by Jen Kirchner
I couldn’t help exhaling a short, sad laugh. “Am I in danger of gingivitis? Because I can see a dentist about that.”
She didn’t answer my question. I had a feeling she was too delirious to have heard me.
“I created a rhyme for your thirtieth birthday,” she said. “Would you like to hear it?”
Why not? This couldn’t possibly get worse, right?
“May the heart not be undone and sever the hands that save. After vanity, retrieve justice from the road. The end is not to end.”
My left eye twitched. How in the world were we supposed to decipher that? An awkward silence settled over the group.
Mom mistook our confusion for disapproval and said indignantly, “Well, it rhymes in Etruscan!”
I heard a heavy plunk as if Mom had fallen back onto the bed, returning to the Seer’s Coma.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll stay home.”
FOUR
As soon as I hung up the phone, I felt conflicted about my decision to stay. The odds of meeting my doom seemed slim, especially since I was only having a few drinks and eating dinner at Uncle Rick’s.
Plus, I didn’t think my career could take any more hits and survive.
I walked back down to my white laboratory. The room was empty now that the guys had gone outside. My eyes fell to Mouth’s black, twisted form sitting atop the counter.
I didn’t have the heart to tell the other knives what had happened, so I just tossed my notebook and map back into the panic room and closed the metal door. I put Mouth’s remains in the drawer with the cotton balls and lollipops, then I shut off the light, locked the lab, and headed upstairs.
When I got to the family room, Brad was pacing in a square around the coffee table, talking on his cell phone. A trail of blue runes hovered around his head and the phone. He stopped when he saw me.
He held up his phone and waggled it for a quick second, then returned it to his ear. “I’m talking to Grandpa. He says your telepathic link is broken.”
I knew he was talking to Grandpa just by looking at the runes. Not only could necromancers see the spell strings that were invisible to everyone else, we could read the compressed layers of information that each spell held. These runes indicated that the caster was getting a view of the room through the phone. The second layer contained an elaborate symbol bearing the caster’s name, age, and magic channel. The symbol read: Asharniuset, second channel. And, unless my math was off, he was 3,872 years old.
I waved hello to Grandpa’s viewing runes and said, “So my dad already called him?”
Brad shook his head and his expression darkened. “Your mom called him a couple of hours ago and ‘suggested’ you might need a replacement.”
My heart sank. “Well, she’s repeated that too many times, because now she’s in a Seer’s Coma.”
Brad didn’t immediately respond. He looked as if he were listening to something Grandpa was saying. After a second, he nodded and looked at me.
“Grandpa’s heading over there now. He’ll link up your new telepath device to Uncle Diaco’s before the Council meeting, and he can have it mailed to you first thing in the morning. You should have it in a couple of days.” He paused again, then rolled his eyes. “And he says you look nice.” He hung up the phone and the runes winked out.
The Council was the governing body of the Immortal State and my dad had been a member for more than a millennium. Thanks to the charm, I had eavesdropped on every meeting since I was made family. I knew more about Immortal law than I did my own.
I asked, “Why is there another Council meeting? They just had one.”
“Something about an emergency session. Grandpa didn’t say what it was about.” He paused and eyed me carefully. “You’re staying home tonight, right? You’re not going to the PR event at the club?”
Before I could answer, Nicolas’s voice shouted up from the basement. “Wait a minute! What?”
I heard heavy footsteps in the hall walking toward us. He appeared on the right side of the room in the open archway. Ryan was right behind him.
“You’re really backing out of tonight’s event? After all we went through to finish this new album, set up events, and get this band back on its feet?”
“Something’s come up,” I said, lifting up my wrist. I pointed at my watch and the charm that dangled from the buckle. “My telepathic device is broken, and my mom is trying to change events.”
“What events?” Nicolas asked.
I shook my head. “We don’t know, and she’s in a Seer’s Coma, so we can’t even ask. She recited some weird rhyme that made no sense, then passed out.”
“What was her rhyme?”
“Um,” I said, trying to remember how it went, “may the heart not be undone… Something about severing hands and retrieving justice from a road.”
Brad grimaced. Nicolas lifted a skeptical eyebrow.
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with tonight,” Ryan said. “We’re going to be sitting in a heavily guarded VIP area, then driven right back here.”
Nicolas turned to Brad. “I thought you were trained to be Kari’s protection.”
“I was. I mean, I am.” His upper lip curled into an impatient sneer. “So?”
“So I think the worst thing you’ll have to protect her from is cheap beer. Besides,” Nicolas said, “I’ll help you protect her. I’m not afraid of some Irish voodoo freak.”
I rolled my eyes. “I feel better already.”
Ryan turned to me and gave me a pleading look. “We’re counting on you, Kari. You’re our singer. No one will care about us if you aren’t there.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Women love Brad.”
“But you’re the face of the band.” His voice softened. “We need you.”
He was laying it on pretty thick, and, as much as I hated to admit it, it was kind of working.
I reinforced my defenses and rebutted, “All of my mom’s previous predictions have come true. Something bad is going to happen tonight!”
Nicolas waggled a condescending finger at me. “She sees many alternate realities and she’s trying to force a better, safer option to happen in this one. If she’s good, she might be successful.”
I frowned. “What?”
Nicolas said, “Your family is freaking out too much to see what your mom is really up to. She’s trying to help you.”
Brad’s face lit up. “Oh, I see.”
Nicolas nodded. “So your mom wants you to retrieve something from a road. You aren’t going to do that by barricading yourself in this house.”
Before we could say any more, the front door slammed shut. We jumped and turned toward the hallway. A female voice with an Indian accent shouted, “Guys?”
Brad whispered, “She’s early.”
“This is the biggest night we’ve had in a long time,” Nicolas said. “I’m not surprised.”
Ryan shouted, “Family room!”
I heard high heels on a mission, heading toward us.
I pushed the Liberace book back into the shelf and tapped my foot impatiently while the bookshelf took its time swinging closed. As soon as it settled into place, concealing my creepy necromancer basement, a curvaceous woman with dark skin and a thick, black mane appeared in the hall. She looked excited to see us.
“Hi Pasha,” we chorused.
The band’s personal assistant and fashion dictator was dressed to kill in a white cocktail dress and spiked red heels. She stepped into the room and appraised each one of us, making sure we looked good.
“You guys look terrific!” she gushed. “Are you ready for tonight?”
No one said anything. Pasha followed their gazes to me.
“What’s wrong?” Her face fell. “You’re canceling, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t help feeling bad. I knew how hard she had worked with our management team and public relations people to pull off this series of events. Granted, we were only going downtown tonight, but it was still impo
rtant. Come to think of it, Nicolas was probably right. Nothing bad was going to happen tonight. My mom knew what she was doing.
“Of course not,” I said. “We’re all going.”
Nicolas looked visibly relieved. Ryan slung a friendly arm across my shoulders and gave me a reassuring squeeze.
Brad cleared his throat. “But we won’t be able to stay for the full two hours.”
Pasha’s good mood returned. “That shouldn’t be a problem. The most important part of the night is working the carpet and rubbing elbows with the other celebrities that were invited.”
I snorted and said, “No A-list celebrity is going to waste their time coming to this tiny city for our comeback party.”
Pasha’s perfectly manicured eyebrows scrunched in annoyance. “Then who do you think is coming tonight?”
I smiled. “Brad’s ex-girlfriends.”
Brad’s eyes widened in horror. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen that one coming.
Ryan shrugged. “Of course they were invited—they’re hot young models and starlets who’ve been in your pants. Let’s just hope they don’t start any trouble.”
Pasha rolled her eyes and pivoted neatly on her heels. “We should go. The limo’s already here, but it stalled in the driveway.”
We all froze. I asked, “What do you mean, in the driveway?”
“Well, it was down on the street when I got here, so I opened the gate. The limo tried following me through but it stalled.”
I resisted the urge to slap a hand to my forehead. “That’s not engine trouble,” I said, “there’s an access spell around my property.”
Pasha gave me a funny look. “You have an access spell around your house? Why?” She looked at Nicolas. “Did you put it there?”
Oh, good question. Pasha was under the belief that I wasn’t a magic user and had no desire for magical interference or aid. I should have thought up something convincing before responding, but I was flustered and blurted out the first excuse that came to mind.
“Angry fans!”
Pasha’s eyebrows lifted. I glanced at the guys in a silent plea for help.
“Oh, yeah,” Nicolas said. “A bunch of fans tried breaking into the property to egg the house. They were still mad about our last record. I put the spell up as a temporary measure. I had plenty of things with your identifier on them, so I was able to plug you into the spell.”
Pasha nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “Well, we’re going to have to go down to the street so Nicolas can fix his spell and we can leave.”
Brad grimaced. Nicolas’s eye twitched.
Ryan clearly didn’t understand what was happening because he shrugged at us and followed Pasha down the hall. We waited until they disappeared around the corner.
Brad rubbed his temples with his forefinger and thumb. He whispered to Nicolas, “Can’t you fix that spell?”
“Your lawyer is over two thousand years old. I’m a damn good second-channeler, but I can’t override his spell. Kari?”
“Are you kidding me? I can’t cast spells in public, much less in broad daylight!”
Pasha shouted at us from the front door. “Are you coming? We’re going to be late!”
We met her at the entry. I grabbed my clutch purse and an extra gate remote from the table and walked outside.
My driveway was long and had a small hill in the middle. I couldn’t even see the street below until I clacked painfully to the top in my high heels. I slowed down, thinking I could give Pasha a big enough lead for me to stop and slip off the shoes. Sadly, Pasha instinctively knew what I was planning.
“Don’t even think about taking those shoes off,” she shouted over her shoulder. “I don’t have another pair of stockings.”
“This must be what the underwear drawer feels like,” I grumbled.
“What?”
“I said this is what heaven feels like.”
If I hadn’t been wearing a mini-dress, I would have asked for someone to give me a piggyback ride down to the street.
I lived on the end of a cul-de-sac. A tall, wrought iron fence surrounded my house, set atop a grassy hill. Spells flickered and squiggled around the gate like serpents, visible only to me. Three of them were the blue of the second channel and one the white of the first channel. Because of the spells, I couldn’t see through to the street, but the front gate was open and I could see the front end of the limo in my driveway. Unfortunately, because the driver didn’t have his symbol listed in the access spell set upon the gate, his car had stalled and refused to go any further. Nicolas stood at the front of the car, staring hard and humming as if in a trance, pretending to fix it. The group gathered around him, appreciating a magic user working his craft.
I walked to the back of the car, standing at everyone’s backs. I pointed at the driver and gestured. A cloud of smoke swirled around me and a large, black symbol peeled off of his back. I directed it into the access spell hovering around my gate. The symbol flew through the air and slammed into the spell. A loud clang rang out.
Startled, everyone jumped and turned toward the noise. Before anyone could ask about the sound, the car’s engine kicked over.
“What’s all that smoke around you?” Pasha asked.
“Exhaust,” I said lamely, and ducked inside the limo.
FIVE
I couldn’t remember a time I had gone outdoors without my dad looking over my shoulder. Every bump over every pothole had me clutching Brad’s arm, looking out for a major voodoo attack from the rear. Despite my fears, I was still alive when we left the suburbs and entered the downtown area of Rochester, New York.
The city’s glory as one of the nation’s first boomtowns had come and gone, and there was no getting it back. Decaying brick buildings and abandoned parking garages were prominent on every street corner. Most manufacturing and other large businesses had moved on to greener pastures, while the companies that stayed were mere shadows of their former glory. The only thing that had hadn’t changed was the immortal community. Over the years, they had spread out in their own form of urban sprawl, but most hadn’t gone far. I guessed they liked the quiet atmosphere.
The industrial city center soon gave way to suburban homes, coffee bars, and kitschy shops, and we took a right onto University Avenue.
This street was the hottest spot in the city. Rumor had it that an immortal owned the neighborhood and rented space to businesses that inspired a healthy nightlife, making it the only place around that was active day and night. Despite my connections, I had no idea who owned it. Whoever they were, they held a deep affection for nature and respected local art—things I really admired. Everywhere I looked, mosaics covered building exteriors, local art stood proudly on street corners, and strings of soft light twinkled within meticulous gardening. Most of the locals referred to it as the Neighborhood of the Arts. Immortals called it Fast Food Row.
And they didn't call it that because of Burger King.
The sidewalks were packed with pedestrians. I even saw people carrying professional cameras. There were a lot of people down here. More than there should have been in this little city.
Brad said, “Who the hell did our PR company invite that garners this kind of public response?” He let that question sink in for a second. “And why weren’t we told?”
“Lloyd knows,” Nicolas said. “We’ll ask him when we get inside.”
Pasha stiffened. The movement was subtle, but noticeable enough. All attention turned to her, though she refused to make eye contact with anyone.
Her words were slow and careful. “Lloyd had a conflict tonight and can’t attend your comeback party.”
Nicolas snorted. “Can’t or won’t?”
Lloyd had managed us since the beginning, even before we signed our first major-label contract. He was our fiercest supporter when our star was rising. Now that we were on the downhill, we only saw him when he showed up to collect his royalty check. By the way he had been treating us over the last year and a half, it
was clear Lloyd thought our careers in music were over.
“If Lloyd is so busy, who set up this party?” I asked.
“Your lawyer and I,” Pasha replied.
I didn’t know what to say to that. Judging by the silence, neither did anyone else. My lawyer cared more about our comeback than our manager? So this is what rock bottom looks like.
The car finally stopped next to a massive crowd jammed onto the sidewalk, pushing and shoving on either side of a red carpet. The carpet ran from the edge of the street to the front doors of a small, renovated grocery store. Above the doors a hot pink sign read “Svelte." Through the windows, we could see flashing neon lights and a crystal ball. The music inside the club was so loud I could feel an electronic bass drum shaking our limo.
Pasha clapped her hands together twice, bringing us back to attention. “Okay, guys. It’s show time! Remember, don’t do anything that isn’t glamorous.”
She said it painfully, as if telling water not to be wet.
The passenger door slid open and I climbed out, carefully, so no one could get a glimpse of my underwear. The crowd started screaming and waving at me, and their enthusiasm only increased as the guys joined me on the red carpet. Cameras flashed from both sides. Out of habit, I stretched out my necromancer senses to pick up anything dead in the vicinity. In my head, I could see blips of the dead as if they were on a map. A lot of immortals were nearby.
The look on my face must have given away what I was up to because Nicolas leaned in, smirking. “Death Radar activated.”
“It’s always on,” I whispered back.
The guys had invented weird names for my abilities. I had no formal training in necromancy, and my knives refused to tell me anything unless I killed someone properly, so we improvised. Death Radar was a name that stuck early on. If I concentrated, I could pick up anything—or anyone—dead within a half mile. I don’t often do that, though. Roadkill makes me sad.
