

### Spear Bearer

### Book One

Stephen Clary

Published by Stephen Clary at Smashwords

eBook Edition

Copyright 2010 Stephen Clary

Discover other titles by Stephen Clary:

Mimic: A Spear Bearer Short

Superhuman: A Spear Bearer Short (Summer 2014)

Abomination: Spear Bearer Book 2

Bowels of Hell: Spear Bearer Book 3 (Summer 2014)

The Globe

Freezer

eBook Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away. Even if you received this eBook for free, you do not have the right to distribute this book. If you did not purchase and/or download this book from an eBook retailer, please do so now to own a legal copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
For Katie who heard it first.
" _...tradition gives the one thing many shapes."_

—The Celtic Twilight by W. B. Yeats

# Prelude

A boy knocks on the door of an RV trailer. In bold letters on the side of the trailer is "THE AMAZING GORDON." It is past eleven moving on toward midnight. Even the carneys, apathetic group though they may be, would be compelled to make sure the boy was not lost if they knew he was only ten years old. But the boy is easily tall enough to pass as a teenager.

An absolutely bald man opens the door and looks at the boy. His face is raisin-like: wrinkled and black; but his golden eyes are bright. "What?" he asks brusquely. Even with this one word, a British accent is evident.

The boy holds the man's gaze without flinching. "You said during the show you were looking for an apprentice."

"Ha!" says a voice from inside, "That one's not the Watcher's brood." The accent is the same as that of the man at the door, but the voice is higher and edgier.

The old man reaches out, takes the boys chin in his hands, and holds it with unexpected strength. The lines of the boy's face are perfect, his dark skin as smooth as porcelain. His eyes are a marvel of brown facets.

"Could be...could be," the old man mumbles to himself.

"He's too small," the voice calls from inside. "The Nephilim are bigger."

"How old are you?" the man asks.

"Ten."

The old man smiles approvingly. "Too small indeed!" he replies over his shoulder. "The nipper's only ten."

"So he's tall for his age," the voice from inside says. "Bollocks, I say. He's as thin as a pole. Does he have the strength of the Nephilim?"

The old man lets go of the boy's chin and holds his hand out. "Give me your hand."

The boy does so. The old man begins to squeeze, squeeze hard. It hurts. The boy squeezes back, fighting to keep his hand from being squished.

"See there?" the old man says, "he's as strong as an ox."

The boy pulls his hand free and shakes it to get the blood back into his fingertips.

"So he's strong," the voice says, "but I'll wager he's not quick. He just exercises a bit, that's all. But there's nothing an ordinary mortal can do to make himself as swift as the Nephilim."

A silver coin suddenly appears in the old man's hands. "You can have it, if you are fast enough."

There is a blur of motion as the boy's hand darts out and the man closes his fist.

They both look down as they open their hands. The coin is now in the boy's hands.

"This is no ordinary boy," the old man says. "After all these years, have I finally found another like myself?"

"I suppose we might should give him a closer look," says the high voice from inside.

The old man motions for the boy to follow him inside.

The boy closes the door behind him and looks around. The walls are lined with shelves filled with thousands of books and hundreds of glass jars. The glass jars have powders (white, red, gray, gritty, grainy) or liquid (clear, green, glowing, opaque) or pale embryo animals. A pine-scent air freshener hanging from the overhead A/C unit doesn't manage to cover up a sulfuric odor.

"It's half past ten. Your mum know you're here?"

The boy nods. "She went to the car. I told her I would catch up."

"And your dad?"

The boy just shakes his head.

"What does your mum tell you about your father?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all? You can tell me."

The boy hesitates, but eventually says, "He came in through her window back when she lived down in Guatemala with her parents. He looked like an angel. She thought it was a dream. But then I came along.

"She says I look like him. She calls me _'Cara del ángel_ '—angel face."

The old man raises his gray eyebrows. "And what does she call you otherwise?"

"My name is Manuel."

"So Manuel, you know any magic?"

The boy looks around and sees a deck of cards. They are very large, and the pictures on them look strange. He looks at them doubtfully, but then says, "I've taught myself some card tricks. You want—"

"Didn't I tell you?" the voice he had heard earlier asks. The boy looks toward the voice. A shrunken head about the size of a grapefruit hangs from the ceiling by its dry black hair. Its eyes are sewn shut, but the threads that had sealed its mouth are cut and they dangle from its lips. It continues, "Sparky knows _tricks_. Silly little parlor tricks."

"Shh," the old man admonishes the talking head. "There is no reason for him to know magic. He doesn't even know what he is." He waves a hand toward the cards, and even though they are five feet away, they blow off the table as if caught in a breeze.

"What am I then?" the boy asks.

"It would seem," the old man says with a wink, "you are a magician's apprentice."

# Chapter 1 — Beyond Muddy Brown Bayou

As Lizzie approached the back gate she noticed the crow. It stared at her with a beady black eye. It always seemed to be around these days, perched high up in one of those tall leafy trees just beyond her backyard. The bird appeared to be more than just curious, and though she knew it really couldn't be anything more than an overactive imagination, Lizzie felt it was spying on her.

"Go away," she shouted at it, directing her anger at the bird, even though it was her mom and sister that had put her in this mood.

The crow only turned its head and stared at her with its other eye.

Birdie jumped up on Lizzie for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time Lizzie pushed the black lab down. "Get down," she said between clenched teeth. Usually it wouldn't have bothered her; usually she would have let Birdie stand up against her while scratching her behind the ears. But today she was upset. Today she had missed her soccer game.

If they'd gone to early Mass they would have made it. She'd done her part—she'd reminded her mom the night before, and in the morning she had eaten breakfast, put on her shiny maroon dress, brushed her teeth and combed her hair in record time. But her little sister Lori had dawdled and acted like a baby, so they ended up going to late Mass anyway. And what would it have hurt if they missed just one Sunday?

"Go away," Lizzie shouted at the bird again.

The crow stretched out its wings, fluffed its feathers, and sidled a few steps down the branch. It was as if it were saying, 'Yell at me all you want. I'm not leaving and there isn't anything you can do about it.'

However, there was something she could do about it. She had her bow. Her plan had been to vent her anger on a tree or two using her blunt-tipped points, but the crow presented a more satisfying target. The blunt tip wouldn't kill the bird, but it would think twice before coming around this way again.

Lizzie pulled her arrow out of the quiver and nocked it onto the string. But as she lifted up the bow the bird alighted and quickly disappeared into the deep green of the nearby woods

She shook her head as she snapped the arrow back into the quiver. The dumb bird had won. But then she knew it wasn't a dumb bird—it had proven that just now. And those clever black eyes...those clever spying eyes...thinking of them gave her the creeps.

Birdie whined from behind the fence as Lizzie shut the gate. They were a pair, Birdie and her, and they always went together out into the fields and woods. It wasn't fair to leave her. But then life isn't fair—that's what her dad always said. If life were fair, her team wouldn't have had to play without their starting forward. Besides, she didn't want Birdie getting in the way while she was practicing archery.

The Long family house sat at the very edge of a neighborhood on the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi, so with a jump across a little ditch they called Crawdad Creek she left the city behind. She ran down a skinny dirt trail, created and maintained by the constant action of her feet, through a narrow stand of woods, and across a soybean field. It was late August and the air was heavy with humidity; sweat beaded up then trickled over her skin. By the time she reached the dirt road on the other side, her shirt was damp. Lizzie wiped the moisture from her brow with the back of her hand.

Now she walked. After all, there wasn't any reason to hurry. Her victims, the trees, weren't going anywhere.

The road curved through the fields and over little hills, and soon it ran near the real woods—a forest so choked with trees that the sunlight only filtered in. A forest so thick that twenty yards in Lizzie could pretend there was no such thing as civilization. She had been in these woods before, but never alone—never without Birdie. Although it felt a little reckless, she didn't hesitate a moment.

The trail she followed was not well used—just a dark line through the grass and bushes, disappearing altogether here, only to start up several feet further there. Vines latched onto her legs, their thorns piercing through her jeans and into her skin—she slowed down and walked more carefully. Soon the trees crowded in around her. No sounds of nearby suburbia could reach her—no barking dogs, no shouting kids, no honking cars. No airplanes either. She was alone, except for the forest animals: striped lizards darting away to hide, madly chattering squirrels making daredevil jumps high up in the trees, sparrows singing, and a woodpecker pecking out "rat-tat-tat." In the distance a crow cawed and, though she felt paranoid to be thinking it, she wondered if it wasn't the same crow following her.

A creek she had dubbed Muddy Brown Bayou, for lack of knowing the official name, dug out a deep trench between Lizzie and the other side. Never had she gone beyond it. Looking at the water, she thought of what might hide beneath the milky-brown surface. There were stories of water moccasin and giant catfish, and her father had told her it was easy to misjudge the current and depth of even the most innocent-looking Mississippi bayou.

"Give me a break," she said, pushing the fear down. Today, she wasn't going to let it stop her. Today, she would be in control. She tossed her bow across the creek. No turning back now.

After taking a few steps back, she ran and jumped. She landed short and began to slide down toward the water below. Down to where the water moccasin and the giant catfish waited to drag her to the bayou's murky depths. She grabbed for something on the bank, her arms working frantically, and she caught a little tree. Digging her toes into the mud, and pulling hard on the sapling—praying it wouldn't give—she struggled up onto the bank.

Lizzie sat, breathing deep, heart pumping hard.

Get a grip on yourself, she thought. "Take a deep breath and clear the mind," her Tai Kwon Do master always told her before competing at a meet, and that is what she did. It worked, as it always did, and she rolled her eyes and laughed. Giant catfish...as if.

She stood up and retrieved her bow, walking slowly, feeling the heaviness of the mud on her shoes and the uncomfortable wetness of her jeans around the backs of her knees.

Some movement caught her eye. A brown and white rabbit.

She didn't have any of the razorblade points that she'd had when hunting deer with her father, but she did have a couple of sharp-tipped field points. They would work. Maybe they'd have rabbit stew tonight. Slowly and quietly, she unsnapped one of the arrows from the quiver attached to the bow. Her dad was away on a business trip, and he'd be proud when she told him she'd bagged a rabbit. It would be her first kill.

After nocking the arrow to the string, she drew it back until her index finger touched the corner of her mouth. She had started learning to use the bow when she was seven, and she was ten going on eleven now, so she'd had a lot of practice. But this wasn't a bull's eye—it was a real live animal—and her heart quickened with excitement. Gauging the distance and using her sight, she took aim. Steady, steady, she told herself.

Twang. The arrow whistled and shot away. It hit the rabbit in the hindquarters, spinning it around.

"Yeah!" Lizzie cheered.

The rabbit began to squeal piteously. The pain in its voice hit Lizzie like a bucketful of cold water.

She ran to the rabbit. The arrow leaned out of it at an angle and jiggled as it kicked and fought to escape. All the while it cried a desperate high-pitched cry. Blood gurgled from the wound and down its leg. Glancing up at Lizzie, the rabbit struggled harder, wild with fear.

"Oh no," Lizzie moaned. She dropped to her knees. Her stomach tightened and she felt like she was going to be sick. Reaching out to touch the animal, wanting to comfort it, she hesitated, her hand frozen in the air—it might try to bite her.

"What have I done?" she asked herself.

"It is obvious what you haf done," came a nearby voice. "Ze question is: will you let me undo it?"

Startled by the voice, Lizzie whirled around to see who had spoken. There was no one.
" _Do you have the Sack with you?"_

I spoke: "The Sack, that is here;

because apples, nut and almond core

eat pious children gladly."

" _Do you have the rod also with you?"_

I spoke: "The rod, it is here;

but for the children, only the bad,

those it meets them right, upon their part."

excerpt of Knecht Ruprecht by Theodor Storm

# Chapter 2 — Knecht Ruprecht

"I can help zis rabbit creature, if zat is what you wish."

Lizzie looked around, but she couldn't see anyone.

"I can help ze creature, but ze time to do so grows short. Do you wish zat I save it?"

Lizzie nodded.

"We neet to hurry. But first, you must make solemn promise. You must promise never to tell anyone— _not a soul_ —that you haf seen me."

"I promise," Lizzie answered.

"Do you swear it on ze Bible?"

"Yes, yes." Anything, if he could just help the rabbit.

"Zan you must do your part. Pull ze arrow from ze creature's leg." The voice now came from where the rabbit lay.

Lizzie looked down.

He stood only as tall as her knees; he wore a red cone-shaped cap that bent to one side, a brown jacket and trousers, and a bright green vest. His shoes were green too, and they curled up on the end. A silver beard hung down from a face that had so many wrinkles it looked like the bark of a windswept tree.

Lizzie blinked in disbelief. She had long since figured out where the presents under the Christmas tree came from, and she knew that tiny, winged ladies with wands didn't really pay cash for baby teeth. Only little kids believe in fairies and elves—but this guy at her feet was too small even to be a midget. He looked like one of those little figurines that people put in gardens: a gnome.

"Ze arrow," the gnome said, pointing at the rabbit. His voice was deep and strong, in stark contrast to his tiny body. "Hurry child. Death comes near."

The rabbit lay motionless. Lizzie couldn't even tell if it still breathed. At least now she felt safe touching it—she knew it wouldn't bite. She kneeled, put one hand on its hindquarters, and pulled on the arrow with the other hand. It didn't come out easily; she had to tug on it, and once she had pulled it out a few inches, she had to reach down and get a new grip on the arrow closer to the body, wincing before wrapping her fingers around the shaft covered with sticky blood. But this was her fault, and she would do anything to make it better. The rabbit kicked once as the arrow came out, but then lay still again. Lizzie eagerly tossed the arrow away and wiped her bloody hand on her jeans.

The gnome leaned over and put his hand on the wound. He closed his eyes and began to chant words she found both strange and soothing. His hand glowed red, and brilliant rays of light escaped between his fingers.

After a moment, the rabbit looked up with darting, nervous eyes. Springing out of the gnome's gnarled hands it ran some ten feet before pausing and giving a wary and confused look back. There was blood on its leg, but the wound was gone.

"You go on zere, furry creature," the gnome said. "No neet to say sank-you."

With that, the bunny hopped away into the brush.

The gnome turned to Lizzie and looked her over head to toe. "So, human child," he asked, "what is it your people call you?"

Lizzie just stared blankly. She had been responding automatically, caught up in the excitement of the moment, but now it began to sink in. He couldn't be real; he couldn't have saved the rabbit like that. It was impossible. But it didn't feel like a dream, and it was too realistic to be a hoax.

"What is your name?" he asked again, slowly.

Lizzie took a deep breath and then answered, "Lizzie."

"Lizzie? Just Lizzie?" The gnome narrowed his eyes. "But your folk most often haf more zan one name. Zere are so, so many of you, you need two or sree names even, yah?"

"Well, yes. I'm Lizzie Long...really, my full name is Elizabeth Marie Long. Everybody calls me Lizzie, though."

"She is Long zen...yah," the gnome muttered, looking up into the trees. He then stared at her hard.

Lizzie shifted on her feet. Why did he repeat her name like it was something special? Maybe he just thought the name suited her; she was tall after all, especially compared to him. But then why was he staring at her like that?

Well, Lizzie decided, maybe he was just giving her a chance to show her manners. "I'm sorry. What's your name?"

"I haf had many names through ze ages." She couldn't tell if he smiled behind his beard, but his eyes twinkled. "In some tales I beat bad children wiz a rod, and in others zey call me Santa's little helper. Truly, I am not haf so bad nor haf so goot. But eyeser way, ze name zey give me is Knecht Ruprecht."

"Ka...Nick Roo...Roo..." Lizzie just couldn't get her tongue around his name.

"Ha ha," the gnome said, not quite laughing. "Nick. You call me Nick zen. Yah?"

"Okay. Nick."

He tilted his head to one side. "Now why, I wonder, do you come to my woods shootink ze helpless bunny wiz your arrow?"

"Oh I'm so sorry," Lizzie said. She meant it. It had been horrible—all that screaming, all that blood. "I didn't know it would be like that. I didn't think that—"

"You didn't sink." The gnome cut her off. "You mortals never sink! Always rush, rush, rush—never sink."

"Well I'm sorry. Nobody's perfect," she said shortly.

"Okay. Okay." Nick put his hands behind his back. "So zen, Lizzie Long, you won't go huntink again with your spear?"

"My _spear_?"

He studied her carefully, but then he raised his bushy eyebrows and gave a little bow. "Oh, sorry, my English it isn't so goot. Bow and arrow, zis is what I meant. You probably don't even own a spear," he said, but then added, leaning his head closer, his eyes probing, "You don't, do you?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. What a bizarre question. What was he getting at?

"Well zen, as I was sayink, you come wizout your bow and arrow when comink to ze woods. If you like, zen we be friends...yah?"

Lizzie smiled. If gnomes were real, having one as a friend would be cool. "So, I'll see you again?"

"Yah. Just walk into ze woods here and call for me. I shall come."

Lizzie looked around and saw the Muddy Brown Bayou. "Right here?"

"Anywhere in ze woods...just call me."

"Good. I just barely made it across the creek and I'm not really looking forward to jumping it again." She sighed. "You wouldn't know another way, would you?"

"Come. Your friend Nick will show you." The gnome turned and motioned for Lizzie to follow. He moved very fast for such a small guy—it helped that the briar and the thistle moved out of his way as he approached. Before long they reached a tree lying on its side. On their side of the creek the roots were pulled out of the ground and spread out in a high arc. The once tall tree spanned the creek and the top of it lay hidden in the woods on the other side.

While they had been walking, questions filled her mind. Now that they were stopped, she could ask. "I come to the woods a lot. Why haven't I seen you before?"

"I hide very well."

"So you have been here awhile."

"Yah. Some time now."

"And no one knows you are here?"

"Yah. I show myself to no one."

"Except me?"

"Yah. Just my friend Lizzie Long.

"But why me?" she asked.

"Smart girl," he said. He stroked his beard, but said nothing more.

"Well?" Lizzie prompted him.

"Because you are Long," he answered, his eyes narrowed and fixed on her. "It is true. But you do not know what you are."

"What?"

"You will know soon enough, I sink."

Lizzie studied Nick as if by doing so she might be able to figure out what he was talking about.

"So you come back zen," Nick said. Then he shook a finger at her. "But you come back alone. And you tell no one about your friend Nick. You make promise, remember?"

Lizzie nodded, then turned and walked across the fallen tree, her arms held out for balance. When she jumped off and looked back the gnome was gone.

# Chapter 3 – The Sorcerer

Manuel stared at the candle and he concentrated on the flame. He pushed it to the right and held it there.

"Now the other direction," the Magician said.

Manuel concentrated and pushed it to the left.

"He's breathing on it," the shrunken head complained. How the head could see with its eyes sewn shut Manuel couldn't guess. But then he had seen quite a many strange and unexplainable things here in the Magician's trailer. And now he was doing something strange which he could not explain. 'Pushing' is what it felt like, 'pushing' is what he called it. But how can you push anything with your hands in your lap while sitting in a chair? How can a flame be pushed at all?

The Magician reached over and cupped his hand gently over Manuel's nose and mouth. "To the right again."

Manuel pushed the flame to the right.

"Ha!" the Magician cried. "No doubt the kipper's doing it!"

When the circus left town, the Magician had stayed. He parked his trailer, still bearing THE AMAZING GORDON in bright red letters on its side, in a local trailer park. Manuel could ride his bike along the Mingo River trail and be there in fifteen minutes. During the summer he had spent much of his time here during the day while his mother went to work. His mother had met Gordon, and seemed glad that he wasn't spending his time alone and unsupervised in their little two bedroom duplex. Now that school had started again, Manuel spent his afternoons here until time for supper.

"Why is he so suspicious?" Manuel asked, looking at the shrunken head.

"I'm right here," the head said instantly. "Don't talk about me as if I'm a piece of furniture."

Gordon laughed. "He's a piece of work, isn't he?"

Manuel nodded.

Gordon looked at the shrunken head. "Everything base about me—my anger, my greed, my distrust—I separated this part of my character—"

"His _intelligence_ ," the shrunken head interrupted.

Gordon laughed. "Maybe a bit of that too. Yes, I separated it and put it in the shrunken head."

Manuel stared at the head. "Why did you keep it?"

The shrunken head shrieked, "You blighter, you pathetic ignorant awful—"

"Enough," Gordon said. "Enough." Then, after glancing a moment at the head he added in a whisper, "He's a part of me. But I do wish there was an off switch."

"Really? Do you?" the shrunken head said. "Then I probably shouldn't tell you that someone is walking up to the door."

The knock came a moment later.

"Anyone we know?" Gordon asked.

The shrunken head shook its head as anyone else might, a strange sight for Manuel considering that it had no neck.

Manuel followed Gordon to the door. When he opened it, a man wearing a gray suit and mirrored silver sunglasses looked up at them. A crow cawed and Manuel looked up to see the raven sitting on top of a nearby wooden telephone pole lamppost.

"The Amazing Gordon, I presume?" the man in the suit said, a hint of Southern twang in his accent.

"That's me," the magician said. "What's your business?"

"May I come in?" The man asked while reaching up and rubbing his mustache.

Gordon nodded and stepped back. The other man walked in. He did not remove his sunglasses.

"Have a seat," Gordon said, motioning toward the booth table typically found in RVs.

Instead, the man looked slowly around the trailer until his eyes came to rest on a shelf with the bottles of powders and fluids, the books, and other bric-a-brac, that Gordon kept. The shelf had metal wire doors, presumably to keep the bottles and other stuff from crashing to the ground when the trailer was on the road. The man walked forward and tried to open the wire doors. They were locked.

"Making yourself at home?" Gordon asked with indignant sarcasm.

The man turned and again his finger went to his mustache. "I am a collector of certain arcane curios," he answered with an indifferent air, but Manuel saw how intently he had studied the things on the shelf. "Like these pendants here, for example." He pointed at a metal tree on the shelf from which hung chains and medallions.

"The dodgy mustache and the sunglasses don't fool me, and they make you look wally," Gordon said. "I know who you are, Congressman. Madison Akers. Mississippi?"

Congressman Akers nodded, removed and folded his sunglasses, and put them into his breast pocket. "You are most observant." Manuel thought he recognized the face from TV, but he wasn't sure.

"What do you want the sigils for?" Gordon asked. "And how did you know that I had them?"

"Oh," the collector said while rubbing his hands together, "I just collect these things. I find them fascinating, and there is so much history behind them."

"They bloody well are not for sale," Gordon said.

"One hundred thousand dollars," the Congressman said. "Right now."

"Not for a bleeding million. You know they are not collectibles. You bloody well know what they are for. And I don't trust you. If you don't cock up and kill yourself with them, you'll cock up and kill others. Maybe you mean to."

Akers frowned. He tried, and failed, to hide his anger. Manuel guessed that people didn't say no to him often. "This country is going down the drain," Akers said. "It will take a strong hand to put it back on track."

"That's a mixed metaphor," Gordon replied, "And a mixed-up excuse. You don't want to put the country back on track. You want to rule the country."

Congressman Akers stared at Gordon for a long time before saying, "I won't deny that I am disappointed. These pendants would have looked very nice in my collection. But I see that your mind is made up." He took his sunglasses from his pocket and went to the door.

Once the door was swung open, Manuel could see that the crow still sat on the lamppost. Its beady black eye stared down at them.

"Good afternoon," Congressman Akers said.

Gordon pulled the door shut without an answer.

"He'll be back, you know," the shrunken head said. "He's going to try to nick the sigils."

Gordon nodded in agreement.

"Why did he want the pendants?" Manuel asked.

"The pendants are sigils, Sparky," the shrunken head said in the condescending tone he often used with Manuel.

"Each sigil is the name and essence of a demon or other non-mortal. They are used for summonings," Gordon clarified. "It seems our guest, in addition to being a Congressman, is also a sorcerer."

"Like a magician?" Manuel asked.

"Ha...like a magician indeed!" the shrunken head scoffed.

"As you know, magicians make their own magic," Gordon explained. "Sorcerers have no power of their own. They summon demons to do their will."

Manuel thought about this. "Then why do you have the sigils?"

"I have them," Gordon said, pointing toward the door, "so blokes like Madison Akers won't."

# Chapter 4 – The Keys

Lizzie had thought about Nick a lot over the past few days. Sometimes she wondered if she'd dreamed the whole thing. Mostly she wanted to run out into the woods to find him again. But she didn't, partly because the gnome had told her to come back when she knew who she was. And she wondered what she would tell him when he asked.

Also, she felt a little uneasy about meeting him again. Stranger-danger is what mom and dad called it when she was little. She didn't know him or what he was all about. Why did he seem so interested in her? Specifically in her and not some other kid in the woods. Something here didn't ring true, she thought.

At this moment, Lizzie and Lori were playing an unofficial game of hide and seek—'unofficial' because Lori didn't know they were playing. Lizzie had jumped into the coat closet and hid in the dark when she heard Lori yelling for her. She didn't do it just to be mean; she just wanted time alone—time to think.

While she moved amongst the coats, she heard a little jingle. She shook the coats and heard the jingle again...there were keys in somebody's pocket. Maybe they were looking for them. Jostling each coat individually, she eventually found the one with the keys.

Still holding onto the coat, she cracked opened the door to let some light in. She recognized it instantly—it was Grandpa Long's black raincoat. He had been at Lizzie's house when he started having chest pains. The ambulance had come and the grim-faced paramedics rushed him away. It was the last she'd seen him alive.

It made her sad to think about that, so she focused her attention on the keys in her hand. Three keys on a key ring: two regular door keys, and a smaller, intricate silver key. She had seen her Grandpa use these keys—they were to the study that he shared with her dad.

There was no doubt she would give the keys to her father. But, as she studied the keys, the gnome's words came back to her. She didn't know who she was.

No, that wasn't it. That's not what he had said. He said she didn't know _what_ she was.

People could be a 'what' as in a geek or a genius. Or they could be a 'what' as in a goalie or a black-belt. Or they could be a 'what' as in a doctor or a fireman.

She jingled the keys and thought: what is my dad? He always said he was a business consultant when asked.

But now as she thought about it, she wondered, why hadn't she ever seen him doing any business? She'd never seen him reading financial magazines, or looking at business graphs, or looking at business operation books. When Grandpa came over he never talked with their father about the work that they did together. They never talked about clients. They never said anything about it...they behaved like it was a secret.

The other thing that didn't make sense was all the visits from the Catholic priests. Several times a year they would come. Not the local parish priest, but priests from all over the world. At some point during the visits, Grandpa and her dad would go with the priests for a closed door meeting in the study.

Perhaps, if she knew _what_ her father was, she might have some idea of _what_ she was. Besides, she was curious now. Could it hurt if she took a look-see in the study?

They had always kept the study locked, except while they were working. 'Working' meant reading. There was always plenty of mail, usually in big thick brown envelopes, and they went through stacks of newspapers that came from all around the world, Grandpa sitting behind an enormous ancient desk, and dad sitting at a table stacked with folders, papers and books. When Grandpa had died, her dad took over the desk.

So why, she wondered, did they always lock the door? What was the big mystery?

She walked casually to the office door, and stood there a moment listening to make sure no one was coming. With shaky fingers she picked one of the keys from the key ring and, though poking and missing at first, slid it into the deadbolt. But it wouldn't turn. She started to pull the key out before remembering how her dad always pressed against the door as he unlocked it. Using her shoulder she leaned into the door. The lock turned with a click. She slipped in, easing the door shut behind her.

The antique desk sat at the far end of the room. Behind the desk was a large window, blinds closed. The walls were built-in bookshelves floor to ceiling, filled mostly with dingy and ancient looking books. The room even had a musty smell like in a used-book store. Next to the desk were four tall filing cabinets, and on top of the cabinets were stacks of green hanging folders.

Just to her right the closet door stood open a crack. She stepped over and looked in. It was crammed with all kinds of clothes—clothes you'd expect to see people wearing in different countries. There were long gowns like Arabs wear, big heavy coats that made her think of Russians, Safari-like khaki pants and shirts, and much more. On a shelf above there were turbans, Cossack hats, pith helmets, and all kinds of headwear. On the floor were a mass of boots and shoes; it was this pile of shoes that prevented the door from fully closing.

Lizzie walked to the desk and sat down. She opened the middle drawer. Just the usual stuff in there: pens, pencils, erasers, paperclips. She opened the drawers on the right side of the desk, but it just contained stationary, computer cables, power cables, computer disks, and stuff like that.

On the left side of the desk were two drawers, a medium size drawer above and one deep drawer below. They were locked.

Lizzie picked up the keys from where she had placed them on the desktop and jingled them thoughtfully. Sneaking into his office was one thing, going through his desk drawers another. There might be personal, private things in there. But after seeing what was in the closet, seeing all those clothes that could be used for disguise, she had begun to wonder if her dad wasn't actually a spy. Maybe he worked for the CIA.

The intricate silver key worked in the lock. In the upper drawer she found a lot of envelopes from the Catholic Church with various saints, or crosses, or Virgin Marys on them. She didn't see anything related to the US government, so the CIA theory was growing weak. But still there was this weird connection with the Church.

In the lower drawer she found only a wooden box, looking rather small in the bottom of that large drawer. Lizzie lifted it and put it on the desk. An image of Jesus nailed to the cross had been carved into the lid, head hanging forward, and a Roman soldier stabbing him in his side with a spear. Hairline cracks marked the wood and the paint was dull and faded. It was obviously very old, so she handled it with extra care.

Inside, wrapped in a velvet cloth, was a gold necklace with a golden egg-shaped ornament, in the middle of which were two blood-red rubies that stared at her like a pair of eyes. It was very pretty and she liked how it felt heavy in her hands.

She held the pendant in her hand, sitting in the big chair. There were a thousand clues, but to her it all added up to nothing. She still had no idea about _what_ he was.

Turning the pendant over she saw the words _Deus Vult_ inscribed in gothic lettering. Perhaps that was a clue. She decided to put the pendant in her pocket so she could Google the words later.

When she left the room she was careful to lock the door on the way out.

# Chapter 5 – Margie

"Man-You-El," Margie cried. "Man-You-El."

Manuel clenched his teeth. He'd hoped that Margie might go to a different school instead of following him to Carver. But here she was, and it seemed her infatuation for him hadn't diminished over the summer.

"Your girlfriend wants you," Lucas said, laughing. He slapped Manuel on the back.

Manuel faked a smile, but he didn't look at Margie, not this time. He had tried being nice. He had tried waving at her and saying 'hi' but that seemed to just make is worse.

"Man-You-El," Margie cried louder.

Manuel kept walking with his eyes fixed ahead, pretending not to hear.

"Margie," he heard a special ed teacher say, "Stop yelling. It's not polite. And you are out of line."

"I'm coming to the game today," she yelled. "I'm coming. Mom said."

Manuel groaned. He hoped that in the cafeteria Margie would be seated facing away from him...a long way away from him.

"Hey," Lucas said, "Your girlfriend's coming to our game. She's going to be shouting 'Man-You-El' for 60 minutes straight I bet." He laughed again. He knew that was not the way to pronounce Manuel's name, and he knew that it bothered him. Lucas was a great student and the best forward on the soccer team, and they were around each other a lot, but somehow Manuel could never think of Lucas as a friend. Most of the time Lucas was friendly enough, but whenever he got the chance he teased Manuel without mercy.

"Do you hear me Man-You-El?" Margie screamed. Manuel detected desperation in her voice.

Lucas laughed again. Manuel could see him looking over his shoulder. "She's coming for you. You better run."

Manuel held his pace, but he could hear the sound of running tennis shoes on the green and white tiled floor. Why was this happening? What did he ever do to deserve this?

And it came to him that the answer was that he had been nice. He had smiled at Margie and he had waved at her and he'd been nice, and it had encouraged her and now, apparently, she had a crush on him.

"Stop it," the special ed teacher said, her voice heavy with effort after running Margie down. "You are being a bad girl Margie and you're going to be in bad...stop! Bad trouble, Margie."

Manuel heard the sound of a struggle behind him, and then he noticed that it was the only sound. In this congested hallway the girls weren't gossiping, the boys weren't bragging, the lockers were not being opened or closed. He looked around and saw that everyone was looking between him and...Manuel looked back over his shoulder to see the other thing. It was Margie, her heavy-set frame dragging the thin teacher behind her. Mr. Jordan, the Vice Principal, was running down the hallway to help.

Manuel stopped, not knowing what to do. Maybe if he just said something to her this would stop. Or maybe if he said something to her this would _never_ stop.

"Give her a little kiss," Lucas suggested. "That should make her happy."

Manuel turned abruptly and hurried down the hallway. This wasn't his problem, and it wasn't his fault.

# Chapter 6 — Beyond Incredible

Mr. Long returned home from his three-week trip to Ireland a day early. Lizzie and her mom helped him wheel his luggage in. Once inside, he kneeled, snapped a suitcase open, and pulled out his gifts. He gave Lori a little drum-like thing he called a bodhran, his wife a wool scarf, and Lizzie a silver necklace with a cross. She put it around her neck and turned for him to fasten the clasp.

Lori crawled into his lap when he sat down. Lizzie sat cross-legged on the couch with her mother. Lori took after their mother: blue eyes, blonde hair with long graceful curls, and a perfect ski slope nose. Lizzie took after their dad: brown eyes, brown hair, freckles, and what her mother called a 'prominent Roman nose.' She supposed this was a nice way of saying it was rather large.

Lifting the lever on the side of his chair, her dad brought the footrest up and stretched his gray-socked feet out. His styling gel had begun to lose the battle against his curly hair, his eyes were bloodshot, and his eyelids drooped low. He sighed and frowned with a weary expression.

"Jet lag," he said. Maybe...but Lizzie guessed there was something more. He hadn't gone on a business trip since Grandpa Long died; they had always worked together. It made her sad to think about, but she wasn't about to show it. 'Tough it out,' her dad always said, and tough it out he always did. Even now he tried to be upbeat as he told them about his trip. And when they told about what he'd missed at home, they only told him the good stuff.

Lizzie was glad her dad was home, but she was a little worried too. She'd thought she would have time to return the medallion with the ruby eyes back to where it belonged, and if her dad found it missing she thought she might get the belt.

The words _Deus Vult_ turned out not to be much of a clue. It just meant God Wills It and it was something the crusaders shouted back in the Middle Ages.

The only thing she could think of was to wait until everyone went to sleep and then sneak into the office and return it then.

Tomorrow summer break would be over and that meant returning to a more regular schedule. So her mom insisted that they go to bed at nine. It seemed so early, and Lizzie sat in bed reading a book about a boy magician and thinking it strange to think that maybe it wasn't a made up story but real, just like gnomes weren't made up but real.

With a start Lizzie woke, the book she had been reading lay face down next to her pillow, the pages bent underneath it. Sunlight came in through the window. Dang, she thought, realizing she'd missed her chance to return the medallion. She'd have to try to stay up late again tonight. Unless her dad discovered the pendant missing. But probably he wouldn't, unless he actually opened the box up and looked inside.

Even though it was home school, Mrs. Long insisted that they dress for it just as if they were going to regular school—pajamas and mussed up hair not permissible. Lizzie put on her jeans, a knit blouse, and tennis shoes. She recently had her ears pierced so she wore a pair of earrings, shiny but not dangly. Her mom had given her a surprised look when she'd asked to have her ears pierced, but although she could whip just about any boy she knew, she didn't want to be mistaken for one.

Throughout the day her mind wandered from her schoolwork, both to the pendant in her nightstand and the gnome and his question. In the morning, during "The Basic Four," Math, English, Science and History, her mom caught her daydreaming three times. After lunch she worked through only half of her French worksheet (they alternated studying French, Spanish, and Italian weekly). "Honestly," her mother said, shaking her head, "I understand it might be hard to get back into the swing of things, but I know you can do better than this."

After school Mrs. Long took Lizzie to Tai Kwon Do and Lori to ballet. The girls were required to have an extracurricular physical activity scheduled each weekday; her dad said it would make them 'well-rounded.' So, for Lizzie, if it wasn't Tai Kwon Do, it was archery, soccer or cross-country running.

They didn't do anything in Tai Kwon Do class but exercise and practice forms. No sparing. No board breaking. Nothing that could get her mind off the necklace and the trouble she'd be in if her father noticed it missing.

But if he was upset, he certainly didn't look it when they returned home. They found him sitting in the living room talking with a priest. When Mr. Long saw his girls he smiled.

The priest stood up, his black robe ballooning out around his plump middle. His stark white hair seemed almost bright against his brown skin. Smiling politely at the girls he said, "Ah...bonitas niñas."

Lizzie knew this meant 'pretty little girls' in Spanish, so she answered, "Gracias."

Lori mimicked her big sister. "Gracias."

"Cardinal Lopez, these are my daughters Lizzie and Lori. And this beautiful woman," Mr. Long said, sweeping an arm toward his wife, "is my wife, Wendy."

"A pleasure," the Cardinal said with a nod of the head.

"The pleasure is all mine, I am sure."

"He is our new..." Lizzie's dad hesitated, glanced at Lizzie, and continued weakly, "...our new Cardinal." Lizzie's dad coughed into his hand before continuing. "I asked the Cardinal if he could join us for dinner." Making a long face the Cardinal couldn't see, he silently mouthed the word "sorry" to his wife.

Mrs. Long forced a smile. "Delightful," she said. "Girls, run upstairs and change your clothes, then come back down and help me with dinner."

After they had finished eating, Lizzie cleared her throat and interrupted the adults who were talking politics and drinking wine. "May we please be excused?"

Mrs. Long nodded, and the girls left the table in a dignified manner. But as soon as they were out of the dining room, they started to run and tore up the stairs. When they reached the door to their playroom, Lori smiled very sweetly and asked, "Want to play Barbies?"

"No," Lizzie said without thinking, but then she had an idea. "Not yet, I mean. I need to run back downstairs. Go ahead and I'll be back in a minute, okay?"

Lori smiled wide, showing three dark gaps where her baby teeth had come out. Lizzie never played Barbies with Lori anymore.

With Lori out of the way in the playroom, and the adults deep in conversation, Lizzie didn't have to wait until late at night to return the necklace. She grabbed the keys and the necklace from out of her nightstand, and in a flash she was downstairs and in her dad's office with the door closed behind her.

But there was something in the drawer that hadn't been there before. A spear. Part of a spear, at least. The wood shaft was broken just a few inches below the metal part. Where it was broken it wasn't splintery and sharp, but worn down smooth, so she guessed it had been broken for a very long time. The metal part was an elongated teardrop shape, dull gray and covered with brown rust spots. Altogether, it was about a foot and a half long.

The box the necklace belonged in was beneath the spear. Hurry, hurry, hurry, she thought, but when she picked up the spear, she stopped. It was the strangest thing. Everything looked _different_. Shadows lightened; colors brightened. As she looked at things they zoomed up to her, every little detail magnified. Looking across the room at the books, she could see creases where the binding had cracked, threads where the cover's fabric had unraveled, and the tiny print of the publisher.

Above her she heard a thud; startled, she looked up at the ceiling. In a moment she realized what had happened—Lori must have dropped something. Yet she continued staring at the ceiling. Something moved there. A spot of light. It didn't move a lot, but around the edges it shimmered, and two narrow bands of light moved back in forth on one side of it. Then it all moved at once, and she heard a quiet creak in the ceiling as Lori stood up. She watched the light move with Lori as she walked across the room. It followed her like a shadow. A Lori-sized shadow. With Lori-sized arms and legs. A shadow, but made of light instead of shade.

It's incredible, she thought. No, it's beyond incredible—it's impossible.

There were voices out in the hall. She could see the outline of two people through the wall. Judging from their size, it was her dad and the plump Cardinal. Although still not altogether believing her eyes, she had to trust her senses. Even if this were just a dream, she wasn't just going to sit there and let them catch her. She quietly shut the drawer and looked for a place to hide.

The closet, of course.

# Chapter 7 — The Cardinal's Demand

A rattle of keys, the click of the deadbolt—good thing she had thought to lock the door behind her. On tiptoes she ran to hide. The doorknob jiggled as her dad unlocked it. The door cracked open just as she crammed herself into the closet.

The closet was so full that she barely fit, and of course it still didn't shut. She held onto the doorknob, keeping it as close to shut as she could manage. The weight of the hanging clothes pushed against her, and beneath her a mound of shoes made her footing uncertain. With a free hand she could have steadied herself by grabbing hold of some clothing, but one hand held the doorknob and the other held the spear.

The Cardinal and Mr. Long walked into the room, shutting the door behind them. Through the door Lizzie could see their outlines moving across the room, but as they reached the desk she could see them directly through the crack. Her dad stood behind the desk where she could see his face, and the Cardinal was on the other side with his back to her.

"Thank you for the blessing on our house," Mr. Long said. "It had been awhile, and I feel the blessings grow less potent over time."

"Yes..., but it may not be as great a consequence as it so happens," the Cardinal said, speaking with deliberate precision. "This is not a social visit—I did not come here to introduce myself as the new head of the Council, nor did I come here just to bless your home. We have important business to discuss. Your trip to Ireland...we did not expect it."

"It was on the schedule. The trip had been planned for months. We had worked very hard to get everything in place. To postpone and reschedule would have been a nightmare. Opportunities would have been lost."

"There are things that would be worse to lose. Without a Second it is too risky to use the Spear." The Cardinal pointed at Mr. Long, his old hand shaking slightly, and said, "You know the power it holds! What if it were again lost?"

Lizzie's dad did not respond, but she imagined that he would be angry with the Cardinal, though she couldn't quite understand the accusation.

The Cardinal sighed. "I am sorry Mr. Long, I did not come all the way from the Vatican to lecture you. No. But you must understand the position of the Church. Your family has served well, but we cannot allow you to put the Spear in jeopardy. The Roman Curia Congregation for Combat with Evil Powers has decided that the Spear must be given to a new bearer. There is a family in France, heirs of Saint Longinus also—your distant cousins I suppose—a father with three sons. We have begun preparing them. I shall give the Spear to them."

Lizzie's dad turned red in the face and shook his head. "You are not taking the Spear from this family."

The Cardinal turned, steepled his fingers, and paced slowly. "I understand this is difficult, Mr. Long. We appreciate your attachment to the artifact. But the Spear is not safe if you do not have a Second."

"I have a Second. My daughter. Lizzie."

Lizzie couldn't believe her ears. He wanted _her_ to be his Second, and whatever that was, it sounded serious. Like she wasn't just a kid but someone real important. And somehow it had something to do with this spear she held.

Overwhelmed by what she was hearing, she lost focus on her situation. She shifted her weight, the shoes beneath her moved, and she lost her balance. The door swung open and she stumbled forward out of the closet. When she fell, the spear smacked the floor with a loud clang.

"Santa María, Madre de Dios," Cardinal Lopez said, crossing himself.

"Lizzie?" Mr. Long came around the desk toward her.

"Yes'r." She stood up before he got to her and handed him the Spear. "Sorry," she said, staring at the floor.

"This is the Spear Bearer's Second?" the Cardinal scoffed. As he raised his voice, the clerical collar grew tight on his neck and his ample skin beaded up around it. "This one sneaking in the closet? This one who tries to break the Spear? This...this freckle-faced child...this _girl_?"

"We have been preparing her—"

With a wave of his hand, the Cardinal interrupted. "Ridiculo! You cannot prepare a girl to do this. It is not a job for a _girl_."

"I would trust her," Mr. Long said, putting a hand on Lizzie's shoulder, "more than most men I have met. I would trust her with my life."

"It would seem so." The Cardinal crossed his arms. "And yet, Mr. Long, a female cannot be your Second. It is against the law of the Church. Please do not be difficult. Give the Spear to me."

Lizzie's dad walked to the Cardinal and the Cardinal held out his hand.

Mr. Long, however, lifted the Spear up and shook it. "My father passed this Spear to me and his father passed it to him. This is how it has been done for the last fifteen hundred years. And you think I'm just going to hand it over to you?"

Cardinal Lopez, looking small and uncomfortable, took a step back. "Have it your way. But this is not the last of it. We shall have the Spear. You will see." He turned so fast that his robe lifted and swirled around him and he hurried from the room.
Longinus, which was a puissant knight, was with other knights, by the commandment of Pilate, on the side of the cross of our Lord, and pierced the side of our Lord with a spear; and when he saw the miracles, how the sun lost his light, and great earthquaving of the earth was, when our Lord suffered death and passion in the tree of the cross, then believed he in Jesu Christ. Some say that when he smote our Lord with the spear in the side, the precious blood avaled by the shaft of the spear upon his hands, and of adventure with his hands he touched his eyes, and anon he that had been tofore blind saw anon clearly...

**The GOLDEN LEGEND or LIVES of the SAINTS, Compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, 1275**

# Chapter 8 — The Spear of Longinus

It was quiet in the office for what seemed to Lizzie a long time. Questions filled her mind, but mainly she wondered what her punishment would be.

When Mr. Long did finally speak, he was still red in the face from the argument with the Cardinal. "What, in heaven's name, were you doing in the closet?" Then louder and with more exasperation he added, "What were you doing with the Spear?"

So Lizzie, head bowed and voice quiet, told him about the keys she had found in her grandfather's coat and how she had snooped around his office. Without lifting her eyes, she pulled out the necklace and handed it to him.

"The Medallion of Longinus," her father said. "It is a protective Talisman. It carries the blessing of Pope Innocent the First. The red rubies represent the eyes of Longinus. The Spear Bearer's Second usually carries it."

There it was again, this Second the Cardinal had mentioned. She wanted to ask, but being in so much trouble she didn't dare say a word.

Mr. Long sighed and leaned up against his desk. "I need to explain to you about our family. I should have told you before now.

"The story begins at the Crucifixion of Christ. Longinus was one of the Roman soldiers there that day. He was almost blind, but he could see well enough that Jesus was in agony, and he had pity on Him. While the other soldiers planned to break Jesus' legs to prove he was dead, Longinus stabbed Him with a spear instead. It was an act of mercy that earned him sainthood. That is why there is a statue of him in Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican." Her father held out the spear. "He used this spear. The Spear of Longinus.

"And a miracle happened. Blood and water splashed from the wound into Longinus' eyes, and cured his blindness. Also..."

He stopped so long that Lizzie, though still feeling tremendously humble, had to look up to meet his eyes.

He stared at her hard, as if she were a crossword puzzle he was trying to solve. He asked, "Lizzie, when you held the Spear, did you notice anything _different_?"

Lizzie nodded. "Yeah. Everything got real clear...and," she hesitated because it sounded crazy to say what came next, "and I could see people through the walls."

A slight smile came to her dad's lips and he nodded. "Yes. I knew it. Any descendent of Longinus that holds the Spear can see with amazing clarity—with a clarity that allows you to look even through walls to see the very soul of a being."

Lizzie began to realize that, amazingly, she wasn't in big trouble. A whipping with the belt is what she'd expected—at the very least to be grounded. But her dad seemed so excited about the Spear that he'd forgotten what a bad girl she'd been. And that was fine with her. "What did it mean when you said I was going to be your 'Second'?"

"Well, first I need to tell you what the Spear Bearer does. The Spear Bearer's job—my job—is to send Fugitive Spirits to Hell."

"Fugitive Spirits?"

Mr. Long nodded. "There are three types: Lost Souls, The Fallen, and Abominations.

"Lost Souls are what you would call ghosts. When a person dies, a door opens for their spirit to journey to the next world. But some spirits avoid the door and continue to roam the earth.

"The Fallen are fallen angels. They come in many different forms: demons, sprites, fairies, elves. They are very rare nowadays. I have only seen a few.

"The Abominations, or Nephilim, are half-mortals, the offspring of an unholy union of one of the Fallen and a human. They look like regular people, but they are unusually strong and fast. Sometimes they are magicians. They may grow to be very old, but they do eventually die, unlike the Fallen who are immortal."

"So," Lizzie asked again, thinking of the gnome's question, "what does it mean for me to be a Second?"

"I'm coming to that. The Spear is very powerful and we must make sure that it does not fall into the wrong hands. It did once and for many hundreds of years during the Dark Ages the Spear passed from one greedy ruler to the next, each using the Spear to conquer his enemies.

"Luckily, a ruler by the name of Constantine gave the Spear, in secret, to the Catholic Church. The Church, in turn, gave the Spear to an heir of Longinus and it has remained in our family ever since. We are at the center of a secret organization within the Church. It is so secret not even the Pope is allowed to know of its existence."

"But what is a Second?" Lizzie said, nearly stamping her foot.

"If something happens to the Spear Bearer, it is the Second that must see that the Spear is returned to safety."

He gave Lizzie a hard, serious stare. "The Cardinal was right. I need to have a Second. I should have taken you to Ireland with me. I wasn't sure you were ready, and it scared me to think I might be putting you in danger. But I became your grandpa's Second when I was only ten, and you are every bit as ready as I was at that age.

"So, Lizzie, will you be my Second?"

Lizzie nodded. "I'll try."

Mr. Long put his hands behind his back. "No. There is no _trying_. Either you do it or you don't."

She thought about what the Cardinal had said. "You think I really can?" she asked.

"Yes. You can see souls when you hold the Spear, right?"

Lizzie nodded, but she wasn't convinced. "You told him you had been preparing me, but I've never even heard about the Spear before."

"Ah, yes," her dad said, lifting an index finger up instructively, "and yet you have been prepared. Controlling the Spear is only a small part of being a Spear Bearer; honestly, that is the easy part.

"Why do you think you have been studying all those foreign languages?"

Lizzie shrugged.

"Because Fugitive Spirits don't just exist in English speaking countries. We must hunt them all over the world.

"You are in karate because your primary function as Spear Bearer is to protect it and keep it out of the wrong hands. Cross-country running increases your stamina and mental toughness. Archery improves you mental focus and power of concentration. And so on and so forth. You are prepared. So what do you say? Will you be my Second?"

Lizzie nodded. "Sure dad."

"Lizzie," her mother called. "Lizzie? Where are you? It's bedtime."

"Tomorrow I will introduce you to the business of gathering Lost Souls," her dad said. "But now you need to go on to bed."

"Okay," Lizzie said, and she dutifully began to walk out of the room. But then she remembered her grandfather's keys, pulled them out of her pocket, and held them out to her dad.

For a moment he regarded the keys uncertainly. Then he shook his head, and with his large hands he gently closed her hand into a fist around the keys. "These are your keys now. We share this office, just like I used to share it with Grandpa."
The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when God's sons came in to men's daughters. They bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

Genesis 6 verse 4, World English Bible

# Chapter 9 – The Game

"Man-You-El! Man-You-El! Man-You-El!"

The only people that attended the games generally were family and friends. And generally the only cheers occurred after a score and, occasionally, when Manuel, as goalie, plucked the ball from the air. But today Margie's cry of "Man-You-El" went on and on and Manuel wished he could crawl under the turf and hide.

It didn't help that he played goalie. If he were playing forward—which is what he would have chosen if the coach would have let him pick—then he would be busy and not feel so much like he was on display.

Years ago he had played forward, where he could run free, weaving between defenders who seemed to move in slow motion, the ball bouncing from his feet like a disembodied part of himself, stopping with him, bending around obstacles. Then, with absolute knowledge of where the ball would go, he would blast a kick at the goal; always near the edge, as far from the goalie as possible, often caroming off the bar.

It felt so good, and Manuel had done it often. Too often.

Parents from the other teams had complained. They said it wasn't fair. He was too old, they complained. Must be, they said. Look at how tall he is.

They wanted to see his birth certificate. And when that checked out they still weren't happy.

Parents on his team complained too. He scored all the goals. He was a ball hog. He needed manners.

So the coach had told him to try not to score so much. And he tried to keep it under five a game. And he passed the ball more; he learned how to pass the ball at just the right time, in just the right place, so his teammate would score.

And the parents on his team were happy. But the parents on the other teams still weren't happy. They seemed even more upset because now the scores were even more lopsided.

Manuel noticed that some of the other team's boys stopped trying to go for the ball; now they were just trying to take his legs out from underneath him. Their parent's anger had infected them too, and if they were going to lose badly, then they would also lose ugly.

So Manuel had been moved to goalie. This is how he described his new position: boring boring boring boring tense _exciting_ bang boring boring boring boring tense _exciting_ bang _..._ When the other team was taking a shot it was great...he loved reading the other boy's eyes, his leg muscles taut and ready to spring, ignoring the feints; then the shooter would decide to pull the trigger, and Manuel would know where the ball was going before he did. He would jump up, or dive sideways—but he didn't try to bat the ball away—he tried to catch it. Sometimes he didn't catch the ball—when it was spinning fast, or wet, too hard or just too far at the edge of his reach—but never did he let anyone score. Not once since he had been goalie.

But usually he caught it. Then he would take the ball and drop kick it, loving the pop of his foot on the ball, the high arc as it headed toward mid-field, and everyone's heads staring up at it like a firework about to bloom.

Then the game got boring again while he waited for the next shot on his goal.

But tonight wasn't going so bad. There had been six shots on goal he'd had to defend already, and they hadn't even reached the end of the first period. A good night, all in all, if not for Margie's "Man-You-El."

At the end of end of the period he ran back to the bench to find his mother holding his water bottle in her hand.

"What's up?" Manuel asked. She had that look on her face.

"Why are you ignoring her?" she asked, speaking in Spanish so that their conversation could be somewhat private.

"Mom," he answered, in English.

"I heard that chico call her your girlfriend. Does that embarrass you?"

Manuel shrugged.

"Do the right thing, Manuel," she continued. "You're a leader. Someday you might be the President. But you have to do the right thing and not worry about what everyone else thinks."

Manuel nodded. He thought his mom was being more than a little optimistic as far as him being president, considering that she was an illegal alien. And he didn't like being guilted into being nice to Margie; he wasn't five years old and if he didn't want to talk to someone he shouldn't have to.

"Group up," Coach yelled.

The boys gathered around him. "We're going to make some changes. Manuel, you'll take Lucas's place at forward. Scott, you have your goalie gear?"

Scott nodded, wide-eyed. He hadn't been allowed to play goalie yet in a close game.

"Manuel, give him the goalie jersey. Hurry up, five minutes."

Manuel wondered why he suddenly was getting the chance to play forward. He wondered if he'd be rusty; he wondered if it would be like when he played before.

"Man-You-El!" Margie cried as he ran onto the field.

"Man-You-El!" Lucas repeated sarcastically from the sidelines. "Man-You-El!"

Manuel turned back and looked over his shoulder. Lucas had a sour look on his face, obviously not happy to be on the sidelines.

"Score a goal for Margie," Lucas yelled again, loud enough that even the people in the stands could hear him.

Manuel couldn't help himself, he glanced at Margie. She had a wide smile on her round face and her hands were clasped together.

Why, Manuel wondered, did Lucas want to embarrass him?

On one hand he had his mother trying to guilt him into being nice to Margie. On the other hand he had Lucas trying to embarrass him. Both of them were trying to control him.

"Man-You-El," Margie yelled.

"Man-You-El," Lucas parodied.

The ball was in play, and Manuel waited patiently and when it came into his area he was on it. He flew down the field, the ball was a part of him, and the other team's defenders were caught flat-footed and Manuel knew no one would keep him from taking a shot. The goalie came a few steps forward and held his arms out like he waiting for Manuel to come hug him. Manuel drove straight toward him, staring into his wide blue eyes, then planted his left foot and swung through with his right catching the ball on the laces. The ball zipped past the goalie in an arc and made the net jump.

Manuel jogged and smiled. This must be what it was like for the tiger released into the wild from his zoo cage. Freedom. Power. Being where you belong.

"Man-You-El!" Margie screamed.

Manuel looked back at her, the smile still on his face, and she beamed back at him. She thought, he realized, that he was smiling at her.

"Man-You-El!" Lucas yelled. "Man-You-El!"

And Manuel realized that Lucas no longer had control over him, because he didn't care anymore. He smiled at Margie for real this time and he waved at her. She jumped up and down and spoke to an older woman next to her, probably her mother, and her short little pigtails shaking with her animated motions.

The next time Manuel got the ball he took his time, letting his teammates get into position. When he drove in on the goal, the goalkeeper came toward him, and Manuel flipped it out to Fred who took the easy shot and scored.

"Man-You-El!" Margie cried.

"Man-You-El!" Lucas cried.

Manuel smiled his brightest and waved at them both.

Lucas stopped yelling his name.

When the referee blew his whistle indicating the end of the game Manuel huddled with his teammates. His coach said a few words and then they cheered for the other team and separated. Manuel began to head to the stands toward Margie.

"Manuel," Coach called.

Manuel turned to find Coach standing with another man.

"This is the high school soccer coach," Coach said. "Coach Simpson."

The man extended his hand and Manuel shook it.

"You're quite a player," Simpson said.

"Thanks."

"Would you consider moving up and playing for me?"

"Uh...after middle school?"

"Now."

Manuel thought about Lucas and Scott and the rest of his teammates. Would they miss him? They might lose some games. But Scott would get to play more; and Lucas wouldn't always feel second best. Which maybe was why Lucas was always trying to annoy him.

"It won't be easy," Coach Simpson said. "The older kids probably won't like playing with a middle-schooler, but I think you might be tough enough to deal with them."

Manuel nodded. Playing with kids his own age was too easy. "Sure," he said, "I want to play for you. But right now I need to go, okay?"

The two coaches nodded and Manuel ran to the stands. Margie and the woman she was with had already left, so he ran around behind the stands.

"Margie," he called when he saw her.

She turned around. Her mouth moved silently but Manuel could make out the syllables on her lips. Man-You-El.

"Thanks for cheering for me," Manuel said, as he came up to stand before her.

"You're welcome," Margie said, quiet and shy now that he stood talking to her.

Manuel looked at the woman next to Margie and caught her wiping a tear from her eye.

"Can you do me a favor?" he asked Margie.

"What?"

"When you cheer for me will you please call me Man-Well?"

"Man-Well," she whispered.

"Man-Well," Manuel repeated.

"Man-Well," she said louder, her eyes sparkling and a smile at the corner of her mouth.

# Chapter 10 — Rocky Springs

It was hard for Lizzie to get to sleep that night. Wonder and excitement filled her. What would it be like "gathering Lost Souls?" Would it be hard? Would the ghosts be scary? And tomorrow was just the beginning. Eventually they'd be tracking down demons and fairies and...

And what about Nick? Was he one of the Fallen? Was she supposed to send Nick to Hell? Was that part of her job?

The thought hit her like a punch in the gut. She had only met him once, but he seemed nice and no way did she want to hurt him. Still, she knew now that her dad would definitely want to know if a gnome lived in the woods beyond their back yard. On the other hand, she had promised Nick—swore on the Bible even—that she would not tell anyone about him.

The next morning she had her lessons as usual, but she had a hard time keeping her mind on them.

Her mom didn't complain though. She knew. "Can't think about anything but the trip?" she asked, looking at Lizzie's mostly empty worksheet.

"Trip? Where are you going Lizzie?" Lori asked.

"I—" Lizzie started.

"She's going to work with dad today," her mom jumped in. "From now on, she'll be working with him often."

"I want to go too," Lori whined.

"Sorry honey, but you'll have to wait until you are older."

"But where are they going?"

"When you are older, honey. When you are older."

Lori looked back and forth from their mom to Lizzie hopelessly trying to figure out what the secret was. Lizzie almost laughed.

After lunch, Lizzie and her dad climbed into his old pickup and headed off on their trip.

"Dad, what do the Fallen look like?" she asked after awhile.

"I've only seen a few myself," he answered. "Most of what I know about them I've learned by reading the journals. All the Spear Bearers keep a journal—before long you'll be starting one."

"But how will I know if I've seen one?"

"Well, it's easy if they're three inches long and flying about on dragonfly wings. But sometimes it can be hard. They're shape changers. They can look like ordinary animals, and they can look like ordinary people. They can even be invisible. So usually you can only catch them when they do something magical. If you're ever in doubt, the Spear will tell you. When you point the Spear at one the aura you see is brighter and green instead of white."

Lizzie sighed. She didn't need the Spear. Though she didn't want to believe it, there was no escaping the fact Nick was one of the Fallen. She shook her head and muttered, "And then you send them to Hell."

"We _banish_ them. Whether that means Hell or somewhere else, I can't say. It can be difficult. They have very strong magic and move fast as lightning. As a Spear Bearer, you must be very fast and banish them before they know what hit them. And the most important rule of all—the journals say this over and over—is never _ever_ talk to them."

Lizzie gulped. "Why? Why shouldn't you talk to them?"

"Because they have magic as old as the world. They can trick you." Mr. Long looked at her and pointed at his temple. "They can get right inside your head. They can bring you under their spell and control you."

He shook his head. "Talking to them is the worst thing you can ever do."

Would a person even know, she wondered, if they were under a spell? If Nick hadn't asked her what she was, would she have used the keys she found to snoop in her father's office? Probably not, she decided. But had he cast a spell on her that made her do it? How would she know? And could she still be under his power in some way?

She thought about telling her dad everything this very minute. But she couldn't. Actually, she could tell him, and that was the difference. She knew with a certainty that she could tell her dad about Nick and they could go into the woods and try to banish him with the Spear. And since she could do it, she knew she wasn't under some magical spell controlling her.

She didn't want to betray Nick. She didn't want to be the one to send him to hell, or banish him, or whatever. She had made a promise and she was going to keep that promise...and hope that it didn't cost her.

Around four o'clock that afternoon they pulled up at Rocky Springs, a small park on the Natchez Trace Parkway. They had been here a few times before as a family, picnicking and riding bikes around on the roads and trails. There were all the things you would expect at a park: picnic tables, camping areas, restrooms, and markers showing places of interest.

Her dad grabbed a duffle bag from the backseat. Lizzie's mom had filled it with sandwiches and drinks. And he had added the ancient Spear.

"You remember this place?" her dad asked.

"Yes'r."

He pointed in the direction they were walking. "You remember what's up this way?"

"Yes'r. An old church."

"That's right. An old church...and an old church cemetery."

"Why is there a church out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"Well, there used to be a town here: Rocky Springs. There were springs here too...that is where the town got its water. But then the spring dried up and everybody moved away. All that's left now is the church, the cemetery, and the ghosts."

The church was a rectangular shape and made of brick, except for the wooden, squarish belfry. It had two regular sized front doors and just three windows along the side of it.

Behind the church, and bordered by a rusty chain-link fence, was the old graveyard. The trees here were large, and their boughs stretched out toward each other and made a dense web that covered the entire area in shadow. Tombstones, covered with splotches of black, gray and green, rose out of overgrown grass. Spanish moss hung down like gray hair everywhere she looked. The place smelled of dampness and decay.

"Now look around," Mr. Long said. "Get a good feel for where everything is. When we come back after dark you'll be glad you did."

Even though it was ninety-five degrees outside, Lizzie shivered. "After dark?" The place was scary enough during the day.

"Yes. It's not as if we can run around gathering souls in broad daylight. We can't risk someone seeing us." He looked back toward the direction they'd come. "Now let's go down to the town. There will likely be Lost Souls there as well."

If there weren't little markers here and there, Lizzie would have never guessed there had ever been a town here. The Mississippi jungle had swallowed the town whole, and left nothing but some bricks and rusted metal. It wasn't as spooky as in the graveyard, but still she got the sense that they weren't alone.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"If there are ghosts around, why haven't you already banished them?"

He looked down at her and smiled. "I was saving them for you, so you could learn the business."

# Chapter 11 — Initiation

They ate dinner at a picnic table and then waited for sunset. Her father read a stack of newspapers and Lizzie tried to do her homework, though there was no way she could concentrate. It seemed like forever before the woods became dark in twilight shadow and the first fireflies dotted the gloom with their yellow-green flashes.

"Time to go," Mr. Long said. "Grab your flashlight."

A bright half moon made the flashlight unnecessary for the walk up to the church, but the light from the moon didn't make it past the canopy of branches spanning over the cemetery. Lizzie shined her flashlight around; the tombstones seemed to crowd around them and she felt a tingle as her hair rose up on the back of her neck. But there were no ghosts that she could see.

She heard the zipper on the duffle bag. Mr. Long pulled out the Spear and looked around. "We're in luck." He leaned over next to her and said, "Hold the Spear with me so you can see."

As she took hold of it, she gasped. Although it was just as dark as before, now she could see everything as well as if it were midday. But that was not why she gasped.

Straight ahead a woman wearing a pink and white checkered housedress stood crying. If she hadn't been slightly transparent, Lizzie would have sworn she were a real person. Not only could she see the woman, she could hear her sobbing too. She watched as the woman blew her nose and then squeezed her handkerchief tight in a fist. "Oh my poor baby," she cried, "my poor little baby. How could you die? How could this happen?"

"Is she talking to us?" Lizzie whispered.

"No, I'm sure she isn't. Most ghosts don't even seem to be aware that they are dead."

"She says her baby died. Wasn't that a long time ago?"

"Let's not worry about that. We have a job to do, and trying to understand the dead is not part of that job. Now, I am going to gather this Lost Soul. Watch.

" _Damnari inter manes_ ," he said with a commanding voice. Darkness opened from the end of the Spear, darkness not so much black as empty, a void in space. The woman's arms reached out frantically, like she was slipping down a hill and desperate for something to grab hold of. Then she disappeared into the darkness, and the darkness flowed back into the Spear.

"Why'd ya'all do that to Leah?" a voice said from beside them.

Lizzie's heart skipped a beat and she spun around. A little girl, about Lori's age, sat nearby on a short stone table. She wore a light blue dress and a blue bow in her curly golden hair.

Mr. Long guided Lizzie around so that they were pointing the Spear at the girl. " _Damnari inter manes_." As the darkness came at her, the girl screamed and tried to grab onto the table, but it didn't help, and she disappeared into the void.

The scream hung on the air for a long time. Finally, Lizzie's dad quietly said, "I hate it when they do that."

"She was just a little girl, Dad."

"She was a Lost Soul. Gathering Lost Souls is what we do. It is not our job to decide who goes and who doesn't."

"But dad, why did she scream like that?"

Mr. Long shook his head. "I don't know. Scared, I guess."

"I thought you said they weren't even aware of us."

He shook his head. "I said most the time. But sometimes...especially the younger ones...well, you saw. Come on. There are others."

They turned, and a man in a brown suit paced in front of a diamond-shaped monolith tombstone. "Eighteen more dollars," he said. "That's all I need, and I'll bring them down. Eighteen dollars..."

"Damnari inter manes."

Blackness enveloped the ghost and he was gone.

"You try it, Lizzie," he said. He pointed at one last ghost, a large black man, his hair dappled gray, digging a grave, his white sleeveless t-shirt dark with perspiration.

The ghost spoke in a deep voice, "Shore is hot today, and me here workin' like a mule." He stopped and rubbed his forehead with the back of his arm.

Mr. Long took his hands off the Spear. "Point the Spear at him and say the words, ' _Damnari inter manes_.'"

Lizzie hesitated—she didn't want to do it. The ghosts didn't seem bad, and they seemed so scared when being pulled into the Spear.

The ghost went on talking to himself. "But I ain't no mule; I'm an ol' man. Heck, these folks treat their mules better'n this. I've gots to get outta this place'n get up North, where a man's not treated like no animal. I just gots to."

"Stop listening to him, Lizzie," Mr. Long said. "It just makes it harder. Just point the Spear and say the words."

Lizzie took a deep breath and said, " _Damnari inter manes_."

"Lo' Jesus," the man shouted as the darkness came toward him, and he threw his shovel. The shovel flew end over end through the air toward Lizzie. The edge of the blade glinted, sharp and deadly. She dove to the ground, dropping the Spear, and put her hands over her head.

She felt the hands of her dad picking her up. "What happened?"

"He threw his shovel at me."

Mr. Long chuckled as he bent over to pick up the Spear. "Ghosts are mostly harmless. The shovel didn't have any more substance than he did."

Lizzie was still shaking. "So, it wasn't real?"

"No. It was just an ethereal projection."

"And they can't hurt me?"

"Well, there have been occasions mentioned in the journals where..." Her dad paused and started again, his voice a little more stern. "They can't hurt you if you don't give them a chance. When you see them, point the Spear and say the words."

"Yes'r," Lizzie answered.

"Here," he said, "touch the Spear. It looks like you got him."

Lizzie held the Spear with her father. Where the man had been there was nothing but another tombstone.

They looked around, but they saw no more ghosts. "It's clean," Mr. Long said. "Now let's go down to where the town used to be. It's likely there'll be some more ghosts down that way."

"Can we do it some other time?" Lizzie asked. She had had enough. Enough fear and excitement. Enough seeing the scared and sad faces of the ghosts.

Mr. Long rubbed his chin for a moment; she could see that he was disappointed. But still he nodded his head and patted her on the back. "Sure Lizzie. That's a good start. You done good." He put the Spear back in the bag.

She felt so raw that the relief of knowing they were finished almost made her cry. Almost. It was a good thing it was dark or he might have noticed.

She turned on her flashlight and led the way out from the cemetery.

# Chapter 12 — Landlord

Manuel and his mother had just begun to eat when the knock came.

Manuel's mother had been feeling tired a lot lately, so he told her to wait and he would check. He looked through the peephole and saw the ruddy face, salt and pepper stubble, and slicked back silver hair of the landlord.

The man owned the duplex they lived in, and he lived in the other half of the house. He had never been friendly, but lately he seemed more threatening to Manuel than before. The man had lived with a sad and stooped woman who always seemed to be on the front porch smoking, but it had been months since Manuel had seen her. He wondered if this had something to do with why the man now seemed meaner.

"Rent's due," the man said, pushing his way into the house as soon as Manuel opened the door. He stunk of cigarettes and alcohol.

It was not a big duplex, and Manuel's mother could hear and see the landlord from where she sat. "It's due next Tuesday," she answered.

"From now on," the man said, "I want you to pay it seven days in advance."

Manuel noticed a stain on the chest of the man's sleeveless t-shirt, and Manuel thought it looked like a big brown nipple. It made the man appeared lopsided, and it would have seemed comical except on him it seemed scary instead. His landlord stood a head taller than Manuel and had broad shoulders and thick, hairy forearms.

"Mr. Lloyd," Manuel's mom said, her voice sounding thin as she stood, "we're having dinner. Can you please—"

"Su casa, mi casa," the landlord said and laughed. "I own this house and I can come in any time I like. But if you don't like it, then maybe you can complain to the cops."

She stopped and stared at him. Manuel could see he had said something that scared her.

"I figured you were illegal," he said. "Just a quick phone call away from a one way ticket back to Mexico."

His mother shook her head, but without conviction. Her lower lip trembled.

Mr. Lloyd sat down on their couch. A satisfied smile spread across his face. "And the rent's going up," he said. "A hundred...a hundred and fifty. Nine fifty a month."

Manuel's mom winced; she put her hand out and leaned against a chair. "I can't afford that. I can't."

Mr. Lloyd smiled again. He seemed to expect and be happy with this answer. "Well," he said, "you know. We've never been friends, you and me. But maybe if we were more...friendly...maybe I wouldn't want to raise the rate." The man squinted when he said the word 'friendly' and Manuel had seen his mother shake her head slowly in reply.

"You could invite me to sit with you for dinner," Mr. Lloyd continued. "That would be neighborly. And then, well, we'll see, if you get my meaning."

Manuel intuitively knew that what the man wanted was something evil, though he only had a vague idea of the details.

"You...can...if you like," she said, faltering, "Eat with us. We are having beans and tortillas..."

Mr. Lloyd smiled broadly, showing his yellowing teeth. "You're pretty smart—"

"But you have to leave after we eat," she said, interrupting the landlord.

Mr. Lloyd stood up. "We'll see," he said, walking to the little dining table. It was a fold up card table with a table cloth over it.

Manuel did not want to sit at the table with this man. He did not want the man in the house. But what could he do? Fighting the man seemed out of the question, not because he was afraid of the man—though he was a little—but because the man was their landlord. He lived next door. And besides, he understood the threats the man was making against his mother. He would call the Department of Homeland Security and maybe he would get her deported. Manuel had been born in Texas...he was a US citizen. But whereever his mom went, of course he would go too.

The three of them sat down at the table. Manuel didn't feel hungry and just watched the man as he spooned a large helping of beans onto a freshly fried tortilla.

Manuel thought of Gordon and wondered if somehow he could call the magician and ask for help. Gordon would come if he called him, he knew. But what sort of magic would get them out of this situation? Maybe if he was more than an apprentice he'd know. The only thing he could do was move a flame. And hairs. He had practiced moving the hairs on his arm.

And he thought of an idea. And concentrated.

And the landlord scratched the back of his neck.

Manuel concentrated harder.

Mr. Lloyd turned suddenly to look behind himself, so quickly it made Manuel and his mother jump. "What the hell," Mr. Lloyd mumbled. He turned his attention to his plate again, but almost immediately jumped to his feet, his chair toppling out behind him and crashing to the floor.

"What's going on?" he asked. "Do you have fleas?"

Manuel was ready with an answer. "I think we have a ghost."

"A what?"

Manuel concentrated on the back of Mr. Lloyd's neck, but managed an answer. "Never mind," he answered, thinking that it was enough to plant the idea in the man's head; there was nothing to be gained by elaborating. Then he attempted more than just moving the hair. One hair, he could see it in his mind's eye, he concentrated on. One hair. And he pulled.

The landlord jumped and spun.

"This is nuts," he said. "This is nuts."

He went to the front door, but before he left he said, "Payment's due, Ms. Garcia," and he slammed the door behind him.

Manuel's mom looked at him. She looked tired, but there was a sparkle in her eyes. "Did you..."

Manuel nodded.

" _Cara del angel_ ," she said, touching his cheek with her hand. " _Mi angel de la guarda_."

# Chapter 13 — Ghost Story

On Thursday, after Lizzie returned from Tai Kwon Do, Mr. Long called her into the office to brief her on their second mission.

"Tomorrow night we're going to the Garner Mansion. It is a bed-and-breakfast. We'll spend the night there, so pack a bag. The woman who runs the place was very convincing, but you never know—she may be making up stories to get people to spend the night there. We'll see.

"I told her that I am a scientist and my hobby is to travel the country debunking ghost stories. Our last name is Smith...don't forget. _Smith_. Luke Smith and his daughter Lizzie Smith. Got it?"

"Yes'r. But why can't we use our real names?"

"We'll do our best to keep her from seeing us use the Spear, but there's always that chance," he answered. "Remember, there are men out there who will do anything to get the Spear. The best way to keep it safe is by keeping it secret. If they don't know who we are, they won't be able to find us."

Lizzie nodded. It made sense.

"We'll leave right after your cross-country exercise tomorrow."

"What about my soccer game Saturday? It's at noon." She had already been worrying that her new job would interfere with her soccer games. She liked soccer. Besides, because she was home schooled she didn't get to spend a lot of time with her friends.

"Oh, sure," he replied, "But you might be sleepy...we're going to be spending part of the night gathering Lost Souls."

They arrived a couple hours before sunset. It was a big white house with tall and scraggly bushes in front. The huge front porch sat empty save a lonely white metal gliding bench; the wooden railing along the porch sagged here and there. The doorbell hummed with a buzzing that sounded like an electrocution in an electric chair.

A woman in an apron opened the door, her gray hair curled and stiff with hairspray. "Hello. You must be the Smiths," she said. She looked at Lizzie with a frown. "You said you were bringing your daughter, but I assumed she'd be older. I don't believe this is a good idea."

"It's okay, Mrs. Davis." Mr. Long put his hand on Lizzie's shoulder. "She's been with me on my investigations before. She isn't any more afraid of ghosts than I am."

Mrs. Davis studied Mr. Long for a moment. "I know I should tell you to go. But I really do need the business."

She invited them to sit on a floral-patterned couch in a cozy sitting room. Lizzie smelled cookies baking.

"If you don't mind, could you pay up front?" the woman asked, removing her apron. "My apologies for being abrupt, but other guests have left suddenly in the middle of the night."

"Yes ma'am." Mr. Long pulled his wallet out and paid with cash. "But you don't have anything to worry about. We won't be frightened by creaky boards and drafty rooms."

The hostess sighed and gave Lizzie a worried glance. After a pause, she smiled nervously. "I was just baking cookies. Chocolate chip. They're cooling on the rack just now. Let me go and get them."

Mrs. Davis returned with a china plate deep with cookies. "Help yourselves," she said.

"Thank-you ma'am," Lizzie said.

The hostess sat in a delicate wooden chair. As she nibbled on her cookie, she watched her guests with a measuring stare.

"Delicious," Mr. Long said.

Mrs. Davis narrowed her eyes. "Where is your equipment? Most ghost hunters bring all sorts of gadgetry."

"We're not hunting ghosts, Mrs. Davis," he answered. "We're here to prove that they don't exist. We only need our eyes and ears for that."

Mrs. Davis looked down at the floor. "I used to be like you. I believed ghosts were for Halloween and campfire stories," she said quietly. "Not anymore. Now I only go upstairs when the sun is bright, and even then I don't stay up there long."

She put her shaky thin fingers to her lips and looked up at the ceiling. "Something is up there. Something evil."

"Mrs. Davis," Mr. Long began, "I'm sure you mean well—"

"I know I should just let you have your way, Mr. Smith, but I'm not very good at this. I never planned to run a...a spook house. Just wanted to have a little bed-and-breakfast to keep me busy, and keep me fed, after my husband died," Mrs. Davis said. Then she turned to Lizzie, "You don't want to go up there, honey."

This woman wasn't play-acting. Something up there had really scared her. Lizzie felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck.

"If it were just you, Mr. Smith," turning her attention back to Lizzie's dad, "I'd probably just let you learn your lesson the hard way. But your little girl...she's so young."

"We're not afraid of ghosts, Mrs. Davis," Mr. Long said.

"Neither was I," she said, looking restlessly around the room. "So when I came here with the realtor, I ignored the creepy feeling I had upstairs. Told myself I was imagining things.

"But it wasn't my imagination, Mr. Smith. My first night here my sleep was interrupted by the sound of a woman crying. I turned on the lamp but I saw nothing. Still there was the crying, and the creak creak of a rocking chair.

"I wasted no time getting out of that room, but what waited in the hallway was worse.

"I saw her, and I know she saw me, because she started to laugh that horrid laugh of hers. It's the kind of laugh you might hear from a child lifting a cat by its tail—the kind of laugh you hear from a child who likes hurting things. I fainted.

"I woke dazed and disoriented. I had hit my head and I was bleeding badly. At first, I tried to tell myself I'd been sleepwalking. But then I heard that laugh again.

"I crawled to the stairway, and pulled myself up by the handrail. That's when she pushed me. I'm lucky I didn't fall."

Mrs. Davis sighed in that broken way people do when they are about to cry. Her skin had turned a shade paler, and she looked weaker and older. Turning her head, she looked outside. "It's beginning to grow dark." Her head shook as if she had palsy.

"Yes," Mr. Long said. "I guess it's about time we head to our bedroom. We'd like to stay in the room you believe has the most activity."

"I sleep down here in the antechamber on the daybed," Mrs. Davis said, now looking back up at the ceiling. "Your daughter can stay down here with me...she can sleep on the couch."

This sounded like a good idea to Lizzie. If the woman had wanted to scare her, she had done a good job.

But Mr. Long shook his head. "No. We'll be fine."

"I know what her name is," Mrs. Davis said, a distant look in her eyes.

"Whose name?" Lizzie asked. Her dad gave Lizzie a slight shake of the head. He didn't want her asking questions.

"That evil one up there," Mrs. Davis answered, looking up at the ceiling. "I've done some research—went to the courthouse. They were the Galbreaths. Mr. Galbreath was a local merchant—he owned several riverboats and brought stuff up from New Orleans or down from Ohio. They had a child, a girl. She's the laughing girl, I think. Her name was Elizabeth.

"Same as your name, isn't it?" Mrs. Davis asked.

"My name is Lizzie." True, Elizabeth was the name printed on her birth certificate; but nobody ever called her that.

"Mr. Galbreath hired a housemaid," Mrs. Davis continued, "a widower named Edith Sikes. She had a daughter named Amy. Both were invited to live in the house.

"Tragically, before long Mrs. Galbreath grew ill and died. Consumption it says on the death certificate, though I'm not certain what that means.

"Just over a year later, Mr. Galbreath married Miss Sikes. But all was not well. I think something happened to Elizabeth when her mother died...it twisted her somehow and made her evil. In any case, she pushed her new stepsister down the stairs. Amy's neck broke and she died instantly.

"I think it is Mrs. Galbreath that cries at night, and it is Elizabeth, her daughter, that roams the house, looking for another victim to push down the stairs."

# Chapter 14 - Imp

Manuel found it hard to concentrate on his exercise because of the storm. He was trying to raise a feather off the table, but every time he felt he had it, and saw the feather slightly jiggle, another crash of booming thunder would break his concentration. Trailers were bad places to be in a storm, and it made him nervous to hear the fury of it as it pounded down onto the trailer. Being nervous didn't help his concentration either.

Gordon had called from the grocery store. He said he was going to wait until the storm died down a bit before coming back home. Manuel thought about Gordon riding through the sheets of rain on his motorcycle and he agreed that it didn't seem like a great idea.

The window next to the door exploded inward, shards of glass spraying the room. Manuel turned and ducked under the table to avoid being cut, then jumped up. The curtains waved in the wind and rain came in through the window. Manuel wondered if the wind was had been so strong to blow out the window...to make it explode.

"On the couch!" Gordon's shrunken head yelled. "The blighter is on the couch!"

Manuel turned and saw something about the size of a junior league soccer ball on the old threadbare couch. It was black and shiny and had veins in it, giving him the impression of a black head of cabbage. Then it began to unfold. Wings opened up, thin arms and legs stretched out, and a dark face with white eyes and white fangs lifted toward him.

"Don't just stand there gaping Sparky," the shrunken head screamed. "Do something!"

Manuel looked around the room for a weapon, but saw nothing to throw, nothing to use as a club.

The imp considered Manuel for a moment, but then looked around the room. When its eyes settled on the bookshelf with the metal doors it darted toward it.

Of course, Manuel thought. The imp was here to steal Gordon's string of sigils. And no doubt Akers, the Mississippi Congressman, was behind it. At least Akers hadn't lied about one thing: he had actually been a collector. If he didn't already have sigils, then he wouldn't have been able to summon this little demon. But obviously he wanted more demons under his control.

Manuel leapt after the demon.

When it reached the bookshelf it pried one of the doors open, splintering the wood frame and bending the thin metal grill.

Manuel grabbed it around the waist to pull it away, and had just an instant to feel the rock hard and cold flesh of the demon before it wrenched around and slashed at his face with its claw. Manuel jerked his head back and it missed his face, but the razor claws sliced through Manuel's t-shirt and deep into his flesh. Manuel screamed, let go of the imp, and stumbled backwards.

The imp grabbed the chain of pendants from the metal tree. It turned and flashed a brilliant and frightening smile back toward Manuel. It seemed to say, 'foolish boy, you can't stop me.'

Manuel nodded and opened his palms. "Go ahead," he said. "It's yours."

The imp squinted suspiciously at Manuel, but then took to the air.

As quick as he could, Manuel reached into the bookcase and grabbed a jar. The liquid was yellow and the animal inside looked like a squid. Spinning, aiming toward the window where he knew the imp would be, Manuel threw the jar.

It hit the imp midair with a crunch that sounded like bones breaking, but maybe it was just the glass. As the glass split and broke away, the squid, which Manuel had guessed was long dead and pickled, wrapped its arms around the imp's head. The imp fell onto the floor under the window.

The imp let go of the chain of pendants and began trying to pull the tentacle legs off.

Manuel picked up the pendants.

"Take them away," the shrunken head said.

Manuel headed to the front door. He'd left his bike under the trailer next to the stairs.

"No, no, you stupid git, the sorcerer will be out that way waiting. The back way."

Instead of a trailer home, Gordon's trailer was an RV and was made more for camping. It had little doors around the sides for camping gear, big enough for a skinny boy to slide out through.

Manuel ran into the back of the trailer, lifted up the lower bunk bed, and dropped in. Then he crawled to the door, opened up the panel, and dropped out of the trailer into the mud.

The rain still came down hard, and the sound of it hitting the metal of the trailers in the trailer park was deafening. He knew no one could have heard him as he splashed in the mud, nor could they hear him as he ran down into the ravine. The storm also meant that he was almost invisible.

The Mingo River had swollen in the rain, and it surprised Manuel how the force of the river on his legs made it hard to stand. He had heard of people drowning in flash floods and he remembered that now. But he knew this was the only way to get out of the trailer park without someone seeing him leave.

He went with the flow of the river to where it ran under 41st street. There were six square tunnels, and Manuel entered the closest one. As he slogged through the tunnel, in the total black, out of the rain but in the grip of the angry river, he thought of the imp and wondered if it had yet struggled free. It could be out there flying and looking for him now. He had to hurry.

The even concrete floor disappeared from under Manuel's feet and his footing became uneven. As he fell he remembered the jumble of white boulders piled up where the tunnels ended. His ribs smashed into a jagged rock, and the rushing water dragged him over the boulders, battering and scraping his knees and ankle. He became lost in the roar of the rain and the power of the river. He swam and tried to keep his head above water mindlessly.

But the imp might be free, he remembered. And the imp probably wouldn't be alone. He remembered the crow, and imagined it circling above now, scanning the ground with its black eyes. That was not an ordinary bird.

He struggled up onto his feet and stumbled to the edge of the river. An asphalt bike and walking trail bordered the river, and it would have made for faster running, but he decided to stay in the ravine for now, hopeful that he would be better hidden here. But he hadn't ran far when his ankle twisted and his knees cracked on more of the boulders. He'd forgotten about the drainage pipes into the river and the big rocks that surrounded them. Pulling himself up again, he decided he had to risk the bike trail.

His ribs ached and he knew his knees must be bloody, but he ignored the pain and ran hard. He ran through the parks, past tennis courts, past all the houses along the river, under the bridges, until he came to the culvert that took the river under I-44. Sloped concrete walls rose up at least fifty feet on each side, great drainage ditches nearly big enough to drive a car dumped out into the river here, and the trail dipped down low beneath the bridges here.

There was no other way home, without trying to run across the busy interstate in the stormy dark, a prospect Manuel considered only briefly before realizing such an attempt would be suicide.

But he didn't like the idea of going down into the culvert. The water would be well up over the trail; he would be swimming for sure. He'd seen the tires and the branches and the other garbage floating in the river, and he didn't like being in the water with that. But the worst part was those big drainage ditches. Whenever he rode his bike past the tunnels, he peddled past them fast and he gave them a lot of room. On those occasions he had looked into them he'd only seen a short ways before they disappeared into darkness. It seemed they must go deep into the earth.

Whatever animals lived in the tunnels, and he imagined there must be raccoons and skunks at the very least, must have been flushed out by now. They would be in the river with him. And it seemed to Manuel that an evil undefined lived in those tunnels, and the image that came into his mind now was of tentacles reaching out from the tunnel, grasping and hungry.

But he had no choice. He saw a log floating in the river and he pounced on it. He paddled with his feet, controlling himself so he wouldn't be just another bit of flotsam, and he avoided the boulders and the bridge pillars. He looked toward where the tunnels should be, but he couldn't see them.

Spinning lazily, a plastic toy tug-boat big enough for a little kid to ride in, passed by him. It seemed so unreal Manuel wondered if this were a nightmarish dream. Then he saw a rail rising out of the water to his left and recognized it. He swam toward it and soon he saw the bike trail climbing out of the water.

On his feet again and out of the water, Manuel ran again. What little light had come from the twilight sun now was long faded, and the rain still came down in a torrent, so he jogged slowly. The pain in his ribs made it hard to breathe, but home wasn't too far away now and the idea of seeing his mom encouraged him.

As he jogged up to his porch he wondered how late it might be. Usually it took him about fifteen minutes on his bike, but it seemed like it had been hours he'd been out, slogging through the river, crashing through the grass and bramble, floating on the river, and running on the trail. He knocked on his door, too tired to fumble in his pocket for his keys.

"Manuel," his mother cried as she opened the door.

He walked in, water dripping off him and puddling on the floor.

"What happened?" she asked. She touched his chest where the imp had swiped him with its claws. "You're bleeding."

Manuel sunk down onto his knees and did something he hadn't done in years. He began to cry.

# Chapter 15 — Whispers in the Dark

"Mrs. Davis," Mr. Long said, "we'd like to go up to our room now, if you please."

"Have it your way, Mr. Smith," she said. She led them back into the entryway and pointed up the stairway. "Turn right at the top and go down the hallway. The master bedroom is the last door on the right."

The staircase began wide at the bottom, followed the curve of the wall up, and grew narrow at the top. The countless steps of those who had lived here had worn splotches of tan into the otherwise dark stained wooden steps.

"Lizzie, I'll put blankets down here on the couch if you decide to come down," Mrs. Davis said as they began up the stairs. She pointed at the substantial wooden banister. "Make sure you hold on tight to the banister. You hear me?"

Lizzie nodded and obeyed. She stayed very near her dad up the stairs, down the dark hallway, and into the bedroom. He flipped on the light switch. A huge tester bed dominated the room, the curtains drawn up and tied to the solid square posts. The nightstand had a digital alarm clock on it, the numbers flashing.

"Do you think the ghost really tried to push her down the stairs?" Lizzie asked, dropping her backpack on the floor.

"It's possible."

"But I thought you said they couldn't hurt you."

Mr. Long shrugged. "Well...they can do little things. Flip light switches on and off. Open doors. Knock glasses off kitchen counters. I suppose that if they caught you off balance, they might be able to make you fall."

He walked to the door. "Let's have a look around."

There wasn't much to see. Each room had a few lonely pieces of furniture. No clothes hung in any of the closets. In a room designed as a library, cardboard boxes sat unopened and the shelves were empty.

After completing their survey, Mr. Long told Lizzie to go to the bathroom and get ready for bed. Lizzie looked out into the dark hallway and swallowed hard. It would be nice if he would come and stand by the door. But he expected her to be tough. At a Tai Kwon Do meet once, another girl had kicked her in the shins in an 'above the waist' competition. But when she told him about it, he said, "Leave the complaining to lawyers and politicians."

So she went without a word, but broke a record getting into her pajamas and brushing her teeth.

While her father took his turn in the bathroom, Lizzie sat on the bed with her back to the wall, eyes darting around the room. At any moment the ghost could come gliding in, laughing and grabbing her with its icy fingers. It took forever for her dad to return.

When he did, he opened his suitcase and put two flashlights and the Spear on the nightstand. "I'm setting my watch alarm for two a.m. I want to make sure Mrs. Davis is asleep." Then he turned off the light.

Lizzie slipped under the stiff sheets and lay very still, her eyes open. Before long her dad began the deep, rhythmic breathing that meant he had fallen asleep. Amazing he could be so relaxed. But then he had been doing this for...well, from since he was about her age. He probably was scared when he first started. Maybe he had even felt a little sad, like she did, using the Spear on the ghosts.

Silver light shone into the room from the waning moon. Just enough light to cast shadows here and there. Lizzie stared into the shadows and her imagination filled in the details: a foot, a claw, a face. Perhaps it would be better to close her eyes.

"Elizabeth. Elizabeth."

Lizzie opened her eyes. She looked around. Had she fallen asleep? Had she dreamed it?

A sudden chill washed over her.

"Elizabeth. Elizabeth," the hissing whisper came again. "It's your dear sister Amy."

Her heart raced. She reached for her flashlight on the nightstand, groping for it in the darkness, but instead she touched the Spear. Immediately she saw someone bending over her. She opened her mouth to scream, but her breath failed and nothing more than a squeak came out.

The ghost, a girl about Lizzie's age, put a finger to her lips. "Shh." She wore a light blue dress that had powdery black stripes running up and down and big pockets sewn in at each thigh. Amy smiled and whispered, "I have a secret."

It felt to Lizzie as if someone were sitting on her chest and squeezing the air out. If she'd tried to say " _Damnari inter manes_ " she might not have been able to. But she didn't even try because Amy had said the magic word: "Secret."

The girl turned her head, revealing a shoulder-length ponytail, and glanced toward the corner of the room. Her pale blue eyes sparkled when she turned back toward Lizzie. "There's your mamma now. She's dead you know. But she still comes...doesn't know any better I think," she said, and silently she backed away toward the door.

A creaking sound began in the corner.

Lizzie's heart pounded. Take a deep breath and clear the mind, she reminded herself. She forced herself to sit up and look toward the creaking sound.

A woman sat in a rocking chair, rocking and talking to herself. "What is wrong with me? I've never felt sick like this before. I just keep getting weaker and weaker. It's a struggle just to breathe."

Lizzie could tell that the woman had once been pretty, but now she looked very sick. Her long blonde hair was dull and thin, her eyelids drooped, her cheeks were hollow, and her lips were chapped. The frown on her face seemed somehow irreversible. She slouched in the chair tugging restlessly at a patchwork quilt, the skin tight over the bones moving in her hands. "Why Lord? Why? I'm too young. My husband...my daughter, they need me. Please, no."

"Hello, Mrs. Galbreath." The girl with the ponytail came back into the room carrying a tray with a glass of water and a brown glass bottle. She beamed with excitement. "I have your medicine for you."

"Oh Amy, it's not doing me any good," Mrs. Galbreath complained.

"Doctor's orders, ma'am." Amy put the tray down onto a table that a moment before had not been there. She poured medicine from the brown bottle into a teaspoon. "Open up."

The lady lifted her head and slightly parted her lips, and the girl tipped the contents of the spoon into her mouth. The lady made a sour face.

"Let me give you a drink to wash it down." Amy turned around, looked at Lizzie, and slipped a corked vial filled with a white powder out of her pocket. She raised her eyebrows knowingly, smiled, and tipped the powder into the drink. The woman, her head again bowed, did not notice.

Helping Mrs. Galbreath lift her head, and putting the glass to her lips, Amy said, "Drink it up, ma'am."

Mrs. Galbreath kept on turning her head away from the glass, saying, "I've had enough," but the girl was persistent, saying again and again, "Drink it all up, ma'am, yum yum."

When the glass was finally empty, Amy gave Lizzie a proud grin. As she left the room, she stopped at the door and motioned with a curling finger that she wanted Lizzie to follow.

After the initial shock, Lizzie wasn't all that scared anymore. What could a ghost do to her? She had the Spear. She looked at her sleeping father. He would want her to use the Spear right then. Just point the Spear and say the words. But she wanted to see where the ghost would lead her. She wanted make sure she understood the secret.

Lizzie slipped from under the covers and tiptoed on the cool wooden floor to the door. Amy passed through the door as if it wasn't even there, but with the Spear Lizzie could still see the outline of her body as she waited in the hallway. Lizzie followed, turning the knob slowly and easing the door open so that it wouldn't squeak.

Amy stood smiling devilishly and as Lizzie came near she began to talk. "It is all so much like a dream, you know, Elizabeth. It all seems like it all happened a long, long time ago. Déjà vu...that's what they call it, right?

"Do you know why I poisoned your mamma, Elizabeth?"

Lizzie shook her head. "I'm not Elizabeth."

"Waiting on you and your mom like a slave. Like ya'all were somehow better than me and my mom. Just makes me sick to think about." The ghost began to walk down the hallway, and Lizzie followed.

"But then I thought up my great plan," Amy continued, "and sure enough when your mamma died, your dad married my mamma."

Amy wrinkled her nose in Lizzie's direction. "The only problem is that you're still here. Daddy's little princess. Oh, you make me mad, with your expensive dresses and your diamond earrings. It's not fair. And I'm gonna do something about it."

Amy stopped and turned square to Lizzie. "You know, it's really strange, 'cause I know I dreamed about this before, and it was just like this, but a long, long time ago. You standing there, right where I tricked you to stand."

Lizzie looked behind her and discovered that she was standing at the top of the staircase. Quickly she moved into her karate stance, putting more weight on the balls of her feet than the heels.

"But in my dream you moved as I tried to push you, and I tripped and rolled down the stairs. Very, very strange...the way it seemed so real. The crack my neck made as my head hit the wall...that sensation of fire running down my spine."

Amy furled her eyebrows in doubt. "But it had to be just a dream, because here I am."

The ghost seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then suddenly looked up past Lizzie's shoulder. "What are you doing here?" she asked, panic in her voice.

Lizzie whirled around, afraid of what she might see. But there was nothing.

Amy laughed. It was the oldest trick in the book, and Lizzie couldn't believe she had been stupid enough to fall for it.

Immediately, she dropped to her knees and leaned away from the stairs. She felt the push like a blast of cold air on her back and shoulders. But she held her ground, and the ghost went over her. There was a rumbling as it rolled down the stairs, a thud and a sickening crack.

Lizzie looked down the staircase. Amy lay there, her head pressed against the wall, eyes wide open, neck impossibly twisted.

For a moment, Lizzie thought the ghost was dead. But of course, the ghost had been dead for many, many years.

Amy's eyes blinked. She sat up and righted her head with her hands. "No. It's a nightmare."

She got to her feet and started up the stairs toward Lizzie. "Somehow, I'm going to kill you Elizabeth. Somehow."

Lizzie pointed the spear at the ghost and said, "I don't think so. _Damnari inter manes_."

As the darkness came down out of the Spear, Amy turned and tried to run, but there was no escape. The blackness sucked her up and she was gone.

# Chapter 16 — Birdie's run

Lizzie woke her father and told him what had happened with the ghost Amy.

He shook his head. "You should never talk to them, Lizzie. Just point the Spear and say the words."

"Yes'r," she said, head bowed.

Mr. Long looked into the corner where the other ghost was. Lizzie still held the Spear, but he probably could hear the creaking of the rocking chair. "Are you going to take care of that?" he asked.

"Do we really have to use the Spear on Mrs. Galbreath?"

"For crying out loud, Lizzie, you're calling them by name now?" he asked, the pitch of his voice rising.

"But she seemed so nice."

"They're ghosts," he said, rubbing his eyes and then his temples. "They don't belong here. And our job is to send them to where they do belong."

"Yes'r," she answered, but still she didn't move to banish the ghost.

After a quiet moment, Mr. Long put his hand on her shoulder and in a calmer voice said, "Look, honey, it isn't our job to decide which Fugitive Spirits to claim and which to leave. We take them all.

"Now, I know it might seem cruel sometimes. But we don't know what happens to them after the Spear takes them. Who knows? Maybe some go to hell, and maybe some go to heaven."

Lizzie nodded. She raised the Spear and pointed it at the ghost in the rocking chair. Maybe Mrs. Galbreath would go to heaven. Regardless, Lizzie had a job to do. Still, she couldn't help closing her eyes as she said the words.

In the morning, Mrs. Davis acted surprised to find them still there. She was even more surprised when Mr. Long told her they had not encountered a ghost. After eating a breakfast of bacon, eggs and grits, Mrs. Davis went upstairs with them.

She walked around, cautious and slow at first, but picking up the pace and growing more confident with every step.

"It's gone," she said. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked hard at Mr. Long. "You did something, didn't you? You got rid of it somehow. I know it."

He smiled and said, "There are no such things as ghosts," and he made a secret wink to Lizzie. She could see he was proud of what they had done. Mrs. Davis could now live in her home in peace.

Lori came rushing down the stairs, and after she had kissed and hugged Mr. Long, she asked Lizzie if she wanted to play tetherball.

Lizzie looked at her watch. There were still several hours before her soccer game, and though she was tired, she didn't feel much like taking a nap. She nodded.

As they walked to the backdoor, Lori whispered, "Why did you go to that old house with dad? What were you doing?"

Lizzie shrugged. She wasn't supposed to tell anyone, and she wasn't about to tell Lori. Keeping secrets was almost as fun as discovering them.

"Mom won't tell me. She just says that you're helping him. But you can tell me. I can keep a secret. Pretty please?"

Lizzie put both her hands on her sister's shoulders and turned her so they were face to face. "When you get older, I'll tell you then...okay?"

Lori pouted her lips. "Whatever. I'm sure it's just something stupid anyway."

As soon as Lizzie shut the sliding-glass door behind her, she realized something was wrong, though she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

She swung the tetherball over to Lori and said, "Serve." Lori was never a challenge, so Lizzie just took it easy and only blocked her shots. Perhaps she would even let her win.

The ball went back and forth. Slap, slap, slap. Something still didn't feel right. It seemed quiet. Too quiet.

The dog wasn't barking. The dog _always_ barked as they played tetherball.

Lizzie looked around the yard. The tetherball whizzed within inches of her head so she ducked away. As Lizzie walked away, Lori pounded the ball, spinning the rope around the pole.

"Birdie?" Lizzie shouted.

"I won!" Lori yelled.

Lizzie pointed to where the back gate stood open. "Did you leave that open?"

Lori shook her head. "I haven't been outside all day."

Then Lizzie heard barking in the distance. It sounded like Birdie alright.

Lizzie pointed at Lori and said, "Stay here. I'm going to find Birdie."

When she turned back around she froze, and whether she saw some movement or she just _felt_ the creature's eyes on her, she looked up into the trees. It didn't surprise her to see the crow looking down on her. Its gaze did not waver. A shiver ran down her spine though the day was hot. He did it, she thought. He let Birdie out. And for a moment she felt fear of the crow.

But, no, she told herself. That's paranoid. It's just a bird. So she took a deep breath, and then burst through the back gate, jumped Crawdad Creek and ran through the narrow strip of woods and into the soybean fields.

Well across the field she could see the black dog jumping around. "Birdie!" she called, but the dog didn't seem to hear.

She began to run, but after a moment she slowed to a jog. Although there wasn't much she liked more than to be out in the fields and woods, she hadn't been back since when she'd met Nick. He was one of the Fallen—there was no denying it. And though he seemed nice, they could trick you. They could put you under their spell. That's what her dad had said.

Birdie continued darting back and forth, chasing something. "Birdie," Lizzie said, out of breath from crossing the field.

The dog looked at her momentarily, then took off again, running and barking at something small down under the thick cover of soybean leaves.

Lizzie followed yelling, "BIRDIE...BIRDIE!" But the dog continued to run, zigzagging wildly, barking high-pitched and rapid, and always moving away. Frustrated and angry she grumbled under her breath, "Stupid bird dog."

On and on they ran. Sometimes Birdie would stop and whine, as if she had chased something into a hole; but just as Lizzie would catch up, Birdie would zip away in a new chase. Before she knew it, the woods loomed near, a tall dark wall. From within she heard the caw of a crow.

When Birdie disappeared into the shadow of the forest, Lizzie stopped and put her hands on her hips. Could it be a coincidence? Or was this a trap?

Birdie howled—a long mournful sounding howl. Lizzie moved to the edge of the wood, leaning this way and that to see if she could get a glimpse of the dog. There was some movement in amongst the trees—a dark silhouette, bouncing.

Looking around warily, she crept into the woods. There was no trail, so it was hard to be quiet as she climbed over fallen trees, pushed her way through brush, and avoided the thorny vines.

Birdie jumped on her hind legs, touching her forepaws on the trunk of a tree, howling upward.

Slowly, Lizzie snuck up on the dog. If she didn't make any noise, maybe she could grab her by surprise.

But before she got to her, Birdie stopped howling, barked a couple of lazy barks, and sat down. The dog yawned. Stretching her paws out before her, she lay down. A longer yawn now, wide, and ending in a sigh.

Lizzie looked around suspiciously. It had to be the gnome. It had to be Nick. She hurried to Birdie's side and shook her hard. "Get up Birdie," she said, trying to sound as forceful as she could without being too loud.

The dog began to breathe quickly, her paws twitching. She was dreaming.

This was magic, no doubt. A trick designed to get her into the forest. She should run—just forget the dog and run. Hopefully, Birdie would find her way back home.

"Hello Lizzie Long. Where haf you been?"

Too late.

# Chapter 17 — The Fallen

She turned around, a hand still on the dog. He stood there, hands in the pockets of his brown trousers. As before, he wore a tall red pointed cap and a green vest. There was, however, something different about him, but Lizzie couldn't figure out what it was.

"Hi Nick," she mumbled.

"We are friends, yah? Why do you not come to see your friend Nick?"

Lizzie stood and realized what was different. Whereas he was only knee high before, he stood almost as tall as her waist now. "You've grown," she said.

Nick nodded. "Perhaps, yah. It all depends on how I am feelink. Lizzie Long, while I haf been in zese woods I haf seen the robins build zeir nests sree times. I haf also seen a certain little girl playink wiz her dog in ze fields, runnink along ze dirt roads, explorink ze woods where ze tall trees grow. Yet since we heal't ze rabbit, you haf not pass't beyond your back gate. Tell me, human child, do you avoid me?"

Lizzie looked away and shrugged.

He narrowed his eyes. "Did you break your promise? Did you tell about me?"

Lizzie shook her head.

"Good...zat is good. I didn't sink you would. Not my friend Lizzie Long." He leaned over and gently patted the dog. Quietly he said, "She is nice dog."

"What is wrong with her?" Lizzie asked.

He looked up, a twinkling in his eyes. There might have been a smile under the thick silver beard. "Nothing. She is sleeping."

"Did you put a spell on her?"

He hesitated, and then nodded his head once. ""Oh...yah, a little magic. Zat's what humans call it—magic. Not to worry—she will be fine. When I am ready, she will wake."

"And did you put a spell on me?"

"Oh no, is zat what you sink? What makes you ask such a sing?"

"My dad..." she began, but she stopped when she heard how incriminating it sounded.

"So you did tell," he said, his voice rising.

"No no no." Lizzie held her hands out before her. "We were just talking in general about...about...gnomes and stuff."

"Gnomes?"

"Well...I mean, I guess I don't know what you are really. What are you?"

"Oh, I suppose gnome is as goot a name as any. Humans haf given me so many names: Elf, Kobold, Hausböcke."

"But what do you call yourself?"

"I am what I am," he said. "It matters not what I am called."

"Are you...an angel?"

"Ha, an angel?" he said, mockingly flapping his arms. "I don't haf wings."

"Well, I don't mean an angel, exactly. More of a fallen angel."

He looked at her long and hard. There was sadness in his eyes. "What I am...where I came from...you would understand it little and believe it less. No, never would I say I was an angel. Zis Earth it was forbidden, but we came anyway. Does zat make me 'Fallen'? If so, does zat make me evil? Some who came are fair and ozers foul. And many in between. Same wiz humans.

"What we, who you call 'Fallen' have in common, is zat we chose ze Earth. We wanted to be amongst ze trees, run through ze fields, smell ze flowers, and see ze abundance of animals. Some loved ze blue mountains, and some ze blue waters.

"Zis is how we came to zis world; zis is how we fell. Do you understand? We are not evil."

He looked up into the trees, and his eyes seemed to fix on something. "Not _all_ are evil. Some fell for ze love of power." Nick grimaced and grumbled, like he had stepped on a nail.

"Are you okay?" Lizzie asked, glancing back over her shoulder to where he had looked, but seeing nothing more than the dense Mississippi foliage. But then she saw it. The crow. It stared at her with a glinting eye.

"I am okay," Nick said, the pain now gone from his face. "But for how long I wonder."

He looked hard into Lizzie's eyes. "How long before you come wiz your fahzer? How long till you come wiz ze Spear searching for me?"

Lizzie shook her head. "I...I wouldn't..." she stammered.

"You know _what_ you are, zen?" Nick seemed to grow taller before her eyes, his eyes intent. "You are an heir of Longinus. You are a Spear Reaper."

"But I wouldn't...I wouldn't..."

"But you will. It is in your blood. Your ancestors haf wip't out hundreds upon hundreds, and zey took ze goot wiz ze bad. Elves and fairies and sprites, beautiful, and peaceful, gone now. What for? What did zey ever do to man?" He closed his eyes, shivered, and stepped back unsteadily. "I must go."

"No, wait," Lizzie said. It couldn't be true. What the Long family had been doing couldn't be so horrible. And she wouldn't use the Spear on Nick. She couldn't.

"Be careful Lizzie Long," Nick said, and again she saw a shiver of pain go through his body. Stepping behind a tree, he vanished.

Birdie rolled onto her paws and stood up. Lizzie scratched her behind the ears. "You okay?"

The dog responded with a vigorous shake and a stretch.

Without looking, Lizzie knew the crow still watched her from above. She felt a sudden rage swell up from her gut so strong it made her hands tremble. "Come on girl," she said quietly but urgently, "let's get out of here."

She jumped when she heard the flutter of wings, and she turned to see a black streak—the crow—negotiating through the tangle of branches, and disappearing deeper into the woods.

# Chapter 18 - Phenom

Gordon had called Manuel at home the night the imp had tried to steal the chain of pendants. After making certain Manuel was fine, he told Manuel that he couldn't visit anymore. Akers would have spies watching the trailer. They would watch him come, and then leave, and follow him home. Manuel wasn't even allowed to call the magician, except in an emergency, because the call might be traced.

Since then it had been a week, and Manuel missed spending time with Gordon.

Soccer on the varsity squad had been both good and bad. His teammates were bigger and faster than his middle school team, which made it harder, and he liked that. But they didn't talk to him.

On that first day, most of the boys just ignored him, but one of the boys teased him. His name was Martin, he was a head taller than Manuel, and he had a silky thin mustache that had looked like dirt to Manuel until he got closer. "You've got to be crapping me, coach," he said when Coach Simpson introduced him.

On the field Martin asked Manuel if knew how to tackle.

Manuel shook his head. Tackling was for football, not soccer.

"When I get a chance," Martin said, "I'll show you."

Manuel guessed this wasn't good, but he didn't reply.

After running several exercises, they scrimmaged. The first time he touched the ball he began to drive to the goal.

"Pass the ball," Coach Simpson shouted.

He looked around. He could pass it over mid-field to a teammate there, but it would be easier just to keep the ball. Besides, he wanted to score. He wanted to show these guys what he could do.

"Pass the ball," Coach Simpson shouted again.

Manuel passed the ball. He noticed, after a few minutes, that the coach didn't yell at other players to pass the ball.

But when next he got the ball, Simpson again yelled for him to pass it. It didn't seem fair, but Manuel did as he was told.

Then the ball went up in the air and came his direction. He could shoot to score from here, he thought. No excuse for the coach to shout to pass the ball.

But Martin was in the area too, running hard for the ball. He was closer, but Manuel was faster. He prepared to plant his foot for a crushing kick, but then Martin slid feet first; Manuel reached the ball an instant before Martin crashed into his ankle with his cleats.

Manuel went down hard on his shoulder and rolled; when he stopped he reached down and grabbed his ankle. It was bleeding.

"Now you know how to tackle," Martin said, quickly back on his feet and standing over Manuel.

"Martin. OUT!" Coach Simpson screamed.

"I was going for the ball," Martin complained.

"OUT!" the coach shouted again.

Another boy showed up as Martin walked away. "Great shot," he said, smiling. He offered Manuel his hand and helped him up.

Coach still yelled at Manuel to pass during practice all week, but when they played a real game he hadn't said anything. He kept Manuel on the bench.

Manuel didn't complain, though the game was close and he couldn't wait to play. He told himself that Coach Simpson hadn't recruited him to play varsity to leave him on the bench. Maybe not this game, he thought.

But with around fifteen minutes left the coach sent him in. Booker T was down by a point. Manuel scored three goals.

Manuel started the next game and played both halves, but this time he had specific instructions. Score three goals and no more.

So after quickly scoring his goals he passed the ball, and he began to relearn the fun in that. Even though he wasn't scoring the goals, he was orchestrating the game, forcing the opponents into bad positions, setting up his teammates for sweet shots.

And the other players on his team started to give him high-fives and call him by name. And Manuel began to feel that maybe the coach knew what he was doing.

After the game a woman with a notepad and a man with a camera on a tripod approached the coach, and Simpson then waved Manuel over.

"This is Lisa Arnot of the Tulsa World. They want to do a story about you."

Manuel smiled, but not too big. Be cool, he told himself.

"I hear you're the next phenom, Manuel," the reporter said. "And after seeing you play, I'm a believer."

"Thanks."

They took some photos of him with Coach Simpson, and some photos of him posing with a soccer ball. Lisa asked him questions about himself, what grade he was in, how long he'd played, what he thought about his teammates, and so on.

Then Manuel looked up and saw his mother. He thought she would be proud, but she had a worried look on her face.

He was going to be in the newspaper. What could be wrong with that? Did she think that somehow they would discover that she was an illegal immigrant?

And then he realized the real problem. He had told her about the string of sigils. And she already knew about Congressman Akers. And she knew that the sorcerer knew Manuel's face. If he saw his picture in the paper he would know his name. And it wouldn't be that hard to find him after that.

"Please," Manuel said suddenly. "I don't want you to put me in the paper."

The reporter followed Manuel's glance back to his mother. She stared at Manuel's mother a moment, then said, "Mrs. Garcia?"

Manuel's mother nodded, even though she wasn't a 'Mrs.'

"I'm Lisa Arnot of the Tulsa World." She shook his mother's hand.

"Please," Manuel's mother insisted, "we can't be in the news."

"It won't be a problem," the reporter said solemnly. "Don't worry."

Manuel felt relieved, surprised the woman agreed without an argument. But he wondered how long it would be before the TV crews would come around. Maybe it would be safer if he just didn't score at all.

# Chapter 19 - Raum

"Man-You-," Margie stopped mid-shout, and then corrected herself, "Man-Well! Look! Look!"

Manuel turned and smiled at his biggest fan. Then his smile fell when he saw what she held in her hand.

"Phenom!" Margie said, her eyes bright. "You are in the paper!"

Manuel asked "May I?" even as she put the paper into his hands.

There he was, second page sports, and he thought he looked pretty foolish with that half smile on his face and his curly black hair frizzed up to almost an afro. He read the caption: "Tulsa's Manuel Garcia—Soccer's Next Phenom?"

"What's wrong?" Margie asked, "You should be happy. You are a star!"

Manuel forced a smile. "Nothing. Thanks Margie." He handed the paper back.

The reporter had lied. Well, maybe not, he thought. She hadn't said she wouldn't print the story. She just had told him and his mother _it wouldn't be a problem_. And maybe the reporter had thought that whatever they were worried about wouldn't be a problem. Of course, the reporter could have never guessed what kind of trouble they would be in if the story was published.

Manuel considered trying to sneak out of school and make a run for home. But it would be a long, long run—Manuel rode the bus and lived miles across town. He wasn't even sure if he could find his way. No, he would have to wait until this evening.

Anyway, he thought, maybe he was just being paranoid. Madison Akers lived in Mississippi, not Oklahoma, so it didn't seem likely he would be reading the Tulsa World.

Manuel might as well have skipped school as far as learning was concerned. He couldn't think about anything but the string of sigils and the Congressman-cum-Sorcerer. Never had he been a great student since coming to Middle School; he did well on tests, but he did poorly on homework. In elementary school homework didn't matter much, but now his grades suffered. Still, he couldn't bring himself to do schoolwork at home; he wanted to be a magician, and grammar and mathematics seemed to be beside the point. And today he'd even done badly on a test, only finishing half his science test before the bell rang.

When Manuel finally found himself getting off the bus, he decided to go around the back way to his house. He felt silly for doing the whole cloak and dagger thing, still telling himself how unlikely it was that Madison Akers would have seen the article in the paper, much less traveled all the way to Tulsa already from Mississippi or Washington DC. But, again, it couldn't hurt to play it safe.

He didn't have a plan. Gordon had told him not to call unless it was an emergency; the magician had been calling Manuel on a regular basis from different places around town so he couldn't be traced, but of course any call to Gordon's mobile phone could be traced. So, he wondered, was this an emergency? Should he wait for Gordon to call? While Gordon did often read the paper, he would probably not open the sports section; American sports didn't interest him, and he often complained about what Americans called 'football'. "They carry it around with their hands," he would say. "How is that _foot_ ball?"

To get to his backyard, Manuel ran through his neighbor's yard in a crouch, hoping that they were not home, hoping they weren't watching him now. He rolled over the chain link fence, ducked behind a cedar tree, sidled around it, and looked in through the kitchen window.

Every cabinet door stood wide open, pots and pans were strewn about the floor and counters. Beyond their small dining room table he could see tufts of white fiber floating in the air. Then he saw a black streak fly to the bookshelf, and he knew it was the imp.

He thought about how upset his mom was going to be upon seeing this mess. The snowy white stuff he saw floating in the air must be from the couch...the creature was tearing the house apart. It made him mad, and he wanted to run inside and stop it.

But he remembered the imp's razor sharp claws, and his hand automatically went to his chest and felt the bumps of the thirteen stitches across the three slashes in his skin. The ER doctor had looked skeptically when he'd said it was a cat.

"Bobcat?" the doctor had asked.

Manuel crept to his window. When he got there he found it broken and the screen ripped to shreds. It was easy enough for him to stick his hand inside and unlock it. As quietly as possible, he slid the window up, and crawled inside.

He slid down onto his bed and a splinter of glass embedded itself in the palm of his hand. He bit his lip against the pain, and pinched the splinter out. Carefully, avoiding the springs poking up through the mattress and the glass from the shattered window, Manuel climbed off the bed and onto the floor. More feathers than seemed possible, considering he only had two pillows, carpeted his floor. Moving on his hands and knees, he crawled through his room, all the while hearing the crashing and rending noises from the living room. He looked around the corner of his door and saw the hallway empty. Trying to move quick and quiet, he went to his bathroom.

Here all the cabinet doors were open too, and all the cleaning supplies opened up and poured all over the floor. It smelled strongly of ammonia and pine scent, and he had to force down the urge to gag. Crawling through the mess, his knees and hands wet, he began to unscrew the trap under the sink.

There were twelve sigils on the silver chain, ranging in size from the size of a nickel to the size of a half dollar. He had been able to fasten the chain to the sink stopper lever securely enough that he knew that the pendants wouldn't slip free and go into the sewer. Sure, the water didn't drain from the sink as quickly as it normally would, but it was a great hiding spot. In any case, the imp hadn't found them.

"What the hell is—" Manuel heard the landlord's voice, and then a prolonged scream. Manuel guessed that the landlord had once again let himself in, and this time he had met the surprise of his life.

For a moment there was silence, then the door slammed, another moment of silence, and then the sound of the imp's destruction continued.

With the pendants clutched tight in his hand so they would not jingle, Manuel went back out through his window, and retraced his steps through the neighbor's backyard.

Now he had a plan—a simple plan. Run as fast as he could to Gordon's trailer. The magician would know what to do, and they could call his mother and warn her not to go home.

Manuel headed for the Mingo River trail, running for speed, not worrying to pace himself. Getting away now seemed to be the most important thing. As he ran through the neighborhood he worried that he might be seen...by another demon, or the crow he'd seen before, or by the sorcerer himself.

When he reached the trail it seemed that the most dangerous part was behind him.

"On your left," a cyclist called from behind. Manuel reflected on how odd he must look, in his purple knit shirt and his khaki slacks running full tilt on the pathway. Not that there would be many people out here on the trail, and not that he particularly cared considering his situation. The biker soon was out of sight and he was alone on the trail.

As Manuel ran into the culvert that ran under I-44, he saw the piles of sticks and trash that had gathered at the edge of the trail from the swollen river when the storm had raged the night the imp had come to steal the pendants from Gordon's trailer. The night he had clung to a log and had been swept through the culvert with the rest of the debris.

When he came to the first of the large square drainage tunnels he remembered his notion that tentacles might reach out and drag him under and into the dark. He'd always been uncomfortable with the tunnels, with their eerie endless darkness and the cool damp air that sometimes seeped out from them. He crossed the faded yellow line and kept as far away from the tunnel as the trail allowed. He felt foolish for feeling so scared, but he dared not turn his head to look.

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw a blur of black. Manuel ducked automatically, though he did not believe. Not real, he thought. My imagination. Or just a bat.

A whistling blow passed where his head had been. The shadow he saw on the concrete was big. It was too big for a bat. Too big to be the imp.

With the momentum from ducking, his legs pumping full speed while his upper body leaned forward, Manuel struggled to keep his feet underneath him.

An iron grip caught his ankle. His body slammed down hard onto the concrete and bounced. He groaned and rolled onto his side. A pterodactyl size bird talon held his ankle. Manuel followed the hard golden-black banded legs up, over a glossy black and puffy outfit covering an abnormally short torso, and finally to the demon's face. Beady black eyes glared at him above an impossibly long beaklike nose.

Bending stiffly at the waist in a sudden movement, it grabbed Manuel by the throat and plucked him up. The demon wasn't any bigger than he, but it carried him easily, dragging his feet behind. Manuel tried to breathe but his windpipe was sealed shut; his head felt like a balloon about to pop. The sky disappeared and the sunlight quickly faded away as the monster dragged him deep into the tunnel. When they stopped, it stood him up against the wall in the darkness.

"I am Raum. Do you know me?" the demon asked, its breath smelling of rotten eggs.

Manuel thought of the crow he'd seen with Madison Akers. He made the connection quickly. The crow and this creature holding him were the same. Raum. Manuel nodded.

"I'll take the sigils now," Raum said.

Manuel felt his diaphragm spasm as his body fought for oxygen. But the skinny but strong fingers crushing his windpipe would not let him breathe. His vision began to grow black around the edges. How long before he passed out? How long before he died?

"Would it be quicker for me to snap your neck and search your body?" Raum asked.

Manuel reached into his front pocket and pulled out the sigils.

The grip on his throat released; the chain of sigils were torn from his hand. Manuel slid down the wall.

A moment later he heard a sound like a wet dog shaking, followed by the sound of flapping wings.

Manuel did not wait for his strength to return. He crawled to the tunnel opening, panting and coughing. After a couple of minutes in the sunshine, he stood.

Raum had taken the sigils. The sorcerer had won. He had failed.

But there wasn't time to indulge in self-pity. He began to run. He still had to make it to Gordon. He still needed to call his mother; he needed to tell her about the imp so she would not go home.

# Chapter 20 — Resonant Sigil Signal

Gordon held Manuel's chin in his hand, looked at Manuel's throat, and shook his head. "I've been a blooming fool."

"Had to be done," the shrunken head argued. "If Sparky had known, the demon would have guessed."

"Guessed what?"

"That we have an ace up our sleeve," the shrunken head said. It made a rapid hissing sound Manuel guessed was laughing.

"I attached an extra pendant to the chain of sigils," Gordon explained. "It's not a sigil, but it is sensitive to the energy produced by a sigil when a summons is made. It will begin to vibrate at a resonant frequency, making a signal."

"Kind of like a radio wave?" Manuel asked.

"Bright lad," Gordon answered with a smile.

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"Well," Gordon wrinkled up his face so that he looked like a prune. "We didn't want them to get the sigils at all. And I thought they were safe with you. But if Aker's demons did find you, and you didn't try really hard to keep the sigils from them, they might guess that something wasn't quite right." Gordon looked down at his feet. "But you could've been killed."

"Ah well," the head intoned. "The little blighter's all right. None the worse for wear. All's well that ends well."

Gordon shook his head. "Sometimes he talks me into things...I am sorry."

Manuel rubbed his throat. In the mirror, he had seen the white marks where the demon's fingers had squeezed. "Yeah. I'm okay." He looked around. "Where is the...receiver thingie?"

Gordon lifted his head and flashed a bright white smile. "Ahh...yes...right here," he said, picking up a glass coke bottle, empty save for a splinter of black metal.

"That's the receiver?"

"Did you expect a portable radio, Sparky?" the shrunken head asked.

"It will vibrate when a summons is made," Gordon said.

"But that won't tell us where the pendants are," Manuel said.

"He couldn't solve a jigsaw puzzle if it had only three pieces," the shrunken head groaned.

Gordon frowned at the head, then explained. "Aligning the splinter with the waves coming from the beacon pendant will make it vibrate more. When I put the splinter between my teeth—"

"You're going to put that in your mouth?" Manuel interrupted.

Before Gordon could answer, there was knocking at the door, and Manuel went and let his mother in. Quickly he told her about the imp in their duplex, the demon who had taken the sigils, and finally the splinter in the bottle.

"When the summons comes," Manuel said, "We're going to go get them back."

Miss Garcia leaned up against the bookshelves. Manuel noticed her hand trembling and wondered why. Was she scared? Or was she tired?

"You're not going," she said quietly. "I know you're not an ordinary boy." She looked now at Gordon. "It is so good of you to train him. I know he needs you. But this..." Now she shook her head, "This is loco. He is not an ordinary boy, but he is _my_ boy." She reached out to Manuel and touched where the demon had left marks on his throat.

"So, Sparky, is your mum going to tell you what to do?" the shrunken head asked in a singsong voice.

"Shut up," Gordon said to the head. Then he turned to Manuel's mother. "Of course, I can be right thick sometimes. Manuel's not coming with me."

Manuel felt a little mad, but he held his tongue. She might come around still, but he knew from experience that if he argued with her then she would dig in her heals.

"We should go to our house," Miss Garcia said. "It sounds like we have a mess to clean up."

"I should come with you," Gordon said. Manuel knew he was thinking about the imp, though it didn't seem that there was much chance they'd find it still there.

But what they found when they pulled up was a bigger shock than they had prepared themselves for. The landlord, wearing his dingy t-shirt over his plump belly, was busy carrying an armload of Manuel's clothes out the front door. Already on the front lawn were dishes, end tables, chairs, a TV, linens, and their kitchen trashcan.

Gordon jumped out of the car and headed toward the landlord. "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

The landlord pointed at Manuel. "They are moving out! Something's not right with them. There was an...an...animal in the house. An evil little black...monster. It ripped up the furniture, broke a window, scratched the walls."

"You're a right bloody arse," Gordon said.

"What business is this of yours?" the landlord asked.

Gordon had his back to Manuel, but he saw the landlord's eyes pop open wide and saw the man step back. He lifted his hands up defensively, "Get away," he muttered, "Get away." Then he turned and ran into his side of the duplex. But before he shut the door he yelled, "Get your evil butts off my property!"

Manuel wondered what Gordon had done, but when Gordon turned around he looked normal and he flashed a wide smile. "I think he'll stay indoors for a bit."

"What are we going to do?" Manuel's mom asked. She looked utterly defeated. She had always been a slight woman, but now she looked frail. Her eyes had no sparkle; her hair had no luster.

"We need to get a rent-a-lorry and pack up your stuff," Gordon said. "We'll put it in storage until you find another place."

"But where will we stay in the meantime?" Manuel asked.

"With me," Gordon said, "Of course."

# Chapter 21 — Chasing the Will-o'-wisp

"They have many names: Will-o'-wisp, friar's lantern, ignis fatuus, corpse candles," Mr. Long said. He sat at the big antique desk and Lizzie at the table. "It's a light people see in the swamps, hovering or darting around in the air. Scientists claim it is a natural phenomenon—the combustion of gases emitted by rotting leaves and such.

"But there are many legends concerning them. Most say they are dark elves or ghosts holding lanterns, tempting travelers to follow them into danger—cliffs, cave-ins or quicksand. They are notorious for appearing just far enough away that you can't get a good look at them, but no matter how you try, you never seem to get any closer.

"I have heard that people have been seeing them down some ways south of Hattiesburg. We need to go investigate. It's probably nothing more than someone's overactive imagination. Still, I think it is worth a trip.

"Friday after school okay with you?"

"Yes'r," Lizzie said. It sounded scary, but she would rather use the Spear on something she knew to be mean and nasty. Besides, could she really say no?

It had already been a long drive when Mr. Long turned the pickup off the highway and onto a rural route. The road wound along next to kudzu-choked telephone poles, past abandoned gas stations, junkyards with rusting cars disappearing in the tall weeds, and scores of trailer homes. He had to stop a few times to look at a map before he decided on an oiled dirt road, narrow and dark under a thick canopy of branches. As they went further, the road became pitted with potholes and lined with deep, muddy ruts.

When her dad veered off this road, Lizzie thought he had accidentally driven straight into the woods; but then she noticed tire ruts in the grass. Bushes scraped against the sides of the truck, branches twanged and snapped against the windshield.

They stopped in a clearing with crisscrossing tracks where vehicles had pulled in, backed up, and turned around. "It looks like the end of the road," Mr. Long said.

What road? Lizzie thought. In any case, no one seemed to have gone any further.

Her dad took a handheld GPS from his vest and pushed a few buttons on it. He chuckled and said, "Technology versus the will-o'-wisp. I'm setting our present position in now. When we are ready to come back, the GPS will point to here. We can't get lost.

"Well...unless the batteries fail."

Lizzie gulped. Why did he have to add that?

He pulled the Spear out of the duffle bag sitting in the back seat. "Let's go," he said, opening up his door.

Holding the Spear out in front of him, he slowly turned around in a circle. As he went around, Lizzie did too. She noticed several wooden signs nailed into the trees around the clearing. They were hand-painted.

POSTED NO TRESPASING

POSTED NO HUNTING

PRIVITE PROPERTY

KEEP OUT VILEATORS WILL BE SHOT

After a few full turns he stopped. He shrugged. "This way, I think."

"But dad..." Lizzie said, pointing at one of the signs.

"Oh," he replied, "those signs are everywhere. These Mississippi men don't like other guys hunting on their property. They don't want some other guy bagging their deer."

They set off.

Lizzie wore a vest like her father. It had everything she needed: two flashlights, a pocketknife, night-vision goggles, and a walkie-talkie in case they became separated. Underneath the vest, she wore the Medallion of Longinus for protection against the Fallen.

Somewhere behind all those trees the sun was setting. The woods were already deep in shadow.

There was no trail, but they didn't need one. He moved fast through the woods, but then so did Lizzie. With all her cross-country running, and her many trips into the woods behind her home, this was no problem. At least until it became too dark.

"Wait, dad," Lizzie said, after tripping on a branch. She strapped the NVGs onto her head. Flipping a switch, the world glowed with an eerie green cast. With the Spear, her father didn't need NVGs.

They continued now, thorny vines clinging to Lizzie's jeans, bushes and branches scraping against her arms. Her dad had insisted she wear a long sleeve shirt, despite the heat, and now she had to admit it was a good thing. They climbed over great fallen trees and sloshed through marshy depressions. Through it all, her dad moved with a singular purpose, the Spear leading the way.

Then he stopped and motioned for her to stop. "Look," he whispered, pointing.

The lights showed up in her goggles as distorted blurs, so she lifted them up onto her forehead. Up ahead, about thirty yards away, she saw a light floating in the air over a thicket of tall bamboo or grass. "Is that a will-o'-wisp?" she asked, leaning in close to him.

"No. It's just a light on a pole. But it probably is what started the rumors of the will-o'-wisp. Someone's in that bamboo carrying the pole. I wonder what's going on. Let's move closer. Be very quiet and don't speak—not even a whisper."

Carefully, they crept toward the bamboo. When they reached the edge of it, Mr. Long signaled for her to wait there. She didn't like the idea of staying behind alone at all, but how could she argue if she wasn't even supposed to speak?

As soon as he stepped away from her, he disappeared into the towering, thick bamboo.

Pulling the NVG back on, she looked at the bamboo closer. It wasn't bamboo at all. It grew tall like bamboo, and had many long skinny leaves like bamboo, but it branched out broader than bamboo, and the leaves had jagged edges and came in clusters.

Her heart skipped a beat and she whirled around when she heard the voices. They were low and deep, the words incomprehensible. A flashlight's beam bobbed in and out of sight behind trees and bushes. She sat frozen, the pounding of her heart ringing in her ears, as the voices continued coming nearer.

# Chapter 22 — The Ringing

Both Gordon's dining room table and sofa converted into beds. Manuel took the sofa; the dining room table was a little bigger and it didn't have the uncomfortable bar in the middle. He hoped his mom would sleep well and maybe not be as tired as she had been so often lately.

So far it seemed to be working. She had lain down to read, but within minutes her eyes were closed and her breathing slow and rhythmic. She still had her work clothes on. Manuel had covered her up and kissed her on the cheek.

Manuel sat on his sofa-turned-bed and stared at the plywood covering up the broken window. He wondered why Akers wanted the sigils; what demon did he plan to summon, and why? Did he plan to steal something important or valuable? Or kill another politician so as to take his place?

He heard a ringing sound and looked up to the kitchen counter. The metal needle in the coke bottle bounced around as if someone held the bottle and was shaking it.

"It's time," the shrunken head said in a whisper.

Manuel picked up the bottle. The pitch of the ringing became lower and muted, but the splinter continued to dance with amazing energy. He knocked at Gordon's door.

Gordon slid the pocket door open. His eyes opened wide when he saw the bottle. "That was right quick," he said. He tipped the bottle and the splinter slid into his hand. Taking the splinter between his index finger and thumb, he opened his mouth wide and fit the splinter sideways into his mouth across his tongue and then clamped his teeth down onto the splinter.

"It's less than a day's journey," Gordon said through his clenched teeth. He disappeared into his room for a moment, and then came back with his black leather jacket on and a duffle bag under his arm. "Let's see what this Akers is about. I think I have everything," he said, looking around the room. Then he saw the shrunken head. "Oh yes...almost forgot you." He untied the shrunken head's hair from the air conditioning vent and dropped the head into his duffle bag.

"Oh, gawd," the shrunken head said, and a gagging sound followed. "Get me out! It stinks of runners and boxers in here."

Gordon stared into the bag. "Well, would you rather I tied you to the handlebars?"

"You are barmy," the head said.

Gordon took the shrunken head out and held it in the palm of his hand. "I guess I could leave you here."

"You could at that," the head replied.

"And maybe I should." Gordon tied the head back up, and in a moment was at the door. "Make yourselves at home. I'll ring you and let you know how I'm getting on. Cheers."

"Bye," Manuel answered before the door shut.

A moment later he heard the roar as Gordon kick started his motorcycle to life. Two louder bursts shook the trailer as Gordon revved the engine, and then Manuel listened as the bike rumbled out of the trailer park onto 41st street, and he followed the sound until it finally blended into the steady cacophony of the highway and was lost.

Manuel looked at his mom and saw her shaking her head. He knew what she was thinking.

"He'll be okay," Manuel said.

"He'll be fine," the shrunken head agreed.

# Chapter 23 — Dale, Jimbo and Jake

The men continued moving closer. Where was her dad? What should she do?

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Calm, calm, calm, she told herself. Slowly, carefully, she began to back her way into the thicket to hide. If she was quiet enough, they were bound to pass on by.

To Lizzie, whose ears had become accustomed to the quiet of the night woods, they sounded like a pair of elephants tramping through the forest. Their footfalls were heavy and sticks snapped under their boots. As they came near, she could hear them talking.

"Ya' know what I'm gonna do with the money when we sell this dope?"

"Uh-uh," said the other.

"I'm a gonna get one of them big four-wheel drive trucks. Ya' know the kind that are so tall you need a ladder to climb up into 'em?"

"Yeah, that's just great Dale. How much you think one of them rigs cost?"

"Thppt," Dale spit. "Dunno."

"I'll tell you how much, dumb butt. Thirty-thousand. That's gonna be your entire take from this here venture. You gonna blow your whole take on that truck? That's just stupid."

Lizzie continued backing away from them into the thicket. Her foot caught on something; she stumbled, and fell backwards. Little bells rang wildly for a moment and then stopped.

"Whaz there?" one of the men shouted.

They came right at her now making a commotion. She started to get up, but her left foot was caught on something. The bells rang as she struggled to free herself. Her boot was snared on a wire strung tight half a foot off the ground. Little round bells hung from the wire.

Lizzie went blind in an explosion of white light as their flashlights overloaded her NVGs. She shielded her eyes with her arm.

"Thppt. What have we here?"

"Grab him!"

Lizzie felt strong hands grab her by the ankles. As they dragged her over the wire and through the thicket, her head bumped hard against the ground.

They stopped.

"He's a little guy," the one named Dale said.

"I think it's just a kid."

"Thppt. Hey, what's that he's wearin' on his face?"

"Shut up Dale. Don't you know nothing? Them those NVG goggles."

Lizzie pulled off her goggles, but they kept the light in her face, so she couldn't make out anything but silhouettes.

"Hey, you're right, Jimbo, it is a kid. Thppt. Hey...he's wearing earrings."

"It's a girl, dumb butt."

"What's goin' on here?" a third man said. Jimbo shined his flashlight on him, a tall man with thin face and a burr haircut. He carried a florescent lamp at the end of a long pole—the lamp they had seen hovering over the thicket.

"Caught a prowler," Jimbo responded. Lizzie could see him now in the light from the lamp; he wore a t-shirt tight around his big chest and he had a slightly protruding gut. His arms were bigger around than Lizzie's legs. He had no neck and a square face, and was mostly bald. In his left hand he held the flashlight, in his right, a shotgun.

"It's a girl," Dale said. "Thppt." It went splat just inches from her face. Suspenders held up his pants, and a huge belly hung out from under his camouflaged t-shirt. His hair was long and greasy, and a bushy beard hid his face.

"Tsk tsk...very unfortunate," the third man said, his voice deep and rough. He pulled a long hunting knife from a sheath that hung on his belt. He also wore a holster with a pistol in it.

"What ya' gonna do Jake?" Dale asked.

"Shut up Dale. We can't just let her go."

"But Jake, she's just a little girl," Dale argued.

"You want to spend twenty years in jail? I don't. So unless you want to get what she's getting, you'll shut your fat trap." Jake stabbed the pole holding the lantern into the ground. "Okay, if you two don't want to watch, you can go look around and see if she has any friends with her."

"Thppt," Dale answered. He and Jimbo began to walk away.

Jake leaned over, reaching for Lizzie's throat with one hand, holding the knife in the other.

Lizzie had had karate classes for six years. What she did next came automatically. She pulled her legs up quickly to her chest, and then thrust her feet hard into Jake's face. "Keyah!"

Jake stumbled backwards, the mud from her boots sticking to his face.

She jerked her legs back, rolled over backwards, and sprung to her feet. She assumed her stance, but even before Jake had recovered her dad was there. It was magical. One moment she's alone, the next her father is there, holding the Spear, and moving like lightning. Two kicks—one to the gut and one to the face, and Jake crumpled, the knife fumbling out of his hands.

Jimbo and Dale stood like statues, too surprised to react. By the time Jimbo finally lifted his shotgun, Mr. Long had his hand and was twisting hard, turning him and forcing him to fall to his knees. Two sharp kicks to the face, and Jimbo let go of the gun.

Dale, having slipped in from behind, put his arms around Mr. Long and began to squeeze him in a bear hug. Lizzie didn't hesitate. She jumped on Dale's back and wrapped her arms around his fat neck. He smelled of sweat and sweet wintergreen chewing tobacco. She positioned her forearm across his windpipe, and she pulled with all her strength. He made a rasping noise as he tried to breathe.

Releasing Mr. Long, Dale reached back and tried to grab Lizzie. With his chubby arms, he could barely get his hands on her, and he clawed at her with his fingernails.

Lizzie saw her dad swing the shotgun, felt Dale's head jerk as the butt caught him in the ear. He fell to his knees. Lizzie let go, and stepped away. Again, Mr. Long swung the gun, this time hitting Dale on the back of the neck. He fell limp to the ground, chewing tobacco spilling from his mouth.

Jimbo stood up, nose bleeding and crooked, and staggered toward them. Mr. Long jabbed the butt of the shotgun into his forehead—whack—and he flopped back to the ground and lay still.

"Drop the gun, and turn around slowly."

Lizzie turned to see Jake holding his pistol.

"Drop the gun. Now."

Mr. Long dropped the shotgun.

Jake showed his crooked teeth with a wicked smile. "I'm gonna enjoy killin' you. I'll cut up that little witch first...so you can watch."

"Go to hell," Mr. Long said. The Spear he kept at his side, but it pointed at Jake. " _Damnari inter manes_."

Jake backpedaled, his eyes wide in fear, firing an awkward shot at the darkness as it came at him. He cowered down, holding his hands in front of himself. Then his face sagged into a blank expression and he went limp.

Lizzie wasn't sure if she should move. Jake lay motionless, but he still held the pistol and his eyes were still open.

Mr. Long sighed. "We need to go."

Lizzie nodded toward Jake. "Is he dead?"

"No. No," Mr. Long said, shaking his head. "But...good as dead. The Spear took his spirit, and the body cannot live without the spirit.

"Come on. We need to get out of here before these other two wake up."

# Chapter 24 — Missing

They were on the highway before Lizzie spoke. "Why did they want to kill me?" she asked.

"They're growing marijuana. You know—pot."

Lizzie shrugged. Marijuana's a drug, and doing drugs is bad. But still, why did they want to kill her?

"When you are caught growing it," her dad explained, "you go to prison for a very long time."

Lizzie nodded, though she still couldn't believe someone would want to kill you over a bunch of plants.

"And since I recorded the position of their _farm_ on GPS," her dad continued, "that is exactly what is going to happen. I'm going to stop at the first truck stop we come to and make an anonymous phone call to the authorities."

After a long silence, her dad said, "Uh, Lizzie?"

"Yes'r?"

"That was pretty scary wasn't it?"

She nodded, but 'scary' didn't seem to quite cover it. Movies were scary. Roller coasters were scary. This went way beyond those things. This was horrifying. She was still shaking. And she felt like crying, but of course she wouldn't dare.

"Don't tell mom," he said. "No sense in having her worry any more than she already does, okay?" For a moment, he took his eyes off the road to look at her. He wanted to see her answer.

Lizzie nodded.

"Hey kid," he said, flashing a smile toward her, "you did great. You're a great Second—a true heir of Longinus. I am proud of you."

With so much emotion bottled up, the sense of pride caused it to all bubble over, and a lump formed in her throat. If she had tried to answer, she wouldn't have been able to hold back the tears.

When they pulled into the driveway, Lizzie jerked awake. She hadn't meant to fall asleep; she hadn't thought it would be possible after what she'd been through. It was five in the morning—not even the hint of sunrise yet. When she shut the door of the truck, the sound echoed in the stillness and hush of the neighborhood. She shivered in a cool early-morning breeze. It was Labor Day weekend. Perhaps she would get in some swimming before the pool closed for the winter.

She yawned. But the swim could wait until after she got some sleep. Sleeping in late sounded good. If only her brat sister didn't wake her up.

They tiptoed up the stairs together. At the top, her father hugged her, kissed her, and whispered, "Goodnight."

"Goodnight dad."

Lizzie grabbed a towel and a washcloth from the linen closet. Dale's stink of sweat and wintergreen still clung to her like the memory of a nightmare. She wanted it off. Now.

The hot water felt good and she lay in it a long while. When she almost fell asleep, she knew it was time to get out. She wrapped the towel around her and walked to her room. The door was closed. That was odd. Lori—too scared to sleep with it closed—always wanted it open.

Lizzie turned the doorknob and eased the door open, hoping the hinges wouldn't creak. The little light from the glowing angel nightlight cast shadows about the room.

They each had their own twin-sized bed, Lizzie's in one corner, Lori's in the other. Lizzie stopped on the way to her bed and stared in the darkness at Lori. She couldn't hear her breathing. The sheets, all bunched up into a mound, were perfectly still. It had been a long, frightening night. It had to be her imagination.

Lizzie touched the lump in the bed, prodded when she didn't feel anything solid, and then tore back the sheets. Lori wasn't there.

Her heart raced, but she took a deep breath. There had to be an explanation. Of course, Lori had got scared and went to sleep with mom. Yes, that made sense.

And yet...something didn't feel right. She shivered. There was a draft. She gulped to see one of the windows open and something moved there. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself. With small, careful steps, she approached the window. The screen had been ripped to ribbons; they lifted and fluttered in the early morning breeze.

She ran as fast as she could to her mom and dad's room. She looked in their bed for Lori, though she knew she wouldn't be there.

"Wake up. WAKE UP! Lori's missing!" she cried.

# Chapter 25 — Detective Cole

After they called the police, Mr. Long grabbed the Spear and left to search for Lori in the fields and woods behind their house. Before he left, he instructed Lizzie to tell the police detectives that they had gone on a night hike, but she was not supposed to say anything about the Spear or their encounter with the marijuana growers. "If you have to lie," he told her, "then lie."

Soon the squad cars came, three of them. The lead detective began asking Mrs. Long questions: "How long has she been missing?" "Do you have a recent photograph of her?" "Are you married?" "Where is your husband?"

She answered the questions by nodding or shaking her head because she was crying and couldn't get any words out. Lizzie had to answer his last question.

"He went out to look for Lori," she said.

"Where?"

Lizzie pointed toward the back yard. "In the woods."

The lead detective walked away and huddled together with the other three officers. They spoke too quietly for Lizzie to hear what they said.

When they were finished, the detective sat on the loveseat and motioned for Lizzie and her mom to sit on the couch. The other officers left the house through the backdoor. Snapping open his briefcase, he pulled out a voice recorder and a pad of paper. He stared at Lizzie for what seemed like an hour. He had two or three warty bumps on his face, and Lizzie thought his eyes were too close together. Not able to hold his gaze, she looked down at her hands.

"Hello Lizzie. I am Detective Cole." He smiled a quick, close-lipped, phony smile. "You share a room with your sister, correct?"

"Yes'r."

"Were you in the room last night with your sister?"

"No sir."

He raised his eyebrows. "Really? Where were you?"

"Me and my dad went on a night hike."

"A night hike? Did your father tell you to tell me that?"

"Yes'r," she answered, but quickly explained, "I mean...he told me to tell you the truth."

"Hmmm," he grunted, jotting something down on the pad in his lap.

He leaned close enough to Lizzie she could smell the cigarettes and coffee on his breath. "Do you know that if you don't tell me everything you know you can go to jail?" he asked.

"Don't threaten the child," Mrs. Long said. A few strands of her blonde hair were stuck to her face where her tears had made it wet, but her blue eyes blazed. "Stop wasting your time with her. If she knew anything, she would have already told you. _Go find my baby_."

Lizzie sighed, relieved. If her mom hadn't snapped out of it, she might have told him about the Spear and everything.

"Okay," he said, shaking his head, "but your failure to cooperate will make the investigation that much more difficult."

Mr. Long returned after noon. His shoulders slumped and he carried the Spear with the point hanging down limply. Lizzie ran out to him.

"They're looking for you," she said.

He nodded. "I noticed."

"There's a detective inside."

"Okay." He sighed. "Take the Spear. Hide it. When you get a chance, lock it away."

She waited for a moment before following him inside. Detective Cole was already asking him questions in the living room as she slipped the Spear under the couch in the den.

"I need to interview you in private," the detective said to Mr. Long as Lizzie came into the living room.

Mr. Long nodded toward the study. "In there."

In an hour they reappeared, Mr. Long's hands behind his back in handcuffs.

Mrs. Long opened her mouth in disbelief. "No," she cried.

"He isn't under arrest," Detective Cole said. "We are just taking him down to the station for further questioning."

"You people don't know what you are doing. My daughter is out there somewhere, and you're here..." she shook her head, "you're here! The one place we know she isn't. And you are arresting him, the one person best able to find her."

"I told you, he isn't under arrest," the detective responded sharply. But then he added in a softer voice, "We have our best men on the job, Mrs. Long. We have an APB out for your daughter, and we've declared an Amber Alert; the radio and TV stations will make sure everybody knows there's a little girl missing."

He turned and began to lead Lizzie's dad out.

Mr. Long resisted. "Wait a minute. Can't I say goodbye?"

The detective hesitated, and then nodded.

After letting his wife hug and kiss him, he leaned down to Lizzie. He whispered, "Do what you can. You are Lori's best chance."

Detective Cole tugged at him hard, and looked back at Lizzie with eyes full of suspicion.
Gaap, alias Tap, a great president and a prince, he appeareth in a meridionall signe, and when he taketh humane shape he is the guide of the foure principall kings, as mightie as Bileth...But yet I will not hide this; to wit, that he maketh a man woonderfull in philosophie and all the liberall sciences: he maketh love, hatred, insensibilitie, invisibilitie, consecration, and consecration of those things that are belonging unto the domination of Amaymon, and delivereth familiars out of the possession of other conjurors, answering truly and perfectly of things present, past, & to come, & transferreth men most speedilie into other nations...

Pseudomonarchia daemonum - Johann Wier (1583)

# Chapter 26 — Gaap

Other police came. They put a tap on the phone, asked more questions, and investigated Lori and Lizzie's bedroom. When finished, they put a yellow ribbon that said 'POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS' across the door.

The police didn't leave until well after dark. Lizzie told her mother, "I'm going out to look for Lori."

"No you're not, young lady," Mrs. Long said.

Lizzie could tell her mom wouldn't change her mind. Still, she had to try. "But mom..."

"It's too dangerous. What would you do if you found her? What's to say that whoever took her wouldn't get you too?"

Yes, it would be scary. But with the Spear she'd be okay. "Dad said—"

"No!" her mom shouted.

The house felt empty. Lifeless. Lizzie's mom watched the television in the den, hoping for 'late-breaking news' on the kidnapping.

Lizzie didn't like sitting around. If only she could do something. The waiting made her sick to her stomach. Seeing her mother sitting on the couch, crumpled up tissues in her fists and staring at the TV like a zombie only made her worry more. No matter what, tomorrow she would search for Lori with the Spear.

The lead story on the news that night was Lori's kidnapping. They showed her kindergarten class picture—although they were home schooled, they still had class pictures made. Then they showed the officers leading Mr. Long into the police station.

"Is the father under arrest?" a reporter asked.

"No," Detective Cole answered. "He is just being held for questioning...for now."

"Is he a suspect?"

Detective Cole ignored the last question.

With a glittering smile, the lady news anchor went right into the next story about Madison Akers, the Congressman now running for the U.S. Senate. Lizzie didn't really care about such things, but he was talking about the kidnapping. He said that he would make laws that would make it easier to find missing children like Lori. That seemed like a good idea, but she didn't like the Representative. The man, she guessed, just wanted votes, and she didn't appreciate him using Lori's kidnapping as an excuse to get on TV.

Without her father there, Lizzie tried to take care of her mom. She got her a diet Coke and made her a sandwich. Her mom drank the soda but only nibbled at the sandwich.

Midnight came and went, and exhaustion began to pull Lizzie down. On the drive home the night before, she had slept only a little. Now she curled up on the couch, resting her head on a toss pillow. With Lori out there somewhere it didn't seem right to sleep, but it couldn't hurt to relax just for a moment.

Tink. Tink. Tink.

Lizzie opened her eyes. She looked around the room. What was that noise?

Tink. Tink. Tink.

She sat up and looked in the direction of the noise.

Lizzie nearly fell off the couch in surprise. Nick stood perfectly still on the other side of the Long's sliding glass door. Her heart raced from the scare.

Nick didn't move but watched her with his eyes.

Lizzie's shock turned to apprehension. There was something unnatural about Nick, something more than the obvious. He seemed to fit in the woods, but for him to be here on Lizzie's back patio with her dad's grill and the outdoor chairs was wrong.

She stared at Nick a long while, unsure, and Nick simply stared back at her with his black eyes. Then she remembered Lori, and she wondered briefly if Nick could help, if he had seen something. But then his oddness struck her as ominous. When she'd first seen him, Lizzie thought that Nick seemed, well, cute. Now he frightened her.

She ran to the door and slid it open. "My sister Lori, you..."

"Yah," Nick answered. "I know. She is in safe place. But you must listen."

"What did you do?"

"Me?" Nick asked, giving a slight shake of his head. "Nothing. It is another. Come wiz me."

Lizzie looked around the back yard. Birdie slept—or more likely was under Nick's spell—but she could see nothing else suspicious. But...he knew where Lori was. Had he been involved?

"Where?"

"Just beyond your fence zere," Nick turned and looked back toward Crawdad Creek and the woods beyond.

"Why?"

"You must do zis," Nick said. "For your sister."

Lizzie studied Nick's eyes. "Can I trust you?"

Nick hesitated before answering. "It will be very scary, zis. But it must be. And you will not be harmed, Lizzie Long, zey promised."

"Who promised?"

"The sorcerer," Nick answered. He cringed and his eyes squinted in pain, then he said, "Now. It must be now. For your sister."

Lizzie stepped through the door and shut it behind her. She followed Nick out through the back gate. He jumped with surprising agility across the narrow ditch and she followed. A few steps further and he stopped.

Lizzie followed his eyes to a tree without branches, and gasped as the tree moved. Huge bat-like wings spread out to either side, and she heard the sticky sound of them as the flaps were stretched apart, and they made a curtain of black blotting out everything else. Its head bowed foreword, two twisting and bent horns jutting out just above his forehead.

His skin was black—black not like human skin but like rubber. Muscles popped out all over his hairless body like on a bodybuilder; his powerful looking arms he held crossed in an X across his chest. He wore no clothes, but he had nothing to hide—he had neither boy nor girl parts. He didn't even have a bellybutton.

Lizzie didn't move; she didn't even breathe.

The demon's head lifted, he opened his eyes, and they glowed like an ember.

A scream escaped from Lizzie's mouth, but only for a moment, because Nick's hand shot out and clamped over her mouth.

"That is the only sound you will make," the demon said in a deep voice Lizzie could feel rumbling in her own chest. "Otherwise," he continued, waving a hand in front of her, showing her the sharp claws on the tips of his fingers, "I shall rip the lungs from out your body. Do you understand?"

Lizzie nodded.

"Be strong Lizzie," Nick said, releasing his grip from Lizzie's mouth.

The demon stepped forward and towered over Lizzie so she had to crane her neck back to look at her face. He smiled, revealing a mouth of pointed teeth, and then he spoke: "I am the demon Gaap. Behold me, and be sore afraid.

"I come as a messenger for a powerful sorcerer. It was the Sorcerer who sent me here this yesternight to steal away your sister. It is he who now holds your sister for ransom. If you do what he wants, he promises he will return her to you unharmed. Otherwise, she shall die."

He paused, and then she heard his voice...felt his voice—evil and painful—inside her head: _We can help one another._

Aloud he said, "The Sorcerer seeks the Spear of Power. This following midnight you must bring it to this one you know as Knecht Ruprecht." He pointed at the gnome.

Lizzie looked at Nick and whispered, "Nick?"

The demon nodded. Again his thoughts invaded Lizzie's mind, I willingly serve none. The Sorcerer controls me with a glyph of pain he crosses over my sigil.

"Tell no one of this meeting," he continued aloud. "Tell no one what you must do. Come alone. Any trickery would be foolish. He sees all." He looked up into a nearby tree and Lizzie followed his gaze to the crow she knew she'd find there. The crow had his head turned sideways, his eye on Lizzie.

When I tell you to act, Gaap's thoughts clawed into her brain, you must not hesitate. If you do what I ask, you will keep the Spear. And I shall be free.

"Remember," he said aloud, leaning down to Lizzie and putting the claw of his index finger just inches from her nose, "tell no one and at midnight bring the Spear. Otherwise, your sister dies."

He straightened and his wings flapped in great powerful sweeps. The force of the wind blew Lizzie to the ground. Dirt and leaves whirled around her and she closed her eyes.

When she opened her eyes and looked up, only Nick was there, looking down on her. "I am sorry, Lizzie Long. It is not me. Be strong." With a sandpaper sound Nick imploded into a spot, and all that remained was a cicada, bug eyed and buzzing its clear wings loudly. In an instant he was gone.

Lizzie stood up, trembling all over, her legs feeling like jelly.

Birdie came down from the house and met her at the back gate. Lizzie patted the dog on the head and went back into the house.

Lizzie sat in the den for awhile, waiting for her heart to slow, fighting to push the terror down. Then she went to tell her mother goodnight.

She found her mother in the master bedroom, asleep in a rocker, a string of rosary beads in her hand.

Lizzie pulled the comforter off the bed and covered her mom as best she could. Then she lay down and waited for the sun to rise.

Her dad was right. She was Lori's best chance. Her only chance.

# Chapter 27 — Rescue Mission

"Ayeeeee!" the shrunken head cried.

Manuel opened his eyes. He'd been in a deep sleep. Sunlight filtered through the metal blinds.

"Ayeeeee!" the shrunken head cried. "They are...hurting him."

"What?" Manuel asked it. "Who?"

"We've got to help him. We need to go."

"Where?"

"WE NEED TO GO NOW!" the shrunken head shouted.

Manuel's mom walked out of the bedroom. She had a crease on her cheek from having something pressed against it as she slept.

"Something is wrong," Manuel told her.

"We need...to go...and rescue him," the head now sobbed.

Manuel's mom shook her head very slightly. She looked so tired and weak Manuel felt guilty for asking, "Can we? Will you take me?"

"No puedo," Miss Garcia said with a tired sigh. Then she added, as if in defense of her answer. "We don't know where he is."

"He told us where he was when he called us yesterday," Manuel said. "Remember? Mississippi?"

His mom nodded. "Si. Vicksburg. But it is a big town."

"I know exactly where he is," the head said. "I am a part of Gordon. When he feels pain or pleasure, I feel it. When he is worried, I worry. And when he is really pressed, I can even hear and see what he sees. I saw the demon attack him...a monster of a creature, ten feet tall with burning red eyes. It was a building down by the river, on a steep brick street. I'd recognize the door Gordon entered."

"Mom," Manuel pleaded. "We have to. Remember the little girl? Gordon thinks Akers has something to do with a kidnapping."

"But what can we do?" she asked. "If Gordon was captured, with what he can do, then what do you think will happen to us when we try to rescue him?"

"But we have the head," Manuel said. "He can tell us when Gordon is alone." Manuel turned to the head. "You can, can't you?"

"Quite right, Sparky," the shrunken head answered.

"And then we can go in and set him free," Manuel said.

Miss Garcia nodded. She looked defeated and it made Manuel feel low to be forcing her to help. But he said these words anyway because he knew they were true. "He would do it for me."

Manuel's mom nodded. "I'm going to pack some clothes. Tomorrow is Labor Day so I won't be missing work if we can get back before Tuesday."

"Thanks, mom," Manuel said. He jumped up and ran to his mother and gave her a big hug.

# Chapter 28 — The Accusation

The doorbell rang and Lizzie's mom awoke with a jerk. "What is it?" she said in a startled voice.

"Doorbell," Lizzie answered from the bed.

"It must be the police," her mom said, quickly getting to her feet. "They must have news." She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and went downstairs.

But the two uniformed officers had little news. A search party had been formed, and at dawn volunteers and officers began scouring the fields and woods behind their house.

"Where is my husband?" Mrs. Long asked.

"We're still holding him for questioning."

"Still? Why?"

"Sorry, ma'am, you'll have to ask Detective Cole about that. He'll be here this afternoon."

Mrs. Long stared at the men in stunned silence as they walked back to their squad car.

There was nothing for Lizzie to do. She couldn't go with the Spear to search for Lori—the demon had made it clear what would happen if she did. She didn't want to watch the television with her mom—she knew there would be no news. All she could do was wait.

She went to her schoolroom and shut the door behind her. How scared Lori must be with the demon Gaap and that sorcerer. She imagined him now, old and bent, skin waxy-pale, eyes black and piercing, his purple robe flowing down to the ground. What a great Spear Bearer she had turned out to be—only a few weeks on the job and she was about to give up the Spear. But Gaap had told her there would be a chance. Would she take it? Could she risk Lori getting hurt?

After an hour of worrying, she came up with a better idea. She pushed the desks out of the way and began to practice her Tai-Kwon-Do forms. It always helped to calm her before a meet. So she went through the movements, kicking, punching, spinning, always concentrating, working to be precise. After awhile she began to feel better, stronger even.

In the afternoon, several people from their church came to the house. The women wore dresses, the men suits. It didn't seem possible, but it was Sunday. They had come right after attending services. Lizzie went back to doing her forms.

The next time the doorbell rang, it was Detective Cole. Mr. Pratt, one of the church people, let him in. The detective went directly into the office and shut the door.

Lizzie hurried down the stairs. Detective Cole was keeping her dad in jail...for no reason. And now he was snooping around the house without even telling her mom he was there.

The church people sat in the living room talking in hushed tones, in the same way people do in the sanctuary just before Mass. They stopped when they saw Lizzie.

"Oh poor girl," said one of the ladies.

Everybody wanted to hug her and pat on her, but she struggled to get by them. Mrs. Robinson, a heavy gray-haired lady, grabbed Lizzie and held her in a death grip; the powerful smell of mothballs and flowery perfume made her cough.

"Please...excuse me," Lizzie said, pushing away, "I need to go."

The ladies looked at her with expressions of concern. Mrs. Finch said, "There's food in the kitchen hun: roast beef, turkey, ham and rolls. Grapes, oranges, bananas. Can I make you a sandwich?"

"No thanks, ma'am," Lizzie answered over her shoulder.

The detective had locked the office door. But Lizzie had the key.

Detective Cole sat in her dad's chair. He looked at her with a sneer as she came in. "I'm doing important police business. You need to leave."

Lizzie stared at him with as mean a look as she could muster. He wasn't about to scare her away. She had faced Gaap—this little man wouldn't frighten her anymore.

"Okay. Have it your way," he said. He looked down at the book he held in his hands. "Interesting book collection your dad has. Demonology. Necromancy. Witchcraft. Is your dad some sort of demon worshiper?"

She shook her head, too angry to speak.

"Hey," he said, acting concerned, "I'm on your side. I want to protect you, if you'll let me."

He narrowed his eyes. "What did your dad do with Lori? Where were you the night Lori disappeared? Was it some _ritual_ thing?"

She shook with anger. She imagined kicking him right between his too-close-together eyes.

"What's going on here?" her mom said. She must have seen the door cracked open.

Lizzie turned and looked into her mom's bloodshot and puffy eyes. "He thinks dad..." she started, but her throat got tight.

Mrs. Long didn't need to hear more. "Ya'all get out of our house. Don't come back until you have a warrant."

"If you don't cooperate—" he began.

She screamed and pointed toward the door, "GET OUT!"

The detective nodded and laid the book down on the desk.

After he left the room, her mom began to cry again.

"It'll be alright, mom," Lizzie said. She wished she could tell her more, but the demon said that the Sorcerer's eyes were everywhere.

Her mom came over and hugged her tight.

"Really mom," Lizzie said, patting her mother's back, "It'll be alright."

"Yes...yes," her mom sputtered. "We need to just keep telling ourselves that, don't we?"

# Chapter 29 - The Captive

Manuel's mom had had a steady diet of coffee on the way down from Tulsa to Vicksburg. Now she had her seat leaned back as far as it would go and she slept. They were waiting. They had driven up the brick street that the shrunken head had described, they had seen the wooden faded-yellow door with the square black metal speakeasy opening, and they had seen the high windows dark and mysterious.

At the corner, along the street that ran parallel to the Yazoo River, the building had three garage doors opening onto the street. They decided to park down the street where they could see both the speakeasy door and the garage doors. And they waited.

They had arrived just as the sun was setting and now it was fully dark. Manuel ate Fig Newtons and potato chips, his mom slept, and the shrunken head moaned from time to time, but mostly remained silent.

An hour went by. And then another. They sat in the darkness, pretending to be just another parked car left on the street for the night.

Finally, Manuel saw headlights from the garage. He hadn't seen the door go up. A long black car pulled out, turned toward them, blinding Manuel for a minute, and then turned and went up the steep road. He realized that the garage had remained unlit.

Manuel turned and looked at the shrunken head.

"He is alone," the shrunken head said, somehow aware of Manuel's questioning eyes even though its eyes were sewn shut.

Manuel took his mother's hand in his and squeezed it.

She sighed deeply and opened her eyes.

"They're gone," Manuel said. "I'm going in to set him free."

"Tenga cuidado," his mom answered.

"I will."

Manuel took the flashlight from the glove box and the shrunken head by the hair. When he reached the garage door he realized that he didn't have a plan on how to get inside. The garage doors had no windows and were made of steel. The wooden door in front looked like something that belonged in a castle; the speakeasy had iron bars over it and was locked shut anyway.

"How are we going to get in?"

"We have acid that will eat through anything," the head answered.

"We do?"

"You bet. On the shelf back in the trailer."

"That's a lot of help," Manuel answered.

"Well...use what Gordon's taught you," the head said. "Use your _mind_ to move that deadbolt."

Manuel looked at the door for a minute. Then he said, "Are you nuts? I can't even levitate a playing card yet."

"Well, Sparky," the shrunken head said, "Fine pickle you've got us into."

Manuel wanted to toss the head into the river.

He looked up again at the window. He could jump high, but these windows were probably twenty feet up. "I need a grappling hook."

"We have one of those," the shrunken head answered.

"In the trailer?" Manuel asked.

"Righto, Sparky."

Manuel groaned. Then he had an idea.

First, so he'd have his hands free, he looped the shrunken head's hair through his belt. "What are you doing?" it asked.

Manuel ignored it.

He ran back to the car and popped open the trunk. With their old car it was a good idea to carry jumper cables, and they had extra long cables. It only took a minute to pull apart the positive cable from the negative cable. Then he ran back to the Sorcerer's hideout. He dropped one cable on the ground and concentrated for a minute, studying the windowsill. He threw the cable up and the clamp caught on the sill and the rest of the cable hung down. Then he picked up the other cable and concentrated on the clamp above that dangled down and swung gently as a pendulum.

"Whacha doin'?" a slurred voice asked.

Manuel turned to find a tangled-haired man in tattered clothes swaying before him. The man looked up at the cable hanging from the window.

"Bugger off!" the shrunken head said.

The bum blinked and looked down at Manuel. He hiccupped. "Eh?"

"Bugger off, you!"

The bum's eyes opened wide as he saw that it was the shrunken head talking. He hurried backwards, stumbling and tripping over the curb. "Wha...whas going on?" Then he turned and ran higgledy-piggledy up the street.

Manuel again looked up at the clamp, measured the distance in his mind, and tossed the other cable up so the clamps caught together.

"Bravo, Sparky," the head said. "Maybe you're a clever fellow after all."

Manuel smiled. That almost sounded like a complement.

The cable still hung a couple feet above him, but Manuel easily jumped up and grabbed it, and lightly climbed the cables up to the window. Once he had his fingertips on the ledge he pulled himself up and balanced on the windowsill. The window hadn't been locked, so he slid it up and jumped into the room. Manuel allowed himself a smile, scared as he was. He felt like a ninja. He pulled the jumper cables in and wound them up.

"He's downstairs," the shrunken head said.

Manuel turned on his flashlight and they ran down a hallway, found a narrow and steep staircase, and then they were in a room filled with boxes that smelled of motor oil and axle grease.

"Shine your torch straight ahead," the shrunken head said. "There!"

There were more boxes and in front of that there was a rolled up rug. "Where is he?"

"It's dark...he can hardly breathe...he's right here," the shrunken head answered.

Manuel looked at the rug and realized that it seemed much fatter than a rug ought to look. He got down on his knees and quickly unrolled it.

Gordon had silver duct tape around his ankles, wrists and over his mouth. He lifted his arms up to Manuel and Manuel freed his hands. With one quick motion he pulled the tape off that covered his mouth. Rip. "Ouch!" he said. Then he said, "Akers has a girl. I don't know what he plans to do with her, but I'm sure the devil is in it. We have to save her."

"So they didn't find the splinter?" Manuel asked. If Gordon and Manuel were to find the Sorcerer, they would need the splinter to track down Akers.

Gordon shook his head. "No. Probably why they didn't just kill me. They want to know how I found them."

"So where did you hide the splinter?"

"I didn't exactly hide it," Gordon answered slowly, now on his feet, his legs free. "I...swallowed it."

Manuel thought of the long black splinter and looked at Gordon's stomach.

Gordon looked down too. "I might need a visit to hospital when we straighten this out." He frowned with a worried expression.

"Can you still...?" Manuel didn't know how to ask.

"Oh yes, certainly," Gordon answered. He stuck his little belly out and turned slowly in a circle. He stopped abruptly. "Yes. Still works!" He pointed in the direction his tummy faced. "They're that way. The bike is in the garage. Let's roll."

# Chapter 30 — A Little Girl Alone

At eleven forty-five, Lizzie went into the office and opened up the desk, where she had returned the Spear after hiding it under the couch. Since her mom was watching TV in the den, Lizzie had to sneak out the front door. She had dressed the same as the night they had went in search of the will-o'-wisp: jeans, long-sleeved shirt, waterproof hiking boots, and a vest.

Birdie began to jump up on her as soon as she went into the backyard. She grabbed her by the collar and held her down while running stooped over toward the back gate. She wished she could take her, but the Sorcerer might not approve and he might hurt Birdie...or Lori. After latching the gate, she shook her finger at the dog, which had begun to whine, and said, "Be quiet!"

She looked back through the sliding glass door. Her mom sat on the couch, her face buried in her hands. Lizzie made a vow: "I'm going to get her, mom."

She jumped Crawdad Creek and sprinted through the narrow strip of woods and into the field. The moon was waxing toward full and the leaves from the soybean plants reflected its silver light. The night was silent save her rhythmic breathing and pounding of her feet. All too soon the woods rose up ominous and dark in front of her.

She felt the night creatures stop to watch her. She looked around, and with the Spear she could see them: opossums, snakes, mice and rats. A crow cawed deeper in the woods, and a shiver went down Lizzie's spine. As much as she didn't want to, she knew she had to follow the crow's call. She crossed the fallen tree over Muddy Brown Bayou.

At first she more _felt_ it than saw it. The power of the Spear drew her eyes toward it. A cicada clinging to a tree glowed with an eerie green light. She stared at it a moment and then asked, "Nick?"

The cicada buzzed off the tree and transformed—arms and legs snapping out, green vest growing in the center, red cap popping up. Nick. Never, it seemed, did he appear the same size. This time he was nearly as tall as she.

"Hello Lizzie Long."

"Don't act like my friend," Lizzie said. "You just pretended to be my friend so that you could get the Spear."

"Sorry child. I had no choice. Ze Sorcerer, he..." his voice trailed off, his beard wagging as he shook his head.

"Caw," the crow cried. Lizzie looked up and saw it high in a tree above them. It didn't surprise her to see that it too glowed green.

"Yah, ze bag," Nick said. Reaching into some nearby bushes, he pulled out a long, narrow bag—a rifle bag.

"Ze Spear, put it in here."

The bag was perhaps three times bigger than it needed to be—perhaps the Sorcerer didn't know the Spear was broken. She unzipped the bag and placed the Spear inside. As she let it go, the complete darkness of the woods engulfed her. Her heart raced. Gaap could be right there next to her and she wouldn't even see him. What could she do anyway? Without the Spear she was helpless—just a little girl alone among immortals in the midnight heart of the forest. No one would even hear her scream.

"Close ze bag," Nick said. "We need to go—zis Sorcerer, he is not patient."

She fumbled blindly for the zipper, but her hands were shaking.

"I can't," Lizzie whispered.

"You must," Nick said. He put his hand on her back. "Your sister needs you."

Little Lori with her long blonde hair, blue eyes and snaggletooth smile. They fought all the time—Lori was a major pest—but at this moment, Lizzie would have traded the world to find her and hug her and make everything alright.

She took a deep breath and held it a long time. "I can do this," she said with a sigh. She zipped up the bag. Nick helped her to her feet with a powerful hand.

"Caw caw caw," the crow cackled happily. Lizzie ducked as she felt the air from the beating of its wings as it swooped down close over her head and then flew on ahead.

Lizzie pulled out her flashlight. "That bird...?" she whispered.

"Ze Sorcerer's familiar," Nick answered with a soft voice. He began to walk.

"Familiar?"

"Like ze witch's cat, yah?"

Lizzie nodded. It helped her nerves to talk. "Is the familiar his prisoner? Gaap said..." She stopped. Nick couldn't be trusted; she didn't want to tell too much.

"No, he does not use ze pain glyph on ze familiar." Nick answered. He quickly added, "And ze familiar is not his pet eyeser, like in your foolish human stories. Zat is how it is wiz ze humans—always getting ze truth all helter-skelter.

"Ze human may sink of ze familiar as his pet, but it is not so. No, it guides ze human by ze power of persuasion, leading him like a rider guides a horse, pulling ze reins zis way or zat. The Sorcerer kidnapped your little sister, but it was ze familiar's plan." As they topped a hill, Nick pointed down at a clearing below. "Zere it is."

It was an area remarkably barren and flat. No trees, bushes or grass. No rocks or fallen trees. Torches on posts surrounded a large circle encircling a five-pointed star drawn in white. Gaap stood outside the circle, his great wings closed and drawn together behind him. A man stood inside the center of the star and a round lump lay at his feet. The crow perched upon his shoulder.

Lizzie hurried down the hill, her eyes fixed on the lump. As she drew closer, the air grew thick with the smell of citronella. Her dad had bought torches that smelled like that. Did the Sorcerer shop at Wal-Mart too?

Lori, the round lump curled up in a ball at the Sorcerer's feet, looked up. She still wore her pink Barbie nightgown, and her hands and feet were bound in rope.

"Lori!" Lizzie shouted, and she began to run.

"Stop right there!" the man commanded.

Lizzie slowed to a walk.

The Sorcerer was nothing like she had imagined him. He wore a sharp dark suit with black wingtip shoes. His hair was short and neat.

"You're the Sorcerer?" Lizzie asked.

"I am," he answered. With a deliberate motion, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a long knife, its blade glinting in the torchlight. "Now, please don't come any closer to the pentagram, or I shall be forced to kill your sister," he said, pointing the knife toward Lori.

Lizzie saw his face clearly for the first time. She could hardly believe her eyes. "I've seen you on TV," she said, "You're that politician."

"Madison Akers," he said. "Sorry we have to meet, Lizzie, under such unfortunate circumstances. But sometimes one is forced to do unpleasant things for the greater good. We need the Spear of Destiny."

# Chapter 31 — The Wood Witch

Manuel and his mom followed Gordon on his motorcycle through town and then onto a highway and finally into the suburbs. They stopped at a neighborhood swimming pool. The paved road ended, but a dirt road continued, one path leading into wooded hills and another toward crop fields.

"Wait for us here," Gordon said to Miss Garcia. "We'll be back soon."

"This is loco," Manuel's mom told him as he was getting out of the car. "You should call 9-1-1."

Manuel shook his head. "We have to find her first. We'll call them when we find the kidnapped girl. The police won't listen to Gordon if he tells them he can use his belly to find her."

"I'm calling the police if you're not back in 30 minutes," she replied.

Manuel nodded, though he didn't think it was a good idea.

Manuel was surprised when they did not take the path into the woods and instead took the narrow dirt road that led to the fields. They jogged.

"What is our plan?" Manuel asked.

"We need to find Akers, of course."

"But then what?"

"Even the best plan needs be adaptable. The more you leave to adaptation, the less you need to change."

"That's it?" Manuel asked. Playing the situation out in his mind, he didn't see how they had a chance.

"I think Sparky's scared," the shrunken head said.

"That's it," Gordon replied, ignoring the head. "I'm not certain what we'll find there. The Sorcerer has summoned a great lord of a demon, a nasty piece of work that one. Similar to that imp you saw, only ten feet tall and ten times as powerful. He had me bound and trussed before I could say Jack Robinson."

"What chance do we have against that?"

"Ah, well," Gordon answered, "I know a little bit about demons. They don't like being summoned, and they don't like taking commands. This one will be looking for a way to defy and destroy this Akers. There's a chance there."

Manuel didn't think this was much of a plan. "A chance?"

"A chance," Gordon replied. "The deck seems stacked against us. But that's only because we haven't seen the Sorcerer's hand. Why has he taken the girl? What is he doing with her now? There are all kinds of possibilities, and we may just need a moment's distraction to rescue the girl. And, if we're lucky, recover the stolen sigils."

The road turned to the left, but Gordon and Manuel continued straight through the fields and toward the woods and trees taller than any Manuel had ever seen.

They slowed to a walk when as they entered the woods, their eyes adjusting as it grew darker. He could see better than other people in the dark, Manuel had known this from comparing what he could see to what his mother could see at night. Also, the moon was full, and even down under the shadow of the great canopy of trees some of the light filtered through.

Manuel was wearing shorts and a short sleeve t-shirt and he quickly learned he was not prepared for a walk in the woods. They had to push their way through thick brush and vines with thorns seemed constantly to wrap around his ankles.

Then Manuel heard the voice, a whisper on the wind, quiet but clear.

Listen, sons of Mud and Light,

Ye offspring of my fairie kin,

My distant relative, my kissing cousin,

Abide my instruction this night.

"Did you hear that, Gordon?" Manuel asked in a whisper. The voice seemed to have no direction and he wondered if it was only inside his head.

"Yes," Gordon answered. "This could be trouble."

Manuel almost stumbled and fell into the deep channel of the creek that opened up before him.

This creek no man can pass,

Through these woods, border to border,

This is my charge and that is my order,

Whether you beg, barter, or dash.

Now Manuel saw her. A tall slender woman stood on the other side of the creek. Despite the darkness, Manuel could see her clearly because the woman seemed to glow, from the dress of green leaves she wore to the brown hair that flowed down below her knees. And glowing brightest of all were the emerald green eyes that were both beautiful and frightening.

So please believe,

You must leave,

Or be forced to do so.

"I don't think this wood witch can stop both of us," Gordon whispered to Manuel. "Go and cross the creek further down. You will find them; we are very close. Move quietly and remember, wait for your best opportunity."

Manuel stared at the wood witch. He had just noticed the claws where her fingernails should have been, but even so, this spirit looked so beautiful and so serene he had a hard time believing it would hurt them.

Gordon shoved Manuel. "Go!" he said.

Manuel began to move downstream, but he kept looking back. Gordon walked forward, then slid down the embankment down to the water's edge.

The wood witch stepped forward and pointed at Gordon's black boots and immediately the water and mud there began to bubble. With a gurgling sound, Gordon sank up to his knees.

Gordon reached out a hand toward the other side of the creek bed, and a sapling bowed down as on command. Gordon grabbed it.

Manuel took one last look. Gordon was down to his waist, the water boiling around him, but he held on firm to the sapling, and the sapling's roots held tight in the ground.

Manuel ran until he came to a tree that had fallen across the creek, a massive tangle of roots rising out from its base and pointing skyward. He skittered across the makeshift bridge and then angled back in the direction Gordon had indicated.

Before long he heard voices, so he slowed his pace and stooped commando style as he crept forward. He came to the edge of a clearing and took in the scene. Madison Akers stood to his left. He had made a large pentagram of chalk and stood inside it with the girl he had kidnapped. The crow was on his shoulder and he held a knife in his hand. Another person, a child about his age judging from its size, stood some distance to Manuel's right and well beyond the pentagram. This person was holding a bag. Another stout and short person with a conical hat and long flowing beard stood nearby. Manuel knew by instinct that this person wasn't human. Finally, the demon Gordon had talked about stood just outside the pentagram. Slowly it turned its head and its red eyes seemed to fix on him.

Manuel froze.

"So without further adieu," Mr. Akers said, waving his free hand toward himself, the crow swaying on his shoulder, "please toss the bag to me."

The demon turned his gaze away from Manuel and stared at the person with the bag.

Manuel breathed again.

# Chapter 32 — Madison Akers

Gaap's voice clawed into Lizzie's mind: _Keep him talking. Move closer to the pentagram_. She had to fight to keep from cringing under the weight of his voice.

"So without further adieu," Mr. Akers said, "please toss the bag to me."

"What are you going to do with it?" Lizzie asked, taking a step forward, moving closer to one of the points of the pentagram.

He sighed. Pointing his knife at Lizzie he said, "I am going to rule the world. Literally. Believe me, the world will be a better place for it"

Lizzie continued to inch forward. "You won't be able to use it if you don't know how."

"I'll figure it out."

The crow cawed.

"I know," Mr. Akers said to the crow. "I see her game."

He reached into his jacket again and pulled out a chain with dozens of round metal pendants attached to it. It jingled as he moved it.

"What is that?"

The Sorcerer frowned. "Has dear old Zuphlas—oh yes, he has you calling him Nick—has Nick put you up to this? I'll show you what happens to those who trifle with me."

He fumbled with the pendants in one hand and separated one from the others. Then he took a red pendant and held it over the first.

Lizzie heard a grunt and turned to see Nick furrowing his brow and squinting his eyes in pain. Lizzie spun back to the Sorcerer and stepped forward again, screaming, "Stop it!"

But Mr. Akers had already gathered the chain of pendants into the palm of his hand and Nick made a sigh of relief. "I am not a fool," he said, giving her a stern look. "I know you are stalling. I know you are trying to trick me. But I am not playing games, Miss Long, and I won't hesitate to use this knife on your sister. I don't want to kill your sister, but I will if you come one step closer."

Lizzie looked down at the line he spoke of—the outline of the pentagram. It was made of white chalk.

"This is how it will work," he continued. "You will throw the bag to me and I'll make sure the Spear is inside. Only then shall I release your sister.

"Afterwards, you will go home and tell the police she was lost in the woods and that you found her.

"Now you could tell them that Madison Akers kidnapped her, but no one would believe you. And then, when you least expect it, I'll send my friend Gaap here," he pointed the dagger toward the demon, who stood dark and menacing just beyond the pentagram, "to take Lori away for good. Maybe you too. Understand?"

Lizzie nodded helplessly.

"Toss the bag to me," Mr. Akers commanded.

Gaap's telepathic voice bore into Lizzie's mind— _Throw it short_.

Without thinking, Lizzie threw it short.

"Oh, for the love of God," the Sorcerer complained. He pointed the dagger at her. "I hope, for your sister's sake, this isn't more of your games."

He grabbed Lori's rope bound hands and dragged her toward the bag.

"Ow," Lori moaned. Lizzie felt guilty—he wouldn't be hurting her if she'd thrown it right to him. At this point, it didn't seem there was any hope of keeping the Spear anyway.

When the Sorcerer reached the bag he got down on his haunches, careful not to put the knees of his wool slacks on the ground, and balanced on his toes. The knife and the chain of sigils he laid on the ground so he could use both hands to pull back the zipper on the bag.

_NOW_ , Gaap's voice screamed inside her head, _wipe away the corner of the pentagram. DO IT._ There was power in the words. Even if she'd tried to resist, it would have been difficult.

She jumped forward, dropped onto her hands and knees, and began to brush away the chalk of the pentagram. Gaap's powerful wings beat swoosh swoosh and there was a rush of air.

The Sorcerer's eyes bugged and he dropped the bag. He snapped up the chain of sigils and deftly shuffled through them.

"Argh," the demon growled, and he bounced up in the air as if shot. As he flew over the Sorcerer he groped for him blindly and missed. He crashed to the ground with a thud, writhing in pain.

The Sorcerer picked up the knife. "I told you what I would do," he said, wagging a finger at Lizzie. Without hesitation he lifted the knife over Lori's stomach.

"No!" Lizzie screamed.

The world moved in slow motion.

Jumping to her feet, Lizzie raced to stop him. But she was too far away.

The knife went into Lori's tummy. Lori didn't scream, she just said "ohhh" drawn out really long.

Then a black streak smashed against the Sorcerer's temple, his head rocked, and the crow flapped its wings to maintain its perch on his shoulder.

Lizzie did not pause to wonder what had hit Akers or who might have thrown it. Before Akers could recover, Lizzie shouted "keyah" and kicked, the toe of her boot finding Mr. Aker's throat.

The Sorcerer rolled backwards sending the crow fluttering into the air. He lifted his head, but Lizzie didn't give him a chance to get back up. Vaulting into the air, she came down with both feet on his face. His head hit the ground, thump; his eyes rolled and blood trickled from his nose. His hand relaxed and the chain of sigils fell onto the ground.

Gaap rose in a flash. He brushed Lizzie out of his way with the back of his arm, sending her tumbling. His black hand throttled Mr. Aker's throat and lifted him easily into the air. "Pathetic mortal. Thought you could master Gaap, did you? Oh, how you shall suffer at my hand." The Sorcerer struggled with both hands against the demon's grip. His face grew red as he choked, his eyes bulging as if they might explode.

Lizzie crawled over to Lori.

"I'm cold," Lori said, shivering, her hands on the hilt of the dagger protruding from her tummy. Blood flowed out all around it.

Lizzie looked up at Gaap. "She's dying," she said.

"One less heir of Longinus to contend with." The demon laughed. "Good!"

He spread his wings. "You would be wise to avoid me. Come looking for me with your Spear, and you might end up like this one here," he said, shaking Mr. Akers like a doll. With a look of grim satisfaction, he tucked the man under an arm and flew into the air. Lizzie turned away and tried to shield her sister from the debris swept up in the gusts from those powerful wings.

Lori coughed, blood bubbling up from her mouth; confusion and panic showed in her wide-open eyes.

Lizzie began to cry. "Oh Lori...no."

# Chapter 33 — The Helper

Manuel felt sick. He had thrown the rock, and he'd hit the sorcerer, and the girl—Miss Long—had finished the job with her kicks. But not before Akers had stabbed the little girl Lori and that was what Manuel was trying to stop.

He stood up. Manuel didn't know what to do. He wanted to help, but there wasn't anything he could do.

Miss Long crouched over her sister, and the creature with the pointed hat leaned over them both. Behind them, on silent wings, the crow came circling back. Manuel followed its trajectory and he spotted the chain of sigils.

Without hesitation Manuel stepped out into the clearing. A somewhat round and baseball sized rock lay on the ground and he scooped it up.

The crow landed, hopping toward the sigils.

Miss Long and the man with the pointed hat were talking and leaning over the girl Lori, their backs to the bird and to Manuel.

Manuel's stone hit the crow at the base of its wings. The bird rolled and several black feathers floated in the air. Any ordinary bird would have been dead; but this wasn't an ordinary bird. When it regained its feet it scanned around with its beady black eyes looking for who had thrown the stone. When it saw Manuel, it shot into the air toward him.

The last time they had met, the demon had left marks on his neck that had lasted for days. Manuel hadn't even been able to put up a fight. The remembrance of that moment, the demon holding him in a death grip in the sewage tunnel, filled Manuel with fear. And Manuel remembered the demon's name: Raum.

Manuel turned and ran. The bushes and vines scraped at his bare legs and caught his ankles so that he nearly fell several times. The demon would fly above these difficulties he knew, and Manuel headed toward the densest trees where a bird could not easily fly.

The wings of the crow beat close behind; any second now Raum would pounce on him. Before him the underbrush formed a wall of green and brown; in desperation Manuel dove into a small opening in the thicket as if jumping through a window.

The crash through the branches and leaves seemed like the tumult of a storm in his ears; a hundred sharp branches dug their fingernails into his skin; thorny vines wrapped around him and spun him wildly; a hard landing on roots and rocks forced his breath from his lungs.

Manuel found himself lying on his back looking up into the endless weave of branches and into the midnight black beyond. Then the face of Raum appeared above him, light from nowhere glinting from those shiny onyx eyes. He had changed into his humanoid form.

Manuel tried to move but vines held one of his arms and both of his legs, and as he fought against his bonds the thorns dug into his skin. "Argh," he cried.

The demon cackled, sounding every bit the crow. "I could end you now. But I am in a hurry, and your end should be slow and painful I think. I will be back shortly." His mouth cracked open into something like a smile, but Raum had no teeth, just hard bone like a turtle or a bird.

Raum jumped into the air, his arms and legs and torso shrunk up toward his head. His head shrunk and now his arms were wings and his legs matched the size of his body. It sounded, as Manuel had noticed before, like a wet dog shaking.

The crow was now gone, leaving only a solitary feather floating gently down to land on Manuel's stomach.

# Chapter 34 — The Crow

"I can help your sister, Lizzie Long, but the time to do so grows short."

Lizzie turned to see Nick standing close behind her. "Take the knife," he said, kneeling beside her.

With both hands, Lizzie pulled out the knife and tossed it with disgust behind her. Blood gurgled out from the wound like a black fountain.

Nick put his hand on the wound. Closing his eyes, he began to chant low and deep. The hand—outlined in a silver halo—glowed red with the power of the magic. For several minutes he did this, his eyes closed in concentration.

With a start, Lori sat up. She stared at Nick. "Who are you?"

"A friend," he replied. He looked at Lizzie. "A friend, yah?"

Lizzie nodded. Yes...he was a friend after all.

"I thought that awful man had stabbed me," Lori said. With her bound hands, she touched herself where the knife had been, then lifted her wet fingers to her face. "Is this blood?"

"You're going to be alright," Lizzie assured her. She hugged her sister, wiped the blood from her lips, and kissed her on the forehead.

"I want to go home," Lori said. She started to cry.

"Of course." Lizzie nodded. She took Lori's hands and tried to untie the rope, but the knot was too tight. She needed the knife.

When she turned to find the knife, she saw the crow hopping along the ground in her direction. It stopped and eyed her suspiciously.

"What do you want?" she asked it.

"He wants ze sigils," Nick said. "Don't let him haf zem!"

The crow jumped off the ground and flew like a dart.

Lizzie dove. She reached the chain of pendants an instant before the crow, and the claws of the crow dug deep into the skin on the back of her hand.

"Ow," Lizzie yelped. She chanced a look up at the crow, though she feared it would try to peck at her eyes. Instead, it continued to claw and peck at her hands, and a thrill of fear and grief struck her as her hands began to look like ground beef. The crow was determined to have the sigils if it had to dig through the back of her hands.

"Get get," Nick said. He kicked at the crow and it fluttered away.

"You'll pay," it croaked at him. "You'll pay."

Now Lizzie saw that the rifle bag lay just a few feet away.

"Okay," she said, "Have your stupid pendants." And she took the pendants and threw them toward the woods.

The crow darted toward the pendants, and Lizzie sprung for the bag. Akers had already partially unzipped it, so it took Lizzie only a moment to pull out the Spear.

She whirled toward where she'd thrown the pendants. Never would she have seen the crow without the Spear—it darted low over the ground, a blur of a black in a sea of shadows. But the Spear guided her eyes right to it. Aiming the Spear at the bird she yelled, " _Damnari inter manes_."

"Caw," the crow shrieked one last time before disappearing into the darkness that reached out from the Spear.

Lizzie sighed. She wanted to collapse onto the ground and just cry. But she was a Spear Bearer, an heir of Longinus. She stood up and looked for the dagger.

"Stop, Lizzie Long," Nick said. "Let me haf your hands."

Lizzie held out her hands and Nick held them, and though he wasn't any taller than she, his hands covered and hid hers completely. She saw the red glow and the silver halo around his hands, and the intense pain turned to a warm tingling feeling. When Nick released her hands, Lizzie saw that her hands, while wet with blood still, were whole again.

"Thank you Nick," she said.

"We are friends, yah?"

"Yes," she said.

She found the dagger and cut the ropes that bound Lori and helped her to her feet. She wasn't wearing any shoes.

Lizzie sat down and started taking off her boots.

"What are you doing?" Lori asked. She had stopped crying.

"You can't walk in the woods barefoot."

"What are you gonna wear?"

"Oh...my socks are pretty thick. And I'm bigger than you—my feet are tougher."

"You are a credit to your kind, Lizzie Long," Nick said.

Lizzie shrugged. It was true; she felt proud. But it wouldn't do to be too proud.

Lizzie walked to where she had thrown the chain of pendants, and Lori and Nick followed. She brought out her flashlight and probed the ground.

"Here they are," Lori said. She picked them up and handed them to Lizzie.

Lizzie stuffed them into a vest pocket.

Nick pointed at the pocket. "You must destroy zat. It is nothing but trouble. Understand?"

Lizzie nodded weakly. She wasn't so sure. The sigils could be useful for a Spear Bearer. "I could summon you," she said. "I might..." she hesitated. She was going to say 'need you'. But that didn't seem like something a friend would say. "I might want to see you."

Nick nodded. "Yah. Or you might want to use ze Spear on me."

"No," Lizzie protested. "You're my friend."

"And your Fahzer?"

"He wouldn't," Lori interjected.

"I promise," Lizzie said. "Cross my heart and hope to die. I won't let that happen."

Nick nodded. He patted Lizzie on the shoulder. "Farewell, Lizzie Long." Then he leaned over, pinched Lori's cheek, and said, "Farewell, little one."

"Bye," Lori answered, her eyes sparkling with confusion and wonder.

"Bye Nick," Lizzie said, feeling a little sad.

With a whisper of motion, Nick shrunk into a spot in the air and became a cicada. Chattering and buzzing, he flew away. She watched him as only one holding the Spear could, seeing him weaving through the dense woods far into the distance, and wondering if she would ever see him again.

# Chapter 35 — Rescue

Manuel fought frantically and with all his strength to free himself. Though the thorns scratched his skin and dug in tenaciously, Manuel pulled against them anyway. Raum would surely be back any second. He wondered if the demon had somehow enchanted the vines. The pain they caused seemed unnatural.

After several fruitless minutes, Manuel stopped struggling and panted with exhaustion. He looked at his bloody arms and legs, and looked at the vines wrapped around them. He had one arm free, and he delicately began to unwind the vine from his other arm. It took time, but it wasn't hard. And the vines didn't seem to be enchanted in any case. The problem, he now saw, had been caused by his panic.

He was down to working on his last leg when the cicada buzzed down and landed on a fallen tree a few feet away.

People talk about the feeling of being watched, but for Manuel it was more than just a sensation. If he felt like he was being watched, he would inevitably turn his head to find someone staring at him, or maybe find them quickly looking away if they were shy. He felt like he was being watched now. And it was the bug he felt staring at him.

"Are you a good or evil spirit?" he asked it.

With a snap the cicada transformed, the pointed cap rising up, arms and legs sprouting from nowhere. He stood only a couple feet high, still standing on the log, a perfect little gnome. Somewhere under the white curtain of a beard he spoke. "I am goot."

"Were you back there? With the girls?"

"Yah."

"Are they okay?"

"Yah."

"And the demon, the crow..."

"Gone," the gnome said. "Did you srow ze rock at ze Sorcerer?"

Manuel nodded.

"Zat was brave," the gnome said, nodding.

Manuel finished untangling himself from the thorn bushes and stood up. "What happened to that chain of sigils? They were stolen from my friend..." He paused and felt guilty for not thinking of Gordon first. "My friend is in trouble. A wood witch met us at a creek. She made him sink into the mud. Can you...can you make her stop?"

"She is gone," the gnome answered. "She only did what ze Sorcerer made her do."

"Please," Manuel said, "Will you help me find him?"

The gnome hopped off the log and began walking. The bushes and the vines swayed away from him as he approached, and Manuel found it easy following in his wake. Before long they stood at the bank of the creek.

Gordon wasn't anywhere to be seen. Not a ripple disturbed the dark water.

"It must be further down," Manuel said.

"No, here," the gnome said, and he pointed a wrinkled finger down at the water.

Manuel followed where he pointed, and there he saw a stick rising out of the water. "Is he...alive?"

"Ze stick is hollow," the gnome answered. "Your friend is clever."

"Can you help me get him out?"

"Will you make me a promise?" the gnome asked.

Manuel nodded.

"Ze girl has ze chain of sigils," the gnome said. He pointed at Manuel. "You will not try to take ze sigils back. You will go home now."

"Why?"

"Because ze girl is my friend." The gnome looked at Manuel solemnly.

"Okay," Manuel said. "I promise. I guess they'll be safe with her?"

The gnome shrugged. "She _means_ goot, in any case." Then he looked upward and thick vine swung free from a branch and slapped into the mud near where Gordon's stick straw jutted out of the water. Manuel grabbed the vine and guided it toward Gordon. The stick straw disappeared, and a minute later Gordon's bald head crested the water, then his big white eyes. When his mouth came out he took a deep breath, and he said, "How did you manage to find me?"

"I didn't," Manuel said. "The gnome did." He looked to where the gnome had stood, and then looked around. "He's gone," he said when he couldn't find him.

"A gnome? Really?" Gordon said. "I guess you have a story to tell."

"Yes...the girl is safe. Raum is...gone...and the Sorcerer too. And..."

"Hold on," Gordon said. "Sorry to interrupt. But you might want to plug your ears." His smile seemed to glow in the darkness. "The shrunken head is still tied to my belt. When he comes up I doubt you're going to want to hear what he has to say."

# Chapter 36 — Home

As Lizzie and Lori approached Crawdad Creek, Birdie came trotting down to the back gate.

"Hi Birdie," Lizzie said. Good old Birdie. Good old house. It felt great to be home.

As soon as they went through the gate, Birdie began sniff at Lori, nuzzling her hard with her nose. Lizzie had to grab her by the collar and hold her down as they walked to the back door.

Lizzie looked in through the sliding glass door. Mom was still on the couch, lying down.

"Shh," Lizzie said, putting her index finger to her lips. "Mom's asleep."

She opened the door slowly, just wide enough for them to pass through. Birdie tried to sneak in, but Lizzie blocked the way.

"No, girl," Lizzie said, shutting the door quickly. _Thunk_.

"Huh?" her mom said groggily. "Who's there?"

"Just us," Lizzie answered in a quiet voice.

Her mom sat up and looked over the couch. Her face was red and indented with the couch's crisscross pattern. She blinked hard. "Lori?" she whispered.

"Mama," Lori cried.

"Lori!" Mrs. Long shouted, and she dove over the couch and pulled Lori into her arms. "My baby, my baby," she cried. She hugged her so tight Lizzie wondered if Lori could breathe.

Then she looked at Lori again.

"What is this?" she asked, touching the blood soaked nightgown. "Blood? Is this blood? Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay, mama. Lizzie's friend fixed it."

"Lizzie's friend?" She looked to Lizzie for an answer.

"It's a long story mom."

"You're bleeding too," Mrs. Long said. She took Lizzie's hands into her soft hands.

"It's okay, mom," she said. Nick had fixed her too.

"I don't understand, Lizzie. There is blood everywhere, but no wounds," she looked into Lizzie's eyes intensely. "Your friend? What did Lori mean?"

"His name is Nick, and he's...I..." Lizzie would tell her, but it wasn't going to be easy. The fear, the pain, and the un-Spear Bearer type friend.

"That's okay," her mom said. "It can wait. Come on girls, upstairs. We need to get you cleaned up. And you," she said, cupping Lizzie's cheek in her hand, "can tell me what you can when you are ready."

Lizzie nodded. There wouldn't be any secrets now. Even if she wanted to keep Nick a secret she couldn't because of Lori. But surely she didn't have anything to hide now. Nick had saved Lori's life, and it couldn't matter that he was one of the Fallen. And she really couldn't be in trouble for not telling her parents about Nick, because she had made a promise. Still, she worried.

Even though it was three in the morning, they got dressed and went down to the police station. The man at the desk said he didn't have the authority to release Mr. Long, but after listening to Mrs. Long's tirade for half an hour, the officer gave in and called someone who did.

Detective Cole came into the station disheveled and angry. "So then," he said, raising his eyebrows, staring hard at Lori, "where have you been?"

"On the advice of legal counsel," Mrs. Long jumped in, "we cannot answer any questions."

Detective Cole sighed and shook his head.

"There is no kidnapping," Mrs. Long said, "There is no crime. You have to let my husband go."

He turned his back to her and slammed his fist down on the counter. "No crime?" he asked sardonically, "Really? What about the hundreds of police hours wasted? Did you know that filing a false report is a crime?"

"Isn't holding a person against their will a crime?" Mrs. Long asked, her face and stance rigid.

"Bob," Mr. Cole said to the officer behind the counter, "get Mr. Long out of here."

When he spun back around, he was red in the face. "What is your game?" he asked through clenched teeth. "Trying to make us look like fools?"

Lizzie shook her head. Compared to Gaap, Detective Cole looked like a circus clown. "You don't need our help to look like a fool," she said.

"I'm keeping an eye on you," the detective said, jabbing his finger at Lizzie's chest. "There's something strange going on here. You haven't seen the last of me."

Lizzie saw him again sooner than she would have guessed. Later that night on the evening news, he was the lead detective in a new case. Congressman Madison Akers, businessman turned politician, had disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

After a good night's rest, Mr. Long brought Lizzie into the office, and helped her make a journal entry for her encounter with the Sorcerer. She told him everything, starting with Nick healing the rabbit, and he wrote it all down.

But when she told him about the sigils he stopped her. "You have the sigils?" he asked.

"Yes'r." She reached into her pocket and showed them to him.

He took the sigils into his hand. At first he looked at the arcane symbols with disgust. But then he smiled. "Do you know what this means?"

Lizzie didn't.

"This is like a goldmine of spirits," he said. "We'll be able to summon all the Fallen on this ring to us."

"But I promised Nick," Lizzie said, "that I'd never use the Spear on him."

"You can't make promises like that Lizzie, I've told you. We must take all the Fugitive Spirits."

"But dad, he saved Lori."

He put the sigils down on his desk. "Okay. Tell me the rest of the story."

When Lizzie finished, Mr. Long stared at the last page for a long time. Finally, he said, "It's true Nick saved Lori—I'll honor the promise you made to him. But you have to know that Lori would have never been in that situation if you hadn't talked to Nick in the first place.

"Now I'm not blaming you for what happened. You didn't know about the Fallen when you met Nick. But you must promise me you shall never, ever, speak to any of the Fugitive Spirits again. Okay?"

Lizzie nodded reluctantly.

"Following that rule now will be particularly important. At least two of the Fallen know where we live. Our house is protected, and yet somehow Lori was kidnapped. And we don't know what else the Fallen might try. You must understand."

"Yes'r," Lizzie answered. She didn't like the idea of using the Spear on Nick, because he turned out to be okay. But her dad was right. Things could get messy when you listened to the Fugitive Spirits. It had happened at Rocky Springs. It had happened at the Garner Mansion. And it had happened with Nick. From now on her motto would be: Use the Spear first and ask questions later.

"Well," Mr. Long said, "it looks as if we're finished." He picked up the pages he had written and put them into a binder. Along the spine it read: Lizzie Long, Spear Bearer.

# Postlude - Hospital

Manuel sat in the waiting room by himself. He didn't count the shrunken head that had been put in Gordon's bag despite its repeated complaints of the "stink of runners and boxers." Gordon was in surgery to have the splinter removed from his intestines. His mom was in a room under observation. When a nurse had come out to clean Manuel's wounds and give him bandages, his mother had passed out. Now the doctors were running tests. Manuel knew that it was more than just being tired or the sight of blood. She was sick, and she'd been sick for some time now.

After rescuing Gordon from the Muddy Brown Bayou, they walked back to the car, and Manuel told Gordon about everything that had happened.

"Did you say a spear? They definitely said 'spear'?" Gordon had interrupted.

"Yes," Manuel said. "It was in a bag."

Gordon shook his head. "The blasted Reaper's," he said. "Worse than demons, that lot."

"So the little girl we saved was a...a Reaper?" Manuel asked. He didn't understand what a Reaper was, but of course it didn't sound good.

"Good night's work, there, Sparky," the shrunken head intoned. "Lost the sigils and rescued our mortal enemies."

"So we shouldn't have saved the girl?" Manuel asked.

"Of course we had to try to save the girl," Gordon said immediately. "Just wish she wasn't a blasted Reaper."

Gordon also had been surprised by what the gnome had said. "He said she was his friend?" Gordon asked in an incredulous voice.

"Yes," Manuel told him. "He made me promise not to try to get the sigils back."

"Then we won't," Gordon said. "And it's a good enough excuse not to face the Reapers. Besides, they likely won't be trying to use the Sigils to take over the world."

Sitting in the waiting room Manuel felt worried about his mother and Gordon, but he didn't feel sad. He thought it was weird, too, because it seemed he should feel sad. They had lost their home. They had lost the Sigils. He had been attacked and almost killed. His mom was sick.

But Manuel had rescued Gordon. He'd helped defeat the Sorcerer and save two girls. He'd kept Raum from getting the sigils back. He didn't feel defeated—he felt like a hero, and it seemed to him that that was what he was made for.

# The End

If you liked this novel, please consider leaving feedback at your favorite e-book retailers. Thanks.

### Sneak preview of

### Abomination

### Spear Bearer: Book Two

# Chapter 1 — The Crown of Stars

"You have the first watch," Mr. Long said. "I'll set my alarm for two a.m."

Bathed in fluorescent lantern light, Lizzie sat in a lawn chair under the tent's awning. She looked up from the book she was reading. "It's been two days, Dad."

"Use the pain glyph again," he said. "Let it know we mean business."

Lizzie pulled the string of pendants from her pocket and found the one marked Serakel, and then found the cruel looking red pendant. It had been almost three years since she had witnessed the sorcerer using the Glyph of Pain on Knecht Ruprecht, the gnome-like creature she called Nick. She had hated it then. She hated it still.

But she tried not to think about it. The job had to be done. And they couldn't wait forever as this Serakel spirit took it's time coming to their summoning.

"I do invocate, conjure, and command thee, O thou Spirit Serakel, to appear and to show thyself visibly before this pentagram," Lizzie said solemnly. "By thy name and sign do I call you forth, and by the Grim Glyph of Pain do I send despair and torture till thee present thyself."

She crossed the two pendants and held them tight together for a good half-minute.

"Dad, I was wondering, what if the spirit has already been gathered? How long do we wait?"

Mr. Long lifted up his baseball cap and scratched his head. "I don't know. Remember, it took almost a full day for the first one to make it here. They don't all travel at the same speed. Some are probably farther away than others." He unzipped the tent and stepped inside.

Lizzie heard a rustling sound in the woods. She picked up the ancient Spear of Longinus, its haft broken short, and went to the edge of the pentagram they had made. With the power of the Spear she looked into the darkness, seeing everything with supernatural clarity—every green leaf, every twig, every dry brown pine needle on the ground. Some twenty yards away an opossum was scrounging through dead leaves and fallen branches.

"What is it?" her father called out from the tent.

"Nothing. Just a possum."

"Okay. Well, I'm going to get some shuteye. Goodnight."

Lizzie climbed back into her chair, her legs curled up underneath her. She started to read again, and waited for her turn to rest.

" _The Mother Earth was made for those,_

Who care the least to love Her.

They poison rivers, pollute the air,

Consuming all that grows."

The song came to Lizzie through the fog of sleep. And with it came the smell of flowers. The voice sounded pleasant and kind and made her feel both peaceful and sad. She had had dreams like that before, where an emotion was simply a part of the landscape and had little to do with what was happening.

" _They live in greedy desperation,_

Hunting, chopping, burning.

Their wanting never ceasing—

Laying low everything under the sun.

" _And now I fear,_

My time draws near,

They aim to harvest me!"

Lizzie struggled to open her eyes. Beyond the edge of the pentagram a live oak tree stood, its trunk thick, its branches long and tortuous. It hadn't been there before.

"Do you hear me, child?" came the voice from the direction of the tree.

"Yes," Lizzie answered.

"Oh Creature of Mud, we have no quarrel between us. Come to me. Let me care for you. You'll want for nothing the rest of your days, and I'll give you the knowledge of the ages."

Lizzie began to stand up, and smiled to think she was sleepwalking. She had never done that before. The Spear began to roll off her lap, and so she took it in her hand. Now the old live oak glowed green.

Lizzie smiled again. It was one of the Fallen. Funny—she should be scared—but she actually felt happy and relaxed. She walked toward the oak, her feet not even lifting off the ground, her eyelids drooping.

The oak transformed. A tall slender woman stood before her holding a silver hair brush. She wore a dress of brilliant autumn leaves. "Come, child, let me brush your hair," she said.

Lizzie had never seen such beauty. Her angular face flawless, her emerald eyes bright, her nut-brown hair reaching down to her bare feet. A crown of stars orbited about her head. The woman invited her closer with outstretched arms.

Beep beep beep, Mr. Long's alarm sounded. Lizzie looked back toward the tent. What was it he always said about the Fallen?

"Please, just a few more steps," the woman said. "You can live forever in the warmth of my embrace."

But as the woman motioned her forward, Lizzie noticed she had claws instead of fingernails. There was tension in the woman's voice. She remembered how her dad had told her the Fallen could cast a spell on you. Lizzie shook her head to shake out the grogginess.

"Lizzie," her dad yelled from behind her.

The spell broke and Lizzie awoke. Without hesitation she lifted the Spear and pointed it at the woman.

"You don't know what you do," the spirit said. "A forest will die. I am all that stands between the trees and the filth belching from out of your factories."

Lizzie was thirteen now. She wouldn't make the mistakes she had made when she was eleven. She had learned to ignore her curiosity. She had learned not to listen. " _Damnari inter manes_ ," she said.

The woman raised her arms and a whirlwind formed and spun toward Lizzie. But the darkness of the Spear closed around Serakel and she was gone.

The whirlwind died at Lizzie's feet, a swirl of leaves and dust.
Energy is equal to the mass times the speed of light squared.

—Derived from Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity

# Chapter 2 — The Foster Home

"Obey our rules—no yelling, no loud music, only one visitor at a time, and lights out at ten—and you won't have any problems from Mr. Snead or me," the large woman said in a belabored voice as she walked up the stairs. She turned to the tall skinny boy walking behind her carrying a beat-up suitcase and she added in a stern voice, "Do you understand, Manuel?"

Manuel nodded. "Yes, Mrs. Snead," he replied.

She smiled and softened her tone. "You can call me Mama Snead."

Manuel nodded, but he wasn't about to call her Mama. He already had a mother.

"You're going to be sharing a room with Jason," she said. Then she stopped and added in a low voice, "We're all full. It's the last bed. I wouldn't put you in there otherwise."

Although Manuel was only in eighth grade, he knew about Jason—the kid with the worst reputation at Hale High. He'd heard about all the fights he'd been in; the way that he'd broke one guy's arm, another guy's jaw, and about a dozen more noses. Although Jason wasn't nearly the biggest kid in the Tulsa public schools, he was undoubtedly the meanest.

"If you can just make it through May, he turns eighteen then, and then he'll be out of the system," Mrs. Snead continued in her quiet voice.

"I don't think I'll be here through May," Manuel said. "This is just temporary." His mom was going through a bad spell...that's what she had said. The MS had gotten so bad she couldn't get around without a motorized wheelchair. She couldn't work anymore; she couldn't take care of him.

"I don't need you take care of me mom," he'd told her. "I can take care of both of us."

But she had shaken her head. She would go to a nursing home where they could take care of her full-time.

Social Services had insisted that Manuel go to a foster home. Gordon had offered to let him live with him in his trailer, but when Manuel told the caseworker about Gordon's offer, she'd asked, "Gordon who?" and Manuel realized that he didn't know Gordon's last name. Actually, he'd always thought Gordon was his last name, not his first name. Stumped, and not holding out much hope that Social Services would approve of a biker who lived in a trailer park without any apparent means of income, he'd given up.

Mrs. Snead lumbered ahead of him down the hallway and knocked at a door at the end of the hall. "Jason?" she yelled through the door.

No answer.

"Jason?" she said, cracking the door open.

"What do you want?"

Mrs. Snead opened the door and walked in. "This is Manuel. Be nice to him. Okay?"

Jason looked up from his magazine and stared at her as he might look at decaying road kill. His scalp was shaved, leaving it pink and shiny.

"Give him any trouble, and you'll be out of here. Understand, Jason?"

Jason looked back down at his magazine.

Manuel put his bag on the bed. He could hear the floor groaning as Mrs. Snead walked away back down the hall.

"Can't believe they put a fricking spic in here with me."

Manuel turned around. Jason was rolling the magazine up in his hand like he was getting ready to use it to swat a fly. "Go downstairs and tell Mama Fat-Ass you want a different room."

Manuel sighed and turned back to open his suitcase. As if today hadn't been bad enough, now he had to deal with this.

"Don't turn your back on me, pretty boy," Jason said.

Manuel ignored him. It didn't matter if Jason called him names. Jason was nothing. Who cared what Jason thought? What was 'spic' anyway? A word, that's all. It bothered him more to be called 'pretty boy' because he knew it was true. He looked like, well...an angel. A white-winged, halo-headed, solicitous-smiling, angel.

"I'll teach you to be dissing me." Jason got to his feet and the floor creaked. "I'm going to mess you up."

Manuel could hear Jason coming across the room toward him—he could hear his footsteps, he could hear his breathing. Would he seriously be planning to attack him in the room? Didn't he care about getting kicked out?

Jason didn't care. He swung a roundhouse punch toward one of Manuel's kidneys.

But Manuel felt Jason behind him, heard the sound of his fist as it went through the air. In a blur of motion, he twisted away around the punch and with a slight push knocked the unbalanced Jason onto the bed. This all happened in the flash of an instant.

Manuel reached down to the now astonished Jason and shoved a sock into his open mouth. He didn't want to fight him—that would only serve to get him kicked out of the home, which would only distress his mother more. His only choice involved magic.

The door stood open. Gordon, the magician, had taught him about matter. Matter is energy solidified. Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. Matter is an illusion created with large amounts of energy. Everything is energy. Matter is an illusion.

With a flick of Manuel's hand the door swung shut. The light switch flipped off. With the lights off he might manage to avoid a fight.

Gordon had taught him the art of changing one's appearance—simply create a suggestion and let the audience fill in the details; the darker it was, the more details would be left to the audience. Using a deep voice that he caused to echo in a most sinister way, he said, "You don't know with whom you are dealing."

From his forehead he pushed out two little bumps. That's all they were, really, _but they suggested horns_. And he was able to get the light from a street lamp to shine from his eyes; it wasn't much, but it _suggested his eyes glowing_.

It was enough. Jason screamed, though muted from the sock in his mouth. He jumped from the bed, scrambled along the floor to the door, fumbled with the doorknob frantically before getting it open, and then ran down the hall.

Manuel walked to the light switch and turned the light back on. You would have thought Jason had just seen the Devil himself. Could be that's what he thought he saw. All the better. One thing for certain—Jason wouldn't be giving him any more trouble.

# END OF SNEAK PREVIEW OF ABOMINATION

Other books by this author to be found at major online book sellers:

Mimic: A Spear Bearer Short

Superhuman: A Spear Bearer Short (Summer 2014)

Abomination: Spear Bearer Book 2

Bowels of Hell: Spear Bearer Book 3 (Summer 2014)

The Globe

Freezer

Visit my blog The Discovered Story.

