Death Rites

by E. A. Copen

  “We’re about two minutes short of hitting my driveway,” she answered, reaching over to adjust the vents directly in front of me. “I should’ve taken you to a hospital. Your lips and fingernails were blue, and you barely had a pulse, but you begged me not to.”

  “I don’t beg,” I tried to say, but I’m pretty sure all that came out was a pained grunt.

  “You said you needed to draw on life, so that’s where I’m taking you. The most lively place I know.”

  I didn’t argue because I couldn’t. My muscles were still stiff, and I’d chilled to the point where my brain wasn’t processing correctly anymore. My body temp had to be dangerously low.

  True to Knight’s word, we pulled into a driveway just a minute later. The house was a little white shotgun style with a wraparound porch that I’d have described as cute if I didn’t think Knight would punch me for it. She parked, got out and came around to open my door. I tried to sit up and climb out, but my movements were jerky and wrong as if I didn’t have full control of my own body.

  “Come on,” she growled and forced my right arm over her shoulder and behind her neck.

  I timed my steps to match hers, or tried to. Since I was considerably taller than Knight, the walk was awkward and difficult, especially since she held me up most of the way. I didn’t question her until she turned us away from the porch and started around the side of the house.

  I turned my head to the left as something brushed against my arm and found we were walking past a bunch of stout, green shrubs. My hand brushed against one due to the awkward walk and warmth flooded my hand, trickling up my arm and into my chest. The shrub, meanwhile, wilted and died, the bright green leaves turning to ash.

  Knight paused and eyed the shrubbery with a frown. “That going to happen to everything you touch?”

  “No,” I managed. I’d drawn too much from the bush too fast, but I couldn’t help myself. I was just so damn cold. Plant life wasn’t the most suitable source of energy, but it’d do in a pinch. What I really needed was direct human contact, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  We limped along the side of the house until the backyard came into view. Sitting in the center of a rock garden, complete with a little pond, was a small glass house. The regular patterns of leaves and branches cast shadows on the other side of the glass. A motion sensor kicked on a floodlight as we tripped around the corner, the light blinding. Knight brought me to the greenhouse and fumbled to get the door open. It was a low door, so I had to duck to get in.

  Inside, plants hung in pots from hooks on the ceiling. Vines crept up the seams in the glass, winding around pillars and decorations unchecked. Flowering plants of every kind lined the walls, some in pots, some in troughs of black dirt. A few statues stood among the greenery, slowly being reclaimed by the trapped bit of nature. It was a gorgeous, backyard slice of the Garden of Eden.

  More importantly, it was twenty degrees warmer inside than out.

  Knight helped me further into the greenhouse and to a patch of brick path where she lowered me to the ground. It was far from comfortable, but as close to ideal as I was going to get. Already, I could feel the buzz of life in the air all around me. There was plenty of energy in the greenhouse to sustain me. The price, of course, would be that I’d probably wake up in a plant graveyard the next morning. Plants were too fragile, and it took four or five times as much energy to replenish what I’d spent if I drew from plants alone.

  Knight stood up, her hands pressed against the small of her back. “This good enough?”

  I winced at one of the bricks digging into my lower back. “How much do you care about these plants?”

  “Why? You going to kill them too?”

  “Plant life isn’t the same as human life. Burns the plants out,” I explained. “Better to draw from higher life forms.”

  “Like a cat or a dog?” She pushed a few ringlets of hair away from her eyes.

  “Human is best. Never tried a cat or dog. Didn’t want to risk killing ‘em.”

  Both her eyebrows shot up. “But risking human lives is just fine?”

  “Not a risk.” I shook my head. “Fire doesn’t burn fire.”

  It made perfect sense to me, but my words just seemed to confuse Knight. She looked around as if someone else were about to walk into her greenhouse in the middle of the day. Then, with a hefty sigh, she lowered herself to the ground beside me. “How’s this work? Don’t suppose I can just chill here next to you?”

  “Physical contact. Skin to skin is ideal, but not required.” I hadn’t meant to say that last bit, but it just sorta fell out of my mouth. Damn my choice of words when making my promise not to lie to Knight. I should’ve been more careful.

  “You’re bullshitting me.”

  I closed my eyes and rolled my head to the side. My body was finally starting to warm up to the point where I could feel my nose again, a marked improvement. “Can’t lie to you. Remember?”

  Her eyes felt heavy on my skin, but I couldn’t bring myself to open mine and meet her gaze. Couldn’t even bother to argue with her. It’d take too much effort, and I was finally lying down. No way I was going to let a little thing like skeptic disbelief keep me awake. She’d either believe me and save her plants, or not.

  A long minute later, fabric rustled and I felt new pressure on my left arm as her head rested on my bicep. “Don’t get any ideas. I’m only doing this because of the heirloom roses. You kill my roses, and I’ll kick your ass, you hear me?”

  I smiled in response, but couldn’t say a word. Sleep was already upon me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I woke in the blue haze of midnight, the full moon hanging high in my vision beyond strange panes of glass. Leaves and stems filled my peripheral vision, their coloring slightly off thanks to the long shadows being cast. The pressure on my arm was gone, meaning Knight was no longer next to me, but the chill had mostly abated. I was by no means warm, but my body temp was probably at least back up in the mid-nineties.

  A noise caught my attention, and I turned my head to see Odette off to the right one row over. Her fingers gently lifted the drooping head of a blooming carnation, and she leaned over for a better look. The moonlight broke over her, and I could’ve sworn I saw her shimmer in it.

  “Odette?” I lifted my head.

  The vision shattered, Odette’s form transforming into the more petite and muscular Detective Knight.

  No, not Detective, at least not right then. She wasn’t on duty, and now that we were so connected it felt weird to call her by her last name in my head. Emma.

  Emma lifted an expressive eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing,” I said, sitting up. “Thought you were someone else.”

  My eyes darted around, and I tried to put together the pieces I had to tell the story of how I’d gotten there and why. I remembered the murder scene, the ritual, holding Grace’s ghost… That’s right, I lost concentration when everyone started asking me questions all at once. I held my head in my hands. I was lucky the backlash wasn’t worse.

  “What happened back there?”

  Her voice was suddenly louder. She’d come closer, her feet moving so silently I hadn’t heard.

  “I’m not used to holding a ghost for questioning in front of a large audience. I normally do that sort of thing alone and just report what I find.” The fact that I’d still been recovering from the Kiss of Life and the scene reminded me of a past personal trauma didn’t help either, but I didn’t tell her about that. None of that had any bearing on her case.

  “Lazarus, you were dead when I hauled you out of there. No pulse and stiff as a board like you’d been dead a long while.”

  “A necromancer’s job is to straddle the line between the living and the dead. Step too far to one side…” I shook my head and lifted my face from my hands. “Don’t ask me to do that again, not in public like that. At least not until I get a proper focus. That might make it easier.”

  “I hope I have no reason to ask
you to do it again.” She sat down cross-legged in front of me. “You did give us something to work with. Moses put out a BOLO on the other girls that had been staying at Vesta Hogarth’s halfway house, and on Odette Hartman. If she’s out there, we’ll find her.”

  Somehow, her speech wasn’t that reassuring. It sounded like the standard fare she’d spout to just any friend or family of someone she suspected might be dead. Or involved.

  I swallowed, suddenly desperate to talk about anything other than Odette. “There’s still one more thing I think I can do to help, something a little easier, especially if I have help.”

  “Help?” She crossed her arms. “What kind of help?”

  “I’m drained, too drained to attempt anything major like that again for quite a while, but a séance inside a controlled circle in a familiar place where half the magic is already done?” I shrugged. “Should be a cakewalk if I have someone else there to help me draw power.”

  Emma’s bottom lip stuck out. “You want me to hold hands with you so you can call up Brandi’s ghost like you were doing back at your apartment when we arrested you.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “You did your homework.”

  She dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. “I checked a search engine and processed a crime scene. Standard detective work. Look, I want to help, and I want to put this asshole behind bars as much as or more than you do. But a séance?”

  “You still doubt what I can do?”

  “I doubt a judge is going to give me any kind of warrant based on the testimony of a spirit to a self-proclaimed necromancer, a necromancer with a record I might add.”

  I grimaced. She had a point. But then, so had Moses when he argued my powers could show them to a viable lead if they got lucky. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Just one more try. If nothing comes of it, then we’ll part ways. I’ll let you do your job and stay out of it. Deal?”

  I hated offering her that deal, but what choice did I have? It was what she really wanted, for us to go back to our old lives, forget each other, and put the killer behind bars. This compromise might get her two out of the three, though I doubted she’d ever go back to a normal life again, not after what she’d just seen at Grace’s crime scene. Pony had always taught me that, in a compromise, both parties ended up at least a little unhappy.

  She stared at my outstretched hand, weighing her options. “Will it hurt?”

  “The séance? Nah. At least, I hope not.”

  Laughter sparkled in her eyes, even if her face didn’t reflect that same amusement. She put her hand in mine and gave me a firm handshake. “Okay, Lazarus. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  She stood without letting go of my hand and pulled me to my feet. Strong for a small-framed woman, but it wasn’t surprising. Somehow, I’d expected her to be strong enough to jerk me around. What really surprised me about Emma were the flowers. I’d never figured her for a rose kind of gal. Just goes to show even a necromancer can be dead wrong.

  Twenty minutes later, we stood outside my apartment while I fumbled with the keys. I might’ve been feeling a lot better, but my muscles still weren’t completely responsive. If I hadn’t already called Brandi’s ghost through once before, I wouldn’t have offered to attempt it again. Once a spirit is pulled through, subsequent summonings inside the same circle were much easier. This time, I wouldn’t have any interruptions.

  “Give me that.” Knight shouldered me aside and grabbed the key from my clumsy fingers, jamming it into the lock.

  I stepped back and glanced around the empty hallway, remembering the last time I’d stood out there with someone else. I still had to figure out what I was going to do about Darius. With everything else going on, I hadn’t had time to address that problem, and I had a feeling he wasn’t just going to let it go because Paula tried to shoot him. I sure as hell wouldn’t. No, he’d be back, and this time he’d probably come armed and less willing to ask about his money first.

  I supposed I could always turn him into the police, especially now that I knew a few detectives on a first-name basis. But they couldn’t arrest everyone in Darius’ gang, and as long as one of them was still free, they’d be gunning for me.

  “Laz?”

  I turned away from the wall I was focused on. Emma stood in the doorway, the door propped open a quarter inch or so.

  She waved me inside. Guess she thought it impolite to enter my place first.

  Forgetting all about Darius, I stepped past her…

  And directly into another trap.

  As soon as my second foot stepped over the threshold, a stream of brilliant purple lit up around me, spinning up from the floor and weaving a net of magic. I reached out to try and pull it apart but stopped when the light shot through my chest. Ice filled my veins, and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I tried for a breath, but all that came out was a rattle.

  The door slammed shut behind me with Emma still outside. Heavy footsteps crossed the wood floor. A black cane with a skull on top emerged from the darkness, the hand resting on it a coal black with painted-on finger bones. A pair of black and white polished spectator shoes carried the rest of the intruder into view. He wore a fine silk suit, tailored. It’d have to be to fit a man of his dimensions: broad-shouldered, thin-waisted, with long, spider-like arms, and strangely tall. The matching top hat had a feather tucked into the bright red band. Tiny skulls decorated the brim of the hat while a silver cross sat prominently in the front. Like his hands, his face was painted like the bones beneath, giving him a ghoulish appearance.

  Shit. Of all the people I thought might be waiting for me in my apartment, The Baron was the last of them.

  He placed the skull cane in front of him, resting both hands on it. “Bonjour, Monsieur Kerrigan,” he said with a heavy accent on the back half of my name. “I think it’s time we had ourselves a chat.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  What I knew about Baron Samedi couldn’t fill a teacup. According to the locals, he was the leader of a whole family of Loa, which were sort of like messengers between God and man, since God wasn’t allowed to interact with humans directly. His official day was Saturday, he liked black and purple, and fancy cigars. In short, I didn’t know more than what a quick online search would tell anyone else about the man himself.

  One thing I did know was that the last time The Baron woke for a stroll through New Orleans, my little sister turned up dead. I couldn’t prove there was a connection between his appearance and her death, but to say I wasn’t his biggest fan would be an understatement.

  I ground my teeth and tugged at the strands of purple magic that had wrapped around my wrists and ankles. The tendril that had worked its way through my chest wiggled, sending out waves of pain.

  He sat down on the edge of my sofa, both hands still on the head of his cane. “Come now, Lazarus, you know better than to struggle in the grip of death.”

  “If you’re going to kill me, let’s just get it over with. I’ve got shit to do.”

  The muscles in his cheek twitched. At least, I think they did. The white paint flinched a little at least. “As entertaining as that would be, and as much as you would deserve it for meddling in my affairs, we have other matters to attend to.” He turned his head to the side and nodded.

  “Meddling in your affairs? What kind of—” Whatever I was about to say, I broke off when I saw Pony Dee step out of the darkness beside The Baron, leaning on his old, wooden staff. My jaw clamped tightly shut, and I narrowed my eyes. “You son of a bitch. You threw in with him?”

  “I don’t need your judgment, boy, especially not before you hear ’im out.”

  “Hear him out?” I strained against the magic wrapped around and through me, holding me in place. “This asshole is connected to Lydia’s murder somehow. I know it! And when I can prove it—”

  “You lack the power to pluck a hair from my head, mortal, let alone survive finishing that threat.” The Baron’s eyes lit up a pale green. He put his weight down on the
cane, propelling himself to his feet. “But I have come to offer that power to you.”

  I blinked. The Baron offering me anything sounded like trouble. The fact that he knew I meant him harm and offered it anyway? That was worth hearing about, but only after I was sure Emma was okay and he wasn’t going to gut me if I refused. “My friend outside the door…”

  The Baron flicked his left hand, and I caught sight of thick, gemstoned rings on every finger. “The detective is in Stasis. I have stopped time so we can speak undisturbed. But I advise against drawing out our encounter. That time will catch up to you both with the rising of the sun.”

  “Get your slimy purple tentacles off me. Then we can talk.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Pony advised. “This man gave up six years of his life hoping to get information that could connect you to Lydia’s death. He’ll kill you first chance he gets.”

  Kill a Loa? The Loa of death? Was that even possible? Not according to anything I’d read. What the hell was going on here?

  The Baron leveled his gaze at me. “I did not claim your sister’s soul, Lazarus.”

  “But you know who did!” I spat. Pony was right. If I could kill The Baron, that’d be the first thing I did. I didn’t have much information about Lydia’s death, but everything I had pointed to him.

  “Gros bête, The Baron doesn’t need one little girl’s soul, nor may I claim a soul before it’s time. That is not the place of The Baron.”

  “Then tell me who did!” I’d watched Lydia die, her body simply giving up. Every doctor in the state had been baffled to watch her steady decline. Her organs were strong, her blood showed no sign of infection. They said it was as if she’d simply stopped living.

  The Baron lifted his chin. “It is forbidden. Though perhaps I could offer some vague assistance if you hear my proposition.”

  I stopped struggling. Whatever The Baron wanted to say, what harm was there in hearing him out? Especially if it got me information that would help me find Lydia’s killer. He hadn’t said I had to accept his offer, just that I had to let him make it. Sounded like a win-win to me.