chairs, nuts and bolts, leather belts, plus a few spell ingredients for the exorcism, and we went on a quick scavenger hunt. Once the Warlock and I had collected some items from the residents down the hall, we went back to the room and I helped him build a restraint chair using the wooden pair as a base. The twin black kittens crouched side by side on top of one of the dressers, watching our labor with rapt interest.
After an hour of magic and elbow grease, the chair was complete, and Cooper had returned with a couple of vials of holy water and some other items that he had apparently gotten from the dead priest’s room.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
“Sure.” I sat down in the Warlock’s creation. The apparatus held my arms out at my sides at chest level, my left arm fitting into a steel overgauntlet that the Warlock had forged from the trash can and part of a folding chair. He’d fashioned an upper back and head support from the second wooden chair. When they got me strapped in, I couldn’t move more than to breathe, but the position I was in was actually fairly comfortable.
Cooper held up the football mouthpiece he’d sanitized and adjusted. “Open wide.”
He slipped the mouthpiece in, popping it into place around my upper teeth and gums. It tasted unpleasantly of plastic and felt like I’d just bitten into a huge piece of stale taffy. “You shouldn’t be able to seriously damage yourself with this in, but just to be safe, we’ll strap your jaw closed so the devil can’t make you bite off your own tongue.”
“Or cast any diabolic spells to counter the exorcism,” the Warlock added.
The first prickles of claustrophobic anxiety danced up my spine as Cooper tightened a leather belt around my head to close my lower jaw around the mouthpiece. I wondered if this was what it felt like to get strapped into an electric chair.
Please stay close, I thought to Pal.
“Of course,” my familiar replied. “I wouldn’t think of leaving you at a time like this.”
Cooper sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, head bowed, staring down at the vial of holy water in his hand. We weren’t Catholics, of course, and I didn’t expect Cooper to invoke Jehovah’s help, but the blessed water holds spiritual purification powers most Talents can tap if they know how.
Cooper looked at his brother. “The doors locked?”
The Warlock nodded, nervously flipping one of the holy water vials through his fingers.
“Okay, then.” Cooper knelt before me, closed his eyes, and began chanting old, old words.
My heart jumped in my chest, and I felt a sudden pain in my head, my guts. I could feel the incendiary ectoplasm jetting from my hand, spilling over the edge of the glove, turning the enchanted steel gauntlet red, smoking like an overheated skillet, but the metal was holding.
Cooper chanted louder, rose to his feet, and poured holy water onto my face. It burned so badly I thought my skin was peeling off. I screamed against the mouthpiece, my muscles jerking spasmodically against the restraints. My vision started to fade, going black at the edges, and I felt myself falling backward—
—I was standing in my old bedroom in the hellement, the floorboards rattling beneath me as if there was an earthquake—
—I was back in the chair, screaming louder, throat aching, but it didn’t even sound like my own voice, it sounded like a couple of cats. My vision cleared. Cooper was standing over me, and past him I could see that the kittens were clawing at the hallway door, howling loud as twin klaxons, fluffed-out black Tesla fur showering blue sparks onto the carpet.
“Keep going, Coop, you’ve almost got it by the balls!” The Warlock tried to pick up the kittens but jerked his hands away as if he’d been burned or shocked or both.
The door boomed as if somebody in the hall had slammed it with a battering ram. The kittens dashed away under the closest bed, and the Warlock stepped back. Another boom, and the cheap steel lock gave, the door slamming inward, the doorknob denting against the cinder-block wall.
Sara stood there in the doorway, Redhawk pistol raised and pointed at the Warlock’s head. “Stop. Right. Now.”
Cooper didn’t stop.
“We can’t—” the Warlock began.
Without another word, Sara stepped forward into the room and fired her pistol at Cooper. I jumped in my restraints. The bullet ripped through his calf muscle. He swore and collapsed backward