Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Carolina stifled an impressed gasp.

  I ignored her, reaching for the residual magic now wholly contained within the circle. I beckoned the glimmer of energy to me. It flitted closer willingly, but it was weak, insubstantial.

  “There is not a lot of magic here,” I murmured.

  “The ash read positive,” Dalton said. He pitched his voice low, not knowing if I was talking to myself or initiating a conversation. Chatting wasn’t generally conducive to casting.

  I nodded, still focused on the fine threads of magic I could feel floating before me.

  “Show me,” I coaxed. “Show me where you began.” Normally I didn’t have to speak to direct my reconstructions, but this magic was immature, for lack of a better way to classify it.

  The residual capered across and hovered over the grave. Then it drifted down into the scorched earth and grass.

  For a breath, nothing more happened.

  Then the dirt burst aflame before liquefying into a sickening pile of blood and pus. That pile rose up, reforming into a dark-haired young man of seventeen or eighteen, dressed in a funeral suit. He had a pink sparkly pencil jutting out of his chest in the area of his heart. The pencil sported a fluffy pink ball in place of an eraser. The teen’s eyes whirled with red blood.

  “Vampire,” I said. “Perhaps seventeen before he was turned, newly risen. But …”

  “Yes?” Carolina prompted. The investigator couldn’t see the reconstruction as it played out in reverse before me. Not unless I invited her in, which I rarely did. I did my job, so she could wait to do hers.

  “It looks as though he was killed with a pink pencil.”

  “A pencil?” Dalton echoed. “Someone killed a vampire with a pencil?”

  “Obviously not,” Carolina snapped.

  Within the circle that surrounded the gravesite, the reconstruction continued to unfold from back to front. A chef’s knife flew into the teenager’s hand — as if he’d flung it away — then he reacted to being stabbed in the chest with it.

  “He’s talking to someone,” I said. “But they … they don’t exist.”

  That didn’t make any sense. I should have been able to see any Adept standing within the circle. Not even someone exceedingly skilled at cloaking themselves could completely hide from me, and such magic would still register within a reconstruction.

  Unless the person the vampire was conversing with was nonmagical? But I immediately rejected that thought. Though I wasn’t well versed in vampire lore, I was fairly certain that even a fledgling would have ripped the throat out of any mundane they encountered on the eve of their rising. And actually, even the magically inclined would be at risk.

  I watched the fledgling vampire read from a rolled-up note, then tuck that note back into his inner suit pocket. Then two pieces of a headstone flew into his hands and miraculously mended themselves. He must have torn the stone from the ground and smashed it. I’d seen no evidence of a broken headstone at or near the gravesite before I cast the reconstruction. The caretaker must have removed it for repair or replacement. Perhaps the reconstruction would make more sense when I watched the events again in the proper order.

  The boy’s dark hair fell across his high, pale forehead as he bent forward, replacing a broken corner of the now-flush-mounted headstone, then twisted back in a flip. He crouched at the base of his grave, again conversing with someone I couldn’t see. Then I watched him — still running in reverse — dig his way out of his grave. Or, as rendered in the reconstruction, into his grave. The ground within the center of the circle smoothed, then was still.

  The magic dissipated.

  I stumbled forward in response to the sudden void of energy. Residual magic customarily ebbed and flowed, but minimal though it was, all the power fueling the reconstruction had simply disappeared.

  “One minute he’s a vampire, and then he’s … not,” I said.

  “That’s usually the case with a first rising,” Carolina said snootily. As if she’d ever seen a vampire rise.

  “You misunderstand, investigator,” I said. “He wasn’t magic, and then he was. He was human. A dead human, then a slaughtered vampire whose remains were purified by fire.” I gestured to the scorched earth at my feet.

  Carolina and Dalton glanced at each other skeptically.

  “Vampires rarely pick humans to be their … children,” Dalton said. “Or anyone so young, even Adepts.”

  I shrugged. None of the Adept knew vampires or their motivations particularly well … except for their need to drink blood to survive. And even those lacking in magic knew that rule, at least in their fantasy fiction and horror films.

  “The boy was human,” I said again. I rarely commented on my reconstructions, but this one was highly unusual. “I can’t figure out why else the magic would be so immature.”

  “It’s not your job to figure things out, reconstructionist,” Carolina said. “Get your collection and we’ll interpret it, as always.”

  I didn’t bother arguing. Carolina was correct. I had a job to do and nothing more.

  I pulled one of my handcrafted oyster-shell cubes out of my bag. Then I stepped through the dormant circle to set it in the center of the scene, placing the translucent three-inch-square box directly over the section of the grave where the fledgling vampire had risen.

  The cubes I crafted were a further extrapolation of my reconstruction magic and unique to me. They were a product of a spell learned as a child from my uncle, then refined over years and years of tutelage. I coaxed the cubes out of finely crushed oyster shell, layering magically polished layer upon layer to create each vessel. As far as I knew, no other witch wielded her magic this way. It was the one and only thing I could create. Everything else I touched gradually eroded into nothing.

  Stepping back out of the circle, I called the residual magic I’d previously accessed into the cube. The reconstruction played out again, but this time from beginning to end in real time. A brief moment from the teen’s rising to his final death.

  Again, I couldn’t determine who the fledgling vampire was speaking to, though it was obvious he knew the person well enough that they could get close enough to kill him with a chef’s knife and a pencil. A feat I would have thought impossible.

  The replay paused oddly after the fledgling vampire dissolved into an oozing pile of blood and guts, almost as if a chunk of time had been removed. Which — again — didn’t make any sense to me. Then his remains were set on fire by unseen means and turned into ash.

  I’d never heard of a vampire turning to gooey mush when killed. But then, I had only textbooks, historic reconstructions, and one incident I’d personally reconstructed in London as references. Like most of the Adept, I had never been face-to-face with an actual vampire. Not only were they a rare subspecies of magic user, they were also traditionally xenophobic.

  I kept the remainder of my observations to myself as I channeled the reconstruction into the oyster-shell vessel. Jade Godfrey had once referred to these handmade boxes as ‘YouTube cubes,’ and she wasn’t far off. When Pearl’s number had appeared on my phone, I’d felt momentarily ill, concerned that she was about to ask me to reconstruct another scene from her granddaughter’s ever-turbulent life.

  Thankfully, there were no demons or blood-crazed sisters to be reconstructed in the Capilano View Cemetery in West Vancouver. Simply a human teenager turned vampire, then turned to a pile of goo and set on fire. His murderer — or savior, depending on perspective — was obviously a human female. Obviously human because she carried no magic to imprint the reconstruction. Obviously female, and specifically a sister or girlfriend, by the note in his pocket and the pink pencil. Though even as I thought it, I realized that assumption could be construed as gender profiling, and therefore wasn’t particularly professional of me.

  But I surmised girlfriend, keeping the opinion to myself as I closed the circle and crouched down by the collection cube. The seemingly delicate oyster-shell box was practically unbreakable w
ith the addition of the collected magic.

  How a human had killed a vampire was intriguingly on the edge of impossible. How a teenaged boy had been turned into a vampire, then had apparently been abandoned by his maker to rise in a human cemetery, was disturbing and haunting. And not at all my business.

  I placed a second oyster-shell cube beside the first.

  “What are you doing?” Carolina snapped.

  “You’d like a copy of the reconstruction, wouldn’t you?”

  The investigator frowned.

  Ancestral history with the Fairchild coven or otherwise, I didn’t know what was going on with the witch. Apparently, I couldn’t avoid rubbing her the wrong way.

  “The Convocation requested the original?” Carolina might be pissy and bossy, but she was also quick. Though good investigators were usually as intelligent as they were magically skilled.

  I nodded.

  Carolina pursed her lips, but she made no further protest.

  I placed the fingers of my right hand on top of the cube swirling with the magic of the collection, and the fingers of my left hand on the duller empty cube. Then I touched my thumbs together, allowing the magic to flow through one hand, into the other, and down into the empty cube.

  The scene I’d reconstructed from the residual magic at the grave replayed through my mind as it was copied. Yes, I also functioned as a magical video recorder. It was only really strange if I thought about it too much. I’d been collecting reconstructions for so long that the spell work was practically instinctual, so thankfully there was no need to really think about it at all.

  I never kept a copy of my professional reconstructions. When residual magic was collected in the course of an investigation, doing so was against Convocation policy. But also, reconstructionists could become addicted to their collections, similar to how someone might be haunted by a memory — except that magic was involved. And magic made everything more potent, especially addictions.

  Sienna, Jade’s sister, was dead because she’d become addicted to blood magic and had gone on a killing spree to fuel the dark rituals she’d used to harvest the power of other Adepts. I had collected many of the reconstructions surrounding the deaths of her victims, but I was fortunate that I hadn’t been commissioned to collect the scene of her own death. Thankfully, I really didn’t know much about the particulars. Because even though three years had passed, the scenes of Sienna’s life — the ones fueled by her addiction — still stalked my nightmares, awake and asleep.

  While it was true that the members of the Fairchild coven weren’t exactly poster children for the good side of the scale of good versus evil, I’d never been forced to reconstruct any of their magical incidents. They kept their darkness buried deep within. And, if it ever came to it, I could cite a conflict of interest. But I absolutely refused to let my family haunt me, not for one minute more than they’d already damaged my heart and soul.

  It wasn’t unusual for the Convocation to request an original reconstruction for incidents such as this, though I was fairly certain that Carolina didn’t like having her investigations so closely observed. It was more difficult to sweep in and announce that she’d miraculously solved a crime when everyone else had access to the puzzle pieces.

  That this was the scene of a crime was obvious, though which crime would be investigated and what charges might be leveled, I didn’t know.

  A teenager had apparently been killed and turned into a vampire. That could be a crime, if he’d been unwilling.

  A teenager had been turned into a vampire in Pearl Godfrey’s territory. That was definitely frowned upon, if not actually illegal according to Adept law. No vampire of power resided in Vancouver, which was and always had been witch territory.

  A vampire had been seen in Vancouver in the company of Jade Godfrey, though. But again, only those in the know — or who had reconstructed the crimes of the black witch Sienna — knew that. However, that vampire had been destroyed by Sienna’s hand in London almost three years before.

  So Kettil, the one-time executioner of the Conclave –– the collective that governed the vampires –– couldn’t have been the one turning human teenagers into fledgling vampires in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

  But I knew only what I’d seen within the magic I’d collected. I didn’t ask questions about things that didn’t concern me or my ability to do my job. Life among powerful Adepts was much safer under those circumstances.

  “I walked the cemetery on my way in,” I said, pushing away thoughts of dead teenagers and vampires while handing the duplicate cube to Carolina. “There are no other residual spots.”

  The lead investigator took the oyster-shell container, holding it gingerly by the edges. “I’m aware of that fact,” she said.

  “It won’t break,” I said, referencing the cube. “Not with normal handling.”

  “I’m accustomed to glass,” she said stiffly, twisting away and passing the cube to Dalton.

  He awkwardly placed the reconstruction in a six-inch thick, foam-lined metal carrying case. The cube didn’t fit into the circle that had been cut out of the foam.

  “We are accustomed to crystal,” Carolina said, repeating herself unnecessarily.

  I smiled politely. Most reconstructionists stored their collections in crystal balls. Some witches also used crystal to amplify seek or seeing spells, but crystal was heavy, unreliable, and expensive.

  “The cube is responsive to my magic,” I said. “I make them by hand.”

  “Yes,” Carolina said. “I’ve seen them at trial. Most effective.”

  I tried to accept the praise — begrudgingly given or not — with a more genuine smile. It was difficult working with a new team member. I wasn’t overly pleased to be filling in for Clay Dunkirk either. Though now that I’d felt the insubstantial magic and the way it had dispersed when the fledgling vampire returned to his grave, I wasn’t surprised that Clay had fainted. If he contained his collection sites as I did, he wouldn’t have had a problem when the magic just dropped away.

  I glanced down at the cube I still held. It was oddly dim for something filled with magic. Red-tinted gray energy sluggishly swirled within it. Perhaps there just hadn’t been enough magic for Clay to collect. Perhaps I was just that much more powerful. The notion quashed the smile I was attempting to maintain. My mother would be pleased that I was upholding the Fairchild reputation, but I wasn’t a fan of how such power was wielded by the Fairchilds in general.

  “I hope Clay recovers quickly,” I said, shaking off the thought and tucking the dim cube into my bag.

  The rain had intensified and evening had fallen while I’d been occupied with the collection. Drizzle was steadily wetting my cheeks. Dalton was currently placing tiny pinpoints of light around the gravesite to combat the darkness. I wondered if he was using a spell or premade charms.

  “Clay is already on his way home,” Carolina said, pulling my attention back to our stilted conversation. “On a well-deserved short vacation.”

  “Of course. Shall I stay in town?”

  “No need.” Carolina gave a dismissive wave toward the administration building where we’d parked. “I doubt we’ve happened upon a rash of risings. A vampire powerful enough to turn more than one fledgling wouldn’t leave his child unattended.”

  “Then I’m pleased to have met you both.”

  “And you, Wisteria.” Carolina smiled tightly. “I’ll include it more formally in my report, of course, but please thank Pearl Godfrey for me. You were very … efficient.”

  Dalton stepped closer, grinning as he reached to shake my hand.

  I hesitated at the friendly gesture, then grasped his hand firmly. Adepts weren’t big on touching. You could never be certain what a magic user of unknown power could do to you through even the most minor contact. But an upstanding member of a Convocation investigative team wasn’t likely to be going around collecting magic for nefarious purposes.

  “Good night,” Dalton said pleasantly.
>
  I nodded, releasing his hand as swiftly as I could, and undoubtedly coming off as reserved and snobbish in the process. But I couldn’t help it.

  “I wish you well with the investigation,” I murmured. Then I all but fled across the wet grass to my rental car. Thankfully, I could use the rain as an excuse for my swift pace.

  ❒ ❒ ❒

  The rain began to hammer down in earnest as I pulled out of the cemetery and headed down the mountain and back into the city proper. The houses — mansions, really — were all well protected by tall cedar and fir trees from the probing of my twin headlights as my GPS guided me through a shortcut out of the affluent British Properties residential area.

  The sporadically spaced streetlights did little to illuminate the winding, narrow road until I hit Taylor Way. Once on that main road, I slipped down the steep hillside, traversed the Lions Gate Bridge, and was cutting through Stanley Park on my way into the city within fifteen minutes. I’d missed rush hour, but would still have to forgo changing at the hotel so I wasn’t late for dinner.

  A text message on my cellphone lit up the car interior. I’d placed it within easy reach on the passenger seat. At a red light at Denman Street, I leaned over to see a text from Jasmine.

  >Looking forward to mac and cheese. Oh! And some of those frozen cheesecake balls.

  I laughed, pulling through the drenched intersection as the light turned green. Jasmine, my lifelong best friend and cousin on my mother’s side, was flying into Seattle on Friday for a girls’ weekend. It was also her twenty-eighth birthday. She was almost exactly one month younger than me. We’d been inseparable since birth and had apprenticed together at the tender age of nine.

  When we were apart, I missed her in a way that made me lonely for all the things I’d never actually had … like a family that loved me more than power, money, and prestige within the Adept community.

  Unfortunately, neither Jasmine nor I had that family, but we had each other. She made up for a lot of the rough times. She’d been there for me, as I had for her. And though I hadn’t spoken to him for over twelve years, both of us also had Jasmine’s half-brother, Declan, for better or worse, for good and evil, forever and after.