The Fourth Channel (Kari Hunter Series Book 1)

by Jen Kirchner

  “Why?”

  “Mikelis destroyed them, along with my kitchen.”

  “What?!”

  When we finally hung up the phone, the fourth channel was going crazy with activity. It felt like tremors around my fledgling magical consciousness, meaning Mikelis was awake and on his way over here to find out what had happened.

  As I headed back to the lab, I realized something was very wrong: Luucas wasn’t showing up on Death Radar. Since he wasn’t a necromancer or a voodoo master, he couldn’t hide his signal—unless he was in the lab, where the black posts would block it. My steps quickened to a dead run down the hall and I burst through the laboratory door. Luucas was awake and dressed in the clothes I had left for him, standing before the open panic room door.

  I broke out in a sweat. My land line was hooked up to the speakers in the panic room. If Luucas had been standing there during the call, he could have easily figured out who I had just been talking to and calling “Dad.” There were only three necromancers in the world. Once he ruled out Mikelis, there was only one left. I was screwed, but how much? Was Luucas going to turn us in? Or maybe he hadn’t heard the call at all—maybe the knives had seduced him into picking one of them up and I was about to be stabbed to death. That would almost be a relief.

  Luucas turned around. I stiffened, bracing myself for whatever accusation he would lob at me, but his expression didn’t reflect my fears. He looked sad and thoughtful. His words sounded earnest.

  “Did you mean what you said about the unauthorized communities?”

  I was at a loss for words. That wasn’t the reaction I expected. “What?”

  “You and Diaco Rendon think you can put an end to the unauthorized communities.”

  “Oh.” I blinked, trying to keep up with this change of events. “Yeah. Dad—uh, I mean Diaco—is looking into it. We have to locate the spell that’s controlling the Styx, and then… yeah. Absolutely.”

  He stared at me. I had no idea what he was thinking.

  “So,” I prodded, “you’re not going to tell anyone about that call? My family is the only reason I’ve survived this long. They saved my life.”

  “Your immortal family?”

  I could already see where this conversation was going. I shook my head and blew past him into the panic room. “I don’t have another family. Just that one.”

  I pulled the box of knives out of its drawer and rushed out of the room. I ran down to the storage room and slid the box under Luucas’s bed. As I was running back to the lab, a new signal appeared on Death Radar.

  Mikelis had just pulled into the driveway.

  I dashed into the room. Luucas was still standing at the panic room door watching me rush around.

  “Listen,” he said, “if you think you can put an end to the unauthorized communities, I want in on this. I can help.”

  I was so distracted by Mikelis that I was barely listening. “Yeah, terrific. Now get in the panic room.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I grabbed a stool and shoved it across the floor, sending it sliding past Luucas and into the steel-cased room.

  “Get inside,” I repeated, “and don’t come out until I tell you to. Mikelis is here and I can’t let him find you or the panic room. If he ever found the panic room, he’d find out about my family, and it would all be over for us.”

  I gave Luucas a little push. He reluctantly stepped inside the room and looked around. He pointed at the monitors on the wall.

  “Are these wired?”

  “Yeah, you can see almost every room in the house; the front porch, the gate… I never use it, though.” I pointed to the right wall. “Don’t touch any of the drawers. If you rifle through them, I’m going to have to make phone calls, and you don’t want that. Understand?”

  “Calls to Diaco Rendon?”

  I went to the corner and reached for the little red button. Before I pressed the button, I gave Luucas a warning glance.

  “There are higher people for me to call than Diaco Rendon. And believe me, you don’t want them involved.”

  Luucas’s eyebrows lifted, but I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I closed the panic room door and ran upstairs.

  As I reached the entry, the front door flew open and a black cloud of necromantic smoke swirled in. I felt hands grab my shoulders. A deep, male voice spoke.

  “What happened?”

  When the smoke cleared, it was apparent Mikelis had dressed in a hurry. He wore dark blue jeans with one leather shoe and one sneaker. A gray sweatshirt had been pulled on over his bare chest. When he released me to pull back the hood and rip off his dark sunglasses, he was sporting crazy bed-head.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Too bad I can’t say the same about my kitchen.”

  “Your kitchen?” He looked at me like I was crazy. “I was afraid I had killed you, Kari.”

  The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them. “Since this was your second attempt, it should have been no problem.”

  He took a sudden step back. He looked like I had slapped him. “That’s not fair. I was up all night searching for a missing friend. When I finally went to bed this morning, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. You know I never want to hurt you.”

  I immediately regretted my words. “I’m sorry. That was a crappy thing to say. I guess it brought up old memories.”

  His expression softened and he retook his step toward me. “What were you doing?”

  “Well, I—” Before I could explain myself, I came to my senses and stopped. When I told my dad about the Styx, he was incredibly confused. Did I really want to make myself look like an idiot in front of Mikelis? I decided to play it cool, as if I had meant to nearly kill myself. “I was just working. Nothing special.”

  His cursory visual inspection of me paused. The channel stirred slightly as he probed my newly enlarged magical consciousness. “Did you…” His voice trailed off, but I knew what he was too reluctant to say.

  “No, I didn’t sacrifice anyone. You know I don’t do that.”

  “But there’s no other way you could have gotten that.” His massive collection of energy poked mine again, rippling the channel.

  “You’re imagining things,” I said. “I’ve always been like this.”

  “Kari, I know your cache of necromancer spells. That’s new.”

  “Trust me. You just can’t tell because you’re tired.”

  His eyes narrowed at me. “Are you trying to hide something?”

  “Now you’re being paranoid.”

  We stared each other down in silence for a long minute. All that could be heard was the sound of Nadia’s purring as she gave Mikelis’s shin an affectionate headbutt. Apparently she did like Mikelis. How had I never noticed?

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Mikelis finally said, then he turned and marched down the hall.

  “Whatever,” I called after him. “You do that.”

  Just as he was turning left to head to the family room, and presumably the lab, he took a quick look in the direction of the kitchen. He did a double-take and stopped in his tracks.

  “Hey,” I called, “can I offer you a cup of coffee? Oh, that’s right, I can’t. You blew up my kitchen.”

  He shot an irritated look over his shoulder, then headed for the bookcase. He was moving so fast I had to jog to catch up. By the time I did, he had already reached my laboratory. I stepped through the door and an excited murmur rippled in my mind: Stubby sensed Mikelis.

  Mikelis was the knives’ version of a rock star, so I wasn’t surprised at the excitement. As long as Stubby adhered to the rules and didn’t talk to Mikelis then I was fine with it. I always feared the knives would tell Mikelis about the panic room, which is why I kept them locked up when he was around. There was still a chance that Stubby would tell him, but the knife was in enough trouble as it was. I didn’t think Stubby wanted additional punishment. As I passed the counter, I slapped the underwear drawer, commanding silence.
I then retreated to the table, putting it between Mikelis and me.

  Mikelis’s eyes made a full sweep of the room. He glanced right over the concealed panic room door, but paused at the pink lingerie bag and Mouth’s remains sitting atop the counter.

  “See?” I said. “There’s no dead body here.”

  He didn’t respond; he was so focused on the ruined sphere that he probably didn’t hear me. His fingers tentatively reached toward it, then stopped in midair as if he was about to do something he shouldn’t.

  Stubby’s muffled, mental voice struggled to be heard.

  She killed Mouth!

  Mikelis stepped back and scanned the cabinets, searching for the source of the noise. Before opening the underwear drawer, he looked over at me.

  “May I?”

  “Like that’s ever stopped you before.”

  Mikelis shrugged and slid open the drawer. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.

  Stubby exuded embarrassment. A small trail of smoke wafted through the satin.

  Help.

  I decided that was enough fun at Stubby’s expense, so I walked over and shut the drawer. Mikelis returned his attention to the dead sphere.

  “This was one of your knives?”

  I nodded. “Mouth. I was trying to figure out a way to bring him back.”

  He turned and looked at me. “You know our knives are supposedly indestructible, right?”

  “I’ve heard that, yeah.”

  He stared at me hard, as if waiting for me to say more. I didn’t.

  “How did you unmake it?”

  “Accident.”

  “You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “Yes, I do.” Maybe.

  His lips pursed in irritation and he turned his back to me. Fine, ebon matter burst around him, clinging to his body in a thick mist. His arms swept the air over the sphere, calling up tangled strings of black runes that stretched overhead. As his arms moved, his fingers flashed necromantic gang signs—identical to the ones I use for spell-building, except his movements were resulting in something completely different: calling up a separate set of half-formed spells. The spells didn’t come from any object in the room, nor did they contain anyone’s magical fingerprint. Mikelis didn’t even look at them; they flashed behind him, hovering off to the side of the table, right about where I liked to study the powers my spheres had touched on The Floor.

  Then I realized what was happening: Mikelis was recalling every spell that had been cast in this room. No wonder he looked baffled. I probably shouldn’t have been able to cast any of them.

  When his sequence of spells ended, the smoke around Mikelis’s body began to die down. Hovering in the center of the room was a single power symbol etched in black, its edges bleeding into the air. The symbol hummed with intense energy, ready and willing to be activated. A smaller version hovered over the ruined sphere, indicating the power was the last one to affect it.

  The magic killer.

  As soon as I saw it, my heart began to pound. Immortality was granted through some very powerful energies deep into The Floor—some so deep I had yet to find them. If Mikelis set off the magic killer while standing in this room, the immortal magic would be stripped from his blood and he’d kill himself. I couldn’t exactly tell him that, either. Mikelis’s entire life had been focused on survival. Telling him he was standing next to a power that could wipe out his entire species wasn’t going to be met with a lot of enthusiasm.

  He didn’t look as if he intended to set it off; he looked like he was just trying to decide what it was. Still, I wasn’t taking chances. I flicked my wrist at the power, dismissing it. The black lines winked out and the air stilled.

  Mikelis whirled on me. “What was that?”

  “Just a thing.”

  “Kari, this isn’t funny.” He pointed at the empty air. “What was that?”

  “I don’t…” My voice trailed off. I felt my cheeks flush. “You know what that was? It’s called ‘none of your business.’ Your concern for my well-being is appreciated. The interrogation isn’t. I’m not a criminal.”

  Unfortunately, when it came to Mikelis, fighting fire with fire was a bad tactic. He took the destroyed sphere off of the counter and held it out.

  “I’m taking this,” he said, “and I’m going to get to the bottom of whatever you’re up to.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop him, but I could at least make this less dignifying.

  I snatched Mouth’s remains from his outstretched hand and went to the far end of the counter where the pink lingerie bag was sitting. I wrapped the destroyed sphere in a piece of pink tissue paper and stuffed it into the bottom of the bag. I arranged the rest of the paper on top, fluffing it high enough to peek over the bag’s edge. I slid the finished bag down to Mikelis and smiled like a piranha. If he wanted to carry Mouth out of my house, he was going to do it with style.

  Mikelis grabbed it and left the room. I followed him back to the entry, watching the bag swing from his fingers by a pink silk handle. Cute.

  Mikelis opened the front door and slipped on his sunglasses. No sweatshirt hood this time.

  “Well,” I said, “good luck getting to the bottom of my evil machinations. Hopefully you’ll come to your senses and realize you’re overreacting.”

  He turned and gazed at me silently. Because of the glasses, I couldn’t really tell what he was thinking.

  One of his thin eyebrows shot up over the rim of the sunglasses, and he slung the bag fashionably over his shoulder. “I’ll let you know if I have any luck bringing your knife back to life.” He turned and sauntered down the steps and across the lawn, swinging his hips like a runway model.

  I was caught off guard and started giggling uncontrollably. His soft, deep laugh trickled back to me. I watched him strut away; it was an amazing view.

  Surprised at that thought, I slapped a hand over my mouth, ducked back inside, and shut the door. I fell back against the wall and burst into laughter.

  THIRTEEN

  I stood at the door and tracked Mikelis’s location on Death Radar. When he was a couple of blocks away, I returned to the storage room and retrieved the knife box from under the bed. Longy and Rambo were excited by Mikelis’s visit, so I had to listen to them gush about the “superior” necromancer. As we crossed the laboratory, I shook the box to quiet them.

  Luucas couldn’t understand the knives’ words unless he was touching my skin. Without necromancer contact, the knives’ excited babble is hypnotic, and Luucas might attempt to pick one of them up—and I didn’t want to know what they’d do once they were mobile and able to stab.

  As I passed the underwear drawer, I gave it another slap. “And you, Stubby, no talking.”

  I opened the panic room door. Luucas was sitting on the stool with his feet propped up on the TV cart.

  He smirked. “You and Mikelis are cute together. How long has this been going on?”

  I didn’t dignify that with a response. Also, I didn’t want to admit that it had been going on since I was in college. “You can come out now.”

  Longy and Rambo resumed their excited conversation, but now the topic turned to Luucas. Their enthusiasm was contagious; Stubby joined in, hollering in order to be heard from the drawer. I gave up trying to stop them. At least they weren’t trying to mesmerize anyone.

  Who’s the old guy? Dibs on first stabbing!

  Hold it, I’m the official household stabber.

  Not right now. You’re in lingerie purgatory.

  Kari, can we watch TV?

  Yes, TV! Something with blood and guts!

  At the mention of television, Luucas was totally forgotten. My sacrificial knives have a horrendous case of ADD. As I passed Luucas, he reached out and touched my arm, catching the tail end of the conversation.

  Kari, pleeeeeeeeeeease?

  Wide-eyed, Luucas asked, “Do they want you to kill me?”

  “No, Rambo wants to watc
h TV.”

  Luucas looked around the room. “Who’s Rambo?”

  I slid out the knife drawer and set the box inside. I lifted the lid and pointed. “That’s Rambo and that’s Longy.”

  “Um, hi?”

  Hello.

  Hi.

  A third, muffled voice perked up from the lab.

  What about me?

  I shouted back, “You’re staying put, Stubby.” I looked up at Luucas and explained, “When they break the rules they get time in the underwear drawer.”

  I was framed!

  “Liar.”

  “What happened?” Luucas asked.

  I CALLED KARI THE WORST NECROMANCER EVER AND I’M NOT SORRY.

  Luucas laughed.

  “You broke rule number two and that means you’re in there for an extended stay.”

  “What’s rule number two?”

  “Talking to Mikelis.”

  His eyebrows lifted in interest. “What did you say?”

  Stubby, encouraged by a captive audience, decided to explain with typical melodramatic flair.

  There I was in the drawer, punished for a small infraction—me, a weapon of terror that all should fear! But I was cast low, covered in panties. Mikelis came! My savior! He opened the drawer and looked upon me, smothered in lace and the scent of flowers. I begged and pleaded and I asked him for mercy—BUT HE WOULD NOT HELP ME!

  Luucas raised an eyebrow. “Mikelis is the most feared necromancer on the planet. What exactly are you saying?”

  I’m saying he’s afraid of Kari’s underwear.

  Luucas’s head tipped back and he howled with laughter.

  I shook off Luucas’s hand and retrieved Stubby from the underwear drawer. “That story earned you some TV time, buddy.”

  Hooray! Now wipe this potpourri scent off of me. Give me something macho, like WD-40.

  “First thing tomorrow, I promise. Right now, Luucas and I have to get ready to go.”

  Luucas’s laughter quickly subsided. “If we find Veronica, she’ll probably lead us to Ruairí.”

  “We’re not looking for Veronica today. We’re going to New York City.”