19
“Hand me the screwdriver, Troy,” his mother murmured as she held out an open palm. The ten-year-old boy shivered but complied.
Her crystals lay in a pile beside her on the worktable. An astrological chart she’d been working on was crumpled in one corner. In the next two minutes the temperature in the workshop dropped by yet another five degrees Celsius, heralding the presence of lost souls.
Scarlett wiped her nose with the sleeve of her wool sweater. “Thank you, son.” Steam hissed from the three-quarter inch black steel pipes in front of her. Gears clattered.
Into the bubbling liquid in the Erlenmeyer flask she dropped a tincture of Hypericum perforatum. Although barely three o’clock in the afternoon Mountain Standard time, the high dirty window in the workshop flickered with overto
