Romancing the Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  “I think it’s time to pay a visit to Alison,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Sebastian said.

  After dropping William off at his apartment, we drove for several blocks before I realized we weren’t headed anywhere I recognized. Sebastian’s car was an antique and didn’t have air-conditioning. My window was cranked all the way down. Sunlight glinted painfully off passing cars.

  Sebastian’s phone rested in his cup holder. Grabbing it suddenly, he began to dial. “Alison,” he said into the receiver. His tone was gruff and curt. “It’s me. We need to meet. Now.” There was a pause then, with a brief sideways glance at me. “Yes, in the usual place.”

  He snapped the phone shut. We turned onto the Belt-way. Sebastian frowned forbiddingly at the morning rush-hour traffic. A million and one questions raced through my head, but I leaned my arm out the window and let the wind buffet my skin.

  We pulled off onto a highly industrial boulevard. Modern glass-and-steel office buildings stood a short distance from the road. A strip of perfectly maintained green grass led to sandstone gravel and scrub bushes. Sebastian pulled into a reserved space in the parking lot and turned off the engine.

  After a few moments of dark silence, Sebastian said, “I don’t like ghouls knowing where I live.”

  I glanced at the office building. “So you have an office?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “I don’t want other people knowing where to find me either.”

  Now I was officially confused.

  “I own a business real estate company,” he explained, unbuckling to turn to face me on the bench seat. Our knees touched, but our eyes met only sparingly. Sebastian spoke evenly, but he was clearly uncomfortable explaining all this to me. “We lease space to companies all over the metro area. All sorts of businesses come and go, so there’s always empty office space—though rarely the same ones for very long.”

  I glanced again at the building with its straight lines and rows of bluish reflective windows. “You meet in empty offices? Isn’t that kind of . . . impersonal?”

  Sebastian cracked a slight smile—the first since we started discussing this subject. “That’s kind of the point, Garnet.”

  I couldn’t even begin to picture Sebastian’s rendezvous, so I just gaped at him mutely.

  His eyes slid away again. “I try to keep things as businesslike as possible. Even so, it’s not easy.”

  No, I thought, my hand rubbing the sore spot on my shoulder, you have to put your mouth on them. It’s personal.

  Sebastian clicked open his door. “Let’s go. We don’t want to be sitting here when she comes.”

  “Yeah,” I said, following him out. “What is our plan, exactly?”

  “Kill her and bury the body where no one will find it,” Sebastian said grimly.

  I glanced at his face to make sure he was kidding. The deep frown scared me. “You’re not serious.”

  “How many times has she tried to kill you?”

  “Three, but that’s assuming they all were her. We don’t know for sure it’s Alison, do we? What if it’s not?” I’d stopped moving.

  Seeing the cornered expression on my face, Sebastian took my hand. The heat carried the smell of chemical fertilizer from the grass. “Then we leave in peace. But, if it’s her that’s behind these attacks, I need you because she’s clearly got some kind of astronomically powerful magic. Lilith needs to hold that at bay.”

  Sebastian glanced over my shoulder at the parking lot. “Let’s discuss this inside. Alison can’t know you’re here. It would destroy any element of surprise we might have.”

  Numbly, I followed Sebastian through large glass doors. A security guard glanced up at Sebastian briefly, eyes widening momentarily in recognition, and then she feigned a sudden overwhelming interest in a pile of papers on her desk. She was still rearranging them frantically as we stood in front of a burnished chrome elevator. Sebastian stabbed the up arrow. A man in a suit and tie joined us. After checking his expensive watch impatiently, the suit leaned over to press the button himself, as if Sebastian’s move hadn’t been sufficient. It seemed like an eternity until the soft chime of the elevator greeted us. The three of us got on. Sebastian pushed the button for the tenth floor; suit for the sixth. In typical midwestern fashion, no one said a word; we just stared pointedly at the red digital display that counted the floors for us. Suit snuck a couple of curious glances at me. I’d opted for comfort again today, so I wore a bloodred halter top, a black mini, and combat boots. My hair was still mussed from the fire, and I hadn’t really had time to freshen my makeup. Goddess only knew what the guy thought of me, but his step was rather quick when the bell chimed and the doors swooshed open on his floor.

  Sebastian chuckled. “I wonder what he’d think if he knew I owned the whole building and twelve more like it.”

  I smiled and squeezed his hand. “We can’t kill her. Not really, you know,” I said.

  “I know,” Sebastian said. “There’s no practical way to get a body out of here undetected. Not during daylight, anyway.”

  I’d been hoping to convince him of the immorality of the idea, but if pragmatism worked . . . I shrugged. “What do you want to do?”

  “We’re still going to have to neutralize her power somehow.”

  “I’ve been considering that,” I said, as the elevator let us know that we’d reached our destination. We stepped out into a darkened hallway. There was a strong smell of new carpet and fresh paint.

  Sebastian strode confidently through the darkness. I stumbled hesitantly, gripping his hand tighter. He stopped and flicked a row of switches. Muted fluorescent squares shone across the ceiling.

  “So, what have you been thinking?” he asked. We stopped in front of a wooden door with a frosted glass window. Pulling a card from his wallet, he swiped it through a key reader, like the kind you see in hotels. A thin, green rectangle lit up with a sharp series of beeps. He pushed the door open. Despite sunlight streaming in from large windows, I tripped on the plastic drop cloth on the floor.

  When my eyes adjusted, I noticed cans of paint and ladders strewn about, though the walls looked all one color. Once again I tried to picture the scene: Sebastian waiting here for Alison—maybe leaning there, against the shallow windowsill. Then what? Did they speak? Exchange pleasantries about the weather? Did he ask her to get comfortable, maybe sit on the floor, or did he just throw her up against the wall and bite?

  “Your plan, Garnet?” Sebastian asked, wedging himself into the corner of the windowsill, much as I’d imagined, looking a bit like a spider in a web.

  “Uh, it’s not so much a plan as an idea,” I admitted, shaking my head to try to stay focused. “Ever since the attack on my apartment, I’ve been trying to figure out how anyone could have so much magic at their disposal. I keep coming up with one answer: a Goddess. I think Alison has a Goddess the same way I have Lilith. Except I think maybe she has this Goddess more like how Coyote has Micah—by force, by bondage.”

  “So, you want to try to free this Goddess?”

  Perching on the edge of a cloth-covered desk, I faced him. “It’s risky. Maybe that’s not how Alison operates at all. Maybe she’s just a really powerful Witch.”

  “All of a sudden? I doubt it,” Sebastian said. “Your theory makes sense. But if you can’t break the chains, can you forge some?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I’ve never tried to do either.” Plus, there was the added consideration: would Lilith willingly help me enslave another Goddess?

  Sebastian chewed his lip. Then he perked up, as though he heard something I hadn’t. “Well, it’s what we’ve got. Worst-case scenario, we go back to my plan. She’s coming down the hall now.”

  With a glance, Sebastian indicated I should hide behind the desk. I scooted onto the floor and ducked under the sheet.

  The plastic underneath crinkled noisily, and I cringed. Holding my breath, I heard the latch of door click open.

  I strained to hear what was go
ing on. I heard footsteps rustle on the drop cloths and then what seemed to be the weight of someone sitting on the desk I was under. No one said a word. Then, I heard a sudden intake of breath, a gasp.

  Sebastian was biting Alison. Right over my head.

  I’d expected angry words of confrontation or accusation—some kind of cue for when I was supposed to leap out and say, “The jig is up!” or something else equally dramatic. Instead, Sebastian was just going about his usual thing. Maybe he planned to drain her to weakness and then question her? Or perhaps I was supposed to strike now, while she was distracted?

  We should’ve had a clearer plan.

  I decided that I’d better get into magical mode regardless. If he needed me now or later, I didn’t want to be caught more unprepared than I already was. Reaching down, I slowly woke Lilith from her slumber. She rose like thunder. Hot spikes of pleasure shot through my veins. My fingers itched and tingled, as though my nerves were awakening after a long sleep.

  Above me, Alison’s gasps became rasps of ragged breath. She grunted and moaned to the envy of any porn star. My own jealousy spiked, but I had to hold it in check. Lilith could subsume me and kill them both in a rage.

  Opening my magical eye, I scanned the office space for a Goddess or other hidden power. Sebastian was a void, so dead and not-there to almost be a presence in its own right, the way a black hole is visible in comparison to the matter around it. Alison pulsed red, like blood, hot and aroused. On the surface, she seemed like a normal human; not even the glimmer of witchcraft showed in her aura.

  Then I saw it—a flash, like the sparkle of a diamond’s facet. It was buried deep inside her heart chakra. It looked unnatural, as though it were a piece of shrapnel trying to work its way through flesh and bone. With magical fingers I began to pry at it, slowly teasing it toward the surface . . .

  The desk moved as the weight above me shifted suddenly. “You bastard,” I heard Alison shout. “Where is she?”

  This was the moment I’d been waiting for to reveal myself as the cavalry charging over the hill, except I was on my knees under a desk. There was no graceful way to extricate myself. If I were Wonder Woman, I could lift the desk up over my head and send it crashing across the room. As it was, I scuffled out and awkwardly sprawled on my butt. Plastic ripped and the heel of my boot dragged the sheet that had covered the desk onto the floor with me. Even so, I pulled myself upright as quickly as I could with fists raised.

  And no one even noticed me.

  Alison had her hands around Sebastian’s throat and was squeezing with all her might. She apparently had not gotten the memo that vampires don’t need to breathe. Still, it looked like whatever she was doing pained Sebastian, so I figured I should get on with the big rescue.

  I suspected Sebastian would be able to subdue her—she was half his size and thin as a rail to boot—as long as nothing else was going on in the magical realm. So, I opened my magical eyes completely.

  And looked into the face of Hel.

  Yes, Hel, the Norse Goddess of the Underworld. I recognized Her because half of Her face was a rotting corpse, and the other was, well, blue—okay, actually kind of navy, really, or possibly even indigo. I suppose I should have been more mesmerized by the pale half, what with strings of shredded flesh hanging from milk-white bones, and maggots dripping from open sores, but I’d never seen anyone with truly blue skin before. The skin of Her full, sensual lips was a slightly darker shade of blue, and Her eyelashes were the color of lapis lazuli. I thought I could detect a deep navy tint in the waves of black hair that fell past rounded shoulders in thick braids.

  Plus, She looked noticeably bored. When the Goddess noticed me gaping at Her, She gave a little roll of Her eyes as if to say, “Can you believe I’m stuck doing this lame job?” Of course, I might have felt more at ease if one of Her corneas wasn’t bugging out of an open socket.

  I also noticed the slight glint of sliver at Hel’s wrists—a symbolic chain that held the Goddess to Alison?

  “Do you want to be free?” I asked Hel, using mine and Lilith’s voice.

  Hel’s lips parted to reveal a truly ghastly smile, filled with rotten and missing teeth. “Oh yes,” she hissed.

  I let Lilith rise. There was an explosion that sounded like a gunshot, and then my worldview shifted.

  I was no longer in the office building, but somewhere else. Everything was a grainy white and there was no discernible horizon line. “I’m calling you out, Sister,” I heard a voice that was mine, but not-mine say.

  Hel stepped out from the grayness. Her blue-black hair flowed luxuriantly in a nonexistent wind and maggots crawled visibly in a hole in her cheek. I only hoped Lilith looked this frightening. Hel bowed her head slightly, in the international “let’s do this thing” gesture.

  I felt myself lunge forward, a fist raised to strike. Hel countered. An unstoppable force met an unmovable object. I could feel a shockwave that should have shattered worlds, but neither Goddess seemed affected.

  Then they laughed.

  “Thank you,” said Hel, as she began to fade into the grayness that surrounded us. Through Lilith, I understood that the fight had been for show. The tremor caused by their one-punch battle had shaken Hel loose from her bondage.

  Grayness turned to black.

  I woke up to Sebastian standing over me. “Well,” he said, “that was a little like using a nuclear bomb to swat a fly.”

  The room actually smelled a little scorched. I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Alison lay on the floor, her eyes shut. Plastic had melted around her in the shape of a Nordic rune. “Is she dead?”

  “No,” he said. “But probably stunned. I mean, seriously, Garnet, did you have to let Lilith out? Do you even know what that’s like?”

  I had no idea, actually. I went away and Lilith came. It was our arrangement. “But, but,” I stammered stupidly. “She had Hel.”

  “Hell?” Sebastian shook his head, looking down at Alison’s crumpled form. “Yeah, that’s what you gave her all right.”

  “No, I mean the Norse Goddess Hel. She had her in bondage.” I frowned. “How are we going to keep her from doing it again?”

  Sebastian chuckled darkly. “Lilith took care of that, I think.”

  “She did?”

  He nodded. “Alison’s magical connections are fried. I’m not sure what she did, exactly, but if I had to guess Hel and Lilith ganged up on Alison and gave her a kind of magical feedback loop. Wasted the ‘circuit’ as it were.”

  Ouch. Now I understood what Sebastian meant by going nuclear when a flyswatter might have been better. “What are you going to do about her? I mean, is she still going to be your ghoul? Anyone’s ghoul?”

  “She’s not mine anymore,” Sebastian said with a slight lift of his shoulders. “What she does with herself now is none of my concern.”

  Cold. Well, it wasn’t like they were lovers, or even friends from the sounds of things. They didn’t talk at all before he bit her. He really did just use them for their blood.

  Sebastian noticed my expression and said, “Too harsh?” He shook his head. “There really is no pleasing you in this matter, is there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re looking at all this”—he raised his arms to indicate the empty office space—“and you’re thinking that I’m too impersonal, too severe. Yet, if Alison and I were friends you wouldn’t believe we weren’t lovers. If we were lovers, you’d never trust that I loved you best.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. Sitting back down on the now-exposed desktop, I sighed. “But I do trust you more than you think, Sebastian. I have Alison to thank for that, actually.”

  We both looked at Alison, who rolled onto her side with a groan. “Really?” he asked. “How’s that?”

  “I found out from her you that were cutting off ties with all of them in preparation for the wedding.” I caught his glance and held it. “That’s sweet, Sebastian, but foolish. I can’t be your only supply of b
lood. Your need would kill me.”

  “I know. But . . . but I thought that we could start fresh after the wedding. You could, I don’t know, take part in the selection of the ghouls? Help me make the rules? Whatever will help you feel more secure.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted that much information about or control over Sebastian’s ghouls, but it was nice of him to offer. “We can talk about that later,” I said. “What are we going to do with her?”

  Sebastian grimaced. “She’s out. I think other than a serious case of magical posttraumatic stress, she’s probably fine. We could leave her.”

  Normally I would have disagreed, but Alison really did look like she was snoozing quite peacefully. “You’re sure she’s okay?”

  Very carefully, Sebastian knelt down beside Alison and checked her pulse and her breathing. “She didn’t concuss. Her eyes just rolled up into her head and she fell over.”

  “Still, I’d feel better if we called an ambulance for her. What if all that scorchy smell is, like, her brain matter?”

  “It’s plastic, and only if you want to spend time in jail.”

  “Why would we go to jail? I didn’t even assault her,” I said.

  Sebastian pointed to his teeth. “I did.”

  Ah, good point, and what a media circus that would be. “What are we going to do with her?”

  He pulled out his phone. “I have an idea. I hate to do this, but the suppliers have their own system for dealing with these sorts of things. I’ll make some calls.”

  Sebastian called what sounded like some kind of bureaucratic council in charge of ghouls, which, apparently, promised to take care of Alison.

  “So what just happened?” I asked.

  “Censure,” he said.

  I looked over at Alison. She looked almost peaceful, except for the drool pooling on the plastic. “What’s censure?”

  “She’ll be bound magically so she can’t practice witchcraft again and shunned by the community.”

  Could be worse, I thought. “Can we go home?” I asked, trying to keep the whine out of my voice. “I just want to sleep, and . . . sleep in.”