Shallow Grave (The Lazarus Codex Book 3)

by E. A. Copen

“Can a ghost be in two places at once?” Emma asked.

  I shook my head again. “It wasn’t his ghost she saw. She saw his body.”

  “His body?” Emma crossed her arms, leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

  I gestured to the ghost even though she couldn’t see him. “This is the ghost of the notorious pirate and savior of the city, Jean Lafitte.”

  “I take offense to being called a pirate.” Jean smoothed his hands over his shirt. “Smuggler perhaps, but no pirate.”

  “What is it?” Khaleda asked, frowning.

  “He doesn’t like to be called a pirate.” I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, back in the day, he used to hunt down monsters for the government. The whole pirate thing was probably more of a plausible deniability set up on the part of Congress, though he was a smuggler and all-around troublemaker. While he was on one of these monster hunting missions of his, he and his men came upon a boat. The crew was missing. All that was left behind was a pile of bloody bones.”

  Emma stepped forward uncrossing her arms. “Say that last part again.”

  “What? That the crew was missing, presumed dead?”

  “No, about the bones.”

  “All that was left of them was a pile of bloody bones.” I watched some realization dawn on Emma’s face. “Yeah, just like your case. I was getting to that.”

  “It’s not that.” Emma sat down next to me, folding her hands. “Well, it is, but the way you said that just now reminded me of a story my granddad used to tell me when I was little. About Rawhead and Bloody Bones, the monsters that lived under the stairs and carried off children who spread rumors. Rawhead was a big, razorback hog whose flesh had rotted off. He was the pet of some witch in the bayou. And Bloody Bones—”

  “A dancing skeleton with no head,” I finished. “I remember the story now. Lost his head for telling lies.”

  “No dancing skeleton or rotting pig hurt that little girl.” The way Khaleda said it, in a small, angry voice, made me wonder what she was thinking about. She hadn’t taken much interest in Kaitlynn, but she had seemed bothered by something.

  I shrugged. “Sometimes stories are wrong. Recent tradition says fae are cute little winged girls, wizards have pointy hats, and necromancers are bad guys. If all that’s wrong, maybe the stories about Rawhead and Bloody Bones are. There’s some things in common, but maybe not enough to draw that conclusion.”

  “I guess so.” Emma crossed one leg over the other. “So how’d he get to be a ghost?”

  “Well, he’s not a ghost. Not technically speaking. I didn’t see the difference at first, but the spell I used in there proves it. That spell should’ve been like a magical ghost taser. I’ve never seen one not react to it that way. He didn’t. The way he squirmed and struggled…” I looked at Jean, frowning. “He’s a soul.”

  “There’s a difference?” Khaleda asked.

  “Sure there is,” I said, nodding. “Ghosts are dead people’s souls. Jean didn’t die. Something attacked him and his half-brother on that ship, forcing their souls out of their bodies. According to Serkan, that makes them Undying. His body is fully aware it has no soul, and no matter what it does, it can’t fill that void, and it can’t die.” I gestured again to Jean. “Jean is a soul, just like the kind I can pull out of bodies. I think it was a Horseman who did this to him, and I think that Horseman was turned into a ghoul, the same ghoul I ran into at the shack where I found Kaitlynn.”

  “But a ghoul doesn’t drain all the body fat from people.” Emma sighed. Now it was her turn to rub her temples and try to work through an impossible problem.

  “No, but I know of something that can.” I narrowed my eyes at Khaleda. “An Archon. Drains them dry, sucking the life right out. Only this one also wants the souls for some kind of potion or ritual he’s going to perform under the blood moon.”

  “That’s tomorrow night.” Emma shot to her feet. “How do we stop him?”

  “Have to find him first.” I stood with a grunt. My legs were still a bit wobbly, but at least my brain wasn’t stuck in the Tilt-a-Whirl anymore. “Which is why I wanted to try that ritual on Kaitlynn. Wherever her soul is, so is Jean’s body.”

  Emma’s face turned to stone. “I don’t care. I’m still not letting you do it. I won’t even bring it up to the parents.”

  “Not that they’d go for it now,” I grumbled. Mr. Michaels had already told me he didn’t want me anywhere near his daughter.

  But now that Jean had found Dominique’s body, I had another option. It wasn’t as good of an option since I couldn’t do it in a controlled setting like a hospital, but I could do it. To test my theory about restoring Jean, I also needed to find Dominique’s soul, which would take a lot of power, more than I could produce by myself, but wouldn’t be difficult. I hoped.

  “I need to talk to The Baron,” I said. “Get some more information on this Horseman and whoever named him. Jean.”

  The ghost went rigid.

  “I want you to find Dominique’s body and trail it. Don’t let it out of your sight, not even for a second. When I call you, I want to know exactly where he’s been and what he’s been up to.”

  Jean nodded and zipped down through the floor of the hospital.

  “Khaleda, I…” I trailed off, thinking about what I needed her to do. She wouldn’t leave my side for longer than a few minutes, so sending her to do any sort of research was pointless. I’d have to do that myself. She had magic though, even if it was some kind of succubus power. I could use that to my advantage. “We’ll talk later. In private. Emma—”

  She held up a hand. “I’m going to watch missing persons for similar reports and go down to the morgue to see if we’ve gotten any positive IDs yet. I’ll also probably be working through the night, so if you need anything, I’ll be up. Call me.”

  I eyed Khaleda and swallowed the growing tension in my throat. “I have a feeling I’ll be pulling an all-nighter too. Let’s regroup at dawn at my office.”

  “Why your office and not the precinct?” Emma asked, her voice suspicious.

  “Because my office is warded. Trust me when I say we’re going to need those wards.” I started to walk away but paused, turning back to Emma. “Bring your gun.”

  “I always bring my gun.” She nodded and patted her holster, though her brow creased with worry.

  I made for the elevator. Khaleda followed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You’re going to do something stupid,” Khaleda said, leaning against the stainless-steel wall of the elevator. It wasn’t a question, but a statement, showing she’d read at least a little into what I’d said to Emma.

  I focused on the numbered buttons and offered a grunt in response.

  “Let me guess. Based on your limited skill set, it can’t be many things. You need to forge a sympathetic link between a soul and its body.” She paused, probably waiting for me to confirm it. When I didn’t, she went on. “The soul part will be easy. Now that you’re a Horseman, you can interact with souls on more than just this plane. You’ll plunge yourself into the place between here and the After, call on the soul as you would a ghost and command it to appear. But doing that will drain you.”

  I turned my head. She leaned lazily in the corner, looking better than anyone who’d been through rotten water and had no sleep ought to. Her legs were crossed and her hands gripping the handrails to throw her shoulders forward. My attention went to the vials still at her waist and then the curves of her hips.

  I turned back around. “Don’t suppose that quick pick-me-up we talked about earlier is still an option?”

  “You’ll need more than a magical energy drink to do what you’re thinking, necromancer. Hovering so close to death, you’ll need to pull on life to come back. Someone else’s life forces. Someone more than human.”

  With the amount of energy I’d expend, I’d need a lot to recover. More than I could get from Emma’s greenhouse or even Emma herself, should she hav
e been willing to give it. That was the real reason animal and human sacrifice had been incorporated into magic in the first place. Equal exchange.

  To pull a soul from where it lurked, even if that place was on Earth, I’d have to travel through the land of the dead. Without the right protections in place, I could get stuck there. I needed power, power that I could generate in a number of ways. Some more preferable than others.

  Lots of energy became available when something died, something the universe did when life left the body. The explosion of arcane forces was the result of a living thing just stopping. Sometimes, a soul could harness enough of that on the way out to become a ghost. Sometimes, someone like me could walk by and scoop up residual energies in a place and store it in something for later.

  But death wasn’t the only way.

  Birth was another time where the same massive amounts of energy could be harnessed. A lot of really nasty generational spells could be cast by inducing labor and using that energy. Or a white witch could use the same power to cure infertility. The nature of the magic energy was different, lending itself to different things, but I could harness it for what I wanted. It’d just require me to be casting a ritual in the middle of a birthing room, which wasn’t going to happen. Pretty sure the hospital wouldn’t like it.

  The last place a necromancer could pull life energy was from sex. Or anyone really. A lot of energy got passed around, exchanged, and otherwise expended, and its uses weren’t quite as limited. Druids and priestesses the world over had used sexual climax, or the abstention of it, to end droughts, ensure bountiful harvests, empower kings, and topple empires. Anymore, there were whole covens of witches around the country who traded their services to artists, athletes, and politicians. Depending on your end goal, you could have a really fun time using that energy, or you could wind up dead.

  It’s a complicated thing, being with someone, and requires a level of trust I hadn’t shared with very many people. I thought I had that with Odette, and look at how that turned out. While I was with Odette, I never had need of such a spell. Then again, Odette wasn’t my first love either. Beth had some magical talent, and you’d be stupid to assume the raging hormones of a teenage boy and the magical curiosity of the hot girl he was tutoring didn’t get all mixed up a few times.

  But this wasn’t the kind of spell that required a stupid boy and a nervous girl to stumble through the motions. And Khaleda wasn’t Beth.

  Khaleda smirked. “Look at you. You know what you want, what you need to do, but you’re agonizing over it, thinking you’d be betraying your love. Is it so easy to forget that she left you to face imprisonment alone? And then, after all that, she stood you up.”

  I turned on her, the movement so fast even she didn’t have time to prepare a response. “How do you know about that?”

  A moment of fear flashed through her eyes, but she quickly recovered. “You told me. Or have you forgotten?”

  “I didn’t tell you any of that. I just said things were complicated.”

  An icy grinding feeling kicked to life in the pit of my stomach. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. She could’ve been spying on me, seen the whole thing. But then how had she gotten back to my place before me to attack me in my apartment?

  The elevator stopped moving. Behind me, the door dinged and slid open.

  “I don’t want to talk about my exes with you,” I said and turned around.

  I stepped out of the elevator without bothering to slow down to check and see if she was still following me. She’d keep up or get left behind. I didn’t care. For a few hours, I’d forgotten that Khaleda was the offspring of an Archon. Not just any Archon, either. This one was claiming to be Lucifer Morningstar, the devil himself.

  And she was right. I was going to do something monumentally stupid.

  But first, I had to find The Baron and ask him a question.

  I reached my car at the end of the visitor’s lot on the second floor of the parking garage. Khaleda reached the passenger side a split second later, practically throwing herself against it, gripping the hood slightly breathless. She’d run to catch me. “Where are you going?”

  “To find The Baron.” I jerked the door open and sat down. Someone had moved my seat. That’s right. Khaleda had driven my car last. With a grumble, I adjusted the seat.

  She pulled open the passenger door and sat down.

  I gave her an appraising look. “Where I’m going isn’t a place for ladies.”

  Khaleda cocked her head to the side, raising one perfect eyebrow. “Something to get in the mood?”

  My cheeks flushed. “It isn’t like that. I need to find my mentor, Pony Dee. He’s my only link to Baron Samedi. Whenever I need to meet, he gets a message to him.”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight to die. Not this close to dark. Suck it up, buttercup. I’m tagging along for the ride.”

  I sighed and focused forward. Why I ever expected her to walk away then, I’ll never know. Khaleda was anything but a lady.

  ***

  It was just dark enough outside when we stopped in front of Karma that the neon gave off a pleasant glow against the dusk. I’d stopped at a big box store to spend the last of my cash on a new pair of jeans and a plain white t-shirt. I was getting tired of walking around smelling like a swamp. Wasn’t much I could do about the wet shoes, but at least I wouldn’t be caked in mud anymore.

  I pushed through the door with Khaleda at my heels and stopped. The club had thirteen tables, each with several cushioned seats on either side. The last few times I’d been in there had been theme nights like jazz and Wild West. They went all out for decorations, going so far as to bring in one of those mechanical bulls for the Wild West night. Guess that night was no different. Red and blue lights washed over the two stages. Behind the main stage, a neon depiction of the Last Supper blinked. In front of it, a topless lady in a nun’s habit worked a pole. A nun’s habit, a white G-string and nothing else.

  Khaleda clapped her hands and smiled big enough it gave her dimples. “Oh, this place is perfect!”

  I scowled. “We’re here on business. Look, but don’t touch.”

  My eyes moved across the floor, settling on Pony sitting at his usual table with someone else, a middle-aged man. Several cards lay between them on the table. Moving closer, I recognized the Tarot deck as one of Pony’s favorites. He was doing a simple three-card spread, and by the looks of it, his client was in for a rough night.

  I stopped by the table and tapped a finger on the eight of cups. “Bad news for you, friend. Sounds like you’re in for some disappointment. And paired with the queen of swords?” I hissed through my teeth. “Get your assets in order, buddy. If she’s not gone, she will be soon. But don’t worry. She was too high maintenance for you anyway.” I moved my hand to the third card, the knight of wands. “This guy says she’s definitely seeing someone else and I wouldn’t go picking a fight with him, not since this is inverted.”

  The customer looked up at me, his upper lip drawn back and eyes squinting. “What? Who’re you?”

  “An idiot,” Pony growled and tapped the knight card. “Assert yourself. There’s time. Go home, Fred. She’s not gone yet.”

  Fred, the patron, slowly pushed his chair out, gave me one more confused look and practically ran for the door.

  I pulled the chair further out and sat while Pony collected his cards. “You think telling him what he wants to hear was the right thing to do? You know as well as I do what that spread means.”

  Pony plucked the knight from under my hand. “One day you’re going to learn to run everything that falls out of your mouth through a filter. Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth. They want to feel better. If you weren’t charging people twenty bucks a pop for a reading, maybe you’d know that already.”

  I leaned over the table and plucked the deck from his hands. “Okay, then. Let’s do you then. Let’s see what the cards have to say about Pony Dee.”

&nbs
p; “Come on, now boy.” He gestured with his hand. “Give ’em back.”

  I ignored him, shuffling. “I promise not to charge you. Besides, it’s just practice. I haven’t done a reading since all this Horseman business started. Come on, help me stay sharp.” I fanned the cards out for him.

  He sighed and looked down at the cards, pulling one and slapping it down on the table. “Ha. Here you are. Tell me what this means.”

  The four of cups. I frowned. “The four of cups signifies restlessness. Dissatisfaction. There’s something you want to change, but that change is somehow out of reach. Maybe something you regret. An old debt that needs to be repaid.”

  Pony grunted. “I’m old. You don’t get old without regrets. Impress me with the next one.” He grabbed the card from the top of the deck and flipped it over.

  “The knight of cups,” I said. “The whole suit of cups is all about relationships, but the knight is about a journey.” I paused, studying the cards before searching Pony’s blank face. “You planning on going somewhere without me?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.” He grabbed the third card with a sour look on his face and flipped it up, holding it so only he could see. The sour look faded as he took in the card.

  I leaned over the table, grabbed the card and pulled it down so I could see it. My heart leaped into my throat at the sight of it. The third card he’d drawn, the one that was supposed to represent future, was Death.

  “It doesn’t mean physical death,” he said and let go of the card. “Means a new beginning.”

  “Pony…”

  “Or even a change in seasons. Maybe we’re in for an early summer.”

  I stared down at the spread, saying nothing. He could make all the excuses he wanted, but I knew what it meant. Alone, or drawn as the first card, he might be right, but combined with a card for regret and a long journey?

  Pony huffed and reached to gather the cards. “Aw, what do they know, huh? What’s the first thing I taught you about Tarot, Lazarus?”

  “They’re just cards. They only have the power you give them.”