by A C Spahn
“At least Harrow’s new gadget works,” I said. “Good, Sam. Keep going.”
Desmond shifted his weight as the ghost heaved at the net once more. The woman’s shade was tall and skinny, and appeared to be on the far side of sixty. Yet undeath lent her paranormal strength, and both Desmond and Kendall had to fight to keep her from flinging them away and breaking free. “On the topic of this gadget,” Desmond said, “did he tell you we’re liable to cover the cost if anything happens to it?”
“It’s a metal net,” said Kendall through gritted teeth. “How much could it possibly cost?”
“It’s made of silver,” said Desmond. “So ... a lot.”
Kendall whistled, though she kept trying to look anywhere but at the ghost. “Guess that’s why they only made one of them.”
“Lucky us getting to test it out,” I said. “It does make our job easier.”
“Our job?” Desmond protested. “I’m the one who always has to wrestle the vengeful spirits.”
I tried not to smile. “Thank you for always wrestling the vengeful spirits, Desmond.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Beside me, Sam grinned as her magic finished flowing and the dirt began to lift itself off the grave, digging up the coffin. “How’d I do?”
I let my senses test the air, feeling for leaking magic. Only a tiny trickle bled out of the enchantment, and when I touched Sam’s hand, I didn’t sense any stray traces lingering in her body. “Almost perfect efficiency,” I said. “Nice work. Pick up your supplies, and let’s get this done.”
Sam gathered the leather cord and water bottle she’d used to craft the enchantment, then helped me open the coffin. Inside lay a corpse nearly identical to our shade. So, she’d been comfortable with how she looked when she died. At least she had that. “Harrow’s notes said her enchantment should be on her left forearm.”
“Got it,” Sam said a moment later, pointing to a small pattern on the inside of the woman’s elbow.
“Good.” Anxiety prickled me, reminding me of the last ghost we’d fought. “We’d better make sure there’s only one.”
“Wouldn’t the Voids have told us?”
“They might not know. Harrow had some intel about this woman, but only because she’s from a shifter family the Voids keep tabs on. If she had a second enchantment, she’d probably have hidden it.”
“I thought you said it’s really rare for people to have more than one enchantment.”
“It is. Most paranormals won’t risk it. But the last ghost did, so let’s check.”
Sam and I discreetly inspected the rest of the body, but we found no further signs of magic. It was good news, yet still I felt uneasy. This was going too well.
With a deep breath, I climbed back out of the grave and faced the pinned ghost. “Sam, be ready to draw the magic out. I’m going to talk to the ghost now. If it doesn’t go well, I’ll need you to put her down quickly.”
Sam waved a hand over the rim of the grave. “Ready.”
Desmond gave me a nod. Kendall closed her eyes and swallowed.
I knelt so I was eye to eye with the spirit pinned beneath the net. “Hello. My name is Adrienne. Can you understand me?”
The ghost kept thrashing, though its translucent, milky eyes locked onto mine. It seemed to stare through me, as I could stare through it. Shivers ran down my spine. “Can you understand me?” I repeated.
The ghost kept fighting. Its mouth moved, but nothing came out.
I sighed. This had been a long shot, anyway. Ghosts were already a rare phenomenon, and even fewer of them retained anything resembling sentience after rising. I’d have to do this the hard way.
Sucking in a deep breath, I lowered my fingers through the silver net and let them graze the ghost’s wispy shoulder.
Ice shot up my arm, numbing my hand to the wrist. Fire chased it, scorching my flesh, an agony of contradicting sensations. I groaned through gritted teeth, aware that too much noise would draw attention. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real. The mantra helped focus my thoughts and wall away the magical pain. Once I’d pushed through it, I felt for the magic within the ghost.
Kadum! Kadum! Kadum!
Impressions came to me, perceptions that had no grounding in any of the five senses. My mind interpreted them into metaphors I could understand. I saw thousands of tiny electrical nodes spread throughout the ghost’s form. They spat sparks, generating the ghost’s body. Thin wires flowed from each node, and where they met each other they combined, twisting into thicker and thicker cables until they became a single wide cable that snaked through the air back toward the grave. I had no doubt if I followed it I’d see that cable connecting directly to the enchantment tattoo on the woman’s body. Power surged from the magic of the tattoo, fueling the ghost and giving it form.
All of this I already knew, though having it laid out before me was like suddenly being able to see individual air molecules while breathing. Fascinating, but unnerving. My brain tried to pull back, to shelter itself from the unnatural impressions filling it, but I forced myself to stay put. This was the only way to learn.
I probed that power cable of magic, testing it for any sense of wrongness, any indication of why the ghost had formed, or why magic wasn’t behaving according to its normal rules. I found nothing. No interruptions to the flow of power, no frayed cable endings, no metaphor that would account for an anomaly in the ghost’s metaphysical makeup. As far as I could tell, everything was working fine.
“Except you exist,” I muttered to the ghost. It still stared through me, but I was far too occupied to be bothered by that anymore.
“Anything?” Desmond asked. His voice seemed to come through a long tube.
“Nothing,” I replied. “I’m going to keep studying this while we disenchant her. Sam, pull the magic out, and have your enchanting gear ready. Remember to call out if you need something you don’t have at hand.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Sam called back. Eagerness filled her voice. This was the first time I was letting her do “real” magic, outside a classroom setting.
I sensed the moment Sam started to draw out the ghost’s magic. The flow through the power cable dimmed, and the nodes that made up the ghost’s body began to flicker. The ghost herself snapped her eyes from mine, suddenly frantic. She thrashed against the silver net, and I saw Kendall nearly lose her balance where her knife anchored the mesh. She caught herself just in time for the ghost to buck again, and she squeezed her eyes shut, every muscle trembling. Desmond just held onto his knife, looking determined.
The flow shrank and shrank, and the nodes flickered more and more. Any moment I expected the ghost would cease to exist. But she kept fighting the net, and despite her flickering body, the power flowing into her never quite cut out. Soon I grew concerned. “Sam? What’s going on?”
“I’ve got it,” Sam shouted. “Making enchantment now. Shut up. Distracting.”
I bit back the words that wanted to spring from my lips. Obviously Sam had missed some of the magic. But distracting her right now could get her, and the rest of us, killed, so instead I pulled myself away from the ghost. The pain in my arm vanished, though my skin still prickled with lingering heat and cold.
I waved my arm through where I’d seen the magical cable fueling the ghost. As my hand passed through it, I felt the kadumkadumkadum of magic within. I narrowed the sweep of my arm until I felt out the exact location of the ghost’s magical energy cable. Kadumkadumkadum beat the magic, a tight coil of power concentrated into a line floating in the air.
By feel I traced that pulsing energy back toward the grave, running my hand along the cable like an invisible cord floating in midair. I expected the line to lead to the corpse’s enchantment tattoo, proving Sam’s unsuccessful attempt to remove it.
Instead, about three feet from the edge of the grave, the power cable abruptly cut off. My hand passed into empty air, and the kadum of magic vanished from my senses. I backtracked an
d felt the magical cable return, but one step further it simply ceased to exist.
Um. What.
Carefully I drifted my hands through the spot where the cable ended. My fingertips brushed up against little threads of magic, as if the cable had split and frayed. These pulsed in regular rhythm, kadum kadum kadum, fueling magic down the cable to the ghost, as if drawing magical power from nothing.
No, not from nothing. For each kadum of the ghost’s power beat in time with the ambient magic surrounding us in the graveyard.
The ghost was drawing its magic from the air itself.
Like me.
Like an enchantress.
“Impossible,” I whispered.
Sam looked up at me, the pride on her face fading to concern. “Adrienne?”
“The ghost is still active.”
“What? But I removed its enchantment.”
“It’s somehow drawing in magic from nothing.”
“You mean like–”
“Yes. Like us.” My hand lingered on one of the magical threads. “We should check the body again for more enchantments, but I have a feeling there won’t be any. We’ll have to find another way to drain the ghost of its magic.”
KADUM! KADUM! KADUM!
Pain spun through my head. The world canted sideways. My knees squished into the soft dirt dug from the grave. A second later I collapsed on my side. Sam hauled herself out of the grave, shouting something, but I couldn’t make out her words. Pain latched around my heart, a burning agony trying to sear the skin and muscle off my bones. My throat felt raw, my lungs on fire, and dimly I realized I must be screaming.
Give ... thirsty ... give ... A woman’s voice hissed in my head, vocal chords frying with sibilant wheezes. The world seemed upside-down, but several paces away I could see the ghost’s milky eyes locked once more on mine. Her mouth moved, and again the words clanged in my head. Give ... supply ... restore ...
More pain dug into my chest. I tore open my jacket and yanked down my shirt, revealing the enchantment tattoo on my chest.
It was moving.
The crisp edges of the black line wavered, threads of color writhing as if trying to flee my skin. When I pressed my hand over it, the drumming in my skull made my stomach heave. I yanked my hand away and rolled to my side to vomit into the dirt. For the instant I’d touched the tattoo, I’d felt one of those magical power nodes fueling the ghost, connected to my chest.
“It’s trying to feed off my magic,” I ground out. Another wave of pain pierced my skin. This time I felt a definite yanking, like a force trying to carve out my heart. “Sam, stay away, it’ll latch onto you, too.” Pain turned my words into a shriek. Dirt and grass spun into sky beneath me, the world inverting and folding in on itself. Through my muddled senses I watched the ghost heave herself free of the net. Desmond and Kendall went flying. She descended on them with lethal claws. Through it all magic’s KADUM beat faster and faster, and the pain grew and grew, until I was sure I was about to break apart.
Abruptly the pain vanished. I gasped in relief and discovered I was crouched on the grass, my head between my knees. Tears stained my cheeks, and flecks of vomit clung to my shirt. I lifted shaking hands to pull my hair out of my face. What had happened? Why had it stopped?
Desmond lay with his back against a tree, silver knife brandished in front of him at nothing. He panted, looking around frantically. “Where’d it go? It was about to strike me. What happened to it?” A red squirrel limped out of the bushes behind him, favoring a bleeding leg.
Someone grunted behind me. I whirled, expecting ghostly claws to rake my flesh.
Sam knelt by the grave, hands buried in the dirt pile beside it. Her eyes were closed, her teeth clenched in a snarl. “Sam?” My voice sounded gravelly. She didn’t answer.
Dragging myself through the dirt, I crawled her way. When I touched her shoulder, the KADUM of magic knocked me flat on my back.
The dirt began to move, flowing to re-fill the grave. But it didn’t just pour in like sand. First it rose into the air, swirling into a dust storm. In that maelstrom, strands of dirt began to organize, particles arranging themselves into dancing shapes. They interwove, latticing and lacing, forming fractals in a mesmerizing display that started ten feet in the air and wove its way down until the dust pattered on the coffin. Slowly the grave re-filled itself, but each fleck of dirt put on a performance before settling.
Sam opened her eyes with a sharp inhale. “There was too much,” she said. “Too much to just store it in a regular enchantment, and I had to make it do something, and I was thinking about how you’ve said magic is an art, and ...”
“What did you do?”
“The ghost was drawing on your magic, and drawing magic from the air. We had to cut it off to kill it, so I figured, maybe if I channeled all the magic nearby, maybe ...”
“You drew in all of it?” Suddenly I realized how quiet it was. No drumming in my head. No tingling against my senses. There wasn’t a lick of magic within reach.
Sam nodded, anxious eyes fixed on me. “I know it was risky, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
Tugging my shirt down, I saw that my tattoo had returned to normal, undisturbed by the ghost’s attempts to sap it. If things had gone on longer, if the ghost had somehow unraveled that enchantment and started to feed off it, I would have died. And probably taken out the entire block in the process, with that amount of magic suddenly loosed with no direction. Sam had destroyed the ghost just in time. But to use all the magic in the area, all at once ... I had done similar things before, but each time had left me exhausted, barely able to stand. Sam sat there, looking a little fatigued at most. Her power was incredible. It would take months for this area’s magic to even out and return to normal.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” Sam said. “I was scared. I couldn’t think of any other way.”
Behind her the dirt continued to fly up, the last piles joining the waltz in the air. “It’s beautiful,” I said, watching the dirt rain down to finish covering the grave.
“Really?”
“Really. Using up all the magic was probably the only way to put the ghost down.”
“So I’m not in trouble?”
“No. You did well, Sam.”
Her smile was like sunshine breaking through storm clouds.
We called to report to Harrow. I told him about the ghost, and how it seemed able to draw in its own magic, without needing to be fueled by an enchantment tattoo. “It was like the magic that formed the ghost had gained enough strength and direction to act on its own, to try to draw in more power.”
“Disturbing,” he said. “I will have to do some research on this.”
Then he hung up on me.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected.
“Maybe the dead woman was an enchantress?” Kendall suggested. Her arm was bleeding from a gash the ghost had given her, and she’d wrapped it with a spare length of fabric from my craft supplies. She still trembled, twenty minutes after the ghost had dissipated, and looked around as if expecting rabid wolves to pounce out of the shadows. It had to suck to have prey instincts warring with human logic in her head all the time.
“I doubt it,” I said, “The Union knew about her family. She was a hummingbird shifter, from a whole family of shifters, like you, Kendall. She has three kids and seven grandkids. There’s no way she was an enchantress without the Union noticing. And anyway, this sort of thing doesn’t happen when enchanters form ghosts. Our shades are supposed to be just like anyone else’s.”
“What else could explain the weird magic?”
“I don’t know. We should look into the woman’s life, just to make sure, but I feel like something else is going on here. Something we’re not seeing.”
“The cult?” Sam asked in a whisper.
“This is far beyond even their capacity,” I said. “The Earth’s magical field is as huge as its geomagnetic or gravitational fields. Much too powerful for humans, even enchanters, t
o manipulate on this scale. The cult isn’t causing this, any more than geologists cause earthquakes. This ... this is something else entirely.”
Desmond sighed. “We should all go home. It’s late, and some of us have wounds to lick.”
“I don’t lick them,” Kendall said. “Not in human form, anyway.” Then her gaze flicked to where Sam lingered behind me. “Hey, kid.”
Sam’s head jerked up. “Me?”
“Yeah.” Kendall took a step forward and held out her good hand. It still shook, but her voice was steady as she said, “Thanks. And good job.”
Sam beamed.
We went separate ways, too exhausted to go out for coffee or spend more time speculating. Desmond drove me home, but neither of us had the energy for much conversation. After he dropped me off, I let my thoughts fall into an exhausted fog. All I wanted to do was fall into bed and dream about something other than magic and undead spirits.
I opened the door of my studio apartment to chaos. Drawers pulled open, art supplies flung everywhere, cabinets ransacked. Leftover ajiaco soup spread across the floor, soaking a skein of orange yarn. Bits of chicken and potato dotted the puddle. My shoes crunched on broken glass and smashed art supplies as I crossed the threshold. I stared down at months of work, destroyed in seconds.
Someone’s been here. The thought stabbed into me, burning away my fatigue.
My apartment suddenly felt cramped, like a cage. Barely three steps from wall to wall. A perfect place to corner me.
Leaving the door open, I sprinted down to the tiny parking lot behind the building. My Void security guard should pass by there soon on his route. He could help me. Maybe he’d already seen whoever broke in and apprehended them.
