Witch's Soul

by Emma L. Adams

  “You thought wrong,” I said shortly, opening the door to my room. Spell ingredients scattered everywhere, clothes discarded after yesterday’s drunken escapades, and…

  “Is that a fury?” He indicated one of the sketches on the wall.

  “Oh, fine, come in.” I scooted inside, tossing my notebook onto the bed. Walking to the desk, I retrieved a blue cleansing spell. I’d rather shower instead, but not with Keir hanging around. When I turned on the spell, all the dirt and blood vanished from my clothes, leaving me refreshingly clean. “Now I know what to do when the guild runs out of hot water.”

  “I take it you don’t normally have visitors?” Keir indicated the monstrous drawing of a fury in full battle mode. “Or you’re trying to give yourself nightmares?”

  “Nah, I like to draw out my fears. If they’re on the page, they’re not in my head.” I didn’t let on that I had not added Evelyn Hemlock to the collection. I had enough nightmares about her eyes watching me from her prison as it was. “But no, I don’t tend to invite people in here. Lloyd and I hold our movie nights in his room, since he’s the one with the expensive TV.”

  “Hmm.” His gaze flicked to the notebook on the bed. “Is that me?”

  “Ah. That must be the first sketch I drew when I found you in the spirit realm.” I picked the notebook up, glad I hadn’t left any other sketches of him lying around. I’d been honest when I said I drew out the thoughts in my head so they’d stop bugging me, but his face wasn’t easy to exorcise. “I’ll just quickly draw the vampire guy again, since Lady Montgomery took the other picture. So I’ll know him when I see him.”

  He looked at the upside-down drawings as I turned the pages over. “Is that Lloyd?”

  I examined the more recent picture. I’d spilled elven beer on the page, and my drunken scribbling revealed that I had not, in fact, imagined the karaoke part of last night. Nor the part where the three of us had taken a full hour to stagger back to the guild. “That’s… yeah. I don’t remember drawing it, to be honest.”

  “When was this?” Keir asked.

  “Yesterday.” I turned the page over and began sketching the vampire again, entirely too conscious of Keir’s touch a whisper away, reminding me of what we’d started earlier. “Our brush with death turned into a wild night out.”

  He tilted his head. “You didn’t invite me.”

  “You ran off.” I finished the sketch, suddenly wishing I’d just walked out in my bloody clothes instead of bothering to come back here. There was a high chance I’d end up covered in blood again before the day’s end, anyway. “I’m going to find Ilsa before we head out. I assume Lloyd returned the candles to the training room.”

  “Which one was Ilsa?” he asked.

  “The… right, you won’t know who the Gatekeeper is. You’ve probably seen her in the spirit realm, though.” I shoved the notepad into my pocket and made for the door.

  “She was there today?” said Keir, following close behind.

  “Yep. You’ll like Ilsa, I think. She’s a former academic and knows more about vampires than even I do, since she borrowed every book on the subject.” I locked the door and turned away.

  “Really?” His brows rose. “Does she know about…?”

  “Nope,” I said, dropping my voice. “I mean, it’s pretty well established that I’m weird even by necromancer standards by now, but only Mackie and Lloyd know everything. And I can’t say I have a bloody clue if my coven is linked to this or not, except through Mackie. This Soul Collector person definitely had his claws in her for a while, but he didn’t show up when Leila made her play for power.”

  “That suggests the vampire either isn’t in the city, or isn’t as powerful as he seems,” Keir commented. “So he’s hiding behind weaker servants.”

  “What, you think he’s doing a Leila Hemlock and hiding in a liminal space?” I hadn’t considered that, but he had showed up at the scene when Mackie had thwarted him. He didn’t need her, any more than he needed the other vampires whose lives he sacrificed. But what was the point in sacrificing humans? What did he have to gain from it?

  “No,” he said. “We’re not capable of using our abilities outside of this realm, as far as I know. Even liminal spaces, I don’t think. I can’t say I’ve ever tried.”

  He had a point. He might have cornered me when I’d been in the Hemlocks’ forest that one time, but he hadn’t actually known I was there, and I doubted his abilities worked in the Hemlock witches’ domain.

  “He can still reach anyone, anywhere. Throughout the spirit line.” He might have a dozen other Ley Hunters branches up and down the country, backed up with lives to sacrifice for his cause, and not everywhere had a functioning necromancer guild. I shook off the thought and headed downstairs. As frustrating as it was that the bastard had slipped through my grasp, we had thwarted him—twice. We’d catch him.

  With Keir beside me, I followed the sound of voices to the weapons room. Sure enough, Ilsa, Morgan and Mackie were arguing loudly, with Lloyd looking on from the side.

  “This,” Ilsa said to Mackie, “is why Morgan kept telling you to keep iron on you at all times. Did you know he nearly got killed by a faerie beast like that one when he joined the guild? Only iron stops you from being lured into traps and possessed. Even if that vampire bastard was already linked with you, you could have stopped him from getting that far.”

  “God, all right!” said Mackie. “I fucked up, okay. It’s not like anyone taught me this.”

  “We tried,” Morgan said.

  “And Jas is the one who almost died for it,” Lloyd interjected. From his positioning, I gathered he’d returned to the room to put his weapons and props away and ended up boxed into a corner by the others’ argument.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson about storing dangerous objects in my room,” I said lightly. “Won’t happen again. Ilsa, can I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I was just on my way to take a patrol out. Not you two,” she added to the psychics. “You stay here and try not to drive the boss into an early grave.”

  She passed the others and looked between Keir and me, a frown puckering her brow. “We haven’t met, have we?”

  “I’m Keir,” he said, his gaze cool. “I’m here to assist Jas with questioning some vampires. I heard you had an interest in the subject.”

  She gave him an equally cool look in return. “Just curiosity. Was it the books you wanted, Jas?”

  “If you have them handy, I wouldn’t mind having a look when I get back,” I said.

  “I left them in the locker room, but I can hand them to Lloyd,” she said. “I don’t usually keep my stuff at the guild, but since they’re from the archives… haven’t you already read them, Jas?”

  “Some of them. The boss still doesn’t let me get at the top-secret stuff.”

  “Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”

  “Just vampires and any variations thereof,” I said. “You know I ran into the guy behind this scheme in the spirit realm, right? He was way stronger than any vampire I’ve faced. I feel like I’m way out of my depth.”

  What I really needed was a way to undo the link between Keir and me, but getting an answer without giving away the fact that my soul was linked to another seemed impossible.

  “We all do,” she said. “If you need anything else, let me know. Including… the secret stuff.”

  She went back down the corridor, leaving me blinking after her. Wait. Had she…?

  “Damn.” I glanced at Keir. “I think she just implied she swiped Lady Montgomery’s secret books. Or her brother did, I guess.” I’d bet it was probably Morgan’s idea.

  Despite my misgivings, my heart lifted a little. The Lynns were on my side. And at this point, I desperately needed allies. Ones who weren’t bound to my soul.

  14

  The first four addresses Keir and I tried yielded no results. Apparently, their owners had all left. Keir didn’t seem fussed about
allowing me to see the vampires’ secret haunts, but with each missing vampire, he grew more tense.

  “Is it normal for them to leave the city like this?” I asked.

  “A lot of us move around a lot,” he said. “The street where the vampire king lived was an exception, and mostly because he was paranoid about security. Now those tunnels are off-limits, there are going to be more and more vampires relocating near the guild, partly for safety reasons.”

  “The guild was a target last time,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, but from the looks of things, even furies would have a hard job getting in there,” he said.

  “I bloody well hope so.” I dug my hands into the pockets of my coat, wishing I’d picked up another warmth spell from my room. “Unless someone screws with the wards again, but I think I fixed them.” Or Evelyn had, anyway.

  “Yes, you did. Have you used your magic a lot since then?” he asked.

  “Oh, I have,” I said, but it wasn’t strictly true. Up until the last few days, I’d held off from using it outside of creating portable spells, the way I had when I’d let Evelyn take the wheel. Even in my own hands, the power felt unwieldy, too much. “I’ve invented a few dozen spells in the last week alone.”

  “Your mentor isn’t here, though?”

  “I saw her at the weekend.” I assumed he meant Isabel, not the other Hemlocks.

  “Right, you said.” He nodded. “And the two of you attempted to intercept the Ley Hunters’ meeting.”

  “If you’re going to lecture me for not telling you—”

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m trying to get a sense of the timeline here. These Ley Hunters are clearly answering to a single individual. This… Soul Collector person. He likely has people stationed throughout England and Scotland, and if I had to guess, the attacks on my fellow vampires are an attempt to take out the people most likely to be able to intercept him.”

  “The same might apply to any gifted necromancer,” I pointed out. “Half my friends can track across a distance through the spirit realm, if they know who they’re looking for…” Should I even be telling him this? Oh, well. It wasn’t like he hadn’t witnessed it in person earlier today.

  “You have interesting friends, then,” he said. “I wasn’t under the impression the guild had a significant number of members with such a gift, but the vampire was attempting to operate under the guild’s eyes. Thanks to you, he’s had to change his plans.”

  “Yeah… but it sure didn’t sound that way when he spoke to me after I got Mackie out of his hands.”

  He shot me a sideways look. “What exactly did he say to you?”

  “He said I did him more good than harm, which was weird,” I said. “The exploding device, losing his allies, not to mention Mackie breaking free and coming back to our side… that sure didn’t look like things were going his way.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He took a left turn down a side street. “What was his goal, cause a disturbance on the spirit line? Because he certainly succeeded in doing that.”

  “Not really. The candles we used stopped him doing any damage. Unless he still has Mackie under his spell, but she was already his.”

  “Right.” A grimace curled his mouth. He looked tired and beaten down, not at all like the slightly cocky and exasperating person who’d hijacked a corpse to annoy the shit out of me a few weeks ago. “I suppose she fell in with the wrong crowd. They’re recruiting.” He paused outside a tall brick house. “And he’s gone, too.”

  “Gone as in dead?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  He walked through an overgrown garden to the front door, which he kicked sharply with his heel. The hallway within smelled stale and musty, but not the sickly rot associated with corpses, nor the coppery tang of blood. You’d think necromancers would build up an immunity to the stench after a while, but no such luck.

  Keir scanned the rooms inside, which contained dust-covered furniture and not much else. “He packed up and left. I suspected as much. Most of us have vessels scattered throughout the city to give us ample warning if a threat presents itself.”

  I gave one last scan of the spirit realm as we left the vampire’s house. “You’re talking like people have targeted the vampires before.”

  “We’re powerful, unique, and have abilities nobody else can match. Of course we’re walking targets. If not for my brother, I’d have died before I reached my fifth birthday.”

  “Really?” He hadn’t been willing to volunteer information about his family before, but I couldn’t help being a little curious despite everything that had happened between us. All he’d told me was that his family were dead, save for his brother, who’d been kidnapped by people claiming to be connected with the Ancients.

  “Yes,” he said, burying his hands in his pockets as a few raindrops began to fall. “We’d better hurry up and check the last of the houses.”

  “You lead the way.” I pulled up my hood, sensing he desired a change of subject. Maybe it was for the best that I didn’t learn too much about him, in case he pulled another disappearing act. It seemed to be a vampire trait, after all.

  The drizzle turned into rain soon enough, and still, no vampires. By the time evening arrived, I was about ready to pass out on my feet.

  “One more house,” said Keir. “Then I’ll take you back to the guild. This way.” He ducked down yet another side street. Today had been an education in the back alleys of Edinburgh’s vampire’s haunts, but I’d been too tired to commit them to memory.

  The house he approached wasn’t deserted. Two men stood outside, both blank-faced and hulking. Undead.

  “Not the enemy,” Keir murmured. “They’re his vessels. He must have left them to guard the property in his absence.”

  “I have to admit, that’s not very reassuring.”

  The two men moved to block our path, for all the world like living bodyguards.

  “We’re not here to rob you,” Keir said.

  “Begone, shade,” said the man, and lunged at me.

  I raised my arm to block his strike, kicking out on instinct. He barely stumbled, grabbing my arm when I hit out. He was as strong as any living person of his size, while I was exhausted and freezing.

  Evelyn’s magic whispered to the surface and I broke free of his grip. Keir tackled him into his neighbour, tossing the man over his shoulder in a martial arts throw.

  “He’s not here,” he said to me, slightly breathless, and we half-ran from the house. “You’re making them uneasy for some reason.”

  “How the hell do they know…?” I didn’t say the word ‘shade’. Nobody had called me that in a while. And I’d thought to most people, I looked like… me.

  Evelyn? She couldn’t have woken up. Right?

  Keir slowed his pace as we reached the street’s end. “You were definitely you. I’ve seen what happens when she’s controlling you, and you don’t look like that now.”

  “Right.” I was losing my grip, apparently. Or the vampire controlling those vessels needed his eyesight testing.

  “I can come with you to the guild,” Keir said. “But I won’t be able to share details of my fellow vampires’ addresses.”

  “She won’t expect you to,” I said. “But I won’t lie, it doesn’t look great for us that they all ran away at the same time.”

  “Some would call it moving strategically out of the line of fire,” he commented. “We’re a little paranoid, even when there aren’t people setting beasts from beyond Death on our tail.”

  No kidding. It didn’t help that the vampires seemed disinclined to ask anyone else for help. Keir’s reaction to our dilemma made a little more sense now. Vampires didn’t strike me as the sort who opened up to people… other than in the feeding on people’s souls sense, anyway.

  I’d figure out how to deal with that later.

  Luck was with me, and the boss was on the phone to the council when I returned. After I’d hovered outside her office for ten minutes, I resigned myself
to a night of filling out paperwork and went back into the lobby with Keir. “It’s your lucky day. You get off unscathed.”

  He didn’t move. “If you’re free, I’d like to take you out to dinner.”

  “I… don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Jas, you look like crap,” he said. “I don’t want you to be stuck doing paperwork all night after the shitty day you’ve had. At least let me make up for my part in it.”

  “Well…” My resolve weakened. “Only if it’s Cassandra’s Café. And you’re paying. I have no money.”

  A grin swept his mouth. “Of course. Your choice.”

  Cassandra’s Café wasn’t exactly high cuisine, but I was too starving to care. I hadn’t exactly been doing a spectacular job of taking care of myself lately, and it was only when the food showed up that I realised how hungry I was. I devoured half a burger before pausing to breathe.

  Keir raised an eyebrow at me. “Did you even taste that?”

  “Don’t judge. It’s been a long day.”

  “It has.” He cast a glance around at the other patrons.

  “Are you using your spirit sight? Now?”

  “Habit,” he said, with a shrug. “I find it helps to see who has the strongest spiritual presence in any given area.”

  “Keep your enemies closer?” I suggested. “Relax, this place is fairly well warded. Besides, there are at least two guild necromancers in here.”

  Meaning, Ilsa and her boyfriend, River, who sat a few tables away. The golden-haired half-faerie was Lady Montgomery’s son and probably knew about the latest debacle by now. I hadn’t seen Mackie or Morgan, so I assumed both had survived training in one piece and without Mackie making another break for it. Not a bad end to the day, all things considered.

  “So you’ve never been here before?” I picked up a few fries and ate them.

  “We have a tendency to draw attention,” he said. “From necromancers, if nothing else. Also, crowded places… some of us don’t react well to the presence of so many spirits. It muddles our senses if we’re not well-practised, and a lot of us aren’t. If another vampire doesn’t teach us coping strategies, we find it difficult to be around a lot of people at once.”