Page 22 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

NOPE.It was a yell from her real self, rising up in a desperate burst of strength that broke through the creature’s hold. Realization streamed in even as the hand yanked at her thoughts again.

Hazel slammed her eyes closed and bolted backward into the bathroom, only remembering that she’d been holding the doorknob when the door banged shut behind her. She sank to the floor with her back against it, letting her head fall forward until it rested on her knees.

Now, instead of the tapping, she could hear the finger dragging itself back and forth across the linoleum. She could still see it behind her eyelids too.

“Shit,” said Hazel, voice breaking at the end of the word.

* * *

More profanity rose within her, and beyond that the howling of a thwarted child:I don’t want this!andIt’s not fair!andMake it stop!

Nobody would, though. And while shedidn’t, obviously, want a giant, hypnotic dead hand between her and her bedroom, and while its presencewasn’tany more fair than the rest of Hazel’s situation, none of that mattered. She’d known that since she was nine and started to see into the ethereal, and if she’d forgotten, there were apparently several jars of tongues in Clarence’s basement whose former owners could have reminded her.

“Fairs are for tourists,” she said, quoting the woman from Vermont who’d taught her the cinquefoil ward, and turned on the taps in the sink. The sound of running water drowned out the hand’s noises, and Hazel sat down on the edge of the bathtub to go over the situation.

Full manifestation.The bits of flesh on the floor made that clear. Just walking through it wasn’t an option.Single entity. Probably not a ghost.The hand seemed to be able to sense her, might even have had a will or the equivalent, but Hazel didn’t think she could reason with it. Fighting would be a bad idea, too, even if she’d had more than a plunger—even before she’d gotten injured, nobody would have confused her with Xena.

Staying in the bathroom had its merits, like a large, solid door between Hazel and the thing out in the hall. The ward she’d set up seemed to be holding. Manifestations tended to fade, and dawn often banished the ones that happened at night, if they lasted that long.

Not always, though. And she’d never been a conduit before. The hand might vanish. Or it might get bolder. Dawn might send it off—or Hazel’s protections might fade as the manifestation pressed against them. The door might not be that much protection once the wards were gone; the hand hadn’t really come up against a physical barrier yet.

She pictured it grabbing at her through the shattered remains of the door, long, gray-nailed fingers stretched out to grasp.

Oh no. No no no.

Her knife was in the bedroom. So were salt, candles, and a vial of blessed water. Hazel had been at full strength when she’d cast the wards there. Perhaps most importantly, her bedroom had her bed, her desk, and two large chairs, all of which could make great barricade material.

The hallway wasn’t that wide, not really.

She opened the door a crack. The hand was still there. She’d expected that and still hoped, in a dim and childishmaybe Santawillbring me a ponyway, that it would have vanished after she’d turned on the taps, mission over once it had scared her.

It crooked just the tip of its upraised index finger toward Hazel, showing her the yellowed bone that had started poking through the flesh. The skin along its side was starting to split in places too. Black goo trickled out.

Hazel shut her eyes again, raised the plunger to guard her side, then threw the bathroom door open and made a run for it.

The house was small. Three steps crossed the hallway between the bathroom and Hazel’s bedroom, a distance that she’d never even noticed before. She felt each time her feet hit the floor and every frantic lunge of her muscles as she bolted forward. One palm hit the opposite wall as the hand made a hideous pulpy noise over on her right side, and she was turning her head to investigate before she remembered that was a bad idea.

She caught herself with her eyes half open, snapped her head back to face fake wooden planks, and so only got a fuzzy impression of the hand jerking backward with its fingers clenched into a fist. The barrier held—for the moment.

Better not test it.

A few sideways steps brought her to her bedroom door. She fumbled left-handed with the knob, not daring to put down the plunger,not thinking about how little good it would probably do. Outside her vision, the hand scrabbled and squished.

In her mind’s eye, Hazel saw it reaching for her, finding a hole in the ward and stretching its too-long fingers out to wrap around her ankle—

The door opened, and she tumbled into her bedroom.

She had the presence of mind to deliberately turn and close the door this time, and then to half drag, half shove the armchair up against it, waiting all the time for the heavythumpand the shuddering wood that would mean her wards had broken.

It didn’t happen. Hazel pushed her desk over to reinforce the chair, not that IKEA’s finest work was much extra weight, and bolted back to her bed. The space underneath showed no obvious signs of haunting, but she still yanked her feet up as soon as she sat down. Any dangling appendage felt too vulnerable.

The bed was farther from the hallway than any place in the bathroom had been, but Hazel could still hear the hand. It had started tapping again. If she hadn’t known better, she really could have mistaken the distant sound for a bird.

Taptap. Tap tap tap. Tap.

She leaned off the bed just far enough to yank open the nightstand drawer where she kept her knife and retreated as soon as she’d closed her fingers around the hilt. She drew her knees up to her chest and sat there, clutching her knife, watching the door, and praying for silence.

Chapter 12