as I could, as one of the wraiths turned and followed me, up to the front and down the other side until the blade touched where I started. The circle was etched clearly into the pavement, and it took me a split second to stand and snap out the closest thing to a spell I had at the front of my brain.
“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”
The four wraiths turned as a unit to look at me, Corb opening his eyes to stare in apparent bafflement, and even Sarge leaned out of the window with his brows furrowed.
“What the hell? That isn’t a spell to contain anything!” He twisted his head to the side, for all the world like a large dog.
“I don’t know!” I yelled as the wraiths floated toward me, going right over the damn circle I’d made because, of course, it wasn’t complete without a proper spell. “It was the first thing I thought of!”
A hand clamped on my arm and I was yanked backward by Feish. “Maybe I was wrong. I think you do need me more than Boss.”
Feish tugged me again, and we were off and running away from the gas station, down the side of the road.
Running. Limping running.
The bane of my existence, and yet I always seemed to be doing it. “Feish, we can’t run forever!”
“I know you can’t. But we need a better place to stand our ground.” She seemed to be searching for something in particular.
I grimaced and dared to glance back. All four wraiths were following us, keeping pace with their long weird stick legs, each step covering ground like they were freaking giraffes. Dead giraffes with giant black bug eyes that reflected the lights off the gas station. Their deep gray coloring matched the mist that spooled up around their legs and seemed to carry them along. They wore tight fitted clothes that only accentuated their inhuman appearance.
Those solid, black bug eyes locked on me from their spindly heads, and it was all I could do to rip my gaze away. Something about them drew me to stare hard into their eyes and, call me crazy, but that seemed like a very bad idea.
Feish suddenly pulled me hard to the left, away from the road and into the bush. “Feish, this will slow us down!” I gasped out as I stumbled over a lump of vegetation. She only paused long enough to yank me back onto my feet.
“Them too! They all gangly goofs, they will fall too,” she threw back at me. “Come on, hurry!”
The rev of the Mustang’s engine caught my ears, and I fought the urge to turn back and check on the guys and Kink. The wraiths were too close for me to risk it. My hip bag bounced hard, and Alan grumbled something about being left alone in peace and quiet. I thumped the bag once for good measure. The last thing I needed was for him to fly out and distract me.
The brush around us was alive with the sounds of bugs and the smell of growing things, the heat pulling on my limbs as if it were an actual weight.
“Here, here! I thought I smelled it!” Feish yelled as she gave my hand another sharp tug. We tumbled out of the long brush that had been tangling around my legs and into an open space. I picked up speed, stumbled over a stone, and went to my knees.
The ground seemed to pull my hands down into the sod, trapping me there. “Feish! I’m stuck!”
My hands were being pulled farther down, and in a matter of seconds, I was—impossibly—almost armpit deep in the ground, my hands above my head. Quicksand? But that wasn’t possible. There was no quicksand in Alabama!
Both my amulet and Louis’s heated as the talismans fought off the spell that was softening the ground and sucking me under. A spell to trap me in the ground, to keep me in one place and easier for killing.
The wraiths behind us let out a wail, like hunting dogs on the scent of their prey, and by the time I looked up, they had me encircled, bug eyes and freaky giraffe legs stalking around me.
My knees began to sink further, pulling my lower half down. I fought the hold of the earth, terror quickly silencing any smart-ass comment that might want to slip past my lips.
The wraiths did what I’d been trying to do. They drew a circle around me and them, using their long, spindly fingers