Merit! Merit!
I waited for the world to come back into focus, stared into Ethan’s eyes. He’d pulled me up by my jacket, hauling me nearly onto my toes while he called out to me.
I’m all right, I said, not trusting my voice to speak. I’m all right. I got my bearings, watched light reassemble a few feet away. Catcher had thrown a fireball, I realized, saved me. I gave him an acknowledging nod, and he winked at me in return.
The sparks had split Padgett’s energy, but he was beginning to re-form again. I pulled away from Ethan and unsheathed my katana.
Padgett had given me a glimpse of his mind. He was mine to destroy.
With a Cheshire grin as he re-formed, he watched me move toward him. “. . . know what I am . . . What . . . want.”
That was easy enough to understand in context. “I know what you are,” I confirmed. “And what you want. And I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
I swung the blade horizontally, slicing through him, then back and forth in a crisscrossing pattern that would have torn a physical form to shreds. But it had no effect on him. It only shattered the image, like a ripple through water, but he re-formed again and again.
“. . . weapons . . . no effect!” he cried victoriously.
He was right, so I stepped back. Annabelle took my place.
“Albert Padgett!” she screamed. “This is your last damn warning. Get the hell out of our town!”
She slammed her foot onto the floor, pushing a shock wave of energy across the room. Floorboards buckled beneath the wave.
But Albert Padgett didn’t even blink.
; “Then let’s get to it,” Ethan said, and we crept across the yard to the porch. The front door was open, the first room lit and empty but strewn with trash, the walls marked by graffiti.
We passed it and paused in the front hall, listening for sound, and heard the low rumble of chanting upstairs. The air wasn’t yet chilled, but if we didn’t hurry, that wouldn’t be far behind.
We took the stairs two at a time, followed the sound and the flickering candlelight, and moved into the room where Robin held court.
It was roughly octagonal in shape, with well-worn hardwood floors and plenty of graffiti. He’d drawn a white circle on the floor with what looked like salt. A fat pillar candle was positioned in the middle of the circle along with a few other bits of magical detritus. He crouched over the pile, flipping through the stapled pages of what I guessed was his ill-gotten spell.
I stepped forward. “Robin.”
He looked up, took in the leather, the sword. And the fear on his face turned petulant. “I’m almost done. You’re too late. You can’t stop me.”
“We can,” Annabelle said, stepping beside me. “That’s precisely why we’re here.”
“I’m moving Albert Padgett into my house,” he said with bravado he didn’t quite pull off.
Ethan joined us. “You’re a child who disturbed the dead for his own gain. And because of what you’ve done, you’ve hurt my people. We will damn well stop you.”
Robin stood up, took two steps backward—and outside the circle. Catcher and Jeff entered the room. Catcher took Robin by the arms while Jeff used a zip tie to bind his wrists together.
“I made magic!” Robin sobbed. “I did magic!”
“Past tense,” Catcher said. “You’re done.”
But the house rumbled beneath us, and the temperature in the room dropped shockingly.
“Here we go,” I murmured, my breath fogging the air. I put my hand on the handle of my sword. “I think that woke him up.”
“He’s coming!” Robin said. “I brought him here! I did it.”
“You called a serial killer into this world using someone else’s spell,” Annabelle said, taking a step backward, away from the circle. “We award you no points for that.”
Light and magic shot up from the floor; lines and shadows shifted and formed into the shape of Albert Padgett.