“I wouldn’t assume she wanted you to do anything at all,” he said. “She made one choice, the witches made another. It’s up to you, Jas.”
“I think it’s more up to the mage council,” I said. “You should probably leave before Lady Montgomery catches us gossiping and assigns me to the night shift. But we’ll figure something out, okay?”
“Sure,” Keir said. “Who was the witch Isabel met with, do you know? The one who identified the signature?”
“He’s called Asher,” I said. “Oh, and… well, I accidentally saved his life by healing him with Hemlock magic. Long story.”
“Damn,” he said. “You don’t do things by halves, do you?”
“Nope. That… that was Evelyn, actually.”
She kept on surprising me lately, and the conversation we’d just had reminded me how very little I knew about her, and the world she’d grown up in.
“Maybe you’re a good influence on her,” Keir said.
“Or bad. She’s getting way too bold.” Maybe I should have re-bound her to the forest after all. But running from my problems had only boxed me into a corner.
“I think it’s worth speaking to this witch again,” he said. “To make sure he hasn’t told anyone else what you did.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s the villain, but maybe I should warn him the mages are planning on interrogating every coven leader, too.”
“If he doesn’t already know. Word travels fast.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. “I won’t let them do the same to the vampires,” I said. “Even—if the worst comes to the worst, Lady Montgomery will protect anyone who comes here.”
“There are a lot of people who wouldn’t take the risk.”
I swallowed. I’d been afraid of that, too. “I know. If you want to leave—"
“I’m not going anywhere, Jas,” he said. “If it comes to it—we’ll deal with that later. We’ve survived worse.”
Yeah, but as long as our souls are bound, you have no choice but to stick with me if it kills you.
I met Keir outside the guild as soon as Lady Montgomery gave me the go-ahead to escape the archives. On the plus side, since I hadn’t actually banished the shifter ghost, I had no paperwork to file. The minus side was bloody obvious.
“Asher doesn’t belong to a coven,” I said to Keir as we walked. “His people used to shelter survivors of the Orion League. I don’t think he’s villain material.”
“Did he ask you any questions that suggested he might know about the Hemlocks, or anything else?”
“Nope. He seemed quite taken with Isabel, though,” I said. “I mean, he was probably shocked that I used my magic on him, but there’s no way he can possibly know where it came from. Even if he met Leila. She didn’t have any magic of her own.”
“Good point,” he said. “Tricky. Where’s his shop?”
I pointed at the alley… except it wasn’t there. A blank stretch of bricks faced us, as though the narrow alleyway had never existed.
I turned back to Keir, bewildered. “His house was there. Just yesterday.”
“I think,” Keir said, “he may have been forewarned.”
Or attacked. Had he sealed the alley off himself, and left the city? Or had the enemy got to him first?
11
I couldn’t sleep. Apparently, Evelyn couldn’t either. When I tapped into the spirit realm in the hope that my body would rest while my spirit wandered, it was to find her staring back at me.
“What?” I grumbled. “Ghosts don’t need to sleep, right?” Some top-ranked necromancers actually left their bodies resting while they wandered around as a ghost, wide awake. Not many people knew that trick, but it was a useful one.
Evelyn, however, was out of my body and onto the spirit line already. If she went off alone, it wasn’t like anyone could actually see her—except necromancers, who might get a bit confused about the resemblance between her and me—but after her restlessness today, who knew what shenanigans she’d get up?
“All right, let’s go for a wander.” I floated out of my body, through the ceiling, then right up through the roof of the guild. The veil of the spirit realm covered the world in shimmering fog which made Edinburgh’s Old Town look like a mystical otherworld. The castle was visible, too, wreathed in an eerie mist. Floating north on this spirit line led to the train station, and it’d take one quick shift to enter the Hemlocks’ forest. South, I knew, plunged through the countryside and wound up in London somewhere.
The other spirit line, though… I never did find out where those hellhounds had come from. But the only way to get there from here was to hop off the spirit line and over to the next one.
I took a step over the edge.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Ivy appeared, her blade strapped to her waist. “Trying to get yourself killed?”
I withdrew my foot. “Trying to find a liminal space.”
“And where is your body?”
I pointed downwards in the general direction of the guild. “Safe. I know what I’m doing.”
“Talking to ghosts,” she said, looking at Evelyn. “Ghosts who look exactly like you do. I thought the guild frowned upon making friends with the dead.”
“She’s not haunting me,” I said. Oh, crap. Well, Ivy knew most of my secrets already, and it wasn’t like the geas would hold now she’d actually seen Evelyn. “We’re bound. Spirit to spirit. The Hemlocks did it using a ritual.”
“The Hemlocks…” Ivy looked from me to her, then back again, as though to determine we definitely weren’t the same person. “Fuck me. Well, that explains a lot.”
“Unfortunately,” Evelyn said.
Ivy raised an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t know that was possible. She’s… alive?”
“In the bodily sense, nope,” I said. “Don’t look at me like that, Evelyn, you know it’s true. The Hemlocks needed an heir to survive and I have no magic, so they bound her to me so I could use hers.”
“Lucky for both of us,” said Evelyn.
Ivy’s brow pinched. “You know… that makes sense. I did wonder how they planned to survive when they’re stuck in that forest. They’re not immortal.”
“Nope,” I said. “Yeah. I know that kind of magic is illegal, but I didn’t volunteer. Evelyn did.”
“It is?” Ivy frowned.
“Wait, you don’t know? You’re on the council.”
“The Council of Twelve doesn’t lay out the rules for magic. That’s on the Mage Lords.”
“There’s a rule specifically saying binding two spirits together is forbidden. So’s blood magic. And magical rituals. Basically, the Hemlocks think they’re the exception.”
“Ah.” Ivy’s lips pursed. “I see. Normally, that law is enforced because of the risk to the participants’ lives, but you’re clearly still alive and kicking. When did it happen?”
“Evelyn nearly died in the invasion and the only way to pass her magic onto me was to bind us. Nobody else survived.”
“Ah,” said Ivy. “I’m on my way to give Ilsa a lesson, and you might as well come along, too. She has the same ability.”
“Travelling on the spirit lines? How can you do it? You’re not a necromancer.”
“Most necromancers can’t do it either,” she said.
Good point, but Ivy was something else entirely. I’d heard a rumour she was part faerie, but faeries’ only relationship with Death was to stay as far away from it as possible. As for her sword, since when was it possible to carry weapons into Death? Sure, I wore the same clothes that I did in the waking world, but they weren’t physically here. Her shimmering blue-edged sword looked sharp enough to chop ghostly limbs off.
We floated south of the guild, and found Ilsa hovering expectantly on the path, her forehead gleaming with the Gatekeeper’s mark. Her eyes widened. “Jas, you told her?”
“She saw me,” I said. “I guess she’s in on all your secrets, too?”
“Yep,” Ivy said from behind me. “Do
you have a power source, or does your magic come from within you?”
“It’s from… Evelyn,” I said. “We can both use it, though. As for travelling on the spirit line, it’s because we’re both shades. Meaning we both died and survived it.”
“Damn.” Ivy glanced at Ilsa. “You know all this?”
“Some of it,” Ilsa said. “I guessed the rest. The Soul Collector stole the Ether Converter from where the Hemlock witches hid it, right, Jas?”
“They had the weapon?” Ivy’s gaze sharpened. “That makes way more sense than the cover story. But it is gone, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “The Soul Collector is gone, too. Except he didn’t tear the worlds apart and fall into the void of his own accord. I did it.”
“Well, fuck.” Ivy shook her head. “You know, I figured you were hiding something, but I’d never have guessed… is that what your Hemlock magic can do, then? Tear a hole in the universe?”
“Apparently.” I resigned myself to running through the events of the last two months, finishing with the Hemlocks’ ongoing war with the Ancients.
“Isabel knows,” I added to Ivy. “I told her not to tell anyone, including the mages. You understand why, right?”
Her hand tapped the hilt of her sword in an apparent unconscious movement. “Yeah, I do, but Vance will probably guess.”
“And he’ll tell the rest of the council in the interests of safety.” I gave her a pleading look. “Then I’ll be locked up. You saw how quickly they kicked the shifters off the council when they must know perfectly well that they’re being manipulated.”
“Exactly,” Ilsa said. “We’re keeping it quiet at the guild, Ivy. Jas is looking for a way to separate her soul from Evelyn’s without doing any damage to either of them. Have you made any progress with that, Jas?”
“No time,” I said honestly. “It’s not in any of the necromancers’ books, including the ones you swiped from the boss’s office. Because most shades don’t survive. Unless the Hemlocks know, but I’d have better luck asking the bloody Ancients. I bet the Soul Collector knew. Pity he’d rip my head off for asking.”
“You should know,” said Ilsa. “Not all the Ancients are, or were, evil. They used to be regarded as gods by the Sidhe. Until they drove out or killed them all.”
“How do you know that?” I frowned. “I didn’t think the Gatekeepers… oh, right, you deal with Faerie. I guess the Sidhe probably remember, since they’re thousands of years old.”
So were the Ancients. They made the Hemlock witches look like children.
“They do,” said Ivy. “I didn’t know the Hemlocks went to war with the Ancients, though.”
“Nor me,” Ilsa said. “I guess some of the Ancients wound up on Earth and got into a fight with the supernaturals already living here.”
“Sounds about right.” The Hemlocks didn’t like to share, I knew that much. “Ivy—how did you even learn about the Ancients?”
Ivy raised her sword to show me the hilt. “This contains the power of an Ancient. It’s a talisman, but not a faerie one.”
My mouth fell open. “Seriously? Like—the Ether Converter?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “The Sidhe made it, not the Ancients, and the god whose power is in here didn’t give it up voluntarily. Reckon I did them a favour by taking it off their hands. Ilsa…”
“I inherited mine.” Ilsa reached into her pocket and pulled out a square leather book. “It doesn’t look like much, but it’s the source of the Gatekeeper’s power. The Gatekeepers worked with the Ancient who loaned us his power to conserve the peace between the realms for years. He wasn’t evil.”
“Still.” I hardly believed they spoke so casually. Talismans. Fragments of the Ancients’ magic. Like my Hemlock magic—powerful enough to bypass even Death itself. “So that’s how you can both wander around the spirit realm?”
“I think the Ancients must have travelled between realms all the time,” said Ilsa, tapping the mark on her forehead. “This is the god’s symbol.”
“It is?” I squinted at the swirling silver glyph, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It wasn’t like when I looked at a witch symbol and instinctively understood what kind of spell it indicated. “Do you two think another Ancient is involved in the attacks on the mages, then? It’d play into their hands if the council fell to pieces. They’d have an open shot at this realm.” Not a cheery thought.
“Maybe.” Ivy re-strapped her blade to her waist. “There was another Ancient I met, who… well, who the shifters used to worship as a god.”
I nearly fell out of the air. “Shifters? They worshipped—the Ancients?”
“Some of them did,” Ivy said. “Just one Ancient, though, who took the form of a dragon shifter. He’s dead, but he has a few descendants left.”
Ilsa stared at her. So this was news to her, too. “Wait, so the shifters are descended from the Ancients?”
“Maybe,” said Ivy. “I reckon the Ancients interbred with humans a few thousand years back and the shifters are the result. But not many people know that theory. Even the local shifters back home thought I was nuts when I tried to tell them.”
“Damn.” I looked at the glowing sword in her hands. That contains the power of a god. No wonder it had a physical presence, even in Death. The Soul Collector had seemed the same. “Do you think it might be linked to whatever’s happening now?”
“I can’t see a clear link.” Frustration furrowed her brow. “When the Ley Line broke open in the invasion, it caused a lot of shifters to get stuck in animal form, so I thought the spirit lines might be involved. That’s why I was at the cemetery the other night. But the attacks didn’t take place on a spirit line.”
No… but the shifters were in half-shifted form even as ghosts. “Ivy, you know that wristband you took from the mages? The stone inside it—it flashed in the vision when the shifter transformed. I was sure the stone was at the centre of the spell.”
“Huh?” Ivy frowned. “I thought you said it was a binding spell.”
“That’s what Isabel and I thought at first,” I said. “But it also reacted against my Hemlock magic when I tried to take it apart.”
Ivy turned on the spot, her hands clenching on her sword’s hilt. “Vance’s family is part shifter. From the same bloodline as the dragon shifter I met. I’ll have to tell him about this.”
“He’s descended from the—” Holy crap. “Seriously?” I’d thought he was mage through and through. That explained his strong reaction to the shifters being kicked off the council.
“He doesn’t go shouting it from the rooftops, but it’s hard to hide,” Ivy said. “He planned to speak to the shifters directly tomorrow. At least we know to look for those stones.”
Might Vance end up being affected by the person manipulating the shifters? It seemed unlikely that anyone would be able to get close enough to try anything on the Mage Lord. Vance had been avoiding assassins since he was a kid, from what I’d figured. Somehow I’d missed the part about him having shifter relatives, but he didn’t talk much about his family. A lot of the mages didn’t, but being related to the shifters was a hell of a secret to hide.
A link between the shifters and the Ancients surely couldn’t be a coincidence. And that stone? How many more were in the enemy’s hands?
12
“It’s dawn,” Evelyn told me. “Are you going to hang around here all day, too?”
“You don’t have to stay in the same place as me,” I said, hovering on the thin grey line. After I’d said goodbye to Ivy and Ilsa, I’d stayed in the spirit realm, watching the city from the sky. Not only did I get to watch a sunrise more stunning than any I’d witnessed in my body without having to drag myself out of bed for it, I’d spent the night swooping around the city like someone from one of Lloyd’s comic books. I wouldn’t lie, it was pretty amazing.
Less successful were my attempts to find liminal spaces. The Hemlocks hadn’t lied when they’d said that anyone could find one by a
ccident, but I’d floated around the spirit line over the cemetery for hours without finding so much as a single crack in the universe.
Evelyn sighed. “Are you planning to let your boss lock you in the archives all day again?”
“With any luck, she’ll decide I’ve been punished enough.” I turned on the spot. “I owe Keir a call, though.”
“I’ll keep my distance,” Evelyn said.
Now I knew how to get rid of her… make out with Keir. Rolling my eyes, I reached out for his familiar presence. A moment later, I found him hovering in the fog of the spirit realm.
“Jas,” he said. “What’s up?”
“If I’d known you were awake in here, I’d have come to find you earlier.”
“You’ve been in the spirit realm all night?” he asked. “Your body’s probably turned into an ice block by now.”
“I’ll survive,” I said. “I’m at a loose end. Is it a bad idea for me to go and talk to the shifters?”
“Depends which shifters. Why?”
“I know what to warn them to watch out for now,” I said. “The mages won’t listen, and I want to do something useful.”
“Hmm. I do know a shifter,” Keir said. “A friend… I’m not sure he’ll be awake this early.”
“Keir, don’t take this the wrong way, but some of your contacts turned out to be less than reliable. More hazardous.”
“Relax, he isn’t a vampire,” he said. “What exactly did you want to warn the shifters about?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. Want to meet at the café?”
By the time I’d woken up—having to employ three warmth spells to get sensation back into my frozen limbs—showered, dressed and hurried to the café, I’d filled Keir in on last night’s events.
“Clancy doesn’t know any more about the Ancients than I do,” Keir said. “But he does know they took my brother. He was the one who took me in for a while, actually.”
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