

Wanda’s smile went wide. “Good wording. Open-ended, unspecific.”

She dealt out the cards and placed them face down on the counter. She pointed to the first one before flipping it over. Unlike last night, Wanda continued on to the rest of the cards, flipping each one over to examine what they told her before raising her eyes to meet mine. I stared hard at the cards, so unfamiliar they might as well be in a different language. The Magician, The Ace of Swords, and Death.

“You recognize this one.” Wanda pointed to the card she’d shown George the night before. “This means death. The Ace of Swords here suggests you should be cautious and wary of illusions. The Magician refers to your power, including spiritual, emotional, and otherwise.”

“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with what my dad told me?” I stared down at the cards, eyes drawn to the skeleton dominating the bodies on the ground.

Wanda cocked her head and tapped her finger on the Death card. “I don’t believe this is referring to your own destruction. A new grave in the cemetery, perhaps, at the top of the hill.”

“And that’s it?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re telling me my answer lies in a graveyard?”

“You chose the question. This is the answer.” She swept up the cards and nodded to Laura. “You are next. Question?”

“I want to know if the thing I’ve been thinking is right,” Laura said in a rush of words.

I raised my eyebrows and turned to her, but she wouldn’t look at me. “What thing?”

“Just, I want to know if it’s right,” Laura said, brushing her fingers against the top of the deck. “That’s all.”

I didn’t push. Laura would tell me what she meant when we were out of Wanda’s shop. Hopefully it had something to do with the spirits in Seaport. The sooner we found out what was going on, the better.