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I rolled ain This ti upon my own body's physical stamina as well as soames If you leave on your own, I won't have to hurt you Come out"

He couldn't stand against that command and the poithin it The shoe trembled, and set incinerated during this Montgomery wouldn't be able to handle that

The se, dark form about two feet taller than me With all his wisecracks, I'd sort of expected a saucy version of one of Santa's elves Instead, the being before me had the upper body of a well-muscled man, while his lower portion reseray-black skin, and I had only a moment to act as I assessed this new develop the clip as I pulled it out By then, he was lunging for me, and I had to roll out of his way, confined by the circle's boundaries

A keres Afey, which required silver bullets; or a spectre, which required no bullets Keres were ancient death spirits originally confined to canopic jars When the jars wore down over time, keres tended to seek out new homes There weren't too many of them left in this world, and soon there'd be one less

He bore down on me, and I took a nice chunk out of hiht hand, the one I wore an onyx and obsidian bracelet on Those stones alone would take a toll on a death spirit like hih, he hissed in pain and hesitated ato load the silver cartridge

I didn't quite ain He hit ainst the walls of the circle They ht be transparent, but they felt as solid as bricks One of the downsides of trapping a spirit in a circle was that I got trapped too My head and left shoulder took the brunt of that ih me in small starbursts He seemed pretty pleased with himself over this, as overconfident villains so often are

"You're as strong as they say, but you were a fool to try to cast me out You should have left ravelly

I shook et rid of the dizziness "It isn't your shoe"

I still couldn't swap that goddaain, not with both hands full Yet I couldn't risk dropping either weapon

He reached for ain The wounds were small, but the athame was like poison It would wear hi I moved to strike at him once more, but he anticipatedit in an unnatural position and forcing me to drop the atharabbed me by the shoulders with both hands and liftedface to face with him His eyes were yelloith slits for pupils, much like some sort of snake's His breath was hot and reeked of decay as he spoke

"You are senie Markham, but you are lovely and your flesh is warm Perhaps I should beat the rush and take youyou scream beneath me"

Ew Had that thing just propositioned ain How in the world did he know that? None of them knew that I was only Odile to them, named after the dark swan in Swan Lake, a name coined by my stepfather because of the for the Otherworld The nah I doubted any of the creatures I fought knew the reference They didn't really get out to the ballet much

The keres had my upper arms pinned - I would have bruises tomorrow - but my hands and forearant and confident, that he paid no attention tohands He probably just perceived the motion as a futile effort to free ed one cluain ain Bullets probably couldn't kill him, but a silver one in the center of his chest would certainly hurt

He stumbled back, half-surprised, and I wondered if he'd ever even encountered a gun before It fired again, then again and again and again The reports were loud; hopefully Montgo in The keres roared in outrage and pain, each shot ainst the circle's boundary I advanced on hi in my hand In a few quick motions, I carved the death symbol on the part of his chest that wasn't bloodied froh the air of the circle Hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I could smell ozone, like just before a storm

He screae or adrenaline or whatever else these creatures ran on But it was too late for him He was ht have simply banished him to the Otherworld; I tried not to kill if I didn't have to But that sexual suggestion had just been out of line I was pissed off now He'd go to the world of death, straight to Persephone's gate

I fired again to slow hih to hit him I had already traded the athame for the wand This time, I didn't draw on the power from this plane With well-practiced ease, I let part of my consciousness slip this world In moments, I reached the crossroads to the Otherworld That was an easy transition; I did it all the time The next crossover was a little harder, especially withI couldn't do automatically I kept my own spirit well outside of the land of death, but I touched it and sent that connection through the wand It sucked him in, and his face twisted with fear

"This is not your world," I said in a low voice, feeling the power burn through me and around me "This is not your world, and I cast you out I send you to the black gate, to the lands of death where you can either be reborn or fade to oblivion or burn in the flaive a shit Go"

He screa in the air, a buildup of pressure, and then it ended abruptly, like a deflated balloon The keres was gone too, leaving only a shower of gray sparkles that soon faded to nothing

Silence I sank todeeply My eyes closed a moment, as my body relaxed and my consciousness returned to this world I was exhausted but exultant too Killing hiotten what he deserved, and I had been the one to deal it out

Minutes later, soth returned I stood and opened the circle, suddenly feeling stifled by it I put omery

"Your shoe's been exorcised," I told hi the difference between a keres and a true ghost; he wouldn't understand

He entered the roounshots How do you use bullets on a ghost?"

I shrugged It hurt from where the keres had slahost"

He cradled the shoe like one lanced doith disapproval "There's blood on the carpet"

"Read the paperwork you signed I assue incurred to personal property"

With a few gruh, he was so stoked about the shoe, I probably could have decimated the office

In love box Battles like that required iar and calories As I practically shoved the candy bar into my mouth, I turned on my cell phone I had a missed call from Lara

Once I'd consumed a second bar and was on I-10 back to Tucson, I dialed her

"Yo," I said

"Hey Did you finish the Montgomery job?"

"Yup"

"Was the shoe really possessed?"

"Yup"

"Huh Who knew? That's kind of funny too Like, you know, lost souls and soles in shoes"

"Bad, very bad," I chastised Lara ood secretary, but there was only so much I could be expected to put up with "So what's up? Or were you just checking in?"

"No I just got a weird job offer Soht he sounded kind of schizo But he claientry He wants you to go get her"

I fell silent at that, staring at the highway and clear blue sky ahead without consciously seeing either one Some objective part of et that kind of request very often Okay, never A retrieval like that required me to cross over physically into the Otherworld "I don't really do that"

"That's what I told him" But there was uncertainty in Lara's voice

"Okay What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing, I guess I don't know It's justhe said she's been gone almost a year and a half now She was fourteen when she disappeared"

My stomach sank a little at that God What an awful fate for soht trivial

"He sounded pretty frantic"

"Does he have proof she was actually taken?"

"I don't know He wouldn't get into it He was kind of paranoid See tapped"

I laughed at that "By who? The gentry?" "Gentry" hat I called the beings that most of Western culture referred to as fairies or sidhe They looked just like huy They found "fairy" a derogatory terlish peasants used to use Gentry Good folk Good neighbors A questionable designation, at best The gentry actually preferred the terive them that much credit

"I don't know," Lara told me "Like I said, he seemed a little schizo"

Silence fell as I held on to the phone and passed a car driving 45 in the left lane

"Eugenie! You aren't really thinking of doing this"

"Fourteen, huh?"

"You always said that was dangerous"

"Adolescence?"

"Stop it You knohat Iover"

"Yeah I knohat you mean"

It was dangerous - super dangerous Traveling in spirit for back to your earthbound body were better Take your own body over, and all the rules changed

"This is crazy"

"Set it up," I told her "It can't hurt to talk to him"

I could practically see her biting her lip to hold back protests But at the end of the day, I was the one who signed her paychecks, and she respected that After a few moments, she filled the silence with info about a few other jobs and then drifted on to more casual topics: some sale at the mall, a mysterious scratch on her car

Soossip always made me smile, but it also disturbed me that most of my social contact came via someone I never actually saw Lately the majority of entry

It was after dinnertime when I arrived hoht, probably at a poetry reading Despite a Polish background, genes had inexplicably given hi Native American appearance In fact, he lookedthis was his clairown his hair out and taken on the na faux-Native poetry at local dives and wooing naive tourist wo expressions like "my people" and "the Great Spirit" a lot It was despicable, to say the least, but it got hi in a lot of e for housework and cleaning It was a pretty good deal as far as I was concerned After battling the undead all day, scrubbing the bathtub just see too much

Scrubbing my athames, unfortunately, was a task I had to do myself Keres blood could stain

I ate dinner afterward, then stripped and sat in s about my little house out in the foothills, but the sauna was one of ht seem kind of pointless in the desert, but Arizona had mostly dry heat, and I liked the feel of huainst the wooden wall, enjoying the sensation of sweating out the stress My body ached - some parts more fiercely than others - and the heat let some of the muscles loosen up

The solitude also soothed me Pathetic as it was, I probably had no one to blame for my lack of sociability except myself I spent a lot of time alone and didn't mind When my stepfather, Roland, had first trained me as a shaman, he'd told me that in a lot of cultures, shamans essentially lived outside of normal society The idea had seeh, but it made more sense now that I was older

I wasn't a complete socialphobe, but I found I often had a hard tiroups wasone-on-one had its issues I had no pets or children to ras like the incident in Las Cruces Yeah, I had kind of a long day Drove four hours, fought an ancient minion of evil After a few bullets and knife wounds, I obliterated him and sent hi paid enough for this crap, you know? Cue polite laughter

When I left the sauna, I had another ht brother had been arranged for tomorrow I made a note in my day planner, took a shower, and retired to my room, where I threw on black silk pajaence I allowed ht's selection had a cae, had anyone been there to see it I alore a ratty robe around Tim

Sitting at ht It depicted a kitten on its back clutching a ball of yarn My love of puzzles ranked up there with the paja for weirdness, but they eased ible You could hold the pieces in your hand and ether, as opposed to the insubstantial stuff I usually worked with

Whileto shake the knowledge that the keres had known my name What did that mean? I'd made a lot of eneht of the able to track me personally I preferred to stay Odile Anony about it, I supposed The keres was dead He wouldn't be telling any tales

Two hours later, I finished the puzzle and admired it The kitten had brown tabby fur, its eyes an alital ca it back into its box Easy coo

Yawning, I slipped into bed Tim had done laundry today; the sheets felt crisp and clean Nothing like that fresh-sheets smell Despite my exhaustion, however, I couldn't fall asleep It was one of life's ironies While awake, I could slide into a trance with the snap of a finger My spirit could leave my body and travel to other worlds Yet, for whatever reason, sleep was more elusive Doctors had recos and alcohol bound the spirit to this world, and while I did indulge occasionally, I generally liked being ready to slip over at a moment's notice

Tonight I suspected irl But no I couldn't think about that, not yet Not until I spoke with the brother

Sighing, needing so, at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars I started counting thehts There were exactly thirty-three of them, just like last time Still, it never hurt to check