Page 95 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

Leonard. Swell.

“Touch her, and I will rip your lungs out through your throat, I swear to Jesus I will.”

Sam, I love you, I thought, and wished that he could hear me.

“Let me through.”

It took me a moment to place the fifth voice. James. James Smith. He sounded tired, almost exhausted, but level. I couldn’t tell whether that indicated success or failure. Was Sally back? Did we win? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t open my mouth, either. I was silent and stuck, unable to do anything at all.

Death, from what I could tell so far, really sucked. Clearly, I hadn’t managed to pick up one of the deluxe packages like Mary or Rose. Maybe I needed to die in a more easily-categorized way. “Fried by parasitic invader trying to consume the living spirit of the Earth” probably didn’t come with a clear type of haunting.

“If you touch her—” Sam again, voice low and tight and filled with a barely-contained menace. Between Leonard and James, he finally had something to focus his anger on. I hoped he’d reserve most of it for Leonard. Poor James had been through enough.

“I have to touch her if I want to put the fire out! Let me through, you asshole, before she explodes or something.”

Was I going to explode? Apparently, I was on fire, which was sort of unsettling, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that “on fire” could lead to “exploding like a car in a bad action movie.” Jean Grey spent, like, half her time on fire, and she never exploded. Then again, Jean Grey was a comic book character, and this was real life.

Pity, that. I could have used a little bit of the Phoenix Force to get me back to the land of the living.

“If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

“Understood,” snapped James.

There was a soft thudding sound, as if someone had dropped to their knees next to me, and then a wave of coolness washed through the warmth around me, chasing some of my comfortable cocoon away. I tried again to open my eyes. I failed again.

“Has she ever done this before?” asked Cylia. “Do humans usually catch fire when under stress?”

“Don’t you know?” asked Sam.

“Kid, I have gone out of my way for most of my life to have as little intimate contact as possible with humans. I play roller derby because everybody needs a social life, and nobody’s going to report you for being weird when you spend all your time with women who call themselves ‘Elmira Street’ and ‘Princess Leia-You-Out.’ I do administrative work when I need a paying job. Just me, a computer, and a bunch of big, important people trying to pretend they couldn’t be paying me more to deal with their bullshit. Annie here is the first human I’ve ever allowed in my car, much less in my house.”

“No, humans don’t usually catch fire when under stress,” said Leonard. “How can you avoid humans? We’re the dominant species on this planet.”

“Believe me, I’m aware,” said Cylia disgustedly. “Any chance she’s secretly a dragon with a dye job? Is she a natural blonde?”

“I feel like she would probably smack me for answering that question, but no, she’s definitely not secretly blonde,” said Sam.

I should have been annoyed by the way they were nattering on while I was burning. All I actually felt was relief. There was a thin, strained edge to their voices—they were scared, and trying to cover it up by talking about dye jobs and human behavioral quirks. That was normal. That was natural. They were okay.

The people I cared about were okay. Whether I had succeeded or not, they’d get to bury me and walk away from this, as soon as they figured out that people who are actively on fire are usually dead, and hence do not need to be consulted about future plans. Even if I was lingering on this mortal plane like Rose or Mary, I wasn’t going to follow them. Sam deserved better than a dead girlfriend, and my parents deserved to believe I was resting in peace, not condemned to a shadowy existence on the edges of the living world. The only ghosts in my family were Mary and Rose, and both of them had died a lot younger than I had, while they were still in their teens, and neither of them was a blood relative. Prices rest. Maybe it’s because we run so hard and so fast while we’re alive, but when we die …

Prices rest.

The cooling sensation spread, getting stronger—strong enough, in spots, that I was actually getting cold. I made a small sound of protest, not audible above the flames. I didn’t want to be dead and cold. I was tired. I was so damn tired. I was ready to rest.

“Really? Is that what you really want?”

This was a new voice, female, unfamiliar. Without thinking about it, I opened my eyes.

There was no fire. There were no friends. I was alone, sprawled in the middle of a great field of harvest-ready wheat. The sky above me was midsummer blue and perfect as a portrait, marked here and there with the skidding streaks of fluffy white clouds, moving briskly along in a wind I couldn’t feel. I sat up. The landscape didn’t change.

“Guys?”

There was no response. I stood, turning in a slow circle. There was no one there. I was totally alone. But the voices …

“They’re still at the crossroads,” said the female voice, from behind me.

I spun, reaching for a knife, and stopped dead. The anima mundi looked at me, amused and exasperated in equal measure. I stared speechlessly back.