The blood seeping out of my shoulder where the pavement arrow hit me (and there is a surprising amount of it) is already getting the attention of the local ghosts. They feed on life, and there’s a lot of life in blood. One of the reasons it’s used in so many rituals and spells to call and control the dead.

They can see me from their side the same way I see them. Light and sound, but like a girl in a peep show booth, there’s no touching. To me they mostly look like half-formed nightmares, caught in a form inherited from their final moments of death. Gunshot wounds, cracked skulls, stabbings. To them I look like a gourmet meal stuck behind glass. And now I’m on their side of the window.

This is probably a monumentally bad decision, but I’ve never been accused of making smart ones. I reach out with both hands, grabbing the kid’s ghost in one hand, and the soul in the other.

My hands sting as if they’ve just been flash frozen, but I hold on tight. I pull the two pieces together. They fuse into one as soon as they come in contact with each other.

Okay. Now what? This is brand new territory for me. I go with the first thing that pops in my head. I shove his soul into his body like I’m tamping down an overfull trash can.

His body’s eyes and mouth snap open in shock, or terror, or something. But it clearly worked. He’s blurring and brightening, and soon all I can see is a man-sized form of shapeless light.

The sound of Wanderers is getting closer. Though they look like they’re running, their feet never touch the ground. And if there’s a wall over here, they can’t go through it. They’re constrained by their own memories of how human bodies and the world work.

Which is a good thing, because otherwise they’d probably be flying overhead and dive bombing me, instead of running at me like Labradors after I just rang the dinner bell.

That’s my cue. The last thing I need is to get gnawed on by Wanderers. Just like coming in here, I have to will myself back to the other side. Used to be it took me a good twenty minutes to cast this spell. But I’ve done it so many times now I can do it in between heartbeats.

I pull myself over just as I see the first running Wanderers round a corner. There’s that jet engine blast of sound, a searing light, and then I’m back on the living side.

The kid’s gone. A silver Audi heads jerkily down the street, then straightens and picks up speed. I suppose motor control takes a minute to come back when you’re raised from the dead.