“I’ll take care of it.” Seeing me reach for my wallet, Jackson picked up the check. “It’s the least I can do.” Chuckling, he gave a sideways glance at Joan, who was boring a hole in the back of his head with her gaze. “Maybe next time we’ll go Dutch.” His chuckle turned into outright laughter. “You really order this every time you come here?”
I gave my stomach a little pat. “Every time.”
Jackson dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table and slid out of the booth.
“Trying to change Joan’s mind with a generous tip?” I shimmied across my side of the booth and followed him outside. “I thought you didn’t care what people think?”
“I don’t.” Jackson raised one shoulder in a half shrug, unlocking the passenger’s side door and opening it for me. “But I also don’t want to wonder if she spits in my food the next time we come here because she thinks I’m a jerk.”
“That’s a pretty big assumption, Sin Eater. That there’ll be a next time.” I heard his muffled reply of
“there’ll be a next time” after he shut the car door.
A silver sedan with out of state tags pulled up and backed into a parking space two spots down from ours. I watched the family of five, mom and dad with three kids in tow, pour out of the car and hustle across the lot, disappearing when they first entered the diner only to reappear at a booth by the window. The smallest of the bunch popped up, her face smudged against the glass, making funny faces to amuse herself and no doubt annoy her parents. Her dad pulled her away from the window, which had become fogged over from her breath.
One of the other children appeared in the window on the mother’s side of the table, her ginger braids swaying as she waved. Unsure if she was waving at us or an imaginary friend, I waved back. She smiled, looking satisfied that I’d seen her, and kept waving. The parents didn’t seem to pay her the same attention they had the other child, not stopping her from playing at the window as they had her younger sister. I looked at the father, expecting him to reprimand her at any moment, but he didn’t so much as blink in her direction. When I shifted my gaze back to the daughter, she was gone.
“Where did she go?” I half muttered.
“Where did who go?” Jackson clicked his seatbelt in place and started the car.
“Huh? Oh, the little girl. She was waving at the window and she just… Holy shit, did you see that?” The girl popped back into view. Not in the seat she had vacated but in the middle of the parking lot. “I think she’s a ghost.”
“I don’t see anyone. Is this like Sixth Sense? Are you going to tell me you see dead people?” Jackson’s teasing was cut short when a rock hit the windshield. “Okay, I saw that.”
“We fought a whole bunch of zombies, I collect souls, you consume them; is it entirely out of the realm of possibility that there is the ghost of a dead girl in the parking lot of a diner, right now?” I gave Jackson’s shoulder a shove to get him into motion. “We need to talk to Hester.”
Nodding his head in agreement, Jackson pulled out of the parking space and drove out of the parking lot. “Is she following us?” He glanced in the review mirror. “I still don’t see anything.”
“I haven’t seen her since the rock hit the windshield.” But that didn’t stop me from peering over my seat to look out the rear window and check behind us one more time. “Can’t you go any faster?”
“We live in Baltimore.” Jackson turned his attention from the traffic to me long enough to give me his “are you serious” look. “There’s a traffic light on every corner.”
Something was wrong. Something besides the ghost I’d just had a run-in with, which was saying something about the state of my life. Buzzing with nervous energy, I felt like someone kicked open a hornet’s nest inside my stomach. I needed to get home. To get to Hester. But the city ran on its own time, and it was working against us, throwing red light after red light in our way.
We hit a roadblock before Jackson could make the turn onto my street. Lights from emergency vehicles lit up the sky. Sirens wailed like banshees in the distance. Hester was waiting outside of the building when we finally got through the barricade and reached my building. So was the fire department. The old woman rushed over, pulling me into a hug before I’d had a chance to get all the way out of the car.
“I called nine-one-one as soon as I smelled smoke.” Hester’s voice was raspy, which knowing her, had more to do with yelling instructions at the firemen than the fire itself.
“My apartment?” From what I could see from the street, her shop looked untouched. I couldn’t say the same for the second floor of our building where my apartment was. Black soot marred the brick front around the windows, the glass busted out for the fireman to blast the inside with water from the ladder truck. I didn’t need to see inside to know everything was ruined.
“I’m sorry, Angel. I didn’t see him until it was too late.” She steered me away from the crowd forming on the street to ogle the devastation to my apartment now that the danger was over. “I had a terrible feeling and knew it had something to do with you. I just started a reading when I smelled the smoke. I saw him standing across the street watching the fire.”
I didn’t need to ask who he was. The necromancer had been here to send me a message by setting my apartment on fire. There was nothing to be done about my home. I couldn’t dig through the ashes and burnt rubble looking for salvageable pieces of my life. Not right now. All of that would have to wait until the fire was out and the building secured.
Until then, the necromancer had my full and undivided attention.
“I saw him, holding one of those burning embers in his hand.” Hester’s words drew my attention away from the black plumes of smoke rolling out of my windows. “The Blacksmith.”
“What?” My stomach didn’t just drop, it opened up into a bottomless chasm. “Smithie did this?” Tears from the pain of betrayal tracked down my cheeks. Blaming the smoke for irritating my eyes, I rubbed the backs of my hands against my eyes and wiped the evidence of my emotions away. “He’s the one who brought me this case. I don’t get it. Why burn down my apartment? Why try to kill me?”
“Maybe we should go ask him.” Jackson’s hands were clenched at his sides, a look of fury marring his handsome features. His charming, easygoing expression, and little dimple when he smiled were gone, replaced with the hardened look of a man who was out for vengeance.
“Maybe we should.” Giving my apartment a final look, I took the hand Jackson offered and moved to follow him back to the car.
“Wait.” Hester grabbed me by the shoulder, forcing me to turn around and face her. “You saw her, yes? The girl?”
“You saw her too?” I stopped in my tracks, my hand slipping from Jackson’s. “That’s why I came home, to ask you about her.” The fire and Smithie’s role as turncoat had distracted me from the questions I needed to ask Hester. Namely, why I could see ghosts all of a sudden.
“She’s a spirit walker and the reason I started your reading in the first place. You can see her because you are in the soul trade, and that’s essentially what she is: a wandering soul. Not a ghost. They’re a rare breed, very few of them left, you see. So, naturally, I felt compelled to do as she said and look at your cards.” Hester’s grip tightened, fingers digging into my shoulder. “I don’t know what she was trying to tell you. I couldn’t see it. Angel, your path is blocked from me. I can’t see beyond the girl. Be careful.” She looked at Jackson. “Bring her home.”
Jackson held her gaze, offering silent reassurance with a simple nod, before taking my hand and leading me back to the car. “Back to Black Marsh?”
“Yeah, back to Black Marsh.” I hardened my heart, mentally preparing myself to face down a friend turned traitor. “Smithie has a lot to answer for.”
ELEVEN
JACKSON TRIED to strike up a conversation once or twice on the way over to Smithie’s, but I was too lost in my thoughts, and it ended up being one-sided. He asked all the right questions, the
same ones I had. The same ones I planned to ask Will the Smith when I saw him. I’d worked alone for so long, I needed to sort through what I knew to be true and what had actually happened before I talked it out with someone else.
Which, in all honesty, wouldn’t take long, considering I hadn’t uncovered much.
There was a necromancer; that much had been confirmed by Big A and my own eyes. He was powerful, turning spirits into fi-follet and raising a cemetery full of the dead. He was working with Will the Smith, if Hester’s account of what happened was to be believed, and I had no reason to doubt her. They wanted me out of the picture, but why? Why bring me in on it in the first place?
“That’s what we’re here to find out.” Jackson pulled into the same spot I’d parked in on my last visit to Black Marsh and turned off the ignition.
“I hadn’t realized I was talking out loud.” I undid my seatbelt and opened the car door, setting one foot on the ground. “I usually work this stuff out on my own. It involves a lot of pacing and probably talking to myself. I didn’t realize I was doing it just now.”
“This is new to me too.” Jackson got out of the car. His head popped back into view. “We’ll figure it out. All of it.” After shutting the car door, he walked over toward the path leading to Smithie’s place and waited for me to join him.
Careful not to make too much noise and alert Smithie to our arrival, I held on to the handle, guiding the door into place and nudging it with my hip until it clicked shut. I gave Coop a little rub down on the roof, and promised my car I’d come back for him. I was a terrible liar. Taking Smithie on, on his home turf was a bad idea. One that was likely to speed up the necromancer’s plan to kill me. But I didn’t have much choice. I had to follow the leads I had.
I just wish this one led somewhere other than Smithie.
We made our way down to the water’s edge, careful to make as little noise as possible. The marsh was quiet. Too quiet. None of the wildlife that made a home in the marshland made a sound. Something wasn’t right. It felt like we were walking into a trap, which meant we probably were.
“Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” I stepped in front of Jackson to get a better look at our surroundings. “This isn’t right.”
“You’re goddamned right it isn’t.” Jackson lifted one foot and then the other. Stand still too long on the wet ground, and you could lose a shoe. “He got you into this, and now he’s saving his own ass by giving you up to the necromancer. Where the hell is he?”
“When you followed me out here before, what did you see?” I realized now that I was wrong; Smithie wasn’t involved, at least not as an arsonist, but I needed Jackson to see what I saw for himself.
“Nothing. It’s always pitch black out here. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.” Jackson came up beside me, squinting as if that would help him see better. “Do you see him?”
“Let me try this a different way.” I ignored his cues to keep my voice down and kept going. “What don’t you see?”
The Sin Eater looked around, taking in what little he could see of our surroundings. It didn’t take him long to catch on. “There’s no glow. Smithie’s coals are out.”
“Exactly, and if there’s one thing you can count on in the marshes, it’s the soft, alluring glow of the blacksmith’s coals. No light, no Smithie.” I stepped out, ankle deep into the water. Reapers ran hot, given our origins, which made the cold water soaking through my boots into my socks a serious shock to my system. Feeling more alert than if my diet consisted of nothing but espresso leaves, I waded out a little further.
“That probably means he’s with the necro somewhere, hiding out. What in god’s name are you doing?” Jackson stepped forward, the water lapping over the tips of his boots. “Get back here before you get hypothermia.”
“Sorry to say, I don’t do anything in His name.” I pointed toward the stars, half hidden behind a bank of clouds. “No matter how much I wished for it as a kid. I’m a Reaper, remember? Damned at birth. Any of that ring a bell?” Up to my calves in the murky, black waters of the marsh, I did my best to ignore the funky smell wafting up from disturbing the sediment with each step. “It’s around here somewhere.” Ignoring Jackson’s calls to come back to the shore and questions about what exactly was I looking for, I kept going. “I’ve seen Smithie do it enough times. I’m close. I know it.”
I was thinking out loud, not actually talking to Jackson, but he seemed to appreciate any sort of update. As I shouted a few expletives, my foot hit something solid. The first stair.
“Found it.” I stepped on the first tread and began making my way up the few steps that led to Smithie’s walkway. Watching the blacksmith walk on water was an impressive feat, unless you knew his trick. Which, of course, I did. Smithie liked to talk. At least to me. “Are you coming or what?”
“Okay, that’s pretty cool.” Jackson looked impressed. “It’s not every day you see a Reaper hover over water.” He waded out, doing his best to follow my path through the inky water. “What are we looking for out here?”
“Smithie’s hou…” My words were cut off as I missed a step and fell into the water. Pondweed wrapped around my arms and legs, pulling me down, further away from the surface and the air I needed to keep breathing. Struggling against the aquatic perennial was futile. The harder I fought, the tighter the plant wrapped its coils around my wrists and ankles.
Jackson’s hands appeared, thrashing wildly in the water, searching for me beneath its inky, black surface. He came close once or twice, but the pondweed just pulled me further away. Head under the water, he tried fully submerging himself, arms moving in sweeping motions as he continued his search-and-rescue mission. It was pointless. He couldn’t see in the murky water without goggles and the marsh had no intentions of giving me up.
This wasn’t the trap I’d been expecting. This was one of Smithie’s, part of his regular modus operandi. It hadn’t been laid for me, but for one of his unsuspecting victims, yet I’d fallen into it all the same. Lured by the comforting glow emanating off the coals, wanderers followed Smithie’s path away from the safety of the shore, further into the marsh, and then the path disappeared, the pondweed dragging them down to wherever Smithie kept his quarry before turning them over to Big A.
Smithie’s keep. Big A.
Willing my heart and mind to slow down before panic set in and I sucked in enough brackish water to fill my lungs and drown me, I tried to ignore the burning in my chest and focus on the purpose of the pondweed. The pondweed was doing its job, dragging me down to the place where Smithie stored his catch. He couldn’t trade them to Big A if they were already dead.
Dying, yes. Dead, no.
The soul would be gone, having vacated the body after death. Foul play by someone on our side negated the traditional rules of engagement. Neutralizing the soul, if you will, and allowing it passage up even if they’d been headed down before Smithie found them. It was in the blacksmith’s best interest to keep them alive. Otherwise he had nothing to trade with Big A and would be rendered useless. Keeping mortals alive—and I would include myself in that category despite my preternatural position because I still required oxygen—meant there would be air wherever I ended up. I just needed to hold my breath until I got there.
A feat easier said than done.
My lungs screaming in protest, burning with the need to breathe, logic left me and primal survival skills kicked in. My mouth opened, muscles and lungs going through all the necessary motions that make up the simple process of breathing. The acrid taste of brackish water slid over my taste buds as it filled my mouth and made its way to the back of my throat, heading toward my windpipe and to eventually bring on my death.
Big A wouldn’t let me die, would he? Maybe. I disobeyed a direct order by pursuing the necromancer and coming out here. No doubt he thought it served me right. If he was even aware of my circumstances. I wasn’t foolish enough to think he had nothing better to do than keep tabs on me. Just as I w
as about to let go, resolving myself to my fate, the pondweed relaxed its hold on my arms and legs, releasing me. I no longer hovered in the depths of the water, falling hard and fast instead. My back came up against something that felt like rocks, jagged in some places, worn smooth in others. Muggy air clung to my skin even as the marsh dripped from my clothes onto the floor. Air. Sucking in deep, greedy breaths, I teetered on hyperventilating before getting myself under control.
Dark and dank, the hole I ended up in wasn’t all that different from any other cavern or cave. Except for that funky smell that only comes from upturned sediment, the concentration of things decomposing beneath the water. Barely able to see a foot in front of me, I pried my phone free of my wet clothes in the hopes of using my flashlight app. Whispering a small prayer that it would turn on, I held the button and hoped for the best.
It seemed my luck had finally turned. My phone not only powered up, but was actually working. Swiping through the apps until I found the one needed, I turned on the flashlight feature. For one blissful moment, there was a flash of light, illuminating my surroundings before the case of the necromancer claimed another casualty of the cellular variety.
Blinking away the red and green orbs from the bright light, I was trying to adjust to the darkness when I realized the orbs weren’t just spots. There was something in the cavern with me and its image had been temporarily seared into my sight like a film negative. Closing my eyelids slower, allowing the image to take shape, I tried to figure out who or what my cellmate was without alerting them to the fact that I was aware they were there.
“Holy shit.” I jumped back when the indeterminable lump on the other side of the cave started to stir. Backed literally against a wall, I braced for a fight, ready to take on whatever the hell it was waking up on the floor. I was unable to decipher the muttering and mumbling that came from across the cavern, but I did recognize the voice.
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