Mist particles stampede his veins, eating him from the inside out as the mother conjuring melts away. The skin of his cheeks sinks under the jawbones, and he rots as strings of ecto-mist deepen in his throat, choking him.

I saw something in that moment . . . There was a Sawyer that didn’t realize he’d become a mass shooter, one who maybe wouldn’t have if somebody had stepped in sooner.

But now there’s a decaying spirit, a harmful person who chose to play parasitic leech, to suck joy out of people and kill everyone it could until it met its match.

I—Jake Livingston—am Sawyer Doon’s match.

I run around the circle and find my scrawny body curled like an S.

I fall through my skin, and reality pangs through me like a gong. Fierce sensations come back—damp asphalt, blinding headlights, thrumming engine, and the aches. Aches in my elbows and knees.

I touch the lighter to the wet asphalt. Fire erupts and travels in an arc around the dying Sawyer, forming a full circle. Scooting backward from the insane heat, sweat spills down my neck, clavicles, and chest.

Sawyer pulls at the mist chain around his neck, but it’s too strong for him. His body chips away as the termites of stars make him their victim. Ecto-mist insects burrow under his skin, weakening every part of him. His hair—wispy string. His arms—strips of thread. A concert of noise from the mist—screaming, whips, gunfire. Horses, dogs, police sirens.

“Sawyer Doon.” My voice is, at first, a polite mutter, directed at the unrecognizable thing hanging in the ring of fire. “I banish you.” From the dredges of the fight left in me, I scream it at the top of my lungs, expelling it into the heat waves. “I BANISH YOU FROM LIFE AND MEMORY, FOREVER. I BANISH YOU TO DEATH.”

A red line rips across Sawyer’s neck. Out spills bloody smoke, and then a mop of fuzzy hair, and then a full head. Skeletal fingers wedge his skin open. A full wraith—no, a soul—bursts from his neck, leaping up into the smoke, shrieking and vanishing.

Sawyer no longer has the means to pull it back. Another breaks free—an entire digested human spirit, this one with blackish hair. And another, until it’s a stream of bodies climbing out of Sawyer’s neck, tumbling upward like floating roses set on fire. The mist gathers in the open space at his throat, filling it, forcing a gurgle from his mouth.

It invades the gaps of his eyes, popping them out like marbles. Sawyer is frail and eyeless, and his jaw cracks open and hangs off, like a cadaver in shock.