by Jen Kirchner
Mikelis’s voice dropped low. “Is that your plan? You’ll drink this and kill me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“You know why—sacrificing another necromancer is the only way to access the Verachidun power.”
I had no idea what that was and no interest in finding out. “This may surprise you, Mikelis, but not everything is about you. I have no plans to kill anyone.”
“Liar.”
“Why would I lie about that?”
“Your entire life is a lie! Is there anything about you that’s real?”
His words felt like a slap in the face. “For the record, secrets are the only way I’ve been able to survive this long. I expected you to understand better than anyone.”
“So that room is designed to keep secrets from everyone?”
“No,” I said. “Just from you.”
His lips pursed together, and something in his eyes reflected pain. Mikelis was the only person capable of breaking through the spells around my house, so the panic room, in truth, had only existed to keep him in the dark about my life. We both knew it. I swept my hand across the room, returning everyone’s attention to the scene he had created. “Why should I have told you anything if this is your typical reaction? You’re hardly trustworthy.”
“I’m trustworthy,” he said, “even more than your boyfriend.”
I caught myself before gasping audibly. Heat flashed on my cheeks as I realized what this was really about: Mikelis had watched my horrendous television appearance with Cody Springer.
My hands clenched into fists. “Cody Springer isn’t my boyfriend!”
His cheeks darkened. “You’re a liar!”
“You’re a moron!”
Abrupt silence. Luucas’s eyes flickered between the two of us. He set the papers aside, ready to intervene. Even the knives stopped chattering.
Ryan whispered behind me, “I don’t think this is really about the panic room.”
I didn’t care what this was about anymore. No one was going to push me around in my own house.
“I’m calling Grandpa,” I announced, then I pointed to Luucas. “You’re in trouble now, pal.”
As I marched down the hall, Mikelis called after me. “He won’t be in trouble, no matter who you call.”
“And why is that?” I shouted back.
Brad’s voice called out from the other end of the hall, interrupting our argument. “Because Luucas is Principal Conservator of the Eastern Americas.”
I came to a dead halt. “What?”
Brad stepped into the open space at the top of the stairs. His phone was out and up to his ear. “He’s a principal conservator. He’s immortal law. Everyone’s been looking for him.”
I turned back to face the lab where Luucas was standing and looking guilty. Mikelis had returned to rifling through my things. Ryan remained flattened against a wall, wide-eyed, taking it all in.
“Let me get this straight,” I said to Luucas. “You’re in charge of hundreds of conservators, but the first person you thought to call was Mikelis?”
Brad laughed humorlessly. “That’s the fun part. According to Moons, they’re practically brothers.”
My heart dropped.
“Mikelis is a bit of a legend,” he added. “He’s the only necromancer to be captured by Ruairí O’Bryne and escape.”
“I know, but what does that have to do with Luucas?”
“Luucas helped him escape. They spent two centuries together hunting down Ruairí and his followers. When Luucas took the job here, Mikelis came with him.” Luucas winced. Mikelis stopped sifting through my things and looked up. Our eyes locked.
“And you two are yelling at me about keeping secrets?” I stormed out of the hallway and into the storage room. “I’m calling Grandpa!”
“Good idea,” Brad said. “I’ve got Moons on the phone. He’s on his way over to Grandpa’s now. Ryan, he says you should go home—and take Nicolas with you, if he hasn’t jumped the fence yet. This is over.”
As I headed for the phone, I could hear Mikelis shout, “No it isn’t!”
Mikelis strode into the room. He still had those damned vials. Brad followed, stepping around Mikelis to sit strategically between us. Luucas hovered in the doorway reviewing my legal papers. He had a photo album tucked under one arm.
I hit the speaker button on the phone and dialed. I heard a rapid succession of clicks, then the low rattling of the European ringtone. The phone clicked again and Grandpa answered.
“Hello?”
“Grandpa, I’m sorry for waking you at this hour,” I said, my voice escalating into a shout, “but I’m having trouble with two of your people.”
I said the last word like it was a horrible disfigurement. Mikelis’s eyes narrowed.
Grandpa chuckled. “Is that so?”
Blue runes started to appear over the phone as Grandpa gained a viewing of the room. Mikelis raised his hands, preparing to stop Grandpa’s spell. I reached forward and slapped his hands away. He fixed me with an angry stare but didn’t try it again.
“Why, Luucas Mikkelsen!” Grandpa said, clearly delighted. “Everyone has been looking for you.”
Luucas looked around, clearly confused as to how he was being seen.
“He can cast spells through the phone,” Brad said.
“How?”
“Grandpa’s old,” I said, “so he’s more accomplished than most.”
“Luucas is old,” Mikelis retorted.
Luucas frowned. “Thanks a lot.” He set the papers down and turned his attention to the photo album. A few loose photographs fluttered to the floor.
Grandpa intoned a low humming sound, the immortal equivalent to a breathless sigh. “I see Mikelis has finally found the panic room.”
“Luucas told him about it,” I said angrily, “and Mikelis won’t put the vials back.”
Mikelis ignored me and approached the phone. He kept glancing between the hovering blue runes and the phone, as if he wasn’t sure where to direct his vitriol. “Who did you steal these from?”
I couldn’t believe he was demanding this of Grandpa. Couldn’t he see the name in Grandpa’s spell?
“You will refer to him as ‘Sir’!”
“I’ll refer to him however I like, since he’s a dirty thief.”
“Apologize!” I hollered. “Right now!”
Luucas’s head suddenly snapped up in alarm, eyes wide. The photo album in his hands slipped out and hit the floor, sending small, square photographs everywhere.
“Mikelis,” Luucas said. “Stop. Please stop.”
I waved a hand at Luucas. “See? Luucas knows to show some respect. You’d better do the same.”
“I will not!” Mikelis said. He pointed at the phone. “Who are you? Why did you give these vials to Kari?”
Luucas looked like he was about to have a panic attack. He snatched a photo from the floor and started toward us. “Mikelis, stop talking to him like that—”
He got halfway across the room before the phone clicked loudly, then screamed with feedback. Luucas stopped in his tracks. Mikelis and I looked up at the blue runes. They were still there and Grandpa was still viewing us. We could now hear additional noises on the other end of the line, shuffling and murmured voices. Grandpa’s speaker had been turned on.
Footsteps approached on the other end of the line. Moons's deep voice boomed with authority.
“Mikelis Priedis!”
The room fell silent with anticipation. Mikelis's eyebrow raised, his upper lip curling impatiently.
“Yes?”
“This is Montuhirkopshef Bacon Newton Celcius Réard Brando!”
Réard was a nice addition to Moons’s ever-growing legal name; Louis Réard invented the bikini.
Mikelis’s eyes widened and he turned to face Luucas, who held up the photograph he had been clutching. It was a shot of me as a toddler in Grandpa’s arms; we were laughing and I was pointing at something below. We were hovering three feet off th
e ground. Brad folded his arms across his chest and smiled.
Mikelis almost looked frightened. I suppose it’s hard to know how to react when you realize you’ve been screaming at the progenitors of your species.
Moons’s voice dropped to a whisper, but intensified in tone, as if he was leaning over the speaker. “I have always wanted to tell you how impressed I was with the way you blew up that castle.”
Mikelis’s mouth opened but no words came out. Our eyes met.
“Is blowing something up your response to everything?”
“Sirs,” Luucas said carefully, “I mean no disrespect, but what Mikelis and I have uncovered here is problematic.”
“For whom?” Brad asked. “Kari’s not hurting anyone.”
“No, but according to the documents in her panic room, she was removed from her family at a young age and placed with immortals. Kari isn’t even her real name—it’s a shell used for bank accounts and business transactions. Her real name, Eliana Estella Rendon, legally joins her to two very influential immortals. It’s a scandal.”
“There are no immortal laws about what we have done,” Grandpa said.
Luucas shook his head. “Immortal law states each person must be given the choice. It must not be made for them.”
“I wrote that law specifically about becoming immortal,” Grandpa said, “and the choice has always belonged to Eliana and Bradley. They have never been pressured to decide.”
Brad and I gave the phone a knowing look.
“Well, not an undue amount of pressure.”
Luucas waved his hands, bringing the conversation back under his control. “None of this even scratches the surface of the bigger issue of harboring a necromancer.”
“Our legal counsel expects to negate that issue, as Eliana is not a practicing necromancer.”
Mikelis jabbed a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the lab. “My ass, she’s not. She has hundreds of active spheres. I don’t know what she’s doing with them, but she’s up to something.”
I started to respond but remembered my earlier conversation with my dad. He had no idea what I was talking about when I told him about The Floor.
“She has never harmed anyone,” Grandpa added, “nor does she plan to.”
Luucas rolled his eyes. “Except in self-defense. But what about her biological family? They must have an opinion about Kari becoming a necromancer and being given a new family. How do you think they feel about Kari being taken away?”
“Quite relieved,” Moons said, “since her biological father is the person Eliana killed.”
All the air seemed to go out of the room. Brad sighed heavily and sat down on a nearby stack of boxes.
“I don’t understand,” Luucas said.
“There is nothing to understand,” Moons said. “Eliana’s birth parents were religious fanatics who couldn’t stand to touch her skin. Her birth father was convinced she was possessed by the devil. Simply put, we removed her from an abusive home.”
“You took matters into your own hands,” Mikelis said.
“We have no regrets!” Moons said. “If given the chance, we would do it again.”
Luucas said, “If she was removed from her birth parents’ home as a baby, how was she exposed to her father? Was he…” His voice trailed off and he looked down at his feet, as if mustering the courage to broach his next thought. A second later he started his question again, though this time his voice was soft and respectful. “Was he brought to Eliana for the sole purpose of training her to be a powerful necromancer?”
Grandpa sounded horrified. “No! Because her adoption by Diaco and Isadora Rendon did not follow human law, we paid her birth parents to stay quiet. The arrangement was amicable. To keep the pretense that Eliana was still living with the Hunter family, we arranged to have her birth mother drive her to school twice each week. The father was to have no contact.”
Luucas nodded. “But the father did drive her on occasion?”
“Only once,” Grandpa said, “which was enough. He attacked Eliana in the car. Diaco was in a Council session at the time and unable to protect her right away. He left the meeting in time to prevent Mikelis from killing her.”
“How old was she when she became a necromancer?”
I shot him a nasty look. “You know, I’m right here.”
“I’m sorry. How—”
“I was eight years old, and thanks for bringing up such a horrific topic.”
Brad studied me for a second, then stood up from his boxes and offered me his seat.
I guess I was feeling a little woozy from listening to the retelling of my personal horror story. Some things are hard to forget, even after so many years. I thanked him and sat down.
Luucas’s gaze went upward to the ceiling. “I’m going to be in so much trouble for not reporting this.”
All heads turned in his direction, surprised.
“If Kari and Diaco think they can stop Ruairí O’Bryne, that operation would be better served if we didn’t reveal her identity yet. It would be better if Ruairí didn’t know we were coming.”
Moons suddenly sounded excited. “And we would protect you from the Council anyhow. Diaco told us about the Styx stealing powers from The Floor. Did he tell you that at the same time yesterday a second-channel power ceased to function?”
That must have been what the Styx stole from The Floor. Since I took the necromancer power it wanted, it grabbed the next closest power.
“What I do not know,” Grandpa said, “is how Luucas met Eliana and Bradley.”
While the group caught up, I took the vials from Mikelis and returned them to the lab.
After all that had happened, the knives were rowdy and confused as to whether we should stab someone or have a big movie night. I resolved the debate by turning on the DVD player and jamming in the first disc I could find in the mess.
When I returned to the storage room, I saw that the guys had cleared the boxes away from the couch and bed. They were sitting in a small group with the phone on a box between them. The conversation had turned to Veronica and how to find her.
“Actually,” I said, “finding her isn’t going to be that hard. I caught her breaking into Luucas’s apartment.”
Luucas snapped to attention. “What? When was this?”
“This morning, when I broke into your apartment.”
Brad frowned. I waved him off.
“It actually wasn’t that hard, because someone had beaten us to it. Your apartment’s completely destroyed. Everything is smashed, cushions ripped up—it’s a total disaster.”
Mikelis’s eyebrows lifted. “I was there a few hours ago and it had been completely cleared out. It looked like you had moved.”
Luucas ran a stressed hand through his hair. “It’s all gone? Everything I own?”
“To erase their tracks,” Grandpa said. “I wonder if they found the Ker’Mortan Dagger.”
That had to be the dagger Veronica had dug out of Luucas’s apartment. I cringed, remembering how sick it made me feel when I neared it.
“You mean that thing has a name?”
Heads snapped in my direction. Moons made a choking noise.
“You saw the dagger?” Grandpa asked.
“Yeah, Veronica found it. I tried to get it back from her, but she got away.”
Luucas, Grandpa, and Moons all started shouting questions at once. Mikelis started gesturing at me. A web of black runes stretched over his head and a small cyclone of black smoke billowed from his arms. I wrinkled my nose and waved my hands furiously, trying to fan away the smoke.
Above the noise, Grandpa asked, “Did the dagger touch you?”
“No.”
The shouting quickly died down. Mikelis’s spell ended.
“Stay away from it,” Luucas ordered. “The Ker’Mortan Dagger was made for killing necromancers. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get it.”
“I don’t want Veronica running around with it,” I said.
>
“There’s not a lot she can do with it,” Luucas said. “Only an accomplished voodoo master can manipulate the dagger.”
“That's the problem,” I said. “Veronica doesn't want it for herself. She's been selling Luucas’s stolen voodoo paraphernalia to a local buyer. She didn’t say who the buyer was, but she was practically drooling when she talked about its value. Apparently that’s what they want the most.”
“That doesn’t make sense either,” Luucas said. “The only reason to have Ker’Mortan is to kill a necromancer. Ruairí doesn’t have the capacity to absorb all of Mikelis’s powers, let alone Diaco Rendon’s, so there’s no point in getting it back.”
“Unless Ruairí has changed,” Grandpa said. “Two hundred years have passed since you two rampaged across Eurasia, pursuing Ruairí and turning his cohorts into sacrifice fodder for Mikelis. Since you and Mikelis settled here, Mikelis has not changed. Ruairí has killed many necromancers in that time.”
A heavy silence settled over us. Mikelis sat back into the sofa and crossed his legs, resting one ankle on his knee. I could only assume he knew the day would come when Ruairí would be ready to murder him and absorb his necromantic energy. Now it was here. I couldn’t imagine living with that pressure for two hundred years, yet he looked resolute.
Moons broke the silence. “We must find Veronica and Ker’Mortan. That is our first priority.”
“Our priority?” Brad asked. “Are you coming out here?”
“You do not think I would sit here and watch my godchildren face Ruairí O’Bryne by themselves, do you? Besides, I do not want to miss a chance to see Mikelis blow something else up.”
Mikelis actually smiled at that.
“We will see you tomorrow,” Grandpa said. “Until then, Luucas, you have no home. And Eliana, you have no protection.”
I wasn’t sure if I liked where this was going. Even Luucas shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I said. “I’m totally capable of defending myself.”
Brad lifted an eyebrow. Yeah, even I had a hard time believing that.
“I saw the video from the dance club, Eliana,” Grandpa said sternly. “You are barely capable of defending yourself against a cappuccino.”