by Anna Abner
No. He couldn’t finish the thought. It was too depressing. He’d made a promise to help, so he’d deal with the woman, just him and her, but at the first opportunity, he’d cut ties. Ryan wouldn’t see her again.
His mother was right. It was a mistake to bring women around Ryan, no matter how pure his intentions.
He strolled through the front door and into the kitchen. Dani had made two cups of coffee. She slid one across the island to him and then sipped hers.
“Needs sugar,” she said. “Do you have any?”
No emotion. As if she hadn’t five minutes ago rebuffed his son. Was she one of those sociopaths with no empathy? But over the past two days he’d witnessed her scared and sad. On their date she’d even been happy.
No, she didn’t lack emotions. Maybe she didn’t understand how much her behavior disgusted him, and that’s why she stood there stirring her coffee and talking about sugar instead of how she’d shielded herself from Ryan’s touch.
David found sweetener, and they both tore into a packet. The moment the smell of the saccharine powder reached his nose, his stomach snarled like a feral cat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything.
‘I’m starved,” he said. “Do you want a grilled cheese sandwich?” Without waiting for her answer, he gathered the things he’d need to make an impromptu brunch. Skillet, margarine, spatula, bread, cheese, and fresh tomatoes. Grilled cheese sandwiches were Ryan’s favorite meal—this month—and he could slap one together in his sleep. “You like tomatoes?”
“Yes, please.” Dani rounded the counter to his side of the island. “Can I help?”
“Stand back. Sometimes the margarine splatters.” He had the tiny scars on his hands to prove it.
“Were you on the safety patrol as a kid or something?” Dani asked.
David couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “No. What are you implying?”
“You’re such a worrywart.”
“No, I’m not.” He glanced at her over his shoulder and she shrugged.
Frowning, David spread margarine on the first two slices and plopped them into the hot skillet where they sizzled. He was not a worrywart, and he did not belong on a safety patrol. Was she teasing him? Because he didn’t like it.
Maybe it was the hunger pangs or Dani’s biting character assessment, but he was temporarily overwhelmed by the mundane, everyday act of making his son’s favorite snack in his own kitchen. God, he missed Ryan. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent him away, but he’d gladly sacrifice his own happiness to guarantee Ryan’s. Even if it meant David was sad for a few days.
He finished the other half of the two sandwiches, smooshed them together, and flipped them. The buttered bread crackled.
It wasn’t until he’d sat at the breakfast bar and swallowed his first bite of food that David could formulate the day’s agenda. “All right,” he said, chewing fast. “Tell me your plan again.”
Dani picked daintily at her sandwich, peeling the crusts off in two long strands. “I’ll teach you how to be a necromancer, and you wake up Cole. It won’t take long. We can do it today. Unless you have to go to work?”
“No.” He’d called Mayor Westfield around dawn and was given the all clear to stay home for at least a week. Carol, the assistant city manager, was picking up the slack. So, David had plenty of time for practicing necromancy.
Necromancy. Three days ago he would have laughed in Dani’s face. But he’d seen her magic. He’d seen those men hurt her. Unless he’d been drugged and hallucinating, which he knew was bullshit, that stuff was real.
He snuck a glance at Dani on the other side of the kitchen counter. If David agreed to this, there was no going back. A person couldn’t learn to be a necromancer and then return to blissful ignorance. If he accepted her offer, a lot of things in his life were going to change.
“I don’t know about all this stuff.” He swallowed the last of his sandwich, wiped his greasy hands on a paper towel, and cleared his plate.
“Please,” Dani said, turning her beautiful, dark eyes on him. “My friend is in a lot of pain. With a little effort, you can help him.”
“Fine.” He was such a sucker. A total dunce. “What do you need to get started?”
“A space on the floor where I can draw.”
“Garage okay?”
“Sure. Do you have any chalk or crayons?”
“Both.” He nodded at her half-eaten meal. “You eat. I’ll find some.” He collected sidewalk chalk from the bottom of Ryan’s toy box, a pack of crayons from a kitchen drawer, and then showed her into the attached garage.
Without the first clue what was going on, David remained in the doorway to the garage clutching art supplies like a madman.
“It’s best if you draw it,” Dani said. “It infuses it with your power and all that.” She gestured toward the bare concrete floor.
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry.” She smiled at him, and his brain got all scrambly. Maybe he shouldn’t have wolfed down his sandwich. It had made him woozy. “This is the easy part.” She sat cross-legged in front of his gray storage tub marked Camping Gear, looking at ease among his things, which only annoyed him more.
But he’d agreed to try.
Following her lead, he sat across from her. The cold concrete seeped through his pants, and he had a flashback to the basement of his captivity. He shook himself, trying to return to some kind of normal head space. But between the Carver and Dani and everything else, David hardly remembered normal.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Draw a spell circle. Make it big enough to kneel inside without messing up the spell marks.”
“Uh.” He got up on his knees. What the hell were spell marks, and how was he supposed to adjust for them?
“About three feet in diameter should cover it.”
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and clicked the screen. “Here it is. Find four points. A bridge is what you want to start with, almost always. It’s a link between worlds and also a gateway.” She squinted. “It looks like a step pyramid with a half circle under and another on top.” Leaning forward, she showed him the phone.
Someone had taken a picture of four hand-drawn symbols.
“You haven’t done this before, have you?” He was losing confidence by the second. If anyone caught him in here drawing squiggles around a circle on his garage floor with blue chalk, he may die of humiliation. “This feels ridiculous.”
“Because you don’t believe.” Like he’d pushed a button in her control panel, Dani teared up. “Look into my eyes. I’m not being funny or jokey. You can help Cole if you want to.” She sniffed hard. “I need you, David. If there was anyone else who could do this, I’d be there with him.”
So she wasn’t a sociopath. She did have human emotions. She was just cold inside, cold like the Arctic tundra.
“Okay.” Because he’d said he would. And he’d never been able to refuse a crying woman anything.
“You’re right,” she said, chewing on her left thumbnail. “I haven’t done this before. I’m not a necromancer. I’m a witch. I don’t use spell circles and I don’t see spirits. I control my own power. Well, I used to.” She turned her phone around. “Draw it. Holden says it’s an I-need-a-friend spell.”
“Holden?” Was it possible Little Miss Icy Veins had a boyfriend? It shouldn’t anger him, but it did. Which was ridiculous because he was the one who wasn’t interested.
“He’s in Turks and Caicos right now, but he just went through the same thing you are. He has fresh notes.”
“Friend or boyfriend?” The moment the question left his mouth he wished he could cram it back in. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter.
“Friend.” Dani put the phone away. “Kneel in the circle. Now, hold on to something. You’re about to cast your first spell.”
Chapter Eight
Cole Burkov huddled in the corner of his comic shop, The Repository, between a rack of new issues and a
shelf of classic action figures in their original packaging. He hid from the nightmare taking shape around him like a little girl, like a giant wuss, like the anti-Captain America.
But unlike a lot of super heroes, Steve Rogers had never played the villain. He’d never gone dark side. Cole, on the other hand…
He couldn’t hide from the evil force waking up inside him. Or fight it.
The bell over the front door of the shop tinkled, and his sister Caitlyn strolled in. She didn’t work for him. She never had. But in this particular nightmare she wore his blue company polo with a name tag on her chest. It didn’t make sense, but so little made sense lately. His world had twisted inside out and warped right along with his sanity.
“Steph,” he begged. But his spirit companion didn’t show. No matter how many times he called, he received no response. “Stephanie, please.”
Too late. Against his will, Cole stood, and a six-inch-long blade appeared in his fist. Maybe it had always been there. The evil inside him had its hands—Cole’s hands—around Caitlyn’s throat before she even had time to scream. She’d scream her throat raw before the night was over.
No. He refused. He wouldn’t hurt anyone else. He’d rather die than cause any more agony. “Steph, help me!”
Cole turned the knife on himself, and though he felt searing pain, it caused no damage. He couldn’t stop the evil inside him, no matter how much he fought.
His friends were out of reach. His spirit companion had abandoned him. He was on his own.
A ring of ghostly witnesses circled him, watching, taking pleasure in every cut and slash of human flesh.
There was nothing he could do but watch as he tortured his sister to death.
* * *
Feeling like the unsuspecting victim of a prank, David knelt in his spell circle and swept his eyes around the room.
Dani had power. He’d seen it and felt it. She could do things he’d previously thought impossible. But David wasn’t a witch. Or a warlock or a necromancer or anything else.
He drove to work every day wearing a suit and tie. He paid his taxes. He bought organic pasta sauce and gave money to the humane society. He didn’t have magic hidden deep inside him. Yes, he’d been in a horrific car accident four years ago. His heart had stopped once in the ambulance and again in the emergency room, but the doctors had gotten him squared away. He’d come home with no long-term injuries, except for the occasional visual hallucination. Now Dani was trying to convince him those aberrations were spirits straining to communicate with him.
“Have you ever seen a spirit?” Dani asked.
And just like that the worst day of his entire life floated up out of memory and punched him in the gut. “Yes.” But he didn’t want to talk about it.
“When?”
The car accident. That horror of grinding metal and screaming tires.
He didn’t remember what happened right after the accident. There was nothing for a very long time, but he remembered what happened before quite well. He saw his baby son safe and tucked into his car seat in the back of his 1963 Camaro dream car. Jordyn, exhausted but glowing in the front beside him. And the motorcycle zipping out of nowhere. David had jerked the wheel to the left. And then the side of the Chinese restaurant had risen up to stop them.
“David?”
He startled. “Yeah, sorry.”
They were about the same height, but Dani’s black hair was longer and darker than Jordyn’s had been. Their personalities, though, could not be more different. A year ago he’d believed Dani was the warmhearted and caring woman he was searching for. A selfless woman like his wife. It’s why he’d leapt at the chance to date her. But now he wasn’t sure.
It had taken so long to get over losing his wife. Years. Sometimes he wondered if he’d ever be completely whole again. Probably not. There would always be a slice of him missing, the piece she’d taken with her.
But Jordyn had been such a caring, generous person he knew she’d want him to find love again. She’d rather Ryan grow up loving a stepmother than having no mother at all.
“Have you?”
He forgot what they were talking about. “Have I what?”
“Seen a spirit?”
“Yeah.”
“After you died?”
David’s jaw tensed. “When I woke up. After the accident.”
“Was it…?”
“My wife?” He’d never spoken of this to anyone. It hurt coming up his throat like a twisted string of barbed wire. “Yes. I saw her. We talked about Ryan and the things he’d need as he grew up.”
Structure. Support. And love. Tons of love.
“Did you know she was a ghost?”
“Not right away. She looked different and fuzzy, but I thought it was the drugs and the head injury. And then,” he said and exhaled, “the doctor came to tell me my wife had passed.” He blinked away the old pain. He’d cried a lot right after, but now all he felt was a burn behind his eyes at the memory of those awful first few days without her.
David continued, “She didn’t come back to visit me, and I was glad. If I ever saw a person that didn’t make sense or looked fuzzy like that, I turned away and ignored them. I figured it was a side effect from the accident. A little brain damage.”
“Okay. Well, today you’re going to start paying attention to them. Let’s begin by casting the friendly spirit spell. Now, I should warn you, necromancers love Latin and the ones I know cast in it. Personally, I think the spells would work the same in English, but what do I know? Now, repeat after me. Amicus pervenio.”
“What does it mean?”
Dani rolled her eyes. “Does it really matter?”
“Amicus pervenio.”
“Anything?”
“No.” Not a damned thing. If guys carrying cameras and boom mikes popped out of the door, David was going to lose it. This was feeling more and more like a setup and he didn’t appreciate being messed with. He could be in Savannah with Ryan right now. Or at the Auburn Police Department. He was friendly with Roger Bryce, the city’s chief of police. Though he didn’t expect special treatment just because he worked with Mayor Westfield, David would love an update on his case.
“Focus,” Dani said.
He inventoried the room. Plastic tubs of sporting goods. Ryan’s trike. David’s ten-speed. But no ghosts. Not even a spooky tapping or an otherworldly whoosh sound. Just Dani’s quiet breathing and the pounding of his heart.
“Nothing. Look, Dani—”
“Don’t give up already. You said you’d try.”
She’d kept him sane in their basement cell. She’d tried to protect him. She’d helped him escape. He owed her, but he wasn’t sure he owed her quite this much. “I’ll try one more time, and then we’re moving on.”
This was either going to work or it wasn’t, and she’d have to face the reality that he wasn’t what she hoped for. David inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. I’m a blank slate.
“Amicus pervenio.”
His fingers tingled, but only a little, and he wondered if it wasn’t psychosomatic. If he concentrated hard enough he could imagine all kinds of weird sensations in his body.
The tingle got stronger and moved up his forearms. He wasn’t imagining that. Or, if he was, he was very much insane. Like wacko crazy.
An electrical current raced up his arms and crackled down his spine. It was different than Dani’s witch magic. It wasn’t cold, but warm.
This must be necromancy. They were right. He was different. He was a necromancer.
A lanky young man blinked into being to the left of Dani. The same boy David had seen twice in the basement cell. Shaggy dark hair fell into his crystal-blue eyes. He looked much clearer and more real now than the other times he’d shown himself.
David furrowed his brow at Dani, not sure what to do next. But she couldn’t see the ghost. He was on his own.
“Hi.” David scrutinized the boy’s skate shoes and how they rested upon the garage
floor as if he was really standing there feeling the effects of gravity. Of course he wasn’t. He didn’t have a corporeal body, just a see-through shadow in the shape and color of a real person. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Yeah, well, necromancers smell funny. Like burnt plastic. So I followed you. Am I your first spirit?” The kid chuckled. “Great. A virgin.”
“My name’s David,” he blurted out.
“Adorable. I’m Tony. What kind of spell you casting?”
“I don’t know exactly.” He glanced at Dani for help, and she shrugged, unable to see or hear the spirit. As far as she could tell, he was talking to himself. He must look like a complete lunatic. “Her friend is under a nightmare spell. She wants to wake him up.”
“And,” Dani interrupted, “My power.” She wiggled her fingers at him. “Don’t forget that. It’s kind of important to me.”
“Look,” Tony said, “I heard your call, and I’ll help you, but only if you help me.”
“Uh. What kind of help?” he asked the boy.
“I need you to talk to my sister.”
“Okay.” Deliver a heartfelt, if slightly ghoulish, message from a recently deceased loved one? Simple.
“You have to promise. Say it. Say ‘I promise.’”
David began to doubt the intelligence of this little arrangement. Tony seemed suddenly agitated. What exactly was he asking for?
“All you want me to do is talk to her?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you what to say.”
Maybe David was missing something, but it sounded like an easy trade. “Sure. I’ll do whatever I can.”
“No, you have to say it. Say ‘I promise.’”
He may be signing his life away, but it was too late to waffle now. “I promise.”
The boy exhaled, his expression softening into a smile. “Thanks.” He stepped around David to see more of the spell circle. “Okay. I’m in. Let’s go wake this guy up. I’ve never seen a nightmare spell before.”
“What did he say?” Dani asked.
“He says yes. And his name is Tony.”
“Well, tell him hi for me. And let’s get started.”