Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  The pounding increased.

  “Elinor? Are you there?” Bianca called through the door. “I finished my client early. I thought you might like a hand with all the books. Open up, would you?”

  “Jesus fuck!” Allan cried. “How many freaks are we going to have to deal with tonight?” He held up the knife, and turned the handle.

  “Bianca, get help—” I cried out. Colin clamped his hand over my mouth, and the rest of my warning came out as muffled grunts.

  Allan frowned at me. “We should have gagged her while we had the chance,” he said. “Keep her quiet, and I’ll get the door for our guest.”

  Colin yanked me up and turned me around, pressing the knife against my throat and shoving me back toward the kitchen so I couldn’t see what was happening at the door. I tried to bite Colin’s hand, but he held my neck firm, and I couldn’t get any of his skin between my teeth. Allan flung open the door. The next moment, I heard a thud as something heavy fell to the floor. I started to cry. Bianca. This was all my fault. You’re completely innocent, and now—

  “Allan?” Colin called out, glancing back over his shoulder. His voice sounded concerned.

  No one answered.

  Colin dragged me backward, heading back toward the hall. “This isn’t the time for pranks. We’ve been shagging around way to long. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Still no reply from the hall.

  “Move, Princess.” Colin shuffled toward the door, his hand on my throat now and the knife pointing toward the doorway. I whimpered, and he pushed his hand even tighter against my face, so all I could breathe was his sweaty skin. My stomach churned. Bianca, I’m so sorry ...

  “Allan?” Colin stepped into the hall. I saw a flash as something moved beside me, and the next thing I knew, the hand on my mouth dropped away. I gasped for air, barely noticing that I had been freed.

  “Don’t just stand there,” said Bianca, slinging her lucky cricket bat over her shoulder as she stepped over the slumped bodies of Allan and Colin. She grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the staircase. “Upstairs, quickly, before they come to!”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I raced up the steps, two at a time, not even bothering to question why we were going up there instead of outside. Bianca had her face set in a determined look, as the cricket bat bounced on her shoulder. She clearly had a plan.

  Upstairs, Bianca beckoned me into Eric’s room. I sat on the bed while she slammed the door shut. “Call the police,” she said, jamming a chair under the handle to lock the door.

  “With what? My phone is downstairs.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “You’re no use.” She dug her phone out of her pocket, found a number, and pressed it against her ear, while she tapped her fingers against the handle of her cricket with the other hand. “Ted? Yeah, it’s Bianca. There’s been a break-in on Blossom Road, the old Marshell place. I’m trapped in a room upstairs, so you better get here fast. No, this is not a fucking joke, Ted. Get over here, now.”

  “You talk like that to the police?” I asked.

  “That’s Ted. He’s a friend of mine from my cricket club. He has a vicious underarm bowl, and an awesome tattoo of his pet canary—one of the best birds I’ve ever drawn. He’ll be here any minute with some reinforcements.”

  “And why are we still in the house?”

  “It’s a defensive move,” said Bianca. “Haven’t you ever seen a battle scene in a movie? They’re bigger and stronger and faster than us, so it’s easier if we defend a small confined space, with only one way in. It’s like a siege. We run into the town and shut the gates, and now they have to assault the walls while we throw stones and dung down on them. Plus, I knew you’d want to stick near Eric.”

  “Eric’s gone.” I said, and the grief rushed over me. I buried my face in my hands, my whole body racked with heaving sobs. “He’s dead.”

  “But he’s a ghost. How can a ghost die again?”

  I looked up at Bianca through the gaps in my fingers. “Excuse me?”

  “Elinor,” Bianca dropped the bat and slid down beside me. “You honestly thought you’d be able to hide this from me? I may have only known you for a week, but it already feels like much longer. I feel as if we’re old friends. And old friends can always tell when the other is lying, or when they’re harbouring the ghost of a dead lover inside a big old house.”

  “You … you figured out that Eric was a ghost?” I lowered my tear-soaked hands and stared at her in surprise.

  “Well, not figured out exactly. For a lawyer, you’re not very good at deception.” Bianca grinned. “First of all, you got really drunk at the pub and told me, remember?

  "But you laughed! You didn't believe me!"

  "At the time, I thought you were just being ridiculous. But then I started going back over all the odd things you'd said and did, and I realised you must've been telling the truth." Bianca counted off all the clues on her fingers. "You seemed really interested in Eric’s personal life for no apparent reason. You poured over books about ghosts and the occult. You had guy-related mood swings but wouldn’t divulge any details about the guy. You seemed weirdly attached to the house. Then there was your sudden desire to buy a violin, and all the vicious rats about the place. And when that violin music started playing at the funeral … well, I’d recognise Eric’s style anywhere.”

  “And you don’t think this is crazy?”

  “Oh, I think it's nuts.” Bianca shrugged. “But not as nuts as you trying to take on two drug dealers by yourself. So where is lover-ghost? I thought he’d be downstairs haunting their arses for trying to hurt you.”

  “He was,” I sniffed, pulling off my glasses to wipe away the fat tears rolling down my cheeks. “But then Allan pushed him out the door. Eric can’t leave the house, or he crosses over. He faded away right in front of me. He’s gone, Bianca. He’s gone forever, and I never got to tell him … tell him that I ...”

  Bianca wrapped her arms around me, pulling my face into her warm shoulder. “Oh, Elinor. I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t know how long we stayed there, me rocking and sobbing as I mourned Eric, and Bianca holding me close while keeping her eyes fixed on the door. I was startled out of my stupor by a loud CRASH from downstairs. Bianca sprung to life, leaping from the bed and grabbing her bat. She approached the door and pressed her ear to the wood. But she didn’t need to in order to hear the second CRASH, and the sound of someone howling in pain. Is that Allan? I glanced at Bianca. She checked her watch. “That’s probably Ted.”

  “Is he—” I was interrupted by loud THUMP, and the sound of Colin’s high-pitched scream.

  A few moments later, Bianca’s phone beeped. She checked the message. “It’s Ted, and the coast is clear. Let’s go.”

  We raced downstairs to find a tall, lanky man with black hair pulled back into a ponytail and several tattoos across his forearms directing four police officers who had Allan and Colin pinned to the rug, their hands cuffed. The first officer was barking instructions into a wakie-talkie. Allan lifted his head and glared daggers at me. Blood gushed from a deep gash above his eye.

  The tall, plain-clothes man greeted Bianca with a friendly nod. “You did the right thing, hiding and calling us. These guys are clearly high as kites. I’m glad you didn’t try to take them on yourselves.”

  “Are you kidding?” Bianca said in mock surprise, as she grinned at me. “We’d never dream of doing that!”

  “We’ll need you two ladies to come to the station to give a full statement. Currently, there look like several charges, including assault–”

  “This is your lucky day, officer.” I said, stepping forward. “You can add drug trafficking to your list of offences. These guys have been running a cocaine ring for years, and there’s a mountain of blow stashed in the violin case I hid in the cupboard in bedroom on the left up the stairs. I suggest you go and arrest the rest of Ghost Symphony, too, and bring in their stage crew for questioning.”

  “You bitch
!” Allan yelled, before he was dragged outside by the officers.

  Bianca and I watched as the police shoved Allan and Colin into their cars and backed out of the drive. Ted stayed behind with us, and he turned to Bianca. “She’s in the back of the squad car. I told her to stay out of the way until we were certain things were safe. Do what you have to do, but you’d better show up at the police station within the next two hours to give your statement.”

  Bianca nodded. “Who is he talking about?” I asked her.

  Tom opened the door, and a tiny figure bustled out, her body a blur of silver hair and black crocheted shawls.

  “Clara!” I cried.

  “There’s no time for pleasantries,” she said, hefting a heavy black bag over her thin shoulder and hurrying up the drive towards the house. “We have precious little time. Where did he disappear?”

  “On the porch.” I didn’t bother asking her who she meant. My heart pounded with hope. Bianca squeezed my hand. She had called Clara. Did that mean Clara was here to save Eric? But how could she? He was gone completely. He had crossed over. He was no longer a shade, stuck partway between the two worlds.

  Clara bounded up the steps, and sniffed the air. “Yes,” she said. “I can sense him here. We must hurry.” She dumped her back on the step and rummaged through it, pulling out a small piece of stone.

  “This is Elestial quartz,” she said as she placed the large stone on the porch, and scattered a few smaller stones around it. “And these smaller stones are moldovite. They are high frequency crystals—their vibrations help to locate and store energy, including the energy of a sprit. Now, link hands. I need both of you to picture Eric in your minds, as clearly as possible. Focus on the details of him—what did his eyes look like? How did his hair fall? How did being with him make you feel? I need you to bring him to life in your mind, OK?”

  I nodded. Clara grabbed my right hand and Bianca’s left. She nodded at us to join hands, too, completing a circle of three around the pile of stones. She lowered her head, and started to chant.

  The sounds she made weren’t words I recognised. At first I thought they were Latin, but I’d taken Latin at public school and I didn’t recognise the sounds. The words reverberated through my mind, pushing out my grief and fear and bringing something else to the surface. Memories. Love. My body flooded with warmth as I remembered Eric as I had known him, the brooding musician, the guy who made me smile, who loved to scare me, who taught me to play chess. I remembered the way he kissed me, and fire blazed inside of me.

  The fire burned my skin from the inside, and it felt as if he really were kissing me, his tongue probing deep into my mouth. I felt the strength of his arms wrapping around my body, his hand pressing against the small of my back, pulling me in. His body pressed against mine, becoming part of me, enveloping me in his—

  “Enough!” Clara cried, snapping me out of my trance. She dropped my hand, and the warm feeling in my body fled, pouring out of me into the large, clear crystal. Clara reached down and picked up the stones, carefully placing them inside a black cloth, and bringing the edges of the cloth together to create a small pouch.

  Clara held the pouch away from herself, as if it contained something poisonous she didn’t want to touch. “Now, where is his body?”

  “In the mausoleum,” I replied, jabbing a finger at the end of the garden.

  “Grab my bag. We’ve got to hurry.” Clara picked up the pouch of stones and hobbled across the lawn with surprising sprightliness. I grabbed the key ring from the hall table, picked up the shoulder bag—it was surprisingly weighty—and Bianca and I followed after her.

  The mausoleum was strung with solar fairy lights. They had been put up for the funeral, so that guests partying on into the night would be able to see some connection to the dead. But in the chaos of the party and the fire, no one had thought to remove them. I fumbled with the lock, searching for the right key. Finally, I found it, and pulled the iron gate open, revealing a large stone room where several coffins lay in niches on the walls. “Which one is he?” I asked.

  Clara pushed past me, bending over to read the names. “Here he is,” she pointed at a dark mahogany coffin resting on a lower shelf. Seeing that coffin made me pause. Were we really about to do what I thought we were about to do? Eric had been dead for three weeks now. Surely he wouldn’t be himself any longer. And he would smell … I didn’t want to open that coffin and see the decay of his body. I wanted to remember him as he was to me, beautiful and vibrant and alive.

  If it could bring Eric back, I have to try.

  “All three of us together,” Clara instructed, as we prised open the lid. I stared down at the body inside, my stomach swirling with part-revulsion, part-nervous excitement. Eric appeared intact, serene. His face stared back at us with an expression of calm. He wore tailored black trousers and a black shirt, a black lace cravat at his throat. A few wounds marred his strong features—from the car accident, I presumed—and his skin was a weird pasty colour, but overall he appeared to be whole, and not filled with worms.

  “Can you really do this?” I asked. “He’ll actually be alive again? He isn’t going to turn out like one of those characters in Pet Sematary, is he?”

  “I’ve never tried this spell before, and I’m working with two amateurs, so I don’t know what will happen. If we get this perfect, Eric will be as if he’d never died. But that’s a big if. Just thank the gods he didn’t decide to be cremated,” Clara replied.

  Clara pulled several white candles from her bag and laid them out around Eric’s body, tucking them into the coffin itself. Two she placed on Eric’s chest. Bianca reached across to help her, but Clara swatted her hand away. “Let me work,” she snapped, as she opened a pouch of dried herbs and laid them out in a circle. Next, she pulled out several more crystals and a bunch of dried twigs and arranged them around Eric’s head and hands. Finally, she withdrew a short dagger with an ornately carved handle.

  “Stand over there,” Clara directed, directing me to the other side of the coffin. Bianca she placed at the top, near Eric’s head. Clara whipped out her phone, opened a compass app, and readjusted some of the candles to stand at the four points on the compass. “Right,” she announced, standing back and raising her hands. “We are ready.”

  Clara directed the point of the knife at the four points of the compass, and muttered some more strange words. Slowly, she set down the black pouch of stones in the centre of Eric’s chest, folding down the corners to reveal the crystals. The large quartz had a strange, white glow.

  “Hold hands,” Clara commanded. Bianca and I gripped each other, exchanging worried glances. Eric had been dead for three weeks now. How could this possibly work?

  “Repeat the chant along with me,” Clara said. “And as you do, picture a cone of white light rising up from Eric’s chest and encompassing the stones. This cone will pull Eric’s spirit back inside his body. Whatever happens, you must keep this vision in your mind. Let us begin.” She paused, then spoke:

  Shadow of chaos, death’s spectre grim.

  Allow my spirit once again to dwell within.

  Bianca and I repeated the words, our voices blending together, echoing through every corner of the mausoleum. I focused my gaze on Eric’s chest, where the crystal sat, now pulsing with a strange white light.

  At first, it seemed as though nothing was happening, but then I noticed warmth spreading through my fingers, up my arms, moving across my chest. This wasn’t the intense heat of Eric’s touch, but a wretched, uncomfortable warmth, as if something unsavoury was crawling through me, slithering a path through my veins. I wriggled uncomfortably, trying to escape the feeling, but it only grew more intense.

  “Keep chanting!” Clara ordered, her voice sounding odd, hollow, as though she were calling from the other end of a tunnel.

  “Shadow of chaos, death’s spectre grim—” I chanted, my voice cracking with pain. The warm slithered through my whole body, rising up my neck and flicking across my cheek
s. It entered my mouth, and I gagged as a foul scent—the scent of death—reached my nostrils. Rotting, decaying flesh filled my nostrils, coming not from Eric’s corpse below, but from all around me, from within me. It was my own flesh I was smelling. It was my own body that was rotting away.

  It’s a trick, it’s part of the spell. I gagged against the noisome odour, longing to pull my hand from Bianca’s to pinch my nostrils closed. But I knew that if I broke my grip the whole spell would be ruined, and Eric would be gone forever.

  “What’s happening to me?” Bianca cried.

  “Keep chanting!” Clara cried. “Don’t break the circle!”

  I closed my eyes. In my mind I pictured a radiant cone of white light, rising from Eric’s chest and enveloping the pulsing crystal. I pictured the cone pulling the energy from the crystal, tearing out Eric’s spirit from where we had trapped it, blending it again with his mortal body.

  “—allow my spirit once again to dwell within.”

  I opened my eyes. The cone was there for real, rising and falling with the rhythm of our chant. But even though our chant rose in intensity, the cone stopped moving, it even seemed to be receding back inside Eric. Whatever we were doing, it wasn’t strong enough to bring the two parts of Eric’s body together.

  I can’t lose you, Eric. I won’t lose you. I love you.

  A strong urge came over me, a sense that I knew exactly what to do. Without stopping the chant, without even looking at Clara for guidance, I leaned over Eric’s body, pushing my head through the cone of light, and brushed my lips against his.

  I love you.

  The cone of light shot up toward the ceiling and exploded. White light enveloped us, blinding me with its brilliance. I tried to shut my eyes but even with them closed I could see the whiteness on my eyelids. My ears rung from the explosion and I floated without feeling in the bright void, unable to move or sense a thing.

  From the edge of my vision, a shape moved toward me, growing more focused as it sped through the white void. It was Eric’s coffin soaring up to meet me. Just when I thought it was going to crash right into me, then there was another explosion of light, and I was standing in the mausoleum once more, the heat gone from my mind. Clara and Bianca dropped my hands.