Seize the Soul: Confessions of a Summoner Book 1

by William Stadler

  Lyle stretched, letting his words drag out with a yawn. “You can tell me anything. All I know is that last night, the key was in the ignition, and the Harley was on full throttle.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re a jerk, you know that?”

  Castella came out of the bathroom. She’d already beautified herself, making her hair straight and her eyebrows thin. Her copper skin beamed from where she’d showered and used my lotion. Come to think of it, she’d probably used my comb also. By the dead, I hope she didn’t use my toothbrush. “Morning, Castella,” I said, squeezing out a smile that for some reason I couldn’t get to curl up at the corners.

  She said nothing – only gave me a head-nod acknowledgement, before turning right to go back into the living room.

  Lyle and I got ourselves ready, minus the extended beautification. It was impossible to care about fashion when a killer like Marcus was after me. Still, I slapped on some form-fitting blue jeans that I’d thrown over the back of my desk chair in my bedroom, then tossed on a violet sweater that hugged my arms and torso.

  I called in for work, complaining that the bullet wound in my side was getting the best of me this morning, to which Richard – my boss – fully obliged. Once all the right things were in place with my quick dress-up, I met Lyle and Castella in the living room and gave Boyd a call, which I was sure was going to get me an earful since I had three missed calls and one voicemail, all from him the night before.

  “Rebekah, how’s it goin’?” came the thick Boston accent on the other end of the phone. “Not too nice to put your boyfriend on the backburners, especially during the night hours, ya’ know. All kinds of crazy things were going through my head. I gotta’ say, this sorority thing’s really gettin’ to me.”

  Right…I’d forgotten that I’d lied to him about rushing with a sorority, and now wasn’t the time to be forthright, not when I knew questions and accusations would inevitably follow. “I was just so tired last night. But I wanted to call you back to let you know that I miss you.” I cringed when I said it, hoping that he’d accept my apology.

  Lyle casually looked away from me, turning to Castella who sat at the kitchen table picking dirt from underneath her fingernails.

  “Look, sweetie,” Boyd said, “I know things come up and whateva’, but I trust you. If you say you was tired, then you was tired. Though I gotta’ say, I haven’t known you to miss three of my calls before – not without a text or a more timely callback.”

  “There was that time I visited my mom in Asheville. No signal until I got back on I-40,” I reminded him.

  There was silence on his end. “Yeah, but you’re not in the mountains…”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, and it didn’t help that I was going to add some more frustrations to what he was already feeling.

  “Boyd…” I paused. “I’m not going to be able to see you today either.”

  There was a sighing grunt on his end. “What’s goin’ on with you? First you don’t answer my calls. Not to mention, you pretend that you’re in this sorority so you can lie about what it is that’s really going on.”

  That caught me off guard. My eyes snapped up to Lyle and Castella, before I eased back to my bedroom and shut the door. They could probably still hear me though, being that the walls were paper-thin. “Did Umara tell you?”

  “Ah, c’mon. When have you ever tried to fit in with a bunch of broads whose only sense of self-worth relied on some letters from like twenty centuries ago, huh?”

  There was so much wrong with what he just said, and if any sorority girl I’d ever met even thought she’d heard Boyd right, she’d probably rip him a new one. But now wasn’t the time to knit-pick over something like this. “Okay, so I haven’t been rushing for a sorority. It’s just…a lot’s been going on at work, you know. Nothing I can really talk about. Company policy. But dealing with dead bodies on a day-to-day basis, well every now and then the police have a few questions. Only this time, they have a few more questions than usual.” I made a nervous face, waiting for his response, pacing back and forth in my bedroom like that would change anything.

  “Does this have anything to do with our talk about wanting a future with you from the other night?” he asked. “I mean, c’mon babe, what is it really? I miss you, Rebekah.”

  “I’m telling the truth this time, Boyd. Just trust me on this.”

  “I trusted you last time,” he said. “Listen…gimme’ a call when you’re ready to tell the truth.”

  The phone went silent on his end. Three tones in my ear told me that he’d hung up.

  What could I tell him though? That I’d been shot at? He knew that. It was the why that he was after. And it was the why that would lead him down a road to answers that he didn’t want to hear, answers he couldn’t possibly understand. Which is exactly what Lyle warned me of.

  When I was back in the living room with Lyle and Castella, both of them were giving me a glazed over look, pretending that they’d heard nothing I’d said to Boyd and expecting me to fill them in so that they could stop faking. “We’ve got today and tomorrow to keep away from Marcus,” I said. “Let’s make the most of it.”

  Lyle let out a relieved breath. “We could just get on I-40 and hightail it out west. Let’s see. Where will two days get us? I bet we could get to Texas if we drove in shifts.”

  I pointed down to my side where I’d been shot. “Stephanie the Druid has got a rope on me. If they think I’m running, then she’ll just pull the plug and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “You think Marcus would risk losing you like that?” Lyle asked. “I doubt it. He at least needs your soul so that Castella can summon Vár. You’re too valuable.”

  “At least?” I questioned him. “I’d hardly say that my soul is the least I can give.”

  Lyle made a face.

  I sat on the armrest of the couch. “If Marcus thinks I’m not going to make good on my end, then he’ll just rip the cord out – the whole ‘If I go down I’m taking you down with me’ kinda’ thing.”

  Castella wrung her hands together. “I can’t go back to him, not without doing what he asked,” she said.

  I reasoned with her. “Marcus expected you to come back with my soul, right?”

  She nodded. “Too late now. Marcus knows that I should have been back by now. If I go to him, he’ll think something’s up.”

  “Maybe,” I said, standing up from the armrest. “Marcus told me to find you and kill you.”

  “He what?” That brought Castella to her feet. “To kill me? So he didn’t care if I lived or died. This has just been about him notching another six hundred years under his belt. It wasn’t enough to murder my son. How twisted can you be?”

  I shook my head. “In his mind, he thinks he hasn’t done anything wrong. Leprechaun Code of Chivalry. But here’s the thing. I know you can’t go to him. But Lyle and I can. Marcus only needs me to have your obelisk to summon Vár.”

  “My obelisk?” Castella chuckled. “And how do you expect to get my obelisk?”

  “Well I’m certainly not going to kill you,” I said. “I was thinking you would give it to me.”

  “Give it to you?” Castella’s eyes went wide. “Have you lost your mind? Do you know how much molding, how many bindings I’ve put into this stone? Years. Hours upon hours of bindings, so much Pith that I may as well have been a Wraith myself with all the voices I’d hear whispering to me at night – so much so that I was losing who I was. Give it you,” she scoffed. “Not even if my life depended on it.”

  “It kinda’ does,” I replied. “Do you think that Marcus will let either of us live after this? Think about it. He knows that we’re just loose ends at this point, and he wouldn’t dare let it get out that he was making negotiations with a goddess to keep him alive. Paranormals would freak! Probably end up doing the same kinds of things themselves, making deals with Vár to gain a few extra years. No, Marcus won’t be satisfied until he silences us for good.”

  Caste
lla dug into her pocket and pulled out her pink stone. The sediment hummed in her hand. And though it was no bigger than mine, I could feel its power even from across the room. “I can’t give it to you,” she said. “I’ve put so much of myself into it.”

  “Not that I’m going to keep it,” I replied. “I just need to barrow it – just so that Marcus knows that I did what he asked and got the obelisk from you.”

  “Then he kills you,” she said, “and I end up having to keep your obelisk. I don’t see how this works out in my favor.”

  I stepped closer to her. “Do you think any legal system will ever be able to pin down Marcus for what he did to your son – what he did to Alejandro? Even if the evidence were in his hands and on his doorstep, he’d weasel his way out of it. This is our one chance to get close to him, to bring him down. I know you said you wouldn’t give up the obelisk for your own life, but what about Alex’s?”

  Castella twisted her stone in both hands, staring down at it. She gave it one more spin before her body began to glow pink. Rosy particles flowed from the obelisk into her hands, and a bulbous orb appeared, hovering at eye level. She handed me her stone after I gave her mine to which she channeled the soul into it.

  When I connected with her stone, there was nothing inside. It felt deep, like my mind was plummeting into an endless abyss. Blackness clouded my thoughts, and I couldn’t see anything inside the stone for what felt like miles. When I spoke, my voice disappeared into nothing. No echo called back to me.

  I felt like I was falling, but then like I was floating, like I weighed nothing at some instances, but then like I weighed a ton.

  A jerk from Lyle on my shoulder snatched me out of the depths of the obelisk. He was staring at me like he’d been talking to me, expecting me to respond to him.

  Castella shoved my obelisk into her pocket with a grim expression. “You aren’t used to diving that deep,” she warned. “Go easy next time, or Lyle might not be there to pull you out.”

  Swallowing hard and stuffing her obelisk into my pocket, I agreed. “I still have to find a soul,” I said, easing my way back into reality.

  “Can’t help you with that,” Castella shrugged. “You just make sure you take care of my stone.”

  Lyle rubbed my back and gave my shoulders a squeeze. “How are we going to find Marcus now that we have the obelisk?”

  That made Castella laugh a little. “He’s an attorney remember? They tend to have a knack for showing up when there’s some benefit to be had. And as for right now, where else do you think he’d be at nine in the morning?”

  Lyle rolled his eyes, a little embarrassed that he hadn’t figured that despite Marcus’s rather unusual night life, his daily activities were somewhat tame – a Leprechaun who’d learned to push papers in Corporate America.

  I’m sure Marcus was having the most impossible time concentrating, knowing that things could go south on him in less than two days. Or maybe a guy like him wasn’t worried at all. Maybe with all his luck, failure never even crossed his mind.

  Chapter

  NINETEEN

  Facing a Leprechaun without guidance was the dumbest decision I could ever make. I knew better, and even if I didn’t, Lyle did. Regardless, we both figured that talking to my advisor Umara Mayorsen was the best plan of action.

  We’d left Castella at my place, and though I didn’t say anything, I prayed to the dead that Lyle was right about her, that she wasn’t a killer, and that she wasn’t going to stab us in the back the first chance she got.

  Umara lived in one of the big houses off of Glenwood Avenue – houses that were easily in the seven hundred thousand dollar plus range. She made her bones the old fashion way – the paranormal old fashion way, that is. She bought and sold rare trinkets with Empyrean modifiers – ones that could make a simple fire spell turn into the Rage of Conflagration, or a simple invisibility spell into teleportation – A Wrinkle in Time style – shooting from one location to another in an instant.

  Unlike some others in her craft, Umara had an ethic about her, only selling to people with good reputations. No cash sales. Every exchange was made with credentials, so that her Dagger of Deception or Ring of the Rhine didn’t end up enveloping an entire city. A lot of natural disasters could have been prevented if other paranormal fences had the ethic that she has.

  In the end, she never really knew how the buyers would wield her wares. But guaranteed a sleaze like Marcus couldn’t pay her a dime and expect even a courtesy in exchange. Of course he found his trinkets and modifiers elsewhere, but everyone knew and respected Umara. Any buyer could be certain that their “Abbra Cadabra” wouldn’t backfire into an “Abbra CaDeath,” as some – no, as most – modifiers were known to do.

  The house / mansion / estate, or whatever it was, rose three levels aboveground with burgundy wood as its structure. Two balconies hung overhead – one on the second floor and one on the third – while the cream double-doors separated Lyle and me from the inside.

  I rang the doorbell, and it took Umara several minutes to open it, which wasn’t unusual since she practically worked all day in her basement laboratory, finding new ways to enhance one trinket, or to disenchant another to harvest the compounds. She did everything short of transmuting lead into gold, though she confessed to me in confidence that she’d found a way – a less expensive way than David Morrisey and his team had discovered some decades ago.

  She told me that if word ever got out about her alchemical practices, entire economies would tank. Stock markets would crumble, and Wall Street would be reduced to a raggedy street corner that no one gave a second thought about.

  I shouldn’t even be telling you, actually. The dead help you if you mention this to anyone.

  The doors swung open and Umara stood before us, a black lady in her late thirties – fair of skin – whose curls and thick hair, streaked with gold highlights, swooped past her shoulders. Her honey hazel eyes beamed at us over her brilliant smile.

  Since she’d been in the lab, she was still wearing her white lab coat and closed-toed black boots. Around her neck, she wore her emerald ward that, as she so eloquently put it, “Kept her safe from any crossed customers.” Never can be too careful when dealing with warlocks and Wraiths.

  “Rebekah, Rebekah, come in, come in.” Umara had already started back into the foyer, beckoning at us from over her shoulder to follow her past the gold-plated curio and plush leather sofas.

  Sometimes when she walked, sparkling fairy dust speckled from her. Now was not one of those times. I never exactly knew what caused the sparkles, and I never had the guts to ask.

  “I’m glad to see that you’re well. Didn’t expect to see you for another—” Umara froze, pivoting on a dime, her lab coat swirling at her knees. Taking several suspicious steps my way, she examined me closely. The emerald gem around her neck began to illuminate and shimmer ever so slightly.

  Umara’s head tilted to the side, one eye nearly closing. “What did you bring into my house?” She scanned me over, searching me. “Did something happen to you? A binding? A root? A hex? A poison maybe?” Fairies like her were hounds when it came to Empyrean usages.

  Before I could answer, her eyes locked on my side where I’d been shot, her emerald gem now pulsing wildly. She came over to me, grabbed at my side – though she wasn’t touching me – then grabbed something invisible in the air down by my hip. By the way her fingers couldn’t touch though her hand was in a fist, it appeared to be a rope of some kind, perhaps the girth of a hammer, maybe wider.

  She held the invisible rope up to me. “Who did this to you? A witch doctor? A Druid? A Shaman? No, not a Shaman, or you would have never made it past the wards at the door without ending up flat on your back in the yard. If I had to guess,” she dropped the cord and shook at finger at me, “I’d say a Druid.” She laughed. “A pretty bad one at that. I mean, look at this thing.” She held it up again, even though I couldn’t see it. “Go ahead, take a peek.”

  She leaned forward,
letting the green gem dangle. I grabbed it in my hand without removing it from her neck, and instantly my eyes were overtaken like I’d just slipped on infrared goggles. Everything in Umara’s mansion-estate came alive in a fluorescent jade. Invisible arrows that I hadn’t noticed before aimed at me from above, and dozens of trip wires crosshatched throughout every room.

  This place was a landmine for the supernatural, which was why Umara had only allowed me to summon in the laboratory in the basement.

  I looked at Lyle who frowned at me, but I was astonished that I could make out dozens of decanted forms within him, a bear, a lion, a python, a gerbil – for whatever reason, I wasn’t sure – an eagle, a Wraith, each of them coming to the surface before allowing another to emerge.

  “Get that thing away from me,” he said, stepping back. It wasn’t like he could feel me doing anything to him, but he just didn’t like being exposed.

  When I finally looked to my side, I saw the makeshift bind the Druid had latched to me. It looked like someone had taken a tattered lasso and jimmied a few knots in my insides. The other end of the rope extended well beyond the door – probably to wherever Stephanie was hiding.

  Umara pulled away, taking the gem back. “See that? That Druid didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing. Looks like a first-grader trying to tie his shoe or something.”

  “The Druid was a girl,” I corrected her.

  “He, she, it doesn’t matter,” Umara replied. “A mess is a mess.”

  “Can you get it off her?” Lyle asked, looking me over.

  “Could,” Umara replied, “but I’m not certain of what kind of mess the two of you have gotten yourselves into.”

  We followed her down endless halls of dark hardwood. Pictures of landscapes and ponds lined the walls, while ceramic vases – half as talk as I am – sat in distant corners with healthy green plants sprouting out of them.