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tomorrow.”
    “Don’t do anything until I get there and can
talk some reason into you!” he shouted into the phone as I hung up
the receiver and turned to face three inquisitive expressions.
    “Honestly, there are times when I wish I
could divorce my father. Pixie, I need to get to the Walsh house as
fast as legally possible.”
    “Obsidian Angel!”
    “Sorry.” I took the passenger seat, buckling
myself in as I shied away from the thought of what Spider would
have to say about my father’s showing up.
    “Let’s see… R for ‘forward’?” Pixie started
the car and immediately hit the accelerator. We shot backward into
a series of shelves that lined the back wall of the garage, boxes
of Christmas decorations perched on the beams overhead tumbling
down onto the car.
    I glared at her. “R for forward?”
    “Heh-heh. Little joke.” She smiled. I
continued to glare until she made a face and put the car into the
proper gear.
    “I will clean it later,” Sergei reassured me
as I slowly turned to look out the back window at the spilled
garlands of gold and silver, the tinsel fluttering to the ground on
either side of the car, and the soft stuffed Santa that tangled
itself on the car’s antenna. The shelves looked a little worse for
wear, but not totally destroyed.
    The car jerked forward four feet. My
forehead hit the padded dash.
    “Sorry. This car is a little different from
my foster mom’s. I have it now.”
    We shot out of the garage, trailing tinsel
and garlands, some of it flying off the car as we careened around
the corner on what felt like only two wheels. I clutched the
dashboard with both hands, mute with horror.
    “Gotta have tunes while I’m driving,” Pixie
said, fiddling with the radio. I screamed and pointed. She jerked
the car back into our lane, narrowly missing plowing headlong into
a semitrailer. “It’s not what I normally listen to, but it’ll have
to do.”
    Rap exploded from the radio.
    I closed my eyes and prayed to every deity I
could think of to just get us to the house without anyone being
maimed or killed.

 
6
    “Well, that doesn’t look good.”
    As I got out of the car, a large shadow
arose from a settee on the verandah and stood at the top of the
steps. It was Adam, and he was holding a shotgun.
    “Wow. He’s really pissed-looking.” Pixie
eyed Adam for a moment before waving me ahead. “You go first.”
    “It is not proper that Karma be exposed to
such danger. I will go first,” Sergei said, floating to the front
of our little group.
    “He’s not going to shoot me,” I assured my
sweet domovoi. “He’s just trying to make a statement.”
    “Yeah. A statement like a herkin’ big hole
blown through your head,” Pixie added in a suspiciously cheerful
voice.
    “You are a morbid little girl,” Sergei told
her.
    “At least I’m alive, and I’m not a slave,”
she snapped back.
    “I am a domovoi! I am not a slave—”
    “Knock it off, you two,” I interrupted,
squaring my shoulders and starting up the flagged pathway.
    “This is difficult enough without you going
at it. If you all could be quiet and let me deal with the
situation, I’d appreciate it. Hello, Adam.”
    “I told you that you were not welcome on my
property,” Adam called down from the verandah. “I meant it, Karma.
You will step foot in my house over my dead body.”
    I ignored the fact that he made an
impressively threatening figure—with or without the gun—and slowly
climbed the stairs until I was directly in front of him. Pixie
trailed behind me. Sergei was beside her, materializing only enough
to be vaguely visible. “That’s going to be a little difficult given
that you’re a polter, isn’t it?”
    Even in the failing light, I could read the
irritation that flashed through his eyes. “My heritage has nothing
to do with the situation.”
    “No? I have always believed that orthodox
polters were bound to their domiciles, guardians of their homes,
unable and unwilling to leave