by Anna Abner
By the time they were all stacked, the fireplace and dusty divan were completely hidden behind cardboard.
Cole ripped the tape off a random box.
“I don’t want to open them,” she said, waving him away. “Not yet.”
“Why not? Don’t you want it?”
She silently counted boxes, picturing the contents. “If everything goes well today, we won’t have to stay here another night and I’ll ship it all back.”
His eyebrows drew together.
“I’m trying to be optimistic,” she explained. “The only reason we’ll need new sheets and pillows and everything is if we lose.”
“You think opening them will jinx us.” He nodded as if he finally understood. “Okay, then let’s get going.”
He gestured for her to precede him out the front door.
Past the crooked porch, Zachary hovered near the corner of the house. Watching.
He didn’t say anything, and Talia was too nervous to start a conversation with the boy, so she waved uncertainly. He stared, unmoving.
There was too much to say to the little guy, and at the same time nothing she could say that would do any good.
“We’ll help him,” Cole assured, climbing into the car beside her. “I promise. We’ll help him find peace. We’ll rescue Sylvester. We’ll stop the Dark Caster. We’ll do all of it.”
The more disasters he named the less confidence she marshaled. How were the two of them, an invisible necromancer and a school nurse with a target on her back, supposed to fix all that? It was seeming less and less likely they could fix any of it at all.
“I know,” she murmured distractedly.
Cole changed the radio stations, pushing random buttons, until he settled on a classic rock channel. Freddy Mercury’s voice blasted from the speakers, drowning out everything else.
The dark, dense pine forests gave way to low, coastal grass and white sand dunes the further away from Auburn Talia drove. Eventually, they crossed a long, narrow ribbon of highway balanced above dark water toward the glittering mansions on Emerald Isle.
The witch’s house was an impressive, three-story wedding cake just off the beach with unequaled ocean views. But there were neighbors. The homes were crammed in side-by-side all the way up and down the beach.
Too many potential witnesses. Too many possible opponents.
Talia drove past number five and turned into the empty driveway of a dark and deserted house.
“I’m not loving this plan,” she whispered, as if the witch might hear her all the way across the street. “We need spell marks to cast. She doesn’t.” They’d be stuck in one place while their adversary attacked from all sides.
“She won’t be able to see me,” Cole whispered. “Distract her, and I’ll cast.”
“Black magic,” Talia clarified. “You mean you’re going to cast black magic.”
“If I have to.”
Cole grasped Talia’s hand and they tiptoed through strangers’ yards, lit by the bright morning sky, toward the lair of the White Wraith.
“She probably has security measures,” she said, trying not to chatter, but failing. There was too much terrified energy bubbling inside her. “She’ll know we’re here before we see her.”
She kept rattling off unnecessary facts. “We’ll need at least one spell circle drawn. Fast. And we have to stick together. We can’t get separated.”
He mumbled something that sounded like don’t worry, and then they crossed onto the wraith’s property. Something immediately felt different, like walking from the fresh air into a subterranean cavern. She opened her mouth to state the obvious, “She’s here,” but the words petered out. The White Wraith was on her doorstep and whatever Talia had imagined her as, she exceeded all expectations.
First, the wraith was beautiful with long, raven hair falling past her elbows. And young. Maybe younger than Talia. She was dressed in an adorable light pink dress and nothing else. Barefoot, she crossed into the yard and confronted them, not exactly angry. Curious maybe. Certainly cautious.
“Burkov, you got my message,” she greeted. “And you brought two friends.”
Talia froze for a second as her mind tried to make sense of the warning. The witch could see Cole? And Hugh? Or at least sense their presence.
It didn’t matter. They’d come too far to get spooked now.
“Eyes on me,” Talia snapped. A trick she’d learned working in schools chock full of rowdy children.
It worked. The wraith turned her full attention on Talia. “This is going to stop,” she said, as if they were just two girlfriends having a tiff. “I’m the one you should worry about.”
The witch actually laughed. “You had your chance to negotiate,” she said, her voice sharp and cruel. “Now is your time to suffer and die. Because that’s the fate of anyone who opposes the Dark Caster.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cole dove for Talia, knowing in his gut they’d made a terrible mistake. This hadn’t been an invitation to talk. It had been a notice of execution. And he’d brought Talia with him.
He shoved her to the ground, shielding her as he furiously drew spell marks in the loose soil.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
“Eat dirt,” was all he heard and then Talia stiffened, her face flattening into the ground. The White Wraith suffocated her with coarse sand.
Cole spun to fight back, but froze at the sight of the witch transformed by magic. She hovered inches above the ground in her full, macabre glory. Her pale white face flickered like a ghoul’s nightmarish countenance.
No wonder her enemies were scared of her. She didn’t just call herself a wraith. She was one.
Hugh must have been distracted by his friend choking to death because Cole didn’t have any spirit power in his fingertips to cast with.
“Hugh!” he roared. “Get your shit together.”
“She can’t breathe!” the ghost wailed.
“Then help me save her,” Cole pleaded. Finally, he felt power, and he pulled out a knife.
But the wraith shifted her gaze. The knife flew out of his hands, disappearing into a clump of bushes.
Coughing and gasping, Talia sat up. “Cole ,” she cried, struggling to her feet. “We have to run.”
“I can stop her,” he said, desperately thinking of a way to make himself bleed. He couldn’t waste the only chance he may ever have to face off with her.
“I can’t believe the master was so wrong about you, Burkov.” A cackle erupted from that ghoulish white face. “I’m supposed to fear you?”
He scratched his nails up and down his arm, ripping and rending old wounds. They tore, and he teared up at the pain, but there was no accompanying zing of power.
He had to draw blood.
The witch glared at Talia, whose face slammed into the ground again. She writhed, but couldn’t fight the wraith’s magic.
And he was beginning to think he couldn’t either.
He dug his fingertips into the freshest cut on his arm, forcing the flesh apart. Blood blossomed, and Milton Couser roused from slumber.
Cole dove for the sloppy spell marks and shouted in Latin. Dark, icky magic pumped through his nervous system.
A whirlwind of sand burst from the earth and struck the wraith, obscuring her vision and stinging her face.
She only screeched louder. “Is this the best you can do?”
Cole lifted a limp Talia into his arms and stumbled away.
But the witch wasn’t finished. Even with his dust storm attacking her, she called out, “That heart of yours doesn’t really belong to you, does it? Want to be rid of it?”
Oh, God, no. Despite a dark period years ago, Cole appreciated his heart and his life. He wanted to keep both.
A fist tightened around his heart, squeezing so hard he was sure the witch would rip it from his chest. Coughing and wheezing, he staggered away.
He shouldn’t have led Talia into danger without a real plan. He was a fucking disappoin
tment.
“You can’t run!” the witch screamed. “I have you in my sights.”
His chest a burning, aching wound, Cole made it to the car. He shoved Talia into the front seat and half sat on her to start the engine and stomp the gas pedal. If they could just get away, catch their breath, regroup.
But the witch had long-distance power. The pain in his chest peaked, past ten, and he blacked out.
* * *
Talia came to her senses in time to shield her head as her Honda slammed into a decorative fence.
Her face and throat were on fire. The bitch had ground her nose into the sand and tore up the tender skin around her mouth and eyes. But that was nothing compared to the pain of seeing Cole pass out, crash her car, and slump over the steering wheel.
“Wake up,” she cried, shaking him. He fell into her lap, his face paling to corpse levels as his lips turned a stomach-churning shade of blue. “Please, Cole. We’re not safe here.” The witch could be on her way to finish them off.
Talia didn’t know what was wrong with him, not exactly, but she could guess. It was probably easy for a witch to give a man on his second heart a fatal attack. Her hands shaking, she checked for a pulse. He was alive, but he wouldn’t be for long. They needed help. And fast. The wraith wasn’t far behind. If she chased their car, she’d be there in minutes.
“Okay,” Talia said aloud to herself, just to feel normal, as if everything was under control. “No problem.” She rummaged in the glove compartment and found a blue permanent marker. “This is what we’ll do.”
Still trembling, she drew sloppy spell marks in the palms of both Cole’s hands. A bridge and a scales. To connect their world to the spirit realm and to plead for justice. Then she turned his hands over and drew a six-pointed star and an anchor on the backs. To represent his soul and a binding magic.
“Miss, I am here,” Hugh said from the backseat. “Tell me how to help.”
“Send him your power,” she instructed. “He’s going to cast.”
Wishful thinking. Cole didn’t look like he could open his eyes let alone speak Latin. But there was only one way to reverse his invisibility spell and he must say the words.
“Cole.” She jostled him. “Take off the vanishing spell, Cole. We need help. Right now.” She stroked his cheeks and curled over him. “Wake up,” she said sternly.
Slowly, his eyes opened, but he didn’t focus on any one thing. Certainly not on her.
“Say the words. We need your friends. We need back-up or we’re both going to die out here.” Talia ran her thumbs over his cheeks, cool to the touch. “Now, Cole.”
“Libero,” he whispered.
Talia felt the surge of power like an electrical charge in the air. Thank God.
She climbed over Cole and into the drivers’ seat, squeezing around him, trying not to hurt him worse than the witch already had.
“Hospital first,” she announced. “Your buddies should be able to find us by then.”
But it didn’t take that long.
Talia reversed the car, broken metal posts screeching against her side panels, and gassed it in the direction of Auburn and away from the White Wraith.
“Cole!” His spirit companion, Stephanie, manifested into the back seat.
Talia jerked the wheel, but swerved back into her lane before taking out a speed limit sign. “Jesus, you scared me!”
“What’s wrong with him?” she cried, her voice raw with worry.
It occurred to her that Stephanie and Dani and all his other friends loved him a lot, so much so that losing sight of him for the past few days had been a kind of torture for them.
“We went up against the White Wraith,” Talia said, shaking her head at their naiveté. What did they expect to do against someone like her? The woman had levitated, for God’s sake. She had become a wraith. “She threatened to take out his heart. I think she gave him a heart attack. He blacked out.”
“He looks like a corpse,” she wailed. “What have you done?”
Before Talia could respond, the spirit was gone.
She couldn’t worry about Stephanie, though. She was far too distracted with every possible thing that could go wrong for Cole.
If his heart stopped beating, he’d have only minutes before he suffered irreversible brain damage. It didn’t even have to stop. If it slowed down, same outcome. She grasped his wrist and, using the clock on the radio, checked that his pulse was within a normal range.
It wasn’t.
“You’re going to be fine,” she said, keeping his wrist in her hand. “Just a little further.”
The moment they arrived at the hospital he’d need something to kick-start his heart. Did emergency rooms still administer adrenalin? Or would he need a defibrillator? It had been so long since she’d taken a course on emergency medicine, she couldn’t remember.
Talia crossed the long bridge from Emerald Isle onto the mainland and heaved a sigh of relief as the white rooftops of the mainland grew nearer. At least one thing was going right. They were leaving the wraith behind.
“Just hang on,” she said, squeezing Cole’s limp hand. “You hear me? There’s a hospital not five minutes from here. They’ll fix y—Oh, shit!”
A black Suburban swerved around her, nearly taking out her side mirror, and forced her off the road. Talia bounced into a drainage ditch and slammed on the brakes, keeping a hold of Cole by the arm so he didn’t slide onto the floorboards.
Daniela Ferraro hopped out of the other vehicle before it came to a full stop and tore open Talia’s passenger door. She was casting so fast, one moment she was a scared, dark-haired woman and the next she was covered in frost.
“Heal,” she hissed, placing her hands on Cole’s chest. And then, not satisfied, she wedged her hands under his vintage tee so they touched skin-to-skin. White, frosty breath puffed between Dani’s lips. “Heal, and be strong.”
“What are you—” But Talia didn’t get a chance to finish her question. A man opened her door and jerked her against his chest, banging her elbow into the doorframe. “Ow,” she complained. “What the hell?”
“You do not want to get between Dani and her magic,” David said. “Trust me. It’s not pretty.”
Talia squirmed free. “Fine.”
“Just let her do her thing.”
Whatever her thing was, it didn’t appear to be working.
“David, help me.” Dani tried pulling Cole from the car, but he was too heavy.
As David and Dani lifted Cole, Talia got a panicky twang in her guts. She didn’t want to lose him. And just because she’d encouraged his friends to find her didn’t mean she trusted any of them. Cole had been hiding for a reason.
“Hold on, stop,” she complained, rounding the hood. “Where are you taking him?”
“You tell me,” Dani said. “You must have a safe house. Some shielded place you’ve been hiding him for the past three days.”
They situated Cole in the backseat of their Suburban.
“On the contrary,” Talia said, turning away from the sight of Cole unconscious and unresponsive. “He has a safe house he’s been hiding me in for three days.”
“Good. We’ll follow you.” Dani climbed into the vehicle and slammed her door like an abrupt form of punctuation.
Without a choice, Talia started her car, sort of amazed the engine still worked.
Leading Cole’s caster posse into Auburn felt just as destructive and dangerous as messing with the dark cabal. Talia didn’t know any of them, despite having a sort of positive encounter with Rebecca at Sparky’s.
Though if Cole vouched for them, then she’d at least give them the benefit of a real conversation. She’d file their assault on her house the night she’d picked up Cole into the worried-about-a-friend folder and leave it at that until she gathered more information.
Besides, at the moment, Cole’s health was her first priority.
No matter what else happened, no matter who else showed up, or what they said, if Cole
didn’t get out of Dani’s vehicle under his own power she was calling 9-1-1.
Halfway to the murder house she noticed a stripped-down Jeep following David’s Suburban. No matter where she turned, they both made the same turn. When she parked in front of the Couser house, both vehicles pulled in behind her.
But Talia had eyes for Cole and no one else. He stepped out of the black SUV, and she catapulted herself toward him, flinging her arms around his neck.
“Are you okay?” she asked, breathing in his scent. “Are you dizzy? Cold? Nauseous?”
But he would have none of her concern. “Talia, oh God, I thought…” He peeled her far enough away to see into her eyes. “Your poor face.” With gentle hands, he inspected her chin. “Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I’m fine. They’re just scratches.”
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” he said.
Her head fit perfectly under his jaw, and if she closed her eyes she could hear his heart, steady and low.
He was safe. Healthy and strong and safe.
“We should get inside,” Dani said, startling Talia out of her one moment of peace all day. “We need to talk, and it’s not secure in the yard.”
Dani strolled into the house first, followed closely by David and then Rebecca and Holden, hand in hand. A beautiful yellow lab traipsed after them.
“This is Buster.” Rebecca reached for the dog who happily licked her fingers.
“He doesn’t like to be alone,” Holden added. “I hope it’s okay.”
Talia shrugged. She couldn’t process the pros and cons of things like pets yet.
Becca sent Talia a quick smile before disappearing inside the house with Holden and Buster, leaving her and Cole in the yard with the spirits. More ghosts in one place than Talia had ever witnessed.
David’s teen, Holden’s little girl, Cole’s spirit companion, and Hugh. When Zachary appeared under the hanging tree, they were a complete set.
So much death. How had she never realized she, and every other necromancer, was surrounded by death? Positively choking on it.
Cole’s warm breath against her face startled her out of her reverie. She snuggled into his body heat.
