Deadhead (Damned Girl Book 1)

by Clare Kauter

  “You left me! You BOTH left me! I was out there because of you two and you left me to die! Henry, I kind of understand. Like you could have turned into a dragon or something and saved us both with a) fire and b) flying away, but in the heat of the moment I see how you could have been too scared to think of that. But YOU!” I spat, glaring at Ed. “You’re not even alive! They literally couldn’t have done anything to you! You could have beaten them off for me! Or at least done SOMETHING when I was grabbed! But no – you were too busy running away! From the undead! Because it’s not like you ARE ONE or anything, IS IT?!”

  “What?” said Ed. “I’m a ghost, how do expect me to –”

  I was having none of it. “You’re a poltergeist, you idiot! Touching stuff is kind of your thing!”

  “I am?” He looked confused.

  “He is? How can you tell?” Henry asked, frowning. Testing me again, of course.

  “The green aura. C’mon, that’s pretty basic.”

  “You see auras?” said Henry.

  “Yes, big deal.”

  “Well, actually,” said Henry, “it kind of is.” I wanted to ask what he meant by that, but Ed interrupted before I could.

  “How did you get away?” Ed asked. “Also, not to be rude or anything, but you smell awful.”

  “That ‘awful smell’ just saved my life, something you were busy not doing.”

  “Ah,” said Henry, nodding. “The coriander.”

  He looked so impressed with my resourcefulness that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hadn’t actually vomited intentionally.

  He continued, “We need to figure out what the deal is with these zombies.” He was right. Where the hell had they come from? Why were they here?

  “Maybe they want brains,” said Ed, shooting for levity and missing.

  Henry and I ignored him, both of us moving to the window to see what was happening outside. Henry jumped up, his front legs just catching the window frame while he struggled to pull his back half up. If only I’d had a camera, I would have made a mint on YouTube with that footage. Out the window we could see the green tendrils curling around the perimeter of the cemetery, flaring up every time a zom got too close to the exit and turning it around. Weird. It was like they were trapped.

  “They’re just pacing the cemetery,” Henry said.

  “Yeah, it’s like they’re not allowed out of the exits. Do you think –”

  “That they’re there to keep us out? Yes.”

  “So it’s got something to do with dead boy here? Great. Another reason to like him.”

  Ed sighed. “It’s not like –”

  “Shut up.”

  For once, he did.

  The fact that they appeared to be confined to the cemetery was not the only weird thing. Even for zombies, they were moving really slowly. The one that caught my foot in the cemetery had only managed it because I trod on its emerging hand. Despite having a hold on me for at least 20 seconds, it never went in for a bite. And the other one, Cheeky, (and, come to think of it, all the zoms that had surrounded me at that point) had plenty of time to bite me, so why was I not now patrolling the cemetery with the rest of the undead?

  “You didn’t do this, did you?” Henry asked me. I glared at him.

  Does he actually think that I would raise a horde of zombies and have them attack myself? I thought. Although, if he was watching and saw me escape two times, I can see why he might think that. But they’re slow and pathetic. Not my style at all.

  “Me? Don’t be ridiculous! If I’d done this –” Suddenly I realised what Henry was doing. He didn’t actually think I was responsible for this; he was just trying to figure out if I knew how to raise the dead. He must have heard the rumours… I caught myself, and instead of saying If I’d done this I would have done it properly, I finished with, “If I’d done this, I’d be dead. Didn’t you see the amount of energy that took? You’d need a whole coven to –”

  The look of realization crossed both mine and Henry’s faces at the same time. “We’ll speak to the Green Wattle Witches tomorrow,” he said. “The zombies will die when the sun comes up. And we can look at the grave in the daytime, when we’re safer.”

  “I can’t believe this. I’ve barely been at this quest business an hour and I’ve nearly been killed by a horde of zombies.” I looked at Ed. “Someone really hated you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Such a comfort.”

  “You left me to die. Any chance of me ever saying anything nice to you is completely gone now.”

  “Oh, and I thought we were just starting to bond, what with you insisting on digging up my autopsy-mutilated corpse and everything.”

  He was such a baby. “I want you to find closure and move onto the next world even more than you do. Trust me.” I turned to Henry. “If we go out the back door –”

  “We’re not going anywhere until the morning,” said Henry with the kind of authority that made me almost listen to him.

  “If we go now we might catch them at it! They’ll all be too exhausted to try anything else and we’ll be able to get some answers.” I was already formulating a list of questions to ask. Number one, ‘What the hell’.

  “Have you forgotten that there are zombies out there? Or are you just insane?” Ed asked.

  “They’re staying within the cemetery. If we sneak out the back door they’re not going to know we’re there, and besides, it’s not like they can move all that fast.”

  “They can move fast enough to catch you,” Ed pointed out. Man, he was getting on my nerves.

  “Only because I was literally ON TOP OF THE GRAVE as one rose! We’ll be fine. Besides they’re not going to attack us while we’re with the coven that raised them, and the hall where they meet is only half a kilometre away.” Henry and Ed both looked unconvinced. “I’ll take my kit! We’ll be fine!”

  “Your kit?” said Ed.

  “All the basic wards, you know. Coriander, garlic, wolfsbane, Egyptian talisman, rune stone, the works. And Henry, if you transform into a wolf then we’ll be safe from everything anyway.” Not many creatures would mess with a wolf at this time of the month.

  “We can’t do that. That’s insane. Right Henry?” said Ed. Henry didn’t answer. “Henry?”

  “Maybe we can risk it,” Henry said after a short pause. “If we don’t move now the trail will go cold.”

  “OK,” I said. “I’m going to have a shower and pick out a new pair of shoes then we can get going.” I started to head up the stairs. My house was old and tiny, but rather than putting it all on one level the builders had inexplicably decided to balance a second floor (consisting of the bathroom and my bedroom) precariously atop the first. This was a house you could legitimately imagine the Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing and blowing down. So concerned about this was I, that before I’d even started moving my furniture in I’d cast strengthening bonds on every structural beam I found.

  Most people would have knocked it down and rebuilt, but I didn’t have that sort of money. Besides, this rickety old place fitted in with the cemetery across the way. I suspected living in a creaky little shack helped give me some street cred as a medium, too, although having said that it can’t have given me too much seeing as I didn’t have any appointments booked in for the next week. (That was good considering my quest, but not so good considering my lack of savings and my need to eat.)

  “Why do you need a new pair of shoes?” Ed called out when I was halfway up the spiral staircase. I didn’t want to relive the incident of the cheek sloughing off the zombie’s face, so I pretended I didn’t hear him.

  Chapter 4

  BOOM.

  Ten minutes later (or possibly 45 minutes, I always lose track of time in the shower), my normally dingy bathroom was completely lit up by the light from an explosion outside. I turned off the water and wrapped myself in a towel, heading for the window. Looking down over the cemetery, I noticed that the green tendrils were still swirling around and most of the zombies remain
ed, save for those who had been caught in the blast. There was a flicker of flames over the spot where I assumed the explosion had occurred – Ed’s grave.

  I threw on jeans and a t-shirt and ran downstairs where Henry was watching from the kitchen. He looked at me. “Was it –”

  “Ed’s grave,” I said, nodding.

  “Someone really didn’t want us digging it up.”

  We watched the fire from the window. The flames were licking over the grave in waves. Not your standard explosion, then. Another spell. That made three spells on Ed’s grave. Perhaps the zombie and explosion booby traps were the reason for the clouding?

  I knew I should tell Henry about the clouding spell, but I wasn’t sure what he’d think about that. Even the fact that I knew clouding spells existed suggested that I knew a little more about magic than I’d led him to believe. Lost in my inner turmoil, I didn’t notice Henry watching me.

  “What?” he asked.

  I sighed. I guess I didn’t really have a choice. “Well, before, when I was – wait, where’s Ed?”

  Henry frowned. “I don’t know. He was here earlier but I fell asleep on the couch waiting for you. You do know we’re in the middle of a drought, right? You should probably –”

  “So you didn’t see where he went?”

  “You don’t think he might have…”

  “I’d like to think he’s got enough brains not to explode his own grave when we’re in the middle of investigating his murder, but –”

  “I don’t imagine he did it intentionally.”

  No, taking into account the previous magical events of the evening, neither did I.

  Suddenly Ed popped through the front door.

  “Where have you been? Did you just – ”

  He cut me off. “I swear I just brushed the gravestone and – BOOM.”

  “You went back into a graveyard filled with zombies? Why? I thought you were terrified of them!”

  “Um, well…” He looked uncomfortable. Good. “Like you said, they can’t hurt me. I just wanted a moment alone with…”

  “You went back into a zombie-infested cemetery for some quiet time with your own grave, but you wouldn’t come back to help me earlier WHEN I WAS NEARLY KILLED?”

  “You’re right, that does sound bad.”

  “And you exploded our evidence!”

  “How do you even know there was anything useful in there? You said yourself that the signals were mixed or whatever.”

  “Because someone had put a clouding spell on it!”

  Oops. Way to blurt it out, Nessa.

  “So that’s what you weren’t telling me. You detected a clouding spell?” Henry said.

  Ed frowned. “I thought they were undetectable?”

  “What do you know about magic?” I asked.

  “Not much,” he admitted.

  “Well, a good clouding spell is usually undetectable. I can’t be sure, but I was getting weird signals from your grave. It should have been pretty standard, easy stuff, but nothing made sense. Clearly someone didn’t want us looking. Now I’m sure there was something in your grave that could have helped us. Maybe something about the way you were killed.” I thought for a moment. “Seeing your autopsy report might help.” I wasn’t medically trained, of course, but I was pretty accustomed to death. Maybe I’d be able to pick something up.

  “And how do you propose we get our hands on that?” Ed asked, a tad snarkily.

  “You’re a poltergeist. Pull a polter-heist and get it for us!” And yes, I was very proud of that pun. Ed just rolled his eyes. No sense of humour. “We should head off. It’d be nice if we could stop the coven before they pull any more crazy magic stuff.”

  To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure that this was their work. This was dark magic – not at all their style. But then again, the zombies hadn’t actually hurt me even when they had the opportunity. If the witches hadn’t done it I didn’t know who else could have. Maybe they could point us in the right direction.

  Ed insisted on wearing all of the wards himself. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was a coward or he was just really excited to discover that he could touch things. While he was busy draping himself with pendants and wreaths, I decided to try and subtly glean some information from Henry to figure out how I was supposed to behave around him.

  “So, are there any forms of magic that are totally illegal and that I definitely shouldn’t do in front of you?” I asked. I was hoping that question would sound casual, but in truth, the only way I could have sounded more guilty is if I’d added “I’m asking for a friend.”

  Henry looked at me in horror. “Oh god, you ARE a necromancer.”

  “What? No!” Cough, cough.

  Ed stopped draping his rosary and started paying attention to our conversation. “You can make me alive again?!” he squealed. Yes, squealed.

  “No, I can’t.” To my credit, I only took a small amount of satisfaction in squashing his hopes and dreams. “Even if I were a necromancer, all I’d be able to do would be to briefly reanimate your body. I could maybe get some basic information out of it if it wasn’t too decomposed, but that’s all. Unfortunately, however, as your body has been completely incinerated, it’s unlikely that I could do anything. If I were a necromancer.”

  “Which you’re not.” Henry did not sound convinced.

  “Which I’m not.”

  Ed had an odd expression on his face. Sad, yet kind of relieved. I suppose being brought back to life after you were murdered would be kind of bittersweet.

  Once Ed was totally covered in charms and Henry had transformed into a huge white wolf, we sneaked out the back door of my house and headed into the forest on the path to the coven’s lair. The witches of Green Wattle met in an abandoned church, which was (like many of their members) old and creepy looking. It seemed like the kind of place that spiders and bats would flock to. I presumed they’d chosen that building over other cleaner spaces for the same reason I’d moved into my cemetery-side shack – because it was good for business.

  To reach the church from my house, we had to travel through a forest. There was a narrow road that people sometimes drove down, but as I didn’t have a car (and Henry wouldn’t let me ride on his back), we proceeded on foot. The creatively-named Black Forest was like the Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter but with more eucalypts and undergrowth. Of course, technically it was ‘bush’ rather than a ‘forest’, but frankly “The Black Bush” sounded a bit wrong.

  I didn’t often walk through here at night, especially not around the full moon. It was still a couple of nights away but I could already feel its effects. Sure, it was nice that the moon gave off a bit of extra light, but with all the magic that was swirling around that evening anyway I didn’t particularly want the danger amplified by lunar energy.

  Plus, there was the risk of werewolves. That was why I’d asked Henry to change – he looked pretty threatening, and his scent would keep away any other wolves roaming the area. Unless it was breeding season, of course. Eek. I decided it was best not to mention that to the others.

  Our trio was sticking to the path so we wouldn’t get lost, but of course that increased the risk of running into other magical folk. And let’s be honest, anyone you might encounter in a forest in the middle of a night was probably not someone you wanted to get to know. Besides wolves, ghosts were rife in this forest, and I was not a big fan of ghosts unless I was being paid to contact them. The ones that hung out in here were especially vile – you could bet that when they were alive, they were the kind of people that would go to shops just to talk at the staff for hours on end. How those ghosts could possibly have enough unfinished business to come back and haunt this place when they’d clearly had so little business going on when they were alive was a mystery. Invariably, they came back as pink-aura spirits, too – they had the ability to manifest in such a way as to make themselves visible to anyone. (This was different from Ed’s style of manifestation – unlike the pink-auras, he could touch
things, but on the other hand he could only be seen by magicals and mediums.) In here, they lurked by the side of the road so they could accost any unwary travellers and complain for hours about their boring death stories.

  My main concern, however, was not so much with the ghosts and other creatures in the forest (we had wards for them), but with whoever was responsible for the spells at the graveyard. I hoped it was the witches so we could get it sorted out quickly, but as much as they annoyed me, zombies and bombs didn’t really seem their style. They were still our best lead, though, and even if they weren’t responsible they would probably know who else in the area was practising the occult. They’d certainly known about me.

  This whole ‘getting a licence’ thing was starting to seem quite tricky.

  “This quest business…” I said, addressing Henry. “Is it always this full-on? Like when I think ‘licence’, I usually think ‘mid-morning trip to the RTA’, not so much ‘midnight trip to the coven’.”

  “I’ll admit,” said Henry, “this one is a bit more tricky than those I’ve examined in the past. However, it is allowing you to showcase your special skills.”

  Ah, so whatever The Department of Magic and Death thought I was had caused them to give me a special test. Henry was determined to figure out what magic I could do. I was equally as determined not to show him.

  “It would help if this were more like the RTA’s system, you know. Like with a handbook telling you what to do to pass the test.” And what exactly was legal.

  “Can we talk about something else?” Ed asked. “Rather than, you know, your admin stuff?”

  I would have rolled my eyes but I’d done it so much that evening that I was worried I’d get an injury, so I just imagined I had and moved on. “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t know, maybe I could tell you the circumstances surrounding my death or something. Like, if you want to get your licence for solving my murder.”

  Annoyingly, he was right. I really did need to ask him that stuff.

  “Right, why don’t you bore us all to death with the tale of yours?”