by Alicia Rades
Talia sat across from me, screaming like a banshee. Her face had gone paper white, and she pointed to something behind me. Grant scrambled away from where he'd been sitting, looking like he might've shit his pants. Nadine’s eyes went wide.
I whirled around and nearly dropped dead at what I saw. A woman in a black dress limped toward us through the shadows. Her face was pale as death, and there was a sickening gray tone to her skin. Her eyes stared forward without focusing on anything. At first, I thought it was some chick from the festival dressed as a zombie, until the moonlight crossed her face. I realized I recognized her from her obituary picture.
Holy shit! It was Emily, but this was no fucking ghost. She was here in the flesh.
How the hell was that possible?
I shot to my feet, my heart racing. "Stand back, everyone!"
I threw my arms out to push everyone behind me.
Emily limped forward. She moved her lips, but nothing came out. I'd seen Professor Warren reanimate animals in Necromancy Safety, but I'd never encountered a human corpse. To say it chilled me to the bone was an understatement.
Nadine grabbed my robes and peeked over my shoulder at Emily. Unlike my hands that were shaking fiercely, Nadine's held steady.
"Emily?" I asked the walking corpse.
She reacted by twitching her head at me. It moved unnaturally, like a creepy demon child from a horror movie. She was almost close enough to touch now, but I didn't want to freak her out—especially if I wanted answers. How was this happening? Was there a necromancer hiding in the trees laughing at us right now or something?
"Emily, what happened to you?" I asked. I didn't know why I was asking. If this was a necromancer's prank, she wouldn't be able to speak. But it was too much of a coincidence that we'd been trying to summon her spirit and her body showed up. Something deeper was happening here. The thing was... did I really want to stick around and figure it out?
Emily reached out for me. Two things happened at once. Emily's cold, dead fingers brushed against my robe, and it was like death itself had touched me. I felt the emptiness of death within my gut.
At the same time, Emily parted her lips. Black smoke began billowing out of her mouth. I'd never seen anything like it. All I knew was that it could only mean something bad. Like, black magic bad.
Nope!
We were out of here. To hell with answers.
“Debilito!” Grant cried. Green magic shot out of his hands and slammed into Emily’s chest. It was a simple defense spell meant to cripple your opponent.
Emily’s body crumbled to the ground, but that black smoke continued to billow out of her mouth.
"Run!" I shouted to my friends.
The four of us whirled around and started sprinting toward the cemetery gates. My heart pummeled against my rib cage. I didn't think I'd ever run so fast in my life.
We only made it a few gravestones down when I heard Gus screech. I took a few more paces before I realized Nadine had disappeared from my side. I spun back around and gasped.
Nadine had tripped over Gus and lay in the grass, groaning. Emily's corpse had risen from the ground and had gone straight for her. Nadine rolled over, and Emily reached out toward the silver star necklace Nadine always wore. She tried to say something again, but it was nothing more than a chilling moan.
"Nad, get up!" I shouted as I raced back toward her.
But Nadine hardly needed my warning. She lifted her foot and slammed it into Emily's gut. Talia and Grant gasped in unison as Emily went stumbling back. I reached Nadine and grabbed her under the shoulders to drag her to her feet.
Nadine held on to me, but she didn't move. She inhaled several breaths and stared at the live corpse like it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen.
“Iactus!” I screamed. My purple magic sent Emily flying back a few feet, but it barely fazed her.
"Nad, come on." I tugged at her.
I was about to toss her pretty little ass over my shoulder to get her out of there, but I didn't act in time. Emily recovered and lunged toward Nadine again.
Nadine screamed and curled into me. I wrapped my arms tightly around her. I expected Emily's body to slam into both of us, but she didn't reach us before a sleek black cat as dark as midnight sprinted into view. It hurdled over the nearest gravestone and hissed as it jumped through the air. The cat's claws sank into the flesh on Emily's face.
Nadine's eyes went wide, but we didn't have time to sit around questioning it. I grabbed her around the waist and tossed her over my shoulder.
"Let's go!" I demanded.
Talia and Grant were holding each other, and Gus had scurried on ahead. They both wore a deer-in-the-headlights expression, but they quickly snapped to attention when I hurried past them.
"Lucas!" Nadine protested, slapping me on the back. "Lucas, we have to go back!"
"Screw that!" I cried. We were almost to the front gates now, and there was no way I was going back to face that dark zombie. Sure, she moved slowly, but there was something terrifying about her. Whatever this was was way out of our paygrade.
"Lucas, you don't understand," she cried, kicking her feet.
We passed through the front gates, and I set Nadine on solid ground. I noticed she'd lost her costume hat at some point.
She brushed the hair out of her eyes. "We have to go back for—"
“We don’t have to go back for anything,” I stated firmly. “Whatever that was wasn’t just some everyday reanimant. There was something dark.”
“Necromancy gone wrong?” Talia asked curiously. Gus approached her, and she bent down to pick him up.
Grant pulled the gates to the cemetery shut and whispered an incantation to lock them.
“I’m not sure.” My heart continued racing as I stepped up to the gate and wrapped my hands around the bars. My pulse slowed as I looked over the cemetery. I didn’t see the zombie anywhere.
“Lucas,” Nadine pressed.
I whirled around and pressed my fingers to my eyes. Usually, her curiosity turned me on, but right now, it was downright irritating. “I don’t care what you want to go back for. Want to see if she’s really dead? Want to know what that black smoke was coming out of her mouth? Too bad.”
Nadine placed her hand on her hip and looked at me with a pissed expression. She raised an eyebrow. “You done? I was going to say, we have to go back for the cat. She saved us.”
“Are you kidding me?” I balked. “That cat can clearly take care of itself—”
The rattling of the cemetery gates startled all four of us. Emily had returned from seemingly out of nowhere, and she was violently shaking the cemetery gates. Her features twisted into rage, and she moaned at us like she was some sort of rabid animal trying to escape.
The four of us took a collective step back.
“She can’t get to us,” Talia stated, though her voice shook.
Grant reached for Talia and stepped in front of her protectively. “Who knows? Our stunning spells didn’t work.”
“Well, we have to do something!” Talia insisted.
“We trapped it,” Grant pointed out. “What more can we do?”
Nadine huffed, then stomped over to the side of the road. She grabbed a thick stick and started toward the zombie.
“Hold up.” I grabbed for the stick before she could get too far. I didn’t want her anywhere near that thing. “I’ll do it.”
Nadine stepped back. “Be my guest.”
I hesitated as I walked up to the corpse. She continued to rattle the gates like a madwoman. My stomach felt hollow as I considered what I was about it do. But it wasn’t like she was alive. I wasn’t going to hurt her.
I flexed my fingers around the stick, testing how it felt in my hand.
“Grant?” I cocked my head at him, though I kept my eyes on the raging zombie.
He stepped forward. He kept his voice steady, and I guessed it was for Talia’s benefit. “What do you need, man?”
“A little help with t
he validus incantation,” I told him. “I can’t do it myself.”
“I’ve got you.” Grant wrapped his hands around the stick with me.
“Validus,” we spoke together.
The stick glowed purple and green as we pooled our magic to make it stronger. It felt like a steel rod in my hands, and I could feel the power emanating from it.
“On three?” I asked.
Grant and I stepped closer to the corpse.
“One…” he said.
“Two…” I added.
“Three!” we cried together.
We lifted the stick and aimed it between her eyes.
“Sorry,” I whispered to her.
Grant and I slammed the end of our enchanted stick straight forward through the bars. It connected with Emily’s face so hard that it snapped her head back, and her moaning ceased instantly. Her eyes rolled back into her skull, and she collapsed onto the ground.
I thought that was the end of it, until her back arched instantly. The sound of bones snapping met my ears, and black smoke erupted out of her eyes, mouth, and ears. It swirled into a ball above her head, and a high-pitched shriek that wasn’t quite human echoed across the cemetery.
“Get back!” I screamed, my heart racing. The four of us stumbled down the road, but we couldn’t take our eyes off the strange phenomenon happening in front of us.
Then all at once, the smoke dissipated, and the shrieking stopped. I gasped for breath as my heart rate slowed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Grant said.
“Wait.” Nadine grabbed Grant’s arm to stop him. “We can’t just leave her here.”
“Well, we can’t touch her, either!” I pointed out. “We don’t know what that was.”
“Then we need to tell someone,” she insisted.
“Yeah, let’s freak everyone out,” Grant said sarcastically.
She frowned. “Someone has to take care of this.”
She had a point.
“Headmistress Verla’s house is just ahead,” Talia said. “We can tell her.”
I glanced to each of them, and they all looked in agreement. “Okay.”
Headmistress Verla’s house was tucked back in the trees. It was pretty elaborate for just one person, with two stories, a three-car garage, and a balcony at the top of the gothic turret. Verla owned like, twenty acres out here at the edge of town, but she was headmistress. She was loaded.
The house was dark when we stepped up to the front door. There was a chill in the air that was even more apparent here in the trees. Two huge door knockers hung from the black double doors. They were shaped as skulls and kind of creepy.
“She’s probably not home,” I said, like the pessimistic guy I was. “I bet she’s at the festival.”
Nadine rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t hurt to check.”
She stepped forward and grabbed the door knocker shaped like a bone. She slammed it hard against the door.
Silence.
I glanced around the forest, as if searching for any signs that the corpse would reappear.
Nadine knocked again, but no one came to the door.
“Maybe we should go,” Talia suggested, eyeing the trees. “There are lots of people in town we can tell.”
“Yeah,” Grant agreed. He seemed eager to get out of here.
Nadine turned from the door. “Okay, let’s go.”
The four of us stepped off the porch, but the sound of a door swinging open caught our attention. We turned around in unison.
Headmistress Verla stood in the doorway, looking positively surprised to see us there. She wasn’t wearing a costume, just a black cardigan she pulled around herself. Her eyes fell on Nadine. “What are you doing here?”
Nadine cleared her throat and spoke like this was an everyday thing. “There’s a zombie in the cemetery. We thought you should know.”
Headmistress Verla’s eyes went wide.
“I think we killed it,” Nadine added. “But the corpse is lying by the entrance, and we didn’t want to touch it.”
Verla’s face paled. “Necromancy?”
I stepped forward. “It was something different. Something… dark. Black smoke came out of the corpse’s mouth.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing more than a harmless Halloween prank. I’ll handle this.” But there was something akin to recognition in her eyes, like she knew there was more to what we’d just encountered than that. It was like she recognized the magic we spoke of, but couldn’t tell us because we were students.
I realized then what had made me uneasy about Emily’s grave. The plot was too fresh. Someone had intentionally grave robbed her and raised her tonight.
The question was who, why, and how the hell were we getting those answers?
Chapter 16
Nadine
The events of Halloween had me shook. I didn’t know what to make of what we’d seen.
“Verla’s probably right,” Talia said as we headed back to our dorm after midnight. Grant and Lucas had walked us back to school, and we split up at the top of the stairs. “It was just a harmless prank... right?”
“Yeah, but who would do that—?”
Talia raised an eyebrow.
“Chloe!” I realized.
Talia shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
My lips pressed into a thin line. “She would find a necromancer to freak us out.”
“Well, there you go,” Talia said. “Mystery solved—”
Talia cut off when Gus jumped out of her arms. He ran down the hallway toward a black cat that sat just outside our door. He crept toward it and sniffed it curiously. The black cat sniffed him back and started purring.
“Um, Talia?” I said as we got closer. I couldn’t take my eyes off the cat—or rather, kitten. It looked only a couple months old. It had a short black coat, and there were no unique markings on it. But there was something about those piercing green eyes. “Is that the cat from the cemetery?”
She took a cautious step forward. “I think it is.”
“What’s it doing here?” I asked. It had to be more than coincidence. There was something about this cat that left me enamored. I had the strangest feeling the cat felt the same connection with me.
It looked up at me, then walked over and started rubbing itself against my leg. My heart melted, and I bent down to pet it. A warm sense of peace settled over me. “She’s so sweet.”
Talia eyed me curiously. “Nadine, can you describe to me what you feel?”
I stroked the kitten’s fur. “I don’t know.”
I couldn’t put it into words. There was a sense of familiarity there that didn’t make any logical sense. I wanted to dress her up in little aprons and decorate sugar cookies with her. I could practically taste the dough melting in my mouth when I touched her. And there was this scent to her that made my mouth water—like the delicious scent of baking bread. I wanted to snuggle her tight and never let her go.
And then it hit me. I gasped and threw my hand over my mouth. Talia smiled from above me, like she already knew.
I let out a shaky breath and dropped my hand. “Talia, could this cat be reincarnated?”
“I think you already know,” she replied softly.
Tears pricked at my eyes. “Is this cat my mom?”
Talia shrugged, but she looked happy for me. “Only you can tell.”
“But… how do I know?” I asked.
“You just… feel it,” she said. “Like when I first met Gus, he came to me with a chickadee in his mouth.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“My grandpa Jimmy was a birdwatcher,” she told me. “He taught me bird calls, and he called me Little Chickadee. I just knew.”
I couldn’t explain it, but something deep within my soul knew this cat was my mother. I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. She nuzzled against me, and my entire body felt warm with love. “I’m keeping her.”
Talia and I entered the room, and I sat on my bed and str
oked the kitten. “Does she remember me?”
“Not quite in the same way,” Talia explained as she began to strip off her costume. “It’s the same soul, but she’s still a cat. She’ll have a strong connection with you that spans lifetimes, but you’ll create new memories with her.”
“A strong connection?” I questioned.
“Why do you think she protected you in the cemetery?” Talia pointed out. “And that you wanted to go back for her? It’s probably how she found our dorm room, too. Reincarnated cats are different from regular cats. They have a high sense of intuition that will draw them to their loved ones, and they’ll act to protect them.”
I pressed my nose into the kitten’s fur, inhaling the sweet scent that reminded me of my mom. A tear fell from my eyes and soaked into her fur. For a moment, all my fatigue washed away, and I knew without a doubt that my mom had returned. She was here to take care of me again.
I sniffled. “I guess that’s why the séance didn’t take. My parents souls must’ve been reincarnating or something.”
Talia looked thoughtful as she placed her costume on the hanger. “That might explain it.”
The kitten began kneading my stomach. I swooned. “Aww… so, what do I name her? Do I name her after my mom?”
Talia pulled an oversized t-shirt over her head. “It’s customary to give them a new name. It differentiates this life from their last.”
“Mm…” I mused. “Then I think I’ll call her… Isa.”
Talia sat on her bed and stroked Gus. “Isa? That’s pretty.”
“It’s my mom’s middle name,” I told her. I squeezed Isa tight to my chest. “I’m so happy to have her back.”
Isa turned out to be a godsend over the next week. My symptoms had flared so bad I couldn’t get out of bed and ended up missing a few days of class. She kept me company while I waited for the pain to settle.
By Friday, I was feeling better. I went to Demonology in the morning, then headed to Introduction to Tarot after an early lunch. I noticed Chloe walking my way. I slowed my steps so I wouldn’t run into her, but she did the same thing. We ended up at the classroom door at the same time. Chloe stepped in front of it so I couldn’t pass and placed a hand on her hip. At my feet, Isa hissed.