by Amie Gibbons
She nodded, smile fading off her face.
“We’re not kidding,” Carvi said. “That would be a cruel joke. We are investigators. Ariana here is with the FBI, she was on her way to a party when she was called in. And he was killed.”
“No.” She shook her head, looking up at me. “He can’t be dead. You don’t know him but he can take care of himself. I mean, someone tries anything, he’s a good shot. He’s a better shot than me. He’s not dead.”
“Oh wow,” I said. “Unless she’s the world’s best actress, it wasn’t her.”
She blinked up at me like she was waitin’ on me to confirm it was all a joke.
“I knew that about ten seconds after meeting her,” Quil said. “She is far too fragile.”
“But that means she’s more unstable, right?” I whispered.
“Yes, but I know I am,” she said. “Makes me less likely to act on it because I know it’s there.”
My head snapped back towards her.
“I’m practically blind,” she said, tapping her glasses. “I have better ears than normal and a really good sense of smell, and you seem to have the same problem I do with the indoor voice thing.”
Her voice wavered and I looked closer.
Her arms shook with the strain of holding her knees up.
Of holding herself together.
“AB, there’s more,” I said. “I don’t know if we really need to get into it since we’re pretty sure you’re not the killer, but if I were you, I’d want to know. Do you want us to get into it, or do you want to call a friend, process this first?”
“No!” she said, hard and sharp. “I want to know. I need to know what happened. I have…” She took a deep breath. “If I don’t have all the information, I will obsess. If I don’t understand something, it runs through my head in a circle. I… I want to know.”
She stared down at her knees and Carvi turned to look at me.
“Don’t tell her he was killed because her emotions set the ghost on him,” he said mentally. “You can tell her everything else, but not that. If you tell her that, it will break her.”
“AB, I have magic,” I said.
Her head jerked up.
“I know it’s hard to believe, but psychics, magic, v-”
“Are real,” she said, again so matter of fact. “I know that.”
“Oh!” I said. “That makes it easier. How?”
“Things not always adding up,” she said after a moment. “In science, we do what we can to measure the real world. I… seven years ago I… it was traumatic, but I felt too much for it to just be that, and I started researching to figure out what happened. I… that led me into looking into magic, because I figured the guy had to be magic.”
She grinned lightly like she was laughing at herself and I nodded.
Technically he was at least a little magic since he was able to move and know things in there, but it was probably something slight like being a sensitive.
“I figured if I felt like that, there had to be a reason. I felt… I felt like something out of a Disney movie. I…”
“You felt like you were meant to be,” I said.
Because that’s exactly how I’d felt about Grant.
Like eventually he’d wake up and see me, and we’d be together.
Which was insane.
She nodded and clenched her eyes shut. “Anyway, I went to a magic shop and started looking into stuff and doing experiments.”
I looked at Carvi.
Maybe she was our girl and just didn’t mean to.
“Okay,” I said after Carvi nodded at me. “Thomas was killed by a ghost.”
Her eyes flew wide. “Ohhhhhh. That’s why he couldn’t defend himself.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The ghost possessed him and made him jump out of a window.”
She looked down, holding herself tighter again.
“AB,” I said, “have you done anything lately with magic?”
She looked up. “You do think I did that?”
“Maybe on accident,” I said. “Just, have you done anything?”
She shook her head. “I ran experiments. Did a few small, I guess you’d call them spells, over the years to see if they’d work. But it takes so much energy and time, and I could only do little things like make wind shut the door or light a campfire. I haven’t even done anything with magic in months. I’ve been… kind of distracted.”
I smiled. “We know the background between you and Thomas, and that you guys were friends for a few months before things kinda blew up on ya. I’m guessin’ he was what was distracting you?”
She nodded, sniffing. “I was soooo happy to have run into him, and I checked his finger and there wasn’t a ring, even though I knew he’d gotten married. Turns out he got divorced and was single. And then we started hanging, and he fit in with my friends. He hit it off with Steve and Paul, peas in a freaking pod. We made this nice little group and just all hung out all the time.
“I always knew he would come back into my life. I felt it. And then there he was.
“We talked, touched on our past here or there. And I could feel things were going to break. I knew it would end badly, but I figured that was me being paranoid and going to the worst-case scenario. I mean, OCD people do that easily. I had too much to drink one night and told him I had a crush on him again, and he was nice about it, but after that he got a little cooler. And then the anniversary came up.”
“Anniversary?”
“Of when we… were together.”
“Ohhhhh,” I said.
“I was posting stuff on Facebook about how hard it was to be his friend and maybe I shouldn’t be friends with an ex, or at least not during that week. And then…”
“And then he went and had a one-night stand with a nurse,” I said.
“Yeah.” She nodded, shaking her head. “I can’t even think about it without feeling sick. I even liked the girl. But she didn’t know there was anything… ha! There wasn’t anything to get in the middle of. But people told him what I’d been posting, and then she said something to him about not wanting to be in our drama, even from afar because she was moving, and he blew up.
“I mean he went to Paul and ranted about me for like two hours. Because I posted some stuff referencing him. No one who didn’t know us both and know something about our history would ever have been able to tell.”
I nodded. “Yeah, kinda sounded like that from his side, but he saw it as you ruining the friendship, like things were going good and you went and ruined it.”
She nodded. “He would. He never took responsibility for things he’s done or his screw ups. Our friend Paul, he’s basically been playing therapist for me for the past few weeks, says Thomas saw me posting like that, even if vague, as a betrayal.
“And the first thing I thought was, ‘He betrayed me first.’ Seven years ago, he blew up our friendship when he hit on me. He tossed our friendship after he got what he wanted and it went badly. He just…”
“He threw you away,” I said, sitting next to her.
“Yeah,” she said, voice cracking. “And now someone threw him away.”
She burst into tears and buried her head in her knees.
I scooched up to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, holding her.
Quil sat on her other side and Carvi stayed where he was.
When she looked up, I took my arm away, and her eyes landed on Carvi.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, voice rough like she was dehydrated.
Carvi shook his head. “I just had to help her with issues similar to yours. I’m already in therapist mode. It’s fine.”
She looked over at me.
I shrugged. “Same situation as you, kinda, but I was fifteen, and it was my boyfriend. But I drank… a lot! I wasn’t ready, I didn’t really want to, it hurt like hell, and after that, he dumped me.”
She nodded, chuckling. “I was twenty-three, and I didn’t think I’d ever feel that much in my entir
e life. And he wasn’t my boyfriend, but he was my friend. My friend betrayed me. And Paul says I never dealt with that. It wasn’t the actual act that left me damaged, it was him leaving me after that. And he did it again last month, just ditched me. And now? Now he’s…”
“He’s left you for good,” I finished.
“You’re magic!” she said suddenly, making me jerk, her eyes wide and voice sharp. “You can fix this, right? He was killed by a ghost so you can-”
“No,” Carvi cut her off, taking her hands again. She looked at him. “AB, he is gone. His ghost is trapped in limbo right now, which means we could theoretically put him back if his body wasn’t destroyed. He jumped out of a twenty-story window. We can’t-”
“Yes, you can!” she said. “I’ve read about it. If he’s in limbo, he’s not gone. If you can get his body to a hospital, if you can heal the damage with magic, or whatever, if you can figure out how to reattach his soul, you can technically put him back. This has been my hobby for years now. Don’t believe me? Go look it up. Research is my thing. It’s what I’m good at. I’m telling you, I have read about this.”
We looked between each other.
“Carvi?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You have any idea what kind of power that would take? What kind of patchwork job we’re talking about? We are literally in Frankenstein territory here.”
“Then it’s a good thing I have access to giant, state of the art labs where we develop nerves, study cell growth, and grow organs in incubators,” AB said. “We have a hell of a lot of energy here. Not to mention whatever magic we could pull from the city. There are spells to pull power from other people, just a little from each. If we have enough of them, we could use that to generate enough magical power to heal him.”
“If you’ve studied this, you know Frankenstein was based on a real doctor, and it did not end well,” Carvi said.
“Except we’re not creating life without a soul,” AB said. “That’s the difference. If his soul is still tied close to this world, like it is when it’s in limbo, then we can put it back.”
“She’s right,” Quil said suddenly. “All those men who died, we can technically get them all back.” He held up a finger. “If we can fix their bodies and figure out how to reattach them, and do it when the veil’s still thin.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
I already knew the answer.
“Meaning if we’re going to do this, we have to before the end of All Hallow’s Eve. We have until sunrise.”
Chapter ten
“What are you saying, Ryder?” Mender asked, the phone distorting her voice, but I was pretty sure she was practically bursting with excitement.
I grinned, glancing down the hall at the lab where I’d left the guys to talk more particulars with AB.
In our job, we never had the chance to actually fix what went wrong, only catch and punish the ones who did it.
The chance to fix something like this? To bring these men back from the dead?
It was more than a miracle.
It was a chance at redemption.
For them and for the woman who unleashed all this in the first place.
It was hope.
And we almost never got that in our line of work.
“According to this woman, Dr. Williamson,” I said, “it is doable. Ma’am, it won’t be easy.
“We’ll have to break whatever spell is holding them in limbo, probably at the exact same time we put them back, so their spirits don’t have the chance to move on, and we’ll have to have enough medical stuff, AB could probably explain, to fix their bodies, and enough magic to stuff them back into their bodies, and we’ll have to do it before sunrise.”
“That’s a lot of have tos, Ryder,” Mender said. “But, my God, we could bring nearly twenty men back to life?”
“Or more since I’m guessin’ the ghost isn’t done,” I said. “But…”
“But we have to find out who did this first, stop them to break the spell, right?” she said.
“Yep. Basic rules of magic. Can’t undo it without the help of the person who did it in the first place,” I said. “Maybe we don’t really need her help, but we do have to know who it was, and what she did, to be able to break it.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t Dr. Williamson?” she asked.
“The guys are, but I still need to get some visions off her to make sure there’s nothin’ hiding in there,” I said.
“Do it. Text me okay if there’s nothing new, call if there is. I’m putting together a team to get the bodies to her lab. Who do we have to run it past?”
“Ummmmm.”
Normally Grant or one of the guys dealt with logistics like that.
“Find out,” Mender said. “Call them, get their consent. We’re sending those bodies there as fast as we can.”
“Oooookay,” I said.
“What about the energy we’ll need?” she asked.
“I actually had an idea on that. I, um…”
I cleared my throat.
FBI Special Agents didn’t say um.
“It’s Halloween,” I said. “There are parties everywhere throughout town. Lots of drinking and lots of dancing, not to mention other activities. I think, based on how Carvi rebuilt his body in July, that if we can figure out how to capture and channel energy, then we could go to these different bars and parties, set up to capture that energy, and draw a little bit from everywhere, and then bring it back to the bodies to put into them.”
“How do we go about doing that?”
I took a breath. “Carvi has been able to do it for himself, and there are spells to do it. The spell in July was supposed to do it by sucking energy through the lead vamps from their subjects… um, I think that made sense.
“Anyway, I think the, quote, unquote, thing we put into these clubs to draw out energy is Carvi. After that, we just need to put together some witches to figure out how to take the power from Carvi and store it and put it into these guys. Some witch should know how to do that. They’ve written about it.”
“I’ll put Menard on it.”
Menard! That was Crowley’s probie! I had a hard time remembering it because every time I thought of his name, it came up as Mender, and so I always thought I was off.
“Annabeth doesn’t really know what she’s doing here,” I said. “But she can get people in and make sure they don’t do anything stupid with the equipment. She’s already said she’s in.”
I could almost see Mender nodding her head. “We have a game plan. Good job, Ryder. Check her, then move onto the next suspect.”
“Stewart’s ex-wife,” I said. “Dan find anything on who could be Edmund’s ex?”
“Found some possibilities,” she said, “but we can’t be sure until we have enough to go on for you to get visions to pin her down.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me know when we have witches who can channel energy from Carvi? I can take him to downtown and he can gather some energy, but he can only hold so much until we have a way to take it from him and put it in these men, and to do it in a way that actually helps, instead of just dropping energy in a dead body. So we’ll need a witch who knows what they’re doing when it comes to healing damage and specifically reattaching souls.”
I could almost see her nodding. “Thanks for the guidelines. Does Carvi have any suggestions?”
“Not for this,” I said. I’d already asked. “But, he’s calling the witch firm he usually uses and asking them if anyone in there or someone they know can do this, the closer to Nashville the better, but he said he could fly them up fast.”
“Last question,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Why is he helping so much? From what I’ve heard of him, he’s not the altruistic type.”
I jerked. “Ummmmm. That is a good question. I can’t quite answer it. I asked why he was helping and he said it was to help me, but he’s goin’ above and beyond, and yeah, I don’t quite trust it, but as
long as he’s helping…”
“Watch your back, Ryder,” she said. “If you don’t know why he’s helping, it suggests to me he’s hiding something.”
I shrugged, glancing back towards the lab. “Yeah, but, I don’t think he is doing this to screw us over. I think he honestly is trying to help me. Now, he might be doing that to convince me to go work for him or whatever else he wants from me, but I think he’s honestly on this case with us.”
“You know him best, so I’m trusting your judgement here,” she said.
Wow, she was?
I was so used to Grant telling me what to do and doublecheckin’, I wasn’t sure what to do with this.
It was almost like I was lead on this case or something.
“I’ll let you know when we have a line on witches,” she continued. “You let me know if Carvi gets one, and tell me how the visions off Dr. Williamson goes. Then go interview Stewart’s ex-wife. We should have her tracked down soon. She’s probably at a party based on the GPS on her phone saying she’s somewhere downtown, so you can have Carvi start sucking up energy there too.”
That was new too.
That level of summary and communication.
“What’s everyone else on, ma’am?” I asked.
If I’d asked Grant, he’d just say work or to get back to work.
“Getting the bodies to the lab now,” she said. “Jet has already tracked down the leader of the lab and is contacting her, so don’t worry about that. Dan is finding the other suspect.
“We have our witch consultant looking for the ghost’s signature to prevent future deaths and hopefully capture it. And now we are working on finding witches who can channel energy, and getting the man power and resources to get the dead men to that lab and working on fixing the damage on them, medically at least.”
Wow.
She just gave me the whole picture of what was going on.
That was sooooo not how Grant worked.
I kinda liked it.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll stay in touch, ma’am,” I said, hanging up.
We were doing this.
We actually had a game plan!
For the first time in hours… no, in months, I felt like my old self.