Water of Souls

by Eli Constant

  “You’d have to have something stronger to support the head.” I murmur. “I thought it was... god... I thought they were treated like hanging puppets, but seeing this. It was different. The holes weren’t threaded with strings. They weren’t hoisted and played with. They were... I think they were lived with. Positioned. Brought back to life in a way.” I speak, hovering my fingers over the new set of bones. “He or she or they... whoever did this, Terrance. I think they’re lonely. Socially exiled. They made friends.” I focus on the bones with everything I have to see if I can feel the person that once belonged to them, but no one is there. This spirt has passed over. Into the ether, I hope. “Who is she?”

  “You can tell it’s a woman?” Terrance’s suspicion is growing. I can hear it in his voice.

  “That’s not magic, Terrance.” Sighing, I point. “If she were younger, it would be harder. Pre-adolescents don’t present significant sexual dimorphism. The sub-pubic angle is large, indicative of child-bearing. On top of that, the bones are just smaller than you’d expect in a man. Is that enough? Or do I have to pull out all the stops? Granted, I might need a textbook for more. I don’t remember my forensic anthropology class as well as I should.”

  “No, I get it.” Terrance crosses his arms across his chest; it makes him look larger somehow. And trust me, that’s saying something. “But you can’t explain away the other things with science, Tori.”

  “I know.” It’s my turn to cross my arms, but the effect is quite different. I do it to shield myself, to hold in my thoughts and fear. “So who is she?”

  “Never identified.” He looks at me, his eyes narrowing like he will look into my soul. “Tell me now, Tori. And it stays here in this room.”

  “You can’t promise that when you don’t know what it is.”

  “Yes I can. I am your friend before I’m an officer of the law. Do you know what it means for me to say that?” Terrance still has his arms crossed, but there’s vulnerability there now.

  I did know what it meant and it was a wonderful thing for him to say, but I knew he’d feel differently in about oh... five seconds. If I gave him the honesty he wanted, that is. “You don’t get it, Terr—”

  He cuts me off, holding up a hand. “I care about you, girl. Don’t you get that? You’re like a damn little sister.”

  “Jesus, first Jim and now you.”

  “What?” Terrance looks confused.

  “I’ve gone a long time without people I can count on, Terrance. Once my dad died, that was it. I couldn’t let anyone get too near me. Jim was the closest thing I had to a living parent figure and he and I didn’t really get on with the feelings bit until he was dying on the floor. Now I’ve got an actual female friend—thank god she hasn’t asked me any questions yet—a boyfriend that’s given me an ultimatum or we’ll be breaking up soon and another supposed friend,” I point to Terrance, “who’s given me the same ‘truth or we’re over’ order.” I fight the urge to stamp my foot. “It’s just too damn much for me to handle.”

  “There’s a real easy solution to all this, Tori.” Terrance finally uncrosses his arms and returns to his normal size and shape. He’s no longer a giant lording over me and forcing my truths out into the open. “Trust people. We’re not all bad. We aren’t all going to,” he hesitates, as if debating whether he should say something out loud, “burn you for being what you are.”

  The world comes crashing down on me.

  The energy it contains is a tidal wave pouring into my body and creating such a pressure that I know I will burst at any second. I am overfilled and overwhelmed.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” A whisper with no conviction.

  “You know exactly what I mean. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I should have seen it sooner, but maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t. Now I’ve gotten to know you. I know who you are at the core. And that has both nothing and everything to do with your affliction.”

  “I don’t think of it as a curse, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I feel strength work its way back into my arms and legs. I stand a little straighter and I look at him without shrinking back. “It’s not an affliction. It’s a gift. I help people with it. I help spirits move on. I give living relatives closure. We’re not all bad, Terrance. No more than all humans are bad.”

  “I understand that now.” He adds the ‘now’ almost as if it is an afterthought, but also the most important word he’s said. “If you’d come across my path back at the academy, I would have turned you in, Tori. I would have given you up quicker than you could blink. That’s what happens when you’re inundated with the warnings about what could happen if we let any of you live. The Rising still scares the hell out of folks. It still scares me.”

  “Then why won’t you turn me in now? If I scare you so much, why not just turn me in? You can have a party, watch me burn on national television. Hell, make it a neighborhood barbeque.” I uncross my arms and swipe roughly at the moisture on my face. My voice still sounds firm and steady. Because I’m strong. Sure, I’m strong. I stayed strong for a whole second. Now I’m crying though. WWF candidate right here.

  “I stand by what I said, Tori. This stays here. In this room. It goes no further. You’re still on the books as a consultant for the department. It’s going to stay that way. Hell, it’d make things easier if we made it even more official than that. Get your ass pinned down with a badge. Jesus, we’d solve every case overnight.”

  “I’m not magic.” I hold out my hands to him, trying to force understanding. “I mean, yes, technically I am gifted. I use magic. But it’s not an exact art and every single body and every spirit is different.”

  “I’m just saying. I wouldn’t have to justify mysterious findings anymore. I could just write: “Officer Cage discovered, through judicious and definitely not ludicrous police work, that the woman had a son.”

  “Over my dead body.” I say that way too often.

  “Yeah, you’ve said that before.” Terrance smiles. He actually smiles. And that gesture, more than his promises to not turn me in, makes me believe that I’m safe.

  That someone knows my secret and I’m safe.

  “I’m going to say this once and only once to you. Not because you need to hear it, but because I may as well say the damn thing now. I’m a necromancer. I was born with the gift. I’ve lived with it and hidden it for all these years. I am good. I am a good person who does good things. I’ve only ever used my power to hurt someone once. And that was last year, against the people who took those girls and killed Lilly.” Now that I’m speaking the words, they spill out and I can’t seem to put the dam back in place. “I can’t promise I won’t use my gift to hurt again. If it’s a bad person doing bad things and I can stop it, I’m going to try.”

  “Okay, I hear you.”

  “I just want you to know the whole package. I want to walk out of here and make sure you understand the truth we’re leaving behind in this room.”

  “I understand it.”

  We fall into quietness then. I silently re-cover the second set of bones with the thin sheet and I walk over to spend another moment with Maggie. I mentally say goodbye, even though she cannot hear me. It opens me to the ghosts still sailing about the room, trying to touch me while I’m available. I shut them out again quickly. I do not have the energy to study them more.

  It’s Terrance who breaks the silence as we lock up the morgue and walk towards our respective vehicles. “I have a feeling that we’ll find more bodies like those, Tori.”

  “What makes you say that?” I dig my keys out of my pocket.

  “The killer got better between the first body and the second. If that was the first body and the second, which might not be the case, but my gut says it is. The point is that they practiced. A murderer who treats it like an art form, like a craft to be honed, they’re not going to quit.”

  “More bodies. Fuck.” We’ve never had a serial killer in Bonneau. Never. I’ve not helped on a case like this before. “My gu
t is telling me you think the ‘they’ is actually a ‘he’.” There was something in the steel of his eyes, and the way he spoke, that made me think he’d already settled on that ‘fact’.

  “Yeah. A guy with very specific tastes.” He leans into his squad car, which is parked only two spaces from mine and he walks over to me standing next to the now-open driver’s door of the Bronco. “Look.”

  He hands me two files, both turned inside out, and there’s a picture paper clipped to each. Two faces stare back at me. Maggie Smythe and a girl that could be her doppelgänger. The second picture was an artist rendering, although stapled under that was a photo of the body when it was first found, fresh and still fleshed-out. Next to the likenesses of both victims are physical specs on the women. Maggie was older than the Jane Doe by ten years, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at them. At least, not according to the drawing versus the photo. Both were petite in size, fair-skinned, brown eyed and had long dark hair. They looked like Mei and I hoped that was only because she and Dean had been on my mind today, wondering how their date went.

  “You have so much information on her, how come she was never identified?” I give Terrance back the files. “I mean, the artist rendering and all the physical specs. Surely, someone could have identified her.”

  “You’d think.” He murmurs, staring down at Jane Doe’s picture, the file open in his hand. “We sent it out to all the surrounding counties, gave it to the feds. They turned up nothing. A few people tossed around the possibility that maybe she wasn’t registered, maybe came into the country illegally.”

  “I guess that’s possible.” I bite my lip, looking up at the sky and letting the cold air bite my face.

  “Tori, is there anything else you can tell me to help this along?” Terrance closes the file and glances up, wondering what I’m looking at. Of course, there’s nothing except sky and my thoughts above us.

  The two victims remind me of someone else too, not just Mei, but I can’t figure it out. Not standing in the cold in front of the morgue.

  I take a deep breath. Being able to speak openly with Terrance was going to take some getting used to. “When I found Maggie’s remains, I spoke to her.” I watch the police chief’s eyes go wide. It’s hard to believe that a cop, who’s served so long and has seen so much, can still be surprised. Then again, I’m probably the first necromancer he’s met. I’m not the only one who has some adjusting to do. “She did identify her killer as male. She said something about his face being both brown and white, like it was painted. But then she thought it was a mask. And his eyes might have been blue, but she wasn’t sure. She also said his hands were blue. I don’t know what any of that means though, Terrance.”

  “Why wasn’t she sure?” I see Terrance’s fingers twitch, like they’re wanting to get his notebook out and start writing. He’s resisting though, not wanting to put anything on paper that can’t be proven without magical powers. He’s a fast learner. He’s going to protect me and keep my secret. It’s a better feeling than I could have ever imagined.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I rub my hands together, phantom memories of reaching down beneath the ground to feel Maggie’s bones running through them, “souls as a rule can’t lie. They tell the truth. But Maggie had been stuck there for a really long time and she was disintegrating. I could have forced her to stay, but she was right on the edge of becoming something dark. Something we would call a wraith. On top of that, she was a murder victim. Sometimes a traumatic death can... Um, God, this is hard. I’ve never really talked about this stuff with someone who wasn’t raised with the knowledge.” I close the driver’s door and lean on it. “Sometimes, but not always, a murder victim’s memory will be really jumbled up. It can take time to put it back together and that wasn’t time Maggie had.”

  Terrance is nodding, accepting my words. “Okay. What about the case last year? With the girls? I’m guessing you talked to Lilly Miller since you did the funeral.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Was she... confused like Maggie?”

  “No, that’s different. Not only was she a child, so she was, let’s say... clearer about the world around her and still trusting of it, she was also freshly dead. Does that make sense? She hadn’t been in the, let’s call it the in-between long enough to get confused. So, with her inherent trust of people and not being dead long, she knew what happened to her. She knew details like the car and the shirt the man wore.” I can hear the lie in what I’m saying, but only because I know the truth. My sadistic half-brother Braeden had altered Lilly’s memory as she lay dying. Instead of doing anything to save her, he’d messed with her mind to keep himself safe. Someday, blood relation or not, I was going to hurt him. Or kill him. Or maybe both and I’d enjoy every freaking minute of it.

  “Okay.” Terrance takes the files back from me and tilts his head forward to rock it from side to side like he’s trying to relieve tension in his neck. “If you hear anything from...anyone, let me know.”

  “If a spirit materializes in my kitchen and tells me the name of the killer, you’ll be my first call. And then you can run him down, lock him up, and throw away the key. He’ll be one fully mirandized criminal.”

  Terrance looks at me in shock, but then he smiles. “You know the best part about me knowing your secret?”

  “What’s that?” I didn’t like the grin spreading across his face like a kid in a candy store.

  “I get to make the following rule. Unless you want to put on a badge and learn how to actually talk like a cop, then no more spouting off like you’re some Deputy Do-Right taught how to do the job by Barney Fife in an Andy Griffith episode.” He chuckles, wiping a tear from his right eye. “Seriously, girl, I don’t know how much more of that I can take.”

  I reopen my car door and give him a wonky salute. “10-4, Chief. I copy.” Closing my door does nothing to dull the sound of his riotous laughter. And as I drive away, I can still see his shoulders jumping up and down as he sits in his squad car. It really wasn’t that funny and I have the sneaking suspicion that the laughter is a product of relief more than anything.

  Because the truth is out. He’s one less person I have to hide myself from. One person versus the entire ignorant world. But that’s something and more than I’ve had in a long, long time. Yet, it’s also overwhelming. My heart is racing, waiting to be arrested, waiting to be burned.

  I pull to a stop at a red light a few blocks down and I dig into my purse to quickly grab my phone and check to see if I’ve missed anything. It’s late afternoon and the clouds overhead are as thick as they always are in our town, made so dreary post-War. We’ll get another few inches of snowfall overnight tomorrow, if the news is right. It makes the world beautiful though, so I don’t mind. It’s better than rain.

  The light turns green just as I depress the button that lights up my cell phone screen. There’s no one behind me, so I check for missed calls and texts before moving forward. There’s only a missed call from Mei and I’m pretty sure I know what to expect from the voice mail she’s left. It’ll be all about her wonderful date with Dean.

  I’m a bad friend and ignore the message. For two reasons. One- I’m still disturbed that the victims in the morgue should be so physically like her, and two- Kyle and I are in the middle of a relationship snafu (I can’t stand thinking of it as a fight) and right now, I really don’t want to listen to another lovely tale about another lovely date, no matter how much I care about Mei and her life.

  Sometimes, I wonder if I’m cut out to be real friends with anybody. I can be selfish, wrapped up in shadows and consumed by my own life. I guess that’s why I do need friends though—to yank me back when the abyss seems too inviting.

  Chapter Eight

  Kyle does come over for dinner.

  We awkwardly hug at the downstairs door and then he goes up the stairs without a look back. I take a moment before following, resting my head on the cool wood of the closed door for a moment. When I mount the stairs and enter the a
partment, he’s already in the kitchen at my small dining table with a thawed bass on a cutting board.

  Dating him, I’ve discovered another new gift thanks to Liam’s mark and my Blood Queen title. I can feel his mood. It’s especially strong when he’s... in the mood. Which he is not tonight.

  “This was really nice of Leslie.”

  “Yeah, it was. I think she needs someone to care for, with Corey being gone. He really doted on her and he always snuck me extra cookies when I was over and she was baking, so of course, he was pretty perfect from a kid’s viewpoint.”

  “Sounds like a good guy.”

  “He was. And they were great together, the kind of couple you knew didn’t have a secret between them and just loved the hell out of one another.” I clamp my mouth shut after I realize what I’ve said. And I can see Kyle’s eyes tighten as he slides the filet knife into the bass.

  “You know, it’s really better to do this fresh and then store it. I’m surprised her grandson didn’t prep them all before giving them to her.” He moves the knife slowly, creating a clean line in the abdomen of the fish from chin to tail. Do fish have chins?

  “I think she’s just grateful he makes time for her. I doubt she’ll even touch the fish still in her freezer. She told me a while back that eating fish makes her think of Corey.”

  “I can see that. Once you get really attached to someone and then they’re suddenly gone, it’s hard to face things that remind you of them.” He splays open the bass and starts working the bones out.

  “You’re good at this.”

  “I watched a video before coming over.” He can’t suppress his grin as he pulls out a line of bones. “I have no idea what I’m doing.” He sobers quickly though. “So we both have secrets. I don’t know how to gut a fish and you...”