Witch's Spirit (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 3)

by Emma L. Adams

  “They don’t do portable spells.” In its purest form, witch magic was made up of energy—wild, raw power. Handmade spells captured that energy, but the Hemlocks were capable of manipulating the raw power on its own without the need to contain it. At least until they’d chained themselves to their forest in order to stop the Ancients breaking free from the realm they were imprisoned in.

  That an Ancient had still managed to attack us was proof that their plan hadn’t worked as well as they thought. Maybe there were other godlike beings walking among us, but I doubted a supernatural register would draw them out of hiding.

  I shook my head, feeling rattled. “I need to get outside for a bit. Unless you want to spar? Doesn’t look like you’ve been doing much training.”

  I was more resilient than most necromancers thanks to the two spirits sharing my body, but that didn’t mean I was immune to physical threats. Lady Montgomery had been strongly suggesting that everyone take a hand-to-hand refresher in case of another attack on the guild and I’d restarted my combat training, but nothing would ever hold a candle to my Hemlock magic.

  “Look, some people are built for combat, some of us are built to run like hell,” Lloyd said.

  I snorted. He wasn’t wrong. The pair of us spent more time running away from zombies than arm-wrestling them. Still, my Hemlock magic was more than a good enough substitute. I hadn’t lied, though, I did need a distraction. I was supposed to be going on a date with Keir in a couple of hours and all I could think about was the dead mage and the doomed shifter. Think cheery thoughts, Jas.

  “We’ll go for a walk, then,” I said. “Not near mage territory. I spent entirely too much of today shut in that meeting room.”

  The two of us left the others and went outside into the cold January air. Typical of this time of year, Edinburgh was bloody freezing but not a snowflake was in sight.

  “So, what else came up at the council meeting?” Lloyd’s breath puffed out in clouds. “Before the carnage? How’d the report go?”

  “Same as the last three, except the mages suggested putting every supernatural on a register so they can anticipate the next attack.”

  “A register?” His brow furrowed. “Yeah, that’s not gonna work. I didn’t know I was a necromancer at all until I raised my sister’s dead cat from the grave. Half the guild’s the same.”

  “I’m not sure it was aimed at the guild,” I admitted. “The subject was rogues, actually.”

  “Like Mackie. And Keir.”

  I dipped my head, perturbed by how easily it’d come to the mages as a solution. Put my name on permanent record? I couldn’t even tell anyone my real full name, Jacinda Hemlock. As for Evelyn, she was one of the millions listed as missing, presumed dead, after the faerie invasion. Besides, if I suggested putting my name on a register, she’d probably take over my body and run for the hills. Or just blast the mage council to pieces. I never really knew with Evelyn. While she’d claimed to be on my side, she was incredibly resentful that she was stuck in my body and forced to share her magic with me. Never mind that she was the only one of the pair of us who’d actually volunteered for this arrangement.

  “They won’t go through with it,” he said. “Trust me, it’s the mages being way out of touch again. Even the guild doesn’t require compulsory registration.”

  “We almost did.” I buried my hands in my pockets in search of warmth. “I don’t know, there’s got to be a way to look out for bad elements without throwing innocent people under the bus.”

  The question was, how? The Soul Collector had existed right under the guild’s nose for years and still escaped detection. The Ancients were clever, and… well, ancient. Immortal, even. How were us humans even meant to compete?

  When Lloyd and I got back to the guild, Keir was already waiting outside. Despite the cold, he wore a thin jacket over a T-shirt and jeans. His longish dark hair had been cut shorter since I’d last seen him face to face, and there was an attractive level of stubble on his defined jawline.

  Lloyd cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m going in. Let me know if you wanna watch a movie later, if you don’t stay out all night.”

  “Will do.” I waved him off and turned to Keir. “You’re early.”

  “I heard about the mage’s death.”

  “Yeah, it was bad luck,” I said. By now, I was half convinced I’d imagined the way Evelyn’s magic had responded. She was so unpredictable that even her magic wasn’t a reliable indicator. “I’ll explain later. I haven’t seen you in person for a while.”

  “Doesn’t the spirit realm count?” He smiled and leaned in to hug me. He was surprisingly warm considering his thin clothes, but in the spirit realm, coldness brushed against me, the touch of a vampire eager to feed. Thanks to my shade power, he and I were bound in such a way that he was only capable of feeding on me, nobody else. Luckily for both of us, the sensation of a vampire’s touch wasn’t unpleasant, more of a full-body massage from head to toe that was as appealing to me as it was to him. By the time we broke apart, his blue-grey eyes were positively glowing.

  I reluctantly let go of his hands. “I swear the guild gets colder every year. Why are you so warm?”

  “Probably because I was sparring with a friend.”

  He’d been hitting the gym over the holidays, too, judging by the visible definition in his arms and chest under his thin T-shirt.

  “I thought your vampire friends left town.”

  “Not all my friends are vampires, believe it or not,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve been waiting to give you your present.”

  Here we go. Our relationship was in its early stages, but he’d told me he’d be getting me a present, so I’d done the same. Lloyd had said I was making too big a deal out of it, but to me, gift-giving signalled a new stage in our relationship I wasn’t sure I was ready for. Things had leapt from casual to heated in a heartbeat thanks to the accidental soul-binding incident, but it was a little difficult to forget that dating me came with Evelyn Hemlock as the eternal third wheel, while dating him came with the added bonus of a missing brother and a grudge against the mage council. Complicated didn’t even begin to cover it.

  “Don’t look so scared, Jas,” he said. “It’s not a hand-stitched puppet.”

  “Lloyd got me monster-patterned socks. We’re good.” Though after our long walk in the cold, I wished I’d asked for mittens instead. And earmuffs.

  Keir handed me a square-shaped package. I took it and dug my free hand into my shoulder bag, handing him his own present. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like.”

  I’d been way more extravagant than normal, thanks to the money Lady Harper had given me, but I knew Keir had more money than I did. Sure enough, I opened the package to find the sort of sketchbook and pencils that would have once cost me my life’s savings to buy. “Oh my god, Keir.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “Yes. I do.” I tucked them under my arm and gave him a one-armed hug. “Now I feel like you aren’t going to like mine.”

  He smiled, turning over the soft package. “I think I know what this is.”

  He opened the package, revealing a handmade coat. Market-bought, but well-made and reinforced with a couple of my own embellishments.

  “I added some protective spells in case you ran into another knife.”

  He folded it over one arm and leaned in to kiss me. “Thanks, Jas.”

  “Least I could do considering the trouble my coven got you into.” I put the sketchbook and paints safely in my bag. “Also, you’ll catch your death of cold in that threadbare thing you’re wearing.”

  “Anyone can catch death by touching me. Or you.” He winked, then shrugged the new coat on over his jacket.

  “You’re confident we’re not going to run into any monsters tonight?” I adjusted my shoulder bag and fell into step alongside him.

  “We’ll send them packing if we do.” He intertwined his hand with mine. “I missed seeing you in the real world. You’ll have to tell me all about
what you’ve been up to.”

  “You want to hear about the hours I spent ransacking Lady Harper’s old houses? We found mice in one of them. No ghosts, though.”

  We walked along the cobbled street, and I told him about the shifter’s attack on the mage. As predicted, Keir told me not to dismiss Evelyn’s instincts.

  “Was he carrying any spells on him?” Keir asked.

  “If he was, the mages would have confiscated them,” I said. “I should have asked Isabel. But if he used the spells, they disintegrate instantly. Mine do, anyway.”

  “Might be worth looking into.” He halted outside the Redcap’s Cave, a cosy pub which offered discounts to necromancer guild members as a bonus for the zombie infestation we’d cleared out of the place a few years ago. “All right, we’re here. No morbid talk from now on, okay?” He squeezed my hand, an unconscious gesture of reassurance that he had my back.

  “I’ll do my best, but necromancer habits die hard.” I squeezed his hand back, still a little surprised at how easily we’d fallen into familiar ways. Vampires weren’t typically touchy-feeling, except in the soul-sucking sense, that is. They didn’t have a reputation for being great with long-term relationships, either, but Keir had sworn to make more of an effort with me. And not just because he depended on me to survive.

  Keir and I entered the warm pub and ordered food and drinks. We spent a good two hours catching up, listening to the music from the old jukebox—much more pleasant than those awful faerie ballads that somehow showed up on every pub’s karaoke list these days—and by my second glass of mead, my head was spinning pleasantly.

  “Ah, looks like the karaoke crew is here.” Keir leaned over to me as a large group of half-faeries came into the pub. The Redcap’s Cave was a popular place to mingle with other supernaturals, but when it came to faerie singalongs, it wasn’t uncommon to walk away with no clothes or any memory of the night.

  “Wanna go for another drink somewhere else?” I slid off my bar stool, my steps a little unsteady.

  “I think you’ve had enough.” He slipped an arm around me to help me walk out the door, sidestepping a group of half-nymphs wearing so little clothing that I was surprised they didn’t have icicles hanging from their ears.

  I wobbled outside, cursing whoever had come up with the idea of putting all the pubs on cobbled streets which were impossible to walk on in heeled shoes, much less while inebriated. Using Keir for balance, I took a few unsteady steps, and then stopped.

  There was a ghost outside. To be precise, the ghost of the shifter who’d killed the mage.

  Why wasn’t anything in my life ever simple?

  4

  The ghost floated in the middle of the street, lit with the faint grey light of the spirit realm. It was definitely the same man I’d spoken to in that jail cell. But I’d thought he’d gone beyond the veil after the mages had killed him.

  “Hey there,” I said, my voice slurred. “What are you doing?”

  The shifter turned on the spot. His hands were encased in scaled claws, and the scales stopped somewhere at his elbows. Must be his shifted form, or a partial shift. I hadn’t known it was possible for a shifter to change forms as a ghost.

  “You!” He pointed with a scaled hand, his eyes widening. “You’re not a ghost.”

  “Uh, you are,” I said, some of my fuzzy-headedness disappearing. “What are you doing out here?”

  A couple of nearby humans gave me wary looks and quickened their pace. I didn’t blame them. In my first year at the guild, I’d given up trying to be discreet when talking to ghosts in public. People expected weirdness from necromancers, after all, drunk or not. But this man definitely shouldn’t be here. We were much too far from where he’d died.

  “I’m here… because…” His hands twitched, the scales rippling. Shifter forms could be ambiguous, especially on half-shifters, but I’d never seen one with scales before. At least he knew he was dead, which was more than I could say for a fair few of the ghosts I dealt with, but the sight of the gleaming scales chilled me in a way I couldn’t explain.

  Wait—when he’d attacked the mage, he’d shifted into a wolf. Wolves didn’t have scales. Huh?

  Without warning, he let out a bone-shaking roar. My whole body shook with it, and I cast a wild glance around, half expecting to hear terrified screams—but none of the humans so much as looked in his direction. I grabbed Keir for balance as my feet slipped on the cobblestones and the spirit realm wavered before my eyes. Then the shifter sprinted out of sight, disappearing from view.

  I looked at Keir in bewilderment. “Did you see that?”

  He’d gone very pale. “Yes, I did. He’s gone.”

  I faced the spot where the ghost had been floating and tapped into the spirit realm. I left my body and felt my drunkenness lift—physical states didn’t typically transfer over to the spirit realm. The shifter, however, had gone. Ran off. Not beyond the gates of Death, but literally ran, like a pack of werewolf shifters were on his tail.

  I returned to my body in a blink. “How’d he do that? He ought to be anchored to the place he died.”

  Keir held my shoulders tight, peering into my eyes. “You left.”

  “Yes… Evelyn didn’t come back, did she?”

  He loosened his hold on me. “No, but I thought you weren’t doing that anymore.”

  “I’m not afraid of her.” Maybe I should be, but I was damned if I let her presence stop me from doing my job.

  He didn’t look convinced. “You know what she did.”

  “She saved me in the end.” My words were sober, my good mood gone. “She won’t screw with me as long as I don’t bind her again. She wants out of this as much as I do.”

  Didn’t mean I trusted her, but she wanted a body of her own as badly as I wanted to be free. Most shades met an unfortunate end, but most weren’t enhanced with Hemlock magic. Together, we might find a solution that didn’t result in either of us dying.

  “Right.” Keir took my hand. “I’ll walk you back.”

  “It’s been a nice evening. Ghost notwithstanding.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “You’re not patrolling tomorrow?”

  “Not until night time. Graveyard shift—literally.” I grimaced. “Otherwise, I’m meant to be helping the mages sort out Lady Harper’s crap from her country estate in the Highlands. We only found out it existed the other week, since you know, she has three other houses. I think she set them up as safe houses out of paranoia, to be honest, not to actually live in.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to be prepared.” His arms enveloped me, and I sighed, relaxing into him. His spirit’s touch caressed me head to spine, banishing the night’s cold and leaving delicious warmth in its place.

  When he released me, he was breathing heavily. “I missed you, Jas.”

  I knew what he meant. In the spirit realm, it wasn’t the same as touching him, wanting him in a way ghosts couldn’t quite have.

  Still… those were dangerous words to hear from a vampire. Especially as my own life was just as unstable as his, and with Lady Harper’s death, nothing stood between me and punishment if the mages found out about Evelyn.

  Yet when I was with Keir, Evelyn stayed away. For now.

  First thing the next morning, I sent Isabel a text asking if she could find out whether the mages had confiscated any witch spells from the shifter. It seemed a long shot, but after a restless night punctuated by dreams of being pursued by a clawed ghost, I was eager for answers on how the hell the dead shifter had wound up on the wrong side of town.

  ‘Weird’ didn’t even cover it. Evelyn was quiet, and I still hadn’t asked her if she’d felt anything odd when her magic had reacted to the shifter’s arrival yesterday. Maybe I should have asked her right away, but I’d been in shock—and besides, there’d been far too many witnesses with the spirit sight in the mages’ guild at the time who would have seen her if she’d shown her face.

  I have a tracking spell, Isabel replied. Let’s see if the ma
ges missed anything.

  All right. I pulled on my clothes, loaded up on spells, and walked out of the guild’s headquarters, texting Lloyd to let him know where I was going.

  The air was cool, crisp, the sky as grey as the spirit realm. I shivered, huddling in my cloak for warmth, and quickened my pace until the tall, modern shape of the hotel came into view.

  Isabel met me outside the front doors. “Hey, Jas.”

  “Hey.” I ducked into the hotel lobby out of the cold. The interior was bright and cheerful, typical of a witch-owned place, with swirling green and yellow patterns on the wallpaper. “Got the tracking spell?”

  “You bet.” She held up a band-shaped spell. “I admit it’s a long shot. The mages won’t let anyone see what they confiscated from the shifter, and they won’t let us into their headquarters again either. If we want to get up close, we’ll have to use shadow spells.”

  “Figures.” I twisted a shadow spell on my wrist and turned into a human-shaped shadow, and Isabel did likewise. “I still feel like I should tell the mages I saw the shifter’s ghost last night.”

  “Hmm. Were you drinking?”

  “I was, but Keir saw it too. Not that he wants to go near the mages with a ten-foot pole.” He held a long-standing grudge against them for refusing to believe that the Ancients had kidnapped his brother eight years ago. While he didn’t mention it often, I knew it bothered him that the Soul Collector had perished without revealing whether or not he knew about his missing brother.

  The gloomy, overcast day ensured nobody spotted us when we neared the gates of the mages’ guild. Isabel picked a spot out of sight of the guards but within view of the gate, and laid down a tracking spell. According to Isabel, tracking spells tended to replay recent important events, and a ward being deactivated would leave a huge magical trace. I took her word for it, because Isabel knew more about that type of thing than me. Maybe Evelyn did, too, but she was still quiet.

  Green light engulfed me when I put my hands into the spell-circle. The glare faded, showing a black and white image of the view across the street. As I watched, two cloaked mages approached the gates, their hands glowing as they activated witch spells. The shimmering wards grew brighter.