“Wouldn’t they be able to sense it, if they’re necromancers?” Isabel queried.
“Right, I knew that.” I bit my lip, thinking hard. “Fine, I’ll leave it here, then, but put it under protection, and for god’s sake, don’t tell the other mages.”
Vance narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s a dangerous device that shouldn’t be left unattended.”
“Then I’ll take it to Edinburgh’s guild,” I said. “They have the expertise. Look, we can talk about this after the meeting. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m curious to know what the person who owns this thing has to say.”
7
Our plan didn’t come without its issues. For one, Vance insisted on arranging backup, so I had to talk him out of sending a dozen mages to tail us. Isabel and I used disguise spells to give us generic human faces that wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, but there was another slight problem.
“If the person behind this is a necromancer, won’t they sense you when we come in?” Isabel said, as we walked past the witches’ headquarters towards the meeting point.
“Only if they’re powerful. But yeah, that’s a good point.” Most people couldn’t hop into the spirit realm while talking at the same time, but if the person running the show was one of the exceptions, I might be better off staying out of the meeting. “Are you okay going ahead and I’ll show up fashionably late?”
“That works,” said Isabel. “Wish there was a walkie-talkie spell so we could eavesdrop from outside.”
“If the owner is working with a witch, he might be prepared for that.”
I hated sitting out on the action, but when we crossed the road, I knew I’d made the right choice. A steady stream of people entered the Ley Hunters’ place, while a tall, broad man stood outside, looking everyone up and down. Isabel, who wore the form of a generic red-haired man, hesitated.
“Go ahead,” I whispered. “I can use the spirit realm to eavesdrop if I want to risk it.”
I tensed as the security guard turned in my direction, then looked away. Even if he twigged I was a necromancer, it wasn’t like he’d know I was the one who’d stolen the device, since I’d left it at the mages’ place.
I walked casually down the road until I was a safe distance away, then tapped into the spirit realm. Sure enough, I spotted the unmistakeable bluish glow that marked him as a necromancer.
The others, though… they were human.
I turned off the spirit sight, burying my cold hands in my pockets. The man hadn’t directly seen me—I’d been too quick for that—but if he did spot me in the spirit realm, he might think I was just someone from the guild walking home. Luckily, this was a part of town where supernaturals lived pretty close together.
I counted down the seconds until five minutes had passed, then I prepared to make my ‘fashionably late’ entrance. When the door closed, I began making my way down the street. With the spell on, I looked like a homeless guy, which wasn’t all that different from some of the other people going into the meeting. Looked like my suspicion that they’d targeted only non-supernaturals was dead on. But what could they possibly want them for?
I crept up to the building, hoped the necromancer’s attention was on his audience, and halted, out of sight of the boarded-up window. While the buzzing of the wards remained, voices trickled through the gap.
“If I may have your attention,” said a nasally male voice that, judging from the authoritative tone, belonged to their leader. “You’ve come here because you saw one of my adverts, or you were invited here by a trusted member of my cadre. It’s an honour to talk to you all.”
Cadre? What the bloody hell was this setup? I hoped Isabel was playing her part well, because my hands itched to yank the wards off the door and demand to know why the speaker had lured a bunch of humans into an abandoned shop. What independent necromancer started a cult of humans? I remained still, my spells at the ready.
“Something was stolen from our meeting room today,” he said. “Nobody outside of this room knows what the meetings are about, nor would they have any reason to stop us. One of you betrayed our cause.”
There was an uneasy pause. Then, whispers rose among the group. Accusations. Was he going to make them turn on one another? Isabel was trapped in there, and would be the only person not in the know.
Time to get the humans out of there and interrogate the bastard alone.
The boarded-up window meant I couldn’t toss a spell inside, so I’d have to go with Plan B. Firstly, I threw a firecracker spell into the air to draw his attention, then I tapped into the spirit realm, searching for the bright glow of the necromancer’s spirit.
He turned in my direction. I gave him a ghostly wave, and in the real world, he yelled, “There’s an intruder outside! Kill her.”
Ah, crap.
The door flew open, and the humans poured out, some of them armed with knives. Killing them would play into the cult leader’s own strategy, but they’d taken him at his word, advancing on me with murder in their eyes..
I threw a knockout spell first, hitting a heavyset man square in the forehead. Isabel moved among the group and several humans dropped their weapons, scratching at their arms as they erupted into a rash. Glad we’d adapted some spells with non-fatal side effects, I deployed three more knockout and shield spells and zeroed in on the leading necromancer. He’d hidden himself at the back, and if not for my spirit sense, I’d have thought he’d fled. Coward. It didn’t hurt that I’d stolen his only weapon.
I grinned and threw an illusion charm. Spiders materialised on the ground in a raging swarm, sending several other humans fleeing into the night.
“They’re illusions, you fools!” yelled the necromancer. “The supernaturals are weak. We are superior.”
“You are one, you moron!” I yelled, ducking under someone’s arm to get to him. I collided with Isabel’s illusory form instead.
“Backup’s here,” she hissed.
“Crap.” If the mages were here, then their fearless leader wouldn’t stick around.
Sure enough, the necromancer turned tail, pursued by several humans. I sprinted after him, tracking him through the spirit realm. He might be quick on his feet, but I’d had years of practice chasing down ghosts, and I was faster than he was. A spell flew from my hand, striking him in the small of his back. As he stumbled, I slammed into him, tackling him to the pavement.
“Gotcha.”
“Who are you?” growled the necromancer, writhing beneath me. “You’re not from the guild.”
“Neither are you. Tell me who you are and why you lured a bunch of humans into your weird cult meeting. What is the society of Ley Hunters?”
“You won’t take me, necromancer.”
“Fine, you can tell the authorities, then.” I made for the trapping spell on my wrist, but his eyes glowed blue-white and kinetic energy blasted into me. I lost my grip and he wriggled free, making another run for it. I flung a shield spell into him, knocking him to the pavement once more. “Tell me. What did you plan to do with those humans? Kill them?”
“They volunteered themselves for a worthy cause.” He fought against my hold, and I snapped on the sticking spell.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“You bitch,” he growled, fighting my grip, but I’d bound our hands together. Who needed handcuffs when you had magic? Bloody amateur. Really, the necromancers were the people who I ought to hand him to, but necromancers as a rule would rather die than be locked up in jail.
Sure enough, his body went slack and his eyes slid closed. Swearing, I shifted into the spirit realm and grabbed him before he could flee his body. “Nice try. You’re staying put.”
“What are you?” he growled, fighting my grip. He was tenacious even as a ghost, but I held on fast.
“A necromancer with more sense than you have. Tell me what you planned to do with those humans.” He was as good as dead anyway, if he left his body for much longer. “I stole your weapon. You planned to suck their
souls into it, didn’t you? To what end?”
“To harness the spirit line,” he said, his ghostly form fading. “To open the veil…”
His eyes flashed grey-blue. The light lingered, gleaming with intelligence, and a smile curled his lip. Then another blink and the ghostly form of his spirit was gone.
I stared at the spot where he’d vanished. For an instant, someone else had looked at me through his eyes. I was sure it hadn’t been him. Yet no sign remained of either of them.
Was that a vampire? I scanned the spirit realm for dark shadowy shapes, but found none. Weird. Really weird.
I blinked the grey away, the necromancer’s dead weight still stuck to my wrist. Detaching his limp hand from mine, I began dragging him back to the shop. Flickers of light told me the mages had been their usual subtle selves and set the place on fire.
Sure enough, when I dragged the necromancer across the road, I found several cloaked mages standing before the humans who’d been knocked unconscious by my spells. By now, all of them had been handcuffed and several had woken up.
“The bastard died before he told me who he’s working for,” I told the mages, throwing the necromancer’s dead body down.
“Tame the fire,” Vance ordered another mage. “There’s nobody inside the building.”
“Feel free to let it burn down,” I said to him. “There were raiders in the shop next door. Earlier today, the owner tried to proposition Isabel and me, so we turned him into a mouse.”
“He did what?” said Ivy, raising her sword. “All right, I’m going after the stragglers. Vance, feel free to knock some heads together.”
“Hang on,” I said. “Not all of them might have known what they were getting into. The necromancer lured them in. It sounded like he was trying to teach them how to fight supernaturals off.” That would definitely attract a crowd, especially people who didn’t want to train as mercenaries but who also wanted to learn to defend themselves. Pity all he’d wanted to do was sacrifice their souls.
Harness the spirit lines? What did that even mean? The lines were like currents of energy, invisible to most people. As for what he’d said about opening the veil? Bringing back a swarm of ghosts or zombies didn’t require human sacrifice. Not in my experience, anyway.
“Is this the person responsible?” Vance enquired, eyeing the dead necromancer at my feet.
“Yeah,” I said. “He killed himself by hopping over the veil. I should have bound him first, but there was no time.”
“Help!” yelled one of the humans, a blond male no older than eighteen. “Don’t set me on fire!”
“Tell me who you are,” Vance commanded.
“I’m nobody.”
“You were caught meeting with a criminal, then tried to kill two people,” said the Mage Lord. The air stirred, a gust of wind kicking up and raising the hairs on my arms. “Explain.”
The kid raised his cuffed hands to his face and sobbed. “They said… they said we had to expect to defend him at any costs. That people wanted him dead.”
“And you didn’t think he was breaking the law?” I asked. “He was going to sacrifice all of you.”
“No, he was teaching us to kill supernaturals.”
I tried to get them off easy. I left Vance to deal with the humans and walked to the blazing house. A tall lanky mage with coppery hair tended the flames, which leapt closer to the raider’s shop by the second, and winked at me when he saw me watching.
“Drake,” I said, approaching him. “Don’t burn that place down. It’s full of stolen property.”
“And rats,” Ivy put in, holding a struggling rodent by the tail.
“Technically, it’s a mouse,” said Isabel, who looked very pleased with herself.
Ivy gave the rodent a shake, and it squeaked with terror. “Looks like a rat to me. That’s what he gets for being a creep. Anyone want to volunteer to play pest control?”
“Can I burn him?” asked Drake.
Flames leapt from his hand and singed the creature’s tail, and it yelped.
“Drake, cut it out,” said a female mage wearing a long, hooded cloak. “Criminal or not, he’s still human.”
“Throw him into the sewer, see how he likes that,” I said. “What’s Vance going to do with those humans?”
“Scare the living shit out of them, probably,” said Drake, grinning at me. He had a long, thin scar running down the side of his face that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.
Sure enough, Vance’s voice rose above the crackling flames burning down the shop. “You are all extremely lucky not to have caused any damage to anyone,” he said. “As it is, if you’re ever offered an ‘opportunity’ like that again, run away or you’ll find yourself giving up more than your lives.”
That’s that, then. At least I wouldn’t have to fill out a stack of paperwork like I would if this was an official guild mission. It was about time I headed home.
As I shifted my weight, a hand rested on my arm. “Gotcha,” said Drake. “Nice try, but you’re not sneaking off without saying hi. Mage politics isn’t my thing either.”
“I thought you were Vance’s second-in-command now.”
“More like a glorified bodyguard,” said the fire mage. “Hey, Wanda, Jas is sneaking off.”
The female mage returned to his side, her hood falling back to reveal thick dark hair framing a heart-shaped face. Wanda was Lady Harper’s granddaughter—half witch, half mage, and the closest to a best friend I’d had living with the mages, before her grandmother had packed her off to a fancy boarding school a year before I’d left. She was the only person in existence Lady Harper had actually been nice to, being her only surviving grandchild, and it’d taken her long enough to develop her mage powers that she’d acquired a group of bodyguards. Drake being one of them.
“Jas!” Wanda hugged me. “I heard you were here. My grandmother had me running errands all day.”
“She’s the person I’m trying to avoid.” So much for making a quick getaway. “Not that I’m trying to run out on you guys, but you might have noticed there’s an epidemic of amateur necromancers creating cults to sacrifice humans. My boss at Edinburgh’s necromancer guild sent me here to investigate, and I have to get back.”
“Unless you’ve learned to teleport like Vance, you’re not going back tonight,” said Drake. “I can create another diversion if it’s Lady Harper you’re worried about. She was pulling spiders out of her hair for days after you left last time.”
“You conjured actual spiders?” I shook my head at him. When I’d fled to Edinburgh seven years ago, I’d needed a reliable way to distract Lady Harper, so I’d begged Drake to create a convincing diversion to keep her busy long enough for me to make it to the coach station.
Drake grinned. “It was a spider-attracting spell. Worked like a charm.”
Wanda snorted. “Yeah, she was pissed at you for about two years. I figured that was why you never came home.”
Guilt twisted into a knot in my chest. “I wanted to,” I admitted. “But you know Lady Harper and I don’t get along. The only magic I had was the spirit sight and it wasn’t like I could have made a career out of it here.”
“She’s seriously pissed now,” said Drake. “Not that it’s anything new. I swear she gets worse with age.”
He wasn’t wrong. Lady Harper had reduced me to tears on more than one occasion when she hadn’t been able to force some Hemlock magic out of me as a teenager. Now I’d unlocked that magic, outright turned my back on my calling and insulted her to boot? She’d be mad at me for the rest of her life.
“She’s spending way too much time in that forest,” added Wanda.
Oh… bugger. “She is?”
Wanda shrugged. “Yeah, you know she never tells me anything. What made her decide to start mentoring you again?”
“I learned how to use my witch magic about ten years too late,” I said, glancing at the mages. “She decided it was her duty to muscle in. Er, I really do have to g
et home, and I have my own transport.”
“Is it to do with your witch magic?” Drake asked. “So you’re a witch and a necromancer now? Jealous.”
“Isn’t being a human fire hazard enough?” I waved Isabel over, and she made her way through the crowd.
“They caught them all,” she said. “Ivy threw the mouse into the sewer, too.”
“I’m almost certain the person behind the attack is up in Edinburgh,” I said quietly. “Not in the city, anyway.”
Isabel’s eyes rounded with understanding. “I’ll ask Vance to fetch the you-know-what. But you should be careful near half-blood territory at this time of night.”
“Did she say half-blood territory?” asked Wanda, as Isabel turned away to approach Vance. “Oh—you’re going into the forest?”
I nodded. “Don’t worry, my magic can get me home from there. Just… don’t spread it around.”
“The Hemlocks don’t like tourists?” Drake asked. “Don’t look so shocked. I know you’re a Hemlock witch. Lady Harper—”
“Told everyone except me,” I finished, rolling my eyes.
“You weren’t here last year,” said Wanda. “There was a huge kerfuffle in the forest and word leaked out that they were still alive. My grandmother didn’t even tell me she worked for the Hemlocks until then.”
Isabel walked up behind me and pressed the spirit device into my hand. “The council doesn’t have to know. That goes for you, too, Drake.”
“Oh, is that the spirit thingymajig?” he asked. “Can I push the button?”
“No, you may not push the button. There isn’t one, besides.” I stuck it into my pocket. “I’m heading off, but I won’t disappear for seven years this time. Promise.”
“We’ll bodyguard you,” said Drake. “The Mage Lord can handle the idiot humans. Seriously, Jas, I don’t know who’s chasing you, but I’m not letting you go out alone.”
“Are you sure?”
Fire sprang to his hand. “The half-faeries’ territory is covered in snow at the moment. Trust me, it’ll be fine.”
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