The Fourth Channel (Kari Hunter Series Book 1)

by Jen Kirchner

  Loud and clumsy stomping started heading my way fast. I knew I wouldn’t make it out without being seen, so I dove behind the couch and squatted down, hoping I wouldn’t be noticed. Once the stomping reached the living room, my curiosity got the best of me and I peeked out from my hiding spot.

  I couldn’t believe my luck. It was Veronica.

  She emerged from the hallway, stumbling, whipping an extraordinarily long blonde ponytail around her head like a propeller. A bundled white t-shirt was tucked up under one arm. She would have had a better time pillaging the apartment if she had worn something more sensible than stiletto boots; the slender heels kept getting caught in the mess.

  I jumped up from behind the couch. Her head snapped in my direction. She let out an ear-piercing shriek as she leapt two feet in the air, nearly dropping the t-shirt.

  Simultaneously, we both shouted, “You!”

  “I've been looking for you, Kari Hunter,” she said, tripping and falling back against the kitchen counter.

  So she had figured out who I was. I couldn’t be too disappointed, since my face was all over the media and synonymous with assaulting sexy actors. As long as I stopped her from telling anyone I was a necromancer, it wouldn’t matter—this ordeal would be over and I could go back to my safe, secret life.

  “I’ve been looking for you too, Veronica Lambert. And I found you first, so I’m one step ahead.”

  “We’ll see about that.” She held up the bundled t-shirt. “I have what Ruairí O’Bryne wants and I’m going to cash in. When that’s settled, I’m coming after you.”

  I nodded like I was impressed. “You’ll probably get a whole two dollars for that t-shirt. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Veronica’s cheeks flushed an angry red and she unrolled the shirt. A long dagger tumbled out. As it fell into the debris at her feet, I saw that it was a yellowed human bone with a crude, silver blade on the end. The handle looked to be made from a person’s ulna, sawed in half. The blade was nearly twice as long. In an attempt to recreate a necromancer knife, the blade had been scorched black and rudimentary etchings had been scratched on both sides. Up near the hilt, dark brown flecks, which clearly weren’t rust, had collected and dried.

  Veronica picked up the knife and held it high. Her malicious smile insinuated what the knife was meant for, though I had figured it out already. I felt sick just looking at it.

  “It’s claimed quite a few necromancers already,” she quipped.

  I shrugged and tried hard to look unfazed. “Since when have you been into voodoo?”

  “I’m not,” she said, “it just pays well. Luucas stole a ton of their crap, which I took and sold for a nice profit.” She waved the dagger. Every time she moved it, a wave of nausea washed over me. I wasn’t sure how much I could take. “This is all that’s left, and it’s the most valuable by far.”

  “Yeah, but who would pay for something like that?”

  She let the knife drop to her side and my stomach turned. “You’d be surprised. I found a buyer who's connected to Ruairí O’Bryne himself! Just imagine what they’re going to pay when I deliver you.”

  “That’s going to be hard to do after you get a Mindwipe.” I pointed at her and tried sounding braver than I felt. “And I'm going to take that stupid knife, too.”

  Her smile hardened and her hand tightened around the handle. “Then may the best woman win.”

  Neither of us moved. Veronica looked as unsure as I felt. She was about ten feet away from me and five from the hall. My eyes fell to the knife in her hand. Hers went to the door…

  I tried diving over the couch. My knee slammed against the wooden frame and I flopped over onto the seat. My purse slipped off my shoulder and its contents spilled everywhere. At the same time, Veronica launched herself toward the door, but she tripped and did a face plant.

  I looked around and saw that my phone had slid to the other end of the couch. My choices were limited: go for my phone and call Grandpa or go for Veronica. I chose Veronica.

  She scrambled to her feet with renewed enthusiasm and started making tracks for the door. I jumped off of the couch in an attempt to tackle, but I missed. I crashed into the remains of a side table and slid, cutting her off from the door. Veronica shrieked and backtracked, climbing over the debris back to the kitchenette.

  I grabbed a loose coffee table leg and used it to help myself stand. As I climbed to my feet, a shadow loomed overhead. I looked up. Veronica had climbed onto the counter and was crouching as if ready to spring. She raised the knife threateningly.

  I realized she was going to take a flying leap. I couldn’t get to her in time to stop her, so I threw the table leg. She let out a high-pitched yelp as it hit her thigh and bounced away, but it didn’t deter her. I started throwing whatever I could get my hands on, pelting her with every broken fragment within reach. A look of determination crossed her face and I knew what was about to happen.

  “Don’t do it!” I shouted.

  She jumped—kind of. The maneuver was more like an awkward belly flop, and she landed right in front of me. I grabbed a lampshade and tried knocking the knife out of her hand, but she twisted around and kicked my leg, sending my feet flying out from under me. I hit the floor hard, feeling two dozen broken pieces of Luucas’s destroyed apartment jabbing into my ribs.

  I rolled over and saw that Veronica was already free and standing in the hallway. She pointed the voodoo knife at me and my stomach rolled.

  “Gotta run,” she said sweetly, “but I’ll see you real soon.”

  Her ponytail sliced the air as she turned and fled. I climbed to my knees and vomited inside an empty planter.

  ELEVEN

  Pasha came through even better than I had hoped. Shopping bags covered the floor of the family room, filled with new clothes. Luucas's old clothes were nowhere to be seen; Pasha had thrown away the undesirables. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a box of underwear, tore off the tags, and tiptoed down to the basement.

  The storage room was dark and cool and the only sound was the whirring of the overhead fan. I felt my way through the maze of furniture and boxes and finally found the bed. If my clunky human sounds had woken him up, Luucas didn't show it. I set the clothes down on the end of the bed and tiptoed back out. For a few seconds, I stood in the hallway, debating what I should do next. I needed to get ready for tonight's performance, but I also needed to tell the knives about Mouth.

  Maybe I didn’t have to. I couldn't help holding onto the hope of bringing back Mouth. I hadn’t heard of destroying a necromancer knife, much less resurrecting one, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. As a self-taught necromancer, there were plenty of things I didn't know. Some of them I didn’t want to know. My dad, on the other hand, knew everything. I bet he knew how to bring Mouth back.

  I walked down to the lab and called him. The phone took a few extra seconds to connect overseas, then I heard the whirring European ringtone. Dad picked up almost immediately.

  “Eliana, are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night; I really needed to sleep.” Also, Mom sent me on a mission to find a dangerous, homeless immortal, so my social calendar was booked. “And for some reason I was starving afterward.”

  “Voodoo attacks will deplete your energy, so you will crave food.”

  I sat down at the table. “You sound guilty, Dad. What happened last night wasn’t your fault.”

  “I should have taught you how to identify voodoo, but you were so young when you became a necromancer. By the time you were old enough, you had learned to disguise yourself very well. The telepathic device seemed adequate, so. . ." His voice trailed off.

  "You always thought you'd be able to watch over me."

  "Yes."

  “Well, now I know to avoid rocks. Lesson learned.”

  We both laughed humorlessly.

  “Your grandfather imbued a new piece of jewelry with the telepathic spell. Once you receive it, I
will show you how to defend yourself.”

  “Any chance my birthday dinner was the event Mom wanted to change?”

  “Doubtful. She would have shown improvement today. Also, I do not think she would go to such lengths to change an event from which Bradley could easily save you. What she aims to change is likely substantial."

  Damn. “How did the Council session go last night? Did you review the proposals?”

  “The proposals will need to wait. The unauthorized immortal community we discovered has died.” He sounded tired and in pain, as if their suffering affected him too. “There was nothing we could do. We want the Principal Conservator of your area to drive to LaPorte and investigate.”

  “Where’s LaPorte?” I asked.

  “A village in Pennsylvania. The Principal has yet to respond to our request, and some of the Council members are becoming impatient."

  Principals kept law and order throughout the Immortal State, assisted by the small, understaffed offices of conservators they managed. Their job was essentially police officer, judge, priest, and friend all at once. They never got time off and hadn’t had a pay raise since I was eleven years old. It had to be the most thankless job on the planet.

  “So the Council is mad that the Principal took a few hours off?" He could have picked a better time to do it, but still, good for him. "Who is the Principal around here, anyway?"

  “No one you know, and we intend to keep it that way. He would surely discover our family situation."

  I nodded to myself. If anyone discovered that my parents had illegally adopted a human child, we would would be in a lot of trouble. It was likely that Grandpa and Moons, as the progenitors of the race and co-conspirators of the situation, could deflect the brunt of the repercussions, though I didn’t know how much.

  “I’m sorry about the unauthorized communities, Dad. I know you’ve tried to figure out what’s killing them, too.”

  “That is all right. Enough about my work—are you feeling all right now? Today is a big day. Your mother and I are excited for your first television appearance.”

  “Mom’s conscious enough to be excited?”

  “No, but if she were conscious, she would be excited.”

  I laughed, despite the situation. “Today’s a big day. We’re as ready as we can be.”

  Before I could say more, I heard a click on the line. Someone was calling Dad. He groaned. “I suspect it is someone on the Council calling.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. Go ahead and answer it.”

  “Call if you need anything,” he said, “and good luck tonight.”

  As soon as I hung up, I realized I had forgotten to ask him about Mouth. He was on the phone with the Council now, so it would do me no good to call back. I turned in my seat toward the panic room door and stared at the metal panels for a few minutes, dreading what I had to do.

  I stood and opened the door. Three mental voices started shouting into my head at once—or possibly hadn’t stopped since I last left. I opened the knife drawer. The contents had shifted from the last time I closed it and the right stack of notebooks had slid forward, exposing a black velvet pouch in the back corner lying on its side. As soon as I saw it, my heart sped up. I used the very tips of two fingers to set it upright—as quickly as possible—then pulled my hand away as if it had been burned. I shoved the notebooks back into place, concealing the pouch from view and putting it out of my mind.

  Grandpa had given Brad and me the pouch on Brad’s sixteenth birthday. He said the two vials inside contained the original serum that would enable us to become immortal if ever we decided to make “The Change.”

  And he wasn’t talking about menopause.

  I picked up the cutlery box and the knives fell silent with anticipation. It wasn’t often that they were allowed out of the panic room together, so group excursions were seen as a monumental occasion. I carried the box out to the lab and set it on the table. Then I retrieved Mouth’s remains from the drawer. I sat down on the stool, sucked in a deep breath, and pressed the metal button on the box. The latch flipped up with a loud click and the lid cracked open. Black smoke gushed out from the three open sides. I lifted the lid and waved the smoke away.

  Three black daggers lay inside on molded foam. Their handles were made of a soft, leathery substance, like kidskin, and never wore down. Their onyx blades soaked in the light. From top to bottom, each was embossed with a tangled mess of symbols. That was where the similarities ended.

  Longy was my first knife, named for its conspicuously long blade. It lay in the cutlery box at an angle, otherwise it wouldn’t fit. The handle fit my grip perfectly, but whenever I touched this knife it inserted gruesome images in my head, suggesting what necromantic work I could be doing. The first time I had picked up Longy, I was unprepared. I spent the next hour vomiting and slept with the lights on for two weeks. After that, I avoided touching Longy at all costs.

  The next spot was empty. Mouth was my second knife. I often had the feeling that Mouth’s rants were supposed to rally me until I was enthusiastic about killing someone, but when Mouth really got excited, the only person I wanted to kill was myself. Mouth had spent a lot of time in the underwear drawer, but not nearly as much as Stubby.

  Stubby was my third creation—as bloodthirsty as Longy and as crazy as Mouth, but with half the I.Q. The handle was black and feminine, just like its predecessors, but the blade was short and fat with an ego to make up for what was lacking. Stubby liked hogging what little stabbing action there was and fought constantly about it with Mouth.

  For a long time, I had lost all desire to make more knives. I hardly used them and their constant harassment was nearly intolerable. Strangely, last year I started thinking about it again, like my biological clock was ticking. During that time, I actually thought the knives were cute. Even the way Stubby demanded to stab my cat seemed endearing. It only took a few weeks of that until I gave into my urges and made a fourth knife.

  Rambo wasn’t like my other knives. The thick, jagged blade looked like something Sylvester Stallone would use to hunt for dinner, and the handle was way too thick for my grip. The knife didn’t seem like it was meant for me. Even the personality and voice were opposite to my other knives, as Rambo spoke rarely and always in monotone. If that wasn’t bad enough, the damn knife just leered at me, a trait I found entirely unsettling. I had taken one look at Rambo and used a pair of hot dog tongs to place it in the box. To this day, I’ve never actually touched Rambo. Hopefully there are no hard feelings between us about that. I’ve never asked.

  I cleared my throat.

  “There’s been an accident,” I said. “I found a magic killer at the back of The Floor and set it off. Mouth was in the room when it happened, and now—” My words caught in my throat and I held up the twisted, dead sphere. “Mouth is gone. I’m sorry.”

  No response. I could have heard a pin drop. I licked my lips nervously and leaned over the box.

  “I promise it wasn’t intentional. You know I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  Still nothing. Not even a vibration to indicate there was any thought happening.

  “Say something!” I pleaded.

  I waited for another minute and decided they were too upset. I couldn’t blame them. I had started to close the box when I felt a tiny buzz on my forehead. True to form, Stubby was the first to speak.

  People.

  “What?”

  You're supposed to kill people, not knives, dummy!

  “Thanks for the tip. Now what about Mouth? Mouth is dead!”

  Technically, Mouth was never alive. More importantly, am I going to get more action?

  I narrowed my eyes. “This isn’t like being called up to the Major Leagues, Stubby. You lost a relative!”

  Uh huh. Does anyone need stabbing?

  “No. If you keep this up, you’re going in the underwear drawer. Now tell me how to bring Mouth back.”

  Who knows? We are a mystery. Only The Floor holds such secrets, and a necrom
ancer as lousy as yourself could never figure it out.

  I felt my eyes widen to the size of grapefruits. “Excuse me?”

  You’re an embarrassment! You’ve only killed one person in your entire life!

  “That was self-defense!”

  Case in point. You’ve spent all your life in hiding, relying on a superior necromancer to fight your battles. If Ruairí O’Bryne ever finds you, your family will become a target, and you’re too nice to defend them! That’s your problem—you’re too nice.

  “I’ll show you who’s too nice!”

  I snatched Stubby from the box and went straight to the counter. I opened the cabinets above. They were mostly empty, aside from some extra blank notebooks, a spare box of pens, and a pink bag with a silk rope handle.

  I grabbed the bag and dropped it on the counter. The knives knew what it was: backup punishment fodder. Longy and Rambo giggled maniacally. Stubby shouted something that couldn’t be repeated in polite company.

  I opened the underwear drawer, tossed Stubby inside, then dumped the bag’s contents on top. The bright pink tissue paper tumbled out first, followed by a colorful medley of silk and lace panties. From the bottom of the bag, two cloth satchels of potpourri fell on top. Puffs of black smoke trailed upward from the drawer like an erotic smoke signal.

  I stuffed the tissue paper back into the bag. “Enjoy your new home, Stubby, because you’re going to live here until your attitude improves. Knowing you, that will be never. Longy and Rambo, you’ll enjoy a crime show marathon today.”

  Longy cheered. Rambo started humming the theme to his favorite show in monotone. I put the bag back inside the upper cabinet and returned Longy and Rambo to the panic room. I put in Autopsy: Special Ops. I didn’t shut the panic room door; Stubby’s punishment would include hearing, but not seeing, the dramatized violence.

  Despite Stubby’s outburst, I wasn’t dissuaded about bringing Mouth back. In fact, I was more determined than ever. I moved to the open area of the room between the table and the counter and gestured. In the blink of an eye, I was swimming in a sea of beige on the bank of the Styx. The shimmering wall that marked the point of no return loomed in the distance.