Page 2 of Magic for Nothing

“I don’t know,” said Kevin. “I really don’t.”

“Everything is about to change,” said Evelyn, and she put her face in her hands and cried.

One

“It’s better to act than it is to react. Acting gets you in trouble. Reacting all too frequently gets you dead.”

—Alice Healy

A deserted house on the outskirts of Salem, Oregon

Now

DON’T GET ME WRONG. Poltergeists have a place in a healthy spectral ecosystem. They wouldn’t exist if they didn’t. Everything evolves for a reason, even the different sorts of ghost people become after they die. Nothing in this or any other dimension is inherently evil.

And none of that was really a comfort with the ghost of an eleven-year-old boy doing his level best to drop an entire house on my head.

“Tyler! I’m here to help you!” I shouted, ducking around the nearest corner. A waterlogged dresser flew past overhead, shattering when it hit an exposed support beam. Either it had been full of beetles—eww—or Tyler was somehow creating them. When the dresser gave way, the bugs came flowing out, so plentiful that it seemed impossible they could have fit inside there. I squeaked and plastered myself against the wall, trying not to hyperventilate. I don’t have a specific problem with bugs, but there’s a big difference between seeing a single beetle and having a wave of them flowing toward your feet.

Mary sighed, stepping in front of me and drawing an arc across the floor with her toe. The beetles parted as they ran up against it, running in either direction, never crossing the line. After they had gone about three feet, they popped, becoming clouds of green mist that rose into the air and dissipated.

“Okay, this is officially the grossest ghostbusting job I have ever been on,” I said, as calmly as I could. It wasn’t all that calm. “Where the hell is Artie?”

“I can check, but it means leaving you alone with Tyler,” cautioned Mary. A splintering sound from the other side of the wall confirmed that Tyler’s tantrum was still in full force. “Are you sure you’re down for that?”

“If it means finding out where my so-called backup is, yes,” I said.

Mary vanished. A microwave flew through the doorway and slammed into the wall next to the dresser. Unlike the dresser, it didn’t burst into spectral cockroaches or break into a pile of splinters. Also, it could have crushed my skull, which I am fond of leaving uncrushed. I swallowed a yelp and moved farther down the hall, trying to keep my exits in view. With the way this had been going so far, I was going to need to run again before much longer.

The trouble with going up against ghosts is that most of them aren’t bad, just confused. They don’t get why I’m alive and they’re not. Sometimes that’s a fair question, like with Tyler, who died when he was eleven. He’d been riding his bike, following all the rules of the road—even wearing a helmet—when a drunk driver blasted around a corner and slammed into him, not giving him a chance to swerve. If there was any mercy in the situation, it was that Tyler had died instantly.

But maybe that wasn’t actually merciful. Because he’d died instantly, he hadn’t had any time to process what was happening. One moment he was there. The next moment he was gone. The moment after that, he was back, spectral, confused, and coming home to haunt his family. They’d only lasted six months before they moved away; who could live in a house that shook and groaned and sometimes cried in the voice of your dead son in the middle of the night?

That all happened four years ago. Tyler had been alone ever since, growing stronger, angrier, and more confused. It was a terrible situation for a kid to be in, alive or dead.

I would have had a lot more sympathy if he hadn’t insisted on throwing things at my head, but hey. Nobody’s perfect.

“Tyler, dammit, could you calm down?” I stayed pressed against the wall, hoping that by shouting at the kid without giving him an immediate target, I could get him to chill out—or at least to stop throwing things. “We’re not here to hurt you!”

The air in front of me shimmered, and a spectral preteen boy appeared. He looked more like a ghost than either of our family phantoms: Rose and Mary both tended to manifest as fairly normal-looking teenage girls. Sure, Mary had white hair and terrifying babysitter eyes that could make me confess to damn near anything, but fashion hair dyes and cosplay contacts exist. You know what doesn’t exist? Makeup that can make a living person transparent and faintly blue, that’s what. Tyler looked like a really good CGI effect, the sort of thing I had exactly zero interest in getting up close and personal with.

“Liar,” he hissed. “Exorcist. Liar.”

“If I were an exorcist, would I have a ghost with me?” It seemed like a reasonable question.

Apparently not. Tyler scowled. “You’re trying to trick me,” he accused. Behind him—well, technically, through him—I saw the busted remains of the dresser start to pull themselves together. He was getting ready for another volley.

Swell. That was just what I needed. “I am not trying to trick you, Tyler,” I said firmly. “If I were trying to trick you, I’d have brought . . . shit, I don’t even know. I have no idea how to trick a kid your age. I don’t even like kids. I never have.”

He blinked. I had apparently gone far enough off-script to confuse him. “You were a kid once.”

“And when I was a kid, I was not my own biggest fan,” I said. “Kids are sticky by default, and annoying almost all the damn time. I am not the person you choose to trick a kid. Look, I’m running out of novel ways to say this, but I’m here because I want to help you. That starts with you helping me. You help me by not throwing that damn dresser at my head again. I am mortal, I am breakable, I do not want to be broken.”

Tyler scowled. “If you want to help me, where are my parents?”

“They’re gone. You died and they moved away, because they couldn’t handle the pain of living here and knowing you weren’t ever going to grow up, or come back, or be their little boy again.” They’d also moved away because he’d scared the pants off them when he started haunting the place, but saying that seemed a little impolitic. Tyler had just been doing what his new instincts told him to do. It wasn’t his fault that those instincts sort of sucked.

“You’re lying!” he howled, face distorting until it was less that of a preteen boy and more that of an unspeakable nightmare. I prepared to brace for impact.