by SJ Himes
Angel grabbed Isaac back, tight as he could, and held on. Isaac clung, and Angel hugged his little brother, squeezing his burning eyes, refusing to cry or show worry.
“I’ll be okay,” Isaac whispered in his ear. “I promise.”
“You better,” Angel said, voice tight, fighting so hard to hold his teeming emotions in check. “You need me, call. I don’t care what I’m doing, I’ll be here.”
Isaac nodded, a couple dips of his chin digging into Angel’s shoulder. Isaac surreptitiously brushed away moisture from his eyes, leaning back, gently disengaging from the embrace.
“See ya soon, kiddo,” Angel said with a small smile, backing out of the room. Isaac tucked his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels, giving Angel a short nod, his eyes glimmering.
Angel grabbed the doorknob, opening the door and walking into Simeon’s ready embrace.
He didn’t remember leaving Nevermore or getting in the car. Simeon held his hand the entire way home as tears ran freely down Angel’s face.
Hope was painful. His whole body ached with it.
3
When Trouble Blows Into Town
“What do you mean, I got a letter?” Angel held his smartphone between his ear and shoulder, fumbling with the keys to his office. It was still dark, and he huffed with impatience, blinking a small orb of hellfire into existence over his hands so he could find the right key. Inserting it into the lock, he opened the door and dismissed the orb, flicking the light switch by the door.
“It was delivered by courier about ten minutes ago,” Daniel replied, his apprentice talking past food. “I had to sign for it. The courier almost didn’t leave it with me until I told him I was your apprentice.”
Angel grumbled to himself, tossing his keys on his desk and grabbing his phone, rubbing the back of his neck. He left his apartment not even ten minutes before, which was only a couple blocks away, so the courier must have shown up right as he was leaving. He frowned, thinking back to the pre-dawn street, and he didn’t recall seeing anyone—not even a car or taxi.
“Well, go ahead and open it,” Angel said, tapping his phone to put it on speaker. Daniel made a happy sound past whatever he was chewing, and Angel snorted out a laugh. He booted up his laptop, looking for the appointment he had that morning at the ass-crack of dawn. Why in the world he thought it would be a good idea to have a private consultation so damn early on a Monday was beyond him. Which was why he decided on waking up everyone he lived with so he could share the misery. Though it was only Daniel since Isaac was at Nevermore and Simeon was at the Tower.
A sharp yelp and swearing came out from the speakers, and Angel laughed. “Papercut?”
“No! It shocked me!” Daniel gasped out, cussing under his breath. “I can’t open it!”
“What do you mean you can’t open it? Just rip it open.”
“I’m trying! Ouch!” Daniel yelped again, and the sounds coming from over the phone were parts hilarious and alarming. “I’m not risking my fingers. You can open it.”
“Who is it from? It might be warded if a courier brought it.”
“Now you tell me,” Daniel muttered, and Angel grinned as he found the appointment time. Daniel was finding his courage and picking up sass lessons from Isaac. His shy apprentice was learning all about sarcasm in the Salvatore household. His appointment was in about five minutes. No time to run back home and get the letter that was singeing his apprentice’s fingers. Daniel recited the address on the letter, “It says, ‘To Angelus Raine Salvatore, Necromancer of Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. From’…Oh, wow.”
“Who’s it from?”
“The High Council of Sorcery, Bucharest, Romania.”
Angel stood up straight, hands falling away from his laptop. He stared at the phone, the quiet in his office somehow loud, heart pounding in his ears. He looked up at the door as if any second one of the Council enforcers would blast through the doorway, ready to take him into custody for crimes sundry against international sorcery laws. He breathed in, breath shaky, and flexed his fingers. He reached out with his mind, cautiously testing the wards around his office, and there was nothing.
“Angel? Angel!” Daniel squawked over the phone, and Angel snapped free of the tension that held him frozen and snatched up the phone.
“Daniel, my appointment is any minute. Can you bring the letter here? Just hang out in the main room until I’m done if we’ve started when you get here. Wake up Eroch and have him come with you.”
“Um, okay…wake up the fire-breathing lizard, he says.”
“Just pick him up and carry him with you if he doesn’t wake up. He was sleeping on my pillow when I left. Don’t walk over here alone. I’d say hold on to it until I get home, but I have a feeling I need to read that letter as soon as possible.”
“Okay. Can I take a shower first?”
“You better,” Angel chuckled and hung up. Twenty-year-old men needed showers for the sake of everyone.
A knock sounded from the front of the office, and Angel took a deep breath, calming his off-center nerves before heading to answer the door. He was still cautious, sending out his awareness, his wards humming in the recesses of his mind, unmolested. There were two people on the small landing outside his door, their auras muffled by the panel, but they were both practitioners.
Angel opened the door, a polite smile on his face.
“Angelus Salvatore?” asked a tall, bulky man in a dark coat, his face set to glower. Angel lifted a brow, unable to see the person behind the big man. He could see a flash of red hair and a small bit of alabaster skin before the big guy shifted.
“I am,” Angel replied, opening the door wider, stepping back and gesturing them inside. His wards were set to allow strangers inside, but they would dampen any magic cast in this space by strangers or those he blocked. Came in handy when dealing with young sorcerers and unexpected guests. They could still cast, but his magic permeated the space, claiming even the ambient magical energies and stifling spells cast by interlopers. Not much use against a practitioner who used their own reserves, but the more dangerous, higher-ranked practitioners tended to reach outside themselves first before casting.
A tall woman was behind the big guy, slim and covered head to toe in black, from her leather high-heeled boots and ankle-length black pea coat to her black silk scarf and a jaunty, tiny pillbox hat atop titian curls. She was familiar, but the shadows were still dark enough Angel was having difficulty determining her identity. He led them back to his office, gesturing at the chairs in front of his desk. The woman sat, unwinding her scarf, her escort taking a stance beside the office door. Angel turned on the lamps as dawn was taking its time arriving and the room had shadows in inconvenient places.
The woman removed her scarf, putting it on her lap before shrugging from her coat. Her escort stepped forward, taking it from her before returning to his spot by the door. The woman, dressed in a thin black wraparound dress that hugged every slim curve and long line of her body, smiled at Angel. She was pretty, in a very human way, nothing of the fae about her in face or form. Dark green eyes, nothing at all like the brilliant emerald of Simeon’s eyes but arresting enough in their own merits, gazed back at him, glistening with wry humor.
“Lady Kensington,” Angel acknowledged after a moment’s pause, surprised. The recent widow was a wizard and a skilled apothecary who owned and ran Nightshade Apothecary not far from where they sat in Beacon Hill. Angel would see her occasionally in the neighborhood or when he needed supplies between scheduled deliveries. Her husband, Lord Greyson Kensington, died of a heart attack three months ago while shoveling snow off the front stoop of their shop one chilly winter morning.
“Call me Heather, please,” she said, voice melodic and rich, smooth as hot chocolate with a shot of whiskey. Her chin rose as if she was expecting argument. What Angel could remember of her husband, the man was a stickler for propriety and demanded to be addressed by his title, even to friends.
Angel
never liked the man.
“Heather,” Angel agreed with a grin, surprising her into smiling back at him. “What can I do for you? And why so early? I would’ve come to the shop.”
“I’m afraid this matter requires a measure of discretion,” Lady Heather replied, twisting her scarf in her fingers. “It’s regarding my late husband.”
Angel paused, thinking. Usually when the recently bereaved came to his door, they wanted either the impossible, like a resurrection, or more commonly, a summoning of the departed spirit. He rarely acquiesced as nothing good could come from repeatedly dialing in to the Other Side. It kept the living from moving on and tormented the souls he would be recalling to this plane.
She must have seen some of these thoughts on his face, as she held up a dainty hand, forestalling his coming denial. “I don’t want you to summon him from the Other Side,” she said, tears gathering on her lashes. Angel waited, curious despite himself. “I want you to find him for me.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not following,” Angel said warily, hoping she didn’t cry. Isaac or Daniel breaking down he hated but knew what to do, a near stranger crying left him awkward.
“The shop was broken into three nights ago,” Lady Heather said quickly, words tumbling over themselves as she hurried to explain. “I heard the commotion from my apartment upstairs, but by the time the police arrived, it was too late.”
“What did they steal?” Angel was trying to follow along, he really was, but he had no idea what a burglary would have to do with her deceased husband.
“They stole him,” Lady Heather said, digging out a handkerchief from her tiny black purse. She dabbed at her eyes, miraculously not smearing her mascara.
Angel frowned. “I’m going to need you to spell this out for me.”
“The thieves stole Greyson’s ghost. I need you to find him.”
His brows went up, and Angel enjoyed the rush of excitement that ran along his nerves. “The thieves stole your husband’s ghost?”
“They did,” Lady Heather replied, clenching her handkerchief so hard her hands shook for a moment. “They made a mess until they found him then they left. A few pricey items were taken as well and petty cash I kept in a small safe in the back room. But they took Greyson and left once they had him.”
Angel put his hands in his pockets, thinking hard. He gave the big man in the corner an appraising glance then back to Lady Heather. She was thinner than when he saw her last though that could be due to grieving. Whether he was on this plane as a dislocated spirit or not, Greyson Kensington was still dead, and his wife obviously mourned his passing. “Greyson had a heart attack, right? Did he have a history of heart disease?”
“No,” she sniffled, managing to look pristine even as she cried a few more tears. “What does that matter? Some scoundrels made off with Greyson. I want you to get him back.”
“There’s things I need to know before I can do anything,” Angel replied carefully, Lady Heather’s grief lending him a degree of caution he otherwise wouldn’t employ, even with private contracts. She may not be a friend, but they both had lived in Beacon Hill about the same length of time, and he couldn’t stretch in this part of town without touching someone who knew someone else. Angel claimed Beacon Hill as his—no matter how legitimate a claim it may be, Beacon Hill and Boston were his to protect, and Lady Heather needed help. “Usually when humans, including practitioners, die of natural causes like a heart attack or an aneurysm, the deceased’s soul departs almost immediately. It’s only in times of trauma or extreme stress and strife that a soul remains, manifesting eventually as a ghost. That’s why so much of Boston is haunted—there’s ghosts from the Revolution and other conflicts all over the place. So, I’ll ask again, how did Greyson die?”
Lady Heather peeked up at him from under the sassy brim of her black hat and must have seen his determination for an answer as she sighed and fell back in the chair, slumping slightly, rubbing her eyes.
“It was a heart attack, according to the coroner. He went quick—the doctor said it was fast enough Greyson wouldn’t have known what was happening.”
The man at the door shifted, and Angel could hear the front door of the office open and close. A quick brush of his mind confirmed Daniel and Eroch had arrived and they were in the front common room. He put them out of his mind for a moment, focusing on the task at hand. Angel moved around the front of his desk and took a seat next to Lady Heather. He leaned in closer, the big guy at the door frowning at him, but Lady Heather leaned in as well. Angel whispered, “Who called him back?”
She gaped at him for a moment then snapped her mouth shut with a click and tried to glare at him. Angel smiled and waited, one brow quirking up when she flushed and looked away. “I asked a friend of mine. A wizard and magical historian at Boston College of Magical Arts. She knew the summoning spells and called Greyson back.”
“What was used as the focus?” Angel asked, thinking about it. Whenever Angel saw Greyson in the street or at the apothecary shop, he was carrying a black mahogany and silver-topped cane. “Never mind. It was his cane, wasn’t it?”
She gave him a nod and looked back at him with anxious eyes. “I didn’t expect this to happen, I swear. I just missed him so much…”
“No, I get it. You wanted your husband back any way you could. Also explains why you’ve only come to me now that someone stole his cane. I would have put a stop to this.”
“Everyone knows how you feel about recalling spirits of the deceased. You’ve turned away enough petitioners that I didn’t even think about asking you.” Lady Heather looked away from him as if afraid to see the censure he was sure was there in his expression.
“You’re right—I would have stopped this. Calling a spirit back from the Other Side just because you missed him isn’t healthy or kind. If his spirit had managed to stay here and become a ghost on its own, that’s one thing—a part of him wanted to stay so badly he would defy the laws of the universe and remain behind, regardless of the suffering he would experience being dead in a living world. But from what I’m gathering, you had a friend who wasn’t a necromancer recall a soul, place the focus in Greyson’s cane, and I’m thinking you had him for a decent amount of time, didn’t you? Probably not long after he was cremated.”
“My friend summoned him the night after his funeral,” Lady Heather whispered, tears now falling unchecked down her pale cheeks. “I just missed him terribly—you know how that feels, don’t you? To lose a loved one? I don’t know how you’ve managed to survive losing your whole family. I wasn’t ready to let Greyson go. I know it was wrong, but I still love him.”
“I do,” Angel agreed, but he refrained from saying he would never recall his deceased family from the Other Side. They were where they should be—free from pain and suffering and at peace. If one of his family members had remained as a ghost after the Salvatore Massacre, he would have done his absolute best to send them on, regardless of what his grief wanted.
“Your friend,” Angel started to ask, patting at the air when Lady Heather shook her head in denial. “Relax, I don’t want a name. I just want to know what her affinity is, and what the power supply is for maintaining the spell. Using an inanimate object, no matter how attached a person may have been to it in life, is no way to maintain the connection without having something or someone power it.”
“She’s an elementalist—air affinity. The spells were in the proscribed section of the library. She said if I wanted to have him around in a partially tangible form, then I had to feed the spell from my reserves. She didn’t know how to power the focus independently. I was able to assume control of the spell once she manifested him.”
“And because neither of you are necromancers, the thieves stole the spell’s focus, absconding with your husband’s ghost. To maintain the summoning spell, they would merely have to support it as you have.” Lady Heather nodded tersely at his deduction, frowning. The fact that neither of them were sorcerers also explained why the summoning spell req
uired they feed it from their magical reserves. If Angel had cast it, he would have had more options—his affinity for death magic gave him a near infinite resource thanks to his soul bond to his undead vampire mate, Simeon—and he was a sorcerer, able to access the veil and the infinite maelstrom of power on the Other Side. Angel could bind objects spelled in death magic to an outside power supply, like he had with Simeon’s hellhound whistle. The process allowed Simeon, a vampire, to summon the beast without needing to cast the original spell. Though no one knew his magical power options were so unlimited these days, and he made no mention of it to his guest.
Angel sighed, rocking back in his chair. “What did the cops say?” he asked after a long moment of pensive silence.
“Not much,” she admitted, twisting her fingers tighter around the silk scarf. “They took fingerprints, found some residual magic from the spells they used to break in, and took a bunch of pictures and a list of what was broken and stolen.”
“Did you tell them your dead husband was part of the loot?” Angel asked, meeting her eyes. His suspicions were confirmed when she shook her head once, looking away from his gaze. “Why not?”
“You know why not,” she snapped at him, her chocolate and whiskey voice simmering with barely concealed anger. “I’d have to explain everything to the authorities. The spells we used are illegal as I’m sure you know. Considering the rash of grave robberies and the criminal ring that was using ghosts several weeks ago to rob their beneficiaries gives me no hope of leniency if I was to reveal the truth. My name is not Salvatore—I cannot get away with breaking magical laws.”
Angel grinned at her outburst, which made her blink at him in consternation. She flushed, a dark red across her cheekbones that somehow made her appear even more tragic and vulnerable. Angel linked his fingers together and dropped his hands over his stomach, kicking back a bit further in his seat, the front legs lifting off the floor a couple inches. His nonchalance was irking her, she was glaring at him in between attempts to cool her temper.
