Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) by Cady Vance

I did was try and fail. I owed Jeff Cline at least that much.
    Laura whipped her head around. “What about what your dad said?”
    “If I don’t try, he might be dead before someone from Dad’s team shows up.”
    “Wait a minute.” George moved away from the window to stand tall before me. “You really shouldn’t banish a demon. It messes up the balance.”
    “Fuck the balance. That man could die if I don’t do something, George.”
    “Fine.” She held up her hands in surrender. “But I’m staying here.”
    “Good,” I said, rolling my eyes as I turned to grab my messenger bag. I didn’t want her coming along anyway. The only person I needed for this was Laura, and even then, I wanted her to stay out of that house. This was something I had to do by myself. No one else was going to get hurt because of my actions.
    I dumped all my candles and parchment books and bones on the floor and plopped cross-legged on the carpet. I’d learned my lesson from the screw-up at Jason’s house. I wasn’t going to wait to cast any spells this time. They had to be done now before the spirit got a whiff of my arrival.
    Laura joined me and held out her hand without a word. We pricked our skin and lit the wick, using our shaman song to drop ourselves into our magic, our blood mingling together as the spell washed over us. When we had finished binding ourselves together, I moved onto the next spell without a glance in George’s direction. I no longer cared what she saw. The way she talked, she’d probably seen this kind of thing a million times before.
    I chanted, long and slow, pouring my mind into the image of a sage leaf. The one thing I focused on when I forced myself to enter the Borderland. Shadows and shifting sand swirled across my vision, weaving masses of black and red and gold into strands of writhing snakes. Taking deep breaths, I stood. The floor below me was a sponge, soft and bouncy, as if I were walking on a sea of marshmallows.
    “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said to Laura, though I wasn’t entirely sure she could hear me when I was inside the Borderland. My voice echoed around me, canyons of darkness on every side.
    Carefully, I exited the house, my body sliding through the door as if I didn’t exist. It took what felt like hours to walk the short distance from my front porch to Jeff Cline’s tiny home that squatted next to mine. The snow fell from the sky, but it didn’t touch my skin. I didn’t even knock when I reached his front door. Instead, I just slid through the walls, ghost-like and quiet as the dead.
    The house was dark, but from somewhere nearby came the unmistakable sound of a man grunting and thrashing on the ground. My astral projected form moved down the darkened hallway toward the sound. A heavy crash exploded just ahead, and then silence. When I rounded the corner, a dark form rose high over Jeff Cline’s body where he lay sprawled on a spattered carpet. It was once a light gray, and now it was nothing but bloody red.
    The spirit hissed and jerked its head toward me, mouth nothing more than a gaping black hole. Heartbeat pounding against my skull, I strode forward and held up a hand in front of me, gritting my teeth at the power building up in my veins.
    “Leave!” I shouted into the wind that picked up steam, rattling against the open door.
    The spirit rose higher in the air and let out a noise that sounded eerily similar to a harsh laugh. Its head lowered so that it was eye-to-eye with me, though all I could see were two oval burning disks of black.
    “I said, go!” My hand shot out, and I threw all my power behind my words. It shuddered under my feet and shook the very core of my being. Holding my hands to my head, I steadied myself until the wave of magic had torn through me. When I finally glanced up, the spirit was still there.
    It hissed and shot closer, weaving a web of darkness before my eyes. “Your magic has no power over me, shaman.”
    Turning, it hovered over Jeff