Sparks

by Laura Bickle

  Anya stared at the burden in her hands. She’d die before she’d let Hope get her hands on the eggs or Sparky. Sparky sat at her feet, wagged his tail.

  “How’s she doing this?” Anya asked. “I get that she’s capturing ghosts, but how does that connect with those fires that smell of magick? And how is she forcing them to do her bidding?”

  Charon reached out to touch Anya’s cheek. She flinched back, but not before she felt the coldness of his fingers. “Feel that?”

  “Yeah.” Her mouth was dry. “I’ve heard the theory that ghosts pull energy—like heat—out of the environment to manifest. Ghostly apparitions are often accompanied by drops in temperature of dozens of degrees.”

  Charon nodded. “And the reverse is also true. When a large amount of energy is discharged, there’s an increase in temperature.”

  “The fires,” Anya said. “The fires always accompany the appearance of Hope’s spirits.”

  “It takes a tremendous amount of magickal energy to control those spirits, to bend them to her will through the spirit jars. It takes even more for ghosts to move physical objects, to steal things, like the artifacts in Bernard’s house. She’s burning them out. Your fires are a side effect of the spiritual effort that’s being exerted, trying to manifest on the physical world, through a vortex.”

  “I saw something like that… in the ceiling, when Leslie Carpenter’s astral double disappeared. And when Bernie’s ghost was taken.”

  “An astral double is as good as any other spirit, for her purposes. Through that vortex, energy can be pushed and pulled. Your ghosts are pushed through that, with explosive force… and they’re drawing energy from the other end—from the crystal lining the witch bottles, from the genie-bottle spells she’s using to control them.”

  “The bottles, they’re the batteries, then these vortexes… they’re holes, then?”

  “Think of the vortexes like wires hooked up to the batteries, wires through which energy travels. And like any kind of uninsulated conducting wire, they can get pretty darn hot.”

  “What about the fires at Michigan Central Station?”

  “Hope’s been there, poaching ghosts. I’d bet my last cigarette that those fires are the result of energy expended when the ghosts are trying to escape. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are plenty of pickings there.”

  Charon leaned against the wall, arms folded. His scuffed, unlaced boots flapped over the tile, and a tiny diamond earring glittered in the harsh fluorescent light. With a bit of graffiti, he would look like he belonged on an album cover. She didn’t have a sense of whether she could trust him or not.

  “How do I know that you’re not one of hers? One of her… minion ghosts?”

  “Fair enough.” Charon picked at a fraying patch of duct tape on the elbow of his coat. “I’ll tell you how to protect Pandora’s Jar in the physical world.”

  Anya raised an eyebrow. “That would be a start.”

  Charon gestured to the newts. “You kept your eggs safe from attack with a magick circle. It’s not foolproof, and she may eventually batter through it, given enough time. But that would be a good place to start.”

  “How do you know about that?” Anya clutched the bag close to her body. She could feel her heart thudding against the lumpy eggs.

  “News travels fast among the dead. On the astral plane, every action is like throwing a pebble into still water—they leave ripples.”

  Anya nodded slowly. “I’ll protect the jar. Then we’ll talk.”

  “That’s the best I can ask for.”

  A scream echoed down the hall. Sparky pricked his ears up, and Charon turned his head.

  He rolled his eyes. “Fresh dead. You’ll have to excuse me.” Charon began to fade through the wall. “When you’re ready, you know where to find me.”

  The scream in the hallway continued for a moment, then was snuffed out, as if the sound had been cut from the air and the ghost who made it never existed.

  Anya suppressed a shiver.

  “IF ANYONE ASKS, YOU’RE A cadet from the Fire Academy.”

  Anya and Katie climbed the steps to the Detroit Institute of Arts. In the darkness and artificial light, the statue of The Thinker cast a long blue shadow, nearly to the edge of the deserted street. The upper parking lot was empty, the doors cordoned off with yellow fire line tape.

  Katie looked down at her clothes. She wore a long, green gypsy skirt, gladiator sandals, and a tank top covered by a fringed shawl. The patchwork bag full of magickal tools she carried weighed more than she did. “Yeah. Right. I’m totally believable as a fire cadet.”

  Anya paused to reassess. “Okay. You’re an art historian.”

  “That’s more plausible.”

  “Just let me do the talking.”

  Sparky clambered up the steps before them, taking point. The salamander had become hyper vigilant as soon as they pulled into the parking lot, and Anya didn’t blame him. She clutched the newt transporter tightly under her arm. There was no telling how many ghosts were in the museum, and which ones might be susceptible to Hope’s influence.

  Uniformed shadows moved behind the yellow tape crossing the doors. The scene was still guarded by DFD. The museum had been closed since the guards’ deaths; despite the political pressure from DIA to release the scene, Marsh wasn’t going to sign off until a conclusion was reached, no matter how long that took. Anya imagined that the loss of revenue was truly staggering.

  A DFD firefighter opened the door, and Anya flashed her badge. The firefighter glanced at Katie. “Who’s this?”

  “She’s with me.”

  “I’m an art historian,” Katie chirped helpfully.

  The firefighter guarding the scene nodded. “There have been dozens of you people climbing over each other all day.”

  Anya’s brow wrinkled. “Historians?”

  “Word is that the lending museums are not happy about this incident. A lot of them are pulling out their collections.”

  Anya sighed. Combined with the indefinite closure of the museum, bad press, and insurance payouts, a significant reduction in collections signified a lack of confidence in DIA. It could seriously hobble the museum. DIA was one of the few remaining gems in the Motor City; she would be sad to see the shine on it diminished.

  “Are you guys patrolling inside?” Anya asked casually.

  “Not if we can help it.” The firefighter on watch jammed his hands in his pockets. “Our orders are to secure the entrance and not to touch anything. Besides…” He glanced over his shoulder. “This place is pretty creepy at night.”

  Anya grinned. “I can imagine.”

  Without the frenzied bustle of cops, firefighters, and paramedics, DIA seemed entirely empty—devoid of all life and motion. Anya and Katie walked through the Great Hall, footsteps ringing loud across the stone expanse. Sparky charged ahead, making no sound as he scuttled across the marble. Among the suits of armor and the chemical-tainted dust, eddies and footprints of the day’s visitors could be seen on the floor.

  But there was still life here—of sorts.

  A distant thundering rolled down the hall, so low that it rattled the dust on the floors. Sparky drew up short, and Anya nearly ran into him. His gill-fronds twitched, as if tasting the air for that sound—an echoing gallop that shook glass and ancient armor. The overall effect was of being trapped on a vast dance floor with the bass cranked up too loud.

  “What is that?” Katie shouted.

  “I think it’s just Pluto,” Anya answered, though her fingers wound more tightly around the strap of the newt transporter. She stood her ground as the thunder rolled into the hall and the massive warhorse blew past them. Pluto charged through the glass doors of the entrance and dissolved. Anya heard shrieks of alarm from the firefighters on watch and the crack-slosh of a dropped coffee container splashing against the floor.

  “Pluto?” Katie squeaked. “As in, the god of the underworld?”

  “Well, this Pluto’s a horse.” The obsidian
horse jogged back from the entrance, mischievous glint in his eye and kink in his tail. Sparky parked himself before Anya, tail lashing, and watched as the ghostly horse trotted past them with a jaunty jingle and a snort. “He’s mostly harmless. I think.”

  “I’ve never seen a ghost that’s an animal,” Katie murmured. “I’ve heard that it happens when an animal’s fate is bound up with that of a human, but… I always thought it was rare. Animals tend to pass easily to the Afterworld, and don’t want to hang around much.”

  “Pluto’s the first horse-ghost for me, too.”

  Now that the horse thunder had subsided, voices could be heard from one of the galleries beyond. It sounded like normal human chatter: laughter and chitchat punctuated by an occasional squeal or clink of glass.

  Katie looked sidelong at Anya. “I thought you said we’d have this place to ourselves.”

  Anya frowned, moving warily toward the noise. It sounded like a damn cocktail reception. “There shouldn’t be anyone here. The museum’s closed.”

  “I don’t know if I can work magick with that distraction going on.” Katie sounded doubtful. “An interruption at the wrong time could be disastrous.”

  Anya rounded the corner to the Special Exhibits Gallery. “Don’t worry. DFD still has authority over the scene. I can throw their asses out, if need be.”

  She skidded to a stop as a ghost stumbled out of the gallery into the hall: Gallus. He was holding the giggling, disembodied head of a platinum-haired woman under his arm. His helmet and cloak were askew, and he straightened his helmet to better see Anya and Katie.

  “Ladies!” he shouted. “Welcome to the party!”

  Anya pointed to the head under his arm. “Um… Gallus, you’re holding a human head.”

  Gallus held the head before him like an athlete with a trophy. The head’s powdered wig was askew, and the head winked. The face was as supple and mobile as if it were still attached to a body.

  “Where are my manners? Marie, meet Anya.”

  Marie’s bow mouth curved up, nearly scraping the beauty mark on her cheek. “Enchantée.”

  Sparky sat up on his hind legs and sniffed at a drooping ringlet.

  “Gallus, this is Sparky. And Katie.” She glanced over her shoulder. Katie’s eyes were round and unblinking. Anya guessed that these ghosts had accumulated enough power over the centuries to visually manifest at will. Even for a member of DAGR, seeing a full-body apparition was unusual—a fact that Anya often forgot. She was too used to seeing spirits, and forgot the effect that they could have on others.

  “Come say hello.” Gallus waved Anya toward the Special Exhibits Gallery.

  Anya couldn’t resist—she peeked in. And her jaw dropped.

  Ghosts from every imaginable era drifted throughout the gleaming white exhibit space like guests at a costume party: women in corseted dresses and petticoats, men in waistcoats. A Zulu warrior sporting a fearsome mask and body paint was chatting up a geisha girl. She smiled with blackened teeth behind a hand-painted fan with a tear in it. A 1940s-era siren in a silver gown snickered at a fellow dressed like Attila the Hun as he brandished his weapons. They milled among the paintings and sculptures, flowing around a glass case in the center containing a life-sized guillotine, complete with a basket.

  Anya whispered to Gallus, “This is… what you do after hours?”

  “There’s not much else to do.” Gallus handed Marie’s head off to a samurai warrior. “She digs me,” Gallus said, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Is that”—Katie glanced at the guillotine—“the Marie?”

  “It is. Marie’s on loan from London.” Gallus grinned. “She thinks I’m a patrician, and I’ve not bothered to disavow her of that notion.”

  “But…” Anya scanned the room. “Where’s the rest of her?”

  Gallus shrugged, unconcerned. “Who knows? Maybe still haunting the streets of Paris?” He winked at the women. “But I can certainly make do with what’s left.”

  Anya screwed up her face. “Sorry, Gallus, but that’s icky.”

  “Hey. You won’t be that picky about how you get your jollies in two thousand years. Very few things will seem kinky then.” Gallus clapped his hands to get the crowd’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he bellowed. “Please meet Anya, Katie, and Sparky. Anya’s the medium I told you about.”

  A wave of acknowledgment rippled through the room, punctuated by a catcall or two. Anya’s cheeks flamed. She’d wanted to get in to protect Pandora’s Jar and get out again without attracting attention. Now it seemed that was going to be a futile effort.

  The samurai squatted before Sparky, admiring the play of dim light on his speckled skin. Anya noticed a rusty red stain marring the samurai’s yellow silk obi and myriad small dents in his breastplate. “Is this your dragon?” the samurai asked in heavily accented English.

  “Yes,” Anya replied, distracted. “He’s my dragon.”

  The samurai bowed deeply before the salamander. Anya noticed that he held his gauntleted arm tightly over his midsection to hold his entrails in. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance, mighty dragon.”

  Sparky sat in a regal posture before his new supplicant, one front foot lifted in a comically benevolent gesture. Anya wondered how often a scene like this had presented itself to Sparky. She had no idea how old the salamander was, or where he’d been. Surely someone else must have been able to see him, perhaps as a holy creature. A holy creature who chased his own tail and ate cell phones.

  “You have the eyes of Ishtar,” a voice hissed behind her.

  Anya started, wheeled to face a barefoot old man dressed in rags. He smelled like dust and stale incense, and his gray beard was tangled with olive leaves. He leaned heavily on a wooden staff.

  Anya clutched the newt transporter, and Sparky growled at her feet. The old man reached for her, but his spectral hand passed harmlessly through her shoulder.

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” she growled.

  The old man blinked at her with coal-black eyes. They were fully dilated—whether from injury, drugs, or madness, Anya couldn’t tell.

  “You have her terrible gaze. The same.”

  Anya’s eyes narrowed. Only Drake had called her Ishtar. How could this old man know about that?

  “We don’t know each other,” she said frostily.

  “But I’ve seen her before.” The old man grinned, reached out to pat her face, but his fingers flickered through, below the level of her skin. “The soul-devourer. The one who condemns all her lovers to death.”

  The breath froze in Anya’s throat, and it wasn’t just the chill of the ghost’s touch.

  “Ishtar walked down to the Underworld to rescue her dead lover, the old stories say. She came armored and holding a sword, demanding the gates of the Underworld be opened to her. The Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal, let her in, but poisoned and imprisoned her. The gods brought Ishtar the water of life, and brokered a deal: Ishtar could return only if she sent someone else to stay in the Underworld in her place.”

  Anya’s mouth was dry as lint. “Who did she send?”

  The old man gave her a toothless grin, without mirth. “Ereshkigal sent demons to the world with Ishtar, to make sure she wouldn’t escape. When Ishtar returned to earth, she found her husband didn’t mourn for her, so Ishtar sent him to the Underworld in her stead. And Ishtar was without both her lover and her husband.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “You wear her armor and are doomed to follow in her footsteps.” The old man’s eyes were black as pits.

  “Ignore old Balzeri.” Gallus intervened, steering the old man away. The old man began to hum to himself. Gallus tapped the side of his helmet. “He took too many drugs. Makes him a bit of a buzz kill.”

  “Um, yeah…” Anya glanced around for Katie, who was immersed in a conversation with an ancient Egyptian. Katie’s eyes kept straying from his kohl-rimmed eyes to his broad, tan chest. His muscular chest was bare, decorated only
with a turquoise collar. Decked out in gilt sandals and a pleated loincloth, he could’ve been a romantic historical fantasy come to life, if not for the blackened snake bite on one bicep out. Anya couldn’t help but wonder if he’d known Cleopatra’s asp.

  “Katie, let’s go.”

  Katie allowed herself to be led from the elegant Egyptian, but her eyes lingered. “Damn,” she said. “That’s one distracting ghost.”

  “We’ve got work to do,” Anya urged.

  “We can come back later?”

  “I’m sure Gallus would have it no other way.” But her mind was focused on what the old man had said, how she had Ishtar’s eyes.

  The Greco-Roman Exhibit Hall was in as much ruins as she’d left it. Yellow fire tape cordoned off the crumpled steel doors, and she ducked beneath it, pulling it aside for Katie. Sparky scuttled ahead of them, among the sparkling bits of broken glass, chemical dust, and overturned furniture.

  “This is it.” Anya pointed to the display case containing Pandora’s Jar. She was relieved to see that it was still there. Sparky waddled up to the glass and cocked his head to stare at it. It seemed that he knew instinctively that it was a magickal thing, that it contained the same crystalline matrix that covered the interior of Anya’s bathtub. Anya wondered if a salamander had ever laid a clutch of eggs in it.

  “This place is filthy,” Katie muttered. She dropped her bag on a clean spot of floor and withdrew a willow branch broom. She began to sweep the area around the case, preparing it for ritual magick. The broom created puffs of dust that made her sneeze as she worked.

  Finally, she stood back, wiping her nose. “I think that’s as good as it’s going to get.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Um, is the fire alarm system hooked up in here?”

  “No. It’s inoperable in this area after the last discharge. What can I do?” Anya asked. She was all thumbs when it came to ritual magick, and she knew it.

  Katie slid a compass and a bucket of children’s sidewalk chalk across the floor. “You can mark the cardinal directions on the floor in chalk.”