“Give it back,” Jennie growled.

“Give what back? This?” The Zaar let Jennie’s pendant slip between its wax fingers, sending it toward a floorstrike shattering before pinching the chain at the last minute.

The Fáidh redoubled his chant, as did Cary and Syke at the other corners of the triangle hemming in the malicious spirit garbed in a wax-museum copy of Eamon de Valera. “You won’t let it break,” Jennie said with what she hoped was a convincing facsimile of courage. “My family jewels are too important to your boss.”

“Such naughty and ignorant words for a piece of clay,” sneered the Zaar. “But you have shown a certain promise in hunting me down and casting a circle, I must admit. I haven’t been bound since Aix in 1611.” Its dull eyes gleamed maliciously from behind its spectacles. “Perhaps it’s time for a new approach.”

The creature carefully replaced Jennie’s pendant in one of his pockets and then leapt at her with astonishing speed and ferocity. Its cold, waxy hands wrapped around her throat with surprising strength, while foul incantations hissed not from the Zaar’s borrowed mouth but from every point in its form.

“κατοχή του σώματος, αποβολή της ψυχής! κατοχή του σώματος, αποβολή της ψυχής! κατοχή του σώματος, αποβολή της ψυχής!”

“Break it apart, Jennie!” cried the Fáidh. “Its spirit is potent but the body is just wax! It only has the power you’ll let it have!”

The small ceremonial dagger Jennie had taken from Whelk’s corpse flashed, and the wax form stumbled backwards, stumps where its hands had been. A swift follow-up blow to the left leg led to total collapse; the simulacra of de Valera toppled to the stone and shattered into pieces. Knife in hand, the waxwork’s vanquisher fished the pendant out of the pocket that contained it and donned the jewel with a triumphant smile.

“All right, Jennie! cried Cary. “Rah rah rah, that’s how it’s done!”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Jennie’s companions crowded around, offering their congratulations.

“Thanks, but there’s no time to waste. We need to move, and quickly.”

The Fáidh nodded. “Come, let’s away from this dank and fetid place of suck for groovier environs.”

Jennie watched as she led her friends away, utterly perplexed at how she could see herself moving and speaking from such a detached viewpoint. “Hey, where are you going?” she cried. “That’s not me!”

Not only could her friends not hear her, but Jennie herself couldn’t either. The words were dead upon entering the world, and with horror Jennie realized that she had no lips to utter them with…not to scream with.

Through some dark trick, the Zaar had torn her from her body and left her an aimless and un-anchored spirit.

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