Victoria Cage Necromancer: The First Three Books (Victoria Cage Necromancer Omnibus Book 1)

by Eli Constant

  But, still. I take Terrance seriously. I take his instinct seriously. So, I’ll call out with my voice, with my gift, with the darkness inside of me that seeks the dead, and I’ll find out for sure—if this family truly died by accident, or if something more nefarious had a hand.

  I start by using distilled water and clearing away the saltwater that’s dried on the floor. I pour it, hot and steaming, and watch the stream find its way to the drain in the center of the room. Then I sit on the damp floor and lean beneath the table to scrub away the blood runes that have helped the salt ward any spirits from entering the bodies. Of course, this means a wraith could possess the vessel, but I feel no such blackness in the Victorian right now. No, everything is still and at peace.

  Which gives me pause over Terrance for only a millisecond, and then I move forward with what I am doing. Just because I cannot feel a spirit does not mean there is nothing here in this house, in this room, with me. I’d learned that lesson a long, long time ago. The dead can hide, even from me, if they want.

  I’m glad the children are finished and in storage when I do what I must next. I drain the father’s body of blood. I do not do it as a mortician would, but as a shaman-taught necromancer. I use my scalpel to carve blood-letting symbols into the skin of his wrists. This is a new skill to me, learned from my studies with Liam. Who seems to know… so much about everything. All the bump-in-the-night things at least.

  I call, my power whispering across the room, to the crimson life-force that is still somehow warm to the touch of my gift. I try to keep my shields up. I try not to feel the body’s death.

  At first, the blood is only a trickle. I wonder if the heat from the fire has done that—caused the blood to get so hot that the water began to evaporate, the proteins to denature, the fat to break down. I push my power forward, asking the blood to return, sending almost the ghost of it back into itself—the way I would with a spirit and a body.

  Then it hits me.

  The blood runs free. It flows like a death river, down to pool beneath the table that the body lays across. It begins to rain down the sides in a waterfall of viscous garnet. It is a horror movie. And I do not shrink away, so ruined am I by shadows.

  I feel the burning. I feel the way the fire reaches out to lick my skin.

  I am choking on smoke.

  I am suffocating in a room I cannot leave.

  I am dying, hugging my children to me.

  My children are dying.

  With every ounce of my will, I drag myself away from the blood memory. I need to focus on the task. Even when I am back, in the present, in my uncharred body, I can smell smoke. But I must do this. I must find out the truth.

  I’d promised myself that I would never do what I am about to do again.

  I’d promised myself.

  I am about to yank a spirit to me. I am about to force it with my will to return. Because the spirits have not yet presented themselves in any way, have not yet made me aware that they still exist on this plane, it is possible that they are all in the ether. I pray none of them are in the anti-ether. That is a place that hurts to touch.

  Closing my eyes, I lift my hands out in front of me and I feel for that tendril of coldness that is where the ether and anti-ether converge. It is something Liam has recently taught me. The blood that smells like metal around me pushes my power further. I could have taken it another step, pricked my own finger and used the letting of my essence send my gift into overdrive, but I am still learning. Still so much to learn. And Liam says history is littered with those with the blood gift going mad.

  I push my hands together as if I am praying and I point my fingers forward, pushing into that space that feels like ice gone rubber. I push and push against the frigid slickness and I feel the spine-tingling thrum of a million souls rushing about in endless nothingness. I focus on the ether. I focus on the lightness I feel, not the tar that reaches out like living smoke to touch me.

  I think of the family. I think of their belongings, nothing but ash now. I think of the children.

  I think of the fire.

  No one responds to me.

  According to Liam, there are places beyond the ether and anti-ether. Those are the places of true tranquility or damnation. I wonder if the father is within one of those places, moved on past the waiting places.

  I pull myself back from the ether. I open my eyes, and when I glance down at my hands, I see my fingers have turned blue with the cold, though it is quite warm in the embalming room at the moment.

  “Well, you’re not giving me any answers, are you?” I frown and set about cleaning the blood with more hot water.

  As I pour neutralizing cleaner onto the floor, a coolness at my back announces that I’m no longer alone. Something has answered me, after all. But nothing came out of the ether or anti-ether. I had not used my power to yank a soul unwilling forth to the land of the living.

  No, this spirit had never moved onto the next place. It had stayed. I looked at the father’s body, waiting for it to come alive with the essence of what once flowed through its form. But it does not move. A scuffling behind me has me turning towards the narrower mobile table where the mother’s body is laying.

  The fingers are twitching slightly, her burnt nails scratching across the metal. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Not quite as bad as nails on a chalkboard, but still my ears protest.

  “Mmmmm. Mmmmm.” The body is trying to move its mouth. Or, rather, the spirit inside of it is. “Mmmmm.” The lips are dried from the fire, the jaw stiff from even the short span of disuse since dying.

  I grab a small cup and walk over to the clean sink. I fill it with cool liquid and then walk over to the body and dribble it across the mouth, hoping it will ease the burden of re-animation so that she can speak.

  Her eyes are still closed, but as I continue to sprinkle the water, they flash open. It is unsettling, but I control myself. I don’t flinch. I don’t want to scare the spirit away.

  “Hello?” I question, watching the half-blackened face with its too-pale, slightly sunken eyes roll about as if half-detached from the sockets. “Are you…” I hesitate and set the cup down so I can move slightly over and rifle through my copy of the paperwork from the body delivery. “Are you Marissa?”

  I wait for some show of recognition. Then, slowly as if the body is the tin man and I have just provided oil instead of water, the head shakes back and forth. I frown, puzzled. “Who are you then?”

  “Dooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm—iiii” The voice cannot finish speaking the name, but it is enough.

  “Dominique?” I turn the page, glancing at the photograph of the family. The father is stood tall and proud behind the beautiful raven-haired mother who is seated. He has broad shoulders and a neatly-trimmed dark goatee. His suit is an older style, yet well-made. The curly-haired children are both sat upon their mother’s knees wearing white shirts with lace collars, which feels very old-world, yet suits them and calls attention to the gorgeous and deep honey-glow of their skin. They are all smiling like the world is a good and wonderful place. It had to have been an accident.

  The world could not be so cruel as to take away those smiles maliciously.

  “Are you Dominique?” I repeat, a little louder and staring at the vessel.

  Now, ever so slowly, the head nods.

  I want to ask him why he’d gone into his wife’s body, instead of his own, but I can’t waste precious time. He may not hold on for long, inside such a damaged vessel. I think about expelling him, forcing him into his non-corporeal form, but again, I am afraid I will lose him and lose this chance to get answers.

  “Dominique, I need to know. Was the fire an accident? Did it just happen? Or did you see someone…maybe someone going into or out of the restaurant downstairs?” It’s too many questions at once, and I know that. I should keep it simple. He’s not young, not clear-headed, and he’s died traumatically. Neither of those things made for a well-functioning spirit.

  Marissa’s forehead
scrunches a little and her mouth struggles to move once again. No… not Marissa’s, the vessel’s body, which is now containing her husband. I can only make out one word. One heart-stopping word when he finally exhales something understandable between all the groans and murmurs.

  “Nooooooooooooo.”

  My voice is thick with emotion when I speak again, because this is the opposite of what I wanted to hear. I wanted Terrance to be wrong, for his cop instinct to just be off on this one. “How do you know?” I feel a tear escaping my left eye, but I ignore it. Even as it races down my cheek and pools at the corner of my lips, I ignore it.

  Dominique tries to answer, but the body convulses around him. There’s too much damage, too much pain, for his spirit to hang on. “Please, Dominique, how do you know it wasn’t an accident?”

  With what I imagine is a mighty, mighty force of will, he makes his once-wife’s mouth move again. “Naiiiilllssssssss.”

  With that final utterance, a rush of cold pushes out of the body and races towards me and through me. Instantly, my skin sprouts goose pimples and I shiver violently. People joke about someone walking over their grave. But it’s really someone already-dead walking through you. That’s the sensation you’re feeling. It has nothing to do with the future, and everything to do with the ever-present now.

  I’ve no idea what nails could mean. But it has to be important. It has to be, or else why would the spirit use his final ounce of strength to let me know it?

  I do not want to cremate the father and mother, but that is the plan and will likely be the case. They have already burned enough. The thought of subjecting the bodies to more fire cuts me to my core.

  I bathe the mother and father, though there will be no identification of who they were. The bodies will not be embalmed. Not for cremation. I make sure the bodies bear no jewelry or other artifice. I manage to transfer the bodies each to their own caskets—the kind specially made for burning—and then I roll them on their carts to the holding room, so that the family can be together again one more time.

  When I am done, I dig my phone out from my pocket and take a deep breath. Terrance wasn’t going to like this any more than I did, but he’d been right. I might not know much yet about why the family died, but I knew that. He was right. Spirits don’t lie. I won’t say never. But generally, they don’t lie.

  Terrance picks up on the first ring. “Can I come by the station?” I rush out before he can say anything.

  “Why. What’s going on? You got information for me?” Terrance’s voice is suspicious and a little breathy, which seems odd.

  “Yeah, but let’s talk in person.”

  He tries to say something else, but I hang up. He does it to me quite often. A little payback might do him good.

  Chapter Three

  I hate going to the station and dealing with Ms. ‘Giant Chip on her Shoulder’ Andrea. She’s like someone made a little girl, but forgot all the sugar and everything nice and, instead, just settled for all the damn spice they could find. And not even good spice either. Not… like… clove and cinnamon and ginger. No.

  She’s a bucketful of nothing but mustard seed and white pepper. I mean, I like white pepper sometimes, but it also smells distinctly like feet. So, now she’s a grownup stinky sweat sock.

  “Hi Andrea,” I say cheerily as I walk through the station doors and see her behind the receptionist desk a few feet away.

  “Ms. Cage.” She stresses the ‘miss’. She got engaged a few weeks ago, after only a few months of dating the guy. If I thought she was intolerable before some poor unsuspecting sap had parked a diamond on her finger, then I’d been sorely mistaken. Now it was ‘did I tell you I’m engaged’ and ‘look at the size of the ring Scotty bought me’. My favorite, though, was ‘how old are you, Ms. Cage? Any marriage prospects? Time’s ticking you know. I’m only twenty-four’.

  To which I normally replied as politely as I could muster ‘no, no plans for marriage. It’s a personal choice’. Then I’d bite my tongue when she’d, less politely, respond with a final jab. ‘Well, some women just aren’t meant for it’.

  No. It has nothing to do with ‘meant to be’. Some women just don’t want to get married dammit. And there’s nothing freaking wrong with that.

  I shut my inner voice up when she reminds me of Kyle’s promise ring, and the little flutter in my stomach its discovery had caused. Sure, you have no desire to get hitched, idiot.

  “Is the Chief expecting you today?” She asks snidely, moving papers around in a very obvious attempt to show her ring off to the greatest effect. At one point, she stops moving her hand, only to twitch the ring on her finger so it catches light. I’ve seen it. Been there. Done that.

  “Your ring’s looking especially… erhm… shiny today.”

  “Thanks,” she perks up immediately, standing and putting her hands on her hips now. “Scotty had it cleaned for me. He’s such a doll.”

  “It needed cleaning after a few weeks? What have you been doing?” I smirk at my joke, thinking I’m just the funniest damn person in the world.

  Instantly, I realize trying to use humor with a humorless toad is a mistake.

  “Very funny. Can’t you just have one nice conversation with a normal person?” She says ‘normal’ like I’m the exact opposite. Little does she know, she’s spot the hell on.

  “Sorry, I forget you have the sense of humor of a big ass rock, Andrea. That is to say. The absence of humor.” I say it with a smile on my face.

  Her mouth gapes open, like she’s surprised I’ve been so out-right rude. Obviously, she doesn’t know me very well—aside from the obvious. And, I mean, everyone knows I’m not normal, even if they can’t put a finger on what makes me abnormal.

  “If the Chief’s expecting you, he’s out back running some laps. Maybe you can join him. Looks like someone’s been attacking the Chinese food again.” She glances down at my midsection which, admittedly, doesn’t look the best in the baby blue tank I’m wearing under my worn black leather jacket. I’d pulled the coat out from the back of my closet recently. It was always with me, in a way. It used to be Adam’s.

  “Well, Kyle’s such an absolute beast in the sack. It helps to have a little padding so I come out the other side only a little scathed.” My cheeks are still hot from blushing at her remark on my weight, but now I see her face scrunch up at the reminder that I’m dating a guy who’s taller, sexier, and stronger than her pharmaceuticals salesman fiancé Scotty—who looks like someone spliced Dreyfus and Martin Short genes.

  Don’t get me wrong, Richard Dreyfus is about as sexy as they come. And I had a hell of a crush on Martin Short when I was a kid. I mean, they’re dead now—before the third world war—but a girl can dream through movie re-runs. Anyways, the point is, put the two together? Not so attractive.

  “Whatever,” she mutters, turning away from me and bending over. In doing so, she cracks her elbow against her desk. She yelps in pain, and I can’t help myself.

  “Gosh, I guess you do have a funny bone in your body after all.” With that, I turn tail and walk swiftly out of the station before she can make intelligible words instead of just sputtering half-formed expletives.

  ***

  I find Terrance in jogging shorts and a police academy shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He’s running like his life depends on it, pouring sweat that’s made the grey top look nearly black. He’s got his lips curled back grimacing, tired from the effort of pushing his body.

  In the past few months, he’s thrown himself into exercise. And yoga, which I still find hilarious. But he needed something—to relieve himself of some of the tension of the job. And, hell, a cop’s wife can only do that job so often. A girl’s got to recharge.

  “Terrance!” I yell out, breaking into a slow jog to catch up with him. He’s just rounded the curve for another lap. He’s not far, but I can see the white wires hanging from his ears. Music, likely loud and drowning out the world.

  I push myself harder to catch up, and b
y the time I hit him on the shoulder to get his attention, I have to stop cold turkey and bend over to nurse my side and catch my breath. “Holy hell, Terrance. I’d no idea you could move that fast. I mean, shit. You look like a body builder. You’re not supposed to run like that too.”

  He yanks the buds from his ears and lets them fall lazily against his damp shirt. “I ran track in high school. I’ve always been quick.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.” I give in and fall to sit on the rubberized padding of the track. “I mean, I run, but not like that. Christ.” I lay back dramatically on the track and breathe quickly.

  “Slow down the breathing, Tori.” He plops down beside me, stretching his long legs out and setting his hands on the ground behind him to prop himself up. “So,” he pulls a water bottle from a holster on his belt I hadn’t noticed, “you didn’t want to tell me on the phone. I’m guessing… that’s not good.” He takes a swallow of water and then splashes some on his head. Droplets rogue away from the stream and hit my face. I wipe them away, not wanting to speak. “Tori?” Terrance questions, capping his bottle.

  “Yeah, all right.” I sit up, going criss-cross apple sauce. “This isn’t what I wanted to tell you, but I think you were right. I don’t think it was an accident.”

  He takes a deep breath and then hangs his head for a moment before looking back at me with his piercing navy blue eyes. They are especially bright right now, like an ocean before a storm. The kind of northeaster that drowns ships and crews.

  “Tell me everything,” he closes his eyes as he says it.

  So I do. I tell him everything, even how I’d reached into the ether and tried to call the spirit originally, thinking it had moved on. I hold nothing back. There’s no reason to anymore. If Terrance had wanted to turn me in, he would have a long time ago. If I burn, he won’t be the reason.

  He only murmurs one word while I’m speaking. ‘Nails’. He sounds confused, curious. I’d nodded at him, though I don’t think he saw me, and continued talking.