by K. F. Breene
“We both can,” she answered. “You just don’t know how yet.”
I gestured at her, lifting my eyebrows at Mustache again. “So?”
Mustache’s jaw tightened and uncertainty crossed his expression for the first time. It disappeared so fast I wondered if I’d imagined it. “We are all magical.”
I relayed the info.
“And they’re all getting stuffed into fresh bodies.” Bria rose, leaving the exposed torso of a dead man in the raised grave as she crossed to Kieran and Thane. She looked over the items strewn across the surface of the tables. “How long have they been here?”
“They won’t be able to tell time like that,” I said.
“Right, right. I always forget that.” Bria shook her head. “How many times have they inhabited different bodies?”
I repeated the question.
Mustache’s brow furrowed, and uncertainty crossed his features again. He didn’t answer. A quick look around revealed he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure. I let Bria know.
“Huh,” she said. “Their brains must’ve been scrambled before they were killed. It’s a way to keep someone’s skill set but erase their short-term memory, including some of the memories that drift with them into the spirit world. I’ve seen the practice used in the field. It makes dangerous, powerful spirits easy to control, but it dumbs them down. They go from extremely skilled and great in the field to nothing more than blunt instruments who need simplistic instructions.”
“But if those instructions are to simply kill…” I said.
She shrugged, turning around. “You said they were soldiers, right?”
I nodded. “Highly decorated, apparently.”
She crossed to a chair tucked in the corner of the room and sat down with a sigh. “There are a million spirits you can call back to use as killing devices. Dumb, easy-to-manage spirits. So many. They practically wait by the gate for a chance to do what they love. But soldiers have a higher-level skill set. They have an increased functionality due to their adaptability, their ease in problem solving. You’d want them for more advanced tasks. You wouldn’t want to waste their potential by scrambling their brains.”
“Then why did they do it to these spirits?” Kieran asked.
“My guess?” Bria waited for his nod. She gestured at the table. “Because our Necromancer is old. He’s tired. He doesn’t have it in him to wrangle pushy spirits. That’s a young man’s game. I’m not even thirty and it exhausts me. I charge an awful lot to do it.”
“Why wouldn’t someone replace him?” Kieran asked, giving her a sharp look.
She spread her hands. “Did you know the information I just told you? Would you know what this guy was doing if I hadn’t told you?” She didn’t get an answer, and smiled. “No. You wouldn’t. He’d say the brain scramble is a necessary step for transferring a spirit to a new body, and his bosses would believe him. He’s the expert, after all. Then he’d give the bosses the parameters the scrambled spirits could work within, and the bosses would adjust their expectations accordingly.”
“With work this touchy, why not bring in a second opinion? Someone to monitor your staff?” Kieran said.
“That happens, but Necromancers don’t directly rat on each other. It’s a community, and if I get old and need to hedge, I don’t want some young asshole ratting me out. In turn, I’ll use my established position to help the young people get placement. Give and take. You do get jerks who try to steal jobs, but they die early. Usually by a newly filled cadaver murdering them.”
“But you’re ratting this guy out,” I said, fixing my hand to my hip. I wasn’t in the habit of lying, and would be damned if I join a dishonest community.
Kieran smiled, as though he’d read my thoughts.
“I’m a black sheep, number one,” Bria said, clasping her hands in her lap.
“Snitch,” Mustache spat.
“I’m saving up super hard to retire early, number two,” Bria went on. “And three, I don’t know who this guy is. I’m just telling my employer hypothetical information. I have a hunch that I’m right, but I could be wrong. Look, I schmooze just enough in the Necromancy community to keep from getting killed. It’s a tight rope, but I walk it with aplomb.”
“You’re saying it’s likely that the employer of this establishment—”
“Valens,” Bria said.
“—doesn’t know that his staff of spirits is operating at a reduced capacity?”
“Correct,” Bria said, nodding.
“Is the guy who puts the spirits into the bodies the same guy who’s been trapping the ghosts?” I asked.
Bria stared at me for a moment, her eyes slightly narrowed. “The short answer: I don’t know.”
“Long answer,” Kieran said.
“Until recently, I’d never heard of trapping spirits,” she said, looking at the graves at the back of the room. “I didn’t know it was possible, but it is a fiercely handy tool. If you try to call someone from beyond the Line, you’re not guaranteed to find them. Many spirits are downright difficult to bring back. Some are impossible. If a spirit doesn’t want to make the trek, they can burrow deep into the beyond, and you’ll never reach them. I wouldn’t mind having a setup where…” Her words drifted away when she caught sight of my angry expression. “I…wouldn’t mind…finding out more about it, but never using it for my own benefit, because that would be wrong…” She paused before muttering, “for some reason.”
“They are still people, and they shouldn’t be trapped in the world of the living,” I said, lifting my other hand to my hip. “They died. That’s the end of it. Keeping them in the world of the living is either bullshit for them, or if they are really bad people, their presence and negative energy is bullshit for the living. The dead are supposed to exit stage left. That’s the design. I didn’t make the rules, I just… Well, I don’t really enforce them, but maybe I should start, know what I mean?”
“No, I do not,” Bria said. “But that’s cool. You do you. Go on with your weird self. Anyway, it’s possible this Necromancer discovered a new trick, but not likely. Old dogs, you know. Maybe he learned the trick from someone else, but there’s a lot of ground to cover so far, and like you said, this guy’s home residence is this unfortunate room. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s not our guy. That is a guess, though.”
So far, that’s all Bria and I had. Guesses.
“Spirits lose a portion of their magic when brought back into a foreign body, isn’t that right?” Kieran asked.
“Yes,” Bria replied. “That’s why it’s attractive to use extremely powerful spirits. You get more bang for your buck. You just need someone powerful enough to control them.”
“With a brain scramble, are their magical abilities reduced further?”
“It depends on how the scramble was performed,” Bria replied. “Working with the brain is always dicey.”
“What are their magics?” Kieran asked me.
I went around the room, surveying the spirits and threatening the ones who weren’t immediately forthcoming. Thane wrote down what they said and descriptions of each of them on a notepad he kept in one of his many pockets.
“Okay.” Bria clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “What’s next?”
Kieran checked his watch before meeting my gaze.
“Her...thing is not here,” I said without preamble. “And if Bria’s right, we still don’t know who’s creating the spirit traps, or how. They all look and feel the same, though, and I have the might to break through them. But how many exist? What if I can’t find them all?”
“Are the traps self-sustaining?” Bria asked.
I shook my head while shrugging. “I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure until I check back in with the ghost in the government building.”
“Okay. Well, first we find that out, obviously.” Bria stood and wiped her hands on her black jeans. “And if the person does need to periodically reapply the trap, then the answer is simple—”
“Kill ’em,” Thane said softly.
Bria threw up her hands. “Thanks for stealing my thunder, Thane. But yeah. We just have to find the guy, and kill him. Problem solved.”
Kieran checked his watch. “Tell me what I’m looking for. I’ll post people to watch.” He moved toward the door.
I chewed my lip, remembering what the teen had said when I’d spoken to her in the government building. “He should be easy to spot. He has long frizzy white hair and white eyes.”
“Anything else?” Kieran asked.
I hesitated before shaking my head. That’s all I could remember. So far, that teen seemed to know more than anyone else about this situation. If anyone could direct me, it was her.
Unfortunately, the best way to get found out was to turn up at a large magical hub…and start asking damning questions.
17
Alexis
Later in the day, after going home and falling face-first into my bed for a much too brief nap, I summoned the will to take a shower. When a firm knock landed on the door, it was afternoon and I was standing in my bedroom, wrapped in a faded pink towel wet from my shower, staring out the window at the trees swaying softly in the billowing fog. Fatigue clung to me, muddying my thoughts and making me obscenely slow.
“Door,” Daisy shouted from her bedroom. She and Mordecai had kept the same schedule as me, but instead of visiting a warehouse in an empty part of town, they’d sat at home and worried. By the time I’d gotten home, they’d been too wiped out to do much besides go back to bed.
“I’m in a towel. You go get it,” I hollered, wondering why Frank didn’t announce who it was. Maybe he’d taken off. He had seemed awfully leery of Bria. Maybe he sensed she could slap him into a new body, which would make him confront his demise. It couldn’t be a nice thought, knowing that the only way to properly come back to the world of the living was in someone else’s previously discarded skin.
“You’re in a towel with your door open?” Mordecai asked disapprovingly.
“I was going to close it. Give me a break.”
“Your shower ended ten minutes ago,” he said.
“Yes, time keeper, thanks for the update.” I slammed the door.
“Jeez.” Daisy’s voice was muffled through the thin walls. “What crawled up her butt?”
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing with the Demigod’s mom,” Mordecai answered. “I think it is stressing her out.”
“Does she need to take it out on us?”
“Do you need to be so loud through the paper-thin walls?” I shouted.
Their voices cut off and I figured they were getting the door. I dropped my towel and pulled out some jeans and the nicest blouse I had, a scoop-neck with pastel splotches in a lovely deep purple. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Mordecai was right—the situation with Kieran’s mom was stressing me out. I’d only been on the job for a day, but I felt completely lost. The situation was much more complicated than I’d thought, and new facets of the problem kept cropping up. Valens clearly had a lot of pokers in the fire. Though we’d found plenty of evidence of him tampering with spirits, we were no closer to helping Kieran’s mom.
I felt like I was failing.
I hated failing. It really ruined my mood.
I grabbed my hairbrush from the dresser top and headed to the bathroom, only to hear another firm knock on the front door.
As I paused in the hall, Daisy and Mordecai each stared at me from their beds, their faces expressionless.
I gestured toward the front door with my brush. “Aren’t you going to get that?”
“If we wait long enough, they’ll probably go away,” Daisy said. Mordecai nodded.
I curled my brush hand under and propped it against my hip. “Do you two have short-term memory loss? Last night there was a knock on the door…and then they broke in.” I pointed at my face. “See this big purple bruise on my cheek? See this thing? It’s all fucked up. I thought an intruder was trying to kill me.” I made a circle with my finger over my temple. “That’s what happens with Kieran’s crew when you don’t open the door.”
“That was this morning,” Mordecai said, attempting to be helpful.
I held up my brush. “Do you want this up your ass?”
“Okay, let’s get real.” Daisy sat up laboriously. Her hair, in a loop at the top of her head, flopped around. “They broke in to suss us out. They won’t try that again until we have more training under our belts. You’re overreacting, which means something else is wrong.”
“She needs our help,” Mordecai said.
Daisy nodded, her hair loop waving. “I agree. She’s floundering.” Daisy clasped her fingers, her face the picture of professionalism, her pajamas swimming in angry unicorns. “What’s the plan of attack?”
“She has on that shirt she thinks is nice.” Mordecai squinted through the gloom of their bedroom, made cave-like by the tightly drawn shades. “She’s going somewhere upscale.”
I sighed, stalked forward, and ripped the shades open. Fog-filtered light illuminated the room. Both kids hissed and covered their eyes like vampires.
“I don’t need your help in anything but answering the door,” I said, stalking toward the bathroom. “And this blouse, for your information, is the nicest thing I own besides the suit.”
“When is that first paycheck coming?” I heard Mordecai ask. He was talking to Daisy. “She needs to go shopping.”
The firm knock turned into a hard rap.
“Get the door!” I yelled.
“Someone is very patient,” Daisy said, and I heard two feet thump onto the ground.
“Jack or Donovan would’ve just come in by now,” Mordecai said, his bed groaning. He was probably getting up, too.
“Yeah, but the others never bother to chase us out of the house,” Daisy said. “Maybe it’s not one of the Six.” She paused in the doorway of the bathroom. “Did you ever hear back from that detective in New York?”
I paused in brushing my hair. “Is this question on repeat? I didn’t leave a name or number. They can’t get a hold of me.”
“How about the mafia? Has anyone been following you? Hanging around?”
“Oh my God.” I pushed past her, cracking under pressure. These two could try the patience of a saint.
At the door, I flipped the lock with too much force, grabbed the knob with a white-knuckled grip, and ripped it open.
“All that, and she opens it herself,” Daisy muttered down the hall. “I could’ve stayed in bed.”
“We should’ve,” Mordecai said, and his bed groaned again.
That probably made two of us.
Zorn stood on the stoop, his expression flat and eyes sparkling with aggressive annoyance.
“I’m here for the girl,” he said without preamble. “I will be taking over part of her training.
I huffed out a humorless laugh. “Good. Run her ragged.” Without another word, I turned and headed back to the bathroom.
“Me?” Daisy asked, the confidence draining away from her posture. I frowned, pausing. It wasn’t like her to react like this when someone wanted to train her.
“Yes,” Zorn said. “Come on.”
“But…” Daisy’s large blue eyes widened. With her pale, porcelain face and dainty features, she looked more like a fragile doll in that moment than the little gremlin Bria had accused her of being. “Why me? I’m just along for the ride in all of this.”
“Not anymore. Let’s go.” Zorn’s tone was rough, his words clipped.
“But…” Daisy gave me a solemn-eyed stare.
“Since when are you wary about training?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“It’s Zorn,” she said, as though that was supposed to mean something.
“He’s not going to hurt you. Not any more than any of the others would. Kieran knows better.” I shooed her away. “Off ye git. Go learn something and quit annoying me.”
She turned toward her bedroom, presumably to get dres
sed rather than to hide under her covers.
“No,” Zorn barked, making her jump. “You’ll train in what you’re wearing.”
Her mouth dropped open, and red infused her cheeks. The spell had just broken. She was clearly intimidated by him, but with Daisy, that only lasted until something jogged her out of it.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said, her voice as hard as his. I smirked. That’s my girl. “I don’t have a bra on. Do you know how much it hurts to run with boobs?”
“Do you?” I asked her, and earned a glare.
“You need to be ready at all times,” Zorn said. I slipped into the bathroom and pulled out the blow dryer but didn’t plug it in. I wanted to hear this. Zorn had refused to train the kids up until now. I wanted to see what had changed, and if it was a problem that I’d have to deal with. “You’ll never know when you have to move. When your cover might be blown. Get used to running with no bra. Get used to wearing enough to bed that you can comfortably slip out of a window in the dead of night. Most importantly, get used to being comfortable in your skin, so that when the situation demands it, you won’t worry about little girl pajamas and the comfort of your family. You’ll only worry about the task at hand. Right now, that task is a hard lesson. Let’s go. Your real training starts now.”
I bit my lip, readying for Daisy to blow up, or maybe just call him a lunatic and stalk back to her room. She hadn’t signed up for anything. She didn’t owe him squat.
Instead, I heard her footsteps moving forward.
“Wait…” I abandoned the hair dryer and peeked my head into the hall, catching a glimpse of Daisy’s straight back and head held high as she reached the front door. “What?”
Zorn stepped out of the doorway. I got one glimpse of Bria crossing the grass toward the house before Daisy obstructed my view, leaving the house.
“Is that a good idea?” I asked, stepping into the hallway. “What even is this training? Who set it up?”
Zorn eyed me as Daisy walked by him. “Kieran approves.” He reached in, grabbed the handle of the door, and pulled it shut.
Anger simmered inside of me. Kieran approved? What the hell did he have to do with it?
