He broke the kiss, wrapping both arms around my back. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jas. I’ll call… no, I’ll contact you through the spirit realm. Okay?”
“Better than okay.” I dug my hands into the fabric of his thick, spell-strengthened coat, then released him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He gave me a faint smile before leaving the guild.
Lloyd cleared his throat. “You’re seriously not going to remove the link? You like him that much?”
“I haven’t even tried the energy transfer yet,” I said. “I need to practise, and I definitely don’t need to take any more risks when we have an army to banish tomorrow.”
“Uh, about that,” said Lloyd. “Lady Montgomery didn’t say who would be going through the mirror with you, did she?”
“Keir and I are going to have to take the lead. And Ilsa, I bet the energy transfer is no problem for her. Maybe Morgan, too, but the number of ghosts in there is probably too overwhelming for anyone with psychic tendencies.”
“And not me?” He raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t want you to get hurt on my account,” I said. “Those shades are powerful—even Keir and I couldn’t stop that vampire getting through the mirror.”
“You do realise that if it all goes tits-up, we’ll be fighting those vamps out in the open rather than a safe enclosed tank, don’t you? I’m going with you, idiot.” He wrapped me in a bear hug, muffling my protests, then released me.
“We’ll see what the boss says.” I headed for the stairs. “Where’s Ilsa, do you know?”
“Either the training room or the archives, I’d guess.”
I headed upstairs with Lloyd. “I’ll tell her how to do that energy transfer thing, if she doesn’t already know.”
Considering she’d learned of the existence of vampires around the same time as I had and had only read about shades in the textbooks before she’d met me, I had my doubts she did. We were going in with so little knowledge compared to the enemy, but what choice did we have? If we didn’t handle the lab as fast as possible, the entire city would be overrun with vampire shades.
We found Ilsa in the archives with Morgan and Mackie.
“About bloody time.” Mackie bounced to her feet. “I knew you were alive as soon as you came back, Jas.”
“That’s because you took the iron off.” Morgan put down the textbook he was reading.
Mackie shrugged one shoulder. “So did you.”
“Ilsa asked me to.” He jerked his head over his shoulder at his sister, who stood on a footstool to reach the highest bookshelf. “She insisted that I’d be able to sense if Jas came back from the other side.”
“Lloyd’s idea,” she said, without looking up.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You all took the risk for my sake?”
“Hardly a risk,” said Mackie, rocking back on her heels. “It’s not like there are any evil vampires around to mess with my thoughts.”
“Uh… about that.” Crap. I can’t tell her the Soul Collector might be back. Not without concrete evidence. If he’d been there in the lab, he’d have found Keir and me. I doubted a tank could hold him.
“Aside from the vampire shade army?” said Morgan. “We’re on the first patrol, obviously.”
“You aren’t.” Ilsa lifted a hefty textbook down from the topmost shelf. “Nor’s Mackie. We’re not prepared to deal with them.”
“Did Lady Montgomery tell you how to banish a shade?” I asked.
“River did,” she said. “He’s giving instructions to the others, too. In case any of them escape through the mirror into the city.”
Worry squirmed through me. “It’s a high-level skill, isn’t it?”
“Not when they’re stuck in tanks,” said Morgan. “A kid could do it.”
“I’m not a kid, I’m eighteen,” Mackie said. “And yes, I can do it, thanks. I’m top of my novice class now, Jas, did you know?”
“That’s awesome,” I said, with a rush of genuine pride at her enthusiasm.
“At this rate she’ll catch you up, Morgan,” Ilsa said. “And you, Lloyd. If you keep getting suspended from missions, anyway.”
I frowned at Lloyd. “Why’d you get suspended? Did you store zombie body parts in your room?”
“Nah, we tried some questionable tricks to get you back from the hole in the sky,” Lloyd said.
I chanced a look at Morgan, wondering if the two had finally voiced their feelings aloud yet. Judging by the distance between them, I’d guess not.
“Questionable meaning illegal?” I queried. To get Lloyd back, I’d have done the same, no question.
“Maybe.” Morgan shrugged. “He said you might be stuck in limbo.”
“Not anymore.” I looked around the room at my friends. “Tomorrow will be risky. I’m not talking any of you out of coming with me, but it’s bad over there. Really bad.”
“I’ve probably seen worse.” Morgan removed his feet from the desk. “Look, you need me there. None of you is psychic.”
“That’s why I think it’ll be too overwhelming,” said Ilsa, with a glance at Mackie. “Those ghosts… how many were there, Jas?”
“Hundreds. Maybe thousands.” I lived in a city of the dead and yet I’d never seen so many trapped souls. It was like the gates of Death didn’t even exist over there.
“But they weren’t all vampires, right?” Mackie’s brash confidence faded a little.
“Most of them weren’t,” I admitted. “But the ones trapped inside tanks were vampires and shades. That’s why we have to banish them one at a time. They were pushed to the brink of death, but the spirit circles are keeping them alive. They’re stuck in limbo, reduced to nothing but hunger, and can drain you dry in a blink.”
Mackie made a small noise, her head withdrawing into the shadows.
Morgan glanced her way. “What, have you seen them before? The guy who took you wasn’t a shade, right?”
“Mackie?” I said gently. “Do you know something?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth pinched. “He… the vampires who captured me said they escaped from a lab somewhere. That’s why they wanted to attack the guild. They… they blamed the necromancers.”
A lab? The mirror was miles away, but… maybe they’d escaped from there a long time ago. Mackie had been a prisoner for years, and the lab had been around at least as long.
“Whatever the case, there’s a lot of people who’ve been suffering for a long time trapped in there, and I owe it to them to at least try to set them free.”
If we can, then maybe Keir and I can undo the bond making him dependent on me.
The memory of him nearly drifting beyond Death’s gate was still raw. I’d come so close to losing him, and I would never put him at risk on my account again.
“What about Lord Sutherland?” said Lloyd. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m on board with the plan, but what if he attacks the guild while you’re gone?”
“He didn’t attack after he pushed me through the gap in the spirit line, did he?” I said. “I’m not even on his radar as a threat. It’s insulting, to be honest.”
He didn’t even seem to care about the Hemlocks. At least, I didn’t think he did. After all the Hemlocks’ insistence—especially Cordelia—that there was an inevitable war, they seemed to be mistaken on who was actually going to participate. The battle was supposed to involve the Ancients and the Hemlocks. Not the mages and the rest of the supernatural community.
“He’s a sick bastard,” said Mackie. “We’ll wipe out his army.”
Ilsa put down the heavy textbook on the desk. “Shades and vampires hardly appear in the same sentence in any book in here, though. Did the mages confiscate every book on the subject? That’s what River implied.”
“I think they did,” I said. “They also confiscated a book from Asher—Isabel’s friend—which contained instructions on how to do ritual magic. Pretty sure the mages are using it as a guidebook.”
But I hadn’t found any signs of the book at th
eir headquarters.
“Asher had a book on rituals?” asked Lloyd.
“He used to, years ago,” I said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d left it over there in the lab. It’ll be what he was using to bind those vampires, I’ll bet. And it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s another reason their plans are on hold until they find the mirror. They left the book behind, and without it, they can’t summon the Ancients.”
And if I found it, I’d be able to reverse the ritual binding my soul with Evelyn’s and bind her to a new body—assuming I found one.
“We’ll take everything they have,” said Morgan.
“I’m not letting you lot have all the fun,” Mackie added.
“I still think you’re batshit, but I’m with you,” said Lloyd. “Okay, if this is our last night alive, I think we should order takeout and watch Zombie Platypus Army Part Two.”
“That sounds bloody terrible,” said Morgan. “I’m in.”
Ilsa snorted. “I’m going out with River, but have fun.”
“Just like old times?” My throat tightened. I might be back home at the guild, but it wasn’t really my home. Not as long as the price on my head existed.
But my friends would stick by my side. And tomorrow, we’d take down the mages’ army before they could unleash it on the city.
17
To no surprise, I couldn’t sleep. After staying up late converting all the ingredients I’d left behind in my old room into usable spells, I left my body in rest mode and floated through the roof of the guild. There, I found Evelyn hovering in silence, eyes trained on the shape of the castle towering over the city. A rush of emotion pierced me at the sight of the peaked roofs, the ribbon of rippling coastline in the distance.
“There you are,” I said. “I wondered if you’d gone walkabout again.”
“That place nearly wiped me out,” Evelyn replied. “You have no idea what it was like in there as a ghost. They swarmed me.”
“Oh, shit.” That explained why she’d gone silent during the chase through the lab and hadn’t helped me recapture the vampire. As a ghost, she’d have been swamped by the crowd of tortured spirits. Not a pleasant experience. “Sorry.”
“I’m used to it,” she said. “I’d rather not have their army overrun the city, so I’ll help you be rid of them.”
“Can you do the energy transfer thing? Even as a ghost?”
“Yes,” she said tersely. Her eyes traced the flow of energy beneath us, the spirit line crossing to the abandoned train station and beyond. The memory of her death and rebirth crawled to the forefront of my mind. We hadn’t had a real conversation since I’d been forced to relive her death in the forest, and if I were her, I’d be feeling pretty fragile, too.
“Just checking,” I said. “You know, since those vampires survived so long in the lab, it’s probably possible to bind them to new bodies. If they aren’t out of their minds, that is.”
“If there was already a soul present in the body, then they would likely perish like that unfortunate necromancer,” Evelyn said. “Even another shade might fade away. Two souls would not make one another stronger. There’s nobody quite like you and I out there in the world.”
Says who? Did she not want to be separated? She’d done nothing but bitch at me for my entire exile, when I hadn’t been wandering around in the spirit realm, anyway. Admittedly, we hadn’t found her a substitute body yet—without a soul already attached. The body would either have to be recently dead or preserved by blood magic, which made it trickier. But then, look at Aiden.
Unless… unless she thought being removed from my body would cost her some of her magic? If it was true, then the same would happen to me. Together we were stronger. Both of us. Strength meant more to her than it did to me, but she’d made no secret of her desire to leave me behind and fulfil the Hemlocks’ mission without me holding her back. Right?
“What is it you want, Jas?” Her eyes were sharp, cutting. “Do you think this is an easy way out for you? A chance to evade your responsibilities?”
“Excuse me? I’m about to take on an army of vampire shades with a bunch of people who only found out they existed just yesterday.” What was her problem this time? Her comment about us being unique was a reminder that we were both outcasts, but that didn’t mean it had to define us. I hadn’t fit in at the witch orphanage, or with the mages, or even really at the guild, either. After all, I’d lived a lie most of the time I’d been here. Yet I’d made friends. I’d built a life for myself here.
Evelyn had never had that chance. Never had the choice. Was she jealous of me?
“If we separate,” I said carefully, “you’ll be able to start over. Become whoever you want to be.”
She made a soft, incredulous noise. “I am a Hemlock witch, Jacinda. It’s my life’s purpose to destroy the Ancients and claim the power that is rightfully mine.”
“All right, then.” I gave up on trying to argue with her. “Feel free to do whatever you like. Just try to remember you’re not the only person who’s affected by your decisions, okay?”
Her head snapped up. “We’re not alone in here.”
A distant voice said, “Honestly, Arden, that doesn’t help.”
“Ilsa,” I said, turning on the spot. “That sounded like Ilsa. No idea who Arden is, though.”
I moved through the grey haze in the direction of the noise. Further down the path, Ilsa floated, a leather-bound book open in her hands. Her talisman.
“Hey,” I said to Ilsa. “What’re you doing?”
“Oh, hi, Jas,” she said, looking up. “I’m trying to wrangle answers from this book. It’s supposed to contain the secrets of the Ancients, but it seems pretty damned reluctant to tell me how to stop those vampire shades.”
“I didn’t know you could actually read the book.” I glanced at the page over her shoulder, but the glowing writing was too small to read.
My magic hummed to life, drawn towards the pages. I willed it to quieten down. Stop reacting to Ilsa. She’s my friend.
She closed the book and opened it again. “The book’s text changes depending on what I need to know.”
I put my hands behind my back. “The text in the book changes by itself?”
“It has part of a living god in it,” said Ilsa. “But it depends if he feels like sharing with me or not. Usually, he doesn’t.”
“Huh.” The book itself looked unremarkable, aside from the faintly glowing cover, but Ilsa must be able to see something in its pages that I couldn’t. “What exactly is it, a guide to being Gatekeeper?”
“Kind of,” she said. “It contains basic info on most parts of necromancy, including vampires, but shades are different. Shades can be created. Vampires are born that way, from what I can figure out. That means the ones in the labs were captured from somewhere. Also, it would really have helped if Arden had told me beforehand that the only way to kill a vampire shade is to remove their spirit essence, turning them mortal again.”
“You and this god were… friends?” I asked.
“More like master and apprentice, and I wasn’t the master.” She closed the book, shaking her head at the cover. A shimmering image of a raven was etched into it, its eyes oddly mesmerising. “Arden is still alive, in this book. Like all Ancients, he’s hard to destroy.”
“Was he involved in the war?” The question escaped before I could stop it. “I mean, the war between the Ancients and the Hemlocks?”
“Not that I know of.” She frowned. “I don’t think he was ever really involved with the other gods.”
“My magic keeps reacting to your talisman,” I admitted. “Like it did to the Moonbeam stones.”
Her eyes widened. “What, in a hostile way? Why?”
“I don’t know.” I stuck my hands out, showing the sparking magic across my palms. “It just turned on by itself. My coven’s being as unhelpful as ever. They didn’t even tell me they created those rituals to contact the gods themselves. Not to fight them. Asher said… he
said all magic had the same source. Ancients, witch magic, necromancy, whatever.”
Her mouth opened slightly. “Maybe it does. It’s a theory I’ve come across a few times in my readings… not that there’s much on the Ancients. Just speculation. But they’ve been involved in this realm for years. I think they’ve always been able to cross over.”
“Before they were shut out of this realm.” By my coven, apparently. No wonder they feel betrayed.
But who was in the wrong? The Hemlocks had never been the most forthcoming of individuals, but every Ancient I’d met had tried to kill me and my friends. Not much of a contest there. And despite it all, Evelyn believed it was her duty to fight against the Ancients. Even if she gained a new body, a new life. Did she really not want anything for herself?
Even if I was unable to convince her of that, tomorrow, I might learn how to set both of us free.
The next morning, I woke early and took my time getting ready and setting up my spells ready to storm the castle. Or rather, the top-secret lab.
Lloyd knocked on my door to bring me a stack of toast from the cafeteria. “The mirror’s here.”
“The mages brought it?” I took the plate from him and munched toast on the way downstairs, feeling slightly odd dressed in my necromancer coat. Like I was just running a regular patrol, not a potential suicide mission that had never been attempted in guild history before.
In the lobby, I found Vance speaking with Lady Montgomery. So that’s how they smuggled in the mirror—using his teleporting power.
“Oh, Jas.” Vance turned to me, and I awkwardly swallowed my mouthful of toast. “The mirror is in a secure room. If the hotel we stored it in is discovered, Lord Sutherland’s people won’t find anything there.”
“Good,” I said. “Are you coming with us?”
“The situation seems better suited to necromancers, given the nature of the army.” He nodded to Lady Montgomery. “We will be staying here to protect the guild in case Lord Sutherland gets wind of your plan.”
“I hope not.” The vampire shades were enough to deal with. But I wouldn’t put it past Lord Sutherland to mount a sneak attack on the guild while we were gone.
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