Page 25 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

“Great. All this and your new friend happens to be a pyromaniac.”

“I asked him to set the fire, if that helps.”

“Okay, weirdly enough, it doesn’t. It doesn’t help at all.” Sam gave the door a venomous look. “I sort of like not being charcoal.”

“I love you, too,” I said.

A look of horrified realization washed over Sam’s face. “I didn’t mean—”

There was a light knock. “You two decent in there?” Cylia called, before opening the door and sticking her head inside. “James says he can’t be absolutely sure it worked without having a ghost to test the wards, but he’s about ninety percent sure. Ninety-five, maybe. Now do you want to come out and explain why you asked him to do that, and why you couldn’t help?”

“Sure.” I set my coffee mug on the counter. The last thing I needed right now was more caffeine. I was already more than wired enough.

In the dining room, James was using a hand towel to meticulously remove each scrap of ash from his fingers. He glanced up when he heard my footsteps, frowning at the sight of Sam trailing along behind me.

“Fun night, huh?” I asked. “Bet you didn’t think this would be the end result of your little adventure in breaking and entering.”

“It’s definitely put me off my life of crime,” he said dryly.

“Where’s Fern?”

“She took the casserole dish out back to hose the embers, so we don’t start a real fire,” said Cylia. “It was a stroke of luck that we found a cast iron casserole dish in the first place.”

“Good luck, so there’s that,” I said. “Look, James, I haven’t been exactly straight with you.”

He rolled his eyes extravagantly. “Really? The woman who punches robbers after accosting them in the woods, knows about ghost wards, and has a sorcerer for a grandfather, not being entirely straight with me? Forgive me while I die of shock.”

“Wait,” said Sam. “Not just general wards, but ghost wards? Why would you—aw, fuck, Mary. Was she here?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She came to talk to me when I went outside. That’s why I was gone so long.”

“Who’s Mary?” asked James. He turned to Cylia. “I feel as if I’m missing something rather important here. Could you please remind them that I can only help if I understand what’s going on?”

“Sorry, kiddo,” said Cylia. “Half the time I feel like I’m waiting for the movie.”

“Mary is my aunt,” I said. “She’s dead. She’s also a crossroads ghost.”

Slowly, James’ head swung back around, until he was staring at me with wide, disbelieving eyes. “A crossroads ghost,” he said, in a tone of exquisitely careful horror. “As in, a mortal spirit bound to serve the interests of the thing I’m planning to destroy.”

“Yup,” I said. “That would be her. Nice lady. You’d like her, except for the part where she came to try and warn me about what was going to happen now that we’ve met you, and the crossroads sort of punished her. I’m trying not to think about that too hard until I know our options. For right now, she’s missing, and a ghost named Bethany is filling in for her. Mary has always had my best interests at heart, even when they’ve conflicted with the interests of her employer. Can’t say the same about Bethany.”

“I … what?” James kept staring at me. “No. Crossroads ghosts don’t have mortal relationships. It’s part of what gets them chosen. They have no family, or minimal family, and when they die, the chance to continue interacting with the material world is tempting enough to let the crossroads convince them to become a very specific sort of haunt. They can’t be someone’s aunt.”

“I don’t know how you know more about the way this works than I do, but Mary’s an exception,” I said. The sad part was, I knew exactly how he knew more about the way the crossroads worked than I did. He’d made them his field of study, whereas my family had spent the last two generations living in the shadow of what happens when you let them get too close. Mary had asked us—begged us, even—to stay away, not to ask questions that might attract the wrong kind of attention, and we’d loved her enough and accepted them as enough of a natural phenomenon that we’d done as we were told.

I felt a little sick, to be honest. If the crossroads were something that could be fought—something that could even be destroyed—how many people had died while my family carried on treating them like they didn’t matter? Like they were something that only lured the weak or unsuspecting when we, out of everyone in the world, should have known better?

James opened his mouth to answer. Then he stopped, shut it, and simply looked at me for a very long moment before he said, “If you don’t explain right now why you have an ‘exception’ to every rule I know attached to your family, and why you knew enough to ask for wards when that ‘exception’ was replaced by someone you didn’t trust, I’m leaving.”

“Good luck with that,” said Sam.

James raised a hand. The air crackled around it, becoming crystalline, like the air on a winter morning during a hard freeze. “I don’t think luck will have much to do with it,” he said.

“Luck always has something to do with it,” said Cylia. “We’re all dancing to Fortune’s tune, whether we believe it or not. Now you boys back down and play nice, or I’ll show you just how much luck can affect the outcome of a fight.”

“She’ll do it, too,” I said. “She fights mean.”

“No,” said James. He shook his head. “I refuse. You’re the only person here who’s bothered to give me a name, and all of you talk in riddles and act like it’s normal. Well, it’s not normal. Yes, I broke into your house, and yes, I’m sorry I did that, but it doesn’t give you the right to treat me like a fool. I want the books. Give them to me and I’ll be on my way. You never have to see me again. I refuse to stand here and be made fun of.”