Neon Blue

by E J Frost

  I wince again. “Okay, it is as bad as it sounds.” It could be worse, actually. Poltergeists can make life really miserable for the living. “I don’t want you to worry.”

  “Well, I do worry. And I’d be a flaming insensitive bitch if I didn’t. So how bad is it and is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Er, kinda bad, and no, I’m afraid not.”

  Lin glares at her coffee cup. “I hate it when I can’t help.”

  “I know you do. That’s what makes you a good doctor. And it’s why I don’t tell you everything. I know how frustrating it is for you to not be able to help.”

  “If I was Kevin, would I be able to help? Do you want me to call him?”

  I raise an eyebrow. As of last month, Lin was still resisting calling her younger brother by his Western name. I wonder what changed there, and why she didn’t mention it to me.

  “Let’s see how it goes tonight,” I say. “If it goes badly, then, yes, I might take you up on that.”

  Because where Lin only inherited some minor healing talent, her brother Wen-Long inherited the full compliment of their great-grandfather’s abilities, including necromancy.

  I should be preparing for channeling my pissed-off ghost. Instead I’m cleaning my house. On my hands and knees. With a scrub-brush, rubber gloves and a bucket of bleach.

  Why? Because Lilliwhite, who is perched on the kitchen table, overseeing my efforts with the linoleum, says the reason that the Squire has never accepted my invitation into the house is because it’s too dirty. And if he’s going to come tonight to guard me while I try to talk to this ghost, the house has to be spotless.

  Damn traditionalist.

  “There’s still some hair in that corner,” Lilliwhite says.

  “Then why don’t you magic it away?” I grit. I don’t mind cleaning up to impress a guest, but this is ridiculous.

  “He’d know if I helped.”

  Right. I slide on my knees over to the corner and hit it with the scrub-brush. To give her her due, Lilliwhite’s right. Toby’s fur has gotten into every nook and cranny of the house. I rinse a hank of golden fur out of the scrub-brush and give the corner another swipe.

  “Better?”

  “Mmm. Now the tall box.”

  “What?” She’s pointing at the refrigerator. “Oh, come on. I’m not cleaning out my ‘fridge. What’s he going to do, a white-glove inspection?”

  “It smells.” Lilliwhite points her tiny noise in the air.

  Great. I dump out the dirty water in the bucket, shake my head at the thought of all the corals dying in Boston Harbor because of the fae’s peccadilloes, pour in some more bleach, and trade the scrubber for a sponge.

  Half an hour later, the sun’s nearly set. The Squire should be arriving any minute. I’m not showered or dressed. But my refrigerator’s cleaner than it’s been since Sears first delivered it.

  “Satisfied?” I ask the pixie grimly.

  “It’ll do.”

  Picky fae.

  “You’d better hurry. He’ll be here soon.”

  “Oh, thanks.” I dump out the bucket, strip off the gloves and race upstairs to shower. I don’t have time for anything fancy, so I just scrub myself hard with a wintergreen salt scrub and hope that’s enough to count as purified. I leave my hair alone. I washed it this morning and I don’t have time to mess with conditioner, without which it becomes a static-frizz disaster. I dive out of the shower to Lilliwhite’s tinkling tones, “He’s here.”

  “Well, I’m naked, so he’s going to have to wait a minute.”

  “He wouldn’t mind. He likes mortal women.”

  He does? I hadn’t thought of him that way. Given that I’ve never seen him without full armor and a helmet, I wasn’t even sure he had those . . . bits. All those nights we’ve been together, and it never occurred to me. The idea’s kind of . . . exciting. But then I remember Tam Lin and every other story involving a faerie lover. Bad idea. “Well, I mind.”

  While I don’t like leaving the Squire waiting on my doorstep, I really do need to do a minute of preparation. Sweet almond and vanilla lotion first. And then the surgical tape.

  Lilliwhite watches me from the lip of the sink with unblinking interest.

  “Could I have some privacy here?” I ask.

  “Why? I know what you look like.”

  Yeah, but there’s a difference between being naked in front of someone and having them watch your contortions as you seal your genitals with surgical tape. “Fine.”

  I try to ignore her avid interest while I carefully seal each orifice. I leave my face alone for the moment, but I’ll do the channeling blind, deaf and mute, with my nose full of protective steam. I’m not giving an angry ghost any chance to possess me.

  Lilliwhite trails me into my bedroom, where I pick my ritual robe off the bed. I usually cast skyclad, which is how Lilliwhite has seen me naked before, and brew in jeans or something I don’t mind getting splashed, but for summoning and sympathetic magic, I wear silk.

  It takes me a minute to get into the robe. The ties behind my neck and at my hip are kind of a pain to do without help, and I’m moving gingerly because of the surgical tape. For a moment I think of Rowena. We used to help each other into our robes. She loved to make me up before we did any ritual magic. ‘Great bones,’ she always said.

  Now her cheekbones are higher, and rosier, than mine will ever be.

  I shake my head.

  I finish the last tie, tuck the surgical tape into the robe’s front pocket and go to answer the door.

  The Squire follows me through the house without comment. I shouldn’t really expect any, but some acknowledgement of the hours I’ve spent on my hands and knees would be nice.

  Men.

  He doesn’t comment on my robe, either. And in that case, silence is golden, because if I’ve offended him by showing off the shape of my legs in jeans, he must be freaking out over how much the open sides of the robe show. But he can probably tell that it’s a ritual robe, since I don’t usually run around in ankle-length, embroidered, white silk, so maybe that makes it okay.

  We leave the house by the back door. Walking down the steps into the yard teaches me a lesson in why most people don’t stick surgical tape on their genitals. Ouch. I’m going to need a healing potion after tonight, I can tell.

  Shah’s porch light comes on automatically, casting a small yellow pool of light into the yard. I ignore it. It doesn’t matter if he looks out his back door to see what’s tripped the sensor. All anyone looking into my yard tonight will see is fireflies and falling leaves.

  I lead the Squire across the yard and into the circle of trees. Oak, ash, rowan and holly. My holly’s the best holly tree anyone has seen in Massachusetts. New England Horticulture has even been out to photograph it.

  It’s what drew me to this house. The circle of trees, and, in particular, the magnificent holly, which must have been planted by some other witch, long before the area was developed in the 1960s. But I’ve never been able to find any records of who owned the place before the very nice but completely un-talented couple who sold it to me.

  As soon as we enter the circle, my hearth room appears around us. Witchlight rises, silver and blue near the trees, gold and red near the center. Suspended in the middle of a permanent pentacle set into the dirt floor, my cauldron flares, shooting green and blue sparks into the air.

  Show-off.

  I pick up a hazel besom from the pile leaning against the oak tree and sweep the path before me, chanting softly under my breath. I spare a thought for the Squire. I hope he won’t be offended by anything I do. This isn’t fae magic. This is my magic, and a lot of it is very untraditional.

  Then I don’t have time to spare him any more thought. Magic ruffles through me. The small hairs of my body rise. My hair flutters in a breeze of my magic’s making. The sweetgrass and yew fire I laid under the cauldron earlier bursts into bright, burning life, and the smell of wormwood rises from my cauldron.

  I
feel the Dead immediately. They press close, just outside the circle of trees. I sweep quickly, wanting the protection of the pentacle and the inner circle around me before they start talking. I cross the stones of the pentacle set into the hard-packed earth and feel its defensive magic snap into place around me. The Squire stops like he’s run into an invisible wall. I reach back, take his gauntleted hand, and welcome him into the heart of my hearth room.

  He crosses the pentacle slowly, like each movement is an effort. I sweep two more steps to the circle of sand. It flares to life, gold light erupting from the ground. The ley-line my hearth room sits atop glimmers, light rising from the ground to shoot off through the trees.

  Oh, magic is walking tonight.

  I leave the Squire at the edge of the inner circle and go back to sweep around the pentacle. There’s no dust or dirt on the pentacle stones – my hearth room keeps itself a lot cleaner than I keep my house – but as soon as I sweep them the river stones begin to gleam wetly, the way they did when I first collected them from the Mystic’s bed. They fill with moonlight, and the shush of water laps through my hearth room.

  “Water,” I say softly, calling the Element, and for a moment I’m drenched, cool liquid sluicing down to splash over my toes. Then I’m dry again, and I stoop to call the next Element.

  “Earth.” I rub my hands over the hard-packed ground, scraping it lightly, until dirt gathers under my nails. My skin goes gritty, as though I’d rolled in freshly-turned earth, and a small dust-storm swirls around me.

  When the dust settles, I step forward, into the golden light of the inner circle.

  “Fire,” I call. It leaps at me from all corners of the room. I stand within a swirling holocaust, feeling its hot feathery kiss against my skin. I hold out the besom and let it burn to ashes.

  “Air,” I say and begin to dance the circle. A tug from the surgical tape. Ow. I ignore it and the next step takes me off the ground. I dance the rest of the circle in the air, my arms outstretched, fire and water and earth swirling around me.

  The first Elemental appears. A pyroclast, small eruptions of lava spilling from his rocky body to hiss on the stones of the pentacle.

  The second is a heartbeat behind him. An ondine, who rises out of the river stones’ glow like she’s surfacing from deep water. She shakes herself and drops of water spatter against the side of my cauldron to fizz with the biting scent of vinegar.

  I finish the circle and wait for a moment, dropping gently back to the ground. Nothing else appears. Just two Elements tonight. Well, three, since the pyroclast represents both fire and earth. Still, less than usual. And not my usual crowd. I usually get a nethanc or a salamander or two.

  And neither one’s an Air elemental. I wonder if that’s a bad sign. The Walking Dead’s sphere is Air.

  I bow to the two elementals and call gifts into my hands. A river stone for the ondine, imbued with a charm to let her walk on land. She takes it from me with a bow of her wet green head.

  I walk around the edge of my cauldron to give the other gift, a salt crystal, to the pyroclast.

  The air shimmers. Three nethancs appear in a rattle of leathery wings. They hiss in a chorus, twisting their reptilian heads around to stare at the pyroclast and the ondine.

  Three. Whoa.

  I give the salt crystal to the pyroclast, who consumes it immediately with a fiery leer at the ondine. While they’re glaring at each other, I call gifts for the nethancs. Steaks. Rare. One from my kitchen counter and two from my freezer. They’re going to have to take them cold. I wasn’t expecting more than one.

  The Air elementals don’t seem to mind. They snap down the steaks in one bite. In concert, all three scaly necks moving as one.

  A hydra. Water and Air.

  I bow to each Elemental again but am careful not to thank them aloud. Old magics don’t like to be thanked by young magics. They find it insulting.

  I reach and draw my churi out of its shadow-sheath. I salute each of the Elementals with it, and then the Squire, drawing him into the ritual. Stooping, I plunge the tip of the churi into the earth just inside the glowing sand circle, and begin to draw the third circle of protection.

  As soon as the churi touches the ground, the final circle flares to life. It’s usually just a line in the dirt, drawn with the churi and sealed with a drop of my blood. Tonight it’s a blazing silver circle, balls of witchlight leaping off it and zipping up into the trees.

  Oh, magic is definitely walking tonight.

  I lift the churi and power ruffles along my skin, hot, cool, wet, gritty.

  A swirl of magic and I rise into the air.

  I grimace. I don’t mind levitating, but I prefer to do it on purpose. And I prefer not to do it when I’m wearing my ritual robe, which rises around me, giving the Squire a view of my bare legs that will probably offend him down to the tips of his fae boots.

  But no gift from the Elements should be refused. I rise until I can hover over my cauldron, twist to wrap myself in the steam, and reach into the front pocket of my robe for the surgical tape.

  The Dead don’t give me any time. They sweep through my hearth room in a screaming, swirling tide. My wards have held them off long enough and now that I’m protected, they’re not waiting any longer. They roar through the ring of trees, pressing inward, spectral hands reaching for me. The pentacle glows, its moonlight outline reaching toward the sky. The two circles blaze, gold and silver, so bright I’m blinded.

  I reach for the wards, tamping them down so I can feel the Dead. Closing my eyes makes it easier. The Dead are a glowing blue stream. Individual faces bubble up through the flow. There are many here tonight who have something to say. In opening the way for my ghost, I’ve called a whole host of unquiet Dead.

  I focus, grasping my churi between my hands to whittle my concentration down until it’s as sharp and bright as the edge of my blade.

  Peter’s face flashes behind my eyes.

  I’m so startled – I wasn’t thinking about him, wasn’t thinking about him at all – that my eyes snap open.

  And there, just at the edge of one of the points of the pentacle, framed by the leathery wings of two of the nethancs, is my ghost. That faint, female outline. A hint of a scent, sweet and powdery, like an old woman. A suggestion of silver-gray curls. They bob as the ghost twists, writhes. She screams. High-pitched. Agonized. The nethancs on either side of her shudder, and, beside me, the Squire raises his sword.

  I hastily shut my eyes. She looks exactly the same in my Inner Sight. But the stream of the Dead doesn’t. It’s gone black and what’s reaching out of it now are nightmares, skeletal hands, skulls, the snapping, snaggle-toothed jaws of ghouls.

  The Dead are walking, and they are pissed off.

  I sheathe my churi and hold my hands out to my ghost. Talk to me, I invite.

  Please . . . make it stop. She flutters, her shape compressing and expanding, like a candle flame in a draft. I’ve never seen a ghost do that before.

  Tell me how. Her pain is clear, and very real. But I have no idea how to help her.

  Make him stop! She screams and the Dead scream with her. I feel their screams like a hundred sharp stones pelting me. A thousand tiny cuts open on my exposed arms and legs. Blood oozes, drips into the cauldron.

  My cauldron’s used to the taste of my blood, but tonight, with so much magic abroad, just a few drops enflame it. Light explodes all around me. Protective light. Ghost-killing light.

  I turn, spinning in the air, wrapping the light around me before it tears into the Dead. The spirit-stream circles wildly, hands clawing, faces stretched wide in silent screams.

  I twist, turning in a tight circle, pulling the light into me. Firelight, witchlight, ghostlight, all arc toward me, wrap around me in multicolored streamers. I pull it into me, open my mouth wide and swallow it down. Feel it burn its way down into my stomach. Erupt stinging out of my pores. I’ll pay for this later, but for now it seems to quiet the Dead. When the screaming stops, I pause and t
ry again.

  Tell me how to make it stop, I ask the ghost.

  She raises those black pits of eyes to me. “Thank you,” she whispers.

  And then she’s gone.

  The Dead go with her. The Elementals follow a moment later, winking out one by one as I sag to the ground. They can feel that I’m too drained to call the Dead again tonight. I’m done, and so are they. Shit.

  One of the nethancs hisses at me before it goes. They’re meat-eaters, aerial predators, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them tries to take a chunk out of me some day.

  But not today. I draw my churi lethargically, but before I can even think about raising it, the Squire’s there, sweeping me behind him with one hand, holding his sword on the nethanc with the other.

  The scaly Elemental hisses again and disappears.

  “I appreciate that.” I slump against the Squire’s back. “I’m really not up to fighting off one of those tonight.” My voice is a rasp, my throat seared from swallowing so much power.

  The Squire sheathes his sword and turns to me. Before I can say anything, he scoops me up, his arms firm under my back and knees, and carries me to the house.

  I think about protesting. I’m not a fainting maiden, and I don’t need to be rescued. But it would probably sound ungrateful. And he is very traditional. So instead I put my arms around his broad shoulders and let him carry me into my extremely clean kitchen.

  Chapter 11

  Showered, carefully un-taped, various cuts closed with comfrey, and dressed in warm pajamas and my moose slippers, I sit at my kitchen table and stare at the phone handset sitting in front of me.

  Why did I see Peter’s face?

  It’s the question I keep coming back to. Beside the obvious ones. What was hurting the ghost? Why did pulling all the negative energies into myself – something my stomach is complaining about so bitterly that I’m afraid to hazard even a cup of decaf – seem to help her? And what’s happening to her now? Those have me wondering. But the question that keeps popping to the front of my brain is: why did I see Peter’s face?