It cut through the brittle old bones like butter. The blue lightning vanished. The Tall Man’s figure collapsed.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Too soon, of course. The air around the fallen heap of bones and metal roiled, smelling of scorched hair and rot. Without a host to contain it, Grandpa Morgan’s duppy was manifesting at long last.

“Gentlefolk of the coven!” Casimir called in a fierce, determined voice. “My darlings, our time has come!”

Sinclair turned to me. He held the empty pickle jar in one hand and the sad, trampled reminder of Jojo in the other, and the determination in Casimir’s voice was echoed in his level gaze. “Stand back, Daisy. We’ve got this.”

I nodded. “Do it.”

I admit it—I’d had my doubts about the coven. But they converged in a circle around the Tall Man’s armored bones and held hands, with Sinclair in the center, facing his grandfather’s spirit. Sandra Sweddon, Warren Rogers, Mark and Sheila Reston, Kim Crandall, Mrs. Meyers, whose first name I really ought to learn . . . their ordinary, mortal faces were strong and beautiful as they chanted an invocation.

Grandpa Morgan’s duppy fought them. It manifested in a shifting array of forms: a bull-calf with fiery eyes, chains jangling around its neck; a black dog with its hackles raised; a giant fish leaping and twisting in midair.

Members of the coven held fast to one another’s hands and chanted louder, their voices strong.

In the center of the circle, Sinclair opened the empty jar, the sprig of joe-pye weed tucked into the breast pocket of his polo shirt. He uttered a word—a word like the word his mother had uttered in the cemetery, all stern, tolling syllables that sounded as if it came from before the dawn of recorded time.

The duppy’s appearance dwindled into that of a stooped, elderly man with tired, bloodshot eyes, gazing at his grandson with a pleading expression.

Sinclair said the word again.

A cool, crisp autumn breeze sprang up, banishing the scent of decay and blowing the manifestation of the duppy into tatters. There was a . . . a sucking sensation, like what happens when contestants on Iron Chef America use the vacuum sealer.

With a deft, deliberate twist, Sinclair screwed the lid onto the pickle jar, capturing his grandfather’s spirit.

It was done.

Forty-seven

In the aftermath, I burst into hysterical laughter. I couldn’t help it.

“Daisy.” Stefan’s calm voice anchored me. “Are you harmed?”

“No.” I wasn’t entirely steady on my feet, but the sense of debilitating weakness was beginning to fade. “I’m okay. Is everyone else okay?”