Have you ever noticed how time seems to slow down when you're actively waiting for something to happen? Especially when it's something that has you tense and under pressure?

The night didn't just pass slowly…it positively crawled. It's honestly amazing how long four hours can become. The worst part of it isn't the alert tension of waiting, or the boredom that comes when the alertness starts to fade. It's how much time you have to think.

By eleven, I had mentally prepared countermeasures for all of the things most likely to have strained the wards like that, from human spellcasters to spiritual predators. At midnight, I took a walk around the outside of the house to clear my head and see if anything might be out there. When I sensed Artemis dozing in the tree, I crept over to stand beneath her and gathered a tiny bit of Anima to create a quick flash of magelight right in front of her nose.

The end result was a startled yowl and a few moments of frantic scrambling as she struggled to keep her perch. The sudden burst of activity was accompanied by a brief surge of amusement from Athena, who must have been watching from the kitchen window. Artemis glared down at me.

<> she growled playfully.

I smiled up at her. <>

<> Her mental voice was sullen, but I could feel her amusement and chagrin through our bond - she was more than a bit embarrassed at having been caught like that.

I laughed softly. <>

<> She resettled herself on the branch, visibly taking up a less comfortable position. I assumed it'd help her stay awake.

Around one thirty, I realized that I was in the same boat when Athena very gently shook my shoulder as I sat at the kitchen table. She smiled down at me warmly and whispered, "Do you want to take a nap, Mistress? Artemis and I can keep watch if you want to get a little sleep."

I rose slowly, stretching and shaking my head. "No, love. I'd better stay awake. Who knows when the attack will come."

We moved together to stand at the window and look out into the night.

It wasn't until around two thirty that something finally happened. Athena was out in the front yard and I was standing with my forehead resting against the window when I felt a sudden pressure against the wards. In my mind, to my magical senses, it manifested as a tingling warning feeling from directly in front of me - something was beginning to press on the wards in the back yard.

<>

<> Athena replied.

<> Artemis said in confusion. <>

<> Athena added as she came into view, her sword unsheathed and held loosely in her right hand.

<> I frowned. That didn't make any sense. Why would it be colder?

She paused and turned slightly, then blew out a breath that was a visible plume of water vapor in the air. I blinked in surprise. Granted, it was springtime, and the temperature at night was still only around twelve Celsius...but that wasn't cold enough to see your breath.

<> she confirmed, looking around warily.

<> I replied. <>

I could almost see her smile. <>

If something supernatural was approaching with enough power - or drawing enough power from the environment - to drop the ambient temperature more than ten degrees that quickly, whatever it was would arrive or happen any moment now. I was quite sure of that, and I wasn't disappointed.

There was a sudden bright flash as the wards came under attack. I felt the energy hitting them cause them to warp and distort, but it didn't break them. Instead, the disruption set off the soft alarm that was magically joined to them, causing a gentle three-note chime to ring in the dining room, kitchen, living room and master bedroom.

I was out the back door before the first alarm finished ringing. I wasn't precisely sure what I was going to do, and hadn't the faintest idea anymore of what I was going to be facing. But I couldn't stand there and do nothing. What I saw as I reached Athena's side jolted me to a halt.

A translucent white-glowing human figure hung about three feet off the ground, surrounded by loudly crackling static discharge generated by its interaction with the wards. There was a heavy smell of ozone in the air as the figure strained and twisted, beat its fists against the invisible surface of the wards, kicking and thrashing as it tried to get through. Its form was so blurred by its frantic motions that I couldn't get a good look at it.

My jaw dropped open. "What the bloody hell is that?" I asked incredulously.

Athena shot me a look that was half-amused, half-alarmed. "If you don't know and can't figure it out, we're in trouble."

She was right, of course. So I thought fast and hard, and immediately came up with two possibilities. One, it could be a ghost of some sort - a spiritual entity making an assault on the wards for its own as-yet mysterious purposes. Two, it could be a human spellcaster projecting his essence astrally to assault the wards, made visible by the collision of energies. Though directly contacting wards with an astral body seemed like a suicidally dangerous thing to do.

Either way, its appearance gave me the clue I needed to modify the wards and drive it off for good. "Don't let it leave!" I shouted to Athena over the increasingly loud electrical crackling as I bolted towards the nearest anchoring runestone.

She gave me another alarmed look. "How exactly am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know! Taunt it or something!" I skidded to a halt, dropping to my knees and coming to a stop right in front of the stone embedded in the ground. The rune on its surface - Thurisaz, for protection against adversaries, which would do very nicely - glowed faintly as it channeled the energy of the wards as I reached out to touch it lightly with two fingers.

I closed my eyes and gathered Anima, ignoring the increasingly creative taunts and insults that Athena was throwing at the spirit to keep it attacking the wards. In my mind's eye, I visualized the matrix of energy I wanted to add to the wards, subtly reshaping their purpose...to not merely resist the entry of spiritual entities, as the wards were currently doing, but to actively repel them.

And I do mean actively.

It didn't take much effort or time to make the change. The framework was already in place, and the basic wards - often the most taxing part to raise - were strong and stable. It was the work of less than a minute to restructure and energize that part of the wards, and the result was satisfyingly spectacular.

The spirit, still thrashing and now angrily clawing at the wards as it tried to reach a smug-looking Athena, suddenly stiffened and howled as it was blasted clear of the ward by a brilliant blue-white flash of energy. The howl cut off sharply, and by the time I had blinked away the spots left by the flash, there was no sign of the thing.

Athena rubbed her eyes with both hands, tail lashing in agitation. "You could've said something, Mistress," she said with perfectly understandable reproach.

"Sorry, Athena," I replied gently, rubbing my own eyes a bit. "If it's any consolation, I got myself too."

She laughed softly as I joined her, staring at the spot where the spirit had floated moments earlier. Looking down at the ground, we saw an almost circular patch of dead, brown and brittle grass about three feet across. Athena frowned and crouched down, brushing the dead grass with her fingertips. "What was that thing?"

"Most hostile spirits - angry ghosts especially - are a negative energy phenomenon, leeching living energy from the world around them to sustain their existence. Not intentionally, but as a simple fact of their existence, at least in most cases." I looked around and whistled softly. "This one must be very powerful to kill a patch of grass that quickly."

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Artemis dropped lightly out of the tree and trotted over to stand with us, looking up at me. <> she said grumpily.

I reached down and ruffled her ears gently. "It'll pass."

Almost as one, the Fishers' burst through the kitchen door into the back yard and approached, looking around warily. Joseph was the first to speak, quietly asking, "What was that, Alys?"

I turned towards him, his wife and kids behind him, and sighed. "Honestly, I'm not precisely sure. But my guess was good enough to drive it off, so I was on the right track, which means it was a purely spiritual entity of some sort."

"Like a ghost?" Phillip asked.

That gave me pause for some reason. Something twigged in the back of my mind and fired off a warning flare, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. It was something to think about later. "Yes," I replied, "Like a ghost."

There was a long moment of silence. "And it won't be able to get in now?" Margaret asked finally.

"It won't even be able to get close now," I said firmly. "I modified the wards to actively repel it and anything like it. Before I say anything else, I need to sample the magical auras in the area before the ambient energy fades to see if I can trace the spirit or learn anything about it."

Joseph nodded, turning and spreading his arms. "Come on, everyone, back to bed. Let her work."

Rose went without complaint, yawning widely and followed by Phillip. Margaret and Joseph lingered a moment longer before following their children inside.

<> Athena asked quietly.

I opened one of the pouches on my belt and reached into it, pulling out two small glass jars filled with white powders. One was simply flour - useful for all sorts of things in varying amounts - and the other was salt, so finely ground that the individual grains were difficult to make out.

<> I said, <> I tossed her the jar of salt.

She caught it effortlessly and turned to make the circle as I considered what I was about to do. Sometimes, spirits have distinct appearances, so in addition to examining what remained of its energies, I wanted to see if I could find out what it had actually looked like. The circle Athena was making would give me a physical framework through which to contain the energies of my spells and the spirit's essence, while filtering out the background noise of the wards.

I hoped, anyway. Jonathan and Hollis had both gone over this technique with me, but only as theory. It was tough to find a spirit that would let you practice on it.

<> I said after a moment's thought, <>

<> She rubbed against my leg, then padded off into the night.

I lost sight of her after only a few moments - it amazed me how a mostly white snow leopard could vanish into the shadows when she wanted to. I made a mental note to investigate the ability when time permitted, wondering if perhaps she was using her natural Anima to make herself invisible. It was a puzzle for another time.

For now, I had to concentrate on the spells I was about to cast. Athena rose from a crouch as she finished drawing a thin line of the very fine salt in a circle around the patch of dead grass and stepped back. "It's ready, Mistress."

I walked over and knelt down, gathering Anima and imagining a cylindrical column of invisible force rising up from the circle of salt. I took a moment to pour some of the flour in a small pile in the center of the circle, then lightly touched the line of salt and released the gathered Anima with a few softly spoken words in Gaelic.

After a moment, I rose and reached out, felt the invisible wall I'd raised, and lightly tapped it with my knuckles. "Nice and solid."

Athena looked curious and reached out, flattening her palm against the invisible column of force in front of her. "That's really cool."

I smiled. "Thanks. Wait until you see my next trick."

I've always enjoyed playing with elemental air magic. There's a million things you can do with it, from a gentle breeze to cool you on a hot day all the way up to lightning bolts powerful enough to melt stone.

In this case, I was going to use it in a couple of different ways at once. First, I was going to use it to disperse and lift the flour, which is one reason why I set up the column of force. It would help contain both the wind I was about to call up and the flour I'd be moving with it.

Second, I'd be trying to reproduce the trick my teachers had told me about. Spirits have a tendency to ionize the air when they manifest, especially if they're interacting with another source of energy, like my wards - thus the smell of ozone. I would try to take advantage of that by swirling the flour up into the air, carefully giving it a positive charge, then a negative one, until it started to adhere to the energy left by the departing spirit.

With a bit of luck, I'd get something that resembled a hazy image of the entity. If I were amazingly lucky, it'd be clear enough to see actual details.

"Okay," I said. "Let's see what we can see."

I gathered my Anima, drawing it in and focusing it on making the air within the column swirl and circle until it formed a small whirlwind. I slowly made a pushing/pulling movement with my hands, like I was turning a wheel, and began to chant softly.

Inside the column of invisible force, the air began to move, shifting the flour gently. I increased the amount of Anima I was pouring into the spell and the flour began to form into a visible funnel, channeled upwards by the invisible force surrounding it. When nothing immediately appeared, I added more energy to it and changed the complexity of the spell, introducing a fairly simply conjuration to reproduce the existing flour, doubling, then tripling the amount. It wouldn't last very long - I wasn't trying to make it permanent - but more than long enough for my purposes.

It made the difference. Slowly, as I pushed the flour higher and higher, a figure began to form. Feet and ankles, calves and thighs in loose pants, an un-tucked pull-over shirt that looked plain and unadorned. Well-muscled arms and a neck whose tendons stood out in extreme tension.

The face was a blurred mess, a single flash of motion frozen in time and devoid of all but the most basic details...a long, gaunt face with deeply sunken eyes and a mouth that gaped unnaturally wide in a silent howl. The head was bald, split by a jagged crack - where none of the flour had adhered - that stood out starkly and with shocking clarity compared to the rest. It ran from where his hairline would have been on the right side down through his eyebrow, reappearing below the eye and traveling all the way down to his jaw. A scar, maybe.

This was no living spirit being astrally projected, nor a simple ghost somehow freed of its haunting-place. It was a ghost, to be sure, but something different all the same. I'd have to do some research.

But as I looked at it, something about the blurred visage felt familiar to me. Frowning, I drew a palm-sized cabochon-cut quartz crystal from one of the pouches on my belt. With another effort of will to gather more Anima, I cast one last spell that wasn't too dissimilar from a Sending, making a magical recording of the image and embedding it in the crystal.

I pressed a bit of Anima into the crystal to test the enchantment, and was pleased when a foot-tall reproduction of the image floating above me rose up out of it. It had the same insubstantial quality as the original, but was clear enough to see every detail. Good enough.

More importantly, imprinting the image into the crystal also made a copy of the spirit's lingering traces. It might not be a lot to go on, but it might give me a clue as to what the thing was, and where it could be found.

The crystal went back into one of my belt pouches, and I returned my attention to the ghostly image (no pun intended) that I'd called up. Something about it still seemed vaguely familiar to me, and I still couldn't put my finger on it. Well, the important thing was that we now knew what had been attacking, if not who or why, and I had been able to modify the wards to defend against it. I had a replica of its image and aura to examine when there was more time, and that was enough to be getting on with.

I smudged the circle of salt with the toes of my boot, felt the invisible column of force collapse, and watched as the flour that made up the spirit's after-image broke up and drifted away on natural winds.

Athena came to stand beside me. "What next?"

"Next," I said thoughtfully, "I want to make sure the changes I made to the wards are stable. If I need to rebuild one or more of the anchors, it needs to be done now."

It didn't take me long to determine that the changes I'd made to the wards on the fly had altered the balance of their matrix and was risking destabilizing them. Fortunately, it wouldn't take much work to modify the rune anchors to compensate, nor would I need to bring the wards down make the changes permanent. It was time consuming though, because although it wasn't complicated, it was delicate work.

Artemis returned a short while later to report that there was no sign of our mysterious attacker. Then she sprawled on the lawn nearby and watched me work, tail flipping lazily. Athena prowled the yard restlessly, obviously still keyed up after going on the alert and not having anything to do.

By the time I finished stabilizing the wards - a little after six o'clock - she had calmed down and was sitting beside her sister on the grass, watching me work. I sat back on my heels, then rose stiffly and stretched before walking over to them and sinking to the ground beside them.

"Well," I said, "That's done. Nothing like that spirit we saw will be able to get to the house now. And after tonight, I doubt that one will try again."

"Why not?" Athena asked.

Good question. I was glad she'd asked...it would help me rehearse the answer I'd give the Fishers when they asked.

"For one thing," I replied thoughtfully, "We just gave it a bad shock, both metaphysically and psychologically. Since it was a ghost - probably - it wasn't prepared to experience pain again. And my wards made it hurt, probably quite a lot. It's been hurt, and it's been forced to acknowledge it can be hurt. I doubt it'll come looking for trouble here again."

I did not add ‘as long as it’s not being controlled and sent by someone.’

Athena gave me a dubious look, no doubt sensing both my doubt and what I hadn’t said. The explanation was reasonable enough - as long as none of the Fishers recognized the spirit.

When I showed the image to Joseph later that morning, as they were having breakfast and I was getting ready to leave, he shook his head. "It doesn't remind me of anyone I ever lead the prosecution against," he said unhappily. "I think I'd almost rather it did. At least then we'd know why it was happening. You're certain it won't return?"

I shrugged. "As certain as I can be under the circumstances. At the very least, I can be pretty sure it won't come back tonight and probably not for the next few nights. It howled when the wards ejected it, and nothing's more shocking to an incorporeal entity than pain. When I've gotten some sleep, I'll try tracking it and see what I can find.

"What I can say for certain," I continued after sipping the mug of tea Margaret had given me, "is that nothing like that will be able to get in. Attempts to do so will still set off the alarm, but I've specifically reinforced the wards against that sort of intrusion attempt. Your family is safe from any kind of spiritual predator."

Joseph smiled. "Thank you, Alys. You'll let us know what you find out?"

I nodded. "Of course."

As the cab took us home, I reflected on the truth of something Jonathan had told me years ago. "Sometimes, Alys, no matter how hard you try, you can't completely resolve a situation. Sometimes a mystery remains a mystery, and life goes on. You do the best you can, the rest is up to fate."

That didn't mean I had to like it. And it certainly didn't mean I had to stop trying to figure it out.