Bone Dry_ A Soul Shamans Novel - Cady Vance Page 0,5
“Let’s do this.”
I dropped the parchment onto the candle and pressed my thumb back against Laura’s over the licking flames. I could feel us take a deep breath together, centering ourselves. And then we both opened our mouths and sang. The song was nothing more than vowels strung together in an easy, melodic tune, but I could feel the intensity of those sounds with every beat. I ignored the heat of the flame under my palm, too focused on what was passing between Laura and me.
It felt like my blood was rushing into her veins, our magic mixing together. The volume of our voices rose. What had started in soft whispers became a belting song. I suddenly didn’t care if her dad heard. I was too wrapped up in the magic. I missed how it made me feel like I could take on the world.
And then our voices stopped, and all I could hear was our ragged breathing and the beating of both our hearts in the same steady rhythm. Bound together by shaman magic. I felt ready for anything, bigger, taller. And because of the spark I saw in Laura’s eyes, I knew she did, too. But I quickly sobered up when I remembered what we were about to face. Kylie needed us to banish a spirit from her bedroom, and if we didn’t do this right, it would suck our life away.
***
As we walked down the winding street lined with perfectly manicured lawns and sprawling mansions, my shaman magic raced through my bloodstream, intensifying every sense. The scent of freshly cut grass and baking apple pie surrounded me and clogged my nostrils. In the distance, I could hear the whoosh of a basketball sweeping through the hoop hanging over the Lyons’ garage door. The shhhhhhh, shk, shk, shk, shk of a sprinkler rushed into my ears, and enveloping it all was the humid ocean air, so thick it was as if my skin sliced Holly-shaped holes through it.
The world just seemed so surreal, like I wasn’t totally connected to it. Or, actually, maybe it was that I was more in tune with it than normal.
Laura was quiet as our flip flops slapped the pavement. I could tell she finally realized what we were about to do. Any shaman in her right mind hated spirits. Probably feared them a little even though we had to bottle that up real tight. Because if we gave in to the fear even a little bit, a spirit would attack us and feed on our life. I’d only been attacked by a spirit once, but that loss of control, of feeling the days of my life slipping away from me…I knew I never wanted to let it happen again.
As we turned into Kylie’s long driveway, a breeze blew off the ocean, lifting my long, brown hair off my shoulders and blowing it behind me. I handed Laura some supplies, and she disappeared into the plants lining the drive. No one at school knew she had anything to do with my cases so we’d decided she should stay tucked inside the bushes where she couldn’t be spotted. As long as she was nearby, we’d stay bound.
Kylie was waiting for me on the front porch, just standing there with hands clasped around a thick white pillar. Her face was pale, and her body was as stiff as a corpse, but she still managed to look like a supermodel.
“Thank god you’re here,” she said when I shuffled up the stairs. “I don’t want to be alone anymore. I asked Nathan if he’d come over, but he had to work.” She pulled off her cotton headband and picked at invisible frayed ends. “It’s been doing it again today.”
“Doing what?” I asked, following her inside. The entry opened up into the highest ceilings I’d ever seen in a house, and I felt like I needed to whisper to keep my voice from echoing all around me.
“Throwing things. Turning the TV on and off. Pulling the blankets off my bed.” She shuddered.
“And this is just in your room, right?” I eyed the big living room and the wide staircase. A lot of space for a spirit to wreak havoc.
“Yeah, is that bad?” she asked. “Please tell me it’s not bad.”
“No, no,” I said. “That’s a good thing. It would be a lot harder for me to get rid of it if it was all over the place in this huge house.”
She just stared at me, fingernails in her headband