Finding the ghost again proved somewhat difficult. In fact, it took me about a week. In the mean time, I tried to concentrate on school. Needless to say, this was not a particularly easy task. School seemed to want to be particularly boring, the teachers sounding like the Hogwarts history teacher who didn’t even notice his own death.
School was school, though. And the city seemed quiet. Loki wasn’t around; he didn’t even show up when I made cayenne brownies, much to my disappointment. I wondered if he’d be proud of what we were doing.
I still felt guilty. Clara was mortal; why was I asking her to take these risks? But she had been so insistent. So eager, in fact.
She had an even lower opinion of what they were doing than I did. And if it wasn’t true? We’d find that out too.
But for now, I had to get the ghost to back down and let go of their high priestess so they’d think they’d won.
Maybe I’d even have to fight him. I did have one other thing I wanted to do. Find Seb. This, too, was no easy task. He was being even more elusive. I was starting to feel avoided.
Then I tracked him down outside Father Will’s church. “Hey, Seb.”
“What’s up?”
I told him about Silver Thorn, what was going on, and what we had in mind. “Keep it quiet, obviously.”
“Obviously. Eww. I hate when I hear about high priests or high priestesses doing it for sex and power.”
“I think there’s a lot in wicca that leads that way. But there’s nothing wrong with sex itself.” I didn’t think so, anyway. Thruor certainly didn’t. She’d spent the night with Mike more than once since we’d moved in with him.
He blushed scarlet and muttered a response.
I changed the subject. “What have you been up to?”
“Oh, chasing a cursed artifact. I’d ask for help, but I don’t really need…”
“…people beating up.”
He grinned at me. “Right.”
“I know why people keep me around.” I kept my face wry, although I was slightly offended. I didn’t want to be seen entirely as muscle, after all.
“Well, keep your eyes open for what looks like a silver two-armed cross. It’ll probably stink.”
I grinned at him. “Will do. I take it it’s a Satan thing?”
“More or less. Started off as a cross, got desecrated into hideousness. It happens. Father Will’s working on it.”
“Okay.” I decided to leave them to it. I couldn’t solve every problem, after all.