Witch's Secret

by Emma L. Adams

  “I’m sorry, did you say an army?” Drake said, his eyes wide.

  “They’re dead vampires,” I explained. “Trapped in summoning circles inside warded tanks. The instant they get free, they’ll attack. If we tried to banish them all at once—I’m not sure even the guild can handle it.”

  Keir sucked in a breath. “And we don’t know if their bodies are still alive.”

  Oh. “Do you think he might be there?” I asked. “Aiden?”

  “I don't know.” He delicately averted his gaze from mine, pacing to the hotel room’s door.

  Given the state of the other ghosts, the chances of finding Aiden alive and sane were dwindling by the second, but I wouldn’t take away the last of Keir’s hope. I hadn’t checked every single tank, and a lot of the spirits had been there a long time. The spirit devices, and the Soul Collector, proved that it was possible to separate body and soul without causing damage—hell, even my own blood magic mark proved it, too—but those vampires had been anything but whole.

  “I’m going to free them,” I said. “There’ll be a way, we just have to be cautious about it. If I blow up every tank, living people will die unnecessarily. Those vampires haven't fed in months if not years. I don't know how they survived.”

  “They're shades,” said Keir. “They survived death, and they came back stronger. And… perhaps their sanity can be revived, I don’t know. But I doubt the two of us can free every single one without one of us suffering the backlash.”

  “Meaning me?” I tilted my head on one side. “Keir Langford, are you actually suggesting we hire the necromancer guild to help us?”

  “Maybe I am.” He turned to face me, and while his eyes retained the wary, haunted look he’d worn in the lab, a smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. “Are you ready to face your boss?”

  16

  “I can’t believe you went to a creepy lab and didn’t invite me,” Lloyd said, sitting across from me on the sofa in Ilsa’s living room.

  “I’m rubbing off on you, aren’t I?” I picked up my coffee mug to get some warmth back into my hands. “You’re supposed to say, ‘why did you go into the creepy lab, Jas? Don’t you know that’s the quickest way to die in a horror movie?’”

  “Jas, you’ve died more times than anyone I know,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you can waltz into the Devil’s lair and walk out in one piece.”

  “Don’t speak too soon.” The combination of exhaustion and caffeine set my nerves jangling, and despite the long day I’d had, I was wired. “I’m sorry I ran off before coming to tell you I was alive. I was expecting a quick visit to family friends, not a dive into NightmaresVille.”

  “Have you met you?” Lloyd glanced sideways at Keir, who sat in the armchair on our right-hand side. “Setting a vampire shade loose in the city is a new one, though.”

  “I didn’t realise he’d lose his shit the instant I freed him and would be immune to banishment.”

  “I bet he’s not immune to my Gatekeeper powers,” said Ilsa, who occupied the other armchair. She and Lloyd had received Isabel’s messages about my unexpected return from the other realm, and Keir and I had spent the last half-hour bringing them up to speed on our latest adventure. “Are you absolutely certain you want to bring the boss into it? Because once you do, Lord Sutherland will have no reason to hold back any more.”

  “Lord Sutherland already had a fury drag me through the spirit lines in an attempt to get rid of me,” I said. “He isn’t holding back. And if he is, it’s because we took the mirror. If we wait, he’ll find it first. We have to take out his army before he can set them loose.”

  “You had trouble with one ghost and you think a small group of us can beat an army?” said Lloyd sceptically. “Your vampire friend might think he’s invincible, but the rest of us aren’t.”

  “None of us is suggesting taking them on all at once,” Keir said. “That’s why we need the guild.”

  “But that place is hellish for necromancers,” I added. “The whole facility is swarming with ghosts. I think some massive tragedy happened there and everyone got stuck on the wrong side of the veil.”

  Ilsa grimaced. “It’s not a liminal space, is it?”

  “Not that I can tell,” I said. “I didn’t even see any windows or doors. It’s a secret lab, so it might be underground. It also can’t have been too far from wherever they stole the mirror from, right?”

  “Near Foxwood.” Ilsa’s mouth pinched. “Yeah, the mages have gone nuts over the Ley Line, otherwise I’d run through and check on Agnes and Everett. They were the ones who had the mirror, so I assume the mages took it from them. But we have bigger problems.”

  The doorbell rang. Everyone looked at one another.

  “If it was a bad guy, they wouldn’t ring the doorbell.” Ilsa got to her feet. “Back in a second.”

  I looked at Lloyd. “What’re the odds the boss already knows I’m back?”

  “She does,” Ilsa said over her shoulder.

  I walked out to join her. River Montgomery stood on the doorstep, his golden hair and pointed ears standing in contrast to his black necromancer coat. Ilsa’s boyfriend… and the boss’s son.

  “So it’s true.” He looked me up and down, taking in my dishevelled appearance. “My mother told me she sensed you in the spirit realm. She wishes to speak with you.”

  That’s promising. “Better hope I’m not getting arrested again. I think she’s going to want to hear this.”

  My nerves spiked again as I walked to the guild’s headquarters with Lloyd on one side and Keir on the other. Ilsa and River led the way. The boss’s son had remained tight-lipped on Lady Montgomery’s reaction to my sudden return, so I didn’t know what sort of mood to expect her to be in. Either way, I doubted she’d shower me in praise for setting a vampire shade loose in the city.

  “I’ll get worse than a stint in the archives for this, won’t I?” I said to Lloyd.

  “You’ll be cleaning the toilets for a month.”

  “Not helping.”

  “I’d say it’s more likely that she sends you to banish that shade in person,” said Keir. “Which I’ll help you with, of course.”

  “I hope it hasn’t attacked anyone.” The shade could have killed me, and given recent events, I could no longer count on my own shade powers to save my neck.

  Keir frowned up at the guild’s warded exterior. A rush of nostalgia swept through me at the sight of the smooth brick façade laced with iron, and the glimmering wards enhanced with my own magic. I kept my head down as we entered the wide lobby, but felt the stares of curious novices scrutinising me.

  River halted, checking his phone. “Change of plans. The boss wants to meet us in one of the summoning rooms.”

  Oh, boy. What was she planning to do, lock me in a room with a poltergeist, like they did in advanced exams for high-ranked necromancers?

  “You don’t have to come,” I said to Lloyd, who looked mildly unsettled as we entered a corridor lined with locked metal doors. “You shouldn’t take the heat for what I did.”

  “Look, I’ve worked for the necromancer guild for a third of my life. I’m not afraid of the—” He broke off as Ilsa opened the door on our right, staring at the summoning circle inside the room. “What the bloody hell is that?”

  “I take it you’re responsible for this, Jas?” Lady Montgomery said, indicating the circle.

  Trapped between twelve candles, the vampire shade floated in the circle, considerably less transparent than he’d been before. He’d fed on someone. Several someones.

  “He attacked the guild?” I guessed.

  “He tried.” Lady Montgomery eyed the others. “Jas, Lloyd, come in here with your friend and explain yourselves. Ilsa, River, find the psychics and tell them to stay away from here until I tell them it’s safe.”

  “All right,” said Ilsa. “Call me back if you need me to take care of that guy.”

  Ilsa and River left, and with their departure, the room seemed to grow several de
grees colder. Or maybe it was the presence of the vampire’s hungry stare. More worrying was the boss’s silence. She looked the same as ever, none the worse the wear for her narrow escape from losing her soul at Lord Sutherland’s hands. Her floor-length cloak was adorned with decorative medals and her greying hair swept back in a bun. Her stern, wrinkled face was as familiar as someone from my own family, and a fist clenched around my heart. Please don’t kick me out.

  “Sorry,” I said when she didn’t break the silence. “It’s my fault he got loose in the city.”

  “I think that’s the least of your recent transgressions, Jas,” said Lady Montgomery. “You have multiple arrest warrants on your head.”

  “I know,” I said. “I mean, I guess about half of them are for the spirit of my dead ancestor, but she doesn’t exist on any records, it’d be hard to prove.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Ah. Maybe joking hadn’t been a good move, but the silence was seriously getting to me. And did we have to do this in front of an insatiable ghost who wanted to eat my soul?

  “I thought Jas was listed as dead or missing,” Keir ventured. “I also thought a number of witnesses saw Lord Sutherland send a fury to drag her through the spirit line.”

  “That is not, unfortunately, what the witness accounts say happened,” said Lady Montgomery, with a sideways glance at the vampire’s ghost. “All accounts of the incident claim that Jas used her magic to open the spirit lines, at which point a number of monsters came through and carried her away with them.”

  A wave of indignation rose within me. “That is such bullshit—”

  “I agree, Jas, but it’s your word against someone who has the letter of the law on his side.” She took in a deep breath. “That is the only reason I am willing to assist with this absurd plan of yours. Ilsa tells me you found a laboratory in use by the Mage Lord—and this man backs up your story.”

  I turned to the vampire’s ghost with some surprise. While his eyes retained the ravenous stare of a half-starved vampire, he stilled under the boss’s stare. “He trapped me. He tore out my soul and left me to die.”

  My stomach lurched. “None of them can remember how long they’ve been there. That lab’s been in use since before the invasion. Would that count as proof?”

  “Considering the mages have made no secret of the fact that the mirror is their possession and was at their headquarters until recently?” she said. “Yes, it would, but only if we can capture and gain testimony from some of the trapped vampires after the threat is eradicated.”

  “You mean… banish most of the ghosts and bring some of the others back to testify against the Mage Lord?” Would that work? It carried one hell of a risk, and yet—she’d managed to get the vampire into a summoning circle even with him being a shade.

  “Yes,” she said. “However, that would not rid us of the price on your head, Jas. I take it you were aware of Jas’s situation, Lloyd?”

  He shifted from one foot to the other under the boss’s attention. “I didn’t think it mattered, since nobody knew Jas was alive.”

  “In case you’re unaware,” said Lady Montgomery, “Lord Sutherland is making a compelling case against the need for a necromancer guild at all. I’m weeks from losing my job, if he decides that disbanding is the best way to go. I have every intention of putting up a fight, but it’s not one I expect to win.”

  “He stole those spirit devices from you,” I said heatedly. “He turned your own people against you and—and ripped out their souls. And he gets away with it?”

  “No perpetrator was found for any of those crimes,” she said, her jaw clenched. “As there were no surviving witnesses.”

  I get it. If she openly accuses the Mage Lord without enough proof to back it up, she loses her job for sure. Then every single necromancer at the guild would be out on the streets and a potential target for the Mage Lord’s twisted schemes.

  “And he blamed me for the furies and hellhounds running amok around the city?” I guessed. “If I’m supposed to be dead, he’ll run out of people to blame.”

  “The spirit devices were destroyed,” said Lady Montgomery. “Which I can thank you for, at least, Jas… however, I don’t doubt he plans to make others. They were the hallmark of the Ley Hunters, after all.”

  “The Ley Hunters?” Lloyd frowned. “I thought the Ley Hunters was like… a cover. For those vampires who worked for the Soul Collector.”

  “That wasn’t the first time,” said Lady Montgomery, with a glance at Keir. “The Ley Hunters was also used as a cover in pre-invasion days by a group of humans who possessed the spirit sight but had no prior connections to the supernatural world. Eventually, those so-called Ley Hunters sold their secrets to the Orion League, who took their resources and used them to fight against supernaturals. Most significantly was their decision to take the Ley Hunters’ practise of inking runes onto themselves to link their spirits to the realm of Death and combining that with an art stolen from the witches…”

  “To turn them into zombies, raised by witchcraft,” I concluded. “The Ley Hunters were the first people to create those spirit devices?”

  “Yes, but they got the idea from an old practise,” she said. “Every couple of decades seems to bring a new attempt to break open the spirit lines in an attempt to gain knowledge or enlightenment, which usually ends in disaster. I need to know, Jas… was it you who opened the spirit lines?”

  I started to shake my head, then faltered. “My magic… it links to the spirit lines. I can open and close them at will. But when the spirit devices blew up, they hit the lines of their own accord. I tried to close the lines, not open them.”

  Lady Montgomery’s expression shuttered, but somewhere in the depths of her eyes, I saw a flicker of fear. It’s not me you should be afraid of. I was kind of surprised Evelyn hadn’t stepped in to say her piece, but she’d been all but silent since my return from the lab.

  I licked my lips. “Has anyone ever travelled to the realm on the other side of the line before? Do you know?”

  Lady Montgomery shook her head. “Travelling to other realms… that has never been an area of expertise of the guild. We deal with Death, nothing more.”

  “And the mirrors?”

  “An Ancient creation, I would guess,” she said. “The League stole many artefacts from the Ancients. It’s not hard to find them if you know where to look—or it wasn’t, before Lord Sutherland started hoarding the information for himself. I suppose now I understand why, if he was conducting similar experiments.”

  “Question.” I darted a quick look at the vampire, who was intently listening in. “Do you know how to banish a shade? A regular banishment didn’t work.”

  Lady Montgomery strode up to the circle of candles. The vampire, while retaining his ravenous expression, moved imperceptibly backwards. “Yes, I can. Watch very carefully, Jas, and remember that vampires have access to the same tools that we do.”

  She reached through the circle’s boundary, her hands touching the vampire’s shadowy outline. A glowing blue light travelled from the vampire to her hands as she removed them from the circle. Like when a necromancer reanimated a corpse, except the thread of light travelled towards her, not the other way around. The light around her hands brightened, and the vampire dimmed.

  I watched, my eyes widening. Lloyd stood frozen at my side, and even Keir’s attention was entirely fixed on the vampire.

  “No,” he whispered. “I will not… die.”

  He was already fading, becoming more transparent until the blue light died out. The last shadow dissipated, and every last trace of the vampire was gone. She hadn’t even used the banishing words.

  Note to self: don’t get on her bad side. My former boss had reached out and drained his life force like… well, a vampire. “How in the world did you do that?”

  Lady Montgomery lowered her hands. “Energy transfer. Not a skill we teach on our curriculum—it requires opening a direct connection between yourself and the vampire, and it’s generall
y only necessary to use it on shades. The transfer removes the energy tethering them to life.”

  “You took his spirit essence out,” Keir said. “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking from me to Keir. “I suppose another vampire would be able to do the same, since the transfer of energy is your area of expertise. That’s likely why you were chosen as subjects of the experiment.”

  “Maybe.” Keir caught my eye for a brief second, enough for me to be certain we’d both had the same thought at the word energy transfer. Lady Montgomery had managed to turn the spirit from a shade back into an ordinary ghost again. What if the same magic could be used to separate Keir’s spirit from mine—and mine from Evelyn’s?

  Keir didn’t speak a word as we re-entered the lobby, leaving the cold room behind. His brow was furrowed as though lost in thought.

  “What now?” Lloyd asked me. “Are you and Keir gonna—”

  “Not now.” The words came out sharper than I intended. “Sorry. I have to think about this.”

  “Me too.” Keir turned to me. “I need to check on my brother. I’d invite you back with me, but you want to catch up with your friends, right?”

  My objection died on my lips. If we were to do the energy transfer, it would take away Keir’s resilience and might make him more vulnerable than before. The decision should be mutual—which meant giving him the chance to make up his mind first.

  “I should stay at the guild tonight,” I said. “It’s safer, and I have everything I need with me.”

  Except you.

  He tilted his head as though he’d heard the unspoken words, and lowered his head to press his lips against mine.

  He didn’t drain me, and I didn’t, despite our direct connection, try the energy transfer. The last thing I wanted was to weaken him right before our mission. But if there was a way to ensure that our link never hurt him again…