Actually, I thought I might look kind of awesomely dramatic and theatrical, at least if I wasn’t cowering. I straightened my shoulders, lifted my chin and put my fingertips against the cauldron’s platform floor. I had no idea what other people thought, but it gave me an absurd burst of confidence, and an idiotic smile bloomed across my face. If that’s what being an action hero feels like, sign me up.

Most everybody around me was moving away. From my action-hero pose I saw Thor and Phoebe holding their ground, though Phoebe’s jaw was dropped and she held her quarterstaff as if she wanted to use it. I wished my sword wasn’t peace knotted, then wished it was real, then felt a chill rush over my skin and knew that if I needed a blade to fight the mist, I’d have one. I’d earned or been given all the elements that made up sword and shield and armor, and even if I wasn’t carrying them, they were an indelible part of my shamanic gifts now.

More certain of myself, I stood up to draw a silver rapier from the ether. I’d done it in the astral plains, and though the physical blade had been lying safe at home under my bed, its presence had been as real as anything else in the world between this one and the next. I was serenely sure I could reach through the intervening space in the real world, too, and have the sword I’d taken from a god materialize in my hand.

Billy Holliday burst through the mass of people running the other way and shouted, “Joanne, don’t!”

All of my serene confidence exploded into little tiny bits. My fingers spasmed open, loosing any hope I had of seizing my sword, and the Sight flashed back on to give me a visual on the hair-raising sensation that the mist thought I’d shown weakness. Indeed, the sound-induced figures in the fog surged, clawing at my power, trying to break it apart so they could get inside me. The rest of the world went away, blocked out by the gray, and my heart seized up with the clenching panic of trying to figure out what I’d done wrong, or had been about to do wrong, that made Billy yell at me. Dammit, every time I thought I was getting a handle on things it turned out I was wrong. I’d have done anything to have Coyote and his lectures and interminable practice sessions back.

Billy said, “Don’t move,” and I knew from the sound of his voice that his teeth were clenched. I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to Phoebe and Thor, but I thought maybe I’d just do what he said and find out why later. A moment later he stepped through the barrier of my power into the midst of the gray, and gave me a grim nod of approval.

Now, the sphere was meant to keep things in, not out, and if anybody could walk through my defenses it would be Billy, who’d shared enough psychic intimacies with me that if Melinda was the jealous type we’d both be in real trouble. I still wouldn’t have expected him to do that in a million years. A combined demand of what are you doing? and get out of here! and how did you do that? came out as “Wblrdt,” and Billy, to my utter shock, snapped, “Shut up, Joanne.”

There were things I’d come to expect from William Robert Holliday. He’d turn up to off-duty events in women’s clothes, for example. Tonight’s ball gown wasn’t an outrageous costume choice, overlooking the detail that Billy, like most people, didn’t often have a chance to indulge in formal wear. So I expected that. I also expected him to take the mystical more seriously than I was constitutionally capable of doing. He was a True Believer, and had been since childhood when he started seeing ghosts after his older sister’s death by drowning. I used to give him hell about it. Now I was grateful for his calm solid presence when the world went wacky.

And despite all the grief I’d given him, he’d never once responded with the kind of comeback I deserved, not even an I told you so when I found myself faced with irrefutable proof that the world contained a lot more than met the eye. I couldn’t remember him ever telling anybody to shut up, much less me in the midst of a paranormal crisis.

I’d been functioning on “act now, think later,” which had, as a rule, worked for me so far.

Now I was scared.

My obvious impulse was to hiss, “What can I do?” but I’d just been told both to shut up and to not draw a blade on the mist. That left me with a big fat nothing in the easy-choices department, and every inch of my body was cold with indecision and worry. Moreover, I didn’t take it as a good sign that the ooze slicked away from me and swirled around Billy, nibbling at the orange-and-fuchsia colors that made up his aura. They were as steady as I’d ever seen them, nothing in his psychic presence suggesting distress, but it bothered the hell out of me. I was supposed to take on all mystical comers, not let my friends step up and do the job.

Unless, of course, my friends had a better idea of what to do, in which case I should get over myself and help somehow, albeit without asking aloud what might be useful. Billy was almost obscured by the mist, nearly all of it having drifted from the perimeter of my sphere to surround him. My heart took up residence in my stomach and churned the remaining pink drink. I closed my lips on a vile-tasting burp and gave Billy five more seconds to tell me what to do before I went Grecian on the gray stuff’s ass.

Billy said, “You don’t belong here,” so gently I flinched, first out of surprise at hearing his voice and then from childish insult. I wasn’t the world’s greatest shaman or anything, but I was doing my best. His vote of confidence meant a lot. Having it dismissed cut my legs out from under me.

“You should be resting.” His colors strengthened, coming through the mist more strongly, like he was putting energy into what he was saying. Exactly like that, actually: from three feet away I felt soothed. Even the sweat beading under my wig and trickling against my scalp stopped itching so much. “I know it’s easy to travel at this time of year, and that you miss your bodies, but they’re gone. Long gone.” Strain showed in his voice, and I finally clued in.

“It’s dead people!”

The mist whipped away from Billy and surged at me, a high-pitched whine suddenly loud enough to make my eardrums ache. The gaping eyes and howling mouths came clearer to me, much clearer as one of the ghosts came at me like it wanted a kiss. Dull cold slid along my cheekbones, fingering a scar on one. I shuddered and stepped back, finding the edge of the cauldron with my heel.

“Joanie, stay still.” Billy’s voice was cold as the dead’s.

I whispered, “They can’t get at me. They don’t like my magic. Just tell me how to banish them and get out of here.”

“Joanne.” Billy had four kids and a fifth on the way, but I’d never heard him employ a Daddy Voice before. Part of me seized up with resentment. My own father and I had an atheistic relationship, which is to say, he’d never quite believed he’d ended up with a child at all. I generally disliked anything that reminded me of that.

The rest of me just seized up because that’s what instinct tells people to do when they hear a Daddy Voice. I stared at Billy, who kept his attention on the mist and spoke through his teeth. “They don’t have to get in you. The longer you’re around them, the more they latch on. The more you move, the more they notice you. The louder you are, the faster they come to you. So shut up.”

I really, really wanted to do what I was told, but his volume had increased all the way through that, and by the time he was done, the party hall was visible again. My sphere contained a cauldron, me and a dense, almost-black cloud where Billy stood. There was no way I was letting him face that alone. I jumped down from the cauldron, took a quick look at the room beyond my sphere—it had cleared out, only Thor and Phoebe immediately visible—and forged into the dark fog that surrounded my friend.