“Want me to send someone over?”
“Nah, Devon has it sorted. We’re fine.” I hope.
“Are you sure?” she said. “Well, you know best. Is she going to the comic play, too?”
“Comic con.” Which was… this weekend. Crap. I hadn’t even begun to think about my own costume, what with our own unexpected zombie apocalypse at home.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I know you’ve been busy with your new boyfriend. You haven’t posted any pictures of him online yet. Is he the young man we met before?”
“You…” I broke off. She couldn’t seriously mean the Death King, could she? “No. Absolutely never in a million years.”
For a start, he was about a thousand years older than me. And dead.
“Well, you can hardly blame me for guessing when you never tell me anything about the men in your life,” she said.
“Brant doesn’t have social media,” I evaded. “And he has a busy life, too.”
“Where does he live?”
“In town.” Well. He lived in a town, just not on this side of the nodes. Truth be told, I hadn’t visited his house in a while, as we’d mostly met up on this side in the last few weeks. Just my luck that Mum would be in the mood to ask a hundred questions. “It’s where he works…”
“I thought you said he drove a delivery van.”
“He does.” Thanks for the cover story, Past Liv. “He delivers things all over the region.”
“Well, tell him to deliver himself to our doorstep so Elise and I can meet him,” she said, her tone half-teasing. Poor Mum. She hadn’t signed up for her only child to get the real-life equivalent of a Hogwarts letter and then make a complete shambles of her life.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Gotta go. I need to help Devon with the shop.”
I ended the call before she invited herself over to meet Brant and ended up with a zombie phantom as a bonus.
As if on cue, my phone buzzed with a message from Brant asking if I was free. Good timing. Or not, because I still needed to tell him I’d accepted the Death King’s offer… while I was sleeping. Which wouldn’t sound weird at all.
I replied telling him to give me an hour, so I’d have the chance to shower and get dressed. On my bedside table, I’d left the coin I’d found in the bucket. I’d thoroughly scrubbed it down before handling it with my bare hands, but no marks had come to the surface. Out of any other ideas, I put it into the pouch with my cantrips to take into the Parallel with me. Perhaps Brant would know what it was, or he knew someone who did.
When I got downstairs, it was to find Devon sitting on the sofa, scribbling away in a notebook. “What’re you doing?”
“Rolling up stats for ceiling zombies to use in our campaign,” said Devon. “Might as well make use of our screwed-up life.”
“Yeah, as long as one doesn’t fall through the ceiling on D&D night,” I added. “That’d derail the campaign, to say the least.”
She shuddered. “We’d better find out what’s causing this before then.”
“No kidding.” I went into the kitchen to scrounge for some breakfast and shoved some bread into the toaster. “It’s like a zombie plague in reverse.”
“It’s got to be a spell,” said Devon. “The dead can’t turn into the living again. Except… well, Brant did, but he wasn’t really dead.”
“Good point.” I looked up as the doorbell rang. “Speaking of whom.”
Brant had only been a lich for a short time before his soul had been returned to his body, so he hadn’t succumbed to whatever made the other liches’ state irreversible. Time, perhaps. They’d lived for centuries, some of them, after they’d chosen to separate their souls and bodies. There must be a point of no return when it was impossible to reverse the process. The Death King alone knew how it all operated, and whether he shared it with me probably depended on how much I pissed him off. Which was debatable.
I walked into the shop and opened the front door. “Hey, Brant.”
“Hey.” Brant greeted me with a warm hug and a kiss. “What’s the latest?”
“A zombie fell through our ceiling.” I gave him the rundown as I munched on my toast, while Devon sewed more of her costume. I opted not to mention last night’s midnight excursion—it’d only complicate things, and besides, there was nothing I’d said to the Death King that I couldn’t have said in person.
Brant pulled a face. “A phantom? You’re saying it just… came through the node by itself? It didn’t attack you or anything?”
“It tried, but it fell to pieces first.” I hesitated, then reached for the pouch at my waist and pulled out the coin. “This was left behind. Not sure what it is.”
“Huh.” He scanned the coin’s pale gold surface. “Nope… it can’t be a cantrip or anything, it’s totally blank. I guess it’s worth asking around.”
“At the market?” I suggested. “I did clean the coin first, don’t worry. We don’t need any of us to drop dead of a zombie plague.”
“Good,” said Devon from behind a ream of fabric. “I was awake half the night expecting that thing to dig itself up and come knocking on our door.”
Brant arched a brow. “You buried it in the garden?”
“It absolutely stank. We’d have the neighbours making complaints, let alone the Order.” I returned the coin to the pouch. “If this is happening on the other nodes, too, the Order will have to take notice.”
The other nodes were located at complete random, from the middle of people’s houses to busy roads. If zombies started raining down on the public, I could only imagine the chaos that would ensue. As amusing as the idea of the Order running around like headless chickens to deal with a miniature zombie apocalypse might be, the result would spell bad news for the secrecy of the magical world.
Brant rose to his feet. “I haven’t heard any other reports. Maybe it came from the Death Kingdom, and because you’ve been there recently…”
“It followed me home?” Damn. He might be right, actually. “I don’t know if the phantom was definitely killed by the same thing that’s murdering liches, but there’s something nasty on the loose in the revenants’ tunnels, too. It has to be the same monster.”
His mouth pressed together. “You’re saying you want to work for the Death King after all, then?”
“Devon and I could use the cash,” I said. “Did you find out anything more about the COS at the market yesterday?”
“Nothing much,” he said. “As far as the regulars describe it, they just set up overnight. About a week after they cleaned up the streets following the battle, they came to the market with boxes full of cantrips and that was that. Oh, and they fixed up the warehouse, too. Got rid of the draughty old walls and stopped the roof from leaking. Some of the regulars were happy, others were disgruntled that the newcomers were making such a blatant attempt to ingratiate themselves with everyone. But most of them thought the place could use a clean-up, so…” He shrugged.
I turned this over in my mind. “A week after the battle… perhaps the fight is what prompted them to kick it into gear.”
“Dicks,” said Devon. “All of them.”
“The Order refused to come here and help with the dead phantom,” I explained to Brant. “They implied I was to blame and that it was our problem, not theirs. If a zombie appears inside their headquarters, it’d serve them right.”
“Maybe then they’d step up and take notice,” he said. “Seems easier than putting yourself in harm’s way.”
“Hey, I was only trying to play a video game, not call zombies into the house,” I said. “Besides, the Death King asked me to help and not the Order. And I’d like to know why.”
Brant still wore a wary expression. “Are you certain he’s not responsible himself?”
“Why would he kill his fellow liches and then ask me to step in to play detective?” I said. “You know the Death Kingdom. They keep to themselves.”
This time, though, he hadn’t. And while findin
g out why the trouble had landed in my house was foremost on my mind, I couldn’t let myself forget the reason the Death King had made an exception to the usual rule: the lure of having his very own spirit mage. A Spirit Element to join his army.
“Okay, but I don’t think you should use this node to cross over into the Death Kingdom,” he said. “Not as long as zombies keep showing up, anyway. We can go through to the market, though, if that’s okay.”
“Go ahead,” said Devon. “I’ll put up an umbrella.”
“Ha.”
I felt for the node, and its familiar rush of energy claimed me. Brant and I crossed over into the Parallel—and landed in the middle of a circle of revenants.
I kicked out, my foot colliding with solid bone and flesh. The revenant flew back into its neighbour, only for Brant’s flames to catch it in the face. Orange flames devoured three revenants, but the fourth dodged and leapt at me. I grabbed a cantrip and threw it wildly, but nothing happened. Oh, damn.
I dropped to a crouch and the revenant sailed over my head, into the path of Brant’s flames. Blinking the haze from my eyes, I realised I’d thrown the blank coin at them, not one of my cantrips. That’d explain why it didn’t work. I picked it up and put it back into the pouch.
“That’s it,” I said, kicking the ashes away. “We have got to find out what’s in those tunnels. If it’s freaking out the revenants, the vampires’ council will want to know.”
“The council doesn’t take reports from humans,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Wish they did.” The vampires who ruled the city rarely showed their faces in public either. “There’s bound to be a local vampire wandering around the market who we can ask. It’s where they buy their light-repellent charms.”
Since we’d planned to head that way to begin with, we made our way to the warehouse once again. If anything, the flow of foot traffic was even thicker than the previous day. I halted near the entrance, scanning the line of people leaving the warehouse. All vampires had the same odd ageless features as elves did, except with pointed teeth instead of pointed ears, which made them easy to spot.
“Hey there,” I said to a passing vampire with long dark hair and dark circles under his eyes as though he was fighting against the vampires’ natural instincts to sleep through the day. “I wanted to ask you a question.”
“Go away.”
Brant blocked his path. “Wrong answer.”
“What d’you want?” he muttered. From his lack of manners, he wasn’t an ancient vampire, but a new one. That explained why he was wandering around in broad daylight, regardless of how it messed with his natural body clock.
“To know why revenants keep feeding on the nodes aboveground,” I said. “That’s three times we’ve been ambushed in two days. You know why?”
“Shit, I dunno,” he said. “Maybe they wanted a change of scenery.”
“Hilarious,” I said. “Something is driving them away from the underground nodes. Haven’t the council noticed?”
“Who cares?” He sidestepped Brant with a vampire’s natural speed and grace, and between one blink and the next, he was gone.
Dammit. I hadn’t a hope of catching him up on foot. True vamps were far above their revenant brethren speed-wise.
“I reckon only the council will know, if anyone,” Brant murmured. “Want to go inside?”
I dipped my head. “It’s worth checking out our friends at the COS again.”
We joined the flow of people heading into the warehouse, letting the crowd’s momentum carry us towards the long tables at the back. The dim ceiling lights caught on the rows of golden coins, and a huge volume of people stopped by to admire the display even if they weren’t actually buying anything.
“You again?” said the woman at the stall. “Looking to make a purchase this time?”
“Yes,” I bluffed, scanning the rows of coins and thinking hard. “I’m looking for…” A spell that wasn’t too expensive. The last thing I needed was to fritter away our remaining cash on a dud cantrip.
“I’ll pay,” Brant said, as though he’d guessed my thoughts. “We’ll take two light spells.”
She named a price, and my heart dropped into my shoes. No wonder they were undercutting our business. We charged nearly twice that for one cantrip, let alone two.
Brant handed over the cash and she selected two gleaming golden coins to slide into a paper bag. “Something wrong?”
I took the bag from her. Even the paper bag looked like an import from the world on the other side. “How can you afford to charge so little? Isn’t a single cantrip worth several hours of work? The materials alone cost a fortune.”
“Ah, we get a bulk discount, being such a large group,” she said. “We wanted to make our wares more accessible to the general public.”
“A bulk discount?” I echoed. “From whom?”
“Our suppliers,” she said.
Weird. Mass-produced spells shouldn’t be possible. If they weren’t carved by hand, they didn’t work right, which was one reason practitioners’ arts remained more or less the same as they had for centuries. Why mess with a good thing?
My gaze caught on a box behind the counter. Inside lay several small coins… blank coins. Wait a minute.
I reached into my pouch and pulled out the coin I’d found on the dead phantom. “I have a question. Can you identify this coin?”
“I’m not an antiques dealer,” she said, an impatient note entering her tone. “That’s a blank cantrip.”
So it is. “Okay, thanks.”
Gripping the coin in my hand, I walked away from the stall. What was a dying phantom doing with a blank cantrip? It was smaller than the ones Devon used, which was why I hadn’t twigged to start off with.
“Was she right?” asked Brant. “Give it here, I’ll check with someone else.”
I passed the coin to him. “If it was a cantrip carved with a spell, it should have disintegrated after being used.”
A sudden suspicion gripped me, but before I could voice it, Brant accosted a red-haired mage behind the nearest stall. “Excuse me, can you identify this coin?”
“What?” said the mage. “That’s a cantrip base, isn’t it?”
“Told you.” I took the coin from Brant and slipped it back into my pouch.
He hurried after me. “Where are you going?”
“To test a theory.” I walked outside and pulled one of the shiny new light cantrips out of the paper bag.
“What’re you doing?” he asked. “Wait—don’t use that here.”
“I’m not.” I walked swiftly until I reached the alley containing the stone staircase we’d been down before.
“Liv!” He hurried after me. “This is not a wise move.”
“When did I ever make wise decisions?” If I ever had in the past, that person had died along with two years of my memories.
I descended into the darkness of the tunnel. When my feet touched down on steady ground, I held out the cantrip, took in a breath, and activated it.
A flood of light spun over my hand, lighting up the murky tunnel. Hints of the foul smell from before rushed towards me, and I held my breath, cupping the coin-shaped spell in my hand. Mass-produced or not, it was as faultless as any cantrip Devon had made.
“Hang on.” Brant caught me up. “I know what you’re thinking, but why not pick a less… grim place to test it out?”
“Too late now.” I shone the light on the tunnel walls. “Might as well look around while we’re at it.”
He conjured a flame to his hand. “Want the other one?”
“We can save it for later,” I said. “Or rather, for evidence, if this goes the way I think it will.”
I didn’t want to look in the darkness for more dead revenants, but it looked like the world at large had abandoned the tunnels to rot. Unless they were directly affected, the vampires didn’t want to know, and the odds of a nobody like me gaining an audience with the council were zero.
; Brant slipped his hand into mine, the other cupping a dancing flame. “If the cantrips didn’t work, someone would have chased those COS people out by now. Everyone uses light spells.”
“I know.” I shone the cantrip’s glow on the walls. “Maybe we should have gone to check out the tunnels where the Death King’s traitor friend hung out. I wonder if he’s still spending his time down there.”
“I doubt it, now Vaughn’s in jail.” Brant’s voice tightened at the mention of his earth mage friend, who’d stabbed both of us in the back. “Someone else lives in his old house now, so I doubt they’d appreciate us poking around in the basement, either.”
I trod further along the tunnel, holding my breath to mask the stench of slaughtered revenants, whose bodies lay ripped open to expose the rotting organs within. No wonder the others had been avoiding the underground node.
“I don’t think we’re gonna find anything down here,” Brant said, holding his coat over his nose and mouth. “It’s abandoned.”
“Hmm.” More dead revenants blocked our path to the node. At least a dozen. If a predator lurked somewhere in the darkness, why kill them if it didn’t plan to consume their bodies? Weird.
The coin’s light vanished abruptly, plunging us into darkness. “There it is.”
“C’mon.” Brant held his flame in one hand, the other taking my arm to help me walk out of the tunnel without tripping over in the darkness. I didn’t object, because despite the light going out, the coin was still solid and cold in my hand. It hadn’t disintegrated into dust like it should have done. I knew it.
I climbed the staircase to the surface and held out my hand to show Brant. As I’d suspected, the coin remained in one piece, except blank, as though the marks had been erased. No… as though it’d never been marked to begin with.
“I guess the only way to see if it’s reusable is to get Devon to try turning it into another cantrip.” I turned the coin over. “Both sides are blank. It’s as good as new.”
“Useful.”
“Suspicious,” I corrected. “The person who made the coin I found when the phantom fell through the node is the same as the one who made these.”
Touch of Death (Order of the Elements Book 2) Page 7
