The fighting had started out loud. Shamus roared and screamed. Bodies make noise when they are flung on the floor. Not just the sound of floor and flesh, but grunts and cracks as bones broke. The metal bar added a new dimension to the noise. There was a rhythm to it as he drove Marsilia back toward me, and I realized he was just playing with her.
I couldn't help her with him. I had to trust that she was strong enough, good enough to protect herself, because I had another job - there were thirteen more ghosts in the room. And I had to figure out a way to keep Frost from eating them all. One of them was right next to me. I grabbed her by the wrist. My hand started to pass through, but I focused my sight on her and she became more solid, just as Peter had.
"Tell me your name," I said to her, giving my command that borrowed-from-Adam Alpha wolf push.
"Janet," she told me, her voice vibrating up my arm.
"Janet," I told her. "Leave."
She tried, but Frost's net held her. Her eyes were terrified. I tried stripping the net from her with my hands, but it didn't work. She wasn't pack, so I couldn't use pack magic to free her.
I pulled Zee's sword out and invoked its larger form. For Zee and Tad, Hunger had been a black long sword. For me, it turned into a plain-bladed katana with a gaudy red-and-purple hilt.
It didn't do anything to the net, though I had the feeling that in sunlight, when a vampire's magic would be at its weakest, it would have been able to eat the magic that bound the ghost. I even tried stabbing her with it. I felt it taste her briefly, and she looked even more terrified, if that were possible. But when I pulled the sword back, she was still there, encased in Frost's trap. I talked the reluctant sword back into its smaller form and stuck it back in my coat pocket.
The clank, clank, clank of the iron bar stopped suddenly, and I looked up to see it arc over the wall of the basement and safely out of useful range. Marsilia popped her shoulder back into joint without so much as a grimace and reengaged Frost. Without the bar, he was not so overwhelming - but she was still hurt. And then he reached out, almost casually, and ate another ghost. It was quick, and I was too far away to do anything about it - even if I could have figured out how. He smiled at me before he hit Marsilia in her damaged shoulder.
Desperate, I pulled my lamb-and-dog-tag necklace off my neck. Armed by my faith, the symbol of the Lamb of God had defended me against vampires. Maybe it would work against vampiric magic.
"Please, dear Lord," I said. "Let this work."
Then I pressed it against the net - which shrank away from the little golden lamb, twisting, curling, and lessening until the ghost stood free. I touched the lamb to her forehead, and said, "Janet. Be at peace."
She vanished in a bright flash of light.
"Yes!" I shouted in triumph and more than a little awe. My little lamb had outperformed Zee's sword.
From across the room, Stefan smiled at me.