by A. J. Locke
“Ready to go?” Kyo asked while I hunted down my car keys. My bag was lying on its side on one of the end tables, and I suspected my keys had fallen out and Luna had made off with them. Sure enough, I found them behind her doggy bed along with an old toothbrush and a spoon. Little hoarder.
“I never said you could come,” I said to Kyo.
“You also didn’t say I couldn’t not come.”
“What? Never mind, come on. But you have to stay out of the way.” I fetched an energy rune and charged it up for him.
“Selene and Kyo are on the case.”
“That couldn’t have been cornier.” I looked at Ethan. “You have any plans today?”
“Meeting up with my parents for lunch, then we are going to the admissions office at NYU to talk about re-enrollment.”
“Take your cell phone, and stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, Mom-Number-Two. Should I also—”
He didn’t finish his sentence though because all of a sudden his body jerked, then went limp, and he slid off the couch to the floor. I ran over to him, pulling his head into my lap. Kyo arrived a few moments later with a cloth he’d dampened with cold water. Ethan’s skin was feverishly hot, and sweat had broken out all over his body. Kyo laid the cloth on his forehead and we both sat there tensely watching him.
About five minutes later Ethan started to rouse and I released a sigh of relief. He opened his eyes, blinked up at me, then reached up and removed the cloth from his forehead before he sat up.
“It happened again,” he said glumly, sitting back against the couch.
“Yeah,” I replied. “How are you feeling?”
“Slight headache, that’s all.”
“Tielle really needs to get to the bottom of this, damn it,” I said. It was not the first time Ethan had randomly blacked out. It had first happened over a month ago, and I’d been scared as fuck. So scared that we’d taken him to the hospital, and I’d called his parents who had left their home in the middle of the night to drive down here. Tielle’s team had come in to check him out and found nothing wrong with him, but about a week and a half later it had happened again. And then a couple weeks after that. And now here we were. Tielle had run dozens of tests but couldn’t figure out what was causing his random blackouts. She assured me and his family that his ghost wasn’t rejecting his body, but needless to say that was the concern at the forefront of my and his family’s minds. And the public’s.
To say that Ethan Lance regaining a physical body was a hot topic issue was an understatement. As I’d suspected, once word got out, no amount of Tielle’s attempts to control the narrative could stop the media and the public from erupting over the story. News programs across the board debated the topic night after night. The issue, as I knew it would be, was vastly divided. There were those who were staunchly against the Alchemy that gave Ethan back a body and called for it to be destroyed, and those who were eager to explore the topic further as they saw it as a step toward overcoming what was supposed to be the most final and unchangeable part of life: death. No one was necessarily running with the idea that every person who died and had their ghost rise should get their body back. Instead, they were taking the angle that special cases, like Ethan’s, should be considered, such as violent, untimely deaths, or people who died in freak accidents.
Tielle had a team devoted to handling the media coverage and educating the public on the experiment. The hardest part of it for both supporters and dissenters to swallow were the ghost-filled runes that were needed to maintain the body. That one was a doozy for sure. I myself could never fully accept it, but seeing how far Ethan had come from the frightened ghost who’d been used as a murder weapon twice gave me some measure of peace with the whole thing. Now there was this whole blacking out issue, which hadn’t been able to be kept secret since I’d taken him to the hospital the first time it had happened. The fear was that Ethan’s body was going to fall apart, which gave the opposition a stronger voice.
“I’ll be fine,” Ethan said. “And if I get in trouble, I’m sure Savior Selene will swoop in to save me.” He grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes.
“Savior Selene might not be a nickname that sticks around much longer if Jacob has anything to do with it.”
“Why don’t you stop worrying about him and focus on more important things,” Kyo said.
I gave him a look.
“You know your merits and what you’ve been through. More so, the people who matter to you know as well and know the sacrifices you made. Some bitter man’s drivel holds no weight to who you are and what you’ve done.”
“Nice save,” I said. I helped Ethan up and he flopped back onto the couch. “Are you sure…”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Ethan said, cutting me off. “And please don’t text my mother about this, it will make seeing her and my dad later unbearable.”
“Fine,” I reluctantly agreed. “Just…take it easy.” There was nothing I could say beyond that, because it wasn’t like we knew what was making him black out. All I could do was pray that Tielle figured out what was wrong and fixed it. Kyo and I fussed over Ethan for a few more minutes, mostly to annoy him, then we headed out to my car.
CHAPTER THREE
“Where does the offending dead witch live?” Kyo asked once we were driving off.
“Harlem,” I replied. We drove in silence for a while, but I was aware that he kept looking at me then looking away.
“Something on your mind?” I asked, turning to him while we waited out a red light. “Or am I just looking that good today?”
“You always look good,” he replied smoothly. “But there is something that’s been on my mind.”
“Shoot.” I turned my attention back to the road.
“You haven’t said much about your mother these past months.” His voice was softer and his tone careful.
My grip on the steering wheel immediately tightened.
“It might not have been very wise to bring this up while you’re driving…”
I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Then another.
“What am I supposed to say about that?” My voice sounded a bit shaky.
“Something, anything,” Kyo said. “You haven’t even attempted to go find her.”
“Find her,” I repeated. “Why? So she can try to finish the job? She drove a knife into my chest, Kyo.”
“Selene…”
“There’s nothing more to say about it. You don’t know anything about my past with my mother.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“What difference would it make?”
“It could help you work through this whole thing.”
“I already have a therapist.”
“So you’ve been talking to her about it?”
My silence was answer enough.
“Talk to me, Selene.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.” Of all the topics in the world, this was one I did not want to broach. I didn’t know how to begin processing the discovery I had made a few months ago when an old photo and a call from Dr. Lane revealed that my mother was a Rune Teller working in the Underground who had given me a very disturbing reading before attacking me and stabbing me in the chest. I had gone over that encounter a million times already and all it did was spin my emotions out of control and confuse me to no end. My mother, Nova, hadn’t been a part of my life since I was about four years old. All my grandmother had told me was that she had issues with addiction. She never outright said that she’d died, but that was the belief I grew up with; that she’d eventually overdosed. I had very few, and very vague memories of her. There was just no connection there. I didn’t know who she was before she had me; I didn’t know what her life was like. Grams never talked about her in much detail. So for all these years she’d been a distant entity. Someone I could credit for being one half of the reason I was here. That’s it. So to have randomly come across her, in the Underground of all places, only to have her try to kill me, was not something
I could wrap my head around. Thinking about it and trying to talk about it just made me feel like my head was going to explode. What’s next? Was my deadbeat dad going to make an appearance and team up with her to kill me?
“Do you want me to go with you?” Kyo asked, voice still soft. “Back to the Underground…”
“No,” I said quickly. “There’s no reason to.”
“Don’t you want answers?”
“Quit pushing me, Kyo,” I snapped. “I don’t want to deal with this right now, okay? Perhaps my mother will show up and try to kill me again, that’s when I’ll deal with it. Until then, I don’t want to talk about it. There’s no point.”
“Whatever you say.”
I could hear the hurt in his voice. I sighed and forced myself to ease up on the white-knuckled grip I had on the steering wheel. “I know you’re just trying to help and I appreciate that. But I’d rather focus on other things than think about something I can’t even begin to figure out. Like you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. It’s been a few months since you told me about how you ended up in the In Between. You said you wanted me to help you find your body, but you haven’t taken any steps toward doing so. I can only help you if you give me a direction to go in.”
“I was waiting,” Kyo said with a slight shrug.
“For what?”
“You.”
“Huh?” I cast a quick, puzzled look at him.
“I was waiting for you to be in a good enough place to take this on with me because it won’t be easy. You were dealing with a lot and your mental and emotional states were pretty much rock bottom. The last thing you needed was to jump onto my case. You needed time, so I was giving you time.”
“Oh.” It had not occurred to me that Kyo was stalling because of me. But he was right, I would not have been in the best position to help him coming right off of dealing with Renton and then all the bullshit with the crossover ghosts and my newly acquired dead magic. Not to mention Garrus having part of my soul and Ethan getting a new body. Having more downtime in the past few months than I’d had in a while had definitely helped. As had the therapy with Micah.
“Well, I appreciate that,” I said. “But you don’t have to keep waiting me out. We can start looking into things. However you want to do that.”
“Quietly,” Kyo said. “This isn’t something we can go about by asking questions to see where it leads us. For over three hundred years, the dead witches have kept this hidden. If they find out we’re asking about the whereabouts of a dead warlock’s body, it won’t end well for either of us.”
“This whole thing is disturbing.”
“But not disturbing enough for you to reject a job working for a dead witch?” Kyo said teasingly.
“Hey, I needed a job and the change of pace from working for a ghost agency was refreshing. I hadn’t expected Tielle to offer me a job, but it works out well for both of us.”
“Oh?”
“Yup, I get to make money and Tielle gets help staying on top of wrongdoings in the paranormal community.”
“Isn’t that what the Paranormal Task Force is for?”
“The PTF is a huge, noticeable presence. Even their undercover work is tied up with upper management controlling things and paperwork leaving a trail. After what the city has been through with Larry, Renton, and the crossover ghosts, the last thing the Paranormal Sector wants is a lot of public coverage of crimes among paranormals. It’s reached a point where it doesn’t even have to be something major. Something small such as this dead witch we’re about to investigate distributing tainted runes could set off mass panic in the public. A lot of people will think that it could lead to a larger problem like the ones we’ve recently dealt with.”
“So fear and paranoia toward the paranormal community is high, and Tielle hired you to look into things quietly and keep the volume down to avoid unnecessary panic.”
“You’re a sharp one,” I said. “A one-woman team who reports to a small group of people will do a better job than a task force tied up in bureaucracy. To a certain extent the PTF has to be open about their investigations or they run the risk of lawsuits coming at them left and right. The government needs them to maintain a certain level of transparency so the public feels as though they’re doing good work on their behalf. So if they were the ones looking into this dead witch, you could be sure it would be on the news tonight and in the papers tomorrow.”
“Interesting,” Kyo said.
“Does it bother you that I’m working for a dead witch?”
“Not really. I’m not out to hate every dead witch walking the planet. But I do want to expose them. Regardless of the fact that they weren’t the ones who turned against us and cast us away, they kept up the mantle instead of trying to restore us. So they must be exposed. Once I have my body back.”
“Expose the dead witches and uncover a bunch of dead warlock bodies that have been having their magic siphoned for over three hundred years. Sounds easy enough.” Yeah right.
“It might be the hardest thing you’ve had to do.” Kyo’s voice was solemn, as was his expression.
“My top ten list will almost be complete then,” I said. “But in all seriousness, it is daunting, and I do have some apprehension, but let’s see what we can do.”
Twenty minutes later we were in Harlem, and I found parking. We got out and walked toward an apartment building on a Hundred and Fifty-First Street.
“The dead witch’s name is Leena Hardwick,” I said. “She’s fifty-eight and lives alone on the sixth floor.”
“What’s the plan of action?” Kyo asked.
“See if she’s home, invite myself in, ask her a few questions.”
“You really think if she’s up to no good she’d be that accommodating?”
“Nope, but I came prepared. I have Alchemized rune powder that will immobilize her so she won’t be able to run or attack me. And I have my rune gun of course.”
“Alchemy on your side, huh?”
I shrugged. “I can’t deny the terrible role it’s played in my life, but I also can’t deny its usefulness. I’m learning not to let my experience with Renton cloud my judgment on Alchemy as a whole. He was just one spoke in the wheel. Micah has been helping me to see the positive side of Alchemy. This rune powder being one of them.”
“My how you’ve grown. This therapist must be worth her weight in gold.”
“She is,” I said. We slipped into the building as someone was leaving, which I was thankful for. Ringing her bell would have put her on the alert and given her time to escape.
We got on the musky smelling elevator and I pressed the button for the sixth floor.
“So when are you going to tell your boyfriend about me?”
Kyo’s question caught me off guard, and I turned to him with raised eyebrows. He gave me an easy smile.
“Not that I don’t mind being a dirty little secret.”
“Then why even ask,” I said, looking away. I saw him shrug from the corner of my eye.
“Just curious, since you two are supposed to be working on being more open and trusting. That’s how the therapist phrased it right?”
“Is this a joke to you?” I said, probably more forcefully than I should.
His amused expression faded. “Of course not,” he said. “Sorry.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’m…I’m going to tell him. Soon.” I knew I had to come out with it, but every time I found myself about to tell Micah about Kyo I held back. Maybe I hadn’t fully worked through my trust issues with him. I was more accepting of his position with the Rune Development Department at the PCC these days, but the fact remained that Kyo was a crossover ghost and other than the ones in Ethan’s runes, they were all supposed to be sent back. Micah worked for the person who was in charge of doing so. Tielle. We had made two more attempts to recall crossover ghosts by connecting my dead magic to the runes on Affairs of the Dead. I had drawn in about thirty more ghosts, and Tielle was of the mindset tha
t only the ghosts within Ethan’s runes remained. If she knew about Kyo, he would have to go too. I had to trust Micah enough to know that if I told him about Kyo he wouldn’t run off and tell Tielle.
The door opened to a hallway with old, dirty carpeting that should have been replaced about a decade ago, cracked plaster walls, and a lesser version of the musky smell from the elevator. Kyo and I stepped out and I started scanning apartment numbers.
“Let’s put a pin on my personal issues, okay? I’m here to do a job and you’re here to tag along and not get in my way.”
“Yes, master. Or should I say ‘mistress.’”
I rolled my eyes at the teasing way he said mistress and led the way to apartment 6P at the end of the hallway.
“This is it,” I said. My rune gun was holstered, and the pouch that contained my vials of immobilizing rune powder was within easy reach in my bag.
I glanced at Kyo. “Somewhere on the ride up here I realized I should have made you stay in the car but here you are.” I shook my head and Kyo grinned. “Stand to the side, out of eyesight and let me handle this. Not that she would recognize you as a warlock ghost from the In Between, but a ghost sidekick isn’t part of my protocol, and I don’t need word getting back to Tielle.”
“Yes ma’am,” Kyo said before moving several feet back.
I then rang the doorbell and immediately heard the sharp buzz of it screech through the room on the other side. I waited for about half a minute, then rang again. Two more rings and several loud knocks later I was beginning to think Leena wasn’t home.
“A bust it seems,” Kyo said. He’d been leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. “Perhaps you should have called first to ensure she would be available to receive guests.” He flashed a smile.
“It might not be a bust.” I dug around my bag and pulled out a key. “Tielle provided me with a key to her apartment just in case the opportunity to search it presented itself.”
Kyo raised an eyebrow. “Should I bother to ask how Tielle got a copy of the key to this woman’s apartment?”
I shrugged. “She has her methods; I didn’t question it.”