by Leigh Kelsey
“Reaper thing,” Rahmi explained. “She drew them to her scythe and severed their contact with the building.”
“So they’re … gone?” Kati asked, staring.
“All except Ingrid the Terrible and a man who says he wasn’t involved in any of their shit. Mrs Balham and Mr Flightwin’s been interrogating them.” Kati doubted the necromancy teacher—a doddery, droning old man who looked ready to become a ghost at any second—could interrogate anyone but she kept her doubts to herself.
“After the ghosts were trapped in her scythe,” Rahmi went on, “Madam Hawkness brought this … spirit ball thing to Lavellian, and he became more solid. Even I don’t know what it did, and I’m a reaper—spirit balls are our purview.”
“And after that, Mr Worth swept you off to the infirmary, and Madam Hawkness brought us to her office to tell her everything that had happened, and she cast this healing spell that fixed us instantly. Not that we were stabbed like you were.”
Kati absorbed the idea of a healing spell, not a tonic. “Can you remember what spell it was?”
“I’ve already begun researching it,” Naia confided.
Kati grinned, fondness for Naia rocketing through her. “Thanks. Both of you. I’d still be trapped in that cell if it wasn’t for you guys. That, or I’d be splattered on the floor.” She shared a smile with Naia, but it faded quickly. “Lavellian told me the ghosts drew me there because Theo wanted me with him. And he mentioned a her, a woman.”
“Who?” Rahmi asked, leaning forward, her brows drawn together.
“I don’t know. He sort of … faded before he could tell me. But we can ask him now, right? The spirit ball healed him?”
Rahmi winced. “Um. Sorta. He’s solid again but he doesn’t have the energy to speak, or properly manifest. He can’t pick things up yet, and he definitely can’t teach. Madam Hawkness is having to bring another teacher in for supernatural history.”
“Shit,” Kati breathed. “But he will heal, right? He’ll be able to talk at some point?”
“Eventually,” Naia confirmed, scratching the back of her neck. Kati blinked, only now realising that her hair wasn’t in its usual bushy braid. Naia’s hair was wild and curly and massive. “But it could take weeks.”
Weeks when Kati wouldn’t know who Theo was hiding with, who wanted the spirits to take her. She pressed her hand to her chest, over her aching heart, and her fingers bumped against the talisman charm Iain had given her. She felt better just for touching it.
“And what the hell was going on with Harley Albright? I wasn’t seeing things, right? She really was there?”
“Yeah, she was there. That ghost, in the big dress, remember her?” Kati nodded, knowing the exact woman. “She possessed Harley.”
“Shit,” Kati swore, reeling back into the pillows of her infirmary bed. “Seriously?”
Naia nodded, her eyes wide behind her turquoise glasses. “Yeah, she took control of Harley’s body and made her attack all those people. She killed two people and…” Naia frowned, continuing in a more subdued voice, “she tried to fight the ghost, got rid of all the knives in her dorm, threw out all her potions stuff after the poisoning, but it didn’t work. She’s a Medium, someone who can connect with spirits on a magical level, and they used it against her.”
Kati digested that information, trying to imagine how it must feel for your hands to murder someone while you’re unable to stop it. She felt sick just at the thought. “That’s why it changed from ritual murder to poison to an athame attack. She was trying to fight it.”
Harley was in Kati’s necromancy class, so that added up too. Shit, this was a mess.
“All the people they made her attack,” Rahmi said uneasily, “were what the ghosts called mongrels. Non-legacies. It’s sick, all of it. It doesn’t matter if we have human ancestors as long as we have magic.”
Kati nodded; she thoroughly agreed. “But not everyone believes that.” Including her brother. She sighed. “What about the tower?”
“I believe I can answer that question,” a welcome voice replied, and Kati looked past Rahmi and Kati to see Iain in a rumpled white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and a tired expression on his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept since the tower, which was probably accurate.
“Don’t we have that potion to brew for tomorrow?” Rahmi asked Naia, elbowing her.
“We don’t even have potions and poisons tomorrow…” Naia replied with a frown, and then blinked as understanding hit. “Oh yeah, yeah we do. Sorry, Mr Worth, we need to go do this … potion … brewing … thing.”
Kati snorted. “Smooth, Clarke.”
Naia grabbed her bag from under the wicker chair she’d occupied, struggling to heave it onto her shoulder because it was likely full of heavy books, stationery, and notebooks to occupy her until Kati woke, and followed Rahmi around the mezzanine to the stairs.
“How are you feeling?” Iain asked, slipping into the chair that Rahmi had vacated. He really did look tired, his brown hair ragged and the shadows on his face making him look gaunter than normal. He didn’t even have any ink stains on his hands, and for some reason that saddened her.
“Better for this,” Kati replied softly, running her hand down the amber magic wrapped around her. Iain shivered and she stared, something in her settling as he met her eyes. “Can you feel that?”
He nodded, his eyes bright behind his wire-frame glasses. “I can.”
“I hear you saved me—ran me up here so Nurse Gardner could patch me up. I could have died if you hadn’t acted fast enough.” That was expanding on what Rahmi and Naia had told her, but it couldn’t have been far off.
Iain was silent, and Kati properly looked at him, noting the jaw clenched in anger.
“What?” she asked, her stomach knotting.
A muscle feathered in his cheek. “When you fell, and I saw you bleeding—I never want to feel like that again, Kati. Never.”
“Sorry?” Kati said awkwardly. “I won’t get stabbed by a psycho ghost again. I’ll pinky promise if necessary.”
He laughed humourlessly, staring at the strand of leaves dangling above Kati’s hospital bed. No—glaring at it.
“Why are you so angry?” Kati asked, wishing he’d look at her again so she could peer deeper into his expression. “Iain,” she whispered, conscious of the student a few beds down. “Talk to me.”
He clenched his jaw again but managed to spit out, “I thought you would die in my arms, and it put some things into perspective for me.”
“Yeah?” Kati asked, waiting for him to tell her they needed to stay away from each other, that they couldn’t kiss again. “Like what?”
“Like I don’t want to stay away from you,” he said in a fierce whisper. He met her eyes finally, alight with both anger and passion. “Like you matter to me, whatever form our relationship takes. Like you deserved better than to be played with the way the ghosts had manipulated you, like you should never have been hurt. Like you could bleed out and never know—” He cut off and quietened his rising voice. “You’d never know I cared about you.”
Kati’s stomach erupted into butterflies, but the anticipation of rejection still squirmed in her gut. “You sure? You genuinely give a shit about me?”
“You know I do,” he replied, his expression wry. “I’ve made that perfectly clear, not too far away from this hospital bed, geographically.”
Kati grinned, her eyes darting to the screened-off area. “Shame we can’t slip away there now,” she breathed.
“You’re playing with fire.”
She shrugged. “Like Rihanna once said, I like the way it hurts.”
He expelled a breath, leaning back in his chair and running a hand over his face. “I shouldn’t even be contemplating it.”
But he was contemplating a relationship with her—or at least thinking about kissing her again.
“You can blame it on the near death experience if that helps.”
“It does,” he agreed with a soft laugh
. “But then I remember you wounded and weak in my arms and rage takes hold again. Not the best thing for me to think of.”
Kati brushed his hand with hers, the smallest, briefest touch, before she drew back. He blew out a breath, his shoulders slumping. “I’d be pissed if someone hurt you too,” she admitted.
His smile was swift and tender. “What, you’d draw your wand and charge into a fight in defense of Lady LaVoire’s nephew?” He was joking but not joking at the same time.
Kati held his gaze so he knew she meant it when she said, “Yeah, I would. Twice over.”
Iain smiled, and just for a moment it lifted the exhaustion from his face. “I wish I could kiss you right now. Not like before—carefully, softly. But still. I wish I could kiss you.”
Kati scowled. “It’s cruel to tell me that when you can’t do anything about it.” In revenge, Kati stroked the back of her fingers down the amber magic still wrapped around her and delighted in his shudder.
“Touche, Katriona.”
For a long moment they just smiled at each other, Kati’s heart full to bursting. “You were going to tell me about the tower.”
“I was!” he agreed, his eyes lighting with enthusiasm. “Our best theory is that because the remains of all the old headteachers were originally kept in the west tower, drawing their spirits to the place, their energy infused the walls until the tower itself became a phantom. It’s fascinating, if you think about it.”
“Maybe if its inhabitants hadn’t tried to—actually, what were they going to do? Murder me?” And because this was Iain and he understood where Theo was concerned, she added what Lavellian had said. That the ghosts had drawn her to the tower by her dreams so she could join Theo in hiding. The more she told Iain, the paler he went, until he was as white as a sheet. By the end of her explanation, he’d taken out his wand and began casting spells, every single one of them absorbed by the amber cocoon.
“Um, Iain? What’s going on? What are you doing?”
“Protection spells,” he said breathlessly, but with panic rather than exertion. His power was vast, and packed a serious punch. Kati shivered as the hairs on her arms rose in response to its proximity.
“Care to explain why?” she asked when he’d cast a seventh spell and finally looked satisfied. He sat back, watching as the cocoon shrunk until it was the size of a football, and then kept shrinking until it was no bigger than a marble. Kati watched as it was drawn to the talisman hanging around her neck, then narrowed her eyes on Iain. He was desperately trying to protect her.
Why?
He ran shaky hands through his hair, tugging at the ends, and Kati wished there weren’t other people around them so she could pull Iain into her arms.
“Lavellian said she,” he said hoarsely. “And your brother summoned someone else that night, not a demon. I’m jumping to conclusions, it’s pure paranoia, but…” The look he threw at Kati was frantic. “Kati, what if she’s back? What if my aunt’s spirit has found a way out of the underworld?”
Kati swallowed hard, her stomach in knots. “And if she has,” she breathed, meeting his panicked blue eyes, “what the hell does she want with me and my brother?”
END
Thank you for reading Kati’s story, I hope you enjoyed How To Raise The Dead! The next book in the series will release soon.
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Leigh Kelsey is the author of sweet and steamy books for anyone with a soft spot for steely women and the tortured men who love them. No matter what stories she’s writing – vampires or shifters or rebels – they all share a common thread of romance, heart, and action. Leigh also writes new adult and young adult books under the name Saruuh Kelsey.
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