Page 19 of Christmas Spirits

Arianna rolled her eyes. “Follow me, here. To get rid of a poltergeist, the spirit must be joined again with its earthly body and burned, in order for it to be cleansed from the living world and the spirit world.”

“So, now that we have the spirit’s name, we can find his body,” I finished.

“And burn it,” Laurence concluded.

“Exactly.” Arianna pointed to something on her screen. “And it says here, Anders was captured, sentenced to life, where he died only two years later during a prison riot. He’s buried in Westwood cemetery.”

“That’s only thirty minutes from here,” he replied.

She snapped her laptop shut. “All right. Looks like it’s time to go grave robbing.”

I blanched. What? Grave robbing?

Laurence seemed just as taken aback. “Uh… You seem a little too excited about digging up some guy’s bones.”

She shrugged, unfazed. “It’s not my first time disturbing a grave. Most cursed and charmed objects are in tombs or buried with the dead.”

It was still hard for me to wrap my head around. Arianna, who was such a young girl, had spent her college years traveling the world and stealing magical pieces from some pretty powerful people, dead or alive.

“Kay, you can stay here, if you want. It’ll be safer for you with all the wards I have on the place,” she suggested. “Laurence and I can go and…”

“We can’t leave them alone,” Laurence interjected. “Not with the poltergeist determined to get to her. And no offense but I don’t think your protection spells will be able to hold it off forever. The thing snapped my wrist like it wasnothing.Kay doesn’t have magic. She can’t defend herself.”

“Okay, then you stay with her,” she said shortly. “I’ll go alone.”

Laurence took a minute to consider this, but then he said, “I don’t like that idea, either. It’s already dark. You shouldn’t be out there alone.”

Arianna let out an aggravated sigh. “I can take care of myself, you know. Level three, remember?”

“That’s not the point.”

As they continued to bicker back and forth and talk about me as if I wasn’t standing there, annoyance jabbed at me. I was getting tired of this constant need to bend over backwards to protect me. I was tired of being left behind. Even Jade had made me stay at the vampire club, Red, to keep me away from Xaver, and that hadn’t gone to plan.

After months of tiptoeing around my anxiety, I was done being coddled. This spirit was attached to me. It was my problem, and I wasn’t going to be hiding from it and allowing others to fight my battles for me.

My grandmother’s words echoed from my memory.You’re only as strong as you let yourself believe. Believe you can move mountains and you will.

As much as I loved and missed my mother, I couldn’t become like her.

“I’m going,” I said, snapping them both out of their squabbling. They stared at me in disbelief, but I ignored it and passed Zach over to Laurence’s good arm. “Me staying here means I can lead the poltergeist to Zach, and I’m not risking that. I’ll go, get Anders’s remains, and come back.”

“No,” Laurence replied shortly. “Not a chance. It’ll follow you.”

“I’ll go with her,” Arianna said, chin lifted. “With your broken wrist, I’m the better one of the two of us to spellcast if it comes down to it.”

That was a nice way of putting it. Not because she was more powerful or a higher level than him but because of his wrist. Since she had been working with him for some time on his magic and readying him for his test, I suspected she was doing all she could to not hurt his ego any more than he did on his own. Confidence was a big part of the craft, or at least that’s what I’d been told. It was Laurence’s lack of certainty in himself that was holding him back.

From his hesitance and narrowed eyes, it appeared he wasn’t on board with Arianna and my plan, but after a moment, he sighed, defeated. “Fine. I’ll stay behind.”

“Great!” Arianna perked up instantly. “Now, let’s get something to splint that wrist and help speed up the healing. Then, I’ll get the shovels out of the back.”

* * *

After constructinga makeshift splint and sling from a broken crate and a shredded bedsheet, Laurence drank something resembling tea but smelling nothing like it and claimed the pain had eased. He still made grunting noises whenever he’d moved too fast or bumped his hand against anything.

But despite all that, he swore he would be able to stay behind with Zach.

We took Arianna’s BMW Beetle this time, a cute little white thing with a canvas roof and tiny interior. The typical car I’d expect for a young woman to drive. Until she explained it had been her Aunt Marla’s car that she’d inherited after her death.

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