Romancing the Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  His eyes narrowed to slits. The fingers holding the beer bottle tightened. “No.”

  I stared at him trying to decide if I believed him.

  Mátyás broke eye contact to look at the wall clock. “It’s only been a couple of hours. Maybe we shouldn’t be pointing fingers just yet. It’s possible he’ll come home any minute—blood on his lips and a spring in his step.”

  “Stop it,” I said, though I knew it was a distinct possibility.

  “If he’s not back by morning, you can paint me as the villain then, okay?”

  Not back by morning? My heart skipped in my throat. “Bright Goddess, Mátyás, you don’t think . . . ? He’ll be back by then, won’t he?”

  “Yes, of course, he will,” Mátyás said, though his eyes didn’t meet mine. Reaching for his cell phone, he said, “Look, maybe we should try Papa again.”

  I nodded and watched anxiously as he dialed. In the quiet of the kitchen, I could hear the phone ring. By the third tone, I knew there would be no answer. Mátyás stared at the ceiling as Sebastian’s voice asked him to leave a message. He said something short and curt in a language I didn’t recognize—not that I knew a lot of languages, but it wasn’t Spanish, which I knew the sound of from spending some formative years with Sesame Street.

  As he snapped the phone shut, it occurred to me that Sebastian might be ignoring any calls with Mátyás’s caller ID. “We should try from here too,” I said.

  “You think he’s avoiding my calls?”

  Mátyás sounded genuinely hurt by the suggestion, so I was gentle when I said, “It’s good to cover all our bases, don’t you think?”

  But I didn’t have better luck. As I replaced the receiver in its cradle, it occurred to me that there was supposed to be a way for me to check my cell phone voice mail remotely. I started hunting for the cell phone manual. I was sure Sebastian had kept it here at his place because he always teased me that I’d lose track of it. Which was true, of course. Pushing papers aside in his junk drawer, I wished he were here to tell me which “safe place” he’d put the damn thing in.

  I heard the bottle clink in the kitchen, which made me think of my neighbors’ recycling bins. I picked up the phone again and called my answering machine at the apartment to retrieve its messages. William had called to let me know that he’d found a bunch of vegan pate recipes he planned on serving at the coven meeting at his place tomorrow. After that, there was a hang up. I tended to get a lot of those as my number was one digit off a hair styling salon, but this time it sounded ominous. I listened to the quick click-click three times, straining to hear the sound of Sebastian’s breathing or any extraneous noises. Did that sound like how Sebastian usually hung up the phone? As I finally gave up trying to decipher it, Mátyás came into the living room.

  I could tell he was acting cool and distant again by the swagger in his hips. “Still no answer, eh? She’s keeping him quite preoccupied.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Am I really that much fun to poke at?”

  “Yes.” Mátyás smiled, leaning his hip against the backside of the couch. “You’ll make an excellent wicked stepmother.”

  “I suppose that makes you Cinderella?”

  “Prince Charming.” He smiled.

  “Oh, you’re a prince, all right.”

  “Finally, we agree on something,” Mátyás said, feigning exasperation, except a smile slipped out—one, much to my surprise, I found myself returning.

  The rumble of a passing semi rattled the window slightly, and for a second I mistook the sound for a car coming up the drive. I rushed to the curtain and glanced outside, disappointed by the bright red glow of retreating taillights. Holding the muslin aside a little longer, I scanned the darkness. All I really saw was my own worried expression staring back at me.

  Upstairs, Benjamin threw a pile of books on the floor.

  Noticing Mátyás’s startled jump and sheepish recovery, I said, “Even Benjamin’s worried. That can’t be good.”

  Perhaps in deference to our shared smile, Mátyás merely shrugged. “He’s a vampire, Garnet.”

  “That doesn’t mean he can’t get in trouble,” I said. “He could be hurt.”

  “Or he could just be off having the time of his life,” Mátyás said. Then, holding up a hand to stop my hot retort, he added, “Even the police won’t file a missing person’s case until he’s gone at least forty-eight hours. You saw him today?”

  I nodded. “A couple of hours before the lecture.”

  “Had he fed recently?”

  I pursed my lips and shook my head, not trusting my voice not to betray my frustration that I couldn’t get Sebastian to take my blood the night before.

  “How long had it been?”

  How was I supposed to know? It wasn’t like Sebastian shared his bloodletting calendar with me. “I don’t know,” I muttered.

  Mátyás was smiling again, but it wasn’t at all the kind I wanted to share. “If you’re worried,” he purred, “maybe you should call them.”

  “What?”

  “I know he keeps his black book around here somewhere,” he said, walking back into the kitchen.

  I stomped after him, curious, despite myself. Mátyás must be putting on a show rifling through all those recipes and such on the top of the fridge; there was no way Sebastian’s estranged son knew more about where he kept his most personal things than I did.

  “Black book?” I repeated, even though I was afraid I knew exactly what could be found in this supposed book of Sebastian’s.

  “Ah, here we go.” Mátyás held up a thin black planner. He started flipping through it. He stood close enough to me that I could smell the beer on his breath. I resolutely kept my eyes from looking down at the book.

  “I’m not going to call those . . . ghouls,” I told him.

  “No worries, darling. I’ll do it,” Mátyás said.

  I snatched the book from him. “No, you won’t.”

  Mátyás put a hurt expression on his face. “I thought you were really worried about Sebastian. Perhaps if I called, you could put your mind at ease.”

  “You’re not doing this. Nobody is doing this,” I said. My hands shook just about as much as my voice. I really wanted to hurl the book out the window, into the trash, at Mátyás’s smug face—anything to get the tangible evidence of the other women out of my hands.

  Mátyás held up his hands in mock surrender. “I was just thinking of you.”

  “Liar,” I snarled. Before I succumbed to the desire to pummel him, I turned on my heels and trudged up the stairs. After nearly tripping on Mátyás’s suitcases in the hall, I threw myself on Sebastian’s bed. Tears burned in my eyes as I caught the scent of Sebastian’s shampoo on the pillows. In my hands, I still clutched the book. I threw the evil thing against the wall with a shriek of frustration.

  I lay on the bed and stared at the corner where the black book fell. After several attempts to ignore it, I got to my feet and picked it back up. The book itself was thin and flimsy—cheaply made. The edges were worn and the spine broken. My fingers felt the roughly textured cover as though looking for some clue as to its contents without actually opening the thing. There were no identifying marks on the outside, nothing to indicate that it held anything earth-shattering. What was I afraid of? That I would find the name of someone I knew? So what if I did? Sebastian took their blood; he wasn’t sleeping with them.

  Was he?

  This was the part of the whole ghoul situation that I was never entirely sure about. All my interactions involving Sebastian and biting happened during sex, but they didn’t have to. The times I’d seen Sebastian sink his teeth into someone in a nonsexual way, it was always ultraviolent— with the intent to kill. But I imagined there could be a happy medium . . .

  Right?

  I shook my head. I never asked, so I didn’t know the answer. Never more did I regret my resolute policy of ignorance than I did right now. If I did open up this book and called any of them, I wouldn’t even
know if I was talking to food or a fuck-buddy or whether there was a difference.

  I set the book down on the bed—no, our bed. The bed where Sebastian and I made love, the bed we were going to share after our marriage. I couldn’t go through with the wedding with this big secret hanging between us. Despite everything, I still didn’t believe that Sebastian had just lost track of time. He’d always had ghouls, and he never missed an appointment before. Something else must have happened to him, and maybe one of these people had seen him last, knew what time he left—something that might help me figure out where he was and what kind of trouble he was in.

  Besides, what did I have to say other than, “Is Sebastian there?” or “Have you seen him today?”

  Closing my eyes, I tried to summon the courage to walk downstairs and pick up the phone. Instead of finding any extra mettle, I felt Lilith roiling just beneath the surface. Her presence reminded me that I could try magic first. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a celestial GPS system, but I could tug the blood connection that was forged between us the night we joined forces to defeat the Vatican agents. At least then I would know if he was still alive. Maybe too I could tell if he was in any kind of trouble. It was worth a try.

  And, as a bonus, I wouldn’t have to talk to any ghouls.

  I got off the bed and put Sebastian’s black book on his dresser. I didn’t want it in my hands because I was afraid it would become the focus of my energy. I needed to be thinking purely and openly about Sebastian’s whereabouts, and the book would taint my visualizations, direct my search.

  Since I was up, I locked the door. The last thing I wanted was for Mátyás to wander in hoping to taunt me. Then, I took my clothes off.

  Normally, I wasn’t a huge proponent of going “skyclad,” which is to say naked, in solitary rituals. It served a purpose in group work—by building trust and the vulnerability that could push a person outside of their comfort zone into the place where magic lives. That being said, I tended to find it distracting now that I was past that place in my life when I felt I needed to be open and raw and exposed for the Goddess to find me. After all, I now had a Goddess, quite literally, within.

  But my skirt felt tight and restricting, and my shoes just plain hurt. It didn’t make sense to be half naked, so I opted for full nudity. Besides, when trying to find my lover, it made sense.

  In fact, I decided to lie down on his side of the bed. Breathing deeply of the trace of his scent on the pillow and sheets, I centered myself. Of all the rooms in his house, Sebastian’s bedroom was the one that I could almost imagine belonging to a storybook vampire. He had a four-poster bed with an honest-to-Goddess canopy, complete with drapes. It was sexy, romantic—a lot like him.

  The room had a lot of windows, all of which were shut tight against the heat. Lace curtains obscured the light from the highway. An ornate oak dresser in a Louis XIV style sat against one wall, and a dresser with a triptych mirror occupied the other. The closet, large enough to walk into, overflowed with clothes from all aspects of Sebastian’s life—oil-spattered coveralls, T-shirts, jeans, leather jackets, opera coats, Armani suits, and a tuxedo or two.

  Framed botanical drawings of various herbs hung on the walls; some were even real, pressed leaves with notations in Sebastian’s handwriting. On the surface of the dressers, silver frames held sepia-faded photos of people who were once important to Sebastian.

  This was a very personal room.

  Reaching deep inside, I unlocked the door that held back my magical sight. Suddenly, the room swirled with the black tendrils of Sebastian’s residue energy. Darker spots hovered over places he’d lingered—one photo on the dresser was completely obscured. I resolved to look more closely at that picture once my work was done.

  I relaxed deeper into a meditative state and felt myself floating just above my body. Looking down, I searched for the thin thread that bound Sebastian and me. It was silver, worked through with gold and badly frayed. I’d sensed that our empathic tie was growing weaker, and it was obvious in the astral plane. I gave the cord a tug, and felt the firmness of a connection. Sebastian was still alive, at least. If he wasn’t, there would be no resistance, and the cord would have come back severed.

  I was just about to pull myself along the cord when I started at the sight of a man standing in front of me. Tall and reedy, built like a farmer, he had mouse-brown hair and a day’s worth of stubble on his chin. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

  “Garnet?” Though I’d never heard him speak before, I recognized his voice instantly.

  “Benjamin?”

  It was Sebastian’s house ghost.

  He looked as solid as the bedpost he leaned against. I’d never seen him this way; it was like I’d suddenly switched to high-definition TV after years of rabbit ears and no cable.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you dead?”

  “I hope not,” I said, glancing down at my body. Other than the fact that every time I saw myself like this I couldn’t help but think it was time to start getting serious about diet and exercise, I appeared to be breathing normally. “I’m looking for Sebastian.”

  “He’s not here,” Benjamin said. A scowl darkened his face. “But that boy of his is.”

  I smiled. “I don’t like Mátyás much either.”

  He grunted. “Sebastian changed the wards last week. Told me I had to let the brat in.”

  Last week? Sebastian must have done it as part of his plan to ask me to marry him. “You could always go downstairs and throw some things around,” I suggested mischievously. Benjamin was technically a poltergeist; he could knock pictures off the wall, flip light switches, and all that kind of annoyingly creepy stuff. “You know, rattle his cage.”

  “Gypsy boy might cast a hex on me,” Benjamin said in the direction of the stairs, with a shake of his head, but he didn’t sound really concerned. “Anyway, I promised Sebastian I wouldn’t scare his boy too much.”

  Lucky Mátyás, I thought. I never got the special treatment.

  “Heck, sure you do, ma’am. I’m under strict orders not to kill you.”

  Well, wasn’t that nice? “Uh, thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” he said kindly, though his eyes watched me darkly. His image flickered slightly, and I thought I caught the glimpse of a more sinister image beneath— something gaunt, empty-eyed, and hungry. Though it was gone so quickly, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it.

  “So, how are you fixing to find Sebastian?”

  “Oh,” I said, lifting the thread in my hand to show him. “I thought I’d follow this.”

  Shielding his eyes, he peered into the distance in the direction the thread seemed to be leading. “I can’t see the end of it. You sure it’s still connected?”

  I shrugged. “It’s all I have.”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  I was beginning to think so. I nodded.

  “You’d better go,” he said. “I’ll watch over this end of you.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure how comfortable I felt with that idea, especially given the way Benjamin stared at my naked body. On the bed, my body shifted as though in response to his predatory gaze. Quickly, I wove a protection spell triggered to wake me if Benjamin came within an inch of me. Sebastian might have asked him not to kill me, but he might have forgotten to include a clause about maiming.

  Sensing the magic, Benjamin’s lips pursed as though he was affronted. I heard him mutter, “Offer to do someone a favor. Humph . . . women.”

  I expected him to turn heels, but he continued to lean against the bedpost with arms crossed.

  The dark flashed behind his eyes again as he said, “You’d better get on your way, missy.”

  With a nod of good-bye, I pulled my astral self handover-hand along the thin wire. Space and time compressed in fits and starts. Despite pulling with the same strength, I seemed to speed along the county road, but slowed as I passed a spot near the side of the highway where someone had placed a handmade
cross and a teddy bear. It was as though I progressed with more difficulty past places where spirits might linger, where someone else’s grief might hold a ghost in place. I shivered. I moved my feet quicker, but it was like walking through mud, or like that dream where you’re running but can’t make any headway. The bear’s button eyes flashed in the headlights of a passing car.

  Once out of the pull of the memorial, I found myself in Madison proper in less than a second. On the lake, moonlight competed with streetlights to shine on the whitecaps. Wind brushed through the leaves in the treetops. The pungent scent of lake—a strange combination of dead fish and the heady scent of fresh water—clung to the dew-dappled grass. A man walking a dog approached me. At least, that’s how my eyes first registered him. As they drew closer, I saw it was a man walking in the footprints of a coyote.

  Sebastian’s thread disappeared. Or, rather, it came undone in a chaotic burst. Suddenly, instead of a single cord, it diverged into hundreds of tinier ones, each leading in a different direction.

  “What the hell?” Which one of these was I supposed to follow? When I tugged the microfibers, each held firm as though they all led to Sebastian. “This is impossible,” I muttered.

  The man and the wolf stopped and cocked their head in my direction. In the darkness, I had only the impression of sharp features and dark eyes. Even at a distance, the intensity of his gaze hit me. Instinct urged me to run. This was the stare of a true predator, and I got the sense he saw me much more clearly than I could see him.

  He reached up a hand and . . .

  Waved?

  The absurdity of his gesture made a hysterical giggle rise in my throat. I waved back.

  Then, fear got the better of me and I turned and fled for home. I could hear the galloping pad of paws behind me. At the highway marker, when I was forced into a slower pace, I heard a howl. I tried to push myself faster, uncertain that he would be held by the same energy. “Don’t look back,” I whispered to myself frantically, feeling like a child trying to escape a nightmare. I swore I could feel hot breath on my neck just as I snapped forward into my own body.