Postmortem (Medicine and Magic Book 2)

by SA Magnusson

“I created a spell. The circle will hold him for now. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to maintain it. I don’t have much strength in that. Mine is more of a spiritual power.”

  I frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means I am here to serve as your guide as you work through this, but I won’t be able to intervene. As I serve the basilica, I am pledged to remain as neutral as possible.”

  I glanced over at Derek. “And helping your brother?”

  “In that, I am not neutral.”

  David’s voice was strained as he spoke, and I suspected that whatever power he infused into the spell was significant.

  “We need to call my grandparents,” I said.

  “I already did that,” Derek said.

  I looked around the room. There were no decorations here, though a few symbols were marked on the walls. As I stared at the ground, I realized that there were others on the ground, too.

  I approached the circle, careful not to cross over it and interrupt what David held, and as I neared it, the power sizzling from it was palpable. I had seen circles before, and when the demon king had been summoned, Lexy had placed a circle that had been used to draw him out, using the blood of the Carter to do so. That had created power, but this felt equally powerful.

  “Why is this here?” I asked as I made my way around it.

  “There are times when it becomes necessary to make requests,” David said.

  “What kind of request?”

  “Requests to the faerie queen.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to attempt to call to the faerie queen, and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have her answer. I knew about the fae, and knew they were powerful, but the queen of the fae would have to be incredibly powerful.

  “Why here?”

  “It allows her to answer. And it’s safe,” David said. “Not all crossings are safe for her. In this place, surrounded by the power of the basilica, she can reach through and answer. It’s our way of reaching the other side of the Veil, though we do so infrequently.”

  As I continued to make a steady circle around Darvish, wondering how long my grandparents would take to answer, I heard footsteps coming down the stairway, and then voices on the other side of the door. David went over and opened it, and Gran and Gramps stepped inside.

  Gran frowned as she saw me, though Gramps smiled broadly. “Katie!” He ran toward me, throwing his arms around me. I sunk into the hug, welcoming it.

  “What happened? Aron told us that you were attacked, and he came to us for help, but he didn’t know where you’d been taken.”

  “The Dark Council took me,” I said.

  “And they released you?” Gran asked, the suspicion in her voice clear.

  “They didn’t release me. Derek and I managed to escape.”

  “How?”

  I glanced over at David but decided that since Derek trusted him, I should too. “The Dark Council had been attacked by something they blamed on the mage council. They think you’ve been targeting those with minimal ability and burning off their magic.”

  “The council could care less about them,” Gran said.

  “I know. That’s what Aron told me. But something had placed a spell on Rory—”

  “As in Barden’s son?” Gran asked.

  “Yes. He made me help pull away the spell before letting us go.”

  Gran grabbed my arm and pulled me off to the side of the room. Gramps came with her, concern in his eyes. I’d seen that kind of concern from him before, but it was usually when I was doing something stupid. I didn’t think that was the case now.

  “You shouldn’t be able to remove a spell like that,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “The spell used by the council requires three council members to be effective. It’s the reason the council wouldn’t waste their time with a low-level dark magic. The magic involved is simply too much and too difficult to handle. We save it for those who are dangerous.”

  “Like Barden?”

  “He would be one we would target,” Gran said. “If we could find him.”

  “Maybe the council tried targeting Barden and got Rory instead.”

  Gran shook her head. “They didn’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Gran met my gaze. “Quite.”

  I looked back at Darvish. “Whatever it was, I pulled it off Rory. If it wasn’t the council, then someone else had done it. I held the spell as long as I could, but when Darvish attacked, I lost control and the spell snapped back on him.”

  “What do you mean that it snapped back?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know how else to describe it. I wrapped the spell in a barrier the same way you had done with Lexy’s spell.”

  “You did what?” Gramps asked.

  I flushed. “I pulled the spell off Rory and wrapped it in magic. I couldn’t hold it for long, though I tried.”

  “Katie, holding a spell is a very high-level spell. And most can’t do it for long at all.”

  “Which was why I pushed it into Lexy,” Gran said softly.

  “It wasn’t easy. It fought me.”

  “The spell fought you?” Gramps asked.

  I nodded. “It resisted. It was almost like it was something alive. And now that it snapped onto Darvish, it’s even stronger than it was with Rory. I don’t know that I would be able to pull it free again.”

  Gran approached the circle and a spell built from her. She pressed it into the circle and it spread toward Darvish.

  “You did this?” Gran asked, looking back at me.

  “I didn’t do anything. I simply lost control of my spell.”

  Gramps approached Gran, and a spell built from him. I could feel it distinctively, though I don’t know how—or why—I could feel it.

  “You understand what this is, Cyn.”

  She looked over at Gramps. “We haven’t seen anything like this in—”

  “Years,” Gramps finished for her.

  I joined them at the circle. I wasn’t able to push on my connection to magic. I wasn’t strong enough to draw it out, and I didn’t want to, anyway. “What is it?”

  Gran looked over at me. “This isn’t a spell, Katie.” Her voice had softened, and the irritation that I’d heard in it before was no longer there. “This is something else.”

  “It is a spell. I could feel it. I felt something like it around a patient in the ER, just like I told you. And then his mother.”

  Gran pulled me away from the circle, positioning herself so that she stood between me and the circle. “It’s not,” she said. A barrier burst from her, and it surged into the summoning circle. It added to what David used, wrapping around Darvish. “And frankly, I’m surprised you were able to do what you claim to have done.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a gorgon,” Gran said.

  “What’s a gorgon?”

  “Dark creatures. And a dark magic. They shouldn’t exist on this side of the Veil,” Gramps said.

  “It’s a creature?”

  And yet… was that so hard for me to believe? When I had pulled it off Darvish, hadn’t I felt as if it were something alive? “If it’s hard for them to get across the side of the Veil, how is it that there are more than one?”

  Gramps turned toward me. “It’s unlikely there is. From what I know about them, it would feed on those who called it. They take magic.”

  Tony. His mother. Rory.

  There had to be a connection between them, then.

  And if it was a creature, could that be why Tony’s mother had died? Had the creature caused too much swelling in her brain as it siphoned off her magic?

  “I don’t understand how they could have attacked him,” Gran said.

  “Perhaps there is more than what we understand,” Gramps said.

  “What is it?”

  She turned toward me, but Gran made a point of keeping one eye angled toward the circle. “A gorgon shouldn’t be abl
e to feed on a dark mage. Or anyone on this side, for that matter. They require a different sort of magic.”

  A nervous thrill worked through me. “What sort of magic?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ve captured it, so we can send it back across the Veil.”

  “Not here, Cyn,” Gramps said.

  “At least we could ask for their help,” she said.

  “Doing so here would risk not only her safety but would risk her anger.”

  “You have any better suggestion, Veran?”

  “If Katie managed to separate the gorgon once before, she could do it again.”

  “I don’t know that I could,” I said. “It took a lot out of me the last time, and holding it… Well, that was almost more than I could manage.”

  And I didn’t know if I wanted to, especially if it really was something that was alive. What would happen if it managed to snap around me? What kind of magic did this thing have?

  “Wait… What do you mean that it feeds?”

  Gramps turned toward me. His face was pale, and he was much more concerned than I’d seen him before. “They feed on magic. That’s how they grow stronger. They feed until they kill off the mage, and they move on to the others who have summoned it until they are freed.”

  Was that why Ms. Jones had died? Had it been a gorgon and not me having missed some diagnosis?

  And if we let it feed on Darvish, he would die.

  Regardless of what he might have done to me, the idea that we would simply let some weird magical creature feed on him disgusted me. I couldn’t leave him to that fate. He didn’t deserve that. I couldn’t imagine anyone who did.

  “We have to help him,” I said.

  “Katie—”

  “You said it yourself. It’s going to feed until it kills him, and then it’ll separate from him. If it does that, we still have to contain it.”

  “She’s right,” Gramps said to Gran.

  “The circle might be enough to hold it, but for how long?” Gran asked.

  “Hopefully it will be long enough to send it back.”

  “What if there’s another possibility?”

  “What other possibility?”

  “Is there any way of killing it?”

  “It would take power from beyond the Veil. It would take someone who could wield that power.”

  “Why can’t the Faerie Queen do that?”

  “A gorgon would be dangerous to her. Her magic would draw such a creature and risk it attacking in the fae lands. There are protections in place to prevent that normally.”

  “Fine. If we need that kind of power, what if there’s a substitute?”

  “What are you thinking of?” Gramps asked.

  “The sword.”

  Gramps frowned. “The sword?”

  “The special sword I have,” I said, glancing at Derek. “It’s from the other side of the Veil, and I can wield it, and we know my magic is different. Even if we don’t understand the source of it, it’s got to be from the other side.”

  Gramps leaned close to me. “What if your magic is part demon?”

  “That won’t work against the gorgon?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. We haven’t experienced an attack from a gorgon in a long time, so I can’t tell you with any certainty whether it would be possible to destroy it.”

  “We have to try.”

  But before we did, we had to help Darvish.

  I stepped up to the edge of the circle. The barrier was a presence, and it sizzled against me, reminding me of the barrier I had detected when we had confronted the demon king. It was all too easy to remember the way the demon king had simply stepped across it as if it weren’t there. Would the same thing happen with the gorgon?

  It really didn’t matter. We had to help him before it finished feeding, growing too strong for us to stop it.

  I focused on the connection to my magic. I was tired, but I didn’t need to hold onto a spell for very long. All I had to do was separate the gorgon from Darvish. I had done it once before, so I knew I could repeat it.

  The gorgon might have grown stronger, but I thought I should be able to reach across the barrier and slip my magic between the gorgon and Darvish and separate the two.

  “Be ready to grab him,” I said.

  “What are you going to do?” Gramps asked.

  “We can’t leave him in there while that thing grows stronger off of him,” I said. “It’s my fault that he was attacked, and while we don’t know what allowed the gorgon to come across the Veil, I know I’m the one responsible for him getting into this state.”

  Before Gran or Gramps had a chance to argue, I pushed out with my magic, sliding it beyond the barrier. For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether it would work, but the barrier didn’t resist my magic and I slid beneath it, forcing my way through, and pressed it against Darvish. Now that I had been through it before, I knew that I needed to let my magic flow through him until I could feel the edge of the gorgon. I found it much more quickly than I had before, and I shoved my way between the gorgon and Darvish, forcing my magic through it.

  Darvish gasped.

  I continued to shove, and it felt as if I were cleaving away a part of him.

  “Katie?”

  I ignored Gramps. I couldn’t be distracted; I didn’t want to risk it. I continued to push and the gorgon came away slowly, peeling off Darvish. It had grown stronger than it was before. I could feel how much stronger it was. It was more substantial, something solid, and I hoped the barrier around the summoning circle would be enough to hold it.

  One more shove and the gorgon was freed. I wrapped my magic around it.

  “Grab Darvish,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” Gramps asked.

  “The gorgon is free. I have it wrapped in my spell, but…” The gorgon was thrashing inside the barrier and I wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer. “Quick,” I said.

  Gramps reach through and yanked Darvish free. As he did, Gran sent another surge of her magic through the ring. It flowed around, severing my connection.

  I staggered back, staring at the barrier. Something translucent swirled around the inside, slamming into it.

  Each time it did, Gran winced. “It’s strong, Veran. I don’t know how long I can hold onto it.”

  “Then let me help,” he said.

  Together, they pushed power through the summoning circle, holding onto the gorgon. I looked over at David and Derek. The two of them watched Gran and Gramps, their eyes wide.

  “Derek. I need you to drive me over to my place. And quickly.” When he didn’t answer, I raised my voice. “Derek!”

  He looked over at me. “What is that thing?”

  “That’s what has been attacking people.”

  “How? What?”

  Derek wasn’t going to be any help. I’d have to drive myself.

  I yanked open the door and stormed up the stairs and out of the basilica. As I stepped out into the sunlight, a sleek blue BMW skidded to a stop outside. Before Aron could get out, I jumped into the passenger seat. “Drive,” I commanded.

  Aron didn’t say anything, just threw the car into gear and sped away.

  16

  Somehow Aron made the distance between the basilica and my condo seem like little more than a few blocks. He squealed to a stop in front of my building. In the daylight, the gray stone had something of a dreary appearance, but maybe that was only my mood. It felt as if it had been days since I’d been here rather than hours.

  “Are you going to wait here?” I asked.

  Aron pushed open his door in answer, waiting for me to get out of the car. I joined him on the street and realized that he was looking down the street. “They were on the rooftops,” I said.

  “I should have detected them.”

  “I don’t know how you could’ve. They had us outnumbered. They were prepared, probably from the night before, when I had detected them in the first place.”

  Aron looked over at me. “I still s
hould have detected them.”

  “Yeah. Maybe you should have detected them.” We didn’t have time to debate this. How long before the gorgon managed to overpower Gran? “You’re the archer. But it doesn’t matter, not really. They got us, and eventually we managed to get away. Isn’t that all that matters?”

  Aron watched me for a moment. “It’s been a long time since I have been jumped like that.”

  “Most the time you’re facing off with demons, so I’m not terribly surprised that dark mages managed to get the jump on you. Now, come on. We need to hurry.”

  I raced into my building, reaching my condo unit, and started to unlock the door before hesitating. With the magic Aron had placed on my unit, it might not be the safest thing for me to simply throw the door open. “Maybe you should open this one,” I said.

  Without saying a word, Aron pressed his hand up against the door and, with the cold flash of magic, the barrier surrounding my home came down. When he pushed the door open, I half-expected someone to jump out at me, but it was exactly as I’d left it. The residual smell from the meal he’d made remained in the air and my stomach rumbled, reminding me of how little I’d eaten over the last day.

  “You only come for the sword?” Aron asked.

  “That’s all we need.”

  “Tell me again why we need this?”

  I took a deep breath. I had explained it on the drive over but wasn’t sure that I did it justice. What did I know about a gorgon? “Only something from the other side of the Veil can kill this creature,” I said.

  “And your grandparents are certain of this?”

  “I’m not sure that they are, but they don’t really know what else to try.”

  And I didn’t know how much longer the protective circle would hold. I knew how hard it had been for me to maintain the protection around the gorgon, but my grandparents were much more powerful mages than me. They would be able to hold it longer, but even they would have limits. The circle would augment their strength, but for how long?

  I didn’t want to push it. I didn’t know how long, which was reason for me to hurry.

  Lucy came strolling out of the kitchen and rubbed up against Aron’s leg. He leaned down and scratched her ear.

  “Be careful. She might bite at you.”