Frost Burned

form and stuck it back in my coat pocket.
    The clank, clank, clank of the iron bar stopped suddenly, and I looked up to see it arc over the wall of the basement and safely out of useful range. Marsilia popped her shoulder back into joint without so much as a grimace and reengaged Frost. Without the bar, he was not so overwhelming—but she was still hurt. And then he reached out, almost casually, and ate another ghost. It was quick, and I was too far away to do anything about it—even if I could have figured out how. He smiled at me before he hit Marsilia in her damaged shoulder.
    Desperate, I pulled my lamb-and-dog-tag necklace off my neck. Armed by my faith, the symbol of the Lamb of God had defended me against vampires. Maybe it would work against vampiric magic.
    “Please, dear Lord,” I said. “Let this work.”
    Then I pressed it against the net—which shrank away from the little golden lamb, twisting, curling, and lessening until the ghost stood free. I touched the lamb to her forehead, and said, “Janet. Be at peace.”
    She vanished in a bright flash of light.
    “Yes!” I shouted in triumph and more than a little awe. My little lamb had outperformed Zee’s sword.
    From across the room, Stefan smiled at me.
    “
Holy symbols
, Batman,” I told him. “We have
help
.”
    I went after the ghosts, trying to avoid the fighting. It was more difficult than it might have been because Frost had heard my exclamation as well, and he kept trying to get to me. Marsilia redoubled her efforts to keep him away. I had to give up on two of them because Frost got too close. I was under no misconception about how fast Frost could kill me, not after seeing the damage he and Marsilia had been exchanging.
    I had just freed a man wearing a dark blue suit and a Gryffindor tie when Asil’s shout made me turn to see Frost right on top of me. Then Wulfe smashed into him like a freight train, if a freight train had been thrown by a Chinese vampire.
    “Sorry, sorry,” said Wulfe calmly to Frost as I sprinted across the room away from them. “But you need to watch what you’re doing, or you’re going to get hurt by your own teammates.”
    I pulled another ghost around and asked him his name without looking at his face because I was using the lamb to destroy Frost’s magic.
    “Alexander,” he said.
    My gaze jerked up, and I looked at Peter’s killer. Why couldn’t he have been one of the ghosts Frost had eaten? “You killed my friend,” I told him.
    “Yes,” he sighed. “Werewolf, you know. Dangerous and evil.”
    “No,” I told him. “Alexander Bennet. Dangerous and stupid.”
    “Are you arguing with a ghost, Mercy?” asked Wulfe in an interested voice from somewhere on the far side of the basement from me. “Good for you.”
    Wulfe was a mess, and in the darkness it was hard to tell what was soot and what was blood. Though he was not as obviously hurt as either Shamus or Hao—even water can’t avoid being hit by two opponents forever. Hao was letting Shamus chase him toward a wall at breakneck pace. Wulfe had left them to it, evidently so he could watch me, though he made no move to stop what I was doing.
    Hao stripped out of his golden shirt and ran at the wall. The shirt seemed to hover for a second, held in Hao’s hand, which stayed where it was while his body pivoted on that axis as he ran his feet up the wall. The shirt ended up on Shamus’s head at about the same time that Hao did a quick in-the-air somersault and landed with both feet on Shamus’s back, driving the other vampire’s head into the wall.
    If I survived this fight, I was going to forever regret not having a DVD of it. Not that recording devices ever captured vampires correctly. They weren’t that much faster in general than werewolves or me, but they could make very small movements incredibly fast, and it gave modern cameras fits.
    The drizzle of rain earlier in the day had stopped for a while. But as the ghost started to tug on my hand, the one with the necklace in it, the rain began to fall again in earnest.
    “Please,” said Alexander, who had killed Peter. “I am so tired.”
    Me, too. I was also wet and cold and fiercely regretting I knew what the right thing to do was. But I finished the job I’d stopped in the middle of—cleaning off Frost’s magic.
    Instead of making soup of the ash on the floor, it was so cold the rain hit and turned to ice—freezing rain.
    “Alexander,” I told him forcefully. “Go.” And I