Page 291 of Sigils & Spells

“You didn’t get rid of me.” Andy. Of course, it was Andy.

“I didn’t try to get rid of any of you. Just her.” I insisted. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.” He stalked forward with the grace of a beautiful predator. “One minute they were here, the next, they were gone.”

“But you’re still here.”

“You didn’t bring you’re little smoke salad down to my space.” He indicated with his arm and the lights went brighter. I gasped. “It’s just an upright. Nothing special, but it was how she convinced me to stay.”

“You wanted to leave?” I asked and moved toward the piano. His space was huge since it was the entire basement. I only knew there was a washer and dryer down here. No one would come down the stairs to get pictures. Said the lights never worked.

“I don’t know what I wanted.” He moved toward the piano. “Death, maybe. Freedom from the addiction.”

I listened carefully, knowing he could turn on me at any moment and neither Finley nor Tex would be around to save me.

He played his long, graceful fingers over the keys and made beautiful sounds with them. I didn’t interrupt him. I just listened. Once he finished, I said, “You’re very talented.”

“Was.” He spun around on the bench and faced me. “I’m dead. At least, I think I’m dead. I should be dead, but…here I am.”

“Alone.” I understood then that I had taken what family he had left from him during that smudging. “Like me, but you had them.”

He nodded. “Now. Now I have to figure out what to do about all of this.”

I tilted my head and asked, “About all of what?”

“You, them, me. Is she even still out there?” He asked. “Where did you put them?”

“Put them?” My eyes went wide. “I only asked to remove the female presence from this house.”

“And you didn’t bother to find out that it was a female presence that tethered us here in the first place.” He crossed his arms. “So. You can either bring them back and live. I can end you and possibly be stuck with your spirit like I am his.” He pointed and I turned to see the journalist, but he was like a ghost, an apparition, not a solid form like Andy. “Or, you can help me get his ass over the line and then figure out how to finally end my existence. I just don’t want to give up a cage I am familiar with for a worse fate. Understand?”

I gulped. Nodded. “Okay. I uh…need to do some research.”

“Fortunately,” he said. “We have plenty of books about it.”

CHAPTER5

Fortunately for me,the good doctor was meticulous in her notes.

“Well, well, well.” I stood outside, over the space in the garden that now had two little vines springing up and out of it. I called out to my house-bound friends, “I think we got it.”

So far, I had no help for the ghost situation, but my monsters. Well, those creatures were not apparitions. They were real, eternal, and that bitch had tied them to her after turning them into what she wanted them to be. In fairness, it was Finley who set her on the path since his counseling records began after she moved into the home and discovered the vampire living there.

I spoke to the dirt and the two vines and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to send you with her. I’m going to get you out.”

I went to the shed and grabbed a shovel. Once I had the vines, roots and all, I moved them to a safe place. I needed to find the last one. Andy. I could kill him with her right now. Send them both into the next realm or wherever she would be going, but in the past week, working with him to find a solution to the missing monster problem, I…really liked him.

Andy was actually closer to my age in both metamorphic and mental years. He grew up with messed up parents and while wealthy beyond any need, he only needed someone to care about him. That was how she trapped him. His heart. Their hearts. The woman endeared them and then bound their spirits to her.

They may never be able to go grocery shopping with me, but they could live as flesh and blood…mostly, inside this property. They just needed to feed now and then.

Hence the missing journalist that Andy murdered and buried back here somewhere. Again, details to be dealt with another time.

“Where are you?” I moved to my hands and knees and used a hand rake to skim over the soil. I didn’t want to hurt him and I was no longer willing to let her keep any of them. “Come on, Andy. Help me here. Fight. They got to the top and they aren’t even in the house anymore. I–” I looked at the house and yelled, “Andy! Come outside. Come to the garden.”

“Hell no.” He stood in the doorway. “I wouldn’t go to that garden when she was alive. I’m not–”

“Get your ass over here. Now!” I held up the two vines. “This is their life source. You have one here too. She is deep in this dirt thanks to her resting here as she ensured her eternal place as yourkeeper.”

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