My shoulder was aching, but after that, I wasn't going to stop until I was done. I was fine. I was better than fine. Hell, I'd even started jogging, though I threw up the first time I'd run the zoo. All those hills. Everybody throws up the first time.

But there was a reason there were very few pictures of me before my twelfth birthday, and it didn't have anything to do with the lack of film.

Exhaling, I set the pestle down and shook my arm. It hurt all the way up, and deciding the holly was pulped enough, I stretched for the envelope of roots I'd scraped off my mom's ivy plant earlier. The tiny little roots had come from the stems, not from under the ground, and the book said they acted as a binding agent to pull the lingering essence of a person together.

My head came up when the TV shut off, but it was only one of them turning on the stereo. Jingle Bells done jazz. One of my dad's standbys.

"Look, it's snowing again," Robbie said softly, and I glanced at the kitchen window, a black square with stark white flakes showing where the light penetrated. "I miss that."

"You know there's always a room here for you."

Head bowed over the mortar as I worked, I cringed at the forlorn sound of her voice. The spell had a pleasant wine-and-chlorophyll scent, and I tossed my hair out of the way.

"Mom…" Robbie coaxed. "You know I can't. Everyone's on the coast."

"It was just a thought," she said tartly. "Shut up and have a cookie."

My knees were starting to ache, and knowing if I didn't sit down they'd give way in about thirty seconds, I sank into a chair. Ignoring my shaking fingers, I pulled my mom's set of balances out of a dusty box. I wiped the pans with a soft rag, then recalibrated it to zero.

The wine mixture needed dust to give the ghost something to build its temporary body around, kind of like a snow cloud needs dust to make snowflakes. I had to go by weight since dust was too hard to measure any other way. Robbie had collected some from under the pews at a church while out shopping for a coat, so I knew it was fresh and potent.