What You Wish For

While lightning electrified the dark orchid skies outside , Leandra and Sharin stood barefoot on the smooth hardwood floor of Leandra's parents' poolhouse, each wielding a flickering black candle in her left hand, and a silver dagger in her right. They didn't notice the sinister way in which their own shadows merged with the wilding ones of trees outside, twisted by wind and rain and projected through the panes of glass by lightning.

The girls faced each other, their bare toes touching the outmost edge of a circle made of dark powder on the floor. At Leandra's feet, inside the circle, lay a book opened two thirds of the way and having a crimson ribbon in its crease.

Sharin zoned out. She knew that Leandra did not really need her help in this. Sharin was there for intention only. It was her spell, after all, to get Jordan back, and all she had to do here was wish. So she thought of him and she wished with all her heart that he would suddenly look up from whatever it was he was doing, wherever he may be -- especially if he was with her -- and that he would feel Sharin's own feelings with every particle of his soul, exactly the way she felt them: the pain, the betrayal, the one of a kind immortal love that was certainly bigger than anything this world had ever known, that could be known only between the two of them. If he did, he could not but come back to her.

Leandra moved very slightly in a rhythm with her own low-spoken words.

Sharin wished even harder as more lightning flooded the room. She imagined Jordan sweeping her up from the sidelines of the football stadium, just as he used to do when she was his girl, when cheerleading had actually meant something to her because she was cheering for her baby, not some stupid mascot or school spirit. For Jordan.

* * *

Jordan woke up coughing. Where am I? He was drowning. He was lying face down in a puddle of water and more rain was pouring over him, entering every pore, filling his mouth and nose and throat with dusty rain and something else --gasoline, maybe motor oil.

He tried to move but something large was on top of him, something torn and made of metal and--

The jeep. It was his dad's jeep. Wrecked and on top of him, pushing his head down into the water again.

He struggled to lift his head above the water, but half his body was pinned. He shoved himself upward with one desperate push that took every bit of his energy and all the adrenaline he could muster, but all that moved was his shoulder. He felt the muscle tear, felt his shoulder dislodge from the socket and fall useless to the ground beside him. He could not move his arm any longer. He strained his neck as high as he could, sputtering blood and water from his nose and mouth as a searing pain rent his chest. His head sank back down into the water. Oh God, no. No...

How much time had passed was anybody's guess. He felt strangely detached from his limbs, and he could smell burning wreckage, and hissing raindrops evaporated as they fell on the exposed hot parts of the jeep. He wondered where Hiral had gone; had she been with him when the car slid off the road and wrapped itself around this tree? No, he had dropped her off minutes earlier.

"Jordan my love," whispered the rain and the trees, "come back to me. Come back. You're mine and you always have been, and you always will be. Return."

Sharin.

Suddenly, the weight of objects had no effect on him. When he stood up, the jeep crumbled away from him like old firewood, sending a few sparks skittering across the road as it did so, and creaking loudly.

"I'm coming, Sharin. I'm yours. I never meant to hurt you, and I will never leave you again."

* * *

Leandra's spellwork was finished. She looked with satisfaction at the geometry of her circle and the other, more secret shapes she had drawn within it and outside of it.

"It's time," she said, glancing with a wicked smile at Sharin, who nodded expectantly and stepped into place inside the circle.

Leandra bent down and set the flame of her candle to the black powder, and the circle was illuminated with fire.

Suddenly, a wind from somewhere swept over the girls and nearly put out the circle of fire. Alarmed, Sharin stepped further into the protective vector.

"No, it's alright!" Leandra whispered harshly, "Show no fear."

A tree limb slapped against the glass, its wet leaves clinging to the panes and then sliding up along them with a sound that sickened Sharin.

"Shhh!" Leandra said, smiling again. "Listen. Do you hear that?"

Sharin strained to listen. The tree limb screeched over the glass as thunder rumbled anew and lightning filled the room with wild shadows. Suddenly, she felt other eyes upon her. Her heart began to pound. She swallowed her fear and squinted her eyes as she turned very slowly to look in the direction of the door.

Lightning flashed, showing a hideous sight; a zombie of some kind, burned and missing much of its skin and clothing and also an arm, with black blood oozing from its shattered jaw, lunged slowly towards the girls, slumping its way through the door. Sharin screamed and backed into Leandra, who threw down her dagger and candle and began to cry.

"Oh my God, what is that?" Leandra shrieked. Finally, her spellcraft had worked. She had summoned some thing from another plane, but this was not what she had meant to do at all.

Sharin screamed again, turning and clutching madly at Leandra's sleeves, digging her nails into the other girl's arms and trembling and shutting her eyes.

"Make it stop, make it go back! Oh God, send it back!"

"I can't!" Leandra shouted, slapping Sharin across the face and dislodging herself from Sharin's grip of terror. "I don't even know what it is! I can't send it anywhere, come on, run!"

The zombie closed the distance between itself and the girls. It raised its one arm and brought it down hard across the back of Leandra's neck, groaning horridly as it did so. Then, it turned on Sharin. Lightning illuminated its face.

"I'm yours," it said. "I've come back to you."

Sharin screamed and screamed.