by D. D. Miers
“They’re all originals, of course,” Greenwood explained, his back to me as he sorted through the chest. “And some of them quite old. The artists aren’t especially notable, but the age alone is enough to make them valuable. A few are family heirlooms, as I understand it.”
I bent to look at the portrait, which lay on its side, tilting my head to see it properly. The subject was a man in a black velvet tunic and golden jewelry, standing before a bleak background and holding a tall, black candle in a strange silver cage. He was probably not that much older than me and, I realized, surprisingly familiar. His long blond hair could easily be mistaken for mine, though his hadn’t been straightened. His fell in heavy, golden waves. There was something in the face as well, and in those pitch-black eyes . . .
“Your ancestor, I believe.”
I jumped a little, realizing Greenwood stood next to me.
“Prince Aethon Tzarnavaras,” the lawyer went on, “painted, we believe, sometime in the fourteenth century. The artist is unknown, as is whatever country Aethon was a prince of. But, we do have this.”
He held out a long, ebony, wood box. I took it curiously, carefully lifting the lid, which moved soundlessly on fine, silver hinges. Within, nestled in deep black velvet, was the black candle in its silver cage.
“It appears to have been of some great importance,” Greenwood said as I marveled, “to have been featured in the portrait and passed down all this time. Go ahead, touch it. It’s not fragile.”
I almost did what he said immediately, but something in the eagerness of his voice made me pause.
“What’s your game here?” I asked, suspicious.
He smiled at me winningly. “Only hoping to spark your interest,” he confessed. “After all, if I could get you to make a case for inheriting your great-uncle’s estate, I would be spared the indignity of handing anything over to your odious cousins in the other room.”
I laughed, convinced.
“Yeah, I can’t blame you for that.” I closed the lid carefully, telling myself I imagined the ghost of disappointment crossing Greenwood’s face.
“They’ll only sell the collection,” Greenwood tried again. “These have been in your family for centuries. It would be an enormous shame to see them sold off to pay for Georgiana’s tacky designer purses or to fund another of Roland’s one-man plays.”
I looked at the art with a sigh. He was right, but I couldn’t. It’d only end up damaged or lost, crammed in my tiny apartment or, worse, in some storage facility.
“I’ll talk to Aunt Persephona about it,” I promised. “Maybe she’d be willing to fight Georgiana and Roland for them. It really would suck to see them sold.”
Greenwood looked like he might press the issue for a moment, but only smiled.
“That’s all I can ask,” he said genially, then checked his watch with a frown. “The service is going to start soon. I had better make one last attempt to wrangle the Sackville-Bagginses.”
The reference caught me off guard, startling a laugh from me, which pleased him. He offered me a hand and, when I took it, surprised me by pressing a kiss to the back of my fingers, brief and cool.
“I hope I’ll see you again soon, Miss Tzarnavaras,” he said.
“Vexa,” I said quickly. “Please.”
He pursed his lips to hide a smile and looked down, eyes bright through the dark frame of his lashes.
“Vexa,” he repeated. “One such as you should not be so free with her name.”
A strange thrill ran down my spine as he looked at me again, the power behind his gaze suddenly humming in the air. For no reason I could easily identify, both fear and excitement stirred in my blood.
But Greenwood only winked and in the next second was gone, slipping back out into the hall.
Chapter 2
Left alone with the art, I tried and failed to understand what had just happened.
I shook my head to clear it. I needed to get back to the service. Aunt Percy should be there by now and perhaps answer some questions or offer a chance at salvation for the family heirlooms.
I knelt again to look at the portrait of Prince Aethon, turning it right side up. I heard the rumble of wheels as Uncle Ptolemy was rolled past the room to the chapel, but I was absorbed in staring at my distant ancestor. There was an undeniable family resemblance that made me certain Greenwood was right. But I was surprised no one had ever mentioned we were descended from royalty. That was exactly the kind of thing my parents would love to bring up at dinner parties. I could only assume they didn’t know.
I recognized his name, not from any family tree, but from my embarrassingly long-lived fascination with Greek mythology. In the myths, there was a king called Aethon—a word which meant burning, consuming. He’d been cursed by the gods with an insatiable hunger that cost him his kingdom, caused him to betray his only family, and finally led him to devour himself like the alchemical Uroboros. Not an auspicious name for royalty. Perhaps that was why I’d never heard of him.
I caught the murmur of people passing the room and realized I’d delayed too long. Guests were walking into the chapel. I cursed under my breath and waited until the hall was empty. Once it was clear, I could make my way discreetly out of the art room and quietly sit in the back of the chapel once everyone else was inside.
I tapped my foot, waiting impatiently for things to quiet down and the few stragglers to finish lingering in the hall. As I leaned against the doorway, I “listened” to the chime of Uncle Ptolemy in the chapel, growing a little louder as the casket was opened. Below his, another quieter chime softly rang. I thought it was the bodies downstairs until I realized those were present as well, farther away.
This was close.
A dead mouse in the walls? I was usually good at tuning out animal death, an omnipresent, constant, water-harmonica hum that sounded like the song of the universe to me. But this was different.
I turned, following the sensation, curious, and realized it was in the room with me. The sound, I realized with a shock, came from the ebony wood box, which Mr. Greenwood had left sitting on top of the chest.
I approached the box without thinking, the chime growing louder in my head, drowning out all other thoughts. By the time I lifted the lid, it was deafening. My thoughts were dim static underneath the musical tone filling my head. The silver was cold as ice as I lifted the candle in its cage from the velvet lining. The candle, blacker than mere wax, pulled in all light, a hole in the space it filled. I reached through the bars, my fingers trembling, to touch the black void, as open and endless as any I had ever perceived within a corpse.
As soon as my bare skin touched the freezing darkness, the wick erupted into bright blue flame, an explosion that ripped through the room, blowing my hair back but touching nothing else.
Power surged within me like electricity under my flesh, burning and painful. I flailed for relief, my power lashing out instinctively. Blue fire filled my eyes and in the dark corners of every room a tall dark figure loomed unseen. Its empty gaze was on me—I realized it always had been. Its cold hand was on my heart and had never left since the first day it started beating. Death stood behind me as a physical presence, and I shook with fear of its unknowable intentions.
The fire dimmed. I stumbled back into myself, shaken and buzzing with more power than I’d ever experienced. I struggled to orient myself, but whatever senses allowed me to hear the dead were on high alert. I heard every mummified rat in the walls, every dried-out husk of every insect and lizard on every windowsill for a quarter mile. I sensed a lost house cat breathing its last under a porch two houses down, blood matted in its long yellow fur. I perceived the five human corpses in the building with me, and the voids within them, which my power poured into like light into a black hole. I fought to hold it back, but I might as well have tried to stop a river with my hands. Power poured out of me like an overflowing dam. I wasn’t enough to contain it.
The hot drip of wax on my thigh brought me back to my surround
ings. I had fallen to my knees, but the lit candle remained steady in my grip, its blue flame flickering ominously. I set it down quickly on top of the ebony wood box, almost dropping it in my eagerness to be away from the thing. The intensity of the power flowing out of me ebbed the moment I stopped touching the candle, which was an immense relief, but I continued to sense the power I’d poured into Uncle Ptolemy, glowing like a coal in the dark. I stumbled unsteadily to my feet, numbly registering that I’d torn my tights, and made a beeline for the chapel.
The service was already underway as I lurched in through the back, gaining a few confused stares. The minister was finishing the eulogy, about to leave the pulpit to invite the mourners up to the casket. Bad idea. I’d put so much power into Uncle Ptolemy that he’d become the undead equivalent of a bottle rocket, completely out of control and mindlessly mimicking the physical habits of life. If no one stopped him, he’d climb out of the casket. I tried my best to pull the power out of him but, frankly, I’d never done it before. Usually, when siphoning off power, I put so little in that it burned out on its own after a few minutes. I’d never had to try and pull power out before, and it didn’t seem like it wanted to budge.
“Vexa?”
Aunt Persephona caught my arm as I hurried through the pews at the front. She was a broad, matronly woman who looked best in all black, with kind eyes and exceptionally long dark hair. When loose, it hung all the way to her feet. Today it was bound up in braids under a dark veil.
“What happened?” she whispered urgently. “A wave of power washed over me, like Death himself walked among us.”
“I’ll explain later,” I told her quickly. The minister stepped back for the pallbearers to open the casket. “Right now I have to—Oh, shit.”
The minute the lock on the casket was released, the lid shot open under the force of Uncle Ptolemy sitting up like he’d been spring-loaded.
Terrified screams answered his spontaneous resurrection. Georgiana went pale as a ghost and fainted, falling limply into Roland’s arms as he stared, frozen. Before Ptolemy could turn and try to climb out of the coffin, I sprinted up the aisle straight for him. I planted a hand in the center of his chest, praying the power would go away as I shoved my dead great-uncle back into his casket and slammed the lid.
I held it down for a moment, afraid he’d resist, but no further attempt to escape was made. I turned around slowly to face the silent, staring, assembled mourners.
“I would like to sincerely apologize on behalf of the Rosenfield Funeral Home,” I said quickly, buying time while I worked on an excuse. “Is everyone all right?”
A few confused murmurs answered me, assuring me no one was hurt. Aunt Percy stared at me, wide-eyed, knowing what had happened but not what to do about it.
“The process of decomposition releases gases into the body cavity,” I explained, bullshitting for my life. “The trapped air can sometimes make the cadaver move or sit up or even make noises. It’s startling but completely normal. You get very used to it in this line of work. The bodies downstairs are always jumping around. Some of them are livelier than they were before they died!”
A resounding silence answered my weak attempt at a joke, tinged with faint disapproval.
Too insensitive, Vexa. It was difficult to tell what normal people considered gauche when you spent your days painting corpses. I cleared my throat and leaned closer to the minister.
“May I suggest we continue the service with a closed casket?” I said hopefully. The minister, slightly bewildered, nodded and I breathed a sigh of relief before locking the casket and moving back down the aisle as calmly as possible. I could only hope Uncle Ptolemy didn’t get too rowdy in there until the service ended and I could figure out a way to put him back to rest.
In the meantime, I hauled ass to the back of the chapel.
“What in Sam Hill was that?” Mr. Gould stood near the chapel door, ashen and close to fainting alongside Georgiana. “I’ve been in this business all my life and I have never seen a body do that.”
“It must have been gasses, right?” I said quickly. “I mean, what else could it be?”
“Damn if I know,” Gould replied, continuing to stare at the casket, mystified, as the service restarted somewhat awkwardly.
I took advantage of his perplexed inattention to make a break for the door. I was barely two steps out into the hall before Aunt Persephona hurried up to walk beside me.
“Vexa, honey,” she said, her voice quiet but even . . . in the way I recognized she was upset but trying hard to be understanding about it. “Did you raise my brother?”
“Not intentionally,” I said quickly, my face turning red.
“Vexa.”
“I swear! It was this thing—”
“Thing?”
“Some old candle of Uncle Ptolemy’s! His lawyer was showing me the art Georgiana and Roland are fighting over, and when I touched it, my powers went haywire!”
“What?” Aunt Percy pulled up short. “Why would Tolly have something that could do that? He didn’t even have the gift!”
“I don’t know!” I said impatiently. “And it doesn’t matter right now.”
“I rather think it does.”
“Correction. It doesn’t matter as much as the four other bodies running around in the prep room right now.”
Persephona turned white as a sheet, then hurried to the prep room a step ahead of me.
Chapter 3
Only two of the four bodies had managed to get out of their fridge drawers.
Mr. Delacey and Ms. Duffy ambled blindly around the prep room in the way of the mindless undead. Unless directed by someone with the gift, like me, resurrected corpses wandered, clumsily trying to imitate instinctual actions and habits from life.
Eating was a popular one.
They’d try to chew on anything they could get their hands on, like toddlers, though they weren’t particularly good at swallowing. They’d gesture, move their mouths like they talked, though when they managed to produce sound, it was mostly windy wheezing or moans that had more to do with the gasses of decomposition than speech.
Mr. Delacey had apparently been a fan of golfing when alive. I watched him chew on a makeup brush for a few seconds, drop it, stumble forward two steps, and perform a perfect driving swing. Ms. Duffy was fixated on a pan that normally held surgical tools, currently scattered all over the prep room floor. She’d gnaw on a corner of it, shuffle a bit, and then hold it to her chest while rocking back and forth. The other two, in their drawers, just kicked and clattered in their ungainly attempts to escape.
“Do you know how to put them down?” I asked Aunt Persephona, hurrying to clean up the spilled tools, rescuing a scalpel from Mr. Delacey’s weak, dazed grip. The undead weren’t dangerous, at least not without direction to be so. They didn’t even know anyone else was there. There was nothing in them capable of knowing someone else was there. They were just a bundle of unconscious biological reactions, muscles twitching and organs spasming. An occasional neuron fired and hit some ingrained behavior done so many times it was engraved in the unconscious portion of their brains. But there was no will, no awareness, no actual person. You could make a corpse move again. But you couldn’t bring a person back to life.
“Don’t you know how to do that?” Aunt Percy replied, staring at Ms. Duffy as she cuddled her tray.
“You never taught me,” I pointed out, frustrated. “And I’ve never needed it before! I never put this much power in!”
I reached for the tray in Ms. Duffy’s arms and was surprised when I met resistance. She had both arms around it and held on with unusual strength. I tugged harder, but she clung to it, resilient. Before I attempted to yank on it again, Persephona put a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“Ms. Duffy lived down the road from me,” she explained, looking sadly at the old woman. “Eleven children. More grandkids than I could count.”
Ms. Duffy held the tray to her chest, rocking back and forth, and I realized
belatedly she was trying to nurse it. Shame twisted my stomach.
“I didn’t mean to bring any of them back,” I tried to explain. “I couldn’t help it. There was so much power, I had to put it somewhere or it would have burned me alive.”
Aunt Percy nodded solemnly and patted my arm. “Let’s just get these people back to their rest,” she said. “Now, you’ve always been stronger than me. I’ve never managed to raise a single person, let alone five at once. But I’ve raised and put down a small animal or two. It can’t be much different.”
She cleared her throat, stretched out her hands, and I experienced with more clarity than ever before, the reaching tendril of her powers, which grew like green shoots and climbing ivy to twine around the void at the center of Ms. Duffy.
“Try to visualize the power dissolving,” she said. “Like sugar into tea. Like rain falling on the garden. You can’t take it back into you once it’s been a part of them. You just have to wash it away.”
That explained why it hadn’t been working for me earlier. I watched her work, and I almost saw the power beginning to thin and swirl, dispersing like smoke.
Sweat beaded on Aunt Persephona’s forehead and a moment later she dropped her arms, breathing heavily. Ms. Duffy was left standing there. Aunt Percy pursed her lips, looking desperately bitter for a moment, then sighed and let go of her magic.
“Do you think you have the idea of it?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, hoping it wasn’t a lie. “Let me give it a shot.”
I pulled open the drawers they’d both been in and reached out with my power to snag first Ms. Duffy, then Mr. Delacey. Giving the undead direction was fairly easy. You had to get inside their heads and think what you wanted them to do. Maybe that’s less easy than it sounds, but as long as your orders weren’t too vague or complicated, it worked. Walk over here and lay down was pretty straightforward, but I needed to break it down into simpler commands like, “Raise your leg onto the table,” and “Shift your weight onto your hand,” which made controlling more than one at a time a nightmare.
