“No thanks to you,” he said. “You just gave away my hiding spot. Now everyone will know where I am.”
“You disappeared!” I said. “I thought you were dead, dammit. What are you hiding in here for?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “Something is causing the phantoms to lose their minds. I know they don’t have minds, but I saw some weird shit out here and I want no part of it, thanks.”
“I think I know exactly what you saw.” I hovered above the marshy ground, glimpsing his pale shaking form inside the hollow of the tree. “Look, just stop panicking for one second, Dex. That won’t help either of us. I’m hunting down those phantoms myself, or at least trying to track down whatever’s causing them to go apeshit, and I’ll help you, too.”
He made a noise of protest, then froze mid-motion. I never would have thought I’d see a fire sprite grow pale with fear, but every speck of colour vanished from his fiery form. His wide eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere over my shoulder.
I turned around, dread clutching me with sharp fingers. A hunched fleshy shape hovered in the air with its clawed hands outstretched. Dex shrank back, while I remained still, unwilling to leave the phantom a path to reach the fire sprite. It shouldn’t be able to harm me while I was astral projecting, so maybe I could figure out what was driving it.
“Hey,” I said to the creature. “What did that to you?”
“Don’t talk to it,” Dex hissed from inside the tree. “Make it go away.”
The creature didn’t look capable of moving in a straight line. Its legs were spindly and thin, hardly able to support its body. Pinkish-grey flesh covered its bones, while its clawed hands were disintegrating with each passing second. A pair of grey bat-like wings flapped weakly behind its shoulders.
“Dex, do you see a coin anywhere?”
“No—get away!”
The phantom lashed out with a claw, and sharp hooks dug into my arm, piercing me in places it shouldn’t be able to touch. Alarm blared through my nerves, and I grabbed for the nearest node’s power.
Magic surged into me, pushing the phantom back and numbing the pain in my arm. Its form turned more solid by the instant, decaying as it did so, its clawed hands drooping. The glow brightened, the life force spiralling out of the phantom and into the node’s path.
The phantom gave a final lunge and disintegrated, its fleshy remains crashing to the marshy earth.
Dex shuddered. “Creeps. They get one good punch in before they die—but if they get their hooks in you, you’re dead. If you’re like me, anyway. You’re fine. You have a living body. I don’t. Blazes and tides…”
“I’ll bring you with me.” I extended a hand into the tree. “Come on, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Dex crawled up my arm like a warm and transparent spider monkey. I withdrew from the tree, scanning the swampland for more phantoms, but the path was clear. I floated back towards the dark shape of the castle with him clinging to my shoulder.
“You’ll have to let go of me when I’m back in my body, or else you might cause me to catch on fire,” I said to him as we ascended the stone stairs.
“Where is your body?” he said. “You’re in… no. You’re inside the castle?”
“Yep.” I floated through the oak doors into the entryway, and towards the hall of souls. Dex’s grip tightened at the sight of the endless rows of shelves.
“Damn.” He whistled. “Who’d have thought all this would be in here? Who’re they, then? Liches?”
“Dex, don’t touch anything.” I winced when he let go of me and floated above the shelves with an eager expression on his face. “Dex! Do you want to get locked up again?”
He skidded to a halt when we came within sight of the Death King—and my body, standing nearby. I shot him a warning look, then slid back into my body. My eyes opened, taking in the sight of the Death King speaking to his Elemental Soldiers. He’d invited them in to speak to him while I’d been out of my body, and they crowded around their master among the darkened shelves.
“Are you sure he’s the one whose body you found?” the Death King was saying. “This amulet is his?”
“Yes,” said the Air Element, their voice low. “I’m sorry, Sir.”
The Fire Element’s eyes narrowed when he caught sight of Dex clinging to my shoulder. Heedless of my warnings, he’d moved close enough that my coat was uncomfortably warm on one side.
“What is that?” Ryan spotted the fire sprite, eyeing Dex with an expression of mild fascination.
“A fire sprite,” I said. “Dex, let go of me. There aren’t any phantoms in here.”
“You found him.” The Death King turned to me. “Olivia, you and the sprite should leave.”
That was it? The impulse seized me to argue, but from the Elements’ sombre manner, he’d just found out the name of the lich who the amulet had belonged to. Besides, the way Dex was trembling wasn’t lost on me.
“All right.” I turned away. “I’m heading out.”
I left the hall of souls, walking the short distance to the doors out of the castle. Dex rode on my shoulder down the stone steps. “You’re going through the node?”
“Not like I have another way home.” It was too dark to safely wander around the swampland outside the gates of the Death King’s territory. Even here, I kept thinking every shadow was a phantom, ready to pounce.
“Well.” Dex exhaled in a sigh. “If that’s the case, I will find another hole to hide in.”
“What’s the issue?” I twisted my head to look down at him. “You’ve never been scared before. Not like this.”
He shuddered. “Those phantoms aren’t like other magical beings. They’re corrupted.”
“By spirit magic,” I said. “Don’t forget I used something similar to bring you back to life.”
He let go of me, his expression stricken, and darted away. “As if I could ever forget it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ran after him, my feet splashing in the marshy ground. “Look, if you won’t tell me what’s wrong—”
“I died, okay?” he all but bellowed in my face. “I died, and I’d rather it didn’t happen again.”
My mouth parted, all words fleeing. He’d tasted his own mortality, and he never wanted to experience it again. Could I really blame him for that?
“You could always come back with me,” I said to Dex. “To my house, that is. I can’t pretend a phantom won’t show up anyway, but it’s safer than here. You can lie low until I find out who’s responsible for the spell affecting the phantoms.”
He flew down to my shoulder. “If I were you, I’d stay out of it.”
“Yeah, slight problem,” I said. “I’m pretty sure whichever lich was working with Vaughn is involved, and as long as that remains the case, the whole of the Court of the Dead might be vulnerable.”
“So?” he said. “You didn’t care if the Death King lived or died before.”
“I didn’t risk life and limb to get his soul back only for him to fall victim to a phantom.” I reached the node, which surged through the air in a torrent of light. “I’m going home. You’re welcome to come with me. Take it or leave it.”
The fire sprite sighed. “Fine, but I expect special treatment.”
“Only if Devon agrees.”
Devon would not be thrilled, but it was the only solution I could think of to avoid losing him again. I stepped into the node’s path with Dex clinging to my coat. As I did so, I saw the Air Element exit the castle and turn in my direction as though to watch me leave, and then we were gone.
13
“You did what?” asked Devon.
Dex flew around the living room, forcing Devon to lift her pile of fabric out of the way of the fire sprite’s path.
“I had to bring him back,” I said. “He was terrified of being the next to die. With good reason, if the person responsible for unleashing those spells knows the Death King and I are on their tail.”
Dex zipped overhea
d. “I’m free!”
“At this rate, it’ll be the Order who locks him up,” she said. “Or I’ll bury him in the garden along with that dead phantom first.”
Dex flew above the dining table, which was set up for this week’s game night. “I cannot be contained!”
If Dex had been solid, I’d have cuffed him on the back of the head. “Cut it the hell out. We’re doing you a favour, and the least you can do is not get us into trouble with the Order.”
Devon blew out a breath. “You do realise we’re going to comic con this weekend? He can’t come with us.”
“Don’t give him ideas,” I said. “I know it’s not ideal, but if I’d left him over there in the Parallel, he’d either have to hide in a tree or risk getting caught by whatever’s turning phantoms into piles of dead flesh. This was my last choice.”
“The vampire council didn’t have any ideas about the undead killer, then?” she asked.
“Only that the lich traitor is probably involved, but nobody knows who it is.” The Death King had to figure that one out himself, but until then, I could at least keep Dex safely out of the way of the killer. “The vampire handed us an amulet belonging to one of the victims, which confirmed the traitor stole the amulets out of the hall of souls before killing their owners.”
“So a lich is behind this?” she said. “For sure?”
“Not alone.” I hesitated, knowing the Death King wouldn’t want me blabbing his secrets to all my friends. “Most liches don’t have enough power to remove another person’s soul. I think it’s a spirit mage again. A spirit mage doubling as a mad scientist with a grudge against the liches. I can’t think who else might have the talent.”
Dex skidded to a halt in mid-air. “No mage has that kind of power, either.”
“The spirit mages did.” Before they’d died out, anyway. Died out… or lived beyond death.
What makes you think I chose this?
The Death King’s words reverberated in my mind, sending a fresh wave of chills racing down my spine. Only a spirit mage could turn another person into a permanent lich. If he’d done it to the others, who’d been the one to bind his soul? Was there truth to the rumour that the liches as a whole had become the way they were due to some dark bargain with death itself? If so, then how had the Death King been turned against his will?
The vampire had said look to your own to find the killer, but maybe it’d been a warning to me as much as to the Death King. If I was turned into a lich, I’d be equally vulnerable to the spell myself. There’d be no turning back.
Perhaps it wasn’t the Death King the vampire had been trying to warn after all.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Dex zipped around the house for hours, revelling in the freedom of no longer being confined to a tree, but even when he quietened down, my mind refused to rest. Especially when I found myself wanting to astral project and find the Death King so we could continue our conversation from earlier.
Now was not the time for my curiosity about spirit magic to reawaken. I couldn’t afford to get distracted from my mission… but what if the truth about the deadly spell lay in my memories, like last time? Inevitably, I then found my mind wandering back to Dirk Alban. He hadn’t taught me how to detach a soul and place it in a vessel… at least, I thought not. But then I remembered how naturally it’d come to me when I’d been pressured to move the Death King’s soul to another amulet, as though I’d been working from experience as well as instinct. And when I’d saved Dex’s life. Miracle or not, carrying that power in one’s hands was the very definition of unnatural, but it wasn’t like I could turn back the clocks and erase the decisions that had led to that moment.
In the end, I fell into restless and uneasy dreams, and woke when my phone started ringing. I saw Brant’s blurry name on the screen as I accepted the call. “Hey.”
“Hey, Liv,” he said. “You sound even grumpier than you usually do in the morning.”
“Uh, I kinda have Dex with me,” I admitted. “He’s been in a hyper mood all night.”
“You found him? When?” A moment’s pause. “You went to see the vampires, didn’t you?”
From his tone, he was gearing up for a lecture and a half. “Look, I just woke up five seconds ago. Dex is here because he’s been hiding in a tree for the last few days, scared the monster who killed the revenants will come after him, so I need to play nice with the Order so they don’t find him hiding in my house. Can I meet you after I check in at the Order’s HQ?”
“I’d love to, but I have a job in the Parallel,” he said. “It can’t wait, unfortunately. See you tonight?”
“If you wanna come and join us at D&D night, sure.”
Unless the Order dumped some other tedious mission on me, I’d get the weekend off, so I just had to see what they wanted me to deal with today and then I’d be free for tonight’s marathon gaming session. Not even a mysterious killer or a displaced fire sprite with entirely too much energy would take that away from me.
I hung up, checking my messages. Mum had sent me another text asking if I was free. I replied truthfully that I’d be at the comic con this weekend, relieved not to have to lie to her again. Every time I thought I had a handle on balancing my two lives, another rogue spirit mage just had to come along and ruin my day.
When I went downstairs, it was to find Devon sitting in the living room, holding one of the cantrip coins I’d brought her between her fingertips and wearing a head torch as though she was about to go inside a dark tunnel.
“What’re you doing with that?”
She looked up, accidentally blinding me with the brightness of the head torch. “I’m trying to uncover the marks of the previous spell. This is the cantrip from the undead monster who attacked you yesterday. If I can find the marks, I might be able to figure out how the spell was put together.”
“But… there’s no traces of the spell left on the coin. I looked.” I averted my gaze until she’d switched off the torch, black splotches dotting my vision. “Is there a way you can uncover what the spell was, then?”
If anyone could, it was Devon. Blinking the glare from my eyes, I peered over her shoulder at the pale gold of the cantrip’s surface. The lines could as easily be from wear and tear as evidence of a spell, but she was more of an expert than I was, and with reusable cantrips, each would surely leave a mark behind.
“Oh yeah, I have something else for you.” She reached into her pocket for another cantrip. “Since you seem to be making a habit of running around behind the Order’s backs again, I thought you might have need of this.”
“Invisibility cantrip.” I took it from her. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“You’re running around doing extra jobs to keep us from going under. Don’t deny it,” she added, as I made a noise of protest. “Take the weekend off. And don’t let the Order’s nonsense get between you and D&D night. Got it?”
“I’ll try not to.” I slipped the new cantrip into my pouch. “All right, let’s see what ridiculous quest the Order has for me today.”
With luck, they wouldn’t have found out about my excursion with the Death King last night.
“We’re going to the Order?” Dex zoomed around my head while I went upstairs and grabbed my Parallel bag.
“Only if you agree not to draw attention.” I rolled my eyes at him, my heart lifting despite myself at the notion of having my partner back. “You’re free to do whatever you like in the Parallel, but don’t forget half the Order is looking for excuses to have me smacked with a disciplinary warning.”
Dex made a rude noise. “They can’t discipline me.”
“Do you really want to chance that?” I walked downstairs and shrugged into my coat, then put on my new boots. “Don’t forget an Order member was the last rogue spirit mage. They’re far from disconnected with this crap.”
Dex refused to ride the node and I didn’t want to tempt fate either, so I took the bus into town and tried to ignore him zipping past the windows, a bright s
pot above the traffic. A least it was a distraction from the constant out-of-tune singing from the old woman on the seat next to me. After I’d escaped public transport hell, I walked up to the Order’s headquarters and instructed Dex to stay put outside before entering. Despite my knowledge that the last spirit mage had come from within this very building, I didn’t believe someone inside the Order was directly responsible for creating the spells turning liches into rotting corpses. Even Mr Cobb had been acting through others out of necessity due to the Order stripping his own spirit magic. But the lack of overt spirit mages within the Order didn’t mean their less scrupulous members didn’t have contacts on the other side who knew about the latest scheme.
Once again, Mrs Carlisle occupied the desk in the retrieval unit.
“Olivia,” she said, upon seeing me enter. “I have a new mission for you.”
“Oh?” I said warily.
“We have word of an illegal cosmetic spell in the hands of a practitioner,” she said. “This is the address.”
She handed me a slip of paper. The Order seemed none the wiser about my excursion yesterday evening, so I risked removing one of the blank cantrips from my pocket. “By the way, what should I do with the used cantrips I was given yesterday? Is there some kind of recycling bin?”
“Put them in there.” She rattled a box at me.
I put the coin into the box. “Where do they end up?”
“The delivery unit takes care of them.” She handed me another pack of cantrips without another word.
Takes them back to the Parallel, you mean. Another question came to mind, but if I pushed too far, she might get suspicious. Besides, now I had Dex with me, I had another way to track their destination.
As I exited the building, two delivery unit staff walked in, carrying a box between them. Good timing. The staff were responsible for carrying deliveries through the nodes, between the Parallel and here, and while I’d never paid them close attention until now, I’d bet my lucky dice those boxes contained cantrips from the market.
Dex flitted over to my shoulder. “What’re you scheming?”
Touch of Death (Order of the Elements Book 2) Page 13