Death Rites (The Lazarus Codex Book 1)

by E. A. Copen

  “Must’ve slipped my mind in between being shot, saving your life, and getting arrested for it.”

  Her cheeks reddened. “That’s not… I wasn’t…”

  Moses patted her on the back. “Easy there, Emma. Don’t want to hurt yourself.”

  She shot him a glare that might’ve made a tiger back away.

  “Think about it,” I said, holding my hands out, “if I hadn’t convinced you guys to go over there, and Detective Moses to free me—both very unlikely things to happen, considering—what would’ve happened to those girls locked in that room?”

  “They’d have died.” Knight uncrossed her arms, her eyes widening.

  I nodded gravely. “Feels like to me someone’s tying up loose ends. If that psychic assault had worked, I’d be a drooling vegetable at best right now. I’m not supposed to be alive right now.”

  “But why would they want to…” Her question trailed off.

  I jammed my hands into the pockets of my dingy old coat and turned away. She’d come to the same conclusion as me. “Because if I’m dead, I can’t talk to that little girl’s ghost. This whole set-up was a trap.”

  And they’d nearly succeeded. In my haste to check on Odette, I hadn’t even considered the possibility. If I’d been just a little less alert, hesitated with my response half a second more, the detectives would have two corpses to process at the scene instead of one.

  Detective Moses’ voice brought me back to the situation at hand. “Can you? Talk to that little girl’s ghost?”

  I winced but nodded. In theory, calling up the freshly dead should’ve been easier than talking to someone whose body had been processed and put in the ground. But the last time I’d seen a dead little girl…

  My throat grew tight as I recalled breaking into the morgue on that day eight years ago and saw her lying on the slab. A piece of meat. An empty shell. Her little lips pale and oddly gray when they should’ve been pink and full of life. Her thin curls—the curls I used to tease her about, the curls she hated with a passion—hung limply around her head like a dark halo.

  My fingers closed into tight fists at my side. Whoever had hurt this little girl was going to pay. “I can do it, but you’ll have to clear the scene, and the sooner we do this, the better.”

  “Hold on a second.” Knight took a step forward, standing between Moses and me. “You’re not serious?”

  Moses frowned and nodded slowly.

  “Nothing he finds is going to be admissible in a court.” She gestured to me. “It’ll all be bullshit evidence, Moses. That’s not our job. Our job is to follow the evidence, not our guts and superstitions.”

  “You want to explain that to the family of the next girl?” Moses said, his tone firm. “I think it’s worth the risk. All the evidence has been bagged and tagged. Photographs taken. All that’s left is to move the body. The worst thing he can do is nothing at all. And if he finds something, we’ll find a way to make it work. I ain’t willing to see another body like this, Emma. Not today, not never.”

  Knight cast me a cautious glance. No, not cautious. Worried. Guarded. The look of someone who had been lied to and cheated one too many times. The look of someone who’d nearly lost all faith in humanity.

  She didn’t say anything to me, instead choosing to study me, searching for any sign that I was exactly what she thought I was, another liar taking her for a ride. Whatever she saw, it must’ve been good enough. “What do you need?”

  “Chalk, candles, and a lighter. Odette keeps them in a kitchen drawer. I’ll also need unrestricted access to the body.”

  Knight turned and gestured widely to several officers who’d stopped what they were doing to listen to our conversation. “What are you waiting for? Get this man what he asked for.”

  They looked at each other like she was crazy but quickly got to work.

  “You’d better not be bullshitting me,” Knight said, turning back to me.

  “What’d you dream last night? About some of your past cases, right? Ones that didn’t go well?” I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to ask that of her right then, and it must’ve seemed like an odd question to anyone but her, but it must’ve made sense to Detective Knight.

  Her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open before she turned away. The psychic connection we now shared had let me peer into her dreams, which felt weird, but I had no control over it. The connection would probably work both ways. That realization was about as awkward as the strange question I’d just posed, but not near as awkward as the next thing I did.

  I grabbed her hands. She tried to jerk them away at first but settled when my grip held her. “Look at me.”

  Hesitantly, Knight raised her eyes to mine.

  “I give you my word, I won’t lie to you. Not now, not ever. So swear I this before these witnesses.”

  Something in the air around us snapped and crackled as power charged and transferred between us. Anyone not in physical contact wouldn’t have heard it, but the sound made Knight flinch. Had she been able to tear her gaze from mine, she might’ve glanced around for gunfire, the noise was so loud, but the magic of the oath held her until it was done.

  A wizard’s oath was ancient magic, as old as magic itself, and mortally binding. I couldn’t break my word now even if I’d wanted to, not without facing death. It wasn’t something I did lightly. I needed Knight to trust me, to believe in my world. That sort of thing didn’t come easy, especially for someone like her. As long as she didn’t trust me, we couldn’t work together, not effectively. While I could’ve spent weeks or months working to gain her trust, more women would die in the meantime. With the oath, I accomplished months’ worth of work in a single binding spell, but that spell had its own cost.

  I felt the magic tug at the threads of the psychic connection we’d forged the day before, strengthening that bond. It buzzed like a golden thread between us.

  Knight pulled her fingers away and swayed, trembling. Even once the spell ended, she didn’t stop staring at me, wide-eyed.

  “You okay?” Moses steadied her with a hand on her shoulder.

  Her answer came out as whispered breath, barely audible. “Yeah.”

  I flexed my fingers, making fists and releasing them. “Let’s get this show on the road then.”

  In the bedroom, the cops had placed a tin full of loose chalk next to a handful of black and white votive candles. I ignored the white candles and snatched up five black candles, planting them on the floor at regular intervals. When it came time to plant the fifth candle, I looked around and realized the only spot to put it would be the headboard of the bed.

  I tried not to look down at the body as I leaned over it, but it was nearly impossible. Even without reaching for my magic, I could feel death reaching for me. The chill of it seeped into my bones, drawing life and warmth from me, pulling me closer to the grave. The crime scene was too fresh, the magic used there strong, and I still hadn’t fully recovered from the Kiss of Life. Too much death in too short a time and my body would forget how to live. Already, I could feel the edges of life slipping away. The colors around me faded, the bright blue paint on the bedroom wall diminishing to slate blue. Wood rotted under my vision, and the bloody sheets decayed, becoming moth-eaten rags that blew in an ethereal wind.

  It lasted a second, maybe more, before I closed my eyes, shook my head and refocused. While my eyes were closed, I envisioned building a wall around my mind, first of moss and then of evergreen trees with thick boughs. A wall of living things to protect me against death. I’d have to lower the wall in a second to cast the ritual, but at least it would keep any further life from seeping out of me unbidden.

  My eyes snapped open on a room without decay, and I placed the candle firmly on the headboard.

  The loose salt, I spread in a vague circle beyond the candles. It’d keep any spirits I summoned from going far. Ghosts didn’t like salt. Didn’t much care for iron either, but salt was much more economical. Not that I thought the ghost I summo
ned would make a break for it. Most ghosts wanted to tell their stories. But you never know.

  The scene set, I stepped back. “Anybody got a light?”

  Detective Moses planted a lighter in my hand.

  Normally, I’d walk around and light every candle and do a little chanting to center myself, but I already felt focused, ready to get on with this. With as much power as there was emanating inside that circle, and as pissed as I was, letting off some extra steam was exactly what I needed. So, after lighting the first candle, I extended a hand over it and gave a simple command. In a loud whoosh, every candle in the circle lit itself. Several surprised gasps sounded from the doorway behind me where I’d told everyone but Moses and Knight to wait. I’d instructed them to stand beyond the salt line and not to cross it, no matter what.

  I could almost hear Pony Dee’s voice in my head. Show off. A smirk touched my face. Maybe he was right just a little, but damn, did that feel good.

  The candles lit, I slowly lowered the barrier I’d built moments ago. The evergreens withered, pine needles turning brown and dropping to the ground. Moss curled and turned black. An arctic wind washed over me as death reached out.

  I didn’t have a name by which to call the spirit forth, but as I was standing over the body, I didn’t need it. Only three presences were lurking within the circle: mine, the weak thread of Detective Emma Knight that connected me to her, and the unnamed victim I was about to call on.

  I raised my hands in the air and motioned as if snatching something above my head. “I summon forth the dead. I command you to commune with me in the realm of the living. Come forth!”

  Chapter Twelve

  The ghost sat up out of the body as it had never left. Maybe it hadn’t. I had no idea what happened to souls after death, except that some of them got stuck on Earth while others didn’t. While it seemed random to me, the next necromancer you ask probably believes there’s some higher being with a dart board and really bad aim. Who knows?

  The little girl that sat up out of her body was cute with fat cheeks and big eyes. Her hair hung in thick, golden ringlets as if they’d just come off hot curlers. In her pretty, white dress and with her pouty lips, she might’ve doubled as a slightly older version of Shirley Temple from her black and white film days.

  Her eyes darted around the room, growing bigger. The expression on her face reminded me of the rabbits in a pet store whenever I approached. When her eyes settled on me, they held some recognition, but the fear didn’t leave them.

  I held out my hands palms up. “It’s okay. Do you remember me?”

  She nodded slowly. Halfway through the motion, her eyes fell on her mangled body. Dammit, I hadn’t meant for her to look down. Confronted with her own death, she did what most ghosts do and freaked the hell out. A scream pierced the air, so loud I had to throw my hands over my ears, even though it didn’t block out the sound. Violent spasms ripped through her ghostly form, arms, legs, and head all jerking in opposite directions as she relived her death.

  I closed a fist and called on more of my magic, the thread that connected me to the ghost, and gave it a little tug. “Stop that.”

  She immediately stopped jerking and fell limp.

  One of the benefits of being a necromancer over being a medium was dominion over the dead. That meant I could do more than just call up spirits and listen to them. I could interact with their forms, and command them to do my bidding. I rarely used that last ability, and it showed in the glistening sweat that appeared at my hairline.

  I spread my fingers on each hand out, mimicking the hand positions I imagined a puppeteer holding a marionette might use. Strings appeared between the little girl ghost and my fingers, connecting me to various different points of her body. I tipped only my left ring finger ever so slightly, forcing her head up to focus on me. “Speak your name.”

  “Grace Muller,” the spirit responded without emotion.

  “Tell me how you died, Grace.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Knight jot something down in the tiny notebook she kept.

  “Murder.” Grace’s voice sent a new chill trembling down my spine.

  “Who murdered you?” Might as well go the easy route first, right?

  Grace’s mouth opened, but her jaw went slack, her ghostly eyes bulging from their sockets with effort. Something was keeping her from answering. Either she didn’t know, or some spell had been laid over her spirit to bind it into an unwilling oath. Unlike the one I’d given Knight earlier, an unwilling oath was black magic of the highest order, breakable only by specialized verimancers. I wasn’t one of them.

  “What’s she saying?” Knight hissed in a whisper.

  “Can’t answer.” I gritted my teeth against the effort of holding her.

  Usually, if a spirit couldn’t, or didn’t, answer me, I could use my magic to send pulses through the strings that held them. The same magic would have no effect on the living, but it was like a cattle prod to the dead and one of the few ways I’d found to cause them pain. I didn’t relish the idea of torturing the soul of an innocent girl, not even if it gave us the name of the murderer.

  Time to try the more difficult line of questions. “Grace, I’m going to ask you some simple yes or no questions. I want you to respond so the officers can hear. Can you do that?”

  Her ghost looked around, her eyes settling on the lamp next to Odette’s bed. With a ghostly finger, she reached out to touch it. The light flickered on and off once.

  “Good. One blink for yes, two for no, got it?” I wiped sweat away from my eyes.

  The light blinked once.

  “Did you die in this room?”

  Grace touched the light once. Knight scribbled the answer down.

  I swallowed the growing dryness in my mouth. “Were you brought here against your will?”

  The light lit up once.

  “Ask her if she knew the person who brought her here,” Moses suggested.

  I relayed the question, and Grace reached for the light but didn’t touch it. She wasn’t sure. The question was too broad, which meant she only knew the person in the vaguest of terms. “The person who brought you here, was it the same person who locked you in the room at the halfway house?”

  Two blinks.

  That meant two people were working together. Well, at least two. Maybe a whole bunch of people.

  “Ask her if it was a family member,” Knight urged.

  “Ask if she saw her attacker,” someone else said.

  Suddenly, a whole slew of questions flew at me from the doorway. I opened my mouth to tell them to shut the hell up and form an orderly line, but all that came out was a cloud of frozen, condensed air. I was suddenly very aware of the blood thickening in my veins, the slow pump of my heart growing even slower. The world decayed around me, walls crumbling to dust. The floorboards fell away along with the ceiling. Instead of the sun, a giant, red moon hung in the sky.

  I’d lost concentration and somehow poured too much of my own essence into the spell, and now it was spiraling out of control, threatening to suck me into the grave. In a panic, I flicked my fingers, releasing the threads that held me to Grace’s ghost, but the apparition didn’t disappear, and the room didn’t rebuild itself. Cold crept into my limbs and every muscle fiber in my body stiffened. I fell face first to the floor, gasping, desperate to draw air into my lungs, but it was a fruitless effort. My lungs, like the rest of me, had already seized up. I was dying, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.

  And then, I was huddled against Knight, my head in her hands against her chest while she pulled her blazer over my shoulders. Despite my warnings, she’d crossed my circle and scooped me up, paying no attention to the magic swirling all around her. Another gasp rattled in my chest as I tried to chastise her for being so stupid.

  She shushed me and patted my head as if I were a child. “You’re here, Lazarus. You’re alive. Stay with me now.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My limbs ached, and my m
uscles trembled along with my chattering teeth, so I couldn’t have spoken anyway. Having her warmth against me was the next best thing to heaven. So, with nothing left to do, I shivered and accepted the embrace.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Stay with me.” Detective Knight reached across the front seat and shook me awake, keeping me just beyond sleep.

  I couldn’t see why. It was fucking freezing in her car. Why wasn’t the heat working? And what was so heavy on my chest anyway? Groggily, I shifted my head and looked down to find Knight’s blazer jacket, an emergency blanket, and something that looked like sheepskin draped over me. It weighed a ton, enough that my arms could barely shift.

  I didn’t recall being dragged to Knight’s car, or if she’d even said where we were headed. Probably the hospital again. Dammit, I had to stop her before she took me there and wasted the doctors’ time on me. There wasn’t anything they could do that a hot shower, food, and some rest wouldn’t do.

  Except even as I thought that, I knew it wasn’t true. Normally, it was. Touching death was draining. Doing it after being psychically assaulted, and so soon after the last one, had left me more drained than usual. I’d need to be in direct contact with life, and plenty of it, for six to eight hours before I was coherent again. Usually, that meant I’d call Odette and we’d spend the night together.

  But Odette was missing. Maybe dead. Maybe worse.

  I needed to find her.

  Suddenly, that was the only thing on my mind, tracking down Odette. I had the stuff back at my place to cast a tracking spell. I was sure she’d left enough DNA somewhere. In fact, I was sure I had an old hairbrush of hers and that stupid hoodie she kept leaving at my place. Yeah, I could use that. But first, I needed some rest. It wouldn’t do to try and use magic with as exhausted as I was. A nap and then I’d find Odette.

  If only that annoying snapping would stop.

  “Hey, idiot! You wake up, or I swear to God I will turn this car around and take your stupid ass straight to the hospital. Do you hear me?”