by Lee French
When they’d made a deep enough hole, Justin jumped in and laid Claire out. Because of roots and rocks, she only fit curled up and Drew could almost imagine she slept. Tears slid down his cheeks again. Tariel tossed in some dandelions she’d bitten off a plant nearby. The yellow flowers landed on Claire’s face and Drew couldn’t look anymore.
He stepped away from the hole and dropped a handful of dirt in. Justin crouched by the edge and dropped his own handful.
“We’ll miss you, Claire,” Justin murmured.
Enion, still tiny, limped as he pushed in a tiny wad of dirt. He sat on his haunches and trilled at the sky, the sound too small to hold so much pain.
Tariel kicked dirt in with her hind legs and kept shoving it in while Drew scooped up Enion and sat on a root. “The first time I met Claire,” Drew said, his voice cracking, “she had this stuffed unicorn. The social worker brought her into the group home and left her there. She sat in the corner of the living room, watching everything over the top of that stuffed animal. Another boy, a few years older than her, stood in front of her with his fists on his hips and demanded she share the unicorn. She hit him with it then she punched him in the face.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Justin chuckled and set his hand on Drew’s shoulder. “That’s how you get her back. Don’t try to forget. Remember on purpose. She shaped you and you shaped her. Nothing and no one can take that away from you. No time is wasted if it’s spent with someone you love.”
“I…” Drew wiped his face. “I thought we’d have more time together.”
“Everyone thinks that.” Justin let go of him and rubbed Tariel’s nose. “I hate to ask this, but we need to go out and take a look around Vancouver. Avery’s going to need some help in Portland. With the seal broken, there’s no telling what’s happening. It might take a while before anyone notices anything, or ghosts might be flooding the streets. There’s something in the air I’ve never felt before, but it’s subtle.”
“I’ll come,” Drew said immediately. “It’s…it’s what she’d want. I think. Damn, I don’t know. Maybe she’d rather I get straight A’s.”
“Did she ask you for help before?”
The corner of Drew’s mouth tugged into a tiny smile as he remembered the moment. “Yeah.”
“Then she’d ask you again now.”
“Yeah.” Drew wiped his face again and held Enion up. “You get to lie around and heal, though. The girls are going to spoil you rotten.”
“Yes, they are.” Justin draped an arm around Drew’s shoulders, sparking vague memories of his father. “Would you like to get something to eat, or would you rather be alone for a while?”
Drew held Enion close. “Food sounds good. I don’t think I want to be alone. Not today.”
“We’ll try to get some sleep tonight, then we’ll go out on Tariel tomorrow morning.”
“Sounds like a plan.” They walked out of the woods together, the horse following. Things would be bad for a while. Drew knew he’d have mornings where he expected her to get on the bus with him. There would be dreams he wanted to share with her. He’d forget he didn’t have to help her with math homework. But he’d get through today, and then another day.
He’d make it without her.
Epilogue
Iulia
Sitting up, Iulia rubbed the back of her head. Claire had ruined everything. The stupid girl had gone to someone else for advice, and they’d given it to her. A green crystal. The perfect color for bolstering Claire and setting her up to self-power. Completely wrong for priming her to be the anchor for the new seal.
Looking around, she spotted Leeloo lying on her side among foreign trees in a land she knew nothing about. She had no idea how to replace the seal properly, especially with all that power from the old one blown to hell. For all she hated Caius, his strength and power had been the catalyst she needed the first time. Claire, as their descendant and a wielder of power in her own right, had been the best option to remake it.
The world didn’t have time to wait for Iulia to bring another life into this world and raise it, assuming her body could even do that anymore. Other descendants existed, of course. Finding one would be a challenge. Iulia had no idea how anyone traced lineage now, but she had no idea who her own ancestors were six generations previous and doubted her descendants knew any better. Names changed, memories failed, writings crumbled, histories faded.
Leeloo rumbled a groan.
Iulia scrambled to her side and patted her flank. “Wake up, Leeloo. I need you small.” Though Claire rode a dragon, she had no idea what ordinary people thought of them in these times. Protecting her only ally seemed wise.
“Tired,” Leeloo whined.
“Shrink so I can carry you.”
The dragon flashed silver. Iulia helped Leeloo settle around her neck.
Twigs snapping and leaves rustling warned her of people approaching. She hid behind a rock and decaying tree stump with a gap between them for her to peer through. Claire’s boyfriend and one of her friendly Knights buried her body at the foot of a tree. The Knight’s white horse pulsed with power, showing her the sprite bindings hadn’t broken. She could see the rules had changed, though. All those men would learn this the hard way. As it should be. Coddling them resulted in nothing positive. Caius taught her that.
Man and boy spoke of loss and grief while she listened, grateful the ability to understand their language had followed her from the Palace. Claire had chosen her allies well. These two seemed to understand their situation, and both struck her as more sensitive than Caius ever allowed himself to be. Had Claire survived, she suspected they would have made worthy allies.
The pair gave one last look to the grave and walked away with the horse. Iulia slumped and had to think. Without the seal in place, ghosts held at bay would roam. They would rise from graves. She doubted she could truly predict the effects. In her time, it would have been annoying. After two millennia of the Palace and its Knights tending the Earth, it could be catastrophic.
She held up Claire’s dagger, which somehow had survived the girl’s death. This phenomenon, she had no explanation for. The moment Claire died, the dagger should have dissipated. Thankfully, Iulia had been able to use it against the stone anchoring the old seal, but she didn’t understand it.
In a flash of insight, she sat up and stared at the churned earth marking Claire’s grave. The girl had died before Caius, which happened before the stone’s destruction. Dead Knights created ghosts. All of them. Every single Knight since Caius had become a ghost. With the power of Claire’s ghost to tap, Iulia had a second chance. She’d need help, of course, and the two who’d just walked away would provide none. If they saw her, she suspected they’d try to kill her. At the least, they would question her intensively.
Filled with excitement over the prospect of finally completing the seal properly, she leaped over the rock and ran to the grave. In the absence of someone or something bound to Claire, this body offered her the only viable link to the ghost. Iulia stabbed the dagger into a tree root, settled Leeloo beside it, and scooped dirt with a flat rock the Knight had left behind.
An hour later, weary and grimy, Iulia brushed dirt from Claire’s inert face. She touched the locket and felt the faint power pulsing beneath the surface. Victory twisted her mouth into a smug grin. Dissecting a gory corpse struck her as disgusting, but she only needed the locket. The rest of the body could stay in this hole and decompose.
Iulia scrambled out, snatched Claire’s dagger, and jumped back in. She pressed the tip of the dagger to the dead flesh beside the locket. When she pushed down to sink the blade in, a white crackle of electricity arced up the blade to her hand, jolting her. Spasms rocked her entire body for eternity.
Dropping the dagger, Iulia gasped for breath and shivered uncontrollably. She drooled blood from biting her tongue. Her wits took their time gathering. She hoped she hadn’t screamed, and if she had, she hoped no one heard it. Her hand still shook when she raised it
, but it subsided while she watched.
She huffed, annoyed by the unexpected and unknown phenomenon. Touching the locket hadn’t released that jolt. It should have. “I don’t want to take the whole thing,” she grumbled at Claire’s body. “I don’t need the whole thing.” Though she wanted to try again, to see if she’d released a built-up charge somehow, she chose to err on the side of not suffering through that a second time. Finding a place to keep a dead body added another layer of difficulty to her task.
Another half hour of struggle later, she pushed the last of the dirt back into the empty hole and patted it down. Provided those two men waited at least a day or two before coming back, she expected the weather to hide evidence of her handiwork. Even now, the dark gray clouds overhead promised rain.
Sitting on a rock to recover her strength, she wished she could call upon her own power to make all this easier. The blown ritual had sapped everything, and this blasted forest had no ley line. Worse, dirt clung under her short fingernails and she wanted desperately to bathe. Handling a corpse made her squirm. While she might be finally free of Caius, she had little else to cheer about.
Plans whirled in her mind. She needed to find a suitable mate and produce a child. Claire would have been perfect to continue the line, but no force on Earth could make that happen now. If Claire had been a boy, perhaps something could have been accomplished, but female ghosts could not bear children. Some kind of proxy wouldn’t work either. Not when the bloodline mattered more than anything else.
The new seal needed to be created. For that, she needed allies and a new crystal. Someone knew where the local witches gathered and they would tell her whether they wanted to or not.
Fat raindrops hit her shoulder, her leg, and the rock she perched on. She got no further warning before a downpour drenched everything. Wanting to use the weather to cover her passage, she jumped off the rock and dragged the corpse away from the tree, hoping to find a suitable hiding spot before encountering anyone.
Heaving the body over fallen branches, through mud, around rocks, and up a small stream, she muttered a string of obscenities in her native Latin. The rain slackened after a while, and she stopped to catch her breath and push wet hair out of her face. She scanned the area and noticed a shallow ley line in the distance.
Too exhausted to drag the body farther, she staggered toward the power. She caught herself on a tree over the line and sank to the ground. The moment she reached for the power, it coursed through her, pushing away muscle aches, exhaustion, and annoyance. Several minutes later, when she’d drunk all she could, she laughed.
As difficult as her path ahead seemed, she could manage it with power. She sat up and smirked at Claire’s body. With a twist of her wrist, she flung out bands of power, lifting her off the ground. Iulia waved her fingers and the body spun, magic wrapping it until she’d cocooned it in so much power no one would see Claire until she wished it.
Iulia drew more from the depleted line, then stood and tugged Claire’s body behind her. She’d need a workshop and some tools. If these things could be found, she’d have them, currency concerns be damned. Her purpose and goal held far too much import for the petty concerns of normal people to interfere.
This new world lay before her, and she intended to use it. With one step and another, she set her sights on destiny. She’d learned from her mistakes. This time, no one would screw things up.
Legal
Ethereal Entanglements is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
No horses, dogs, teenagers, or dragons were harmed in the making of this book. The author regrets accidentally smashing a spider with her laptop, but the wretched slugs that ate her daffodils deserved their horrible deaths.
Copyright © 2016 by Lee French
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-1-944334-07-9
About the Author
Lee French lives in Olympia, WA with two kids, two bicycles, and too much stuff. She is an avid gamer and member of the Myth-Weavers online RPG community, where she is known for her fondness for Angry Ninja Squirrels of Doom. In addition to spending much time there, she also trains year-round for the one-week of glorious madness that is RAGBRAI, has a nice flower garden with one dragon and absolutely no lawn gnomes, and tries in vain every year to grow vegetables that don’t get devoured by neighborhood wildlife.
She is an active member of the Northwest Independent Writer’s Association and one of two Municipal Liaisons for the Olympia region of NaNoWriMo.
Lee can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Wordpress.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this book, please take a few minutes to review it on Goodreads or wherever you buy your ebooks. The fourth book will be out in 2017.
Books by Lee French
Spirit Knights
YA urban paranormal adventure
Girls Can’t Be Knights
Backyard Dragons
Ethereal Entanglements
Ghost Is the New Normal (coming 2017)
The Maze Beset Trilogy
Superheroes in denim
Dragons In Pieces
Dragons In Chains
Dragons In Flight
In the Ilauris setting
Standalone fantasy tales
Damsel In Distress
Shadow & Spice (short story)
Al-Kabar
Non-fiction
with Jeffrey Cook
Working the Table: An Indie Author’s Guide to Conventions
The Greatest Sin series
Epic fantasy co-authored with Erik Kort
The Fallen
Harbinger
Moon Shades
Illusive Echoes (coming soon)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue