by Lee French
Kay offered no answer.
Chapter 6
Claire
As she floated past the trees, Claire wondered how long Drew needed to accept her new form. Hours? Days? Months? She broke free of the woods and found Tariel standing next to Justin, who still sat with Avery while he healed. Both his feet had been eaten away, leaving him with stumps at his ankles, the bones sticking out. His clothes had suffered too. He’d need a new trenchcoat and everything else.
“You dumbass!” An unknown man’s voice, rough and low, echoed in the clearing.
Justin, Avery, and Tariel all turned to see a black sedan creeping over the dirt past the head of the driveway. Avery rubbed his face. “Yell at me later. I need a drink right now.”
“Of all the moronic things you’ve done over the years, this is way beyond the pale. At least you usually risk your life to catch murderers. The radio is full of panicked calls from patrol cops about freakish nightmare bugs, and I know it’s your fault.”
“Stirin. I know. You can bitch at me all you want later. Now is a time for healing and planning.”
Claire realized with a start that she could understand Avery’s sprite. The bond between sprite and Knight was supposed to be private and inviolate. Of course, no one ever told her that in so many words, she just assumed that if she couldn’t understand Tariel or Stirin, no one else but their Knights could either. Maybe ghosts understood sprites. Maybe the destruction of the Palace had changed the bond.
“You better believe there’s going to be a past due bill to pay on this one,” Stirin grumbled. He retreated to the driveway and parked.
“I think I’ve had worse days, but I can’t remember any of them offhand.” While waiting for his feet to regrow, Avery wriggled out of his ruined trenchcoat and held it up. Ragged edges and holes formed the lower half. He sighed. “These next few days are going to be hell on my wardrobe.”
Justin snorted and patted the left leg of his jeans. The bottom edge matched Avery’s coat. “I’ll go talk to Anne. She might be able to provide some protection for fabric now that we can’t rely on the Palace for it.” He noticed Claire. “Unless you can do something about that?”
“Uh.” Claire grimaced. “I’m still figuring out the basics over here.”
“At least we know a witch.” Avery wadded up his coat and set it aside. “She might have friends who’ll help if you don’t mention me.”
Justin smirked and nodded. “Are you staying for this planning thing, or leaving to rest up? I’ve got to get some work done on the roof or Marie will kill me.”
“We can’t just let those bugs roam around Portland,” Claire said. “Shouldn’t that be the most important thing to deal with right now?”
Avery lifted his leg, showing off the pulsing, ragged stump at the end. “What would you like me to do about it right this minute? They spit acid and have tough exoskeletons. We need better weapons or better tactics before we can deal with them.”
When charging in failed, Claire knew Spirit Knights tended to falter. Justin had no other tactical approach to a problem. She preferred punching things in the face too. In her current condition, that did nothing. All three of them sat in the same boat with no paddle. In a raging current. Headed for rocks. That didn’t even count whatever Iulia planned to do with her body.
“I should at least go home and change my clothes. Hopefully, my feet will be healed by the time I get there. Can I get some help?”
Justin picked up Avery and carried him to Stirin.
“I hope you all didn’t make a huge mistake by destroying the Palace.” The unfamiliar, earthy woman’s voice came from Tariel.
While the horse turned away to head to her stable, Claire debated revealing her new understanding. She might gain valuable insight into Justin, but suspected she’d accidentally blow the secret at some point, angering one or both of them.
“I hope so too.”
Tariel stopped and regarded her with one large, blue eye. “You can understand me?” She whuffed. “Of course you can understand me. You’re a ghost. I should keep that in mind. Thank you for not pretending otherwise.”
Glad she’d made the right choice, Claire smiled. “You’re welcome.”
“Come with me to the stable. Justin will follow along soon enough.”
Claire drifted behind the horse to the small outbuilding. She hadn’t spent much time here in life. Justin took care of his sprite. The handful of times he’d asked her to do anything for Tariel, it had been scrubbing her water bucket in the kitchen sink. As a result, she’d only caught a few glimpses inside.
The stable shared one wall with the farmhouse, with a heating vent on the hardwood floor at its base. Clean fir branches covered the rest of the floor. A pair of buckets hung from hooks in easy reach for Tariel when she lay on the floor. Hooks on another wall held a variety of brushes and tools, and her saddle and bridle had their own perches.
“It’s not much,” Tariel said as she backed in and lowered herself to the bed of greens, “but it’s warm when idiots don’t leave the door open. And in this case, the idiot in question is Drew. But I know he’s less an idiot and more an untrained colt new to his power and having a hard time right now.” She used her teeth to pull a rope, causing the door to swing shut.
Claire let the insult pass without comment. Tariel had spent years with no one but Justin to talk to. She could see how that might make a person—or a sentient horse—a little snarky. Judging by the handful of dumb things he’d done since Claire met him, Justin probably drove Tariel nuts sometimes.
“Can I ask you a question about ghosts?” When Tariel nodded, she tried to figure out how to word what had happened earlier. “How do they interact with each other? I mean we. Or maybe just me.” She huffed in annoyance. “How do I interact with other ghosts?”
Tariel whuffed, the sound giving Claire the impression of someone whistling at the scope of a question. “I don’t know. The Palace made sure ghosts couldn’t interact with each other except through possessed or controlled hosts. Whenever a Knight died, his soul wandered around, trying to find a resting place. In theory, a living Knight followed that soul around, removing obstacles from its path so it didn’t fixate on anything and become a Phasm.”
“Then how did my father become one?” Claire thought back to the funeral. She hadn’t connected all those men with the local Knights before. Funny how she’d met Justin that day and forgotten about him. “Aren’t there a bunch of Knights around here?”
Tariel’s gaze flicked away from Claire. “It’s complicated. Kurt asked Avery to handle it. He also suggested that Justin ride along with him a few times, but Justin…has a somewhat negative opinion of authority figures. Avery being a police detective made him choose not to be cooperative or helpful. Our bond was new, so I didn’t push him. Then Kurt’s health declined, so he stopped coming back from the Palace.
“Currently, it’s Avery and Justin, and we’re on our own. Under that Phasm’s influence, Avery killed a few Knights, isolating the region. The closest now is Charlie in Olympia. Last I heard, there were two around Seattle. Beyond that, you have to go to Boise, Spokane, or Sacramento to find another one.”
Ticking off her fingers, Claire frowned. “There are a lot of Knights in the world.”
“As far as I understand, there is one Knight per two million people in the world, give or take, and that ratio has been steady since the beginning. The distribution, on the other hand, has been uneven at best. For a while, there were twenty-one in the Roman Empire and none anywhere else. Then Caius sent his men out with the command to breed in far-flung parts of the world. They settled where they wanted, as did their sons. Some regions have never seen a Knight.”
Justin stepped inside and pulled a brush off the wall. “Avery is coming back as soon as he’s able to walk.” He took a handful of Tariel’s mane in his hand and attacked a knot. “He’s going to bring some extra clothes. Where’s Drew?”
Claire shrugged. “In the woods someplace, trying
not to sulk.”
One side of Justin’s mouth quirked up. “Don’t be too hard on him. I think he might’ve followed you into the grave if I hadn’t been here. If you could make yourself solid, he’d probably handle this better.”
“I haven’t given up on that. Still trying.” Claire held up her hand and watched her boundary writhe and ripple. Maybe she needed a witch to accomplish this. Speaking of witches, she hadn’t told anyone about the important one. “By the way, Iulia has my body. And my dagger.”
“I see.” Justin brushed out one knot and started on another.
“That dagger would be a nice thing to have,” Tariel said.
“Yeah, only I don’t understand why it still exists. Shouldn’t it have gone poof when the Palace did? You lost your sword, after all.”
“Probably because of the thing you did to sever your locket from the Palace. If Justin had found a way to power his sword with a ley line, he’d still have it.”
“I guess.” Claire wondered whether Caius had made things permanent the way he claimed to, or if he’d half-assed it in the least effort-intensive way possible. Considering how much of a giant jerk he’d turned out to be, probably the latter. “Does that mean I could enchant weapons?”
Justin gave Claire a sidelong glance. “You can understand Tariel now?”
“Yeah.”
“Good to know. If you can craft or enchant objects to be effective against ghosts, magic, or, for example, mutant ants, that would be very helpful. I’d rather you do that than try to make yourself solid. It’d be more helpful.”
Nodding, Claire considered the challenge. In her demesne, she had the power to make anything she wanted. Those things had no special properties and disappeared on leaving her demesne, according to Rondy. To make something permanent, she’d have to talk to him.
“I think Iulia is kind of a bigger problem,” Claire said.
“How disturbing that she dug up the body.” Tariel shuddered. “Wait. She must’ve watched us bury it to know where to find it. That’s even more icky.”
“If she watched us bury it, then she can’t have taken it far. Where is she?”
“Inside a box.” Claire recounted everything she’d seen for them, with as much detail as she could remember. “She knows I was there.”
“She also knows how things worked before the Palace, so she probably knows more than that.” Justin ran the brush through Tariel’s mane, finding no more knots. “We have to assume she’s aware you’re a Phasm and can predict how you’ll interact with people, ley lines, everything. I’d much rather overestimate her than under.”
“In that case,” Tariel said, “we have to assume she can find a way to summon and trap you with the locket.”
“I think the locket is the only way I can leave my demesne. I might be able to use Enion or Drew, but I doubt it.”
Justin yanked loose horse hair out of the brush and stuffed the wad in his pocket. He hung the brush on its hook. “So our goal is to get the locket, remove it from your body, and find a way to give you control over it. That should stop whatever Iulia thinks she’s going to do with it.”
“She wanted to make a new seal,” Claire said. “She was very clear about that being her highest priority. As much as she hated Caius, I got the impression him having to die for the Palace to be destroyed was just a happy side effect to her.”
“I have to be honest, Claire.” Justin sighed and looked away. “She’s not wrong. A new seal is a worthy goal. She’s not our enemy, she’s just someone who took your body without asking. Which I don’t approve of, but if what she wants to do will make this world safe, then I have to give her a chance.”
Without saying it, he’d just told her he’d choose the rest of the world over her. Claire wanted to hate him for it. But she thought of Missy and Lisa, and his wife, Marie. If she forced him to pick between his family and her, she knew he’d pick his family. If he wanted her to choose between him and Drew, she’d choose Drew. Same thing.
“Maybe we can help her find a way that doesn’t mean I die again. I’m not keen to take Caius’s place, either.”
Justin smiled. “Also a worthy goal.”
Chapter 7
Drew
Sitting in front of the sycamore where he’d helped bury Claire, Drew held his head in his hands with his glasses dangling from two fingers. He wanted to scoop all the dirt out and look at her corpse. Her ghost made everything so confusing—he needed something solid and real, something he could touch.
Mutt sat beside him as a warm, comforting presence. The dog remained silent, keeping his thoughts to himself. Kay also kept quiet, letting Drew forget everything for a few minutes. Except Claire. He couldn’t forget her, no matter what.
He raised his head and slipped his glasses on. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Pet me, Master.”
Drew obeyed the request, stroking a hand down Mutt’s back. The simple gesture soothed him, though it did nothing to solve his problems. He picked at the brief conversation he’d had with Claire, searching for clues about how he should feel. “If Claire is super-powerful, how come she can’t do anything?”
“She hasn’t figured out how,” Kay said. “Not so different from our situation. I didn’t know we could spew lava until you almost burned down a building with it. She doesn’t know what she can do, so she hasn’t done any of it yet.”
The lava incident had been a result of tapping that wild ley line. At least, Drew hoped so. The other explanations—his grief burning him up or Kay going mad—sucked. He never should have gone with Justin today. Except if he hadn’t gone, Justin and Avery would both be dead now, and it’d be his fault.
He hugged Mutt and stood, wanting to move around instead of sitting still. The lava thing came back to mind. Justin had stopped him by punching him in the face. Claire had an impressive temper and tended to hit things first and act questions later, if ever. Like all the other Knights. In life, her conscience and the threats of police or death had held her back from doing awful things.
“Once she figures it all out,” Drew said as he stepped over gnarled roots to find the nearest ley line, “what will keep her from doing whatever she wants?”
“I don’t follow?”
“We’re not more powerful than Justin. Not really. No matter what we can do, he can always punch me in the head to stop me. Or hit me with a baseball bat, or have Tariel thrash me, or whatever. He’s bigger and stronger is what I’m saying. Who’s going to be bigger and stronger than Claire? Who’ll keep her in check when she goes off the rails?”
“Hmm.”
While Kay thought about it, Drew hopped over a stream, putting him on a neighbor’s property. Mutt splashed through it behind him. Drew scooped up a stick and held it out for Mutt as they continued toward the nearby ley line.
“Do you want to play fetch?”
“Yes!” His tongue hanging out, Mutt bounced with excitement.
Drew tossed the stick to the side and watched the dog race after it. The simplicity kept him from screaming at the unfairness of everything. Mutt brought the stick back, his tail wagging high.
When Drew had thrown the stick again, Kay finally answered. “No matter how powerful Claire gets, Iulia can probably trap her with the right preparations. Right now, another ghost might be able to trap and control her, but that means you have another ghost with her under its thumb. Which isn’t an improvement.”
“No.” Drew took the stick from Mutt and threw it again. With a few more steps, he straddled the thin ley line and tapped it. He saw Mutt’s wagging tail sticking out behind an evergreen. “Is there any way we could force another ghost under our control, like Mutt?”
“Not like Mutt, no. He’s under our control because we had the same master. When that master was destroyed, the combination of you and me overpowered the simpler spirit controlling Mutt. But in theory, we could declare ownership over a random ghost and make it our slave. The potential downside is we lose and it declares ownership over u
s. Not that we can’t do it, we’d just have to prepare and find a ghost weak enough to subdue while still being strong enough to control Claire.”
Mutt yelped in fright and fled back to Drew. A vague figure of mist spilled around the tree. The mist-thing reminded Drew of a child’s finger painting of a person, with wavering lumps for arms, legs, and a head.
Drew gulped. “How about containment? Can we do containment right now?”
Kay also gulped. “We can try!”
“What do I do?”
Kay paused for one beat. The ghost floated closer. Mutt hid behind Drew.
“Let me have control and I’ll do it. Action now, teaching later.”
With little time to make a choice, Drew had only one reservation. “Do you swear you’ll give my body back?”
“Yes! Team! I get it!”
Drew stepped aside and watched Kay raise his arm. He sent fog to encircle the ghost, which seemed elementary. “You needed control to do that?”
“No.” Kay forced the fog to rotate, creating a whirling sphere around the ghost. Though Drew couldn’t see it, he knew the inner layer rotated faster than the middle layer, and the outer layer moved faster than both. Between each layer, Kay created a mesh of more mist lazily crawling in the opposite direction. The outer surface flared with traveling spots of color, just as Claire had.
No, that wasn’t Claire. She died. That hurt, yes, and he wanted to go back and fix it so he rescued her in time. But the thing he encountered today? Claire’s ghost—an echo of her soul left behind when it fled for whatever happens at death. His best friend died and left nothing more than a shadow of herself behind. That thing needed to be contained before people got hurt. Claire would want him to deal with it.
“Wow. That’s crazy complex.”
“Yes. Good thing we were already tapping a ley line, because this is hard to keep up.”
“Can you take control of the ghost?”
Kay paused. “I don’t know. Do we want to try?”