Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things That Byte (Dowser 8.5)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  “Not every girl dreams of being invited to a graveyard to help a necromancer speak to the dead, but I do.” Gabby gave me a rare smile. Then she reached across and plucked a cupcake from a grouping on the far side of the counter. “Solace in a Cup. That’s one of your favorites.”

  I nodded, stepping back to take the chocolate carrot cake with chocolate cream-cheese icing from her. “I like the cinnamon. Thank you.”

  It wasn’t really the cinnamon that made these particular cupcakes stand out for me, though. It was the fact that Jade had developed the recipe, along with three others, when we’d both been in mourning. Me for Rusty, and her for Sienna. Even though everyone around us thought our siblings had gotten what they deserved.

  We hadn’t talked about it. Not out loud. But …

  It was the first cupcake Jade had ever given to me.

  A weird combination of emotions suddenly gripped me — fear, sadness, anger, trepidation. Jade hadn’t just gone off hunting elves somewhere with no cellphone service. Jade was missing … or worse. Otherwise, Liam wouldn’t have been stepping up to take charge. Otherwise, Jade’s mother, Scarlett, or her grandmother, Pearl, would have been at the bakery … or Kandy … or Warner … or even Kett.

  “You okay?” Gabby asked.

  I shook my head. Then, realizing that was the wrong response, I nodded. I’d been gripping the cupcake too hard, leaving the impressions of my fingers in the paper-wrapped, moist cake. “I’m fine.”

  If Jade or the others were missing or dead, there wasn’t anything a lowly necromancer could do about it. So I would stay focused on finding out where Rochelle’s mom was interred, and trying to call forth her shade. And by the time I got that sorted, everything else I couldn’t control would sort itself out. Whichever way it went.

  “Text me.” Gabby glanced up at the clock on the wall, then went back to frosting cupcakes.

  “I will.” Cradling my cupcake in my hand, I pushed open the door and stepped out into the alley.

  As the door clicked shut behind me, I slipped my hand underneath my poncho and looped my fingers around my necklace. Then, with Jade’s magic in one hand and a cupcake in the other, I lifted my face to the gray, cloud-filled sky. And even though if pressed, I wouldn’t have been able to definitively tell you I believed in any higher power — I wished … I prayed for Jade to be okay.

  Then I ate the cupcake, texted Rochelle my lack of news as an update, sent a ‘checking in’ text to Jade and Kandy, and headed home to crawl back into bed.

  An incoming text message forced me to admit I wasn’t really sleeping anymore. I opened my eyes to find a dead red-eared slider watching me from the neighboring pillow.

  “Ed,” I muttered, my eyes and throat sandy. “That’s creepy.”

  Though, honestly, it was me who’d brought him to bed in the first place.

  As I rolled over to reach for my phone, I thought about all the times I’d heard that necromancers glowed to the dead and the undead — beckoning to them with our magic. I’d never had it personally confirmed, but that might have been what Ed saw when he looked at me. A glimmer of my power.

  The text was from Tony. Not Jade or Kandy. I swallowed my disappointment, along with the renewal of the gnawing fear that had kept me restless and wakeful for the entire morning.

  >Liam has an idea. Meet us in the basement in an hour?

  I groaned, texting back.

  I’m seriously not interested in coming all the way there for an idea of Liam’s.

  Tony texted back an LOL emoticon. Apparently he thought my disdain for his brother hilarious. Then he added:

  >And bring Ed?

  That woke me up, just a little. Why Tony or Liam might have been interested in Ed, I had no idea.

  Fine. I’m not sleeping anyway.

  >That’s my girl.

  I stared at his last text for a while. I definitely wasn’t Tony’s girl, but I didn’t want to be a snippy asshole about it when I’d just asked for his help.

  Groaning again, I flung myself out of bed for the second time that day. It was later than I’d thought — after one o’clock — so I had probably slept somewhat.

  After I showered, I texted back.

  On my way.

  I deftly avoided the ‘my girl’ subject by giving Tony the text equivalent of a combination cold shoulder and subject change. Hopefully, he’d get the idea.

  “You want to do what?” I asked, crossing my arms and cradling Ed protectively against my bulky Cowichan-inspired sweater.

  Obviously taking my indignation as rhetorical, Liam didn’t bother repeating his initial request. “Do you think it could work or not?” The dark-haired sorcerer paced the length of the sectional couch that stood between us, only half addressing me.

  I didn’t like how rattled the cool and cocky detective had become in only a few hours.

  “It will totally work.” Tony was hunched over a tiny piece of tech on his desk. He appeared to be trying to figure out how to attach a thick elastic band to it.

  “Magic and tech do not work well together,” I said. Emphatically.

  Liam glanced over at me, then gestured dramatically toward Tony. The tech sorcerer.

  Ed, picking up on my rising anger, tucked his head underneath my thumb. I gritted my teeth, trying to remain civil. “Let me be clearer. My magic, necromancy, doesn’t work well with tech. Plus —”

  “Have you tested it?” Tony asked without looking up from his fiddling.

  I ignored the interruption. “Plus, the witches’ charm allows Ed to pass through witch magic, not elf magic. I’m not going to risk him —”

  Liam laughed snarkily. “He’s a dead turtle, Mory.”

  I almost turned and walked away. Topped by his already supremely false sense of self, the sorcerer’s arrogance was completely ignorant. “What’s this really about, Liam? You want to be a hero? Why don’t you leave that to the actual warriors?”

  He snorted. “Your so-called warriors have fallen, Mory.”

  “So you say.”

  “So I saw.”

  “They get back up. I know, I’ve seen them do it. Multiple times.”

  “Not this time. Jade —”

  I was around the couch and in Liam’s face before he could finish his sentence. He stumbled back a step as if I’d pushed him.

  “Jade is bigger and badder than you could ever hope to be, sorcerer.” I layered every ounce of contempt I could into that last word. Which, even by my estimate, was a lot.

  “That’s exactly —”

  “And she’s also the most decent and warmhearted person you will ever meet.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t. You can’t even fathom it. You’re arrogant and power hungry and completely ignorant of how magic actually works.”

  “Hey, now —”

  I shoved Ed in Liam’s face. He took another step back, coming up hard against the coffee table and almost tumbling backward. Tony was watching our exchange with his mouth hanging open.

  “How do you think necromancy works, asshole? You think I just channel a piece of magic from the earth, or a magical artifact like you do, and funnel it into a corpse and voila!?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So what do I use, then?”

  “You … you use your … internal magic.”

  I laughed harshly. “To read graves or talk to ghosts, yes. But Ed isn’t either of those things, is he? He’s undead. He can even make certain basic decisions for himself. Say, if he senses danger or wants to explore his surroundings. What do you think fuels that, sorcerer?”

  “I … I …”

  “He’s mine. A piece of me, asshole. Some necromancers work with bones and even blood to summon and bind.”

  “And the others?” Liam asked calmly. “What do necromancers like you use?”

  I looked away from him, choking back the story on the tip of my tongue. A story about finding my brother’s ghost. About giving him the strength to attack his murderer, Sienna. The s
tory of how my own brother would have drained me, killed me, in order to avenge his death — and with so many people saying that he had been just as complicit in murdering a half-dozen werewolves as Sienna was.

  I reached up, unzipping my sweater slightly so I could touch my necklace. Cradling Ed in one hand, I ran my thumb across the ridges on the lowest coin. It was an ancient inscription I couldn’t read, on a piece of alchemy that had saved my life multiple times. Including stopping Rusty and Sienna from taking more than I had to give.

  I calmed myself. “Soul magic,” I murmured. “That’s what I do. That’s how I wield. Instinctively. Ed is animated with soul magic. My life force.”

  Tony snapped his mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth.

  “And that rather brilliant magical artifact around your neck?” Liam asked gently. “Jade’s work?”

  “Yes.” I met his gaze. “Try to take it off me, sorcerer, and you’ll get a nasty surprise.”

  He frowned. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

  I laughed darkly. “You haven’t proven to be one bit different.”

  Liam’s expression became stony. But then he nodded, turning back to look at Tony. “You’re going to need something sturdier than an elastic. And we’ll test the connection on witch and sorcerer wards before trying to breach the elves’ .”

  I shook my head, tucking Ed into my satchel. “You haven’t heard one thing I’ve said.”

  Liam scrubbed his hand through his short hair, making it stand up in multiple adorable directions. I looked away.

  “I heard everything. And I’m countering it all with the simple fact that Jade is in trouble. She needs our help. She’d do the same for any of us, yes?”

  “You can’t even comprehend what she would go through to rescue any one of us.”

  Liam smiled tightly. “There’s your answer. If we do everything to protect Ed but still lose him to the elves, lose the sliver of your soul along with him … and manage to save Jade in the process?”

  I clutched my satchel tightly, feeling Ed shift within its depths. “The witches —”

  “The witches are fooling around with their stupid grid,” Liam said. He started pacing again, but slower this time. As if moving and thinking were the same function for him. “Trying to contain the problem. Wait it out. Avoid confrontation, not solve it.”

  “And your plan solves it how?”

  “It gets us eyes on the elves and whatever the hell they’re doing. Maybe it tells us why they need Jade. How they’re … holding her. Knowing that will help us figure out what to do next, before this spills out into the streets and threatens the entire city.”

  “You really saw them … the elves … carrying everyone into BC Place? Kandy, Kett, Warner, and Haoxin? Like, unconscious?”

  “Or dead.”

  Fear tightened in my belly. “Except for Jade.”

  “She was carrying the blond woman.”

  “Maybe it was a ploy.”

  “Which is why I waited.” Liam glanced at his wrist, tugging back his sweater to look at his watch. I didn’t know anyone else who wore a watch these days. “Which is why I went to the witches first.”

  “The dragons —”

  Liam scoffed. “When the city is in ruins, the dragons will bestir themselves. If they bother to come at all. Honestly, I’d thought they were a myth before meeting Jade —”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Haoxin is a guardian.”

  “Exactly. And this is her territory, yes?”

  I nodded curtly.

  “So if she’s already here, then the other guardians will leave it to her, won’t they? If I understand it correctly, they all oversee different territories.”

  I felt a little lightheaded. “Jade … Jade is the warrior’s daughter. He’ll come for her.”

  “They haven’t come, Mory. Maybe they have reasons for that, but that’s not my immediate concern. Because what if it wasn’t a ploy? What if everyone is still alive? And what if they’re killed because we waited?”

  I swallowed hard. I willed myself to ignore my fear of failing, my fear that the task was too difficult, too far above my power level. Gathering every ounce of bravado I could muster — every ounce I had somehow collected through some sort of spiritual osmosis from those more powerful than me, to whom such things came naturally — I nodded. “But not without Jasmine.”

  “Jasmine? The vampire?”

  Ah, there was that arrogant tone the sorcerer wielded so well.

  “Jasmine,” I said condescendingly, “was a highly skilled tech witch before she was remade. She’s been working on the witches’ grid, but if we can tear her away and she gives your plan her blessing, then yes. Yes, to save Jade I’d sacrifice more than Ed. I owe her, three times over.”

  “You want me to … consult a vampire?”

  “You want me to hunker down with only you and Tony as backup —?”

  “Actually, I’d be monitoring the feed from here,” Tony interjected. “But Jade did mention that I should ask the vampire for help with my research into the elves.”

  I waved him off. “You want me to help you get through a massive magical shielding that the elves have erected over BC Place, sitting out in the open and practically blind as I pilot Ed. You think they won’t notice?”

  “That would be the idea.”

  “That’s what you’re hoping, Liam. Hoping. So yeah, I’ll take the uberstrong, uberfast, tech-savvy vampire over you any day.”

  Tension ran through Liam’s jaw. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “She’ll have to come here. And I didn’t want to delay until after sunset.”

  “No problem,” I said, pulling my phone out of my bag. “She walks during the day.”

  Surprise flittered over Liam’s face.

  I smirked at him. “Let me give you a little piece of advice, sorcerer. You ain’t in Kansas anymore.”

  The dark-featured sorcerer smiled wryly. “Boston. But, yeah, I get your point. Shut up and listen.”

  I nodded. “And stay out of the way when the swords come out.”

  “Right. Though it’s possible you’re also underestimating me, necromancer.”

  “Doubt it. But I’m not going to make you prove it. If what you’re saying about Jade and the others isn’t some ploy, and they’ve all fallen … then … we’re probably all screwed.”

  Applying my thumbs to my phone, I crossed over and sat down on the couch while texting Jasmine. I was going to have to figure out how to word the request concisely, with just enough information to get the tech vampire to join us.

  “Hey, Tony,” I asked. “You got a location for me yet? For Jane Hawthorne?”

  “I’ve got a general area for you to look, but I haven’t been able to drill down further. The records might be offline.” The word ‘offline’ was delivered with epic layers of disgust.

  “Cool. A general location might be enough.”

  “I’ll keep looking.”

  I had fallen asleep on the couch while studying a summoning spell that I’d found in one of the books I’d grabbed from the library. When I woke, I was clutching Ed, and the book was wedged underneath my left shoulder. I’d been pulled from my slumber by a pulsing, enticing energy.

  Jasmine had arrived.

  Though I didn’t remember actually texting her the address.

  I glanced at the coffee table, noting my phone a few inches from my face. I made a guess that someone — likely Liam — had continued the text conversation with Jasmine. So much for thumbprint security. Though I wouldn’t have put it past Tony to have cracked my password.

  I sat up, blurry-eyed and grumpy as all hell. I hated sleeping at random times during the day — though the darkened windows informed me that the sun was setting, and the day was gone.

  “Not like that,” Jasmine muttered, reaching over to fiddle with some tech Tony was working on at his desk.

  The messy-haired sorcerer flinched, then froze.

  Jasmine sighed as if completely put
out. “Really? Get over yourself, child.”

  “Hey!”

  “Well, do you want to do it right or not?”

  “I’m not a witch. I can’t just do it like you say just because you say it.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Tony grumbled something under his breath. Then he bent back over whatever the two of them were working on together.

  Jasmine turned her gaze on me. Her golden curls cascaded halfway down her back, and her bright-blue eyes were full of mocking mirth. “You introduce me to the best people, necromancer.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, stretching my legs over the coffee table. “Just wait until later.” Liam had apparently left the room, if not the house.

  Jasmine twisted her mouth wryly. “I’ve already met him. Delightful.”

  “Hey!” Tony said, though with a slight uncertainty that indicated he didn’t quite know who we were talking about.

  I settled Ed down in my lap as I remembered to take a picture with my phone of the summoning spell I’d been studying before falling asleep. Then I reached for my knitting.

  The door opened behind me. A muted male voice preceded its owner from the hall. “I said stay out of it.”

  Jasmine’s smile turned predatory.

  “Screw you, Liam,” Gabby said, shoving her way into the rec room with her twin Peggy at her heels. “We’re already involved. Hey, Jasmine.”

  “Amplifier,” Jasmine said, sounding slightly disappointed.

  I read the vampire loud and clear. It was harder to mess with Liam when the twins were around. Gabby wasn’t exactly friend material, but everyone liked Peggy. Plus, the twins were under Jade’s protection. And no matter how powerful Jasmine was with the executioner’s blood reanimating her, she wasn’t any match for the dowser.