Spirited

by C. M. Stunich

  “These are shadows!” I screamed, shaking him. “You can't do anything about them! We need spirit whisperers and shadow whisperers, that's it! Get everyone out of here, go collect some and come back.”

  “I'm not leaving you here,” Air growled out, but I ripped my arm from his grip, feeling Vex's large form moving behind me. Even though he was a stranger, I wouldn't have put it past him to try and stop me either.

  Flicking my wings back, I knocked both men away from me, turned, and took off toward the skeleton beast, Talon appearing suddenly beside me.

  “Need some help?” he asked, jumping up and launching a vial from his bandolier at the monster. The small glass bottle hit the creature in the face and exploded, making it scream as its skull started to melt. Ghosts … could always fight other ghosts. The damage they inflicted to each other was temporary, but whereas spirits could decide not to feel pain, shadows had no choice in the matter.

  “Thanks,” I said as I threw my wings downward in a sharp motion, thanked the gods that the Vibrant had high ceilings, and rose above a violent sweep of the creature's claws. Beating the black feathered appendages behind my back, I pulled out Hellim steel and hoped that my mix of magic would be make me a worthy opponent.

  The thing about being a spirit whisperer and needing a handler … was that you had to find some way to deal with combat situations and not get that person killed. Since a shadow whisperer did not need a handler, I was hoping to break the barrier on the creature with that magic first. That was the only way to take down a shadow—break its magic shell and then exorcise it.

  It was going to be interesting, being able to do both.

  Please let me get into the Royal College so I can learn how to be a proper shadow whisperer, I prayed, hoping like … well, Hell that Hellim was listening to me. I'd been apprenticed to a spirit whisperer from the age of five to the time I turned seventeen. But now I needed to learn how to use my shadow magic, and I highly doubted any shadow whisperers were looking to take on a twenty year old apprentice.

  Pulling my wings in close, I dove at the creature with Hellim's knife and slammed it down as hard as I could into its melting skull. The blade of my knife sank into the gooey mass and I felt it, a crack like breaking glass, the magic around the creature shattering the same way Mr. Grandberg had shattered my shield back at the manor.

  Ripping my knife from the creature's head, I used my wings to propel myself backward and dropped fast, right into the middle of the suddenly empty dance floor. The only dancers here right now were corpses and several confused spirits. Not everyone left a ghost, but it was All Haunts' Eve, and about a hundred times more likely for a spirit to stick around.

  Some might move on naturally, but that took a lot of magic and a lot of heart. They had to really want to move on. Most would have to be exorcised.

  But that was tomorrow-Brynn's problem. I'd be rounded up with all the other mediocre spirit whisperers and sent into the city to clean up ghosts.

  “Jas!” I yelled as I slipped in the blood and just barely caught myself, my handler sliding into place behind me. Flub, I knew I should've worn the boots! Jasinda and I moved forward like a unit as I switched my Hellim knife out for Haversey steel, and grabbed my necklace. It was up to Jas to make sure we maintained contact.

  Theoretically, I could've used magic to exorcise this thing but … it was big and powerful and I was afraid I'd get pulled right to the other side along with it, cloak and handler be damned.

  With a battle ready cry that probably sounded stupid as hell, I swung my knife in an arc and slashed across the gashadokuro's massive rib bone.

  “Goddess-speed and happy endings,” I growled as adrenaline surged hot and heady through me. Silver light swarmed up and around the creature, and in the blink of an eye, it was gone.

  Before I could even think to get too excited about it, I spun around and found the guy in the fox mask sliding his katana through the center of the snake.

  It fell to the ground bleeding and thrashing as something else slipped in, something old and powerful, something that turned my bones to ice all the way from the other side of the room.

  The fox-masked boy turned toward it just in time to be sent flying by another skeleton creature that'd squeezed through the double front doors of the dance house. One was ripped off and the other hung askew, letting in a surge of small shadowy creatures that were hard to make out, even with my second sight.

  Fox-Guy smashed into the wall with a groan and crumpled to the floor as I noticed Airmienan near the tables, sweeping magick through the air with wide arcs of his arm. Like I said, I knew little to nothing about Hekkett and the powers he granted to his descendants, but as I watched … I saw the prince obliterate several of the small shadowy creatures, the ones that moved like broken feline marionettes across the scuffed wooden dance house floors.

  Maybe … there was a reason the ancient metal sign above the Royal College gates read an academy devoted to the study of magicks, spirits and shadows. Everyone knew the flubbing sign was outdated, built in an era when the school was so elitist and privileged that it only served the royal magick whisperers and a handful of the most powerful spirit and shadow whisperers. But maybe there was something else to it? Because between me and Air, we seemed to have this ship on lockdown. His power seemed fairly similar to mine—a combination of spirit and shadow magic. Interesting.

  Jas and I started toward him when Vex appeared from behind the gashadokuro in his griffin form, grabbing onto one of the monster's back legs and yanking. The giant skeleton went down with an all too human scream exploding from its non-existent throat. It crashed to the wood floor and literally shattered into pieces, the skull rolling toward the tables, the toe bones scattering like marbles.

  But it was only down for a second.

  I didn't even have time to feel a small surge of triumph before the white bones were rattling and quivering, sucking back toward the rib cage of the beast like they were inexorably drawn to it.

  Fuck.

  At that point, I didn't notice or care if I lost a feather. If there were ever a time to curse, this would be it.

  Redirecting my attention back to the largest shadow, I realized it wasn't just a swirl of smoke and nightmares like the smaller creatures … it was a woman in a cloak made of storm clouds. As I stared at her, she dropped the hood and flashed long lavender hair and eyes the color of aged bronze—the same as the boy in the fox mask. She had ears just like him, too, tall and curved, and a mask … that was melting down her face like wax.

  Pulling out Hellim's blade, I hefted it in my left hand, keeping Haversey's in my right.

  “Stay with me,” I told Jasinda as she stood between my wings and kept a palm on my back. The reason most spirit whisperers weren't trained in combat was because there were few real situations where we needed it. Hostile ghosts could be taken down from across the room with the right spell. And most simply needed to be hunted down and flushed out; they didn't fight like the Grandbergs did.

  But a situation like this? Well, I wasn't trained for it, so I had to improvise. There really was no other choice.

  “Don't hurt her!” Fox-Guy said, shoving to his feet and spinning his katana in an impressive circle with just one hand. “I'll deal with her; help your friends instead.” His eyes met mine, that shimmering bronze color that was more brown than gold, a muted, less yellow version of my own eyes. In them, I could see how serious he was about that statement. I had a feeling that if I approached the woman with the melting face, I'd have a blade whisperer's katana to answer to.

  “Suit yourself,” I said as I turned back around and came this flubbing close to getting my head knocked off by a third gashadokuro. It was Talon that saved me, shoving both me and in turn, Jas, back and into the front counter at about the same time Fox-Guy jumped over it and stood with his back to us. “I almost forgot about you,” I said as the thief held out a hand and jerked me back to my feet.

  “I come in handy sometimes,” he said, but
he was already busy pulling out another vial and tossing it at the skeleton monster's skull again. Same trick, same result. The thing melted and started thrashing, but as Jas stepped back and I readied myself to fly up toward its head, Vexer roared a warning in a sound that reminded me of the Nalahari Desert lions.

  Flicking my gaze over, I found Air backing up slowly, still swinging magic at the small shadow creatures … and moving directly toward a fucking giant boar with gleaming black tusks and blood oozing from its lips. He didn't know to check his back because his back was, essentially, to a wall.

  The shadow creature had walked right through it.

  “Air!” I screamed, launching myself toward him and throwing my body between him and the pointed tusks. Magic exploded from my chest in silver and red tendrils, snaking around me like tentacles and stabbing the boar right through the heart. Its shield broke at the same moment I exorcised it, shouting my spellwords just as Talon used every ounce of his strength to throw Jas into me.

  If he hadn't done that, and if I hadn't been wearing the ridiculously expensive cloak, I'd have had my soul sucked straight from my body and sent to the Otherside.

  The boar disappeared in waves of silver light, but I guess third time's a charm because Talon was suddenly in front of me, face grim as he yanked me into his chest. Jas was clinging to my arm and like any proper handler, she knew to never let go, her nails raking my flesh as the three of us tumbled to the floor.

  That was when time stopped, I think. That moment right there when I flicked my gaze over my shoulder, past Jas' wild sapphire eyes … and saw the blood.

  There was an awful, awful lot of blood.

  “No.”

  The word fell from my lips, just a whisper, a tiny sound that nobody heard. I thought I'd screamed it, but I guess my heart knew better. Because by the time I'd uttered that simple syllable, another boar spirit had slid through the wall … and gored the prince directly through the chest.

  Ruby red liquid sprayed everywhere as a horde of people stumbled through the damaged dance house doors and started flinging magic and spellwords and the steel of both the Light and the Dark Deities.

  But … it didn't matter.

  It didn't matter because they were too late.

  Tremors wracked my body as I stood up, the world melting away from me the way that woman's mask had poured down her face. I saw nothing as I stumbled over to Air, those same red and silver tendrils lashing out from my body and striking the boar spirit through the skull, my lips mumbling spellwords that didn't mean anything to me anymore. Jasinda was there, still clinging to my arm, but I didn't notice her as Air's body collapsed to the floor and I fell into the pool of blood next to him.

  No sounds escaped my lips as I rolled him onto his back, his sea green eyes wide and his face frozen in shock. He didn't gasp or choke or tremble because he was already dead.

  “Get a flesh whisperer!” someone was screaming behind me, but a flesh whisperer wasn't going to be able to help Air, not unless they could perform the queen's precious resurrection spell. Lifting my eyes up, I met Air's shocked ones across the surface of his bloody chest.

  “This isn't happening,” he told me as he reached out and clawed at the pocket of his black tunic. “Not yet. Gods, please don't let this be happening yet.”

  “Even gods can die, Air,” I said as Jasinda looked at me in surprise, reached down to the only bit of floor that wasn't covered in blood, and grabbed a handful of spook dust. She tossed it in the direction of my gaze and then gasped as it settled onto the prince's hair.

  “I wasn't ready yet!” Air screamed as he dug at the coat pocket in frustration, blue-white fingers disappearing into the fabric but refusing to take hold of anything just yet. It took time for ghosts to learn the type of skills that Elijah and Talon knew. “Oh fuck, Brynn, you have to believe me that I wasn't ready,” he breathed, looking at me like he'd made the biggest mistake in all the world.

  Jasinda reached over his still warm body and dug her fingers into the pocket of the coat … sliding out a gold ring with the Amerin royal crest on it. I'd seen this particular ring before, on the finger of one of Everess' husbands before he died. It was an engagement ring. And when Jas passed it over, I slipped it onto my ring finger and found that … it'd been resized for me.

  “I wasn't ready,” Air moaned, sitting back on his ass and curling his fingers into his hair.

  “What happened?!” Elijah screamed a moment later, walking through the wall and pausing next to his cousin with an expression as close to true horror as I'd ever seen on a person's face. “Air, what've you done?!” And it was then that I realized that no matter how hopeful Elijah of Haversey pretended to be about this resurrection spell, he didn't truly believe in it.

  “I … wasn't ready,” the prince repeated for a third time as Talon approached from his other side and looked at him with something akin to pity.

  In the distance, somebody wailed and I felt my heart stutter and stop at their sound of anguish. It was too much; I just wanted them to shut up so I could think. And that's when Jas reached out and hugged me, pulling me close and taking my mask away so she could stroke my hair.

  It was me.

  I was the one who was wailing.

  “Let's get her out of here,” Vex said, his strong, solid warmth kneeling on my left side, back in human form and totally naked. I had absolutely nothing left in me with which to appreciate it.

  Taking me from Jasinda's arms, he lifted me up and let me bury my face into his chest.

  I don't think I left that spot for days.

  “This is … unbelievable,” the queen was saying as she paced ruts into the stone floor, moving back and forth in front of Airmienan's coffin. Her only son, the last heir. Dead. Gone. And Everess was glaring at his ghost as he sat next to me on a stone bench, gazing at his glass coffin and the washed, dressed, and styled corpse residing inside of it, hands folded neatly across his Royal College uniform jacket as if he were sleeping.

  But Air didn't sleep like that, all perfect and coiffed. He was mussy and loud and he drooled a lot. I always found it funny because it was the complete opposite of how he was when he was alive— I mean, when he was awake.

  Awake, not alive.

  Although not alive was a more accurate description for the state of him now.

  “Your Majesty,” Ame of Haversey, the Royal Spirit Whisperer, was saying as she stood next to Ombre of Hellim, who just happened to be the Royal Shadow Whisperer. “As soon as you give us the go-ahead, we'll get started on the project and—”

  “Project?!” the queen roared, turning in a flutter of purple, red, and white robes and looking like she was all of ten seconds from backhanding the other woman in the face. “This is my son!” She pointed at the ghost version of Air instead of the corpse which I much appreciated. “He is not a fucking project.”

  “Understandable,” Ame gulped out, keeping her ice-blue eyes on the corpse's waxy, over-painted face instead of on the queen. She was hard to look at now, Everess was, all sharp edges, like broken glass. Just sitting here made me feel sick, but what choice did I have? Air wasn't bound to the Vibrant or the castle or even to his own mother … his spirit was bound to me. “I just can't quite grasp your reasoning for putting a girl in charge of such an important undertaking. Double Blessed she might be, but she's inexperienced and ill-equipped for this job. Give us the freedom to harness her magic, and we can get the prince up and breathing again before anyone knows the difference.”

  Everess continued her pacing, slicking her fingers back through her blonde hair and cursing so colorfully that I automatically shifted my wings in response. Although I wished I hadn't done that because she flicked her sea green eyes over to mine, stealing my breath away.

  And to be honest, I didn't feel like I had a lot of it left.

  For four days I'd laid in Air's bed, smelling his blankets and his shirts, and weeping tears for him that wouldn't stop. Tears that seemed silly when he was lying beside me and stroking m
y hair back with ice-cold fingers. But he wasn't strong enough or skilled enough yet to make himself warm to the touch.

  The only thing keeping me going at this point was, surprisingly, Vexer, the griffin man that I barely knew. He was warm and solid, and he was alive. That was a Hell of a lot more than I could say for anyone else in my life right now. Jasinda was a mess. She kept trying to be comforting, but I see my own pain echoed back at me from her face. Air wasn't just my childhood friend; he was hers, too.

  So … Vexer was a stranger who didn't much care about the crown prince, and he was a big, broad, warm chest to cry on. His arms were strong and muscular, and his hand was large enough to take up my entire lower back, pressing brands of hot comfort into my silken pj's.

  Pretty sure both Elijah and Air wanted to murder him in his sleep.

  “You work it your way,” the queen said, nostrils flaring as she stopped pacing for a moment and exhaled, “and they'll do it their way. Two different approaches to the same project.” She spit that last word out and I got the impression that she was regretting bringing her own spirit whisperers in on the resurrection spell. But then, they'd been the ones to find the prince and they already knew he was dead, so maybe she figured why not?

  At least I wasn't the only who'd be throwing themselves at a useless spell, one that was never going to work. Now that Air was dead … I was sure of it. He was gone. Forever. He was gone and he wasn't warm anymore and his hot breath wouldn't stir my hair and he was never coming back.

  “Don't cry, Brynn,” he choked out, sitting between me and Jasinda as she fingered one of the spirit charms they'd taken off the prince's body. It was around her neck now, broken and wielding its magic so that she could see him. “It'll be alright. We'll figure this out together.”

  “She doesn't want to talk to you right now,” Elijah hissed from my other side. He was sitting next to Talon, something the queen really didn't like. But she'd already had words with Air's spirit behind closed doors while I sat in the hallway and curled my knees to my chest. So she knew about Talon, and his participation in the project. Her son had given his word, and she wasn't about to go back on that, not now that he was dead.