Talia's Bodyguard

by Lisa Daniels

  And did he ever even smile?

  “You’re having fun with this, aren’t you?” she accused him, five minutes from home. As they crossed the road with a few others, cars braked around them.

  “Fun, miss?” Janos lifted one eyebrow, which looked like a little wriggling black beetle. “I assure you, I take my job very seriously.”

  “You’re acting way too overkill with this,” she burst out, gesturing at his outfit. “You could look normal, act normal, but you’re walking like you’re about to shit a brick, and you full-on attempted a double murder when someone threw something at me. Are you trying to humiliate me?”

  “I’m trying to protect you.” Now that eyebrow sank into a frown. “And I don’t walk like I’m shitting a brick.”

  “Whatever.” She’d get him back for this later. Summon the entire pet cemetery just to unnerve him or something. Absently, she dipped with her magic into the atmosphere, taking a small taste of the Other Side, of the differing souls that drifted upon it. Most were street animals, insects—anything living contained a soul—but she also felt the whispering, the scratching of human souls deeper down, past the first layer. The deeper she went, the more… dangerous the soul became.

  Her heart hammered a little faster as she crept around this forbidden field. Her father didn’t want her using her magic needlessly, bringing back people who didn’t want to be brought back…

  But she was tired of practicing on friendly animals. Never challenging her powers. She wanted to do more, get better. For no other reason than personal satisfaction.

  Which was why… but of course, he’d be watching, now. And he’d likely report back to her father. She gritted her teeth, letting the foul mood form a cloud over her head for the rest of the way home.

  True to expectations, the bodyguard followed her everywhere, except for when she summoned up Willow from the grave, enjoying the fact that he kept a wide berth from her. She took Willow’s body with her into her bedroom and locked the door firmly shut, hoping her bodyguard wouldn’t freak out and insist he had to be in the same room. He hadn’t so far, but this was the first time she’d taken Willow in with her. And the things she intended to do with Willow were… less than admirable.

  Which was why she apologized profusely to Willow’s soul, before evacuating it out of her body and preparing her willpower for the next daunting task.

  To test the limits of her magic, since just playing with animal souls wasn’t enough. She wanted more meat to her practice. Her father kept promising to get around to training her better in her magic, but he was always busy, and her own sister was stuck in the middle of yet another police investigation and lived separately, visiting home on rare occasions. Their father provided frosty dinner evenings at best.

  Ensconced within the bedroom, she examined the bones of her dead cat and began delving into the Other Side once more. All the animals in close proximity clamored for attention, but she didn’t want to reach for these easy, gentle souls. No—she wanted something more. Going deeper into the Other Side always felt strange, as if her mind were being dipped in treacle, her limbs frosting over and becoming clumsy with cold as she crept into the deeper layers, seeking out different souls.

  She could only locate souls of things that had died in the area. Souls had a way of anchoring themselves to the places that meant most to them in life, and there were a few civilians—a few departed ancestors that still lingered. The oldest soul she could taste was about a hundred and twenty years dead. Most would have passed on—but some clung stubbornly. She headed straight for that ancient soul, sensing it to be more resilient, more bitter and hostile than the other ones, which seemed to float in a dreamlike state as if unaware of their demise.

  This is precisely the kind of soul my father warned against, she thought. Still, it was fascinating to taste the remnants of this old soul. She lingered around it, as it still didn’t seem to notice her presence, trying to pick up more from it. One hundred twenty years dead. Still aggressively shaping itself to a male form—most souls lost their attachment to gender, too.

  Proud, she thought. Immensely proud. Saturated in hate. Would have been in his sixties when he died. The soul finally detected her, and a surge of hatred billowed in her direction like smoke. Triggered by seeing a woman. She grinned, and dug her hooks into his aura.

  I Command you to enter the body of this cat and cause no harm to anything, living or dead. I Command you also to be silent as the grave, and as still as a statue.

  She had to make the Commands more specific with the nastier souls. They tended to try and seek more loopholes, more ways to override her instructions. The soul howled with the force of her Commands, and instantly slammed his whole will against hers. She buckled under the strain, but knew better than to break under the pressure, to give into any doubts or fears tucked within. He tried doing that, hissing she was weaker than her sister, that her father didn’t care, that her bodyguard would be happy to kill her…

  He’s not that strong, she thought with grim satisfaction. I imagined it being worse. With a last, aggressive push, the soul popped into the body of her cat. It twisted and writhed in the wrongness of being placed into a foreign body unrelated to its own bones, and she waited calmly for the soul to submit to her instructions. One last twitch of the cat’s tail, and it settled into a sullen, hateful silence.

  “I Command you,” she said softly, “to tell me what kind of person you were in life, and why you linger even now, when you could have moved on.”

  The cat hissed, but it was more of a hollow, human sound, before he began to tell her the tale. The voice was low and growly, resonating from the Other Side. He told her of a life spent as a shop owner—a simple man called Thomas Miller. His father sold tobacco, and he took over the business, venturing into roll-up business, but at nights…

  At nights, he made women scream with pain. His wife, he hated. His daughter died, beaten to death when two. His son died of pox, and he ended up killing at least three whores… fancying himself as a Jack the Ripper.

  He was caught and sentenced to death. His wife took over the tobacco company.

  “Would you believe that cheating bitch—taking over a man’s business, marrying someone else...” the voice rasped around the head of the cat. Now that the soul was allowed to tell his story, his resistance lessened. She noted that, how this rancid spirit became easier to control when she allowed it a voice. And listened. Even though his story churned in her stomach and made her want to crush the soul, burn it to cinders and never allow it the chance to harm others, ever again.

  His soul also drained her energy at a frightening rate, but she kept him contained, listening to the gleeful way he waited to torment the descendants of his wife, and when those people had moved out of Lasthearth, he instead tormented women in particular, making sure they never rested easy.

  “Do you consider yourself a good person?” she asked the soul. He had forgotten his name, but still clung fiercely to a host of his living desires.

  “I am good,” the spirit insisted, baleful blue eyes now glaring at her. “Whores like you are the Lord’s attempts to see if we will sway from our paths… but I never did. I never did.”

  Yes, you just killed people instead, she thought with disgust. Her energy was almost gone, after only fifteen minutes of holding this spirit, compared to the easy hour she managed with Willow.

  “Rest,” she told him. “And thank you for your tale.”

  The eyes continued glowing, until the noxious presence detached itself from the body, vaulting back into the Other Side. It lingered by her longer than she felt comfortable with… but a firm push made sure he was allowed to spit out his poisons elsewhere, buried deep.

  No sooner was she contemplating Willow’s bones than she heard the door open, without her permission, and spotted the livid face of her bodyguard. Her heart did a chaotic leap. Hadn’t she locked it? She swore she’d locked that damn door.

  “I heard everything,” he said, after a rather
pregnant pause between them. “I heard what you did.”

  “You weren’t supposed to,” she snapped back, cheeks burning in a sudden rush of shame and guilt. Anger crept over it in a bid to defend. “There was a reason I locked the door...”

  “The lock’s busted,” he replied, indicating the turn, showing how loose it was.

  “At least knock. What if I was naked?”

  “Then I would have some serious fucking questions about why you’d be naked with a dead cat serial killer in your room.”

  The way he spoke, it made it sound so twisted. “Okay, no, it’s not like that. It’s...” She cradled Willow’s bones in a protective manner. “I have to practice my powers. Just raising up pets… it’s not enough. Do you understand? I’ll never get any better if all I do is keep my training wheels on.”

  “So you summon a demon? Because that spirit sounded like it came straight from the depths of hell,” Janos hissed, his eyes cold, his demeanor stiff. Talia winced. He’d only see what he wanted to see. A necromancer doing horrible necromancer things.

  “Some souls are harder to summon than others,” she persisted mulishly, avoiding his eyes because it was easier than staring into such wrath. “The older, gnarlier souls provide more of a challenge. He was the oldest soul I could find in this area. Willful, hostile, cruel… if you’re not strong enough, they can mock your Commands. He tested my strength better.”

  When he didn’t answer, she risked peeking at him. His face was fathomless.

  “I didn’t enjoy speaking to him any more than anyone would. But the best way… the best way to keep him from resisting was to pretend to listen. He wanted someone to hear out his vile story.”

  Janos remained silent for a moment longer. She wanted to keep piling on reasons in the silence, to convince him she wasn’t some depraved necromancer from the stories, but she kept her mouth shut instead. Which took quite a bit of willpower.

  “I understand,” he said eventually, “that you do need to practice. Wild magic is more dangerous… but I just don’t understand why you’d choose something like that to use.”

  She bit her lip. She’d already explained. But perhaps he wanted something more. “He is a means to an end. And better perhaps to get someone like him than to ensnare a better soul into my services.”

  That seemed to strike a nerve within him. His eyebrows knotted together. His lips formed a thin line. And he changed his tone. “Are you forbidden from doing this? Is that why you hide in your room?”

  “I...” Well, there was no escaping from this one. “Yes, I’m not supposed to. My advanced training isn’t to start for some time, but truthfully… I think my father wants to keep me on pets. He’s a summoner, so is my sister… and unlike her, who went to the police academy, I chose archaeology.” Admittedly, in the hope of being able to contact ancient souls. “He wasn’t too impressed with that choice. He wanted me doing something a little more respectable.”

  Her father, to be honest, was livid. Her mother just sidled out of the picture and let the two of them rip, but he’d basically expected her to undertake a profession that would keep her firmly rooted in Lasthearth and Samhain. Archeology, if she could punch through the low demand and somehow get a job, rather than end up being a cashier in a supermarket, meant traveling the world. Visiting massacres and undertaking projects to uncover ancient buildings, artifacts, and bones.

  She rather liked that idea herself. She wanted to eventually wriggle out of Lasthearth. She never intended to become the best in her field, or catapult onto the front pages of the tabloids like her father and sometimes her sister did. She just wanted a normal job. To use her powers and yet not be thrust into the spotlight.

  “It seems like a good career choice,” Janos said then, surprising her. “As long as you don’t go around reviving all the bones you come across, or summoning people from a necropolis or something.”

  The idea inflamed Talia’s brain for a brief moment, before she tamped down on her sudden ambition. Best not to convey to him that she sincerely hoped if she was ever sent to a necropolis, she’d discover ancient souls…

  “I don’t intend any harm in what I do,” Talia said in an attempt to reassure him. “I just want to learn. I don’t want to sit around, twiddling my thumbs until I become old and useless.”

  “There’ll always be uses for a necromancer,” Janos said, but his voice was flat and cold. “But I would be careful about this. I am not obliged to tell your father about your… experiments, but I do not support them, either. Which is why… I want you to warn me when you attempt something like this.”

  Talia blinked at him in surprise. “Wait… you want me to tell you?” This wasn’t what she expected. At all. She honestly thought he was planning to try and forbid her or something.

  “Yes,” he said. “Then I can be in the same room as you.”

  She squinted up at him suspiciously. “Why?”

  “So I can protect you, if something should go wrong with the magic. If you’re going to experiment with dangerous laws, then let me do my job and ensure no harm comes to you.”

  Biting her lip, she considered this. While this was an ideal solution on his part, it meant that she could have no privacy at all when it came to practicing. Speaking of privacy… she eyed her door lock suspiciously. She was sure that was working. Most likely he’d done something to it. Yet she’d never get that truth from him. “I don’t want anyone watching me.”

  “Too bad,” he said.

  “Just wait outside the room or something. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re fine until you’re not,” he said, and that was the end of the matter.

  She fumed silently, but short of firing his ass, and creeping past him in the night (though she highly doubted that’d be possible with someone of his senses), it seemed like he wasn’t budging. Leaving her to maintain her foul mood, all while returning Willow’s bones to the garden, and also catching a sweeping, calculating glare from her father.

  I don’t know where you got him from, Father, she thought, still debating whether or not she might be able to just get rid of him and deal instead with a new bodyguard. And maybe she could get around to asking for a Valkyrie, if her father could afford to splurge. Valkyries also tended to bring back spirits for battle, but they did it in a slightly more wholesome way than a necromancer, since they didn’t need to have the bones handy, first, and they didn’t force the spirits. They took them from some pre-existing stock from Valhalla.

  Her whimsy was dashed when she looked into the hard, determined eyes of her bodyguard. He seemed far too efficient for her father to ditch him. So she’d try to wriggle out of his grasp by other means instead.

  Chapter Four – Janos

  Out of all the necromancers that existed in Samhain, it had to be this one he was assigned to. Because she was doing everything in her power to try and give him the slip, except she constantly kept underestimating his heightened senses. Once she tried escaping out of the window to practice her powers in secret. He was waiting for her at the graveyard when she finally made it. Another time, she tried setting him some mundane, tedious task to try and peel him away. He didn’t do that task, and she’d become increasingly grumpy that he was “invading” her private space, when in fact he did give her privacy, but he couldn’t ignore his primary directive: to make sure that she came to no harm.

  And her own magic could inflict grievous harm if left unattended, though he suspected that if he did tell the father about her extracurricular practices, what little camaraderie between him and the daughter would cease to exist.

  The worst part was going to that damn university. Too many threats to keep an eye on, giving him no choice but to present as a visual threat, meaning he maintained a presence in lecture halls and drew eyes wherever he went. He preferred being the more silent type when it came to protection, plain clothes and all—but for this case, plain clothes wouldn’t help. He needed to be deliberately menacing. To take down a target without ripping them apart in th
e process, and to ensure she never tried to resort to the use of her own powers, as people held mixed views about Talia and her father.

  Maggot eaters was perhaps the kindest of the insults he’d picked up. Some students made the sign of the cross when she passed near them with her insipid friends, whom he knew as Elodie, Jake, and Nadine. Elodie to him smelled a little off, like she was trying too hard to prove that Talia was her friend. Maybe collecting good-person points for other people to approve of her. He didn’t like any of them, to be honest. All these people were about seven years under his age group, and their type of conversation at times felt like listening to a foreign language. He wished he was back home again with his friend group, who were now growing out of their get out and get wasted every weekend mentality, and settling down with families, focusing more on their careers.

  He wished as well he’d been more active in pursuing the woman he did like at school, or the one who was an aunt of one of his clients. The aunt certainly liked him, but it would be slightly unprofessional to grow attached to anyone related to his clients—or the clients themselves. His job wasn’t worth all that ruckus.

  Still, once he’d finished the rounds, he planned not to let his father send him blindly to work again. That man was determined for him to get over his dislike of necromancers, but they sure liked proving, time and time again, that they weren’t people to much like.

  There was a certain something about Talia all the same. The tall, proud way she conducted herself, her staunch beliefs in her abilities, and that willful stubbornness that kept her attempting to avoid him at every opportunity.

  Good luck with that.

  The lecturer he sat in on was droning about recently excavated dig sites dating back some eight thousand years or so, showcasing what they thought were the remnants of some of the earliest civilizations to have existed. Since they were talking about dragons, he had zero interest. Jake sat next to Talia, whispering in her ear, and on occasion, he was able to pick up on what they were saying.