Grave Promise (How To Be A Necromancer Book 1)

by D. D. Miers

  "Someone's been living here," I said, hushed, like I thought someone might sit up from the sleeping bag at any moment.

  "Could just be squatters," Ethan said. "It might not be our guy. Any sign of the candle?"

  I shook my head, frowning.

  "It feels like I'm standing right on top of it," I told him. "The sensation is the same in every direction."

  Curious, I went to investigate the books next to the sleeping bag. As soon as I saw the titles, I waved Ethan over.

  "That’s Society of the Dead, the Grimorium Verum and Kardec's Spirit's Book," I said and pointed them out. "These are texts on necromancy and black magic. My aunt has some of these. Jesus, is that Kieckhefer's Forbidden Rites? My aunt has a collector's copy of that. She wouldn't even let me touch it, the stuff in that is so nasty. This copy is probably even older than hers!"

  “And look at this.”

  I followed his nose to a small altar hidden in a heavily shadowed corner. I might not have spotted it at all if it weren’t for Ethan. The buzzing sensation came from it even more strongly. The altar, a small wooden table with a cloth draped over it, had two normal tea lights in each corner and a small copper dish in the center containing what looked like a small black ball. As I touched it, the buzzing jumped to new, skin-tingling heights. I realized it was wax. Wax drippings from the candle.

  “This resembles tracking magic,” I said, carefully pocketing the little ball of wax and disassembling the altar. The buzzing died down at once. “I recognize it from Aunt Persephona’s books. They were using it to find the candle. This kind of spell works by imitating the magical signature of whatever it’s searching for and amplifying it. Which is why my connection to it led us here.”

  "So then this is our guy," Ethan said, sounding puzzled. "Can't say I was expecting our enemy to be a hobo."

  He turned away, snuffling, and proceeded to the large doors across the room.

  "Me either," I agreed, picking up one of the books to page through it. "There's got to be something else going on here. Maybe he—"

  I cut myself off as something fluttered out of one of the books. I squinted through the gloom as it landed at my feet, bending to pick up a worn Polaroid. It was a family photograph of a handsome, smiling couple standing in front of a modest but pleasant house, their children gathered around them, an older girl, a baby in the mother's arms, and a dark-haired younger boy. He was young, maybe ten years old, and he was not happy to be there. A big black Labrador sat at his feet, its tail a blur. Something so idyllic looked incredibly out of place tucked between the pages of a book on necromantic rituals. Something terrible had happened to that family. I just knew it.

  "Vexa!"

  I glanced up at Ethan's urgent call and saw he had pushed the doors to the next room open.

  "You want to come see this."

  The heavy odor of death sifted toward me as I approached the doors and I quickly realized why. The room was large and square, probably once some kind of formal dining room. Diffused light through the tall windows illuminated the mutilated bodies of seven crows, arranged around the edges of a circle painstakingly laid out in what could be a mixture of ash and blood.

  Why hadn’t I smelled it earlier? Sure, there were small fragments when I first entered the house, but something of this magnitude should’ve been on my radar. Perhaps there was magic inhibiting me?

  “Vexa?” Ethan’s wolf form stood across from me, his large, furry head tilted in concern.

  “Sorry.” I stepped around carefully, studying the scene beneath my feet.

  I recognized some of the symbols that made up the complex geometric shape of the circle from Aunt Persephona's books. Someone had been working a ritual here, and a dark one from what I could tell. I shivered at the implications of what I saw, though I didn't know enough to tell what it was for.

  On a paper dropped near the door, someone had drawn a half-finished sketch of the circle and I picked it up, squinting at the notes written in barely legible spidery handwriting.

  "Virgil's seal," I read, struggling to pick out letters. "Binding, unbinding? Unstable reaction . . . Why were they taking notes on their own ritual?"

  "Hell if I know," Ethan replied. "But this place gives me the willies. Let's get out of here."

  "Hang on," I said. "I want to take those books with us. They might give us an idea of whatever this person is planning."

  There was an empty bag near the books, presumably the one this person had carried them in. I stuffed them back into it quickly, glancing at the titles as I went. I paused, seeing one out of place.

  "Forgotten Royalty," I read. "Banished and disgraced aristocrats of medieval Europe—"

  "Hurry up," Ethan said, discomfort coming from him in waves. "I don't like it here."

  "All right, all right. Let's go." I hurried after him as he loped away, hurrying to the door. I was glad to leave the eerie place behind, though a bit uncomfortable turning my back on it.

  I yawned as we reached the yard and I climbed onto Ethan again.

  "So what now?" I asked, as he started to pace away. "The candle wasn’t there, but maybe there were more clues about who’s responsible for this. Maybe we should have checked the basement."

  "Like hell," Ethan said, and his fur stood on end. "Pro tip: Don't go poking around in the basements of places where people have been doing black magic. Even if they didn't put something in there themselves, that kind of magic attracts things. Things I'm not interested in tangling with by myself.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “You got anything on that radar of yours now that the decoy is gone?” he asked, nosing his way through the tall grass as we headed back to the road.

  I turned my head, searching, but couldn't find anything.

  "Maybe it's too far away," I said. "Or they have it hidden."

  "Possible," Ethan said, and I held on tighter as he ran back to town. "Any chance you can work that tracking spell they were using?"

  "I don't know how," I admitted, ruefully. "I barely know enough to recognize one. Like I said, the only training I've had is how not to use my powers."

  "Seems kind of frustrating," Ethan said. "Didn't you ever want to try and learn anyway?"

  "Keeping it hidden was always a pretty reasonable decision to me," I said. "It chafed when I was little and I wanted to raise an army of zombie squirrels to torment the obnoxious kids from school, but there was an appeal in having a magical secret, too. And Aunt Persephona made sure I was completely aware of the potential consequences of revealing myself. Our kind of magic isn't exactly well received by the general public."

  "I suppose it is pretty divisive," Ethan said with a chuckle. "I sure didn't expect a necromancer to be as friendly and helpful as you've been. Or as cute."

  "Cute?" I repeated, feeling my face heat.

  "You know," Ethan replied, and his heavy shoulders rolled beneath me in a shrug. "You imagine a necromancer, you kind of imagine a creepy old wizard dude."

  "Oh," I said. "So you're saying I'm only cute for a necromancer?"

  "Now, I didn't say—"

  "Would you rather there was a creepy old wizard dude riding you right now?" I wiggled suggestively and Ethan stumbled, missing a step.

  "All right," he said, embarrassed. "You're cute, okay? Not just for a necromancer. You're cute!"

  "Damn right I am," I said, satisfied.

  "I'm going to make a small detour," Ethan said, eager to change the subject. "I don't think I can get you home without being spotted, and I don't want to spend the rest of the day being hunted by animal control. My place isn't far from here. I can grab a change of clothes and drive you back."

  He kept to the outskirts, eventually jumping the back fence of a decidedly shoddy apartment complex.

  "It's not much to look at," Ethan said, sounding a little self-conscious as we slunk around the back of the plain, dilapidated building. I heard the sound of glass breaking somewhere and two people arguing loudly. "But it's cheap, and no one
pays too much attention to what I'm doing. Which is important for someone with my, uh, condition."

  I got off his back as he led me up a dangerous-looking fire escape to a room on the third floor. The studio itself was as rundown as the building and sparsely appointed. A cheap sofa, probably a curb-side salvage, sat in the middle of the room. Judging by the blanket crumpled at one end and the empty paper plate forgotten on the cardboard box acting as a coffee table, the couch served as both a bed and a dining table. Ethan trotted past me and with a shake changed back. I averted my eyes, both to preserve his modesty and because watching his bones shift back into place unsettled me.

  "Did you just move in?" I asked, concerned as, now human-shaped again, he dug in a box near the far wall.

  "Uh, no, I've been here about a year," Ethan said, not looking at me. "I've just found it's better not to get too settled, you know? Travel light. Never know when you'll need to skip town."

  He kept his tone upbeat but even without the mind-reading connection, I knew it was forced.

  "Plus, between the library and my day job, I stay real busy," he went on. "I'm barely even here. I'm gonna go get changed. You can make yourself at home."

  He hurried off to the bathroom with a fistful of clothing, and after standing around awkwardly for a moment, I sat down on the end of the couch. I couldn't make this sad, bare little room fit with the cheerful, laid-back, friendly man I'd spent most of the day with.

  I double-checked the time on my watch. Past noon. Playing hot-and-cold to find the candle had taken a while, and inside the old house, time had slipped by strangely in fits and starts.

  "Do you want to get something to eat before you take me back home?" I asked, realizing I'd skipped breakfast. Between that and my phenomenally bad night's sleep, I was exhausted.

  "Sure thing," he called back, muffled through the bathroom door. "You like pizza? I know a great place."

  Scanning my phone, I realized I'd missed several calls from my parents and one from my aunt. I had a feeling I knew what they were about. I hit the return call button for my aunt first.

  "Did you just wake up?" Aunt Persephona asked. "I know you said those painkillers would knock you out, but it's half past two!"

  "No, I've been out of the house since before sunrise," I told her, rubbing at my eyes. "I didn't even take the painkillers, and I feel like death warmed over. But we might have learned some things about whoever took the candle."

  "We?"

  I remembered Persephona hadn't met Ethan and scrambled for a way to explain him. "Well, uh, I met a guy?"

  "When? This morning?"

  "When I got hit by the car, actually. He's an EMT."

  "And he's helping you search for the candle? How much did you tell him?"

  "Nothing he didn't already know, so relax. He's already in on the secret. He's a werewolf."

  "A were—Vexatious Tzarnavaras! Do you have any idea how dangerous those things are?"

  "No, I don't," I said, a little offended by her vehemence. "You never even told me they existed. Apparently, there's a whole magical community you never told me about."

  "A handful of would-be witches and snobby old-world types who don't approve of our kind of magic," Persephona said dismissively. "Or dangerous monsters like that werewolf. No one you needed to know."

  "First of all, his name is Ethan and he's not a monster," I said sharply. "Second, you could have at least told me they existed!"

  "Well it's too late for that now, isn't it?" she replied, just as defensively. "Why don't you tell me what you found out while you were cavorting with a wild animal instead of resting from the car accident you were just in?"

  I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. She was impossible when she got like this. I'd just have to hurry through it and hope she didn't blow a fuse.

  "Apparently the candle is some kind of source for all necromantic energy in the world. And I'm connected to it somehow."

  "A . . . what now? And you're—"

  "Yeah, so I can kind of feel it all the time, or I could, so we followed it to this old house outside of town. But it turns out it wasn't there. Whoever stole it had a tracking spell going and that's what I sensed."

  "Were they—"

  "No, they weren't there. But they'd been doing some nasty rituals in that place. Something involving killing birds. I found some notes, something about Virgil's seal? And some books. I took those. I'm hoping there'll be something in there to tell us what this guy is up to."

  "Maybe you should bring them here so I can—"

  "I will, as soon as I get something to eat and a long nap," I promised. "In the meantime, do you know how to do a tracking spell? Maybe we can use the same one they were using to hunt them down."

  "Well, I've never done it before, but I could try. I think I'd need something from who or whatever we're tracking though."

  "I have a bit of wax from the candle," I told her. "And some things that belonged to whoever stole it. That should be enough, right?"

  "Hopefully," she said, and I heard the concern in her voice. "But this all sounds like a dangerous mess. Is there some way you could just sever your connection to this thing and let it be?"

  "I'm not sure," I confessed. "If there is, I'll jump on it, I promise. But even if I could break my connection to the candle, I'd still want to help Ethan find it. This thing is crazy powerful, and the kind of people who are willing to murder me to get it probably shouldn't have that kind of power."

  "That doesn't have to be our business," Persephona pointed out. "This isn't the first or the last time something like this has happened. It can work itself out without us."

  Well that was a rabbit hole I wanted to follow. But Ethan was coming out of the bathroom, and I didn't have time.

  "Just do me a favor and look into that tracking spell," I said. "I'll talk to you more later. Oh, and did you tell my parents about the crash? I've got like six calls from them."

  "No, that would be the impound lot's fault," she said with a sigh. "Apparently your father's name remains first on the title so they called him about picking up the wreck. They gave me an earful about it, though. I would suggest calling them soon."

  "Son of a bitch," I muttered. "All right. Talk to you later."

  I hung up, putting my hands over my face. What if whoever was after me targeted my parents, too? With everything going on, I didn’t have a moment to call and explain—but I needed to. I had to warn them.

  “Give me a sec.” I told Ethan, stepping away and taking the phone from my pocket. Quickly, I dialed my dad’s cell number. I could call the house, but my dad tended to be less emotional than Mom.

  My mom answered on the second ring. “Vexa!”

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “What in the world is going on? Are you all right?” She exhaled but didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Of course you aren’t okay. What’s happened?”

  I didn’t have to see her to know she was pacing, “Mom, I’m okay, seriously. I couldn’t call you if I wasn’t.”

  “Don’t minimize the severity of this situation, Vexa.”

  “Is Dad there?”

  “Your father is in the shower.”

  Damn. “Okay, look. Technically, things are not as okay as they could be, but I’m figuring it out. In the meantime, I need you guys to be careful.”

  “Oh, gods. I knew it. Careful of what?”

  “It could be nothing.” I ran a hand through my hair, hoping to stop the ache forming between my eyes. “Look, can you just let Dad know I’ll call him? In the meantime, Aunt Percy is taking care of things, I promise.”

  “Vexa?”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “I’m trusting you blindly because my gut is telling me to. But I don’t like this.”

  “I understand, and I love you, both of you. I’ll be in touch again soon. I promise”

  I spent another few minutes placating my mom and finally was able to get off the phone.

  "Still want to do lunch?" Ethan asked, sitting dow
n next to me with a sympathetic smile. "We could hang out here if you want? That place I know delivers."

  I contemplated going back out right now, facing people and noise and the general exposure of being out in public. My skull buzzed with exhaustion and every inch of me was bruised and achy.

  "That sounds great," I said with a sigh. "Do you have any Tylenol?"

  "I think you need a little more than Tylenol," Ethan said frankly. "And a very long nap on top of that."

  "I'll sleep when I'm dead," I said with an ironic smile. Ethan rolled his eyes.

  "I'll go call the pizza place," he said. "Try to relax."

  I kicked off my shoes, huddled up against the arm of the chair, and dragged one of the books out of my bag to start reading. I didn't have time to relax while some unknown bird-murdering weirdo was in possession of a super-powerful antique that could potentially kill me at any moment.

  Chapter 9

  "You know," Ethan said through a mouthful of pizza, squinting at an old text on European magical traditions. "I expected necromancy to involve a lot more human sacrifice and a lot less menstrual blood."

  "Yeah, early European witchcraft loooved their menstrual blood," I agreed. I had my feet stretched out on his lap and a slice of pizza in my off hand. I'd started flipping through Forgotten Royalty, though so far there wasn't much in it beyond some minimally interesting trivia.

  "There isn't even that much in here about actual necromancy," Ethan said.

  "It's hard to find books dedicated just to necromancy," I said, distracted as I read about a Byzantine prince banished to a Turkish island. "Usually it just gets folded into other books of dark magic, when it gets addressed at all. Purely necromantic texts tend to be personal works passed down through families and never published. Aunt Persephona has all of ours."

  "She seems like an interesting lady," he said.

  "You don't want to meet her," I said. "I just found out she is apparently wildly prejudiced against werewolves."

  “Well, I should have seen that coming,” he said with a sigh that implied it was a common occurrence.