Molly possession

Captain Turtleneck drew one of the seashells from his belt, murmured something to it, and gave it an expert, effortless flick. It sailed through the air and landed only inches from my invisible apprentice’s toes.
“Oh,” Lea said, setting her mouth into a pouting moue. “Pity. She had such potential.”
I gave my godmother my most furious glare and sprinted forward.
The shell began to glow with a urine-colored light.
It had worked for Morty. Maybe it would work again.
I flung myself at Molly, focusing on protecting her, and I felt myself slide into her, merging and mingling from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. (Which hardly made sense, given how much taller I was than she—one more example of the way physics doesn’t necessarily apply to spirits.)
I suddenly felt utterly exhausted, frightened, and at the same time in a state of euphoric exultation. I could feel the various illusions dancing upon threads of my will, demanding complete focus and concentration. My legs and feet ached. My ribs ached. My face and shoulder hurt.
And then I felt myself choke, then wonder what the hell was happening to me.
It’s me, kid, I thought, as loudly as I could. Don’t fight me.
I didn’t know what the seashell would do, but there wasn’t much time to get particular. I extended my left hand along with my will, and murmured, “Defendarius.”
Blue energy suddenly blazed up around Molly and me in a sparkling sphere.
The seashell shone brighter and exploded into a sphere of pure white fire, as hot and fierce as a microscopic nuclear warhead. It lashed against the blue sphere like a bat hitting a baseball. The sphere went flying, taking us with it. I braced my arms and legs against the sides of the sphere, straining to hold it together. Without my shield bracelet, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up.
The sphere struck a car and bounded off it into the wall of the building. Its path had us careening tail over teakettle, but our braced arms and legs kept us from smashing our head against the sphere’s interior. We wobbled and rolled into a corner of the lot, and I realized dully as I looked around that Molly’s illusions had vanished. My bad. The strength of the shield had cut her off from them and ended her ability to keep them going.
I looked up to find the turtlenecks advancing on us in a crowd, and I dismissed the sphere, landing in a crouch. I gathered more of my will together and swept my arm from left to right with a murmured word, and a second curtain of blue fire sprang up between me and the oncoming bad guys.
One of them gave the wall of flame a disdainful snort and calmly walked into it.
Like I said, I’m not much when it comes to illusions.
I am, however, reasonably good with fire.
The turtleneck didn’t scream. He didn’t have time. When fire is hot enough, you never really feel the heat. Your nerves get fried away and all you feel is the lack of signal from them—you feel cold.
He died in the fire, and he died cold. The cinder that fell backward out of the fire could never have been casually identified as human.
Now, that got their attention.
I stood there holding the fire against the remaining turtlenecks, the heat scorching away the thin layer of snow on the asphalt, then making it bubble and quiver, changing it into my own personal moat of boiling hot tar. It was hard work to keep it going, but I’ve never been afraid of that.
Harry, I need some room, came a thought from Molly, hardly able to be heard over the blaze of concentration necessary for maintaining the fire.
I gritted my teeth. It was like trying to hold an immensely heavy door open while half a dozen friends squeezed in around me. I felt an odd sensation and increased weariness and blocked them both away. I needed to focus, to hold the turtlenecks away from Molly.
Once again, the bad guys impressed me. They knew that an intense magical effort could be sustained for only a limited amount of time. They didn’t risk losing more men to the fire. Instead, they played it smart.
They just waited.
The fire blazed for another minute, then two, and as my control over it began to get shaky, something attracted my attention.
Flashing blue lights, out on the lower avenue.
A CPD prowler had stopped across the entrance to the parking lot, and a pair of cops, guys I’d seen before, got out and walked quickly into the lot, flashlights up. It took them about half a second to see that something odd was going on, and then they had both guns and flashlights up.
Before the turtlenecks could turn their guns on the police, the officers had retreated to the cover offered by their car, out of direct line of sight from the parking lot. I could clearly hear one of them calling for backup, SWAT, and firefighters, his voice tense and tight with fear.
I felt myself giggling with exhaustion and amusement as I grinned at Captain Turtleneck. “Bad boys, bad boys,” I sang, off-key. “Whatcha gonna do?”
That made Molly cough up a chittering belly laugh, which shouldered my awareness aside and came bubbling out of our mouth.
Captain Turtleneck stared at me without expression for a moment. He looked at the fire, the moat, and then at the police. Then he grimaced and made a single gesture. The turtlenecks began to move as a single body, retreating rapidly back the way they had come.
Once I was sure they were gone, I dropped the wall and slumped to the ground. I sat there for a second, dazzled by the discomfort and the weariness, which I had rapidly grown accustomed to missing, apparently. The smell of hot asphalt, a strangely summertime smell, mingled with the scent of charred turtleneck.
I shivered. Then I made a gentle effort and withdrew from the same space Molly occupied. The weariness and pain vanished again. So did the vibrant scents.
The grasshopper looked up and around, sensing the change. Then she said, “Hold on, Harry,” and fumbled at her pockets. She produced a small silver tuning fork, struck it once against the ground, and then said, “I can hear you with this.”
“You can?”
“Yeah, no big deal,” she said, her voice slurred with fatigue. “See you, too, if I line it up right. And it’s easier to carry around than a bunch of enchanted Vaseline.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Before the cops show up. They’d try to lock you up for a long time.”
Molly shook her head.
“Kid, I know you’re tired. But we have to move.”
“No,” she said. “No cops.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “What?”
“Never were any cops,” Molly said.
I blinked, looked at the empty entrance to the parking lot, and then found myself slowly smiling. “They were another illusion. And you sold it to the turtlenecks because they thought you’d already blown your wad on the flashy stuff.”
“Excellent,” purred Lea, appearing at my side again.
I flinched. Again. Man, I hate that sudden-appearance stuff.
“An unorthodox but effective improvisation, Miss Carpenter,” she continued. “Adding complexity on the meta level of the deception was inspired—especially against well-informed adversaries.”


Ghost Story Chapter 22, Page 250-253