Laurel blatantly ignored her aunt as she packed her emergency kit into a small over-the-shoulder bag. The woman meant well, but she nattered on as though Laurel's life depended on each and every thing that was packed into the bag. Granted, sometimes it did. But today was most likely not going to be one of those times.
Each of the three witches had their own personal field kit, a backpack or a belt pack that held what they thought they would need when they went out alone to do witchery, magic, or other sorts of trouble-shooting. They had the same core elements, but different specifics for each: Where Merry had a raven's wing and an icon of Annwn, Laurel had an amulet that served the same purpose. Where Amber's ritual blades consisted largely of assorted pocket knives, Laurel had a scarred and somewhat ornate dagger that slid easily into a sheath along her leg, accessible through a slit in her jeans pocket.
She put on all of these accoutrements now, and stuffed what couldn't be concealed on her person into her shoulder pack. Most of that was food, water, vitamins, necessities when performing magical activities that might leave the caster drained of energy and strength. Her aunt burbled some more last minute instructions, then subsided into silence when she realized she was being carefully ignored.
"I've been doing this for a long time, Aunt Ashe. I'm not a child anymore. And I haven't had a drink in six years. I know what I'm doing."
Aunt Ashe, wisely, kept her mouth shut.
Laurel heard what she was going to say anyway and sighed. "I should be back in a few hours. If not… well, there's no end of cavalry to send after me, so it should be fine. It's only a child's ghost anyway." That was, she hoped, why Sebastian had sent her after it. She could still feel twinges of pain where the Pilgrimess had raked her over the stomach.
"You're chasing ghosts, Laurel. It's always more trouble than you think when you chase ghosts."
Laurel couldn't tell if Aunt Ashe was speaking realistically or metaphorically. But then it also occurred to Laurel that most people wouldn't think it was quite right to refer to a ghost 'realistically.' "I'll be fine. Besides, if we leave these things floating around, there'll be no end to the trouble they cause."
"But …" Aunt Ashe said, and stopped. They'd had trouble with ghosts before. They knew. She sighed, frustrated. "Just what the bloody hell was this old codger doing with the damn Ocularis anyway?"
"Trying to take over the world, at a guess," Laurel shrugged wryly. "It's not like you can do anything else with it."
"Yes, but why?"
"Because he could." Laurel had never much understood the whys and wherefores behind the less stable of the magical community and, apart from a few select friends, she had never much cared. "Because he had the book and he just couldn't resist the temptation to use it. How the hell am I supposed to know?"
Aunt Ashe sighed. Somewhere in there was the clear assumption that Laurel needed to get out more.
"I'm not going to change for you now, Aunt Ashe. I never was. At least I'm going out there to deal with the bloody problem and not cause more of it, or try and use the Ocularis myself." It came out snappish, but Laurel was tired of dealing with her aunt, the ghosts, and just about everyone and everything else. It was getting close to November again anyway, and she always got crabby around November. But she didn't want to think about that now.
"Of course not," Aunt Ashe snapped back, offended at the very idea that someone in her family might do such a thing. "You've more sense than to go messing around with anything Infernal."
They looked at each other for a moment and then, unexpectedly, they both laughed. The laughter went on and on, at first slightly tinged with hysteria on Laurel's part and then, slowly, they calmed. It broke the tension without shattering either of them, and Laurel hadn't realized how nervous she'd been about facing the ghost until that moment. The thought, or rather the repetition of the knowledge that she had more sense than most magicians came as a relief to her.
"Well, you know these sorcerers," Laurel said. Flippant, but it put them both a little more at ease. "Always messing around in things that they shouldn't, or things that they won't understand…"
"Isn't natural," Aunt Ashe chuckled. "I know. Just you be careful, Laurel. Your mother would haunt me till my dying day if I let anything happen to you."
Laurel shook her head and hugged her Aunt. "She'd haunt you even after your dying day. Which wouldn't be so bad, because then I could kick both your asses."
Her Aunt hugged her back. "Language, girl, we taught you better than that."
"No you didn't," Laurel laughed again. "Uncle Edward swears like a sailor when he gets in full steam."
The other woman shook her head, amused. "Your Uncle Edward was a sailor. At least he has an excuse." Aunt Ashe sighed. "Don't forget, dear heart, if it gets bad enough you can always call n us for help. It wouldn't be the first time…"
"And I doubt it'll be the last. But we did this, Aunt. We may not have built the Ocularis, but we were the careless ones who let the ghosts go wandering off into the general population after it was destroyed, and we should have damned well known better. Especially since we're supposed to be the good guys. So now it's up to us to fix our mistake, and you know that's the way the world works."
Ashleigh nodded. "Come back safe, girl," she hugged her niece fiercely. "Miss Veronica would have my hide for her wall if I let anything happen to you."
-
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Laurel sighed as she walked up the hill to the old, run-down house. Miss Veronica indeed… they all talked about her as though she was still a young thing growing up in the Depression and the era of the flappers and baseball as the great American past time. The Great American ghosts, the mystery of the dust bowl. Those strange old circus men she kept talking about. They were all, the entire family scared of her. Hell, Laurel was too. But that didn't mean they had to tiptoe around her as though she were made of glass, or worse, as though her every whim was law. At least that was what Laurel told herself. Old habits were hard to break, though.
And none of that sort of thinking was getting the job done. Laurel stood in front of the porch and surveyed the house with sight and Sight. Reptile eyes, the twins called them, cousin Thomas called it 'Camera One, Camera Two.' The family had moved out a week or so ago, driven mad in only a few days by the haunting child who kept threatening their own living children. The house had barely gone up on the market and it was already starting to develop a reputation. Which, really, it didn't deserve. It was a perfectly decent house in a nice enough section of town.
It just happened to have a ghost in it.
A little judicious family influence had gotten her the realtor's passcode and beeper, so getting in the house itself wouldn't be too hard. Laurel rather hoped she wouldn't have to do that, though. She didn't want to have to explain to anyone what she was doing, in any of the potential situations that could arise from her breaking and entering the unowned house.
"First things first, I suppose," she muttered to herself. She reached into her pocket and drew out her dagger, concealing it in her left hand so that the average passer-by on the sidewalk below her wouldn't see it. Right side to invoke, left side to banish. The sinister path. Laurel snorted at her own superstition.
"In the name of Arianrhod I call upon the sylphs and spirits of the wind…"
The words were old, formulaic, familiar. The ritual opening itself was as old as anything else her family had carried with them across the Atlantic ocean, and it carried with it the power and weight of that age. The impact, too, because no sooner had she finished the East quarter and moved on to the South than a spectral arrow came shooting across the space where she had been. She ignored it placidly, although inside her stomach was churning itself into knots, and kept going.
"In Kai's name I call upon the salamanders and spirits of the flame…"
"Stop that!"
It was a child's voice, no doubt of that. The arrogance of a young, spoiled boy. Familiar in its arrogance, actually; the child had the same tone of voice she'd heard her own cousin Donald use, before Janet had started to grow and developed the uncanny ability to find each and every soft spot in their fights. Being beaten by a girl had done wonders for Donald's overbearing egotism. Laurel smiled tightly, nervously. Maybe the same would be true here. Her stomach, her chest ache where the Pilgrimess had raked her over.
"In the name of Llyr I call upon the selkies and spirits of the water…"
"Stop that!"
This time the arrow creased her ribs; she hadn't turned away fast enough. Laurel swore, to herself, inside her mind, and moved just a little bit faster to complete the circle.
"In the name of Cerridwen I call upon the stones and the spirits of the earth…" she paused and flattened herself just in time as the arrow went whistling over her head. From the ground she completed it. "…to seal this place as sacred, to guard and protect me, to aid in the work that I must do. In the name of the Goddess, so shall it be."
The boy screamed, charging her, waving his bow like a club. For which Laurel was actually rather grateful as she stepped into the now complete circle that hummed around her with a reassuring resonance. She was able to duck and dodge the angry kid with relative ease, and the blows from the bow left only welts, as oppose the potential deadliness of the arrows. She grabbed the bow after the first couple of minutes, though, and practically yanked it out of the boy's hands. He lunged after it and she held him away from the bow with a firm hand on his head, staring down calmly as he unloaded angry punches into thin air.
"Let me go!" he screamed. "Let me go let me go let me go!"
"Are you going to behave yourself?" she asked. The scowl on his face told her even if the boy himself was keeping silent. She picked up the bow and made as if to break it.
"No!"
"Then behave yourself." Dear God, she thought to herself with sardonic, amazed humor. He really is a spoiled brat. Sebastian, what the hell were you thinking. You know I don't have any sort of patience for these kids.
"I don't have to," the boy said. His expression had smoothed itself into what would have been polite arrogance if he had been old enough to carry it off. As it was he just looked the acceptable side of pouty. "You're not my mother."
"No. Your mother's long gone from this place. And you should be too, if you had any idea of what's good for you. This place isn't for you anymore, kiddo. You should have moved on long ago."
"My mother's not gone," he snapped. "She's just on holiday."
Laurel sighed. "How long have you been out here? Or better yet, how long were you in that infernal idiot's glass house? Months? Years?" She looked the kid up and down. "From the way you're dressed I'm guessing it's years. Do you even know how long you were in there?"
The kid shook his head slowly. "No…" and then in a burst of rapid speech. "I don't like you you're not very nice you're mean and I want my bow back!"
"You'll get it back when you stop acting like a spoiled brat and start …" she wanted to say 'acting your age' but she had the sinking feeling that the boy was acting his age. "Behaving like a nice little gentleman. You're not going to get out of here until I let you, anyways, so you might as well."
"I don't believe you," he mumbled, and rushed the circle. Laurel just crossed her arms and stared at him in amusement as he bounced off the inner wall. "Ow!"
"Told you."
"I hate you!"
"Good. That is an excellent place to start."
Silence. Laurel rather suspected the poor kid didn't know how to deal with that, or with her in general. He tried hitting the wall a couple of times, to no avail. Laurel folded her arms over her chest and kept a tight grip on the bow, secure in the knowledge that there was no way that kid was bringing down her circle until she was damn good and ready to let it fall. After a while the boy seemed to realize this and sat down at the edge of the circle with an expression of frustration that might eventually lead to tears, as it so often did in young children.
"Are you done?" Laurel asked calmly.
"I hate you."
"Fine." Laurel took a deep breath. "You don't have to like me. But you're not supposed to be here anymore, and it's my job to see that you get to where you have to go."
"I'm supposed to be with Mother and Father," the child insisted. "I'm supposed to be in school."
You're supposed to be dead, Laurel thought, but she knew better than to say it. "School was over for you a long time ago, I'm afraid." For all I know your mother and father are dead too. "It's time for you to be going along now."
"Where, with you?" The boy had a fairly healthy amount of scorn in his voice for a kid. "Mother said not to trust strangers, even if they are pretty girls."
"You're a little young to start paying attention to pretty girls," Laurel said sharply. "And if Mother told you never to talk to strangers, what were you doing running off with a man who stuck you in a glass box for years?"
The boy looked down. "He talked to me. He knew who I was. No one talks to me anymore. They just scream and run away when I try to play with them."
Laurel sighed. She walked over and sat down beside the boy, resisting the urge to invite him to sit down next to her since it wouldn't do much good anyway. For all she knew he'd go right through the dirt. "That's because you're not supposed to be here anymore, kiddo. You should have moved on years ago, you just didn't know it at the time. And no one got a chance to explain it to you 'cause the damned fool went and stuck you in a glass box like a spectral battery." Maybe now was the time to tell him. "You're gone, kid. Or at least you should be."
"No!" The kid started yelling and throwing himself at her again, beating at her with his fists. She put her arms up to protect her head. Clearly, it hadn't been time. "No! You're lying! You're wrong and you're lying and I hate you! I want my mother!"
"Your mother buried you years ago!" Laurel yelled, out of patience and out of sympathy and more affected by having to talk to the ghost of a child than she would admit, even to herself. "You're dead! You've been dead for years! Your mother buried you and moved on with her life! And now you've got to move on with yours…" The kid was crying. Laurel sighed. "It's either that or I've got to move you along. And trust me, you won't like it if I have to do it."
The kid stared at her. Laurel stared back. Neither of them was comfortable with the other's presence, and they both knew it. Laurel wondered yet again what the hell Sebastian had meant in bringing her here. She was getting very, very tired. And she didn't want to have to deal with this kid, or any of the ghosts anymore. Especially this kid. It reminded her far too much of her own situation, years ago.
"Will it hurt?" the boy asked finally.
"No." Laurel sighed. "No it won't."
"Okay…" The boy was already starting to fade, but he seemed not to have noticed yet. "Um. How do I do it?"
"Just… give up. Give in." A small smile turned up the corners of her mouth. "Head towards the light. Or something."
"Okay…" he sounded scared. But he was fading fast, which meant he was probably on his way to where he should be. Probably.
"Hey!" Something occurred to Laurel, then. "You might want this." She heaved the bow at the kid, who caught it with a sudden and heartfelt grin. "Never know what kind of people you might meet on the other side."
"Thank you kindly, little lady," the boy said in what he probably thought of fondly as a Western-style accent. Laurel just shook her head and watched as the boy disappeared, then waited a good while longer before she went around dispelling the circle.
"Sebastian, what the hell are you doing to me…"
Each of the three witches had their own personal field kit, a backpack or a belt pack that held what they thought they would need when they went out alone to do witchery, magic, or other sorts of trouble-shooting. They had the same core elements, but different specifics for each: Where Merry had a raven's wing and an icon of Annwn, Laurel had an amulet that served the same purpose. Where Amber's ritual blades consisted largely of assorted pocket knives, Laurel had a scarred and somewhat ornate dagger that slid easily into a sheath along her leg, accessible through a slit in her jeans pocket.
She put on all of these accoutrements now, and stuffed what couldn't be concealed on her person into her shoulder pack. Most of that was food, water, vitamins, necessities when performing magical activities that might leave the caster drained of energy and strength. Her aunt burbled some more last minute instructions, then subsided into silence when she realized she was being carefully ignored.
"I've been doing this for a long time, Aunt Ashe. I'm not a child anymore. And I haven't had a drink in six years. I know what I'm doing."
Aunt Ashe, wisely, kept her mouth shut.
Laurel heard what she was going to say anyway and sighed. "I should be back in a few hours. If not… well, there's no end of cavalry to send after me, so it should be fine. It's only a child's ghost anyway." That was, she hoped, why Sebastian had sent her after it. She could still feel twinges of pain where the Pilgrimess had raked her over the stomach.
"You're chasing ghosts, Laurel. It's always more trouble than you think when you chase ghosts."
Laurel couldn't tell if Aunt Ashe was speaking realistically or metaphorically. But then it also occurred to Laurel that most people wouldn't think it was quite right to refer to a ghost 'realistically.' "I'll be fine. Besides, if we leave these things floating around, there'll be no end to the trouble they cause."
"But …" Aunt Ashe said, and stopped. They'd had trouble with ghosts before. They knew. She sighed, frustrated. "Just what the bloody hell was this old codger doing with the damn Ocularis anyway?"
"Trying to take over the world, at a guess," Laurel shrugged wryly. "It's not like you can do anything else with it."
"Yes, but why?"
"Because he could." Laurel had never much understood the whys and wherefores behind the less stable of the magical community and, apart from a few select friends, she had never much cared. "Because he had the book and he just couldn't resist the temptation to use it. How the hell am I supposed to know?"
Aunt Ashe sighed. Somewhere in there was the clear assumption that Laurel needed to get out more.
"I'm not going to change for you now, Aunt Ashe. I never was. At least I'm going out there to deal with the bloody problem and not cause more of it, or try and use the Ocularis myself." It came out snappish, but Laurel was tired of dealing with her aunt, the ghosts, and just about everyone and everything else. It was getting close to November again anyway, and she always got crabby around November. But she didn't want to think about that now.
"Of course not," Aunt Ashe snapped back, offended at the very idea that someone in her family might do such a thing. "You've more sense than to go messing around with anything Infernal."
They looked at each other for a moment and then, unexpectedly, they both laughed. The laughter went on and on, at first slightly tinged with hysteria on Laurel's part and then, slowly, they calmed. It broke the tension without shattering either of them, and Laurel hadn't realized how nervous she'd been about facing the ghost until that moment. The thought, or rather the repetition of the knowledge that she had more sense than most magicians came as a relief to her.
"Well, you know these sorcerers," Laurel said. Flippant, but it put them both a little more at ease. "Always messing around in things that they shouldn't, or things that they won't understand…"
"Isn't natural," Aunt Ashe chuckled. "I know. Just you be careful, Laurel. Your mother would haunt me till my dying day if I let anything happen to you."
Laurel shook her head and hugged her Aunt. "She'd haunt you even after your dying day. Which wouldn't be so bad, because then I could kick both your asses."
Her Aunt hugged her back. "Language, girl, we taught you better than that."
"No you didn't," Laurel laughed again. "Uncle Edward swears like a sailor when he gets in full steam."
The other woman shook her head, amused. "Your Uncle Edward was a sailor. At least he has an excuse." Aunt Ashe sighed. "Don't forget, dear heart, if it gets bad enough you can always call n us for help. It wouldn't be the first time…"
"And I doubt it'll be the last. But we did this, Aunt. We may not have built the Ocularis, but we were the careless ones who let the ghosts go wandering off into the general population after it was destroyed, and we should have damned well known better. Especially since we're supposed to be the good guys. So now it's up to us to fix our mistake, and you know that's the way the world works."
Ashleigh nodded. "Come back safe, girl," she hugged her niece fiercely. "Miss Veronica would have my hide for her wall if I let anything happen to you."
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Laurel sighed as she walked up the hill to the old, run-down house. Miss Veronica indeed… they all talked about her as though she was still a young thing growing up in the Depression and the era of the flappers and baseball as the great American past time. The Great American ghosts, the mystery of the dust bowl. Those strange old circus men she kept talking about. They were all, the entire family scared of her. Hell, Laurel was too. But that didn't mean they had to tiptoe around her as though she were made of glass, or worse, as though her every whim was law. At least that was what Laurel told herself. Old habits were hard to break, though.
And none of that sort of thinking was getting the job done. Laurel stood in front of the porch and surveyed the house with sight and Sight. Reptile eyes, the twins called them, cousin Thomas called it 'Camera One, Camera Two.' The family had moved out a week or so ago, driven mad in only a few days by the haunting child who kept threatening their own living children. The house had barely gone up on the market and it was already starting to develop a reputation. Which, really, it didn't deserve. It was a perfectly decent house in a nice enough section of town.
It just happened to have a ghost in it.
A little judicious family influence had gotten her the realtor's passcode and beeper, so getting in the house itself wouldn't be too hard. Laurel rather hoped she wouldn't have to do that, though. She didn't want to have to explain to anyone what she was doing, in any of the potential situations that could arise from her breaking and entering the unowned house.
"First things first, I suppose," she muttered to herself. She reached into her pocket and drew out her dagger, concealing it in her left hand so that the average passer-by on the sidewalk below her wouldn't see it. Right side to invoke, left side to banish. The sinister path. Laurel snorted at her own superstition.
"In the name of Arianrhod I call upon the sylphs and spirits of the wind…"
The words were old, formulaic, familiar. The ritual opening itself was as old as anything else her family had carried with them across the Atlantic ocean, and it carried with it the power and weight of that age. The impact, too, because no sooner had she finished the East quarter and moved on to the South than a spectral arrow came shooting across the space where she had been. She ignored it placidly, although inside her stomach was churning itself into knots, and kept going.
"In Kai's name I call upon the salamanders and spirits of the flame…"
"Stop that!"
It was a child's voice, no doubt of that. The arrogance of a young, spoiled boy. Familiar in its arrogance, actually; the child had the same tone of voice she'd heard her own cousin Donald use, before Janet had started to grow and developed the uncanny ability to find each and every soft spot in their fights. Being beaten by a girl had done wonders for Donald's overbearing egotism. Laurel smiled tightly, nervously. Maybe the same would be true here. Her stomach, her chest ache where the Pilgrimess had raked her over.
"In the name of Llyr I call upon the selkies and spirits of the water…"
"Stop that!"
This time the arrow creased her ribs; she hadn't turned away fast enough. Laurel swore, to herself, inside her mind, and moved just a little bit faster to complete the circle.
"In the name of Cerridwen I call upon the stones and the spirits of the earth…" she paused and flattened herself just in time as the arrow went whistling over her head. From the ground she completed it. "…to seal this place as sacred, to guard and protect me, to aid in the work that I must do. In the name of the Goddess, so shall it be."
The boy screamed, charging her, waving his bow like a club. For which Laurel was actually rather grateful as she stepped into the now complete circle that hummed around her with a reassuring resonance. She was able to duck and dodge the angry kid with relative ease, and the blows from the bow left only welts, as oppose the potential deadliness of the arrows. She grabbed the bow after the first couple of minutes, though, and practically yanked it out of the boy's hands. He lunged after it and she held him away from the bow with a firm hand on his head, staring down calmly as he unloaded angry punches into thin air.
"Let me go!" he screamed. "Let me go let me go let me go!"
"Are you going to behave yourself?" she asked. The scowl on his face told her even if the boy himself was keeping silent. She picked up the bow and made as if to break it.
"No!"
"Then behave yourself." Dear God, she thought to herself with sardonic, amazed humor. He really is a spoiled brat. Sebastian, what the hell were you thinking. You know I don't have any sort of patience for these kids.
"I don't have to," the boy said. His expression had smoothed itself into what would have been polite arrogance if he had been old enough to carry it off. As it was he just looked the acceptable side of pouty. "You're not my mother."
"No. Your mother's long gone from this place. And you should be too, if you had any idea of what's good for you. This place isn't for you anymore, kiddo. You should have moved on long ago."
"My mother's not gone," he snapped. "She's just on holiday."
Laurel sighed. "How long have you been out here? Or better yet, how long were you in that infernal idiot's glass house? Months? Years?" She looked the kid up and down. "From the way you're dressed I'm guessing it's years. Do you even know how long you were in there?"
The kid shook his head slowly. "No…" and then in a burst of rapid speech. "I don't like you you're not very nice you're mean and I want my bow back!"
"You'll get it back when you stop acting like a spoiled brat and start …" she wanted to say 'acting your age' but she had the sinking feeling that the boy was acting his age. "Behaving like a nice little gentleman. You're not going to get out of here until I let you, anyways, so you might as well."
"I don't believe you," he mumbled, and rushed the circle. Laurel just crossed her arms and stared at him in amusement as he bounced off the inner wall. "Ow!"
"Told you."
"I hate you!"
"Good. That is an excellent place to start."
Silence. Laurel rather suspected the poor kid didn't know how to deal with that, or with her in general. He tried hitting the wall a couple of times, to no avail. Laurel folded her arms over her chest and kept a tight grip on the bow, secure in the knowledge that there was no way that kid was bringing down her circle until she was damn good and ready to let it fall. After a while the boy seemed to realize this and sat down at the edge of the circle with an expression of frustration that might eventually lead to tears, as it so often did in young children.
"Are you done?" Laurel asked calmly.
"I hate you."
"Fine." Laurel took a deep breath. "You don't have to like me. But you're not supposed to be here anymore, and it's my job to see that you get to where you have to go."
"I'm supposed to be with Mother and Father," the child insisted. "I'm supposed to be in school."
You're supposed to be dead, Laurel thought, but she knew better than to say it. "School was over for you a long time ago, I'm afraid." For all I know your mother and father are dead too. "It's time for you to be going along now."
"Where, with you?" The boy had a fairly healthy amount of scorn in his voice for a kid. "Mother said not to trust strangers, even if they are pretty girls."
"You're a little young to start paying attention to pretty girls," Laurel said sharply. "And if Mother told you never to talk to strangers, what were you doing running off with a man who stuck you in a glass box for years?"
The boy looked down. "He talked to me. He knew who I was. No one talks to me anymore. They just scream and run away when I try to play with them."
Laurel sighed. She walked over and sat down beside the boy, resisting the urge to invite him to sit down next to her since it wouldn't do much good anyway. For all she knew he'd go right through the dirt. "That's because you're not supposed to be here anymore, kiddo. You should have moved on years ago, you just didn't know it at the time. And no one got a chance to explain it to you 'cause the damned fool went and stuck you in a glass box like a spectral battery." Maybe now was the time to tell him. "You're gone, kid. Or at least you should be."
"No!" The kid started yelling and throwing himself at her again, beating at her with his fists. She put her arms up to protect her head. Clearly, it hadn't been time. "No! You're lying! You're wrong and you're lying and I hate you! I want my mother!"
"Your mother buried you years ago!" Laurel yelled, out of patience and out of sympathy and more affected by having to talk to the ghost of a child than she would admit, even to herself. "You're dead! You've been dead for years! Your mother buried you and moved on with her life! And now you've got to move on with yours…" The kid was crying. Laurel sighed. "It's either that or I've got to move you along. And trust me, you won't like it if I have to do it."
The kid stared at her. Laurel stared back. Neither of them was comfortable with the other's presence, and they both knew it. Laurel wondered yet again what the hell Sebastian had meant in bringing her here. She was getting very, very tired. And she didn't want to have to deal with this kid, or any of the ghosts anymore. Especially this kid. It reminded her far too much of her own situation, years ago.
"Will it hurt?" the boy asked finally.
"No." Laurel sighed. "No it won't."
"Okay…" The boy was already starting to fade, but he seemed not to have noticed yet. "Um. How do I do it?"
"Just… give up. Give in." A small smile turned up the corners of her mouth. "Head towards the light. Or something."
"Okay…" he sounded scared. But he was fading fast, which meant he was probably on his way to where he should be. Probably.
"Hey!" Something occurred to Laurel, then. "You might want this." She heaved the bow at the kid, who caught it with a sudden and heartfelt grin. "Never know what kind of people you might meet on the other side."
"Thank you kindly, little lady," the boy said in what he probably thought of fondly as a Western-style accent. Laurel just shook her head and watched as the boy disappeared, then waited a good while longer before she went around dispelling the circle.
"Sebastian, what the hell are you doing to me…"