Dawn froze, her back to me. After a second, she said in a more subdued tone, “I’ve done plenty of crazy and reckless things in my life. And people close to me have died. And, I don’t know, I guess I got through most of that because I thought I had a pretty good handle on the way the world works, and didn’t stress too much about what happened after this whole life thing was over. I mean, it wasn’t something anyone could actually know for sure, and certainly not control, right?” She turned and looked at me. “But you’ve kind of flipped that upside down. These past few months, I’ve been learning how little I actually know about the world all around me, and that there definitely is some kind of life after death, and people like you can control or even destroy my soul.”
“I wouldn’t—”
Dawn raised her hand, and winced, rotating her shoulder. “My point isn’t to make you feel bad. It’s just, the way I deal with it, the way I always deal with crap, is to keep moving forward and try to make today a good day. Because if I stop and just start thinking about it all or worrying about it too much, I’m going to end up a crazy hoarding cat lady who never leaves her house. And I don’t think either of us want that.”
I slid out of bed and gave Dawn a long, tight hug. “Okay then,” I said, leaning back and smiling at her. “You’re coming. I’m just going to an ARC facility today anyway, that should be safe enough. And whatever I find, I’m letting the ARC handle it.”
“Perfect,” Dawn said, walking into her bathroom. “Now, you can go home to clean up, or—” She turned and gave me a come-hither look only slightly dulled by ghosts of exhaustion and pain, and waggled her eyebrows. “You can join me in the shower.”
Her mention of a shower was like a splash of cold, salty water, and my stomach clenched. “How about you take a shower, I’ll go clean up, and you can pick me up after.”
Dawn sighed. “I love you, and I can’t imagine how fucked up it must have been to drown. But it’s a little weird you can deal with sasquatches, and ghosts, and a creepy spider lady, yet a simple shower freaks you out.”
“It doesn’t freak me out, I just … need some time to get comfortable with it again is all.”
“Okay, well, go do your thing, and I’ll be ready. And if you dare sneak off without me, I’ll tell Alynon your childhood nickname.”
I didn’t bother questioning her willingness to do so. I got dressed and headed quickly for home.
The morning sun crested the madrona trees surrounding our yards, lighting my path across our yard to the back door in a carpet of glistening morning dew. I stepped through the door into our mud room, and the protective wards around our house tingled over my skin, a feeling like placing your tongue on a nine-volt battery powered by hugs.
I went down the hall and through the kitchen’s back entrance. Pete, Vee, and Sammy stood around the kitchen island, each chopping or cutting different vegetables. Sammy arched an eyebrow at me. “Well, look who’s doing the Sunday morning walk of shame.”
“Shame is about right,” I replied.
All three stopped their chopping. Vee asked, “Is everything okay between you two?”
“Yes, we’re fine,” I said. “I think. But I nearly got her killed.”
“I warned you,” Sammy said, scowling now as she resumed chopping, perhaps a little more emphatically than before. She was still not thrilled by the fact that Dawn and I were dating. Her day job involved counseling mundy women (and sometimes men) who’d been seduced or courted and then dumped by an arcana or feyblood, helping them deal with the aftermath. She continued without looking up, “I assume the danger you called about last night is somehow tied to the alchemist you asked me to look into?”
“I think so. Did you learn anything?”
Sammy shrugged. “Not much. Except he’s a black marketer.”
Bat’s breath. That wasn’t good.
If he was a black market alchemist, that meant he was getting feyblood ingredients via unofficial channels—possibly including poachers and grave robbers. And that meant the feybloods had even greater motive to attack him, and for the ARC to want to cover it up. The ARC didn’t want to give the Fey any justification to claim grievance, and more importantly, didn’t like anything related to magic being outside their control—or to be cut out of any profits.
Was this black market alchemist working for someone? Perhaps even the Arcanites? If so, he might not fear killing a feyblood if he knew his friends in power could make the problem go away. And a black market alchemist might also know something about the mana drug, perhaps even a cure. Silene had surely known that.
“And she didn’t tell me,” I muttered.
*Silene? Of course not,* Alynon said. *They may let you do them a favor, but you are not one of them, nor do they trust you.*
“Well, I don’t see how they expect me to help if they’re withholding such important info.”
“You’re doing that talking to yourself thing again,” Sammy said. “It’s creepy, even if you do have an actual voice in your head.”
“I don’t think it’s creepy,” Vee said as she hunched in on herself and added in a softer voice, “and neither does Sarah.”
Gods, Vee would not do well living among the wilder Shadows feybloods.
And if Silene and the Silver really were getting mixed up in some kind of magical gang war, the Silver Court might not be a good option, either.
Not that they were going to have to choose.
“How are you guys doing?” I asked, looking between her and Petey. “Have you come to any decisions?” One day down already, only two left to decide.
“No,” Pete said. “But Sammy is working on something.”
Sammy shrugged. “I have a couple of contacts among the feybloods, a few friends, but I don’t know if there’s anything they can do yet.”
“That’s okay,” Pete said to me. “If we can’t figure something out, I know you will.”
Right. Me, the guy who almost got his girlfriend killed just hours ago. “I’m doing my best,” I said. “Speaking of which, I need to go Talk with a dead feyblood and deal with that situation before it makes this situation any worse. If you’ll excuse me…”
Pete said in a small voice, “I guess we’re not watching cartoons?”
I turned back. “What? Cartoons?” And then I remembered, I’d promised to watch Sundurday Morning cartoons with him. “Crap. I’m sorry Petey. This whole feyblood thing came up, and then with the attack and—”
“I understand,” Pete said, looking down at the vegetables like a puppy rejected by his favorite boy. “It’s okay.”
Vee put a hand on his back and rubbed gently.
Oh gods.
“Really, I’m sorry Petey. How about we do it tomorrow? Assuming I get this thing resolved by then.”
“Tomorrow’s Monday,” he said in a quiet voice. “And then—” He fell silent.
And then, they might have to go live in some feyblood steading, or else declare themselves rogues.
“Don’t worry, Petey. We can still watch Sundurday morning cartoons on Monday. We’re grown-ups, we can make our own rules now, right?”
Pete shrugged, but a small smile emerged on his face. “Okay.”
“Awesome. Okay, the sooner I get this over with, the better and safer I’ll feel.”
I went up to my room, grabbed a change of clothes, and cleaned up in the upstairs bathroom. As I exited to the hall, I sensed a spiritual presence once again coming from the direction of Mort’s room.
I really didn’t have time to deal with whatever Mort’s issue was. But if the Arcanites were involved with the jorōgumo attack, what if they were also influencing Mort, like they’d influenced my father before?
I dropped off my stuff in my room, then went to his door and raised my hand to knock.
I stopped.
Given my recent experience, I was done giving Mort the benefit of the doubt.
I pulled out my skeleton key, hanging on a cord around my neck. An ancient necromantic artifact m
ade from the fingerbone of a thief, it too had once been Zeke’s, but Vee had gifted it to me. It was creepy, but handy (or at least fingery). I touched it to the doorknob, and the door unlocked with a soft click. I focused my will, called up and readied the well of magic from the locus of my being, and threw open Mort’s door.
Mort’s bedroom had the warmth and softness of a Cylon base star, decorated entirely in black and shiny silver, dominated by a television the size of a starship view screen. Mort lay on his back, entangled in his black sheets and comforter, writhing with his eyes closed, and—thank every god and goddess that ever existed—wearing his black satin pajamas.
And mounted on top of him, a woman’s spirit undulated in sinuous rhythm to Mort’s writhing, her eyes closed and her head thrown back as her red hair floated out in a wavy cloud behind her. With each thrusting undulation, I could see with my arcana senses a trickle of Mort’s life energy being drawn up into her.
By Crom!
*Holy—can we get in on this?* Alynon pleaded.
“Mort!” I shouted.
Both Mort and the spirit opened their eyes with a start, and stared at me. Mort looked dazed and confused, like he’d just tumbled all the way down the stairway to heaven and hit his head on every step. The spirit looked more “Black Dog.” Her eyes practically glowed red, and her face was distorted, the soft beauty replaced with a look both demonic and ravenous.
She flew at me, hands grasping, mouth stretching impossibly wide.
I threw my will against her like a shield. She slammed into it and fell back, and I felt her spiritual resonance shiver over me, one of insatiable hunger and lust, but the shield forged of my will and magic held strong.
I grasped at the spirit trap hanging from around my neck, and lifted the twisted silver box. I focused my will, reached through the trap—
“Stop!” Mort called out, breaking my concentration. The spirit lurched forward, and I threw up my will again, stopping her reaching fingers less than a foot from my throat.
“Are you crazy?” I shouted, but realized Mort wasn’t talking to me. The spirit looked from me to Mort, and her face rippled between demonic and beautiful and back again.
*La, I bet she’s a demon in bed. Literally!* Alynon said.
Stop distracting me, I need to focus!
“Brianne, please!” Mort said, pushing himself weakly up onto his elbow. “Go!”
He was on a first-name basis with this thing?
Brianne looked at me, and I knew I had only a second to act. I raised the trap, and reached out through it once again to summon the succubus—
Brianne screamed—whether a cry of anger or a wail of despair I couldn’t tell—and flew out of the window before my magic touched her.
“What the hell?” She should not have been able to pass through the wards that surrounded our home’s exterior without being destroyed. They were meant to keep in the spirits we worked with as much as any enemies out. Yet I heard and sensed her fading away beyond the wall, fleeing.
*Clearly, your brother granted her free passage,* Alynon said. *And again, why did cruel fate trap me within the boring brother?*
Screw you, I thought at him.
*Promises promises.*
Mort slid from his bed and practically fell to his knees. He caught himself on the edge of the bed and pushed himself back erect, though thankfully only in posture. He looked terribly thin, less like early Spock now and more crow-like with his gaunt face and beak of a nose, and I thought I spotted a few glints of silver in his thinning black hair.
He glared at me. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “Who said you could just bust into my room?”
“Are you kidding me?” I waved after the departed Brianne. “What the hell were you doing letting a succubus feed on you? And why are you on a first-name basis with her?”
“She’s not a succubus,” he said.
“I think I know a succubus when I see one,” I replied.
“She’s my—she’s none of your business.”
“Like hell she isn’t! Even if I wasn’t your brother and, for some weird reason, actually worried about you, I’m a necromancer. I can’t just stand by and let a succubus run loose.”
“She’s not a succubus!” Mort shouted, his face flushing red.
“Then explain what I just saw.”
“Get out of my room.”
Sammy and Pete both appeared in the doorway behind me, Pete carrying the family’s silver sword.
“What’s going on?” Sammy asked.
I looked from her to Mort. “Just what I was asking. I came in and found Mort having sex with a spirit named Brianne who, as far as I can tell, was a succubus.”
“Seriously?” Sammy asked Mort, disgust in her voice. “The Internet porn wasn’t enough for you?”
Mort sagged down to sit on the edge of the bed, his head hanging as if too heavy to hold upright. “It isn’t like that. Brianne is—she’s my spirit wife.”
“Your what now?” I asked.
“I—she’s the spirit who possessed Mattie’s mother during conception.”
“What the hell?” Sammy said. “Did you use possession to rape Mattie’s mother?”
“No! Finn can explain it.”
“Um, no, I can’t,” I said.
Mort looked up, surprised. “You mean you don’t know? You really don’t know, about Mother, about the … ritual?”
I felt a sinking feeling in my gut as Sammy demanded, “What about Mother?”
Mort waved at me. “Why do you think he’s got the Talker gift, and none of us do?”
*Hold, you truly did not know?* Alynon laughed in my head. *Oh Bright, that explains so much.*
“Stop playing Riddler and just tell us!” I snapped.
Mort sighed. “You know the Talker gift is rare. But if during … conception the mother is possessed by a spirit, it’s much more likely to manifest.” He raised his hands defensively as Sammy sucked in an angry breath. “It was totally voluntary on everyone’s part, at least for us.”
“You’re saying … Mother was possessed by a spirit when I was conceived?” I asked.
“As far as I know,” Mort replied. “For obvious reasons, it isn’t something people talk about much, especially the older generations.”
Pete dropped the sword and put his hands to his ears. “I don’t believe you. This is another of your stupid pranks.” He strode out of sight, singing “Rainbow Connection” loudly.
I put the thought of Mother being possessed out of my head—or rather, it leaped from my head like a stockbroker in a market crash, chased off the ledge by the danger of imagining my parents having sex at all.
“So where does your spiritual sex doll come in?” Sammy demanded.
“It’s not like that!” Mort said. “I felt a connection to Brianne.”
Sammy snorted. “I’ll bet.”
“I tried to make it work,” Mort continued. “The women I dated after Mattie’s mother, I tried to find someone open to a poly relationship, and—”
“Are you serious?” Sammy demanded. “That’s not polyamory. That’s just you getting your ghost fetish off. Did your spooky booty call ever contribute anything to the relationship, anything to your other partners, except to use their bodies?”
“You’re addicted, you’re not thinking straight,” I said. “You know how a succubus is created. How can you not see what you’ve done? What you’re doing to yourself?”
A succubus wasn’t a born feyblood spirit, it was a human spirit twisted and transformed through the lust and need of a human necromancer, a creation born out of greed and fueled by self-destructive appetite, like Gordon Gekko, or boy bands. Sex with a spirit was supposed to be, well, a spiritual experience, leading to a kind of soul orgasm. But it was highly addictive for the necromancer, like coffee-flavored heroin, and being deprived of all other physical sensations, the spirit comes to hunger for it and for the life energy fed on in the process.
“You know what?” Mort said
. “I wanted to give my child the best gift I could. And I fell in love with Brianne. So sue me!”
“Wow,” I said, realization hitting me. “You really did just have Mattie to secure your place as head of the family business.”
“No,” Mort said. “I had Brianne possess her mother so that she’d have the best possible—”
I heard a swallowed sob behind me.
Smeg.
I turned to see Mattie staring at her father with wide, tear-filled eyes.
“Is Uncle Finn right?” she said. “Did you—is that why Mother left?”
I didn’t want to be right. But Grandfather did make clear in his will that he wanted leadership of the family business to go to someone with children, and that the Talker gift was equally important.
Mort pushed weakly to his feet. “Matilda, honey, I—”
Mattie shook her head, and fled back through the door up to her attic bedroom.
“You bastard—!” Mort yelled at me.
“Yell at me later,” I said, feeling pretty damn horrible. “Your daughter needs you.”
Mort began to stand, then slumped back down onto the bed, his eyes closed, his body swaying. “She’s angry. She won’t want to talk to me right now.”
“You still need to try,” Sammy said.
“I will, when she calms down,” Mort replied.
“You’re a coward,” Sammy said. “And I’m pretty damned ashamed to be your sister right now.” She followed after Mattie.
“Dude,” I said. “Seriously, you need to get your act together. Mattie needs you. And … I hate to see you like this.”
Mort laughed. “Whatever. You’re just determined to make me look bad, in front of Mattie, in front of Pete, in front of clients. You want to take my place? You think you could? You don’t know half of what it takes—” He began coughing, and it went on far too long, escalating into body-racking convulsions. Just when I moved in to help, however, he regained control, and waved me off. “Go … away.”
“Mort, we need to summon Brianne. We need to dissipate her spirit, send her on. And then, you need to talk to Mattie.”
“No!” Mort said. “No. I—I don’t want your help. I’ll take care of it.” He cleared his throat, looked up at me. “I need to take care of it myself. Or it won’t mean anything.”
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