Zeke spoke up. “The ARC likes to keep them in a state where the spirits can be questioned as easily as possible if we need to.”
“And there’s that.” I sighed. “For some reason, Talking is less draining if the body is as close to its living state as possible and you have a sense of their personality, of who they were.”
“We can talk to them?”
“Well, I can.”
Dawn paused in front of a man dressed in a black Members Only jacket and extremely tight Jordache jeans.
“Hello! This guy looks just like Hugh Jackman. You’re sure you can’t hook a girl up, bring him back to life?”
“And you accused me of doing bad things with dead bodies?”
“Well, if you brought him back, he wouldn’t be dead, now, would he? Maybe you could just animate him as, you know, a brainless hunk o’ warm Wolverine goodness?”
“Uh, no. Trust me, both the cost and the results of raising the dead are pretty nasty.”
“Well, damn. Way to crush a girl’s dreams.” We caught up with Zeke and Mort, and Dawn said, “If magic is real, so far it all seems dangerous and creepy. Where’s the awe and the fun?”
I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped. What could I say? I’d asked the same question myself more than once.
“We’re here,” Mort said. “He should be down the hall on the left.”
We turned down the side hall and began reading the name plates. We found the one we wanted fourth from the end. Devon Newman was short and sturdy looking, his gray suit stretched over an ample belly, the flattop buzz cut utterly failing to de-emphasize either of his large chins. He wore a Seahawks blazer rather than a dress shirt beneath his suit jacket. His right hand held a tiny paintbrush. This, I realized, explained what appeared to be a re-creation of a World War II battle around his feet, with tiny painted soldiers fighting over a miniature landscape, cotton smoke issuing from their guns and tanks; and on a raised plain a group of wizards battled feybloods with silver wire lightning and red plastic fire.
“Okay, Gramaraye,” Zeke said. “Time for you to do your thing.”
“Yeah. Lucky me.” I closed my eyes and went through the mental exercises Grandfather had taught me, to clear my head of distracting thoughts, to bring my emotions to a neutral hum. I opened my eyes, looked into Devon’s face and touched his hand.
The resonance of his spirit thrummed loud and clear.
“Devon, I summon you.”
The connection was immediate. Devon wasn’t warded against Talking. Few bodies in these general ARC crypts were, since it was cheaper and more efficient just to limit access to the crypt, and then ward the crypt itself against anyone outside of it from summoning the spirits of those inside.
I felt a pull, like some invisible part of me reaching out from my center to Devon’s body, and then magic and life flowed out of me, draining away in a slow but steady trickle.
“Hello, Devon,” I said.
There was a pause, and then Devon’s voice replied, “Hello?” His mouth didn’t move. “Shit. I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
It took extra energy to make his voice heard by the others, not just by me. But I needed Zeke to hear him. And I wanted Dawn to believe me. I glanced at her to see how she took it. She looked at me with a wide-eyed, uncertain expression, an expression tinged with a horror I recognized. “You’re really talking to a ghost?” she whispered.
I nodded. This was not the time to explain the difference between a ghost and a spirit. I returned my focus to Devon. The faster we wrapped this up, the less of my life I’d lose.
“Devon, I’ve summoned you to—”
“Are you sure you’re a real necromancer?”
“What? Yes. I’m Talking to you, aren’t I?”
“Well, yeah, it’s just, I’ve seen my fair share of summonings, and you don’t seem to be doing it right, buddy. No offense, but I don’t want to be accidentally unmade or nothing by a beginner, you know? Is your boss around, maybe?”
Mort snorted. I just sighed. On its own, necromancy really isn’t all that showy or impressive to observe: no flashes of light or howling winds, no fire or lightning or transformations or even a bouncing table and flickering lights in most cases. It’s really just a couple of folks talking, even if one of those folks is dead. So in order to ensure proper respect for their talents, early necromancers began to wear fancy robes, and added a dash of ritual and a lot of theatrics to the whole affair.
At the height of necromantic ritualization in the Middle Ages, a summoning could take up to three days, and involved elaborate costumes, lots of chanting, and occasionally a lovely assistant. Even as recently as last century, one ritual got so out of control that the ARC had to cover it up by claiming it was a rock concert by a group called KISS (Knights in Sorcery’s Service), and then had to promptly create a real band by that name in order to make the story stick.
But I felt no desire to maintain those particular traditions right now.
“I am the boss,” I said, shooting Mort a look that said not to argue the point. “We have some important questions for you, and not a lot of time for ritual.”
“Well, no offense,” the heavyset warden said, “but how about a little prid quo, uh, you know. Like, I answer your question, and you answer mine? Like, how’s the ’hawks doing this season?”
Zeke blew out his mustache and stepped forward. “Tell him what I told you to say.”
“Devon, I have an enforcer here with me. He wants you to know this is official enforcer business. They suspect someone might be planning to break into the EMP crypt, so to close any holes in the security they’re asking each warden how someone might succeed.”
“Oh, sure, ask me now when I can’t even get a bonus or nothing. Do you know how many times I applied to be an enforcer? Or made suggestions about the security at the empie?”
“Well, they, uh, want me to tell you that’s why you’re being consulted, and they’ll give a bonus to your inheritors.”
“Fat lot of good that does me. And Linda already got her reward when I died. I’m sure she went around telling everyone at the funeral how she warned me about my weight, how she just knew it was going to kill me. But do you know what I had to go through just to sneak a couple burgers without her finding out? Talk about stealing past security! You’d think I was having an affair the way she—”
“Devon!” I said. “Enough! If you want to continue enjoying the benefits of an ARC crypt, and not be unmade, then I suggest you fulfill your obligations and start answering my questions. Now.”
“Okay! Geez! What do you want to know, then, oh great one?”
“I told you, the enforcers want to know how someone might break into the crypt beneath the EMP.”
“Fine. Well, if I was going to break in, here’s what I’d do.”
Zeke flipped open a small notebook and took notes while Devon outlined the security measures and how he’d bypass them. When Devon was done, he said, “Are we good?”
I looked at Zeke. He nodded.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re good. Thanks, Devon. I dismi—”
“Wait! Can you get a message to my wife?”
“Uh, sure. What is it?”
“Tell her … I loved her, nagging and all.”
Ahhh. True love. “If I see her, I will. I dismiss you.”
I released the connection, and the hallway spun. I put out a hand to catch myself but missed the wall, and fell to the side. Dawn caught me.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. That didn’t cost me much, really, but it’s still a shock to the system.”
“Cost you?”
“Life. It costs me life to Talk to the dead.”
And it almost cost me lunch. My stomach tried to invade my throat, but fortunately my throat knocked it back down where it belonged.
“Let’s get out of here,” Zeke said. “We have some planning to do.”
Mort led the way back to the s
tairs. I followed in a head-throbby daze.
“Finn?” Dawn said in a quiet voice. “Your mother, is she here someplace?”
“No. My mother’s buried in our family mausoleum.”
“But you could talk to her if you wanted?”
“No. She’s warded.”
And then I realized that I could in fact talk to her, for the same reason I could talk to Verona.
Dawn paused. “Could I talk to my dad?”
I sighed and gave her a sympathetic look. “It’s usually not a good idea to Talk to someone you care about, unless there’s an important reason.”
“Because it would cost you some of your life.”
“Yes, that. But there’s dangers to you as well. As a rule, it’s best to let the dead be dead.” I put a hand on her arm. “And in my experience, they know how you felt, what you would say if you could.”
We reached the stairs. Mort touched a fist-size square of silver on the wall, and after a few seconds the roof over the stairs receded, revealing a late-afternoon sky with a high chance of rain. If any mundies had been near, we would have heard a chime instead and been required to wait for them to leave before the way opened.
As we stepped out onto the lawn of the cemetery, Mort said, “You’re going to owe me for this, bro. I don’t mind lending a hand, but this—”
“A hand?” came a munchkin voice behind us. We all spun around. Out of the shrubbery atop the tomb’s concrete platform stepped Priapus, the gnome leader. He had one eye bruised and swollen beneath its bushy white brow, and a scabbed-over cut ran along one bare arm, splitting the rose tattoo in half and impaling the flaming skull.
He glared from beneath his pointy blue hat, and raised a gleaming sickle. “One hand of a necromancer. I’ll take that offer, deal breaker.” A half-dozen more gnomes stepped out of the bushes and from behind tombstones all around us.
Dawn grabbed my arm. “Are those—?”
“Gnomes,” I said. “Angry gnomes.”
23
Just Like Heaven
I placed myself between Dawn and the gnomes on the tomb’s concrete platform. The only thing worse than angry gnomes are angry gnomes at eye level.
“We don’t want any trouble,” I said. There were too many of them to fight or flee, at least without risking Dawn’s life.
“We ain’t here ta take requests,” Priapus said. “We’re here ta make good on the deal this one had with us.” He waved his sickle at Mort again. “We acquired the Talker artifact as requested, and have suffered losses because of it. You now owe us the promised payment for the artifact, plus fair compensation for our losses from the sasquatch attack, plus compensation for the time and expense of waiting for ya to leave the protection of your home and to track ya here like.”
Mort tucked his hands under his armpits. “I don’t have anything to give you,” he said. “Not here. If you’ll just give me another day—”
“A day’ll add further interest to your debt,” Priapus said. “And we would need ta hold ya as guarantee against said payment thereof.”
“What?” Mort said. “Can’t you just take my word, as a necromancer?”
“Forget about it,” the gnome said.
While the gnome and Mort were speaking, I edged closer to Zeke, and whispered from the side of my mouth, “Fight or flee?”
Zeke shrugged, his brows furrowed in a concerned and unhappy expression. “Not my problem.”
Great. Zeke and his damn sense of right and wrong. Mort’s problem wasn’t our problem, it was because he’d traded in illegal artifacts, and Zeke wouldn’t soil his hands fixing that kind of trouble.
Mort sounded panicked as he said, “How am I supposed to pay you if you’re holding me hostage?”
“Not hostage,” the gnome leader said. “A guarantee of payment like. And these two’ll get the payment for us.” The gnome waved at me and Zeke.
Mort’s eyes darted to mine. “But—what happens if they don’t pay?”
“They’ll pay,” Priapus said. “They fought for ya against the ’squatches. If they’d do that, they’ll pay ta save ya from our penalty for default.”
“Finn?” Mort said, his tone desperate now. “You need me! You can’t just abandon me.”
The fact that he thought I would just abandon him to the gnomes made me want to just abandon him to the gnomes. Granted, it had already crossed my mind that abandoning him to feybloods might be karmic payback for abandoning me to the Fey. And I felt an instant twinge of annoyance that my brother’s stupidity entangled me even further with the world of feybloods and magic I’d hoped to leave behind entirely. But besides the fact that I actually cared about him for some reason, he was right. We might need him to get into the EMP. I sighed. “What will all of this cost us?”
The gnome cocked his head to the side, and stroked his ZZ-Top beard for a second. “The debt, including one extra day of interest, requires no less than two hundred Toths of magic or artifacts of equivalent value thereof like.”
“Two hundred?” I said and glared at Mort. I doubted we had half that. “We’ll pay twenty-five, plus free preservation and dissipation rites for ten deceased.”
“One hundred fifty Toths, since we can’t be sure he won’t weasel out and hide in your home again.”
“Fifty, plus free preservation and dissipation rites for twelve deceased.”
“One hundred Toths, rites for fifteen deceased, and ya retrieve for us one sock of natural fibers worn by a deadified wizard.”
I blinked. “What—” I began, but stopped myself. Best not to ask what they needed a dead wizard’s sock for. But it gave me an idea. “What if I offered you fifty Toths, and to place a gnome statue in the Inner Sanctum beneath the EMP in Seattle within, say, the next forty-eight hours?”
Priapus stroked his beard. “If ya fail to place the statue, the cost’ll be the two hundred Toths, plus you must use your Talker skills for us however we require for one year.”
I glanced at Mort. Damn it.
“Agreed, as long as it doesn’t risk my health or cost me more than two years of life.”
“Done!” said the gnome leader. “And witnessed.”
“Witnessed,” said the other gnomes like a munchkin chorus.
* * *
We shared little conversation in the car as Dawn drove us back to the Edmonds-Kingston ferry. In fact, Mort and Zeke both fell asleep in the back. On the ferry, Dawn and I quietly exited the car and made our way up to the top deck. The sky looked like rolling hills of gray, but several golden columns of sunlight cut through breaks in the clouds, highlighting the white peaks of the Olympic mountains, and creating glittering circles on the choppy blue-steel skin of the ocean. The wind’s chill cut through our clothes, so we took shelter in a covered observation section.
“So,” I said as Dawn reattached a ribbon that had blown free of her hair. “You’ve been hit with a lot today. You doing okay?”
“I don’t know. I guess,” Dawn said. “I mean, I always believed there was magic, and ghosts, at least on some level. But—” She shrugged. “It’s not what I thought it would be.”
I looked out across the water at the dark shoreline of the Olympic Peninsula. “So, is it something you could deal with? You know, on a daily basis?”
“Well, I kind of have to, don’t I? I mean, I can’t unlearn what I’ve learned.”
“Actually, you can,” I said. “We could make you forget everything that happened today.”
She looked at me. “Please tell me you haven’t done that before. Made me forget stuff?”
“No.”
“Okay. Good. That would piss me off.”
I smiled. “So now you really know where I’ve been the last twenty-five years, why I didn’t call or write. It wasn’t my choice,” I said.
“I know. I get that.”
“And what you said in the Belmont last night,” I said. “I thought about it. And, well, if you’re still interested after everything that’s happened, after everything yo
u’ve learned, I, uh—how would you feel if I kissed you right now?”
Dawn stared at me for two long, loud heartbeats. Then she said, “Why don’t you try it and find out.”
I stepped close to her, until I could feel the heat of her in the cool sea air. I slipped one hand around the back of her neck, leaned in, and kissed her.
In summoning a spirit, I always feel a moment of connection and then the flow of life energy from me. With that kiss, I thought maybe I knew what the spirit felt. I felt pulled into Dawn, into the feel of her, the smell of her, the presence of her. I felt summoned into the world of that kiss, felt energy poured into me through it. I consumed her kiss, pressed myself into her and pulled her into me.
The kiss ebbed and surged from deep to playfully light and back again, like the swell and crash of the waves against the ferry, though I soon lost all sense of the outside world, focused only on the warm world of Dawn’s lips, the rhythm of her tongue.
The blare of the speaker announcing our approach to Kingston brought me back to the ferry, to the world of up and down, left and right, inside and out, the world where I existed separate from Dawn. We eased our way out of the kiss, blinked at each other for a second, and both grinned.
“Hey, sparkle eyes,” Dawn said, her voice low and soft. “Now you know magic is real.”
* * *
We held hands for the drive home from the ferry, exchanging ridiculously happy grins when we caught the other looking. That hour with Dawn finally felt like I’d come home.
Sadly, our actual homecoming meant that the moment had to end, and I had to start thinking again about dangers and plans. It was nearly 7 P.M. when Dawn’s car bounced into her driveway, waking Zeke and Mort. Golden hour light cast long shadows from all the plants and piles of junk in Dawn’s yard. We climbed out of the car and stretched, then moved as a group to the break in the hedge between our two properties.
“You want me to go see if the coast is clear?” Dawn asked.
“No,” I said. “Enforcers aren’t the only people looking for us and I don’t want you in danger.”
“I sure hope you’re not going to act like you can keep this girl safe by locking me away. I can handle myself, you know.”
Finn Fancy Necromancy Page 26
