“You have icing on your face. Is that dark-chocolate buttercream?”
Mory wiped her face and observed the transferred streak of icing. “Yup.” She licked the remnant off her hand.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “From a Cozy in a Cup?”
“Nope.” Mory offered me a saucy grin. It was the first smile I’d seen from her. However, only two other options with dark-chocolate buttercream icing were currently available in the bakery. The ever-popular Sex in a Cup, a cocoa cake with a dash of cinnamon, and the Desire in a Cup, a chocolate raspberry cake. I was fairly certain Mory’s mother would not be a fan of her daughter eating either of those for breakfast.
“I like Portland,” Mory said. “Good shopping, big book store, and lots of bridges.” Her grin widened. Someone slept well last night, at least.
“If books and bridges are all you’re looking for,” I answered, “then you should never have reason to leave home.” Still pissed about Portland, and sorcerers, and vampires, I crossed back to my workstation and started to transfer cookies from a cooling rack to a tray, just to do something with my hands.
“Rusty took me. A year ago,” Mory said behind me. It was a deliberate mention of her brother designed to tug at my heartstrings. It worked.
“During the beer festival,” I whispered, more to the cookies than Mory. I remembered Rusty talking about it at a fireworks party last summer on the roof of his building. That had been the first time I’d met him. He’d just started dating Sienna, and had managed to stick around long enough for me to bother meeting him.
“Yeah.” Mory continued chatting as if she wasn’t stabbing me in the gut with every word. My guilt resided in my stomach, hence my need to constantly fill it with chocolate, and cookies, and cupcakes. “While he was at the festival, there was this camp thing I went to for two days. I met a bunch of werewolves and we practiced stuff.”
A camp for Adept kids. Great. One more thing I’d never been to. Jesus, I was tired of my own whinging. I was freaking tired of trying to be the best granddaughter, the best dowser, and the best … friend.
Well, I guess I didn’t have to worry about the last one anymore.
“So you’ll take me, then? To the warehouse? To Rusty?”
I turned around, knowing I needed to say no to her face. Knowing she needed to understand that the right thing for me to do was to take her home to her grieving mother. A mother who didn’t need her daughter even more traumatized by my family than she already was.
Then I saw her face.
Mory didn’t really look like Rusty. She was so tiny, but still gangly around the edges as if she wasn’t finished growing yet. Her eyes were dark pools on her face, too large for her round cherub cheeks and pale lips.
“Tima is here,” Mory rushed to add. “So she … so you can leave now, yes?”
Tima came in part-time during the weekends, though with it being summer now, she’d picked up a few weekday shifts. She was only a year or so older than Mory, and had probably just been dropped off by her brother. Her not-dead brother.
I faltered. This wasn’t a decision I should make … but it was a decision I could make. When was the last time I’d chosen, I’d decided? Damn it. Tima covered me midday for yoga and paperwork, not ghost hunting.
“How do you know he’ll be there?”
Mory chewed on her lip. “He’ll come for me.”
“Why?”
“It’s a necromancer thing.”
“You mean you can call any ghost to you from their … from the site of their death?”
Mory hesitated. I folded my arms and stared her down. Necromancer secrets or not, she’d answer my questions or we wouldn’t step one foot away from the bakery.
“No,” Mory said. “Just a blood relative.”
“Why doesn’t your mom take you? You obviously know the location, or at least that it’s a warehouse.”
Mory ducked her head. She was playing with a bracelet on her left wrist. It was too big for her and too manly. Rusty’s, I guessed. “She doesn’t want me to do it. She doesn’t want me to … be tied to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s my brother. If I call him, he can choose to stay. To use me as an anchor point.”
My mind boggled at the idea. “I thought ghosts were just impressions of a person’s energy left on this plane of existence?”
“That’s shades.”
“Shades and ghosts aren’t the same thing?”
Mory squirmed uncomfortably.
I crossed my arms, raised my eyebrow, and remained quiet. A technique I was — rather unwillingly — learning from Kett.
“Shades are like … like a photograph, like you said, impressions,” Mory said. “Ghosts can talk, and even answer questions about their life. If you know the right thing to ask. But they don’t … they don’t learn or, like, grow.” Mory fell silent, and bit her lip.
“Then what are you saying about calling Rusty and him staying? How can a shade or ghost stay with you?”
Mory bowed her head further, fiddling with the edge of her blue T-shirt now. I could see the bones beneath the flesh of her wrists. She was skinnier than she should be.
“She means a necromancer can trap a soul with her, as a familiar,” a cool voice said from behind us.
I’d felt the vampire’s magical signature remain in the alley, but he moved swiftly enough through the back door he that almost startled me.
Mory jumped and spun around. “That is not what I mean —” Her retort died on her lips with a squeak. Yeah, if you knew you what you were looking at, vampires were damn scary. A necromancer would know what she was looking at — not by his magic, as I did, but by his soul. Or the lack of one …
“Kett,” I said, matching his cool tone. “Eavesdropping is beneath you.”
Kett stiffened, his icy blue eyes locking to mine rather than on the necromancer. He didn’t like being given personal critiques, but it kept his attention on me and off Mory.
“Nor were you invited into this conversation,” I added. “Please don’t make me ask you to leave.” Sometimes channeling my grandmother was the best defense against the vampire. Plus, I had a feeling we were both a little unsure of what would happen if I did actually ask him to leave and he refused.
The magic of the wards might back me and eject him — maybe even tear him apart if he fought. It would be an insult and an affront. Vampires liked to think of themselves as all powerful. They didn’t like being trumped by magic — hence their hatred of necromancers. Ironically, death magic was their Achilles heel. Yeah, I was a slow learner, but I had started piecing things together.
“It’s not like that,” Mory said. Brave girl to find her voice in the presence of a vampire. “I would never trap a soul. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I’m not powerful enough. I doubt anyone is —”
“Someone was, once,” Kett said. A chill ran down my spine. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but I didn’t like the faraway tone of his voice.
I stepped around Mory, placing her behind me. I didn’t like that this put the workstation between her and the bakery, but it was the quickest option.
“It would be his choice, Jade,” Mory said. “Like my uncle.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, distracted by the implications. “You have a ghost uncle who follows you around?”
“Eww, not me. My mom. It’s her great uncle. He died when she was super young, and he chose without her asking. To stay with the family. Rusty could stay with me … if he wanted.”
I could hear Mory fighting tears behind me, but Kett’s face remained like clear ice. “Your grandmother would not approve,” he said.
“You going to run and tell her, vampire?” I asked, knowing that Kett was very careful to avoid contact with Gran. He wasn’t scared of her, I don’t think, but he was always wary of ramifications. Gran was well liked and highly ranked in the Adept community. Vampires were neither.
Kett smiled. I hated it when he did that. It was too human, softening everything about him. Making him almost accessible. Likeable. Sexy.
I felt his magic shift along with the smile. I wasn’t sure what the shift meant, but I didn’t like it. Or rather, I didn’t like that I noticed and enjoyed the taste and feel of it.
I narrowed my eyes at him and glowered.
Kett’s grin widened, as if he thought I was an adorable curmudgeon. I was, but I really had to stop being so around him.
He pulled out a cellphone and sauntered into the bakery. I wasn’t impressed. I was certain he’d been practicing that walk.
“He has a cellphone,” Mory said quietly.
“No point in whispering. He just heard our conversation through that steel door. Dog whistles must be a bitch for him. Which, now that I think about it …”
“A vampire with a cellphone.”
“Yeah, he’s all twenty-first century.”
“He’s not twenty-first century.”
“You can see that, huh?”
“He’s … he’s …”
I gave the fledgling necromancer a cookie, then slid the partly full tray onto the stock shelving unit.
“He would have killed me if you hadn’t been here,” Mory finally articulated.
“Nah. Vamps have a rep, but they’re pretty anxious about bad press.”
“All vampires hate necromancers.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen why.” First hand actually, when Sienna — after absorbing Rusty’s latent necromancer powers — had raised Hudson in the morgue. The zombie werewolf had kicked Kett’s ass. Mory didn’t need to know that extra part of the saga though. “The immortal really don’t like being mortal.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is my uncle was killed by a vampire that was hunting my mom.”
“Wait, what? Creepy great uncle was drained by a vamp?”
“Well, not exactly,” Mory answered. “My mom was young, like two, and she got out of the house at night. Her uncle found her in the graveyard —”
“Your mom grew up next to a graveyard?”
“It was a family plot. You know, on the estate. Mom probably went there to talk to the ghosts.”
Okay. No sane vampire would be caught on the estate of a necromancer family. And definitely — whether sane or rogue — not in a graveyard. Actually, I guess it pays to be able to speak to the dead.
“Anyway,” Mory continued. “They found them in the morning. My great uncle dead and my mom sleeping beside him.”
“Okay, that isn’t super creepy at all. He was drained?”
“Broken neck.”
“Your family thinks a vampire would have killed without draining? And then didn’t kill your mom?”
“The family thinks the ghosts drove the vampire off. They can do that, you know.”
“And the ghosts confirmed the vampire’s presence?”
“Well, my mom was the only full necromancer in the family at that point. Her mom died giving birth to her. So she was the only one who could communicate with them directly. And she was two.”
A more likely scenario, I thought, was that the great uncle — left alone to tend baby necromancer — got drunk, passed out, and then woke to find baby gone. Stumbling out of the house, he found baby in the graveyard, tripped over an old headstone and broke his neck. Then dead, he forever after chose to stay with his great niece — the only person who could now see him — and tell her he saved her from a vampire.
Ah, families. So full of loyalty, love, and half-truths.
“So you’ll take me? I’m not powerful enough to do any damage or hurt anyone. I just want … I want Rusty to have a chance to …”
“Redeem himself?” I asked gently. Mory didn’t answer. “If he murdered those werewolves with Sienna, do you think he’ll tell you?”
“My mom thinks he’s guilty.” Mory’s whisper cut me right across the unhealed spot on my heart.
“There was a lot of evidence,” I said, trying to somehow contain and control the emotion threatening my rational thought process. “Evidence collected by trained Adept investigators. People I didn’t even know existed before the tribunal. They had that magical cube thing, like YouTube only with better camera work.”
“I saw it.”
The reconstructionist had somehow created a ‘magical imprint’ of Hudson’s death. Even through my grief, I’d thought the magic was amazing. I could feel residual magic, of course, but I certainly couldn’t reconstruct scenes from the past. Hell, I barely comprehended the present.
“And now what? You’re hoping Sienna made him do it?”
“I don’t care!” Mory cried. The sentiment drove straight into my soul. I, too, worried that some part of me didn’t care one way or the other. That some part of me just wanted my sister back.
I remembered Sienna standing in the magic of the portal just a floor below where Mory and I stood. I remember how she dissolved into the magic — washed clean away. First her dark magic, then her very being. I’d held on to her as long as I could feel her fingers. I’d held on, wishing she could stay, wishing everything could go back …
“I have a purple lip gloss that looks terrible on me,” I said. “It would look great on you.”
“Yeah?” Hope flooded across Mory’s face and out through her limbs. She’d been clenching her fists so tightly it was a good thing she obviously chewed her nails. Though it was hell on her fluorescent orange manicure.
“Yeah. Let’s grab it. Along with some proper shoes. I can’t go ghost hunting in sneakers.”
CHAPTER NINE
A quick stop at the Godfrey Properties offices — and a dozen cupcakes — yielded the keys to the warehouse on West Sixth Avenue. Gran, aka Godfrey Properties, owned an entire block of West Fourth Avenue including the bakery and the apartments above. She also owned various commercial and residential properties in and around Greater Vancouver. She was a powerful witch and real estate mogul.
I asked Linda, Gran’s office manager, for the keys to all the larger retail spaces that Godfrey Properties currently had available for lease to cover my tracks. If Linda told Gran I was looking to expand the bakery — cupcake bribe or no cupcake bribe — the gig would be up. But then, Mory and I wouldn’t be hanging around just waiting to be caught anyway.
We cabbed it to the warehouse where I’d found Rusty half eaten inside a pentagram, with my sister hiding with her arms slashed in a protection circle close by. At the time, honestly, I’d just been happy that Sienna was alive. Beyond all the blood — and the vivid picture still imprinted on my mind — I hadn’t really absorbed Rusty’s death. I’d wanted him to be the bad guy so much that I didn’t dig into — hell, I barely even listened to — Sienna’s story. Only after she literally stabbed me in the gut with her duplicity did I finally wake up and figure it all out.
Now, here I was standing outside the same warehouse, on the same sidewalk, looking for Rusty. Or at least helping Mory find Rusty. The warehouse looked smaller in the midday sun than it had in the middle of the night, when I’d been surrounded by a vampire and four shapeshifters.
The building was empty and still in need of a coat of blue exterior paint. The ‘For Lease’ sign was gone. Other than Mory standing next to me, I couldn’t feel any magic in the immediate vicinity. The witch cleanup crew had scoured the area.
Mory shifted beside me, shuffling her feet. I wasn’t too sure how long I’d been staring up at the second floor of the east side of the building. The cab was long gone. I was desperately trying to not wallow in the memories of the night three months ago that changed the fabric of my life.
I’d never thought of myself as easily manipulated — not mentally or physically. But the path I’d seen so clearly stretched out before me had been a false construct based on Gran’s half-truths, Sienna’s lies, and my own willful ignorance. Now, whenever I stepped forward, I did so with no trusted guidance and no perception of the futu
re.
The worn cement of the parking lot felt solid underneath my feet, and that was good enough for now.
I approached the side door, ghosting my footsteps from three months ago. Though the key ring held multiple options, the key for the eastern door was clearly marked, and I slipped it into the lock, very aware that I hadn’t actually spoken to the young necromancer standing behind me for a number of minutes.
This field trip was turning out to be far more selfishly motivated than I’d thought, as if I was seeking some sort of cathartic release I hadn’t known I needed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My voice cracked embarrassingly.
“What for?” Mory asked. Her voice was much more steady than mine, but her tone was remote, as if she might be steeling herself.
“I should have done more. I should have figured it out before …”
“Yeah, everybody says that.”
“I guess they probably all think so, but … I was here. I should have been … wiser, stronger.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No.”
“And neither was anyone else.”
Jesus, now a fifteen-year-old was laying truths on me like they were plucked out of the air when I — the supposed adult — was still struggling to see them hanging there.
“Inside?” I asked.
Mory nodded. I turned the key. The lock was newly stiff. The original had been broken by Desmond … no, Kandy, during my last break and enter.
The side door opened into the wide room I’d expected. Tables, chairs, and some cubicle dividers were stacked along the outer walls, but essentially the main floor was empty. Empty and very, very clean. I doubted it had been this clean three months ago. But then, I couldn’t see in the dark so I could be wrong.
“I had two seeing-eye werewolves guiding me through here last time,” I said as I crossed into the warehouse and shut the door behind Mory.
“Your friend whose hair freaked you out?”
“No. Two others.”
“But she’s a werewolf.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s like your bodyguard, hey?”
Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser Series) Page 11