Zeke grunted. “It’s against the laws—”
“Then go back there and rat me out to Grayson,” I snapped. “It’s the least of the things the ARC will charge me with.”
“But this charge would be true, yeah?” Zeke pressed. “The others may not be.”
“As if that matters,” I said. “You heard the stuff the ARC believes about us.”
Zeke looked away, his jaw jumping as he clenched his teeth. Dawn drove up in a wood-paneled green station wagon, and waved us over.
Mort moved close to me and said in a low voice, “You know the ARC will just go in and mess with her memories if you tell her, right?”
“Only if they find out she knows, and they think she’s a threat.” We hurried to the station wagon and piled in. I took shotgun, next to Dawn.
“So we’re headed for Everett?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I glanced at my watch. Just after 11 A.M. The ride to Everett would suck up a good portion of the remaining day, but I had little choice.
“Allrighty. Please keep your head and arms inside the vehicle at all times. Asses, feel free to hang out the window.”
I kept glancing in the side-view mirror until we reached the edge of town, but nobody appeared to be following us.
“So,” Dawn said. “You were going to tell me the secret to life, the universe, and everything?”
“Actually, something like that,” I said. I could feel Zeke’s disapproving glare on the back of my neck. I cleared my throat. “The big secret is, magic is real. And I don’t just mean in the sense of your tarot readings, or Wiccan spells. There’s a whole world out there hidden from you and the rest of the mundanes.”
“I see. So I’m a muggle, and you’re a wizard, Harry? Is that it?”
I frowned. “No, I said mundane, not … muggle? And I’m not a wizard. I’m a necromancer. My whole family is, though we do have some wizardry in our bloodline. Well, except Father. He’s a thaumaturge. And he’s shown touches of sorcery, seeing hints of the future from time to time.”
Dawn gave me a worried look. “Necromancers? Please tell me you don’t dress up in robes and do sick things with dead bodies, or drug people all Serpent and the Rainbow style?”
“No. We mostly do the same thing as regular morticians, except we can actually manipulate life energy and the body somewhat, we can bind, dissipate, or destroy spirits, and we can extract latent magic from a body. And … I can talk to the dead.”
“You see dead people. Got it. And this explains your running away all these years, and all the weird shit that happened today, how?”
“Uh, right. Okay, let me back up a bit.” I composed my thoughts. “Basically, there are two realities, at least, that we know of. There’s our reality, and there’s the Other Realm, which you can think of sort of like fairyland, and it’s where most raw magical energy comes from. A long time ago, shamans learned to access the Other Realm, to travel there on dream quests and such. And their dreams and memories took shape in the Other Realm, became living spirits, and these spirits began to travel back into our world, hitching rides with the shamans. Some of these early spirits became gods or other beings we call the Elder Spirits. The others joined with people, with creatures, even with plants in our world. They created the magical races such as the waerfolk, unicorns, kelpie, dryads, and all the rest, which we call feybloods.”
“Holy shit,” Dawn said. “That’s amazing.”
“I know it’s a lot—”
“No, really. I was just telling Tinkerbell this same story the other day while we were flying back from Never Never Land, and she was all, ‘Bitch, please stop smoking the crack,’ and I was all, ‘Yeah, you’re right, who’d believe such a load of crap? I mean, fairies can’t be real, right?’”
“Dawn—”
“Wait, I’m not done. And then Tink dropped dead right there because I didn’t believe in her, and I felt really bad, so I ate an entire carton of chocolate ice cream and had sex with the Old Spice guy at the same time, and then I realized, shit, I must be dreaming and fairies aren’t real, and I woke up hungry, horny, and really pissed off. Okay, all done now. You were saying?”
Mort chuckled in the backseat.
I looked over my shoulder. “Shut up, Mort. It’s not like I’ve ever had to do this before.”
Zeke looked out the window. “You shouldn’t be telling her at all,” he muttered.
“This is awesome,” I said, looking back at Dawn. “I’m telling you the truth, and I’m getting crap for it from every side.”
“Yeah, well, you seriously can’t expect me to believe what you’re saying? I’m back to thinking you’re a meth cooker at this point. You know that shit rots your brain, right?”
“Tell you what. When we get where we’re going, you’ll have all the proof you need. But for now, just humor me, okay?”
“Oh, you’re plenty amusing without adding my humor,” Dawn said. “But go ahead. Talk away.”
“Fine. Where was I?” I glanced back at Mort.
“The Fey created the feybloods.”
“Right. Well, long story short—”
“Too late,” Zeke muttered.
“—the Fey themselves evolved into true, thinking beings, and eventually tried to negotiate as equals with the arcana, to protect the feybloods and set up rules of trade for the magic from their realm, but the arcana dismissed that as negotiating with a dream, or a pet. Even today, there are sects who don’t believe the Fey are any more than very lifelike dreams, without real feelings or desires of their own. These conflicts have led to several Fey-Arcana wars.”
Zeke exhaled sharply. “You make it sound like we caused the wars. But the Fey and feybloods need to be controlled. They’re too dangerous to just let them do whatever they want, especially when some of them would love nothing more than to see every arcana dead.”
Part of me agreed with Zeke, the part that had been fed on by the Fey for most of my life. But the part that had been raised by my empathetic mother and generous father, the best version of me whom I realized I wanted to be around Dawn, won out.
“Maybe they wouldn’t want to see us dead if we didn’t treat them all like animals?”
“They are animals!” Zeke responded.
“Including your sister?” The words slipped out before running through my “stupid things not to say” filter.
Zeke’s hands were suddenly around my throat, solid as an iron clamp and squeezing hard. The car rocked back and forth as Dawn swerved and shouted, “What the fuck?”
“Let go!” I gasped. “I’m sorry, okay?”
Zeke released me with a push that gave me minor whiplash. I rubbed my neck. Anger borrowed my mouth to speak, “I didn’t call Vee an animal, Zeke, you did! And if you put your hands around my neck again, you’ll get to feel your spirit being ripped from your body.”
“You’d have a hard time doing that if you’re already dead, fool.”
“Jesus, you two,” Dawn said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you guys are taking this fantasy shit way too seriously.”
“We’re fine,” I said, looking at Zeke, and took several deep breaths. This wasn’t helping my case with Dawn. And Zeke’s reaction aside, it had been a jerk move to antagonize him like that. I willed my anger to dissipate. “I’m sorry I said anything about Vee.” Zeke shrugged and looked out the window. I glanced at Mort. “And thanks for the backup by the way, bro.”
Mort raised his hands. “Don’t drag me into your drama.”
I turned back around and settled into my seat.
Dawn adjusted her rearview mirror and said, “So far, you still haven’t told me anything that explains what’s up with you and your family.”
“Well, I was trying. You need to understand my world in order to understand what’s wrong with it,” I said.
“You’d be amazed at what I can understand,” Dawn said. “So maybe skip the history lesson and get to the point? And then if I have any questions, like what a feyblood is, or which mu
shrooms you’ve been licking, I can just ask you.”
“Fine. Remember Felicity? She was a witch. She didn’t attempt suicide or get shipped off to some hospital; she was attacked with dark magic, or at least pretended to be. Either way, I was framed for it and exiled to the Other Realm for twenty-five years. I just got back a couple days ago, and someone tried to frame me again by really killing Felicity. Plus, I have a clan of witches seeking revenge for Felicity, and because sasquatches killed one of them and they blame me.”
“Sasquatches?”
“Yes, sasquatches.”
“I see. And Pete?”
“He was hit by a hex from that clan of witches.”
“Right. So don’t you have a ministry of magic or something you can go to for protection?”
I sighed. “We have governing bodies called Arcana Ruling Councils who are the nice folks that exiled me and now want to question us as suspects. So I need to figure out who’s really behind all these attacks, assuming it’s not the clan of witches, and to do that I need to talk to Katherine Verona’s spirit. And to figure out how I can get to Magus Verona, I need to talk to a dead security guard who’s in a protected crypt in Everett. And now you know everything.”
Dawn drove in silence for several minutes. Finally, she said, “So, you’re trying to get to this Verona person?”
“Yes.”
“Well, shit, I have no other but a woman’s reason, yet I always thought magic but a jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, as a nose on a man’s face, or a … something or other.”
“Nice. So you still don’t believe me.”
“Not to sound like my old therapist, but I believe you believe.” She shrugged. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for all the magic stuff. There always is, like in that Sherlock Holmes movie. Some sick bastard put a chemical in Pete’s shampoo that was set off when he began to sweat or something, and you think he was hexed. And maybe there really is this ARC thing, a bunch of dudes like the freemasons or Skull and Bones or whoever, who think their hocus pocus rituals are going to help them rule the world someday. All I know for certain is somebody hurt Petey, and if that someone believes the same crazy stuff you do, then maybe you’re the best way to find the bastards, and make them pay.”
“Mundies,” Zeke muttered in the back.
Mort’s phone rang. He checked the screen, then answered. “Hello? No, we’re fine. What—really? You okay? All right. Okay. Thanks.”
He hung up. “Mattie says Grayson left. There were two enforcers with Grayson, and they questioned everyone. They threatened to charge Mattie with obstruction, but they didn’t arrest anyone.”
“Enforcers?” Dawn asked.
“Arcana cops,” I said, glancing at Zeke in his Miami Vice getup. “Zeke used to be one. Their outfits have changed though.”
Dawn glanced in the rearview. “Now, that’s a shame.”
“Just table the label and drive,” Zeke replied.
22
Dead Man’s Party
Holy crap, traffic sucks.
It took almost three hours to reach Everett, between waiting for the Kingston ferry and then getting stuck in all the traffic headed north on I-5. The freeway was three times as wide as I remembered, but still clogged with cars.
When I complained about it, Dawn said, “Maybe you guys should have flown on brooms or something?”
“And mess up my hair?”
She laughed. “You always did worry too much about your hair.”
“Well yeah, it’s my best feature.”
“I always thought your eyes were your best feature. They sparkle when you smile.”
I may have actually blushed a bit. I cleared my throat. “Dawn, I wanted to tell you—” I glanced over my shoulder. Zeke and Mort were both watching me with too much interest. “Uh, I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you looking out for Pete.”
“Yeah, well, looking out for people seems to be my thing.”
We reached Everett, one of the many little cities north of Seattle, just before 3 P.M. I didn’t know much about it except it had a Boeing factory and the Museum of Flight. Like every other town or city we passed through, it had grown since the last time I’d seen it. Thankfully, Mort knew where we were going.
The Evergreen Cemetery sat on the edge of the city, on a little side street not far from the freeway. It had been around since the Civil War era, filled with actual stone and marble headstones, crosses, and statues worn and darkened by time and weather and sorrow. Dawn parked on the side of the road outside its gates, and we made our way across the rolling hills to the most prominent of the crypts, a large stone-gray ziggurat called the Rucker Tomb. I’d visited it many times as a child, climbing its stepped concrete sides and imagining myself exploring Mayan or Aztec ruins, while Father dealt with ARC business in the crypt below. It sat upon a raised concrete platform, and the front entrance was reached by stairs that passed between two man-size stone pylons. We stopped in front of the stairs.
“Please tell me you’re not going to break into this thing,” Dawn said.
“Not exactly,” I replied. “Mort, you’re up.”
Mort turned his pinky ring around so that his persona gem was palm-side down, put his hand on the right pylon, and said, “Aperire Ostium Per Mea Ius Ex Necromantiae.”
There was a moment’s pause, then a voice came from within the stone, “Mortimer Gramaraye, you may enter.”
The stone stairs receded from us with a low grinding sound, revealing a second set of stairs that led down rather than up.
Dawn touched the pylon. “Okay. I’ll admit, that’s some pretty cool Indiana Jones stuff right there. But nothing that requires magic to explain.”
“Just wait,” I said, and led the way down the stairs to a chilly stone passageway that smelled of Pine-Sol and earth, lit by hanging yellow bulbs. The walls were painted white, and half-columns lined the walls every few feet, with arches spanning the hall between columns.
We passed beneath several arches and reached the first sepulchral niche on our right, an alcove about eight feet tall, its base level with my knees. A man and woman stood smiling down at us. He wore a brown topcoat, vest, and ribbon tie, and had bushy sideburns that reminded me of Isaac Asimov. The woman wore a blue dress that gathered in at the waist then flared out in the rear. Each held a croquet mallet resting jauntily across one shoulder. In their left hands, the man held a small alchemist’s crucible, and the woman a crystal ball symbolizing the prophecy branch of sorcery.
Dawn stared up at them for a second, then said, “Damn. Is this the part where I should start worrying you’re going to drop me in hot wax?”
I laughed. “No. You’re perfectly safe, I promise.”
“But those are real dead people?”
“Yes.”
“How come they don’t look like mummies, or Courtney Love or something?”
“Magic,” I said.
“Uh-huh, of course, magic.” She didn’t sound as confident in her denial this time.
Zeke sighed loudly. “Can we get this done, and save the tour for later?”
“You’re right, sorry. Mort, lead on.”
Mort took the lead. Side tunnels branched out to either side, with symbols and dates marked on the corner columns. The sepulcher alcoves were constant now on both sides of the hall, one after the other. The people entombed in Avalon Underhill had all worked for the ARC, or did something to earn a place here. We passed men and women of all ages, sometimes teenagers, and the rare child included through some family deal made with the ARC. They represented all five branches of magic: alchemy, wizardry, thaumaturgy, sorcery, and necromancy. And their clothing styles changed as we left the nineteenth century behind and began traveling through the twentieth-century sections. I paused by a man in a baby blue polyester suit. Note to self—go for a “timeless” look when I die.
The symbols and tools of the branches of magic evolved too, incorporating plastics and electricity, as well as refinements in the use of magic
itself. It used to be, for example, a wizard had one, maybe two tattoos covering their entire body. But as the ingredients of the inks evolved, and the tools and spells became more efficient, the tattoos needed less space to do the same magic. Wizards could fit up to eight tattoos on an average body by the time of my exile. I could only imagine how many tattoos a young wiz sported today.
We passed the occasional live mourner being escorted by a necromancer, and a crypt warden making his rounds. We all bowed our heads, and both Mort and I touched our hands to our forehead in a gesture of respect that also served to display our black-stoned persona rings marking us as necromancers. Nobody stopped or challenged us.
Dawn acted like she was on a museum tour whenever no strangers were in sight. She stopped occasionally to read the silver plaques at the base of each alcove, then sprinted to catch up with us. “They remind me of stuffed pets,” she said. “Why are they staring at us all creepy like that instead of being in a coffin?”
“I think the tradition started because people hoped necromancers or one of the other magical branches would find a cure for death,” I said. “Sort of like those people who have their bodies frozen just in case we can cure and revive them someday.”
“Is there? A cure for death?”
Her question made me think of Heather in biology class, hoping to create a true reanimation potion. And Grandfather had frequently grumbled about the unfair advantages of Fey immortality, first to me, and then to Grayson when I, being so wise in my teen years, decided his grumblings were boring. Heather and Grandfather were two of the most skilled and intelligent arcana I knew of, and even they had not been able to defeat death.
“No, there’s no cure,” I said. “At least, not one that doesn’t require a constant flood of raw magic and serious Monkey Paw consequences. And trying to find one has become pretty much illegal.”
“So why keep making these little die-o-ramas?”
“Just more fun, I guess.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, which would you rather do? Plan a display for yourself, pick out an outfit and a pose and all that, or pick out a coffin?”
Finn Fancy Necromancy Page 25
