Griffin snarls through his teeth. DJ lunges forward and grabs Griffin’s other arm, trying to yank him free, but Morrow’s grip tightens. Griffin’s knees buckle.
I can’t sit here and watch them. I can’t be useless while Zoey is on the floor staring up at nothing.
I grab the door frame with my good hand. My legs don’t want to hold me, but I force them to anyway, hauling myself into the van.
“Get off him!” I yell.
Morrow’s head whips toward me.
I grab the bag of salt from the back and fling a handful at Morrow’s face. It passes through him but leaves gaps, breaks in his form where the crystals cut.
“That’s right, asshole,” I say. “Remember me?”
“You bitch,”he says, his voice pressing up against the borders of my mental walls.
Benji scrambles for his bag, pulling out a railroad spike.
“Call me that again, I dare you,” I urge. “You have no idea how much worse this can get for you.”
Benji drives the spike into Morrow’s arm. The smoke parts dramatically where the iron jabs through Morrow’s form, leaving a tunnel big enough that Bob could leap through. The tunnel widens, severing his smoke arm.
Morrow’s amputation isn’t enough to stop him from using his arm, which hovers in place, thrashing and yanking, but his grip on Griffin loosens, and DJ pulls him free.
The ghost vac pulls harder.
Morrow’s fighting it, tendrils whipping out in every direction, at the racks, at the walls, at the floor, and then recoiling like the eyestalk of a slug. My walls are up, but when he screams, it’s not inside my head. The others flinch, but grimace through the pain of Morrow’s furious shrieks.
His eagerness to find Zoey, alone in the van, must have overruled the part of him that was cautious and planned ahead. Only now that he’s trapped does he seem to be coming to terms with the reality of his situation, that he’s going to be sealed in an iron tomb.
He sinks lower, his reach growing shorter and shorter. His face is contorted, brows furrowed deep, lips peeled back in a snarl.
I laugh. It’s like the sound wounds him, judging by the way his tendrils suck in.
One thick tendril bursts out of Morrow’s chest, lashing toward me.
I throw myself to the side, my good hand grabbing at the salt water bottle on the seat. I go down hard on my knees, pain exploding through both kneecaps, but I have the bottle. I twist the cap off with my teeth and fling the contents at Morrow.
The salt water hits him in the face. Where it touches him, his billowing form sizzles and pops like bacon grease on a hot pan. He shrieks again, the sound so loud it makes the van windows rattle.
His mouth opens, unhinging like a python, but the containment unit drags him down in a spiral of furious mist. His eyes find mine.
The jar swallows him whole.
Benji slams the lid on and twists it shut so hard the threads grind. Griffin disconnects the ghost vac. Inside the jar, angry smoke presses against the glass, swirling and battering against the sides.
I drop the bottle and crawl toward Zoey, who’s still lying on the floor.
But Griffin is already at her side, checking her pulse. “She’s breathing. Zo? Zoey, can you see me?”
Zoey blinks slowly. “What—” she starts, then her eyes go to the jar on the floor. “Did you get him?”
I collapse into a heap and release a trembling breath.
“We got him,” Griffin croaks, and the relief in his voice is so palpable I can practically feel it filling the van. He crushes her into a hug and her muscles tense, but she accepts it.
DJ sinks onto the bench seat, her shotgun still clutched in both hands. She’s shaking so hard that the gun barrel is rattling against her knee.
Benji kneels in the center of the van, staring at the jar, and then turns around to look at me. “Eden, are you okay?”
