I told him, starting with the incident with the van, even including the part about the Ouija board, even though that was a little embarrassing. I didn’t want to leave anything out in case it turned out to be important. But we?
?d had enough attacks now to discern a pattern: heat and fire. Something invisible that struck suddenly and left no trace.
“It’s rare finding someone who can read anything through a Ouija board. It’s not the most efficient tool.”
And I’d been worried that he’d make fun of me for going along with it. Grant seemed to take everything seriously.
“What is an efficient tool?” I said.
“Oh, this and that.”
The trouble with the real-deal psychics and magicians is they didn’t like to talk about what they could do. Like Tina covering it up because she wanted her colleagues to take her seriously.
“What does something like this?”
“I’m starting to get some ideas,” he said.
“What are we supposed to do in the meantime? This thing is getting more violent. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“What do you know about protective magic?”
“You can crush St. John’s Wort pills and scatter them with breadcrumbs to get rid of a fairy,” I said.
After a pause, he said, “I didn’t know that. Interesting.”
Hey, my side gets a point on supernatural Jeopardy. That was a switch.
“But that’s probably not going to be useful here,” Grant said.
Oh well.
“Try this instead.” Grant gave me directions: “Take the dust from a ruin—”
“Ruin? Like old temple, Roman aqueduct? How am I going to get—”
“You live in a city—what’s been knocked down recently? An abandoned shed going to weed will work just as well. Mix it with blood—”
“How much blood? Human blood? I’m trying not to kill people here—”
“Cow, sheep, pig, chicken. Special order it from a butcher shop. Not human.”
Grant was being very patient with me. “Oh. That makes sense.”
“Mix the dust and blood, then sprinkle the mixture around whatever you need protected. Probably the homes of everyone who’s involved. Any other structures. You can even carry a jar of it with you, to use in a pinch.”
Kind of gross. But I wasn’t going to question it. “What kind of spell is that?”
“I adapted it from an old Egyptian potion. Ideally, it’ll form a protective barrier.”
“And it works?”
“In at least one case it did, yes.”
Now, there was a story I needed to get. But later, when this was over and we were all still alive.
“Thanks. We’ll give it a try.”
“This still won’t stop it,” he said. “This isn’t an ideal solution. I’ll try to come up with something better.”