I looked down at the lifeless body, observing the blisters and third degree burns that had eaten through the skin and to the bone on her neck and her collar. Her shoulders and upper chest appeared to be much the same.
Wait…where’s her soul? I inspected her body to see if there were any signs that her soul might be leaving, some array of color of black or brown or red or pink. Nothing.
To my surprise, the burn marks were gradually fading away, new skin replenishing where the scorched skin had been. She’s alive. “She’s alive!”
In a rush, I got to my feet and searched the living room, until I found what I was looking for – a snake plant by the far right wall on a stand. Shaking water off my hands as I hurried over to the plant, I grabbed it and set it down by Stephanie, picked up her wrist, and shoved it into the soil.
At once, her tattoos fired dozens of blue lights around her body, spiraling, swirling, spinning. The blisters popped, and dead skin fell away as new skin replaced the old. Her eyes were still stationary, but the blue lights trimmed her eye sockets, then retreated into her pupils.
Slowly, her chest began to rise and fall. I smiled, then touched two fingers below her thumb to check for her pulse. It was there, strong and rhythmic. My smile turned to a nervous laugh. She’s alive.
As if emerging from a deep dive, she sucked in a gasping breath. Her eyes shuttered, and then she went into a furious coughing fit, pulling her hand out of the soil and rolling to her side.
She’s alive…
Chapter
TWENTY-TWO
The snake plant had withered to a brownish gray, and the soil was dry and flaky. Stephanie sat up and braced her back against the wall, sliding her wet red hair off her shoulder.
Still on my knees, I looked at the blank screen of my phone again, then threw it to the dry carpet a few feet away. “Wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”
“No thanks to you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“The blue lights continued tracing her tattoos, though some of them had waned. “How long was I out?”
“A few minutes.” I really wasn’t sure. It had felt like hours.
“It’s going to take me days of draining the earth to get back to full power.” She winced and rubbed the left side of her head. “Maybe longer. I think I’ve lost some brain functions.”
“I’m sorry, Stephanie, I just—”
She waved me off slowly. “It’ll heal…just takes time.” Her voice dragged, and her words slurred together. “You brought me back.”
I couldn’t tell whether or not that was a question, but I answered her anyway. “I didn’t mean for it to go that far.”
“Neither did I.”
I placed my hands on the wet carpet and summoned water to clean the Pith off me. Stephanie noticed, watching me intently like it was something she’d heard that we summoners did, but she’d never actually witnessed.
I got off the carpet, picked up the dining table, and set up a chair beside it. I offered Stephanie the other chair; she declined. “You came here to kill me. Why? Was it because Marcus sent you?”
She shook her head.
“Why then?”
“Because I know what Marcus wants you to do, and I know what that’ll do to my little brother.” She wasn’t looking at me, but gazing blankly at the blinds that shifted back and forth over the sliding glass window.
“He wants to summon the goddess of contracts, doesn’t he?”
She nodded.
“Is it so Marcus can live for another six hundred years?” I asked.
She turned casually to me. “That’s not all he wants.”
I felt my insides grow cold.
Stephanie let out a heavy breath, letting one leg lie flat while she rested her elbow on the knee of the other. “Marcus is a money man. Every cent he owns is accounted for. Every mile he drives is recorded for gas and maintenance. Every minute he works is calculated into his salary. It’s a Leprechaun kinda’ OCD, counting his gold and checking it twice. Most deals he makes are on the table. So if you break the contract, he can just take you to court and sue you for everything you own. But then there’re the other deals.”
“What other deals?”
She rolled her eyes, shook her head. “The ones like me. Those of us who’re paid off the books. It wouldn’t go over too well if he had people like me and my brother and all those paranormals you saw at his place on his payroll. So he draws up these Empyrean contracts, ones that he whips out of thin air.”
“Wait,” I squinted. “I think he had me sign one of those.”
“Well, they won’t hold up in a public court, but they will hold up in the eternal court. You see, Vár, as powerful as she is, she’s still a low-grade goddess. When she’s called, she answers. Who’d want to be in a position like that?”
Stephanie was in a position like that, and I could tell by the way she said it, that it was something that was wearing on her.
“Marcus wants you to summon Vár,” she said, “knowing that you can’t contain her. What’ll happen is that she’ll be set free on earth to do as she pleases.”
“And that’s bad because…?” I let it drag out.
“You can’t be serious.” She gave me a condescending stare. “Imagine setting a slab of meat in front of a starving dog. And imagine if that dog got loose. What would be the first thing you think that dog would go for?”
“The slab of meat,” I replied, matter-of-factly.
“Wrong. If that dog doesn’t know you, and you set him free, he’d go for the person who let him loose first. Think about it. If a dog was starving, and he saw you as a threat, I can promise you that he’s going tear you apart so that you won’t go for the meat, and so you won’t try to lock him up again.”
I set my elbow on the table, bracing my knuckles on the side of my face with one leg crossed. “What’s the slab of meat that Vár’s after?”
“Ever told a lie?” she asked.
“I’m sure I have,” I replied, not willing to admit that I’d been lying to Boyd all this time.
“Have you ever promised you’d do something, but wasn’t able to do it?”
“Probably. But if I didn’t do it, I’m pretty sure there was a good reason why I didn’t.”
Stephanie shook her head. “Vár couldn’t care less about your reasons for not doing it. All she knows is that there are millions of broken promises and lies everyday, and she intends to punish every person who’s ever committed one.”
It took me a minute to wrap my head around that. “You mean if she’s released, then she’ll slay millions without a second thought?”
“Not necessarily slay, but bankruptcies, foreclosures, plagues, pestilence, whatever is legitimate justice for the covenants people have broken.”
“A white lie hardly counts as a covenant,” I replied
Stephanie pulled her legs to her chest and rested her forearms atop her knees. “To her, there’s no difference.”
“Good thing she isn’t more powerful than she is.”
“That’ll change once you summon her. Which is the reason I came here,” she sighed. “If you release Vár, who knows what’ll happen to me or my brother. We’ve both told our share of fibs here and there, and I know Vár’s just ready to unleash her fury on both of us.”
The fact that Stephanie had come here to kill me was all the evidence I needed to believe that what she was saying was true, because at this point, Marcus needed me alive, not dead. On top of that, she no longer had the staunch attitude that whatever Marcus commanded, she did.
“If Vár is released, won’t Marcus be killed too? A guy like him has to have broken at least some contracts over the six hundred plus years he’s lived.”
“Maybe a guy like him, but not him. Not Marcus,” Stephanie said. “If there’s one Leprechaun who clings to that code of chivalry, it’s him. Has he swindled? Yes. Has he duped? Yes. But it’s all been because the other person didn’t take the time to closely review the term
s of the agreement. Not a lie. But also not much fun for people like you and me.”
I’d known that Marcus was dangerous, but to want to unleash the goddess of contracts on the world to pour out justice on liars and covenant breakers was more demented than what I’d imagined. “What’s in it for him?”
“Think about how many people have made underhanded deals with him, then flew the coup when they couldn’t make good on their end. There’d be no way for Marcus to go after that many people. And we’re not just talking about the person who made the deal with him. Remember, he’s been alive for centuries. And promises carry over from generation to generation. He couldn’t keep up with that many bloodlines if he tried.”
“But Marcus sets up situations for people to fall into his agreements,” I said. “Just like when he bailed me out of jail so he could force me to find Castella, or when he had you root me so we’d follow you back to his place and wreck his house, then blame us for the damages, demanding that either we pay or do as he says. It’s twisted, and it’s not right. These are not agreements by any means.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Did Marcus really intend to unleash Vár for some sense of retribution for debts owed to him? I knew he counted his coins, but to this degree? Did he really have to go this far?
“What about the lies in his own bloodline?” I asked. “He must have considered that there are people in his lineage that have broken covenants before he made this contract with Vár.”
Stephanie combed her fingers through her hair a few times, then let the wet strands fall back to her shoulder. “He’s apparently been spending years setting things right that his bloodline has done wrong, as far as contracts go. I suppose the rest Vár might be willing to overlook in exchange for her freedom.”
“How do you know all this? Did he tell you?” I asked.
“How do you think? Daniel told me.”
“The Wraith?”
“Yup. Marcus kept his plans to himself. But he had to let this one with Vár spill out if he was ever going to see it happen,” she said.
“Spill out of his mouth? You mean like praying to Vár?”
“Exactly,” she said, looking back towards the blinds that had stopped drifting back and forth. “Marcus had to talk to her to make a deal with her. Of course, Vár could appear to him as an apparition, but he still had to talk to her. Daniel, as messed up as he is, faded into the spirit world so Marcus couldn’t see him and listened to the entire agreement.”
“But couldn’t Vár see Daniel, even though he was invisible to Marcus? Why didn’t she tell Marcus that Daniel was there?”
Stephanie shrugged. “I don’t see how that mattered to her. Marcus was the one keeping the secrets, not Vár.” She gave me a look. “I know you think you need to go to Marcus with the obelisk, but if I were you, I’d leave him alone. You’ve already severed the root I put on you. There’s no reason to take the obelisk to him.”
Even though Stephanie was spilling her guts about Marcus’s plan with Vár, I still didn’t trust her. There was no way I was going to let her know that I had Castella’s obelisk and that Castella had agreed to help Lyle and me confront the Leprechaun.
“If I don’t take the obelisk to him and summon Vár,” I said, “there are other æther summoners out there. If he doesn’t get me to summon Vár, he’ll get someone else, unless Vár decides to come after him.” I bit the inside of my lip, thinking. “I may be the only one willing to stop him.”
“You think so?” she asked incredulous.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But if Marcus can’t use me, he’ll just try again and again and again, until he comes across the right summoner who can and will be tricked into unleashing Vár. I’m not saying that I can stop him, only that I have to try.”
Bracing her fist on the carpet, water squishing between her knuckles, Stephanie leaned to her side and picked herself up. When she was on her feet, she held her head, dizzy from where she’d expelled her energy to resuscitate herself.
When I asked her if she would help us with Marcus, she shook her head and told me that she was too depleted to do anything but lie on the ground for the next few days and rejuvenate. Before she left though, she did tell me that if I needed her to give her a call, leaving her number on my counter.
Chapter
TWENTY-THREE
Waiting is not one of my strong points. Instant oatmeal isn’t instant enough. Text messages aren’t fast enough. I know, I know. First world problems, right? Well, waiting for death made me a little more patient than I can ever remember being.
After Stephanie had left, I blow-dried all the water out of my phone, and lucky for me, it started working again. For how long, I wasn’t sure, so I checked my texts as quickly as the Messages app would allow – not quick enough for me, of course.
Lyle had texted me to see if I was home, and when I finally got back to him, he let me know that he was on his way over. Before he got there, I vacuumed up the water from the carpet as much as I could. The carpet was still damp when I was done, but at least it didn’t have standing water squishing up every time I walked on it. I changed into some dry clothes – a burgundy long-sleeve shirt with beige jeans – before sweeping up the glass in the kitchen from the oven window that had broken.
Lyle knocked, and when I didn’t answer right away, I heard him jingling his set of keys to open the door. After he came in, he said, “What happened in here? Summoners gone wild?” he laughed.
He saw that I wasn’t laughing with him. He clenched his coat at the collar, shivered a little. “You’ve got it freezing in here. Thermostat still not fixed?”
“Not yet,” I said. “This mess came from another friendly encounter from Marcus’s on-call Druid healer.”
“How’d it go?”
“Not as expected.” I showed him the gaping hole in my oven and the dark area on my carpet that Stephanie had drenched. There was also the kettle and the water that I had strewn across the kitchen – the water now cool, of course. “We got into it, and Lyle…something bad happened.”
“I see that,” he said.
“No…I’m being serious.”
He grabbed both my arms and looked me square in the eyes. I’d rarely heard his tone so fierce and unforgiving. “What did she do to you?”
I hadn’t realized how shaken up I was until I heard Lyle talking to me like that. I bit back the tears from the unexpected flood of emotion. They still came to the surface, threatening to betray me at the edge. “The fire…it was like you said…I couldn’t control it.” I looked away, pulling out of his reach, so that the intensity of his gaze wouldn’t push me past my stable point.
That was when he saw the tiny singes in the carpet that had burned through to the wooden base before being extinguished by the drenching water. “Was this you?” he asked.
I nodded. “When I summoned the flames, I lost control. Every bit of anger, of rage, of hatred that I had in me erupted to the surface and exploded into fury. I nearly killed her, Lyle. I did kill her. She was dead. Had she not been a healer, she’d still be lying right there.” I pointed to the place on the floor where her body had crumpled to the ground.
“Rebekah…you can’t think like that. You knew this would happen, being a paranormal. Days like today, or the other day at Marcus’s place, they’re unavoidable. And being a summoner, things can get a little out of control. Stephanie came at you. You did what you had to do.”
“I know, Lyle. But to kill someone with my bare hands.” I held my hands out in front of me. “I can’t get used to this. I don’t want to get used to this. And you want to know what scares me? I’ve trained with fire, many times. Every time it’s the same. I lose control of it. And once the control is lost, I don’t want to contain it. I like the chaos.”
Lyle sat on the armrest of the sofa. “Listen, Rebekah, things are—”
“What about æther, Lyle? If I summon Vár, I’ll have to use æther. I have no idea what it feels like, how it flows through my veins. I do
n’t know how it twists or bends or brakes, how it binds. Or the pleasure of it – the pull that it has once it’s a part of me. Carter said he saw me use it the other night with the police officers. But I don’t remember anything after the gunshot.”
There was a distant expression on Lyle’s face that told me he had no idea what to say to me. Either that, or he knew that whatever comforting words he had, I would have hurled some rebuttal back at him. What could he say? Æther was unknown to me, except the research that Umara had found about it, which in itself was scarce at best. There just weren’t æther summoners around who were willing to share their experience. Æther couldn’t be acquired or taught like the other elements. So either æther summoners wanted the to keep the secrets of the power to themselves…or they were terrified at what the power had done to them.
“Maybe you don’t have to,” Lyle said.
“Maybe I don’t have to what?” I asked.
“To summoner Vár. To go to Marcus with Castella’s obelisk. To try to figure out what Marcus wants with you. Maybe you don’t have to do any of it,” he shrugged. “Castella’s out. Done. She doesn’t want revenge. I talked to her when you went out with Carter last night. She doesn’t want any part of this. Let’s just leave and go west like we first talked about.”
“She’s out? What do you mean ‘she’s out’? She can’t be out. I still have her obelisk, which is worth more than who knows what.” I took a few steps closer to him, stepping on the damp carpet, not caring since I’d put on my calf-high black boots.
“She’s out,” Lyle said again. “Like out-out. She said she didn’t want to have anything to do with this anymore. All that matters to her is her son. She told me that she was going to go and find his soul if she could, and get on the first plane to Arkansas. My first thought was the obelisk and all that she was leaving behind, but none of it mattered to her. She said, and I quote, ‘What more could I lose that has any value?’ Then she left and didn’t look back. I say we take Umara’s advice and leave Marcus alone.”
Seize the Soul: Confessions of a Summoner Book 1 Page 18