to wreak vengeance.
Vengeance.
“Rae. Rae, as soon as you see him, you need to get the girls to go hide in the car.”
“Tucker, I’m busy here—”
“If Conklin’s running the show, he’s….” Tucker shuddered. “He’s not your husband, Rae, and he likes to hurt women.”
Rae wrapped the wire around the second-to-last peg and unwound enough to finish the final leg. She double-checked the length and then snipped it off with some wire cutters from her pocket. “You told us that. I remember.”
“Rae, I am afraid for you,” he told her nakedly.
“Tucker, you and me, we’re going to have a conversation after my husband gets unpossessed. I think this thing you do with Angel is real noble and all, but it’s gonna fuckin’ kill you if you are not careful.”
She rose from her crouch to start the next stage—the circle. Tucker moved to the middle, turning as she ran the wire, crouched, wrapped it around the next nail, and the next, and the next. He kept his eyes on the property, not sure which direction Josh was going to come running from—if he was going to emerge from the trees, pop out from the dimensional graveyard, or charge down the underbrush at the fence line. Either way, Tucker needed to be ready. The ghosts were staring at the lot of them making a trap in their territory. To Tucker’s left, Tilda was wrapping a broomstick in silver wire. One of the ectoplasmic remnants of bad karma and residual memories started to moan as she threw the thing down the hole and then stood on it, shoving it down until her leg disappeared.
She grabbed the post-hole digger and used it to thrust the broomstick in deeper, and the moan intensified to a scream.
Rae looked over her shoulder at the masses of the disembodied dead staring at her and her children and at Angel and Tucker with the ferociousness of murder in their eyes, and spat.
“Find your way to heaven, you assholes! If you’re stuck here, it’s ’cause you didn’t fuckin’ want it bad enough!”
The ghost stopped screaming for a moment, and Rae crouched down to start inscribing the circle. She’d finished the first leg in the stunned silence when an anguished shriek stilled her.
“Rae! Dammit, run.”
Tucker saw Josh then, right at the tree line beyond the cemetery, and called out, “Angel! Get the kids to the minivan. Stay with them!”
“Goddammit, Tucker!”
“Protect the children, dammit! Murphy, Coral, Tilda—you guys get your asses to the car!”
Tilda was shoving the second broomstick down on top of the first. “Gimme a goddamned minute,” she shouted. “Murphy, Coral, listen to him!”
“Listen to me!” Rae snapped. “Kids, now!”
They had three more legs to the circle left, the nails pushed into the dirt, and Murphy finished the last nail as Coral turned to grab the bucket.
“Leave it!” Rae hollered, clipping off an end of silver wire. “C’mon, Tucker, we’ve got time to finish this. Josh can’t run for shit!” Tucker ran to the center of the pentagram and watched Josh’s progress as Rae wired the center nail of the figure and ran the wire down to the hole.
“Shit!” they both said together. The ends that connected the whole works to the hole in the ground hadn’t been connected to the post-hole digger.
“You come here and finish the pentagram,” Tucker hollered. “I’ll get that!”
Her job required more strength and more finesse—but Tucker wasn’t proud. Feverishly, he wrapped the loose ends, connecting the points of the pentagram with the angles of the pentagon inside the circle. Five points when Rae finished the one she was working on. Five was a good number, wasn’t it? Tucker tried to remember what five represented in numerology, and all he could come up with was the five of wands and how everybody seemed to be running around with their heads up their asses. Whatever.
“The second broomstick is stopping,” Tilda said, shoving at it with the post-hole digger. “If you finish what you’re doing and give it to me, I should be able to connect it all.”
Tucker finished the last wrap and handed it off, then swung around to look at their handiwork. It looked good—a sparkling, house-sized pentacle, actually, surrounded by the toxic phosphorescence of the angry dead.
Beyond the milling ghosts, Josh stumbled, fell to his knees, and for a moment, he struggled. Tucker could see him, pounding the ground in frustration, as Josh Greenaway fought with Thomas Conklin Senior for control of the form they were both currently occupying.
“You fucker, get out!” Josh shouted, and Tucker