Hereditary Magic

by Emma L. Adams

  Hazel nodded grimly, and ran alongside the fence, scattering iron filings. River’s idea. The necromancers would be entirely caged in the territory, and perhaps the iron would make the Winter Gatekeeper hesitate to break free. Or at least slow her down. River, meanwhile, started passing candles to me.

  “They’re set to come on at the same time if they form a complete circle,” he explained. “I can activate them from a distance.”

  “Good,” I said. “I don’t think much of our chances of lighting matches in this wind.”

  My hands were numb even with gloves on, and I wished I’d worn a thick coat, but I’d opted for my lighter jacket for ease of movement. I surveyed the line of iron etched in the snow, and the candles placed at intervals. Twelve candles was the key, apparently.

  “This is the wonkiest circle I’ve ever seen,” I admitted.

  “‘Spirit hexagon’ doesn’t have the same ring to it,” Hazel said wryly. “Just as long as it works…”

  “It’ll work,” River confirmed, laying down another candle carefully and brushing snow from its top. “That the candles are close enough together is more important than the shape. But those necromancers—I can’t sense them.”

  “Can you sense anything beyond the fence?” I continued sprinkling down iron—alternating with salt, though I suspected it’d do little to deter that particular spirit.

  He shook his head. “I wish I could. From what I saw, her body is dead, but her spirit is alive. Once the body and spirit have spent too long apart, the soul decays and so does the body. The link is severed, permanently.”

  Almost without thinking, I willed the grey film to cover the world, showing me the spirits beneath. I sensed the three of us right away—three bright sparks in the grey haze—but beyond… nothing. I’d only been able to sense the Gatekeeper’s spirit when I’d more or less been standing on top of it.

  The clouds over the Winter estate were so dark, it was impossible to make out what was going on over there. I blinked the grey away, disarmed by how easily my vision shifted between spirit sight and normal sight. I wished I’d had the chance to practise. Odds were, we’d have only one chance.

  And I’d never let them drag River into Death again.

  I put down the next candle. The snow became a blizzard, and it seemed to take twice as long to reach the next part of the fence. Hazel fell behind, and a strange humming noise kicked up. Greyness filtered over my vision, and a gleaming shape passed behind the fence.

  I froze. They’re here. They know we’re here. The necromancers must know we were outside. They might not know what we were doing, but they were ready.

  So was River. He crouched in front of the gate, laying down three candles. Not part of the circle. Rising to his feet, he drew his sword.

  “Don’t,” I whispered, putting a gloved hand on his shoulder. “They got you last time.”

  “It won’t happen again.” His jaw was set. “I still haven’t got them back for attacking you.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I think they thought I was Hazel.” I pulled out my knife. The quietness was a distraction. The grey film on my vision told me what they were really doing. The necromancers’ spirits shifted on the other side of the fence, and I stepped back into a defensive stance.

  The two necromancers leaped the fence, one of them colliding with me at speed. We fell into a heap in the snow, candles flaring around us—but we’d missed River’s trap. River himself traded blows with the second one, who wielded a short knife of some type. The one pinned beneath me shifted, but I sank my knife into his arm.

  He yelled aloud, eyes widening as the iron poisoning hit. Rolling to the side, he displaced me onto the snow, hurling Winter magic into my face. I anticipated the move and let the attack bounce off my shield. Summer magic sprang from the palms of the second, and it hit me that they’d entirely dropped their disguises, unmasking themselves as faeries. And one of them’s from Summer. He left the traces at the crime scene.

  The bigger necromancer wielded Winter magic in one hand, a knife in his other, driving me backwards. I was far outmatched skill-wise, but we’d bested them once already, and despite the viciousness of his strikes, he wasn’t aiming to deal a fatal blow.

  They need me alive.

  I lunged forwards, tackling him into the snow. Magic blasted me again, making my teeth rattle, but ricocheted off the shield. My grip on the knife slipped, my hands numb, but I held on, punching him with my free hand. He screamed, writhing—I’d kept my fist clenched on a handful of iron filings. The iron left angry welt marks on his face, but before I could stick the knife in, he threw me off him. My back hit the dirt, and he lunged, grabbing my legs. I kicked out wildly, missed—and Hazel pounced.

  Magic exploded from her palms, knocking him forwards. I kicked him again, and the headless body of the second necromancer fell across our path. River stood over him, his sword gleaming with blood.

  “Get him in the trap, River!” I shouted.

  He grabbed the surviving necromancer and threw him into the candle trap. Binding lights shot up around him, caging him in. At the same time, River’s blade came down, sinking into his arm.

  The faerie-necromancer spat. “Let me go.”

  “Not until you tell me your allegiance,” River said. “I killed your friend. Don’t think I won’t do the same to you.”

  “Not to your Courts, scum.”

  “Vale outcast, then,” he said. “Necromancer for hire… I imagine your skills are in high demand, but not amongst your own kind.”

  He laughed. “You’d be surprised. I don’t fear death.”

  From a half-faerie, that was like hearing ‘I don’t fear cars’ from a small woodland creature. It didn’t compute.

  “How did Holly find you?” I asked.

  He coughed, spitting blood. Iron poisoning. Already his face was turning grey as the impact of the stab wounds spread through his body. “You really think you’ve trapped me?”

  Icy hands grabbed my throat, throwing me into the air. Greyness seeped across my vision, and the bared teeth of the first, dead, necromancer floated before my eyes. Not again.

  If I didn’t get him off me, fast, I’d be joining him in Death. Greyness smothered the others entirely, locking the pair of us into a hazy space, his hands gripping my all-too-mortal throat. Tugging me forwards. A horribly familiar pulling sensation gripped my soul, pulling me towards the gates. I braced my feet, raised my numb hands to my throat, but grasped only empty air. His hands weren’t gripping my physical body, and I couldn’t—

  I grabbed River as a ghost.

  I dug down for the sensation I’d had then—the realisation that I was the Gatekeeper. I could walk between the realms of death and the living. This guy was dead, permanently, and when the veil took his soul, there’d be nothing of him left.

  Cold, solid hands appeared beneath mine as I tightened my hold on him, even as my own arms dropped to my sides. Ghostly hands, my spirit detaching itself from my body, grabbed him, pulling him off my earthly form. His grip slipped—and I grabbed his hand in mine and squeezed. Hard. He was physically stronger than me in the mortal realm, but as ghosts, such things didn’t matter anymore.

  I yanked him towards me, hard, and he stumbled—or rather, floated, dropping in mid-air. I probably couldn’t cause him any physical damage, but instinctively, I knew what to do.

  Grabbing his wrists again, I envisioned the towering gates, fiercely, intently. The gates weren’t bound to a particular place. No matter where you died, they always found you.

  A flickering came from behind him. Then the gates appeared, towering, endless, paradoxically going on forever and everywhere at once.

  “No!” he screamed, but I shoved him, with everything I had, in the direction of the gates. The tide of spirits swallowed him up, and he was gone.

  The gates’ pull caught me, insistent. I spun on the spot, my heart sinking. I’d disconnected from my body again. How—

  “Ilsa!” River’s voice shouted
in my ears. There was a flash of light, a hand caught mine, and the fog cleared. I lay on the grass on my back, a candle burning at my head.

  “I sent him over the veil,” I said, unnecessarily. “Let him try coming back to make trouble now.”

  River nodded. “The other died—but you shouldn’t do that without training. If you’re not careful, the gates will sweep you away.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” I got to my feet, my hands still numb with cold, yet warm in the spot where he’d touched me. “Where’s Hazel?”

  “Finishing the iron barrier. Holly must know, but she’s still inside the house. We need to get onto her territory in order to finish the spirit circle.”

  Greyness covered the world, so suddenly that I floated right out of my body, the gates’ siren song pulling, pulling. There was another jolt, and I came to awareness, face-down in the snow. I lifted my head, shakily, seeing River braced against the fence. “What happened?”

  “That was a huge disturbance in the spirit realm,” he said, his face ashen. “Someone is dead.”

  Chapter 22

  River staggered back from the fence and began to run, following some sixth sense I couldn’t detect.

  “Is she breaking out?” The circle was only half complete, and the second half needed to be inside the grounds of the Winter estate.

  River stopped. So did I. The prone form of a piskie lay in the dirt. In fact, there were several, all coated in a thin layer of ice. I took two steps towards the nearest, which appeared to still be breathing, though its form was almost see-through. Dying. I turned back to the Winter estate. The blizzard had worsened since we’d left, a thick curtain of snowflakes blanketing the whole house, and its terrible magic was infiltrating the world outside, killing any Summer faeries which came near. Even on our territory.

  “They’re harnessing death energy,” River said quietly. “It’s more than necromancy. Something is sending out a wave of death energy. Anyone who comes near…”

  “Might die?” I stared at him. “But we’re—”

  “It’s not enough to affect humans… yet. We need to…” He trailed off.

  Old Mr Greaves’s ghost had appeared in the middle of the road.

  “Stop them,” he said. “They’ve taken him.” The spirit was barely there, his voice more like the whisper of leaves on pavement than an actual, human voice. But it was definitely him.

  “Fuck!” River said, his sharp voice breaking the silence. “I knew it felt like a necromancer. They have Greaves.”

  My stomach lurched. “The living one?”

  The spirit vanished into the fog. River gritted his teeth and walked against the driving blizzard, towards the gate.

  I grabbed his arm. “You can’t—if they have him, they’ll take you, too. They’re after necromancers, aren’t they? We’re affected worse.”

  River shot me a look. “That includes you, Ilsa. I’m bound to protect the Gatekeeper.”

  The Gatekeeper. The gates of Faerie… or death? Both, maybe. Both were in danger today, and both depended on the two of us to save them.

  River halted. “There’s someone moving over there.”

  “Holly?”

  His breath hissed out. “Undead. I can sense them.”

  Like we needed any more enemies. “Damn,” I said. “I’ll get the salt—”

  Two short figures jumped out of the hedge. Pointy-eared and about level with my knees, they leaped at us, claws aiming for my face. I struck back, the knife cutting a line down the nearest redcap’s arm. Its screech threatened to burst my eardrums, but this time, my knife found its home in its throat. Crimson stained the snow, and River tossed the body of the second one aside.

  Then the dead redcaps stood up.

  “Oh shit.” I backed up, fumbling in my pocket for the salt shaker, cursing the coldness for numbing my hands. As I flung salt at it, the redcap’s face dissolved. Ugh.

  “It’s a knock-on effect,” River said. “The veil—anything that died recently will come back.”

  “Think I worked that much out,” I responded. “That means—the undead will keep coming back unless we take them to pieces.”

  “I’ll hold them off,” he said. “You’re the one who needs to finish the circle.”

  I didn’t argue. He was a better fighter than I was, and one of us needed to secure the rest of the spirit circle. Fast. If the dead were rising of their own accord, it meant the Winter Gatekeeper was moments from breaking free.

  I reached the front gate, hoping to hell Holly was too distracted by whatever the Gatekeeper was doing to notice me sneak onto her territory. It was a wonder anyone could see in the driving snow, but the moment I slipped through the gate, my spirit sight snapped on. Greyness flooded my vision once more. I wished I’d had time to practise using River’s useful trick to sense if there was anyone nearby, but the entire house was blurred, probably due to the Winter Gatekeeper’s out-of-control magic.

  Focus. Get the candles down. The sky was thick with snowflakes, and the breath felt frozen in my lungs. Urgency screamed in my ears, but I couldn’t walk any faster. My hands and ears were numb. I continued my path around the garden’s perimeter, heading for the fence on the house’s right-hand side.

  I laid down the first two candles, where they were immediately blanketed in snow. Tossing a handful of iron filings down, I hoped they were enough to counter the Winter magic assailing the place. Maybe the necromancers use spelled candles for a reason. I brushed snowflakes from my eyes, the bitter cold cutting through my coat. Once I reached the back, there was no chance I wouldn’t catch Holly’s attention. I just needed to move fast enough that it wouldn’t matter.

  My numb feet pounded against the gravel path. The circle was more of a crooked octagon by now, but it didn’t matter as long as the points were in alignment. I slammed down the next candle, heart pounding against my ribs, breath stuck in my chest, lungs burning.

  And stopped. Undead barred the way around the corner of the house—too many to count.

  “Get out the way,” I said.

  None of the undead moved. There was no way to get around them. And the salt was running low. My hands were too numb, too clumsy, to fight.

  The first undead lunged. I kicked out, hurling salt at it. Its face dissolved but it kept going anyway. Bloody creatures felt no pain. How was I supposed to take the whole pack down at once?

  The book.

  No. That’d definitely draw attention. I was so close.

  I held the salt shaker one-handed, and punched the zombie. This time it fell, but two more took its place. Choking on the stench of dead flesh, I used my knife to carve a path through, but the press of bodies was like moving through sludge.

  And then a white light appeared, penetrating my greying vision. Horror momentarily blanked out the cold and exhaustion. The undead weren’t simply reanimates. Those white lights were their souls, trapped here, and furious. They collectively swarmed me, clawed hands grasping not at my body, but at my very essence. Wanting me to join them in misery.

  No. Never.

  “Get away!” I croaked, my vision flickering back to the real world. I threw the empty salt shaker, my free hand scrabbling at my pocket for the book and finding something else. A candle, one of the few left. Wait—they were infused with necromantic power.

  The candle ignited in my hand. Though they didn’t cease their attack, a few cringed away from the light.

  I held it above my head, a clear warning. “I can banish you,” I shouted, wielding the knife in one hand, the candle in the other.

  They moved aside, slowly, and I pushed my way through the pack, finding a free spot for the next candle. So close…

  Another flash of light came from the lawn ahead. Then another. A summoning circle. Greyness seeped across my vision, but not before I’d seen the body lying in the circle. I knew who it was without looking close—the necromancers’ leader. And swirling currents of blue light spiralled from the circle to the house. Beside the circle stood… Holly.
She must be drawing on the necromancer’s power in some way.

  “Contain them!” Holly shouted, her voice whip-sharp on the breeze.

  Greaves said, “This is more than a necromancer can handle, you foolish girl. The spirits will have you.”

  The voice didn’t come from his body but from the spirit hovering above it. She’d torn him out of his body. Winter feeds on death energy. What the hell was she doing—boosting the Winter Gatekeeper’s power? I needed to finish the circle, but there was no way I could walk right out in front of her and not be noticed, even with all her attention on her own circle.

  She killed Graves. Gingerly, I crouched down, laying the second to last candle on the snow. If I sprinted—

  The icy presence of the Winter Gatekeeper’s spirit burst outwards like a deadly flower in bloom. Blue tendrils snaked across the lawn from the dark space of the house.

  “That’s better,” purred the spirit. “I see what you’re doing with those candles, dear. You’re hopeless.”

  I froze, my body locking in position. I felt her before I saw her, her evil presence brushing against me, colder even than the snow. She’d been watching me from within the house the whole time. I need to move. I have to—but my legs wouldn’t obey. Her magic had frozen my body. Move!

  The Gatekeeper’s laughter rang in my ears.

  Snow blanketed my fall, and everything faded to grey, and whispering. Cold air on my face… cold snow soaking through my clothes…

  “Wake up!” Holly snapped.

  I opened my eyes, my mind fuzzy, everything indistinct.

  “I said get up, idiot.”

  “What?” I lifted my head. “I thought you wanted this.”

  “You thought wrong,” said Holly. “I’ve been trying to stop her, and now—it’s all your fault.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”