”You need to let go.”
“I can’t,” I told him, knowing the others were listening. “I’m not sure I can keep her with just the necromancy magic.
“You have to trust the ether. Connect with it.”
“I don't like it,” I told him. He knew that truth anyway. The connection wasn’t some ability to read the inner parts of me, but he caught the surface, and the surface told him that I was not at all prepared to trust something that I hadn’t even known was in me. It was like cancer. Unexpected and unwanted. Probably deadly.
“You have to trust it.”
We were connected enough that I knew he believed what he was saying.
I held knuckles white onto the power I had collected and slowly let go of my magic first. It had been the easiest gathered. It was easier for me to let it go. As I did, I was flooded with more of the cool magic. I didn’t like it, I didn’t want it, but I took it.
And then…then…I let go of the cypress trees. They slipped away, and the coolness reached to my toes. I looked around me, at the family I hadn’t known I had, and it was so hard. So very hard to let go of the power they were giving me. But as I did, I was filled to overfull with the very light of the moon, with the coolness of fall and the chill of the rain.
And when I fed that power into the cage of the night, the spirits inside of Mandi shrieked.
I hated it. I loved it. It was so right and so wrong, and I never, ever wanted to feel this again.
And then it got worse.
chapter 18
A crack opened in the universe. A slim, sliver of shadow and but as it opened, light poured forth. Cool, starlight that was wrong and chilling and different and…alien. Everything about it wasn't right to me. Everything about it wasn't where I wanted to be. Was that because I was alive? Surely that place felt right to the dead?
“Push the cage into the light,” he said. He sounded different. His confidence was gone, but I did as he asked, Mandi—and the cage I’d formed around her moved into the crack in the worlds. She screamed and I saw a spirit stretch out of her. And then another and another until she was vomiting out darkness and horror and as she was—she changed.
Her hair fell away, her skin sucked back like the moisture was being vacuumed out. She wasn’t getting older. It was like she was being dehydrated. On and on it went until…a husk of nothing was left.
“Now let go,” he said.
I let go so fast, I was afraid that I would get magic whiplash. But the second the coolness was gone, I filled myself with the magic I knew. The warmth and the goodness. The magic I poured into brewing and lighting candles and sending thoughts to my sister.
“What the hell was that?” Monica asked. She shoved forward and this time she could bypass the boundary of the cemetery.
“I’m going to go with possessed monster killer freak,” I said. I sat back down on the grave I had slept under not so long ago. And I leaned back. I knew my kin were there though I did not touch the ether to see them.
Regardless, their presence gave me comfort.
“Who do you think you are?” Monica shouted. “You could have gotten us killed.”
I didn’t open my eyes I felt like I had been wrung out. I wanted my princess bed and my mom and a cheeseburger. I didn’t answer, because why would I fight with a prima donna in the graveyard? Instead, I pushed to my feet and reached for the telltale rectangle in keeper leader’s pants.
“Hey,” he said as I took his phone. I ignored him and called Felix.
“What’s up?” Felix’s voice said.
“Your girlfriend is a ripe super-cow, and that comes from a person raised by Autumn Hallow. How is my mom?”
“She’s good. The healer said she’d be okay. You did good.”
I closed my eyes and let the relief flow over me.
“She’s going to a place for injured magic users. They’re going to give her like electrolytes and a few potions, but mostly, she’ll need to sleep a lot.”
“Are you with her?”
“I’m sitting outside the Quietus Building.”
“Come get me,” I said.
I added, “Please,” too late for politeness but given the dagger eyes I was getting from his girlfriend, I guess he had more to worry about than my bad manners. Even still, I said, “I’m going to be coming out by the oak grove.”
I tossed the phone back to keeper leader and then scrubbed my face before turning to make my way to the edge of the graveyard.
“Where do you think you’re going,” Monica snarled. “You can’t just leave.”
But…of course, I could. And I was going to.
“Rue,” Dr. Hallow said. “Please wait.”
“Thanks,” I told keeper leader. He nodded and didn’t try to stop me with the others.
And then another voice said my name.
“Rue,” the voice was soft and young. Too young.
I looked back. A little girl looked at me through the white, dead eyes of a spirit that wasn’t fully in either world.
“Don’t trust them,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Oh, any of them.” And then she winked away.
I looked at the others, and they were all looking to where I had been, but there was no sign that they had heard what I had heard.
“Great,” I said. I turned back to the path to where I would have a ride.
“If you’d have had the talisman,” Dr. Hallow said. “You wouldn’t have needed to fight so hard. You could have sent the spirits back with one swipe of it’s focused power.”
I shook my head and kept going.
“Someone needs the talisman, Rue.”
He probably wasn’t wrong. But I wasn’t sure that someone was me.
And I wasn’t letting anyone push me into anything.
Not today anyway. Today I was going home to my princess house, where I would curl up in my princess bed, and sleep the sleep of the people who were once wanted for murder, but no more.
Should I go sit by my mother’s bed? Probably. But she was sleeping this off, so would I. I knew she’d live. I could feel her strength returning.
Should I call my sister and find out what she was up to? Yes. But I wasn’t going to. I knew she was fine. Having fun, even.
Should I call Elizabeth or the sharks? Nah. What was the Keeper team for if not for the responsible stuff?
“Rue,” the Keeper guy said. I’d reached the edge of the oaks and saw Felix pulling up in a battered green station wagon with wood paneling.
I turned back and looked at him.
“You got lucky,” he said.
A blind and deaf monkey would know that. I wasn’t going to argue. I raised my brows in silent question instead.
“You were brave, smart, and lucky. Don’t think you’ll live so easily if you poke your nose in next time.”
That was when the fury hit me. It was strong and vicious. I suspected that he was a boy scout. Because his eyes widened to dark brown pools of shock when I lifted him up and threw him into an oak tree with my magic. I guessed he had probably taken Magical Ethics 101 or something.
“How long,” I asked quietly, “Have you lead this makeshift team of Keepers?”
“Three years,” he coughed. He was not demanding to be put down, and I admired how he ignored what I was doing to him. If he hadn’t been the only person to make me as angry as my mother could, I’d have been impressed.
“That was three years of a ghost-possessed villain being a secretary for you fools.” Every ounce of my disgust reflected in my voice. “I don’t want your job. I want to go to school and study and be a college freshmen. I want to go somewhere hot on Spring Break and cram for finals. I have every intention of going back to that life. You don’t want me to take over your job? Do better next time. Stop the murders. Save me from your ineptitude.”
Everything I had just said was utterly unfair. I knew it. But I didn’t cut my magic until I’d slammed the wood-paneled station wagon door.
“Caught the bad guy,” I said to my former DM. “Sent her to hell. Time for a burger. Let’s get the girls.”
And it was that simple. We returned to my mansion, Martha, picked up Chrysie and Jessie and then found a burger shack that made milk shakes, fry sauce, and burgers that could be ordered with bacon, cheese, more cheese, and avocado. No ketchup.
And when I was done creating a food baby, I found my bed, saw the ancient knife brimming with power that had been left behind by Martha, and carefully tossed it onto the floor without touching it.
I could feel it on the border of my mind, but I ignored its pull to curl into my princess bed and sleep the sleep of the living.
The sleep of the dead was a problem for another day.
Author’s Note
It remains ever true that books, even simple light ones like this, don’t happen without the help of others. Thanks to Auburn Seal for helping me create this world and the idea of Keepers. I can’t wait to see your take. Thanks to Pamela Welsh and Louisa Lechner for your invaluable feedback. Thanks to Emily Pavlina for the many hours of babysitting and the surety that I can leave my children in loving hands to work. Thanks to all of my family and friends for your constant support.
I am ever grateful,
Amanda
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
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
Author’s Note:
Hallow Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery Page 16