While the rest of the Bao Down group was driving around Massachusetts setting up the unspeakable servants and fighting the Court of the Burger Queen, Reba was setting up the artifact eruv around Salem, to symbolically enclose it so that Tal could extend their magick exclusion ability over the whole town. Reba was joined by the Indian mages of Endemic Spice:
- Ramachandran the Videomancer
- Ardhanari the Mancymancer
- Leatherface the Reverse Vigilante
The eruv, a fishing line charged with several decades of geomantic energy from Boston, needed to be strung up around the borders of Salem.
Leatherface knew how to operate a cherrypicker, and Ramachandran had the money to rent one. It would take all night and then some, but they had the technology and the expertise to hang it on the power lines. Yellow vests and hard hats ensured that nobody would ask them questions while they "worked the lines" at night.
They were in the Harmony Grove Cemetery when they ran into trouble.
Leatherface and Reba were in the bucket of the cherrypicker, looping the eruv around a telephone pole at the edge of the graveyard. The wheels were locked and there shouldn't have been any way for it to move. And yet it began rolling on its own, with the basket extended and two people in it, twenty feet in the air. Leatherface lowered the basket just in time to dodge a nearby tree, and the gang was able to stop the cart before an industrial accident dumped them out.
The team suspected a supernatural cause for their trouble. Ramachandran dropped some random Videomancy magick on his camcorder, and it allowed him to see the vector: a collection of ghosts, floating around above the cemetery. The team intuited that these were phasmata - ghostly servants controlled by Coffin, the corpulent leader of the Brahmin Occult Society. The crew wedged the wheel of the cherrypicker to stop it from rolling away. Leatherface prepared to admonish the ghosts, using his crowd control ability to make them disperse. One of the ghosts teleported him a mile away, into Saint Mary's Cemetery.
Reba began swearing at the ghosts to debuff them, in case they cast more significant magickal effects. Leatherface jogged back to the rest of the group. He noticed six rough and ready women in a late night diner, who looked just as out of place in the wealthy WASP neighborhood as he did. They all turned to watch him as he went by.
Back in Harmony Grove Cemetery, the team debated how to banish the Phasmata. A gust of magickal wind almost tipped the magickal eruv out of the cherrypicker's basket, but Ardhanari used a saved casting of telekinesis to toss it back up into the cab with Reba. Leatherface noticed that the women had followed him after he passed the diner, and were milling around at the edge of the graveyard.
Ardhanari lit a cigarette, cast a charisma boosting smoking spell from her Mancymancy library, and went to see what the strange women doing. They weren't carrying weapons, but they were clearly psyching themselves up for a confrontation. With her extreme powers of persuasion, Art discovered that
- The women were prisoners bailed out of jail by Sin Woo-Jin
- They were in his debt as a result
- He sent them to get the magickal eruv from Reba
Art used a Merchant ability she'd copied off Rachel to buy the debt the women owed Sin, removing their reason for attacking the group. Now she just had to find someone else to sell it to, before the Usurer showed up to collect.
Reba, Ramachandran and Leatherface debated how to get rid of the ghosts. If Ramachandran could get holy water and other exorcism stuff, he could use Videomancy random magick to pretend to be an exorcist and make the ghosts go away. Unfortunately it was 1:00 AM, and the holy water font wasn't working at the Saint James Church. Ramachandran pounded on the door of the rectory, sweet talked him into sanctifying some holy water, and rushed back to the graveyard. Leatherface loaded a squirt gun with the juice and sprayed down one of the drifting spirits. The phasmata dissipated, freed from servitude to the fatman. The other ghosts swiftly departed, the boss not willing to risk any more precious ghost slaves interfering with Reba's scheme.
With both the ghosts and Sin's janissaries neutralized, Reba and Endemic Spice worked through the rest of the night to string the eruv.
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