Quick as a shot, I swept my broom to the side, then pulled it back to me like an oar. This sent my phone skittering across the floor and straight toward me. Thank goodness I’d invested in a good phone case, or this plan would not have worked.
I stooped down still rooted to the spot and grasped the phone in my hands. With a quick swipe to unlock it, I opened my contacts and typed a quick message, both of my thumbs flying impossibly fast over the screen.
Drake, SOS!
Come help me!
I sent each text separately, not knowing when Virginia would manage to wrest the phone from my hands and silence my cries for help.
Ghost is— Virginia reeled back around and tore the phone from my hands with her magic before I could finish. It flew and smashed against the wall, much the same as the frog had. So much for that heavy-duty case.
RIP, my iPhone.
Drake would come. I knew he would. What he’d be able to do to help, now there was a question I hadn’t quite thought out.
I studied Virginia to see if any more of her had faded from view, thanks to her most recent use of magic, but it seemed she had lost no ground. Which meant the drain she’d placed on me was beginning to work.
No, no, no.What else could I do to stall her?
“Merlin, I’m scared!” I shouted, making Virginia positively glow withschadenfreude.
“I won’t leave you,” he promised from his spot at the window. “Even through the barrier spell, my presence is keeping you strong. And yours is also protecting me.”
“But the drain…” My words fell away as if my energy was also being sucked from me along with the magic.
Merlin stood and pressed his paws against the barrier, giving me a full view of his furry tummy.“It’s my magic you carry. A small part of it is going to Virginia, but most of it is able to escape to the barrier and come back to me. I can’t leave or the magic will have no place else to go.”
“Stop helping her!” Virginia raged, but she was also unable to cast through the barrier. To land an attack on Merlin, she’d need to go outside. And we all knew he was a much more powerful magic user than she was, especially with my additional energy flowing into him now.
“You’re stuck until you’ve generated enough magic to enact whatever death spell you have planned.” Merlin addressed the ghost directly, his voice cold and haughty.
To me, he said,“Ignore her. She can’t hurt you yet.”
“Oh, yes, I can!” Virginia screamed and then lunged and bit me again. She came at me so fast, I hadn’t been ready with my broom. Darn it!
This new wound throbbed with pain, but I could survive it. She couldn’t bite me to death, and right now my primary objective was to not die. Honestly, it was kind of my only objective.
“Memorize this list of ingredients,” Luna called to me from beside Merlin. “When your boyfriend gets here, send him straight to my garden. If he brings back what we need, Merlin and I can make a new binding potion.”
“But he’ll see you practicing magic and hear you talking!” I objected. Merlin had drilled it into my head from the start that I could not reveal magic to non-magical people. What was the point of surviving my ghostly encounter only to wind up in a dingy prison for the rest of my life?
Luna’s voice came to me strong and confident. “We have not revealed ourselves to him, so he will only hear meows. And his eyes will invent other scenarios to explain away our actions. Everything will be fine. Just be careful. Now memorize this list. Hawthorn, celandine…”
Luna shouted out at least ten ingredients, and we went over them again and again until she was sure I had them all right.
Virginia continued to spit and howl, but at worst she only made us repeat ourselves a few times to be heard over the din.
Why did it feel like my epic magical encounters always dragged out? Life-or-death confrontations in movies always happened so fast. There was no waiting for a ghost’s magic to recharge or biding time until the correct potion could be brewed.
Real magic was both more exciting and much more boring than the magic in the movies. At least the movies couldn’t kill me.
Virginia, on the other hand…
She swept toward me again, and I hit her away with the broom. I was getting kind of good at this. She rounded back to attack again, but a pair of bright white lights burst through the window, interrupting her efforts.
Drake had arrived.
24
Everything seemed to stop as Virginia and I waited mid-battle for Drake to turn off his engine, exit the car, and come inside.
He pounded on the front door.“Gracie! Is everything okay? Let me in!”
The barrier spell! Would he even be able to enter? And if he did, would he be able to get out again?
“Drake,” I cried out, my voice hoarse from all the screaming I’d been doing that night. “Don’t come in!”
“What’s going on?” he demanded, rattling the doorknob, but it remained shut tight.
“Don’t come in!” I begged, hoping he wouldn’t waste time arguing. I needed him to act and act fast. “Please, I need your help. I need you to go to a garden and get me a list of ingredients.”
Drake pounded on the door with all he had.“What? Gracie, why? What’s going on? Is the ghost back? Are you okay?”
“It’s here, and it’s very angry. I need to bind it before—”
“I’m not an it! Show some respect, you weak mortal!” Virginia hissed and swooped around the room.
“Whoa,” Drake cried, and his pounding stopped. “Was that the ghost? You’re right, it does sound angry!”
“It, it, it! I am not an it! And you, foolish boy, have just been added to my hit list,” Virginia was in fine form, glowing the brightest I’d seen yet. Pride was an important sticking point for her. Hmm, maybe if Drake came in he could talk her to death by getting her to use her magic so muchshe dematerialized, but I couldn’t risk his safety. And I also much preferred ridding myself of her permanently. It was Luna’s potion or bust. I just needed to convince Drake to leave and get what she needed.
“Drake, it’s okay. Don’t listen to her,” I called, hoping that Virginia’s threats hadn’t caused him to lose courage. “Just go to the garden. Bring back what we need. It’s the only way. Do you have your phone? Take down this list.”
A brief moment of silence, and then,“I’m ready.”
I recited the ingredients to Luna’s nodding approval and also gave Drake the address. “Now hurry please! I’m counting on you!”
I listened as Drake’s feet slapped the pavement in retreat, then his engine roared to life and he sped away.
“What now?” I asked the cats who were both still watching from the windowsill.
“We wait and hope that he brings us the correct ingredients. And swiftly,” Luna answered.
“Drake knows a little bit about a lot of things,” I said, recalling the conversation I’d had first with him and then with Kelley. “Gardening is one of them. Besides, he can always look up the ingredients on his phone and make sure he’s picking the right ones. He won’t mess this up.”
For some reason, I believed this with every fiber of my being. Drake would not let me down. In fact, he would save me. Everything would be okay.
I just had to be patient.
“I’m growing stronger by the minute,” Virginia reminded me in a serpentine whisper. And she was right. She’d regained the form she had when I first saw her—a full bust that filled out to just a little below her armpits. “I will kill you, Gracie, and I will make your boyfriend watch. Then I’ll rebuild my power and kill him, too. Next will be Luna. I’m saving my former master for last. Before the night is through, you will all be dead.”
“No one is dying today, you old goose,” Merlin heckled her through the barrier. “Especially not my familiar and not my unborn children!”
Virginia gasped and spun toward the window.“What did you say?”
“We have the power of love on our side. Your hate will never win,” I yelled, because that seemed like the type of thing a good guy would say in a showdown like this.