Page 18 of Christmas Spirits

“We’ll ask Arianna. Maybe she’ll know what it means,” he said.

“And maybe she’ll know what to do about your wrist.”

He glanced down at it and winced. “Yeah, I don’t know how I’ll be able to take the level one test now. I may have to reschedule it again.”

I frowned. I knew that was the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew better than me about magic and the need of both hands.

“We’ll see what Arianna can do.” I gave him a reassuring smile.

After parking in front of the store, we walked inside. At the sound of the bell chiming, Arianna appeared from behind the beaded curtain, holding Zach in her arms. Seeing my baby again made me flush with relief, and I strode over to take him. She gladly passed him over, and I pressed my lips against the top of his fuzzy head.

“How’d it go?” she asked, looking us over. When she spotted Laurence’s wrist, she sucked in a sharp breath. “That good, huh?”

“The poltergeist followed us there,” Laurence explained. “It forced its way into Kay’s mother…”

Her eyes widened in shock. “What?”

Laurence glanced my way, silently asking if I wanted to chime in.

I sighed and swayed side to side as Zach chewed on his fingers. “She was channeling it. Unwillingly.”

“And it broke your wrist?” she asked Laurence.

“And threw Kay across the room.”

Again.

“Looks like you have a pretty powerful poltergeist on your hands here,” she said.

“There’s another thing,” Laurence said. “Before we left, she had said Marc Anders. Kay thinks her mom was trying to tell us something. Like a clue. Does that mean anything to you?”

Arianna shook her head. “Not off the top of my head, but there’s one way to find out.”

“One of your aunt’s books again?” I asked.

She chuckled. “Nope. Just the handy, dandy internet. We’re not savages.”

She spun around and disappeared into the back room again, only to return a minute later with a laptop in hand. Opening it, we walked over to her side and peered at the screen. She typed in the name Marc Anders into the search bar.

The second she hit GO, the screen filled with the name, mostly from articles or news captions. And other reoccurring words followed after it.

Murderer. Serial killer. The Westwood Stalker.

Icy-cold dread snaked through me, making me shiver.

“Looks like Marc Anders’s has been around the block,” she said, quickly skimming the information on the screen.

From what I could gather during her rapid clicking, Marc Anders was known for following his victims—all women between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five—kidnapping them in broad daylight, holding them in a large storage container in the back woods on his property, and repeatedly raping them before killing and burying them in shallow graves.

“Why would your mom say the name of a known serial killer?” Laurence asked me from over my shoulder.

“You said she was channeling the spirit at the time she said the name, right?” Arianna asked, and I nodded. “Do you remember me saying that poltergeists were once souls of those who’d been so corrupt, something had happened during their transition after death?”

“You mean…” My words trailed off as the information sank in.

“Yep. We now have the name of our spirit.”

“And…that’s a good thing.” Laurence’s tone revealed he was unsure.

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