by A. J. Locke
When he saw me, he prepared to run again, but I threw my necromancer power at him and held him immobile. That was another nifty ability we necromancers had. We could throw an invisible net over a ghost to keep it from fleeing, but we had to be within close proximity to do it. Finding himself unable to run, the ghost dropped to his knees and started whimpering and pleading as I came closer.
“Please don’t send me into the afterlife, please don’t!”
I’d heard these kinds of pleas seven times already tonight.
“It’s not a bad thing,” I said, kneeling in front of him. He bent his head and his ghostly body shook. “Trust me, guy, you don’t want to hang around here for too long. It’s better to get your affairs in order and fade away.”
“No!” His head snapped up, and I was faced with intensely blue eyes. He was a good-looking ghost, though he had a young look to him. I think his hair was blond, but it was so pale it looked white. Or maybe that was what they called that platinum blond. “I’m not dead. You have to believe me. I’m still alive!”
I sighed, opening my palm to reveal the absorbing stone.
“That won’t work on me,” I said. “I can tell the difference between a ghost and a living person.”
“That’s not what I meant!” he screamed.
I frowned when it looked like he was about to cry. Ghosts couldn’t produce tears, but they could do everything else associated with crying: sob, scream, and whatnot. He had an expression of intense fear that I’d never seen before, not even on the most reluctant-to-be-found ghost.
“I’m alive, I’m alive! You can’t send me, please, you have to help me.”
I shook my head. Something was off with this ghost, but maybe he’d been in theater when he was alive and just had a flair for dramatics.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you. Hiding out is the worst thing you could do.” I moved the rune stone toward him, and he shied away like I was coming at him with knives and fire. When I touched him with the stone, he wailed, but I blocked him out so I could concentrate on what I was doing.
Contact with the ghost was supposed to activate the rune and suck the ghost into it, but seconds passed and nothing happened. I frowned and pushed the stone into him more, figuring maybe the stone wasn’t touching him enough. Still, nothing happened.
I drew my hand back and stared at the stone. Was it inactive or something? I felt the thrum of energy I was supposed to feel from it, so why wasn’t it working? I set that one aside and took out another one, touching it to the ghost. I was bewildered when, again, nothing happened.
I tried three more, and none of them worked. I sat back on my heels and stared at him.
“What the hell?” I said. He looked up at me, still looking like a wretched mess. “My rune stones aren’t absorbing you. Something must be wrong with them.”
But they had worked with the other ghosts tonight, so what could have made them suddenly stop working?
“Look, please listen to me. I know it may seem like I’m a ghost, but I’m really not. My body is still alive!”
“What?” I said. Had I encountered a crazy ghost? He started to calm down a little since I was just sitting there, not trying to absorb him anymore.
“My name is Ethan Lance,” he said. “And I know I’m a ghost right now, but I didn’t die. I was shoved out of my body, and someone else took over!”
“What?” I said again. Maybe he was a dead mental patient?
“My body is alive,” he said, his blue eyes fixed on me as though he was willing me to believe him. “I’m just not the one walking around in it.”
Chapter Five
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Of all the tales I’d heard from ghosts I’d tracked over the years about why I shouldn’t rein them in, this one took the cake. Had to give Ethan points for extreme originality.
Then again, he had resisted the absorption runes, and unless something was suddenly wrong with the stones, then something was wrong with the ghost. So the least I could do was hear him out, then decide what the hell I should do with him.
Ethan took a deep breath, though being that he was a ghost, it was more like a leftover human gesture than his actually needing a calming breath. I frowned when I noticed something about him. “You’re touching the ground,” I said. “And you’re not that cold. Nor is your glow extremely bright.” Three things ghosts weren’t capable of unless they were wearing rune stones or a necromancer was channeling energy into them. Ethan’s aura felt cool, but nowhere near as cold as ghosts were supposed to feel. Still, when I touched him without channeling energy into him, my hand went though. So he was a ghost…but he wasn’t behaving entirely like a ghost.
“Does this mean you’ll listen to me?” Ethan asked hopefully.
I nodded, too shocked to speak. What the hell was going on here?
“A few days ago, I was walking home from a friend’s house,” he started. “It was pretty late and there wasn’t anyone else around. I had my headphones on, so I didn’t hear whoever it was come up behind me, but the last thing I remember happening while I was in my physical body was this burning hot pain go through me. After that, everything went dark, and when I came to, I was lying on the sidewalk.
“At first I thought I was attacked, but when a woman walking her dog came down the block and walked through me, I knew something was wrong. I thought I’d been killed, but I didn’t see my body anywhere, nor did I see any blood. I didn’t know what to do, so I just went home and freaked out all night, but the next day I saw…I saw my body come back and come into my house. He had my wallet and keys on him, of course, and he took a bunch of my clothes and left. I tried to confront whoever it was, but he couldn’t see me. I followed him, but I lost his trail when he went into the subway.”
“Wow,” I said. “That…that’s a lot to take in.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said despondently. “I can see it on your face.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I mean, something is definitely going on. I can’t use my rune stones to absorb you, and the characteristics that go along with being a ghost are a little off in you.”
“I’m telling the truth,” he said. “I came here because I thought I could find a necromancer who could help me, but then you started chasing me, and I panicked because I thought you were going to blast me away.”
“Necromancers aren’t really in the business of blasting away ghosts,” I said. “Unless they become a beastie or we really can’t help them. But Ethan, if what you’re telling me is true, then I think we have a serious issue on our hands. I’ve never heard of a living person having their soul shoved out so someone could take over. It sounds like…” I frowned as I tried to think this through, becoming alarmed when I realized where my thoughts were leading me.
“Sounds like what?” Ethan prompted, sounding both afraid and hopeful.
“Reanimation,” I said. “Sort of.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard about that.”
“Yeah, reanimators have the power to take a living soul and put it into a corpse, but it’s not quite adding up to your situation. You were supposedly kicked out of your body, and an existing ghost jumped in. That’s unheard of in the realm of reanimation, so I don’t know what the hell to make of it.”
“You said supposedly,” Ethan said. “Do you really not believe me?”
“Maybe I just have to see it to believe it,” I said. “I mean, this sounds ridiculously insane.”
“If you could track down my body, then you’d be able to see for yourself that I’m telling the truth,” Ethan said. “Could you please try? I’m telling you that my body is still alive, walking around out there, and I have to be put back into my body.”
I regarded Ethan for a while, not really knowing what to think. Here I was, my first night back on track and retrieve in several years, and I ended up with a ghost who claimed his body was still alive and wanted my help in getting him back into it. Yeah, th
is should be a piece of cake. I sighed and stood up, releasing my hold on Ethan and indicating for him to stand up as well.
“Since I have my own questions about what’s going on with you, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now,” I said, which made him look relieved. “I may be able to track down your body, but I’ll need something that belonged to you, a personal item from your house.”
“I’d get it for you, but I kind of can’t touch anything.” He sounded sad.
I thought for a moment. Sure, I could let him lead me to his house so I could break in and grab a pair of his undies or something, but my shift didn’t end until midnight. Then I had to report back to the office with the ghosts I’d rounded up. Plus, I also had to prepare for tomorrow’s reanimation inspection. Therefore, I was going to let Ethan help himself here.
I fished into my bag and pulled out my energy runes. I hadn’t handed them in even though I’d been taken off client work. I pulled two of them out and placed them around Ethan’s neck, then picked up a piece of debris from the ground.
“Take it from me,” I said. Ethan reached out and tentatively slid his fingers around the object, then gasped at the fact that he was able to do it. “The rune stones are channeling energy into you to make you tangible. So you’re able to touch things, and you’re also able to be seen by people, so keep that in mind. No peeping Tom behavior when you have those stones on. Go to your house and bring me back something personal. The best bet would be a piece of dirty laundry. Then come to my house.” I recited my address and made sure he remembered it.
“Okay, I can do this. I can definitely do this,” he said. “Thank you…”
“Selene,” I said.
“Thank you, Selene.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said, turning around and walking toward the door. “If I can find your body, then I’ll expect all the thanks in the world.”
“Right,” Ethan said.
We were back outside, standing on the sidewalk.
“Be careful and try to blend in,” I said. “Don’t talk to people if you don’t have to, and definitely don’t tell anyone what you just told me, even if it’s another necromancer. Got it?”
“Got it,” Ethan said resolutely.
We parted ways, and I watched him weave through people with some trepidation. He’d probably gotten a little used to walking through things. Even though Ethan had left, the tracking rune was still glowing, so that meant there were more ghosts in the area. I headed off in the direction the stone was leading me, hoping I wouldn’t encounter another wacko story like Ethan’s from any more ghosts tonight.
* * *
When I got home, Luna immediately let me know how enraged she was that she had not yet been fed or taken out for the night. If she was a bigger dog, she probably would have mauled me. As it was, she yapped and nipped at my feet until I filled up her food bowl. Then she was quiet for a full ten minutes before she started pawing and barking at the front door, dragging her leash in her mouth.
While she ate, I’d changed clothes, thankful beyond all belief to get out of those pumps. Then I took her for a longer walk than usual to make up for being so late. Poor Luna had to deal with a scatterbrained, slightly neglectful owner like me, but hey, I had managed to keep her alive for over six years. Even though I’d kept her little bladder waiting numerous times, she’d been broken out of doing her business in the house. She was so good to me, and I didn’t deserve it.
Once we got back inside, Luna was pacified and curled up on her doggy bed to nap. I could now take a shower and grab something to eat, but there’d be no curling up and sleeping for me just yet. I had to wait for Ethan to return, and before he came, I had to do something about the fact that the reanimation check was tomorrow.
First, I retrieved a bag of supplies I kept hidden under a floorboard in my bedroom closet. I then rummaged around in my handbag until I pulled out a flat, circular, dark-blue rune stone that I had stolen from Trevor. My visit hadn’t been only to antagonize him, and when I’d been rifling through the rune stones on his table, I had really been looking for this particular stone.
It was a binding rune, and not only was it extremely rare, it was also illegal. Thus, the Underground was the perfect place to sniff one out, and I was glad when I’d spotted several in Trevor’s possession. It would have been great if I only ever needed one of these, but for some reason, they became inactive after one use. I had a stash of defunct binding runes under the floorboard because I couldn’t risk throwing them away and having them found and traced back to me.
I moved aside my coffee table and the rug under it, then emptied the contents of the bag and picked up a vial of white powder. After carefully drawing a circle on the floor with the powder, I sat back on my heels for a moment so I could focus. I was confident in my ability to do this, but I always felt nervous when it actually came down to doing it.
Long ago, my grandmother had been the one who taught me how to hide my reanimation power. She was also a reanimator and had lived her entire life without being found out.
My grandmother had her own secret supply of binding runes, but after she died, all I had was what she’d left behind. When they’d been used up, I had to find more on my own. That’s where the Underground came in handy.
The process of binding my power was exhausting, and the reason I was nervous was because even though I knew it worked, I still didn’t know much about the powers of the binding stone. My grandmother’s knowledge was all I had: it was used to bind. I had studied and researched rune stones a lot while I was in training school, but there was decidedly less to find about obscure and illegal runes. That meant that even though the stone helped me hide a part of my power, that didn’t mean that was all it was capable of doing. I always felt like I was taking a dangerous risk whenever I used it.
But when my options were using an illegal rune to protect myself versus having my reanimation power removed and possibly going insane from it, I was gonna go with door number one.
I opened several other vials of powder and spent the next twenty minutes using the powders to draw runes inside the circle I’d made. The powders were made up of finely ground rune stones. They were different colors, and each had a different role to play in the ritual I had to perform.
After the runes were drawn, I placed the binding stone in the middle of the circle. Keeping my hand on the stone, I channeled energy into it. After a few moments, it started to glow, and as I filled it with energy, the stone’s power activated the runes I had drawn until they were all glowing, including the circle that encompassed them.
Now came the part where I concentrated like a motherfucker, because I had to give the binding stone only my reanimation power. If I wasn’t careful, I wasn’t at all sure the stone wouldn’t just suck me dry and leave me with no power at all, or hell, no life. And since I was channeling a lot of my personal energy into the stone to keep it active, I had to be careful, because if I took too long and the stone exhausted me, I’d be in big trouble.
I closed my eyes and focused on the power inside me that responded to reanimation. It was easy to differentiate, and I actually did picture it to be a streak of red in a sea of blue. Whereas my necromancer magic felt warm, my reanimation power felt hot, probably because it was more focused on things that were alive than things that were dead. I had to peel away that streak of red and push it outside of myself and into the rune stone, where it would be stored until I was ready to take it back.
It might have made sense for me to just keep my reanimation power permanently bound in the stone, and I had tried to do that once, but after a few days, I’d felt sick, started hallucinating, and felt like something was attacking me from the inside out. It was like I was slowly dying. When I took my power back, I’d instantly felt better.
If that was what it was like to live with my reanimation power permanently stripped, then I was going to do whatever it took to ensure that never happened. I couldn’t blame Trevor for running, and I was appalled for all
those who’d had no choice but to succumb to the stripping. It was no secret that a lot of them ended up in asylums afterward.
I grew progressively more tired the longer I sat there with my hand on the stone, trying to peel away a part of my metaphysical body. The fact that my necromancer magic thought I was trying to channel it somewhere and was willing to go didn’t help. I had to constantly hold it back while at the same time try to take something from it and give it away. It was like holding back an ocean while trying to let only a specific wave ripple through.
My body ached, my body temperature plummeted, and I started to feel light-headed. Still, it was working. The binding rune was taking my reanimation power.
Once I felt it completely leave me, I opened my eyes and lifted my hand off the stone. I wanted to collapse, but I had to deactivate the circle first. It was never wise to leave a rune circle active. The magic within it could become inclined to do things you didn’t want it to do. The process would take a few minutes since I had to draw my energy out of each rune until there was no more glowing. I went at it even though my eyelids drooped, and my body felt weak, like my bones had dissolved into water.
“Hey, I got a shirt!”
My head snapped up and I saw Ethan walking toward me. I’d left my door unlocked and told him to let himself in.
“Stop!” The tone of my voice made him freeze, but he’d already touched the outer circle. Some of the powder was displaced.
He looked down at his foot then looked at me. “Did I do something bad?” He slowly slid his foot back.
“I don’t think so,” I said, though my heart was thumping fast.
I had just about finished deactivating the circle when he’d come up to it, so I hoped it had been dormant before he touched it. I stared at the runes for a moment, and thought I saw them give a faint, pulsing glow, including the binding rune, but that could just be my eyes playing tricks on me because I was so exhausted. I felt no energy coming from the runes though, so I was reassured that they were no longer active. I released the breath I’d been holding.