Free Elemental Shadows by Phaedra Weldon Page A

startled us. Grey jumped up from where she'd been lounging on the kitchen floor and ran into the dining room. Again.  
    I dove into my bag by the stove and retrieved my guns. With the Lady in my left and the Lord in my right, both of them loaded and ready to fire, I pressed my back to the wall on the kitchen side of the archway. On the count of three I turned with both hands out, both guns up and ready.  
    Before, when I summoned the Salamander, I'd been thinking of having to deal with supernatural elements. Things that were Arcane and magic based. But the slam and footsteps I was hearing now were made in the physical world, so I was now thinking I was dealing with an intruder. A real one, and not my imagination.  
    As I moved through the dining room I glanced through the sliding glass door to the Circle—
    Someone was moving inside at the Circle! Well son of a bitch! Someone had broken into Ina's backyard, which as far as I knew, was an impossibility. I ran to the door, opened it and moved along the tall cypress I'd helped Ina plant when we moved into the house.  
    "Freeze!" I shouted as I burst through and pointed my guns at the altar.  
    The person I'd seen wasn't there. No one was there.  
    I heard another noise, this time from inside the house and Grey was howling, barking, and growling.  
    I ran back to the house, burst through the door and saw the back of Grey in the doorway to the kitchen. But just as I arrived and pointed my guns inside, I saw…
    It.  
    There was no other way to describe it. It wasn't a man or a woman that I could see. It was close to six feet tall and made of…shadow.  
    It was the image of someone, but not the substance. And it was bending over the Hammer.  
    "You hold it right there, asshole."  
    The thing did seem to hesitate before it turned and looked at me. It had eyes…and a nose…just like the thing in my phone had.  
    A deep, low, and slow laugh that reminded me of the Uncola 7-up guy, vibrated the tile floor under my feet as it bowed to me, just before it plunged its hands into the book.  
    I fired over and over again, but the bullets went through it and struck the range hood, the fridge, the doorframe to the TV room and the island itself.  
    The laughter increased in volume as it, and the book, did this weird motion blur and vanished.  

I ran to the island and slapped both of my hands, with the guns, on the counter.  
    No!  
    I put the guns on the island and bent down to look under it. I ran into the TV room, the living room, and the herb room. But the shadow form and the book were gone.  
    My phone rang in the bag and it took me a minute to figure out where it as. I remembered the red worms and hesitated as I pulled it out. The crack was still there but the worms were gone. Kyle was calling so I put him on speaker phone 'cause I really, really needed to talk to him. "Hey, you're not going to believe what just happened—"  
    "I'm pretty sure I will, cause you need to sit down."
    I put the phone on the island as I continued looking around. That thing took the Hammer! And this bit of knowledge was causing me no end of panic. Without that book, Ivan couldn't make a copy. Without a copy to give to the Clerics, they were going to try and warlock Arden and she was going to blame me if that happened.   "I am not sitting down!" I yelled at the phone, and realized I had a bit of hysteria in my voice.  
    "Okay then stand. That first house with the dog? You were right. Just a simple Daemon. Kicked that out with a spell. The other stuff? Sam…these things are real. Ivan and I both saw them."  
    "What things? Ghosts?"  
    "No, these Shadow People."  
    I straightened up. Right…the people Ivan talked about. "What did they look like?"  
    "They're sort of different sizes, but none are as tall as Ivan and I. And they're fast. It's easier to look at them if you sort of try to out of the corner of your eye. You can't really see them if you look at them head on."  
    I knew