The demon grabbed Mr Jinx and threw him towards a fortune teller's wagon. It splintered into dust as he smashed through it. "You come into my domain." The demon spat. "And think you can destroy me?" The demon raised his fist; it caught fire with a blue flame. "Two's company, three's a crowd."
"It's not your domain." A voice shouted from behind him. The demon spun round to see Emily walking towards him. "This is my mind." She threw a punch at him so hard it flew him across the fun fair. "Now get out. You're not doing this anymore to me."
The demon gave a grin. "Emily, Emily… we have talked about this before. How many times have I got to tell you?" He struck her hard across the face. "You have been evicted from control." He picked her up by her hair. She screamed in pain, but her eyes suddenly changed and looked over his shoulder. He looked round only to catch a glimpse of Mr Jinx as he finally slammed his anvil spell into his face.
Wraith woke up to find he had been tied up to Iva in the loft of the haunted house. "You ok?" he mumbled to her; his head felt like it was about to split in two. "What have they done to you Wraith?" Iva said. "What have you done to him?" she then screamed at Alex.
"Nothing." Alex said as he and the undead gathered around them. "But what we will do soon is join you to our little company." He brought out from his belt a small axe and sniggered. "Piece by piece." He raised the axe and Iva gave a scream. Wraith tried to remember a deflective spell. But he couldn't focus, his mind was swimming. It was too late, too late.
The axe held for a moment then exploded with his hand into a thousand pieces. Alex gave an agonising scream and held his now bloody stump.
Jac stood by the attic doorway holding a shotgun. "I remember the day you were born." He said. "I remember like it was yesterday. It was snowing and the doctor and nurse had to walk here as all the roads were shut. There was always something wrong when it came to you Alex." Jac said. "You never felt like my son. You're nothing but a changeling now."
Alex ran towards his father screaming.
The demon lay on the floor groaning in pain. Emily stood over him and said to Mr Jinx. "Why are we still all here? Why are we not back?" She looked down to the demon. "We won, you lost?"
The demon laughed. "I am a false thing I was told by someone to trick you." Its face turned black and piggish. "You know who it is, you've always known who it is."
Alex gripped hold of his father's throat. "It was me you bastard fool. Me who called that demon forth." Alex picked his father up by the throat. "I wanted to be part of magic but not like some stupid occult detective. But to be really magic itself." He threw his father to the floor and raised his hands in triumph. "So I sacrificed myself so the spell could work. I killed myself so I might live undead with magic and now..."
But before he could finish his twisted logic his mother blew his head off with her husband's shotgun. The undead crowd fell to the floor like rag dolls.
The spell was broken.
Hex dizzily trotted into the attic. "What happened? Why is everybody looking at me?"
In the days that followed, Jac and Emily moved to France and put the fun fair up for sale. They would never return to England again. Each in their own private way felt relieved for it.
Iva fixed her front door and re-laid her razor flash spells and told a rather confused neighbour that when she screamed, she sounded like a man.
Wraith laid on his sofa for two whole days and slurped pea soup that Iva had made for him. He repeatedly told her how bad her razor flash spells were. In turn she laughed and dared him to break into her house again.
But it was Mr Jinx that the shadow of the Carnival Camnoki lingered on most. He had been an occult detective for a very long time. He had to accept he was getting old. Too old in fact.
He went for long walks and wandered the edge lands of London and remembered the old days.
He made a decision.
Wraith agreed. So did the Dark Duke. It was Iva who was the problem. "But I don't want you to leave." There was a tear in her eye.
Mr Jinx gave her a hug. "London is not my home. Haiti is." He looked her hard in the eye. "Let an old man go home." Iva wiped the tear away and watched the boat he was sailing on go over the sunset horizon.
It was for the best.