Modern Magic
Page 246
I gripped the obsidian knife warily and fell into a defensive stance. With my left hand, I took out my jack ball and started twirling it to repel spirits, muttering ‘stay away’ over and over again. Teag was doing the same. I hoped it worked. I wasn’t close to Teag’s level of martial arts mastery, but I had trained enough to hold my own in a fight—at least with the living. The difference between the wraith and the vampire ghost, Sorren had told us, was that the wraith ate away at the soul, not just life energy. That meant even Sorren had something to worry about.
The wraith stalked us, keeping its distance. Maybe it sensed the jack balls, maybe it didn’t like the salt. Or maybe it was just deciding which of us to kill first.
The wraith blinked out of sight, and suddenly reappeared in front of Teag. Teag pivoted and shouted a war cry, stabbing his staff into the wraith. The runes along the wooden rod glowed, and the wraith shrieked and drew back. Again the wraith roiled forward, and Teag reached down with one hand to loosen one of the knot-balls on his belt as he held his staff like a lance. Energy crackled at the tip of the rod, spraying embers like a giant sparkler. Teag was new with his magic, so his control wasn’t great, but any weapon is better than nothing.
I wanted to go after the wraith to help Teag, but we had agreed to hold our places unless things got dire. Behind us in the circle, Mrs. Teller was chanting, digging in the recently-disturbed ground to bring up the coffin box. We had to protect her, give her time to dispel the Crossing and lay the wraith to rest, or more people would die—starting with the four of us.
The wraith came at Sorren, and it was a toss-up who was faster. Sorren brought his iron sword down in a diagonal slash that would have split a mortal body in two. The wraith’s outline wavered, and it let out an unholy screech that nearly deafened me. If I hadn’t been sure the spirits around us had already fled, that scream would have woken them for sure. The wraith’s tendrils snapped at Sorren like a whip, leaving red welts where they struck his skin.
I knew it would come for me next. I braced myself, but even so I wasn’t ready for the aura of cold dread that surrounded the wraith. It felt as if the moon and stars had all gone out, as if everyone I loved had died. I fought despair, and found anger. The wraith’s tendrils flicked toward me, and I tried to evade them, keeping the jack ball twirling. That seemed to keep the wraith’s body at a little more than arm’s distance, but its tendrils kept moving. One of them caught me on the wrist and thigh. Like dry ice, they burned and froze at the same time, and I slashed at the tendril with the obsidian knife as I raised my wounded arm to shield myself. The brass bells jangled, and the knife stabbed down into the black mist. If the tendrils had been flesh, I would have cut them off.
Once more, the wraith fell back with a god-awful caterwaul, and I staggered back a step, feeling pain sear down my arm and leg. The wraith came at me again, faster than I could blink, and I stabbed and struck at it, channeling my rage as if I were fighting a carjacker for my keys and wallet. I knew it was trying to draw Teag and Sorren off so it could get a better strike at Mrs. Teller, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I lunged forward, bellowing for all I was worth, bells clattering. I threw a handful of salt from my pocket into the place where a heart should have been, and the wraith froze, just for an instant. Enough for me to dive forward, slash it again, and drop back, getting the jack ball back in motion to keep the wraith from getting any closer.
I thought the wraith would go after me again, but it veered at the last minute and caught Teag by surprise. Three of its tendrils slapped at his skin, and everywhere they touched, a red welt blossomed. Teag screamed, and plunged his staff into the belly of the wraith, but the tendrils caught him again, leaving no chance for Teag to unknot one of his ropes. The jack ball dropped from his hand as he staggered.
Teag tried to hold his stance against the wraith, but I could see him trembling with the strain. “Stay where you are!” Teag shouted before either Sorren or I could move. Teag’s left hand went to the agimat charm on his necklace, and for just a second, it looked as if his entire body crackled with electricity, throwing the wraith away. Angry, raw, circles marred his face and arms, and he swayed on his feet, but he remained standing. He snatched up the jack ball he had dropped, circling it as he kept a wary gaze on the wraith.
Once more, the wraith surged toward us, flowing like filthy water across the grass. “Mirrors!” Sorren yelled, and the three of us held up our reflecting glass as the wraith drew itself up from the ground to its full height, tendrils swirling like the tattered hem of a shroud.
The wraith hissed its displeasure, then blinked out of sight. A heartbeat later, as Mrs. Teller’s chant rose to a keen, the wraith materialized behind me and its inky tendrils closed around my chest and belly in a freezing, burning grip. The sudden, blinding pain made me gasp for air, and the obsidian knife fell from my hand as my muscles spasmed.
Each welt was a bit of my soul stripped away. How many pieces could be torn from a soul? How long would it take to die like this? And if I lived, soul-wounded, what would I be?
Everything seemed to happen at once. Sorren and Teag came running, weapons at the ready. But I knew that with the wraith pressed close to me, they couldn’t attack the wraith without hitting me, since the wraith was mere shadow and mist. I fell to my knees, dropping my jack ball and my knife, and my hands gripped the dirt like claws.
There’s a reason a psychometric doesn’t like to touch things in a graveyard. Things touch back. Magic, fueled by primal fear, seared down my arms, into my hands, into the ground. Terrified almost beyond reason, my conscious mind turned my magic loose, and it shot through the cemetery dirt with a cry for help.
The restless dead answered. I could feel spirits massing beneath where I knelt, adding the weight of their souls to my own, counter balancing the pull of the wraith, giving me what remained of their tattered strength. I felt their cold hands clasp my own through the dirt, and the meager energy that remained to them, they offered to me against a foe the dead feared as much as I did.
Just as quickly, the spirits left me, but I had new strength to go on despite the pain. Sorren and Teag were striking at the wraith, trying to draw him off. Blood seeped from welts across Teag’s arms and chest where the wraith had torn through his shirt. Sorren’s shirt was ruined, and blood ran from open wounds on his forearms and face.
The spirits were gone, but anger took their place, cold and pure. It gave me the strength to rise from my knees. With a half-mad cry of rage, I gripped the black tourmaline stone in my right hand, plunging it into the wraith from behind to pull him off Teag, who was staggering like a boxer going down for the count. The wraith gave a banshee wail and turned toward me. In that instant, I shoved the only thing I could reach between us—Mrs. Teller’s basket.
A flash of light nearly blinded me, and when my vision cleared, I saw an iridescent barrier between me and the wraith.
The glowing film glimmered like a soap bubble, but it was strong enough to send the wraith screeching back, temporarily out of reach.
“Get behind me!” I shouted, angling to keep the protective, glowing field between us and the wraith, trying to position myself as a barrier to keep the wraith away from Mrs. Teller. Visions filled me from the sweetgrass beneath my palms. Images blurred together, of Mrs. Teller wreathed in candle smoke and lit by firelight, of lowcountry marshes and ancient drumming, of my mother’s love and Baxter’s protective growls. I could smell the distinctive scent of sage and basil.
I didn’t know how long I could maintain the iridescent scrim, but I was prepared to hold it until the white light burned me up, if need be. Anything was better than being lashed by deathly cold, dying one soul-splinter at a time.
Mrs. Teller’s chanting reached a crescendo behind us. I heard her shout in a language I did not understand, then heard the crunch of glass and wood.
The wraith froze mid-attack, and its death-cry will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. It began to spin, slowly at
first then faster and faster until it became a vortex, and then popped out of existence.
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath. My shaking arms fell to my sides, although I still had a death-grip on the basket. Sorren and Teag rushed toward me, amazed that we were all still alive.
Behind us, Mrs. Teller’s voice had fallen to a quiet drawl. Even without being able to catch the words, I knew she was thanking the powers that had answered her summons. After a moment, she stood, and released the salt circle. On the edges of my raw nerves, I felt a rush of invisible power, called and dismissed.
“That’s done,” Mrs. Teller said, as matter-of-factly as if she had just put biscuits in the oven instead of dispelling a killer revenant. She looked down at the shattered remains of black wood and splintered mirrors lying atop the demon bowl-basket, all that remained of the coffin box that had summoned the wraith. “I’ll gather these up and burn them with sage and rosemary, just in case.”
I looked down at the bloody welts that marred my hands and arms. “What did it do to us?”
Mrs. Teller looked the three of us up and down with a practiced gaze. “You all sure do look sorry,” she said. “Each place that thing touched you, it took a thread of your soul. You’ll feel it. Gonna feel weary, heartsick, hopeless.”
“Can it heal?” Teag’s voice carried a note of desperation I had never heard before. Even Sorren looked concerned.
Mrs. Teller nodded. “Takes time. You’ve got to be still, meditate a while. Pray if it suits you. Think on goodness. Go out of your way to do good for someone. Gotta heal from the inside out. There’s no potion for it. It’s on you to fix.”
She gave a sharp nod of her head. “Wraith’s gone. Curse is done. Best we be moving on.”
* * *
Maggie ran the store for us the next day. Teag and I looked like something the cat dragged in. I didn’t want to answer questions, and I was anxious to do what I could to speed the healing. On the news, they said that a house had burned to the ground the day before, likely a gas explosion. It was High John’s place. I never asked Sorren if he did it, and he never brought it up.
Marjorie called me that evening. She said a man from the government had come by with official paperwork to take the humidor, and she gave it to him with her blessing after he assured her she would not be held responsible. All she could tell me, when I asked her to describe him, was that he was tall and blond.
Sorren’s skin healed overnight. Vampires regenerate. Teag and I took longer. But soul wounds, Sorren said, take just as long, human or vampire. I had the feeling he knew from experience. Then again, time is on his side. I’m just mortal. So I figured I’d better get working on it. Tempus fugit.
Wicked Dreams
“Where did you get this?” My voice sounded sharp, even to my ears. I was looking at a man’s ring, made of heavy silver with a raised decorative seal in the middle. And without even touching it, I knew it had drawn blood and caused pain.
“I picked it up at the police auction day before yesterday,” my would-be customer replied. They said it belonged to ‘Diamond Dan’ Hanahan, the businessman they indicted for racketeering a while back.”
My customer didn’t have any psychic abilities, I was sure of it. You wouldn’t have to be a psychometric—someone like me who can read objects’ history by touching them—to feel the malevolence that seemed to be forged into the ring. I was pretty certain that any flavor of clairvoyance would send a big, mental neon warning sign to someone with the faintest trace of a sixth sense. Mine was screaming.
“It’s a very nice piece,” I said, still refusing to handle it. And I named a price I thought was better than fair.
“Sold,” the man said, and waited while I wrote up the paperwork and got him his money. When he left, I sat down in my chair behind the counter and sighed, watching the ring warily.
“We’ve got a hot one,” I called out. “And we need to make sure it stays out of circulation.”
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antiques and curio shop with more than its share of secrets. We’ve been in Charleston for over three hundred and fifty years, and in that time, few people outside our inner circle have ever suspected the shop’s real purpose: to get dangerous magical items off the market and out of the wrong hands. I’m just the most recent in a long line of my relatives to run the shop, and many of them were psychometrics like me, or clairvoyants of some kind. Given what we do, that kind of talent helps.
“Make sure you let Sorren know,” Teag said walking over to see what I had. Teag Logan is my assistant store manager, best friend, and occasional bodyguard. He’s got his own magic. He’s a Weaver, able to weave spells and magic into cloth with the warp and woof of the fabric, and also able to draw threads of data together to find out information that’s hidden or secret, making him one hell of a hacker.
“I will. Sorren can get it over to the Alliance to take care of,” I replied. Sorren and the Alliance are some of our other secrets. The Alliance is a coalition of mortals and immortals who work together to destroy or secure the dangerous magical items we find. Sorren is one of the Alliance leaders. He’s also been the silent business partner behind Trifles and Folly from the beginning, and he’s a nearly six-hundred year old vampire.
Teag used a set of antique chopsticks to pick up the ring without touching it, and drop it into a lead-lined box, which he walked back to put in the office safe. When he came back up to the front of the store, he brought me a hot cup of tea, loaded with sugar.
“Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t have to touch that thing to get some pretty bad vibes from it. Diamond Dan liked to get his hands dirty. He used that ring when he beat people up, and he enjoyed it.” I shivered. If the images were that strong just from being close to the ring, I really didn’t want to think about what I would have seen if I had touched it.
“That was in the news when his case went to trial,” Teag said. “Real nice guy,” he said sarcastically. “If the ring was used in his crimes, why did the police put it up for auction?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t a murder weapon, and it probably wasn’t stolen. Just because he was wearing it at the time he did illegal things wouldn’t have mattered to the police.”
“I hate when they do their auction,” Teag said. “We always get a flood of ‘spookies’ and we end up paying money for things we can’t turn around and sell.”
“Which means Trifles and Folly is doing its real job,” I replied. “Much as it pains the sales figures for the month. That’s one more nasty item that won’t be out in circulation.”
Most people don’t realize that even when an object isn’t actually magical or haunted it can be so fouled with bad, negative, or just downright evil resonance that it can have an impact on an unsuspecting purchaser. It’s not too different from people who move into a house where a murder or an awful crime was committed and then report trouble sleeping, depression, even behavior changes. The unseen world affects us far more than the average person realizes. That’s why the Alliance has been doing its best to keep people safe for the last five hundred years or so. When we do it right, no one notices. When we screw up, people die.
“Looks like it’s going to be quiet in the shop today,” Teag noted, glancing around the empty store. “We must be in between bus tours.” Charleston merchants depend on tourists, and we can tell a difference on the days when one group of conventioneers or visitors are moving out and the new group is moving in. Odds are, we would be slammed tomorrow, as the next batch of sightseers started exploring the city.
“If that’s the case, I’m going to seize the moment and head over to Honeysuckle Café to grab a bite for lunch,” I said. “Want me to bring something back for you?”
“The usual,” Teag said, and I knew that was the rosemary chicken salad on ciabatta with aoili.
“You got it,” I said, “and a sweet tea to go?”
“Definitely.”
I was more in a latte mood as I walked over to Honeysuckl
e Café. It’s one of Teag’s and my favorite lunch spots, and it’s popular with the entire King Street merchant group because the food and coffee are so good. I consider Trina, the owner, to be a good friend of mine, and Rick, her best barista, makes the most awesome latte in Charleston. So despite the freaky ring, my mood was pretty high as I headed over for lunch.
The universe has a way of making you pay for that kind of optimism.
I knew something was wrong when the patrons at Honeysuckle Café were talking in a hushed buzz. Usually, it’s a caffeine-fueled dull roar. It wouldn’t take a psychic to sense the tension in the air, and it was so unusual, I checked the news sites on my phone as I waited in line in case there had been some kind of national tragedy and I hadn’t heard.
“Hey Rick,” I said as I got the front of the line. “Skinny vanilla latte please—and what’s going on?”
Rick looks like he should be working in the kind of gin joint where world-weary men go to relieve their sorrows. I suspect that he’s done more than one tour of duty in such a place, both behind the bar and in front of it. Now, he slings coffee instead of martinis, but he has a ‘been there, done that’ manner that would put Bogart to shame. I’m not the first to make that comparison. There’s a sign over the latte bar that reads, ‘Rick’s Place’.
“Anything for you, sweetheart,” he said in his best Bogie voice. He pulled the double shots of espresso like a pro and steamed the milk. “As for the vibe, everyone’s talking about the murder.”
“Murder?” I echoed. On the whole, Charleston is a pretty safe city, as cities go. Yes, bad things happen as they do everywhere, but not as much as they do elsewhere. I credit the Alliance with some of that, since we tend to shut down the worst of the bad things before they get started. Still, one tragedy is too many, and from the look of things, something had hit close to home.