by Clare Kauter
And to think I’d briefly trusted her. “No, neither of those things.”
“They chased us, though,” said Ed. “They nearly hurt you! It was only because of the coriander that you were safe.”
I hadn’t mentioned to the others that there had been at least two instances when the zombies had the opportunity to kill me and instead did nothing.
“They could have hurt me, but they didn’t,” I said. I looked steadily at Daisy. “You’ve raised them before, haven’t you?”
Of course she had. But she was smart. “Do any of you work for The Department?”
Ed and I both looked at Henry.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then no, I have never knowingly raised any zombies, nor has any member of this coven. However, if we were to raise them, we would only do so for good purposes, and we would never allow them to attack anyone.”
What exactly did she mean by ‘good purposes’, I wondered.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘good purposes’?” Henry asked.
“You’ll have to talk to Grand Witch Hecate,” Daisy said.
“I’m not going to have you arrested,” said Henry. “I’m just here to supervise a quest, and it’s pretty clear you didn’t intend to raise all those zombies. Having some answers would just make our job easier.” I didn’t believe him and I could see that Daisy didn’t either. Don’t trust the establishment, man. Necromancy was pretty illegal, probably. I’d need a handbook or something to know for sure.
“Even so, you’ll have to talk to Hecate. She can explain our policies much better than I can. I’m actually on my way there now if you want to join me. I need to check if she’s OK – I’m quite concerned. It’s very unlike her to not show up, and after tonight’s events…” She trailed off, looking away from us. She shook her head and turned back. “As I said, you’re welcome to come with me.” There was something odd going on here. I doubted she couldn’t explain the policies herself, but she seemed very keen to take us to Hecate. Ah, of course, I realised. She’d recruited us as her entourage to help travel there safely. A decent idea in theory, but judging by the kind of luck Henry, Ed and I were having that night, I probably would have picked someone else.
“No!” said Ed, surprising no one with his cowardice. Daisy didn’t appear to hear him. Of course, I realised. She can’t see ghosts. Ed could manifest a physical form, but unlike the pink-auras in the forest, he was still invisible to most people. That was kind of the point of poltergeists, I guess: to be able to move objects while remaining totally unseen. If only I couldn’t see him either. “We need to go home. Please can we just call it a night?”
“Sure, let’s go see Hecate!” I said. A couple of witches helped me gather my things up off the floor, all the while Ed protesting and Henry and me ignoring him. Henry obviously wanted to speak to this Hecate about whatever laws the coven had been breaking by raising the dead and such. I wanted to find out what the hell had happened that night to make a whole cemetery come alive, seemingly without the conjurers’ intent to cast such a spell. Oh, and annoying Ed was a bonus.
Once we’d all gathered up our supplies, we set off, me with my charms and herbs and Daisy with her potions and spell book. Walking out the door was still slightly nerve-wracking after my last experience of crossing the threshold, but this time it was much less eventful. Once outside, Henry suggested we cast a ward spell over the group, making ourselves imperceptible to predators. I suspected he was trying to subtly test my magical ability yet again.
“Excellent idea,” said Daisy. “Tonight is a dark night. We need all the protection we can get. Let the three of us form a circle.”
“Um, excuse me, can I get in on this protection thing? Can someone tell her I’m here?” Ed whined.
“Oh, shut up,” I snapped at him. Daisy looked at me, shocked. She thought I was talking to her. “I’m sorry, we have a ghost with us. A very annoying one.”
“Oh, how odd,” she said, looking very confused. I supposed it would seem a bit odd that we would travel around with a ghost in our party. They weren’t known for being great company. “Will he or she be joining us?”
“Yes, he will, and he would very much like to get in on this ward business,” said Ed. I sighed.
“Unfortunately he will.”
The four of us formed a circle, Henry and I each holding one of Daisy’s and one of Ed’s hands. While I didn’t particularly want to touch the creep who’d been perfectly willing to run off and let a bunch of people die, even though they were clearly being attacked by the same person who’d murdered him, Daisy found it disconcerting holding someone she couldn’t see. This also had a slight advantage, in that since I wasn’t holding Henry’s hand, he wouldn’t be able to tell how much magic (if any) was coming from me. I had a good feeling that Daisy wouldn’t tell him either, even if the witches had dobbed me in to The Department for practising with no licence.
Daisy began to chant quietly and I shut my eyes, channelling my energy into forming the ward, an invisible dome that would encase the four of us and keep us hidden from anything looking on. Of course, if any averagely talented magician got too close they would be able to sense it, but it would keep us protected from most attacks. At the very least, the wolves would stay away.
White tendril energy streams burst upwards from the earth, knitting together to form a shelter. I nearly let go in shock at how strong the energy from the spell was – the dome was growing with hardly any input from me whatsoever. I looked across at Henry who looked equally as shocked as me. Neither of us had expected the power from one witch to be so strong.
When the casting was over, I watched the pearlescent tendrils fade until they were transparent. White. I’d never seen a white spell cast before. Blue and green were the common colours: the ones used by witches, wizards, shamans and the like. I’d seen red before, too, which was rarer. But white? I wondered what spell she’d used. Whatever the enchantment, we were safe in our bubble. Despite our protection, Henry transformed back into the big pale wolf from earlier. After the night we were having, I supposed we couldn’t really be too careful.
“Tell me about your quest, Nessa,” said Daisy as we started off. “What exactly do you have to do?”
Henry and I explained everything to her, giving her a more detailed recap of the evening’s events. Daisy was the sort of person that you instantly trusted, and to be honest I felt like we could use someone with her magical skills on our side. We tried to introduce her to Ed, which of course was a bit weird for her as she couldn’t see or hear him, but she was incredibly polite anyway. “I’m so sorry that we can’t have a proper conversation, Ed, but Hecate can speak to ghosts, so at least when we arrive there you’ll have another person to talk to.”
Ed did not look impressed. If anything, this news seemed to annoy him. “We should have just gone home. What possible use is this trip to us? She’s just some old lady who’s probably dropped dead alone in her empty house.” Wow, he was starting to sound like me.
“He’s really looking forward to meeting her,” I said.
“I hate you.”
I wondered if Hecate was responsible for the cemetery debacle. Until we found out what their ‘zombie policy’ was, it was hard to know who could have hijacked the witches’ powers. I was certain that no one at the church had known what was coming, and it seemed unlikely that Hecate would have been involved given that it nearly killed off her whole coven. Not turning up that particular night didn’t look good, though. How did the culprit do it? And how had the person responsible known for sure that the coven would meet that night?
“How often does the coven meet?” I asked.
“Every night at sundown,” Daisy replied. Right, so that solved one mystery. The zombie trap would have worked any night of the week.
We were walking towards the nearby town of Gretchen, only a few kilometres from the church, where Hecate owned an occult bookstore with a flat upstairs. Ed’s theory that she’d just dropped dead seemed unl
ikely to me, because even if she was ancient, if she was still climbing stairs at her age then she was probably indestructible. Naturally, 2 kilometres out from the town, with the glow of the streetlights vaguely discernable in the distance, the one thing from which our ward could not protect us appeared: a thunderstorm. There was a flash of lightning and a distant rumble.
“It’ll probably be OK,” Daisy said.
“Yeah, that sounded like it was a fair distance away.”
In my opinion, Henry and Daisy were showing an unbelievable level of optimism for anyone who’d lived through the Actual And Literal Worst Night In History (working title). I couldn’t decide if this was more of a horror movie or a farce. I said nothing.
Ten seconds later, down came the torrential rain. Almost instantly, Henry’s fur was soaked through and slicked to his flesh. My hair had weird little frizzy bits curling around my face where it had fallen out of my ponytail. Daisy looked like an elegant nymph who was taking a shower under a waterfall. Ed looked exactly the same, but more miserable. We were so wet within a few moments that we didn’t even bother hurrying towards the town. The dirt road turned to sludge under our feet and I was sinking down to my ankles. Great. Second pair of shoes ruined in one night.
All the fantasy novels lied – quests are overrated. And I didn’t even have a sword or bow and arrows. Not that I’d be able to use them, but at least I’d look cool. Instead, I was like a drowned rat, with red mud not only on the outside but also the inside of my joggers, squelching around. (At least it was my joggers, though – it’s not like I actually needed them, given that I hadn’t exercised since… Well, earlier that evening when I was jumping through the church door, and before that when I was running from the zombies. But before that? Probably that skipping I did in primary school.)
We were making pretty slow progress, what with being held back by the suction of the mud, but eventually we made it to the outskirts of town where the roads were paved. Henry and I immediately found a puddle and began to rinse the mud off our feet while Ed watched on judgmentally.
“Really?” he said. “You’re taking a bath in a puddle like a couple of hobos? For once I’m glad I’m invisible so I don’t have to worry about being seen with you.”
Daisy waited patiently to the side as I poured the slop out of my shoes and rinsed them in the water rushing down the gutter. Somehow she had managed to come out of that thunderstorm entirely untouched by the mud. It was like the earth and weather just… liked her. Maybe she was a nymph. I’d heard that fae sometimes joined covens to expand their magical training, but I’d never actually met any kind of faery so I didn’t know how accurate that rumour was.
Well, I’d never met one until – perhaps – now. That would explain the white energy, and how she was able to put up a ward so easily, and why she was second in command of the coven despite appearing to be so young. She could actually be hundreds of years old. Plus she was the right build – tiny.
That would explain why the witches were still alive when we’d got there. In all honesty, human witches should have been dead from that sort of power drain long before we’d arrived and woken everybody up. The rest of the witches were still in a bit of a daze even after we’d healed them, whereas straight away Daisy had seemed downright, well, spritely. (Puns are hilarious, and if you disagree, you can leave.) The one part that didn’t make sense to me was that she couldn’t see Ed, but perhaps that wasn’t part of a nymph’s skill set.
Once I had finished washing my feet and Henry had cleaned his paws, we continued on to Hecate’s shop. When we reached the front door of Witch’s Brew Coffee and Book Shop, we were surprised to see the sign still flipped to ‘OPEN’ and the front door unlocked.
“Does it usually stay open this late?” I asked Daisy.
“Not unless it’s full moon,” she answered. I nodded. Late-night trading when it was full moon was pretty standard in the occult shops. I usually hosted séances during the full moon. (Not this month, of course, because I was having something of a client shortage…) Usually it was a one-night-only deal, though, not something businesses did in the lead-up.
We entered with caution, although at this point I was wondering what more life could actually throw at us.
As it turned out, Life was out of ideas, so what we found behind the counter was Hecate, fast asleep. There was a moment of panic when we first saw her slumped over the coffee machine, all of us thinking that maybe she had just dropped dead from old age, but then she let out a loud fart and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Then we all began to regret breathing at all as we coughed and gagged at the scent. Daisy put her hand over her mouth and nose and gently shook Hecate awake. Hecate sat up with a start, looked around in confusion, blinked a couple of times and then wrinkled her nose.
“Gee, what’s that smell?” she asked. Henry, Daisy and I all murmured that we didn’t know and shrugged and shook our heads. Ed, however, was not so tactful.
“It’s you.”
I was about to get up him when Hecate spoke again.
“Who are you two?”
Two. She was looking at Henry and me. She hadn’t seen or heard Ed. I exchanged glances with Henry, who was clearly thinking the same thing as me: this was weird. Normally, I would have assumed that the old lady had lied about being able to see ghosts, but since Daisy, another magical being, couldn’t see him either, I was starting to think there was something about Ed. Maybe it was because he was a poltergeist? Maybe The Department had clouded him as part of my quest? No, if either of those things were normal then Henry wouldn’t look just as confused as me.
There was one other possibility that I could think of: whoever was responsible for Ed’s death and for raising the zombies had tried to cloud his ghost. They might have worried he’d seek help, and so blocked persons of magical background from being able to see or communicate with him. That was the thing about clouding spells – you had to be very specific. The “persons” bit would explain why Henry could see him. A shape-shifter wasn’t really a person. I, on the other hand, despite the occasional foray into the realm of spell casting, did not have a background in magic. My background was in death. Or potentially, as Henry believed, in ‘other’.
I tried to think. Had anyone else been able to see him? None of the witches had. The zombies had completely ignored him, but as he wasn’t human that wouldn’t be surprising even if they could see him. What about the vampires? Generally, vampires can see ghosts. I’d assumed they’d just been ignoring Ed due to his lack of arteries, but perhaps they hadn’t seen him. They’d used magic to disappear at the end of our encounter, which wasn’t something vampires could do unless they’d been able to use magic when they were alive. And that would mean that although they were now dead, their background would be in magic… Meaning that if I was right, they couldn’t have seen Ed.
Well, proving my theory was one thing I could look forward to when the vampires found and horribly murdered me. I shuddered and tried to push the thought aside.
I realised someone was talking. I had been so deep in thought that I hadn’t bothered answering Hecate’s question. Daisy or Henry seemed to have introduced me and they were now debriefing Hecate on the night’s events.
“A whole cemetery? Yeesh, I’m glad I slept through that meeting.”
I let out a little snort of laughter.
Henry, not at all amused, asked Hecate, “Would you be able to explain to me what exactly your necromancy policies are?” For someone who’d seemed so casual earlier in the evening, he sure was acting uptight now. I suppose stress does that to a person.
“We sell the cones to normals,” she explained, not looking at all concerned that Henry was a government official. Cones were a type of contained magic that looked much like an incense cone, except that instead of lighting them, you broke the tip off to activate them. Normals, people with no magical ability, could buy various types of cones for different things – they ranged from alleviating symptoms of the common cold to what Hecate was
describing: necromancy. “There’s a very strict procedure we follow in accordance with The Department’s regulations. The cone is used to raise a deceased friend or family member, just to allow for a final goodbye. It helps with closure. Used in conjunction with counselling it can be very effective. ”
How seeing the rotting corpse of your loved-one reanimated as a zombie could possibly make you feel better about their death was not something I entirely understood.
“In what way is that possibly safe? Necromancy is illegal for a reason!” said Henry. Ah, so necromancy was illegal. Good to know.
“It’s not illegal in this region if it’s used for therapeutic purposes. They need to be prescribed by a shaman or another health professional, of course. And it’s not at all dangerous – the cones have inbuilt safety features. The zombies can’t attack people and they can’t leave the confines of the cemetery where they were created.” Which explained why the zombies hadn’t bitten me or chased me back to my house once I was out of the graveyard. “And, normally, the cones can only be used to raise one zombie at a time.”
“Normally?”
“I assume what happened tonight is that someone, rather irresponsibly I might add, used an amplification device to channel far more energy than the cone would usually use.”
“And do you sell them, too?” Henry asked. Wow, someone was getting a bit snarky.
“Or clouding cones?” I asked. There appeared to have been a lot of clouding going on recently, and if the guy or gal responsible had got their zombie spell from here, maybe they’d bought a couple of other things while they were in.
“Unlike necromancy, they are illegal. Class one banned objects,” she answered. “We’ve got some in evidence. Amplification devices in various forms that I’ve confiscated from séances and the like. We also seized about a hundred clouding cones from a lab in town a few weeks back. We were lucky to shut them down before they started selling.”