by A C Spahn
Desmond sighed. “We’ll wait,” he told Axel. “Just make sure he calls us as soon as possible.”
On the other end of the line, Axel spoke a few terse sentences. Desmond stiffened. “Again?” More murmuring I could barely make out. I thought about donning my sensory ring to enhance my hearing so I could eavesdrop, but that seemed rude.
To Desmond, not to Axel.
After a moment Desmond pocketed his phone and faced us. “Another ghost has risen.”
Wind whipped through the graveyard, whistling beneath the sounds of muted struggle. The ghost fight was going about as well as the one from the previous night, but I couldn’t shake the fear that something would go wrong.
Desmond hunched over his silver knife, bracing it with both hands against the thrashing of the ghost pinned to the dirt beneath it. This ghost was male and middle-aged, with hooded eyes and a long, arrogant nose. He scrambled to claw Desmond, fighting to break free of the silver holding him down. Desmond dodged the majority of the attacks, but a few new, thin welts rose on his arms where the ghost nicked him. It looked like he’d run into some thorn bushes while gardening. Not dangerous, but mildly painful and irritating.
Sam huddled alongside me as I finished enchanting the dirt out of the ghost’s grave. She cast wary glances back at the trapped shade. “Why doesn’t he just phase down into the earth to get away from the silver? He’s immaterial, right?”
The last of the grave dirt lifted itself into a neat pile beside the headstone, revealing a plain brown coffin. Fatigue cramped my muscles, and I shifted my weight to work life back into my legs. “He doesn’t know that. Ghosts think they’re still alive, so it doesn’t occur to them to travel through solid ground.” I set down the sloshing water bottle I’d used to enchant the dirt into moving, plastic this time to avoid breakage, and pulled a long piece of yellow yarn from my pocket. Tying one end around the bottle neck, I draped the other onto the casket and then twisted off the water’s cap. “Open,” I chanted, directing the magic through my materials. “Open, open, open.”
The casket lid creaked up. Inside lay a body almost identical to the ghost. Sam peered over my shoulder. I pointed inside. “See how the shade looks just like his corpse? That means he has a strong sense of self. It probably also means whatever enchantment is holding him here hasn’t decayed too much.”
“Can you ladies please cut school short?” Desmond called, ducking beneath another swipe from the ghost.
“Sorry!” I shouted. Sam and I dropped into the grave and began undoing shirt buttons, searching for the body’s enchantment tattoo.
“Found it!” Sam announced, holding back a sleeve to reveal a medium-sized circular pattern on the body’s inner elbow. “See? Told you I’d be helpful.”
“Don’t do anything to ruin it,” I said wryly. “Ready?”
Sam nodded, already grabbing my bag of craft supplies, hand poised to pull out whatever I needed.
I took a deep breath, then drew in the tattoo’s magic. The black line regressed, shrinking toward my fingers until it vanished.
Kadum! Kadum! Kadum!
Water, cool and deep and dark.
Air, syphoned from the depths.
Peace. Serenity. Life.
“It’s a water-breathing enchantment,” I said, relaxing. Despite the magic drumming in my head, I felt at ease. This magic was gentle. Yielding. “I need a blue ribbon, a coffee filter, and a nose ring.”
Sam handed me the items, which I quickly laid out. The magic flowed into the coffee filter, brewing. “Filter,” I chanted aloud so Sam could hear. “Keep out the undesired, let through the wanted. Take in only air. Only air.” The magic, already inclined toward this purpose, gleefully accepted the redoubling of its instructions. I sent it lightly through the ocean-hued ribbon, its gentle color aligned with the magic’s purpose, and into the blue-rhinestone nose stud.
The enchantment took hold happily, and I smiled as the magic finished flowing. “Easy,” I said. “This is what enchantment is all about.”
Sam picked up the nose ring and studied it. “It’s a nose ring of waterbreathing?”
“Yup.”
“... Can I get my nose pierced?”
“Nope.”
“Hey!” Desmond shouted. “Are you going to finish soon?”
Sam and I both leaped to our feet. She scrambled out of the grave, then reached down to help me up. Crawling out on hands and knees, I saw Desmond still wrestling to keep the ghost pinned. He’d taken a few more scratches.
Sam’s face was white. “I don’t understand. We took off his enchantment. You said that would put him down.”
I cursed. “He must have more than one.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Very.” I crouched to drop back into the open grave.
Movement across the cemetery caught my eye. We were in the middle of the graveyard, in a patch of headstones surrounded by monuments and gargoyle-topped mausoleums. Behind one marble colonnade, a figure ducked back out of sight. I stifled a gasp.
“Duck!” Desmond cried.
Without turning, I dropped to my stomach. My hands and face hit the dirt, and I felt a rush of something chilling breeze by inches from my back. When I raised my head, the ghost was halfway to the colonnade.
“There’s someone over there!” I shouted. Desmond ran by me, swearing. The silver tip of his knife was stained black.
Sam darted after him.
“Sam, no! Come back!” I yelled. She either didn’t hear or ignored me, disappearing amidst the lavish grave markers.
I dropped back into the grave and tore at the corpse’s clothes, frantically searching for another enchantment tattoo. Through my touch I felt the remaining kadum kadum of magic within his body, though not where it originated. I found it on his left ankle, not a tattoo but a birthmark, a brown line tracing a circular pattern. Born under enchantment, like Kendall. With my hand on the birthmark, I felt the beating of magic inside. It was bigger than the tattoo had been, more magic tied up within.
No time for caution now. I drew out the magic in one big burst. The birthmark shriveled and vanished into my touch.
KADUMKADUMKADUMKADUM!
Dirt, rich and soft.
Blooming petals.
Dirt. Dancing. Joy.
Dammit. I wished I’d brought a shovel. It would have been the perfect focus for this magic. From what I felt, the man was a minor earth elemental, able to send part of himself into the ground. It seemed he used that power to produce a vivid garden in his yard. With no shovel, I instead improvised, pulling from my purse a bag of dried flower petals and a single work glove. I balanced on the edge of the coffin and plucked a long blade of green grass from outside the grave, then set up the enchantment. Cultivate, I chanted, focusing the magic on the petals. Make things grow. Coax life from soil.
The magic swirled in the flower petals, but it hesitated. I felt it resist, displeased with my choice of focus. I know they’re dead and dried, I thought. They’re the best I’ve got. I tried to picture the flowers as they would have been in full bloom, to focus the magic on what the petals represented, not what they actually were. Life. Cultivate life.
Finally I felt the magic move, accepting my control. It channeled through the grass blade, which started smoldering, and into the glove. A green line that almost looked like embroidery traced its way up the thumb of the glove and formed a spiral there.
I blew out the spark trying to catch in the grass blade, then tucked the glove in my pocket and boosted myself out of the grave. Sprinting for the colonnade where I’d last seen my friends, I hoped I wasn’t too late. For them, or for that passerby unfortunate enough to be caught here.
Around the corner of a mausoleum bigger than my apartment, I found Desmond. Sweat soaked his black t-shirt and plastered his unruly hair to his light brown skin. He knelt over Sam, who lay curled on the ground, moaning softly. Her right pants leg was in tatters, and stained dark with blood. My heart stopped. “Is she ...?”
“On it.” I dropped my bag beside him. “There’s fabric in there. Tie up Sam’s leg.” Then I darted around the far side of the mausoleum.
Just ahead of me, Kendall’s squirrel form bounded from a low-hanging tree branch and landed atop an elaborately carved headstone. She sat up and pointed a paw to another mausoleum a few yards away, positioned against the edge of the cemetery and surrounded by a hip-high brick wall.
“He’s in there?” I asked her. Her tiny furry head nodded.
I crept inside the perimeter of the wall, careful not to make too much noise. My feet seemed to find every dry stick and loose stone in the grass, but I came around the mausoleum to see where its surrounding wall met the cemetery’s wrought-iron fence.
A man stood atop the wall with one leg over the fence, struggling to free his jeans pocket from one of the spiky wrought-iron adornments. He yanked the fabric free with the rip of splitting seams, and then looked up. Moonlight lit half his face, leaving the other half in shadow. Our eyes locked. Recognition sizzled between us.
With a shriek I tapped the enchantment on my left ring and launched a blast of lightning at him. My hand shook, sending the blast astray. It sizzled across the iron fence beneath him, sparks zapping where they met his body. Cursing, he dropped down on the other side of the fence. He darted between the trees obscuring the street on the other side. Footsteps pounded on pavement as he sprinted away. A moment later a car revved and screamed off down the street. By the time I managed to boost myself onto the wall, he was long gone.
My injured arm ached from hauling my weight out of graves and onto walls. Weary to the bone, I dragged myself back to my friends. Kendall had shifted back to human and clothed herself, and was helping Desmond support Sam, who looked ashen. They’d cut away the ruins of her pant leg, revealing a nasty-looking gash on her calf. A pile of vomit told me she’d not taken the wound well.
“She might have grave poisoning,” Desmond said. “We should get her to HQ.”
“Did you find the guy?” Kendall asked.
“I found him.” My voice sounded like it came from far away.
“Did you talk to him? Convince him not to tell anyone what he saw?”
“He won’t tell.” I swallowed. “He wouldn’t want to attract attention any more than we would.”
My friends stared at me. “Oh, shit,” Kendall said.
I nodded. “He’s one of us. A paranormal. His name is Vince, he’s a minor enchanter, and he’s the one my cult sends to track down runaways.”
Chapter 10
SAM THREW UP AGAIN, so we loaded her in Desmond’s car and continued talking as we carpooled. “So this Vince guy. He was here for you,” Desmond said, not asking a question.
I nodded. “Tonight, anyway. He was probably the one chasing down the boy we found in the graveyard, too.”
“Do you think that’s when Vince spotted you?” asked Kendall.
“No. It was dark, and chaotic. I still don’t think he could have known it was me from that distance.”
“Could he be tracking you with magic?” asked Desmond.
“No.” Of that, at least, I was sure. “Trackers can only be focused using objects of an extremely personal nature. Something the target considers a part of themselves. I don’t let myself get attached to objects. Not even the art I’ve sold should work. Vince would have to get hold of one of the very few things I consider personal treasures, and they’re all either carried with me or in my apartment, which he has no way to find.”
“What about a map?” asked Kendall. “Could he enchant a map to show him where you are?”
“Magic doesn’t work that way. A tracker points in the direction of its target, but it’s not a GPS. It doesn’t tell you the destination up front. To do that, you’d need a focus for the magic that already knows where the target is, which means you wouldn’t need a tracker in the first place.” I thought for a moment, running through possible enchantments that could lead Vince to me. “I suppose if he did somehow make a tracker, he could try to triangulate my position, like I did to track down that bear shifter last spring. But I live in a densely populated area. He’d have to do a lot of trial and error to figure out my exact location. And like I said, he’d need a focus to make the tracker, and he doesn’t have one.” The fist clenching in my gut began to release. Seeing Vince didn’t actually put him any closer to finding me. It just confirmed my suspicion that the cult had sent someone out here.
“So what,” said Kendall, “he spotted you by accident tonight?”
“No, the spot where he was hiding was well-chosen. If the ghost’s second enchantment hadn’t made me start looking around, I wouldn’t have even seen Vince. He was there on purpose, watching us. Watching me.” The car’s temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. I shivered. “He probably searched the city’s graveyards for ghosts, and then settled down when he found one, knowing we’d come. He knew I was here because of the enchantment design that painter searched for online. It wouldn’t have taken much of a leap for him to realize I was the enchantress putting down the ghosts.”
“But why was the murdered boy there when we fought the other ghost? Why was the boy even in the city?”
“I don’t know. He might have overheard my location once they discovered it from the painter. Maybe he came looking for my help.” The thought put a heavy sadness in my soul. “Vince was probably doing double-duty, hunting down the boy and trying to track me, too.”
“Scrawl multitasking on that guy’s resume,” Kendall grumbled. “If he’s such a bigshot tracker, why didn’t he attack you tonight?”
“Maybe he wasn’t sure yet about my identity. Maybe tonight was just a chance to make sure I’m really me before he risks exposure.”
“Yeah, but he exposed himself pretty good, getting his pants stuck like a moron. Seems like that would be a time to fight.”
“I’m a stronger enchanter than he is. By a lot. He’ll want to take me by surprise, when I can’t defend myself.” The words seemed to echo off the car’s roof, assailing me again and again from new angles. Comforting in one way. Vince wasn’t going to attack me when I had the slightest advantage. Disturbing in another. Vince would attack me when I didn’t have any advantages.
Desmond took a hand from the wheel to squeeze my fingers. “We’ll get this guy.”
I turned my hand face-up to stroke his palm. “I know.”
Sam’s reedy voice rose from the backseat. “I think I need a bucket.”
I passed her a plastic bag from my purse just before she threw up again.
“Ew,” Kendall muttered.
“Would you lay off me?” said Sam. “What’d I ever do you?”
“You tried to kill me a few months ago.”
“I said sorry.” More vomiting. “Please. I really am sorry. I’m trying to change.”
“Then why’d you go chasing the ghost when Adrienne told you to stay with her?”
Sam didn’t answer.
Kendall’s voice softened a hair. “Change isn’t something you promise, kid. It’s something you do.”
Sam’s voice was soft. “I’m trying my best.”
“Kendall,” said Desmond, “the girl’s sick. At least be nice to her for now.”
With a sigh, Kendall started rubbing Sam’s back as she puked yet again.
All thought of Vince the enchanter left as we arrived at Union HQ and shepherded Sam up to the medical ward. Dr. Tamika Richards was there to meet us yet again, her dark eyebrows rising when she saw us. “You folks are about the only thing that happens here on night shift. What’d you do now?”
“She took a cut from a ghost,” said Desmond, helping Sam limp forward.
Sam started gagging. Dr. Richards had a plastic tub in front of her before I could blink.
“Grave poisoning,” said Dr. Richards. “Nex
t time, girl, let a Void be the one to get cut. You’re not immune to all the paranormal diseases out there.”
“Noted,” Sam mumbled into the tub.
Richards gave Sam a couple shots, one that was supposed to boost her immune system, another to take the edge off her nausea. She sanitized and bandaged the gash on Sam’s leg, saying it wasn’t deep enough to need stitches. She warned us Sam would essentially have the stomach flu for the next couple days, and instructed her to stay in bed and chug fluids until she went two hours without throwing up. Then she could try some food, and if that stayed down, the magical reaction was out of her system.
On our way out, I stopped at the secretary’s desk in the lobby. “Is Bane Harrow here yet?”
Cassie closed several windows on her computer, complicated-looking lines of computer talk that I didn’t really understand. I spotted her purse on the desk and figured she was getting ready to go home for the night. She blinked too-big eyes at me and smiled that plastic doll smile. “I’m afraid Mr. Harrow is still occupied with important matters. Shall I have him give you a call when he becomes available?”
My hand formed a fist. “How many times do I have to say the word urgent?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can pass a message to him if you’d like?”
I hesitated, but remembered Harrow’s admonition about not spreading news of the impending war. Passing a message about Vince wasn’t technically crossing that line, but I didn’t know how strictly Harrow would interpret my vow of secrecy.
“No,” I finally said. “Just make sure he gets in touch with me right away.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Yeah, do that.” I followed my friends outside, where we piled back into Desmond’s car.
“Can I come stay with one of you?” Sam asked as soon as Desmond keyed the ignition.
“It wouldn’t be safe to stay with me,” I said. “Kendall has five housemates who would want to know why she had a random sick teenager hanging out in her room. And Desmond is a guy, and you’re a minor.”
