by A. J. Locke
I was growing excited now; I knew I couldn’t yet say I had the solution to the case, but this was definitely worth looking into. There was just one issue—I needed Micah’s backup on this, and he wanted nothing to do with me.
I still had to try. The case came before our personal issues, and I hoped Micah would see it that way. I gathered the papers with Larry’s family tree and headed back to Micah’s cubicle. This time, I saw his eyes narrow slightly as I walked up.
“I’m not here to try and force you to talk to me about the other night,” I said. “But I think I may have a break in the case that we should investigate. I’d go alone, but I can’t quite drive yet, and the last time I went out on my own, I got beat up, so…”
He said nothing, and I sighed.
“Look, Micah, this isn’t some ploy. I promise you I’ve come across something, and despite everything, isn’t the case more important?” I placed the papers in front of him and pointed to Michael’s picture. “Does he look familiar to you? That’s Larry’s half brother, though these days, he goes by Trevor, and he works in the Underground. And as you know, he’s a reanimator.”
Micah frowned as he stared at the paper.
“I think that if Trevor put Larry into Ethan’s body, then Larry went after Leslie for cheating on him, and Athena for being the one who discovered that Trevor was a reanimator. I looked into it; she was the one who found him out.”
Micah folded his arms and sat back, giving me the barest of glances. “It’s still inconclusive.”
“Have you come across any leads that are more worth following?”
His silence told me he had not.
“It’s enough of a connection to look into,” I said. “We need to try and find the body-jacker before he kills someone else Larry or Trevor has a grudge against.”
“Larry hasn’t been seen in a while,” Micah said, frowning. “I heard that some of the other necromancers have been looking for him the past few days.”
“There could be a good reason for that,” I said.
“What do you want to do?” Micah asked. His voice was still tight and flat, but at least he was talking to me.
“Seek Trevor out,” I said. “I know where his shop is in the Underground; it’s the perfect place to start. If he’s there, hell, if Larry in Ethan’s body is there, we could have this all taken care of before the day is done.”
“Only if your assumptions are correct,” Micah said, but he stood up and handed me back the papers. “Let’s go.”
* * *
I endured a painfully awkward car ride with Micah during which I didn’t even bother to attempt conversation. About twenty minutes later, we were walking into the Underground.
“How do you know where he sets up shop?” Micah asked, and I think I detected some suspicion in his voice. It would be just what I needed to have him think I was in cahoots with Trevor if he was up to no good, wouldn’t it?
“I come to the Underground a lot more than you probably think,” I said. “The rune I need to mask my reanimation power can’t exactly be found at the local rune shop. I came across Trevor a few years ago and realized that this was what he’d done with himself after escaping being stripped.” I stopped in front of the door I knew led down to Trevor’s shop. “This is it.”
We headed through the basement door. When we got to the bottom, I saw Micah looking around warily as though he thought a trap was about to spring on him at any moment. I couldn’t really blame him. A lot of people who worked the Underground liked to set booby traps to trip up the cops and help them escape.
I opened the hidden door in the wall, then the one in the floor, and though Micah looked more hesitant about going down farther, he didn’t hem and haw over it. Soon, we were standing in Trevor’s small workroom, but it took only a second to realize that it was a lot different from the last time I was here. It was empty.
“Is there another door we have to go through or down?” Micah asked, stepping forward and looking around. Since the room had been cleared out, there was no candlelight to see by, and only the barest light filtered down from above. But it was enough to see that the room was empty. Micah and I pulled out flashlights.
“No,” I said. “He cleared out.”
Micah turned to me with a raised eyebrow.
“When I was here last week, this room was full of reanimated animals, candles, rune stones, and Trevor, of course, but he’s gone now.”
“Interesting,” Micah said.
“This was the block I chased Ethan’s body-jacker down, come to think of it,” I said. “If it is Larry in there, maybe he was here to see Trevor, and after our scuffle, he told Trevor I was on his tail, and they packed up and left. Damn it.” I pounded my fist against the wall. “Now how the hell are we supposed to find him?”
“There’s no essence to trace,” Micah said. He’d pulled out an absorption rune and had been moving it all over the room. He came back over to me, looking discouraged. “He must have cleaned up before he left.” Meaning, Trevor had used absorption runes to get rid of any essence left behind to ensure no one would be able to track him.
“Let’s see if there’s anything else we can find,” I said. We spent some time looking over every inch of the room but came away with nothing. We left the musty hole and headed back outside.
“What now?” Micah said, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets and staring off across the street. Honestly, I had no clue.
“Go back to the office, I guess,” I said as we headed back to his car. “This is discouraging, but the fact that Trevor hightailed it strengthens my theory about him and Larry being connected to who’s walking around in Ethan’s body.”
“Except we’re still no closer to finding them, and while we twiddle our thumbs, someone else could get murdered.” He glanced at me. “Why don’t you try to create another rune stone to track Ethan’s body?”
I smacked myself on the forehead, then regretted it and winced since my head was still a little sore. “Why didn’t I think of that?” I said. “The T-shirt Ethan brought me would be useless now since I absorbed everything from it for the first tracking stone, but I could have him get me something else from his house. Once he resurfaces.”
“Okay,” Micah said. We reached his car and got in, but Micah didn’t start it.
I looked at him. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his arms trembled, and he suddenly seemed unable to control his expression. I sensed an explosion coming; it had been only a matter of time. I braced myself for it.
“How could you do it?” He didn’t yell, but that was somehow worse. He was staring out the windshield and not at my face. “How could you do it?”
“Micah, just hear me out.”
Now he turned to me, and the hurt and anger I saw on his face made me shrink back against the car door.
“What’s there to hear?” he said. “You were fucking our married boss, Selene, then you made me feel like there was something between us, but the moment my back was turned, you go and…” He made an anguished sound and slammed his palm against the steering wheel.
“I didn’t do anything with Andrew that night!” I said, to which he just scoffed. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I went in there to tell him off for leaving me a diamond necklace and to tell him that it was over, but he didn’t take it well and tried to force himself on me!” Micah’s expression froze as he stared at me. “He ripped open my shirt and jeans, but I was able to get away from him. That’s the truth, Micah.”
His jaw was back to being tightly clenched. I hoped he wasn’t setting himself up for dental work down the line.
“He forced himself on you,” he stated.
I sighed and slumped back against the seat. “You know what a domineering man Andrew is at work,” I said. “Well, it crosses over into other things too. I realized that he saw me as a possession, and when I asserted otherwise, things went a lot worse than I anticipated.” I turned to him. “You have to believe me. I wouldn’t go from kissing you one minute to bent over i
n front of Andrew the next.”
“So last night was different, and I could strangle Andrew for trying to force himself on you, but what about before? How long have you been sleeping with him?”
“About eight months,” I said hollowly. That angry spark was back in his eyes.
“Why?” he said. “You know he’s married, and he’s our boss! Why did you do it?”
“Look, I get that you’re mad because of what you thought I did the other night, which I just explained was far from what you thought, but what business is it of yours what I was doing with Andrew when you and I were nothing? It’s not like you haven’t made your way around the office, me included!”
“None of them were my boss, and none of them were married,” he said. “Have you no sense of morality, Selene? I wouldn’t think it’d be that hard for you to find a lay, so why Andrew? I can only assume you had some ladder you wanted to climb.”
“Fuck you, okay?” I said, and I think the force of my words caught him off guard. Tears stung my eyes, but they were angry tears because I hated myself for ending up in this position. “I didn’t do it for status. If anything, I got downgraded if you recall.”
“Then why, Selene?” He slammed his hand against the steering wheel again. “I know it should be none of my business, but when I think about you with him, him touching you…” He closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath. “Can’t you understand why this would bother me?”
“I did it because I was bored, okay?” I said. “At least I think that’s why I did it. I don’t know, damn it.” We turned to each other at the same time, and our eyes locked. “What do you want me to tell you, Micah? That even though I slept with our boss for eight months, I felt bad about it because he was married? Well, I didn’t, and you know why? Because Andrew didn’t seem to give a fuck about screwing me behind his wife’s back, and that made it easier for me. I thought it was the best-case scenario, sex without any attachments or expectations, because that was all I could get.”
He made a sound of disbelief. “Yeah, right.”
“It’s true,” I said fiercely. “I became used to one-night stands, but you know what, in the morning, none of them wanted to make me their girlfriend. Except you, I guess, but you gave me the cold shoulder instead of saying anything, and I never put any effort into finding someone who didn’t just want me for one night. Doing it the noncommittal way was easier, and fun, and you wanna know something else? I was the one who seduced Andrew; he didn’t seduce me. That was all I was worth.” I crossed my arms tightly and sat back, staring out the window, because I couldn’t bear to look at his face. “Call me a slut, tell me I have no morals all you want, I deserve it. And I’ll deserve whatever comes my way from Andrew after this. He didn’t fire me, but he stuck me with Larry’s file to organize. And if I quit, he’ll blacklist me so no other agency will ever hire me.”
“You’re worth more than that,” Micah said after a few moments of tense silence. His voice was calmer. “Don’t ever think Andrew is the best you can do, because he’s not. And if he tries to ruin your career, I promise he won’t get away with it.” We looked at each other, and I could see the hostility on his face cracking.
“Micah…”
He looked away and started up the car. “Let’s go back to the office and see if we can figure out where to go with the case.”
I guess painful, emotional conversation time was over. I was glad we had it out, but I still didn’t know where I stood with him. But the murderous ghost in Ethan’s body took precedence, I guess. I buckled my seat belt and spent the ride back staring out the window and feeling drained in more ways than one. I wanted to get past this with Micah, but it wasn’t something I could fix just by being aggressive about it. Micah would have to decide on his own if he could accept me after finding out I’d been sleeping with our boss for over half a year.
We got back to the office and had taken only a few steps into the suite when someone called my name. I turned to see Ilyse standing behind us. She held an old book, and I didn’t like the look on her face. Seeing her made me remember the whole business about the Rot taking hold of me. It just kept coming, didn’t it?
“Selene, we need to talk,” Ilyse said. “It’s important.”
I sighed and started forward, but Micah grabbed my arm. I turned to him with an eyebrow raised. Ilyse was already back to the elevators.
“Can I come?” he asked.
“Are you sure you want to?”
He nodded, so I shrugged, and we went with Ilyse to her office. She regarded Micah, then me, and I knew what she was asking.
“He knows everything,” I said. “You can say whatever it is you have to say in front of him.” Micah and I sat in front of her desk.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” Ilyse said.
I checked my phone and saw that my battery was depleted.
“Dead battery,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I will get in more trouble than you can imagine if it’s found out that I shared this information with you,” Ilyse said, her voice low and her face still looking troubled. “But I care for your well-being, so I am risking myself to give you this warning.”
Micah and I exchanged looks, and I suddenly felt as though every organ in my body had clenched up in dread of what Ilyse was about to say.
“The dead witches affiliated with the government have come up with a different way of tracking reanimators,” Ilyse said. “Apparently, the search last week had an ulterior motive. They used their rune stones to capture some of your personal essence and are going to use it to track not the reanimator, but the thing that’s been reanimated.”
My eyes widened, as did Micah’s.
“W-what?” I sputtered, trying to wrap my head around this.
“It’s genius,” Micah said. “If someone’s personal energy leads them to a reanimated person or animal, they’ll know for sure they have a reanimator to round up.”
“Yes,” Ilyse said.
I was still sitting there, stunned. Personal energy was different from necromancer or reanimator energy, because unlike my reanimation power, it wasn’t something I could strip off myself and hide in a rune stone. You can’t hide your own life energy, nor can you stop it from being left behind. If we channeled our own energy into ghosts, they ended up with some of our energy on them, and vice versa. That was why ghosts gained tangibility from us, and we gained the Rot from them. Fair trade, no?
It also meant that when I reanimated Luna, some of my own essence was left on her, like a handprint, and that was what the dead witches would use to sniff out reanimators.
“Selene? Selene?”
I brought myself out of my thoughts and realized Micah and Ilyse were staring at me.
“This shouldn’t affect you, right?” Micah said. I looked from him to Ilyse and could almost feel the tension within them.
“Luna,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse. “My dog…last week…she died…and I reanimated her.”
Micah looked shocked, then he swore.
“What do I do?” I whispered. I had gone through so much to strip my reanimation power every time we had a search to endure. Now, it seemed the witches thought doing their random searches wasn’t enough and had come up with a way to seek out not us, but whatever we had reanimated. Shit. Shit. Shit.
What were my options here? Kill Luna again but leave her dead so she couldn’t be tracked? The thought of having to do that twisted something unpleasant in my stomach, and I knew I could never do it. Micah was holding my arm, but I could hardly feel it. I had gone numb.
“I appreciate you warning me, Ilyse, but there’s nothing I can do. I reanimated my dog, and now I’m going to get caught.” I sagged back against the chair, feeling boneless.
“When are the dead witches supposed to start tracking?” Micah asked.
“Within the next few days,” Ilyse said. “They’ve already started working with dead witches affiliated with companies like Affairs of the Dead to teach us how
to work the magic. We’re all supposed to be involved with tracking down reanimators.”
“A few days,” I said wearily. “I’m going to be found and stripped within a few days.”
“Maybe not,” Ilyse said.
My head snapped up and I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“This ghost bond, while not entirely a good thing, could help you avoid being stripped if you’re found out.”
“Really?” Micah said, and I could detect a hopeful note in his voice.
“I found out a lot more information about reanimators who are ghost bound,” Ilyse said. “If they strip you while you’re bound to a ghost, it could kill you.”
“But our goal is not to keep me ghost bound,” I said. “Because Ethan wants to get back into his body, and if we stay bound, eventually the Rot will take me. So I’m damned either way, right?”
Ilyse and Micah’s silence was answer enough. I sighed.
“I know this is serious,” Ilyse said. “But you need to know the things I found out about being ghost bound, Selene.”
I forced myself to sit up straighter and pay attention, even though I really wanted to find a deep, dark hole and throw myself into it. Micah was holding my hand now, but I could barely feel it even though I could see from the strain in his knuckles that he was holding me tightly. Ilyse opened her book and flipped to a page somewhere in the middle.
“There’s a lot that will happen once you have a ghost bound to you. Some of it you already know, like gaining stronger necromancer power, being infected with the Rot, and the ghost siphoning energy from you and becoming more of a physical entity, but one of the most surprising things I found out was that the connection between you two goes so deep it affects your emotions.”
“How?” I asked warily.
“I read that oftentimes, reanimators used their bound ghosts as a weapon,” Ilyse said. “Because it was easier for them to get close to their foes using a face their opponent didn’t know. A lot of the time, what fueled the ghost to act for their bound reanimator was the reanimator’s own feelings. Hatred, vengeance, anger. If any emotion is strong enough in the reanimator, it gets channeled to the ghost and can cause the ghost to act on those emotions. Sometimes the ghost even acted independently of what the reanimator wanted it to do.”
