“Will I be able to… touch him?” I ask. The thought of being able to feel David again is so overpowering that it nearly drops me to my knees. “Will he be like Runner? You’re a Phantom…”
“It’s not the same,” Bex says, “I’m sorry. If anything, it will be an apparition. Like the first time you saw Anya.”
“And let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That’s assuming he even shows,” Kara adds.
“He’ll show,” I say. “Yes. I’m in.”
Wood creaks and Anya and Delaney descend from upstairs. They are smiling, Anya holding tight to Delaney’s arm, and their hair is mussed and their cheeks are rosy and they both wear satisfied devilish grins. I envy them.
Bex waves them over. “You’re just in time. We have a request.”
***
We are back in the basement, and this time there is no corpse.
Delaney is at one of the black apothecary tables mixing various liquids and powders together in a small stone bowl. Kara sets a large blanket down on the floor, and Anya lights the candles on the altar at the far end of the room.
Mad takes my hand. “This is going to sting,” she says as she produces a small dagger from nowhere and slices it across my palm.
“Shit, Mad!” I say, yanking my hand out of her grasp. Black blood wells and oozes from the cut.
Delaney comes over with the bowl. “Ah, it’s just a scratch. Gimme,” she says, taking my hand and turning it so that my blood drips into the concoction she’s put together. The liquid hisses as my blood hits it, and a thin trail of smoke wafts from the bowl. “Perfect,” she says, then dips two fingers in the bowl and smears the liquid down my right side of my face from my cheekbone to my jaw. Moving from witch to witch, she does the same to each of them.
“There is nothing more powerful than the blood of someone we’re working with, or on,” Mad says. “It’ll help us make contact.”
“Little warning would have been nice!” Runner calls from across the room, where Delaney has just smudged him with the mixture. “Just saying.”
“Come,” Bex says, and we move to the blanket and sit in a circle. She gestures for us to join hands, and when Runner takes mine he squeezes it just a little to let me know that he’s here for me, and my heart nearly bursts with gratitude.
Mad lights a stick of incense and places it in the center of the circle, setting it so that the ash will fall into the bowl with my blood.
The five necromancers lower their heads and close their eyes, and with one last glance at each other, Runner and I do the same.
“David, we have someone here who would very much like to speak with you. To see you. If you’re there, we are open and waiting for you to join us.”
I no longer need to breathe, but if I did, this would be the moment where I held my breath. Unable to help it, I crack one eye open. The rest of the circle still has their head bowed and their eyes closed. The smoke from the incense floats lazily above the bowl. There is no breeze to stir it. No change in the air pressure or change in the way I feel. I close my eyes again and will him to appear.
“Gray, why don’t you try calling to him?” Bex suggests.
I open my mouth, but the words catch in my throat. What do I tell the man who was murdered because of me? Then I realize that there’s only one thing I can say that actually matters. “David, I’m so sorry. What happened to you is all my fault, and if you’re staying away from me and from us here now because you blame me, well… I don’t blame you.”
Hot tears slide down my cheeks and I let them fall. “Please forgive me. I should’ve left Lilah sooner. I should’ve protected you. I should’ve done a lot of things differently. And I’m going to make up for the wrong I’ve done and the hurt I’ve caused.”
Still, there is nothing. My heart shatters in my chest.
“He’s not coming,” I say and open my eyes, and that’s when I see that all five necromancers are frowning.
“Do you feel that?” Mad says, and the other four murmur an agreement.
“That’s not right,” Kara says. Her eyes pop open. “What are you playing at, Gray?”
“I… what do you mean? Nothing! What’s wrong?”
“He’s not here,” Anya says.
I swallow hard, tears welling. “I know. He doesn’t want to see me…”
“No,” Bex says. “He’s not here. In the spirit realm. Gray, he’s not dead, at least not in the way you’re thinking of it.”
“There’s only one way to think of it,” I say, my voice low and nervous as I try to comprehend what’s happening. “I woke up in a morgue. His body was on the slab next to mine.”
Runner shakes his head at them. “After the Lilah incident, I picked her up at his grave. He is absolutely dead.”
I don’t feel him here, though. At every conjuring that the Daughters of the Dead have done that I’ve been a part of, I’ve felt something. Something I couldn’t explain, maybe, but something every time. Now, there’s nothing, and it feels wrong.
“You’re taking us to that gods damned graveyard and we’re figuring this shit out now,” Kara says, and I couldn’t agree more.
***
An hour later we’re standing in a cemetery over my fiancé’s exhumed grave.
I am not ready for this.
I lift the lid.
And look into David’s empty coffin.
My legs go out from under me and I lean on his gravestone to keep myself from falling.
“Lucifer,” Runner spits under his breath. He spins on me. “Again! He’s a liar, Gray, and now you’re stuck in some hellish bargain with him over a man who’s not even dead!”
“Well, that might not be true,” Bex says. “Just because he’s not buried here doesn’t mean he’s not dead.”
“What, you think he’s buried somewhere else?” Delaney says.
“No,” Mad says, and I see a lightbulb go on for her. “He’s not buried at all.”
Kara snakes an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in tight like we’re pals. “Demon, what we’re getting at here is that there is a very good chance that your precious David is a Counterfeit, and that he’s somewhere in our realm, alive-ish and well, right this very minute.”
THANK YOU!
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Notes
HELLION: THE DEAD HEX: (Hellion, Book 2) Page 13