his palm that zipped across the space to engulf the former duke. The glow overcame him and then collapsed into nothing but a pinpoint, leaving an empty space where Griffin’s father had been.
A gasp tore from his mother’s lips. Garibaldi shushed her. “Hush, my dear. He’s not destroyed, merely exiled from this place.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Griffin told him quietly as a familiar sensation began swirling in his chest.
Garibaldi turned that strange hand toward him. In his other, he held an object that sent a chill right down to Griff’s feet. A spirit box. Such things were rare—prisons for spirits. The ghost’s essence could be captured and bound to the box—and whoever owned it—forever.
The bastard was going to imprison his mother, bind her to that box and keep her as his.
“I see you recognize what this is.” Garibaldi held up the box and waggled it mockingly. “You also know I have power here. Power I intend to use. Now, be a good boy or I’ll use it on you.”
Griffin laughed, warmth rushing through his Aetheric self. Unlike Garibaldi, he was bound to his body even in this realm. He wasn’t a spirit, and no one—no one—had power like his. The worst Garibaldi could do to him was send him back to his body. His mother, however would become a prisoner, and even Griffin would be unable to save her then.
The villain had him and he knew it. A slow smile curved the man’s lips. “Now that we understand one another, you’ll run along if you ever want to see your mother again. If not, when I wake up, I start with your friends. Want to wager on whether or not I can pull their spirits from their bodies?”
He didn’t think such a thing was possible, but no, he didn’t want to wager the lives of his friends on it. He didn’t want to lose his mother, either—not to this monster. She belonged in Heaven—the spirit realm—with his father.
The thought of his father brought Griffin’s anger to the foreground. How dare Garibaldi involve his parents—hadn’t he done enough to them? And how dare the man meet Griffin in this place and make threats?
He couldn’t rush him, because he’d use the box on his mother. He couldn’t use his own abilities against him, because his mother might get caught in the cross fire.
Glancing at Garibaldi’s body in the chair, an idea occurred to him. He turned on the villain with a smile. “Have you an effect on the tangible world in this form, sir?”
Garibaldi scowled. “Of course not.” Only against other spirits did Aether travelers have form. But Griffin was not an ordinary traveler.
“I do,” he said. And to prove his point, he moved—teleported, for lack of better term—to the chair and wrapped his hand around Garibaldi’s throat. The spirit of the man caught his breath, his metal hand going to his throat.
Griffin looked at his mother as he squeezed harder. “Go.”
She shot him a worried glance, but didn’t argue. She simply disappeared, set free by Garibaldi’s loss of concentration.
It would be a lie if Griffin were to say he wasn’t tempted to end this then and there, but he was not a murderer. He would not make himself into the very thing he was so tempted to destroy at that moment. That didn’t stop him from holding on just a little bit longer. Garibaldi’s face began to turn blue as his spirit waned and sputtered.
A little reluctantly, Griffin let go. While the man sputtered for breath, Griffin reached down and grabbed his mother’s earring from the hand made of flesh rather than metal. For now at least, Garibaldi would have no power over his parents.
His actions cost him, however. As Garibaldi’s shocked body pulled his spirit back to it, his Aetheric self raised the metal hand and blasted Griffin with the same energy it had used on his father. Griffin’s fingers curled around the earring just as he was sucked back into his own body in his own house.
He bolted upright on the floor of his study, the warm gold in his palm digging into his flesh. He had saved his mother, but for how long? He still had no idea where Garibaldi was hiding or of his plans for his automaton. He was exactly where he had started.
Perhaps not exactly. He knew now that Garibaldi had power in the Aether, and he would be better prepared for that the next time around. He also knew that his mother was