by Anna, Vivi
Jovan jumped at the chance to show off. He cupped his hands together. “Accendo.” A glowing ball of blue light developed inside. When it filled his palms, he released it, and it floated up in front of him.
“The locket will swing back and forth when we are moving in the proper direction. It will stop if we veer off the path.” Skylar held up the locket in front of her toward the north. The locket didn’t move. She turned to her right and did the same. It started to swing back and forth like a pendulum.
“This way,” she said.
They followed her along the narrow dirt path that cut a straight line through the graves. Some had elaborately carved stone markers spouting some sentiment about the deceased. Here lies Mary Margaret Theodore, loving wife and mother. But most had only had a stone cross with a name and date chiseled onto it. This was a place for the poor, there would be no crypt or stone statues of tribute. The grounds were not kept clean and trimmed. All they would find here were the dead and forgotten.
At the end of the path, where it veered off in two other directions, Skylar stopped and held up the locket again to get another bearing. The locket had been turning left on the path. They followed that along about four rows of gra sr re="-1">Skyves, when the locket stopped moving.
“She’s here somewhere.” Skylar stepped off the dirt path and started walking along the graves.
Jovan took the other side and the three of them read over the names of the poor dead looking for Evangeline. There were old men and young, wives and mothers, and children. He saw a small fresh grave with a child no older than three.
Then he found her. Evangeline Stokes, born 1825 died 1844, the year Sebastian disappeared.
“She’s here.”
Skylar and Rhys joined him at the overgrown grave. Other sites had appeared well attended to, but this one looked to be a half century old. The yellowing grasses grew to the knee, and vines wrapped around the cross like snakes. A shiver went down Jovan’s spine. There was a strong presence around the gravesite. He didn’t sense it was evil, just powerful.
Skylar dropped the locket into her jacket pocket then took her satchel from Jovan. She unfastened it and slid out a gilded mirror about the size of a dinner plate. “Please stand back. I need room.”
Jovan and Rhys moved back a few steps as Skylar knelt on the ground and set the mirror on top of the grave, crushing the grass beneath it. Jovan watched in silent respect as she pricked the end of her index finger with her hat pin and smeared the four corners of the mirror with her blood. As she drew symbols in red, she chanted in ancient Gaelic, the language of the Druids.
When she was done speaking, she peered intently into the mirror. The firelight hovered above her, and the eerie blue glow reflected in the surface. Frowning, Skylar moved the mirror, first left then right, and then tilted it up.
“What’s wrong?” Jovan asked.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Do you need more light?” With a finger he guided the blue sphere closer to her.
She shook her head. “No. That’s not it. Something is blocking me from seeing.”
Tightening his grip on his cane, Jovan scanned the area, peering into the dark shadows. “Something or someone?”
“I’m not sure.” She stood, holding her mirror. “Either way, I can’t scry.”
“So it’s a dead end,” Rhys said.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Not necessarily,” Jovan replied.
Rhys sighed angrily. “We already discussed this, Jovan, and you’re not doing it.”
“I don’t take orders from you, dear brother.”
Skylar slid the mirror back into her bag. “If you do it, I’ll have to inform the council.”
“Then tell them, what do I care? Their rules mean little to me, as we’ve already established.”
“Jovan, please,” she pleaded.
“I’m not leaving here without answers, Skylar. This is our best and only lead. We must find Sebastian.”
She nodded and gave him room. She glanced at Rhys to see if he was going to give Jovan any more grief. His brother just shook his head and said nothing else.
Jovan’s hands shook slightly as he took out what he needed for the ceremony. He’d never worked this spell before—well, not successfully, anyway. Years ago, he tried it s, hhtl on a dead rat. He’d gotten it to twitch its tail but nothing further. At least he had to try. If it didn’t work they were no further behind than they already were, but if it did work, they would get all the answers they needed. It was worth the risk to him.
He pushed four candles into the grave dirt, one at each corner. Then he took out a wooden mixing bowl and poured milk into it from one glass vial and honey from another. He mixed them together vigorously in a counterclockwise motion. When it was done, he dug a little hole in the soil in the middle of the grave and poured the mixture into it.
“A sweet libation to lure you, Evangeline.” He crawled on the ground to light each candle. “A beacon to guide your way, Evangeline.”
He stood then, sensing the fear and apprehension in both Rhys and Skylar as they hovered nearby. Some considered necromancy to be a black art. But Jovan knew that it was not the magic that made it black or white, it was the practitioner behind it.
He held his left hand up over the grave then drew his athame over his palm. Pain sang up his arm as his skin split open, but he didn’t flinch. Blood, dark and thick, ran down his hand and dripped liberally over the grave.
“This is mad, Jovan, you don’t have to go any further.”
Jovan ignored Rhys and continued the ritual. “A blood sacrifice to appease your pain, Evangeline.” He squeezed his hand into a fist to stop the flow. “Rise to me. Rise to me. Rise to me.”
As he waited, Jovan took out the handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wrapped it around his hand.
Skylar approached, reaching for his hand. “Let me see.”
“It’s fine, Skylar. You don’t need to coddle me.”
“I have some healing ability, why suffer needlessly? You don’t need to prove to me you are a man. I already know this.”
Reluctantly, he let her inspect his wound.
She unwrapped the cloth and peered into his palm. “Thank the sun it’s not deep.”
Rhys came up to stand beside them. “I don’t think it’s working. It would have happened immediately.”
Ignoring Rhys, Jovan closed his eyes as Skylar ran her fingertips over his cut. There was sharp stinging, and then a subtle calming heat swept over his skin. Her power enveloped him, seeping into his pores. Healing him.
He opened his eyes and met her gaze. A delicate warm glow surrounded the irises of her eyes. It drew him in, and he wanted to breach the distance between them and kiss her. To feel her. To taste her. Memories of her flooded him fully and he had to open his mouth to gasp the crisp night air or drown inside them.
Rhys was muttering beside him, and he wanted to turn to tell him to be quiet when a muffled crack of wood had them all flinching and gazing down at the grave of Evangeline Stokes.
“That can’t be what I think it is.” Rhys moved back two paces from the grave.
With his hand still touching hers, Jovan turned toward the grave. His heart pounded in his throat as the tall grass began to quiver from the movement beneath it. They formed a semicircle around the grave and watched in awe as the dirt beneath the grass pushed up and skeletal fingers poked through. Skylar gave a little gasp and shuffled closer to him.
More of the corpse broke through the ground. First a hand, then another, then arms, an sthe">Ignod the top of the head with wisps of long dark hair still clinging in desperation to the skull. Jovan had an urge to reach down and help Evangeline out, but to touch the undead was to risk his own demise, as the undead often liked to take the living down with them.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the entire corpse of Evangeline had crawled up from her resting place and stood before them on partially rotted and skeletal legs. The dress she
’d been buried in now hung in tatters. Cotton fibers decomposed as well as flesh. A face that Jovan was sure had been pretty once was now a patchwork of gray muddled flesh and brittle bone. He had to admit, though, that she looked decent for years dead and buried.
“Now what?” Rhys asked.
“Now I ask her what we need to know.” Jovan took a step toward Evangeline. She turned her head to him. He couldn’t say she looked at him because she would’ve needed eyes to do that. Instead she had gaping gray cavities with bits of grass and clumps of dirt clinging to the sockets. His stomach roiled as he gazed upon her.
“Are you Evangeline Stokes?”
She nodded solemnly. There was a distinctive brittle sound as she moved. Dry bone scraping against dry bone.
“Do you know who I am?”
Again she nodded.
“We are searching for Sebastian. He’s gone missing.”
“Miss Sebastian,” she whispered, her voice like the cracking of electricity. It made the little hairs on the back of Jovan’s hairs stand up.
“You miss him?”
She nodded.
“Did you see him before you died?”
“Yes,” she murmured. “And after.”
Jovan looked at Rhys. His brother raised his eyes in question. “You saw him after you died? Here?”
She nodded. “He wanted me to forgive him.”
Jovan didn’t want to ask the next question, but he knew he had to. To find the truth. “Did…did Sebastian murder you?”
She shook his head. “An accident. A spell gone wrong. But he blamed himself.”
Relief surged over Jovan. He let go of the breath he hadn’t known he was even holding. He knew his brother could not be a murderer. He knew it in his gut, but confirmation of it made him feel better. “Do you know where he went after he raised you?”
She nodded. “To go back.”
“Go back where?”
“In time.”
Skylar went to speak, but Jovan put his hand up to stop her. “She’ll only respond to me. Let’s not confuse her.”
“You mean any more than she is. She couldn’t possibly mean Sebastian went back in time. Time travel’s impossible, Jovan. There are theories certainly. But nothing that’s been proven.”
“She can’t lie. The spell compels her to tell me the truth.” He looked at Evangeline again. “Why would Sebastian want to go back in time?”
“To save me. To stop the spell.”
“Where in London did Sebastian go?”
“Whitechapel.”
“Was he going to see someone?”
She nodded. “Carolin sd. >
“What is Caroline’s family name?”
“I do not know.”
“Do you know why he went to see this Caroline?”
“I do not know.”
Rhys moved beside him, taking up his hat and wiping his brow. “That’s enough, Jovan. Put the poor girl back to rest.”
In different circumstances, he would have argued with his sibling, but this time Rhys was right. The girl couldn’t give them any more information. He nodded, then reached in his bag for the pouch of salt. He procured a pinch and was about to toss it on the corpse when Skylar stepped in the way.
“Wait.” She took the locket out of her jacket pocket and draped it over Evangeline’s skeletal fingers. “This belongs to you.”
Evangeline tilted her head down to look at her hand. She closed her fingers, capturing the necklace inside, then turned to Skylar, acknowledging her. “Thank you.”
Jovan tossed the salt over her skeleton. “I release you. I release you. I release you.”
Evangeline’s corpse turned and stepped back into the hole she’d dug to get out. Once inside, she gathered the disturbed dirt and bits of grass and pulled it over the top of her skull as she disappeared. Within minutes it was as if she’d never come out of the ground. The dug-up grass and lumps of soil were the only indications that something was amiss. The candles blew out on their own. Jovan gathered them and
the rest of his supplies and put them back into his sack.
“Are we off to Whitechapel then?” Skylar adjusted her hat and smoothed down the line of her overcoat, as if they hadn’t just been conversing with the dead.
Chapter Eleven
She didn’t know what to expect from a necromancy ceremony, but it definitely wasn’t what had taken place. It wasn’t evil, as some would profess, like the council, but more maudlin. To see Evangeline’s decayed corpse and know she would never live again made Skylar sad. Especially when she could hear in the spirit’s harsh voice the yearning she still had for Sebastian. She suspected there was a great tragic love story there but she’d likely never know the truth of it.
She glanced at Jovan as they made their way out of the cemetery. They too had a great tragic love story, and she wondered even now if it was truly over. If there was any more to their tale. Did she want there to be, was the real question.
As if sensing her musings, he turned to meet her gaze. In the eerie glow of the firelight, she swore she saw the same questions in his eyes.
“Are you well, Skylar?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She set her gloved hand to her chest. Why was her heart pounding so fast? “Just a bit jarring to see her is all.”
“At least we got some answers.”
“Not much, if you ask me,” Rhys sniped.
“No one’s asking you,” Jovan retorted.
A rumbling sound came to Skylar’s ear, and she stopped on the path. She tilted her head to listen. It came again. Louder this time.
Jovan noticed she’d halted, and did the same. “What is it?”
“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“It’s the sound of…digging. Like many people digging at once.” She turned around to face the graves behind her just as the two nearest them burst open, and two corpses crawled out.
“What did you do?” Rhys demanded of Jovan.
“It’s not my doing.”
Once the corpses were upright, they shambled toward her. Frightened, Skylar stumbled backward, running into Jovan. He put his arm around her shoulders to steady her.
“Come on, they can’t move quickly.”
Together they turned and came face-to-face with another five undead.
“But it seems we are outnumbered.” Rhys took a distancing step back, nearly treading on Skylar’s foot.
“What’s the plan here?” Skylar asked, feeling the pressure as more bodies surrounded them. “Can you put them down, Jovan?”
“No, only the summoner can. There’s someone else here in this cemetery with greater skills than I.”
“I say let’s start swinging and hope for the best.” Rhys pulled on the metal handle of his walking stick and unsheathed a long rapier. The blade glinted in the glow of firelight.
Jovan grinned. “That’s the best idea you’ve had, brother.” He swung his cane at the nearest corpse, pulverizing its skull with one blow. “Follow me, Skylar, stay close.”
She did as instructed, nearly pressed against him as he moved through the undead, swinging his cane back and forth to clear a path. Her hands itched for her bo. She didn’t like having to rely on Jovan to see her safely through the corpse maze but she had no choice. It was either that or be torn apart by the undead. Which she suspected wouldn’t be a very pleasant way to die.
Then she remembered the device her father had given to her before assigning her to the Davenports.
Shoving her hand into the pocket of her overcoat, she found what she was looking for. The bamboo rod was no longer than her palm, but the size was deceiving. She pulled it out, pressed the button along the side, and two more bamboo pieces sprang out on each side, forming a bo the length of her arm.
Clutching it tight, she swung out at the encroaching undead. She knocked one over and then another, until there were only a handful following them.
By the time they made it to the gate, they had easily mowed down a
hundred bodies. She looked behind her at the carnage in their wake. Some of the corpses were still moving on the ground, without legs or arms. One crawled toward her without a head. Before the corpse could grab her boot, Jovan kicked it away from her.
“We need to get out of here, they’ll keep coming until the practitioner releases them.”
“To do this kind of work he must be close, don’t you think?” she asked.
“Yes.” Jovan peered into the surrounding dark. “Too close for my liking.” He took her arm and pulled her through the open gate to their waiting coach.
Rhys was already there with the door open. “Get in. I’ll drive.”
Skylar didn’t hesitate. She looked over Jovan’s shoulder to see more undead shambling after them. He climbed in behind her and shut the door the instant a freshly dead corpse swiped at him, just brushing his jacket with the tips of {h t lengt brown decayed fingers. Rhys pulled the carriage away as soon as Jovan had shut the door.
Skylar pressed the button on the staff, and the pieces slid into themselves once more. She dropped it back into her pocket. “Do you suppose it was Hawthorne?” She stuck her head out the window to see if they were being followed.
She saw no following carriages only shambling corpses spilling out of the cemetery gates.
“Knowing the type of man Hawthorne is, I’d say he hired a very powerful necromancer to do his dirty work.”
The council would have to do some creative information dissemination in order to keep the incident contained. A bunch of undead roaming the streets would not go unnoticed, not even at this hour.
Skylar settled back in the seat. Folding her hands in her lap, she noticed a tear in her glove. She drew it off, surprised to see two gouges in the back of her hand. She must have been scratched by one of the undead and didn’t notice.
“You’re hurt.” Jovan reached for her, but she pulled away.
“It’s nothing but a scratch. It’ll heal.”
“Good lord, woman, you are stubborn.” He shook his head.
“No more than you.” After removing her other glove, she covered her wound with her hand and concentrated. She could feel the gash knit back together. When she lifted her hand again the wound was closed and a pale new-skin pink.