Spirits Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

They’ll drag me to church and have an exorcism on top of it. Dad asked for a transfer to Newfoundland because of the trouble I was into back in Halifax.” He let out a depressed sigh, laced with guilt. “This is gonna kill Mom.”
    I wanted to tell him that he was exaggerating, but we both knew he wasn’t. Until he turned eighteen or found a relative to take him in, the next three years of his life would resemble an unimaginable hell. Yet, he’d made the choice.
    “You should have thought of that before you involved yourself in something you couldn’t handle,” I snapped.
    Jeremy gave me a reproachful look. “Rachel.”
    “What? It’s a little too late for pussyfooting around.” I winced. “I can’t believe I just said ‘pussyfooting.’ ”
    Manny looked at me, his expression pleading. I ignored it. “Manny, if you don’t tell me exactly what you did tonight, people will get hurt. Do you understand me?”
    Manny’s eyes grew wide, his face pale. “But I didn’t mean to—”
    I cut him off. “It doesn’t matter what you meant. You called for spirits and, worse, somehow you screwed up the spell and they’ve manifested in corporeal form. Now tell me what you did.”
    He cringed at my tone. Jeremy glared at me.
    I closed my eyes and counted to five before opening them again. “Tell me what you did; otherwise, the native spirits you’ve summoned might see the local people as invaders and come after all of us. I need to know so I can put them back before someone is hurt.”
    Manny licked his lips before letting out a long sigh and slumping back into his chair. “I was only trying to contact the spirits of the Vikings. For strength and stuff.” He shrugged. “I get picked on at school for being fat.”
    Contacting any dead spirit was a complicated, dangerous process for someone who’d never had experience doing it; however, asking the collective energy of an area for help was fairly benign. “How did you do it?”
    “I downloaded a spell off the Internet and—”
    “The Internet? You used a spell off the Internet?!” I rubbed my forehead. “What were you thinking?”
    His face flushed even more. “What’s so bad about that?”
    It took all my strength not to lash out at him in that instant but I recovered quickly. It was unfair to blame an isolated teenager for doing what teens do best: make mistakes. “All right, all right. Show me the spell you used. I might be able to figure out how to put them back.”
    Manny said the spell was downstairs and left to fetch it. I looked at Jeremy and sighed. “Well?”
    “LeBlanc is never going to stand for demon summoning.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Spirits, Jeremy. They are spirits.”
    “Whatever. The fact is, we have a couple dozen rampaging dead things and there is no way we can put that in a report.”
    David came in first. I gave him a warning glare, but he ignored me. It was his strongest trait. “What’s going on? Tell me the truth.”
    “Manny summoned the spirits,” I said quietly.
    “Manuel is engaging in witchcraft? We have murderous spirits in our town because of his devil worship?”
    I shushed him. “He’ll hear you. First, witchcraft is not devil worship. Second of all, he didn’t understand what he was doing. I’m not excusing it, but let’s not jump down his throat. We still need to put these spirits back into the grave permanently.”
    Jeremy chewed on his lip, then said, “Doesn’t sunrise automatically fix all the spooky things? That’s what happens in the movies.”
    “Real life isn’t like Buffy. They’ll just disappear for the daytime, since the sun hurts them.” In other circumstances, I would have smiled.  “They keep coming back.”
    “Wasn’t your witchcraft powerful enough? Prayer can banish demons.”
    I stared at him and let out an exaggerated sigh. “I sense the supernatural. I do not control it. I have almost no power of my own. My banishment spell was amongst the most complex that I’ve ever done