by K. F. Breene
Shivers raced across my skin. Those people would try and latch on to me with desperate abandon, I could already tell. They’d yell at me, anxious to be heard. They’d clutch at my arms, wanting to be felt. They’d cry, trying to find peace.
That house was filled with torment.
Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t signed that contract. That I hadn’t agreed to take this job.
“Hey.” Bria wrapped on the window with her knuckles, her skull ring with the two rubies for eyes clattering against the glass. “We’re good. There aren’t any surprises. We’ve got a boring afternoon ahead of us. Let’s go.”
She had no idea what she was in for. Nothing but surprises awaited us in that house.
“Hello. Bria?” I heard through the glass as I pulled on the door handle.
A woman in her fifties, wearing a burgundy pants suit with the jacket flaring away from the white blouse beneath it, stalked forward with a smile. The combination of her tight, shoulder-length curls and her large red cheeks made her look like a doll. Her smile showed a chipped front tooth.
“I’m Clare Lawson. I’ll be working with you today.” The woman reached Bria and stuck out her hand.
Bria shook it without ceremony. “Hey, Clare. Did you get briefed?”
“Yes, yes.” Clare glanced at me. “And this is Alexis?”
“Exactly. Alexis has a unique way of working with spirits, so she’ll do her thing while you do yours, and I’ll see what’s what.”
“Well, great.” Clare puffed out a breath with her smile, a little winded from striding over.
Dreading this with everything I had, I crawled out of the car, taking my phone but leaving my bag behind.
“Oh, there’ll be a clean place to set down personal affects,” Clare said, noticing.
I shut the door firmly. “It’s okay. I don’t need anyone’s grubby paws on it.” I pointed at the surly face staring at me through the window.
“Oh...” Clare’s smile melted away in confusion as she turned to see what I was pointing at. Her confusion intensified.
“Let’s do this.” Bria stalked forward, her camo backpack slung across her shoulder.
“Yes, of course.” With a last worried look at me, Clare followed Bria.
This in no way looked like a magical neighborhood. The desolate street boasted not a single car besides the Beemer, the sidewalks were cracked and the curbs were crumbling, and the abandoned houses sagged helplessly. On many of them, the siding and boards swung loose, blackened with dirt and covered in chipped paint. Weeds choked front yards and bare tree branches twisted into the blue sky.
We were in a ghost town.
Without consciously intending to, I started down the disheveled sidewalk, moving away from the house we’d come to see. A strange buzzing permeated my senses. It seemed to emanate from the houses, vibrating along the rotted wood siding, draping over the doors and windows.
Three houses down from the first house, I held my hand up to one of the doorways. The buzzing beckoned me, asking that I enter.
No. Not me. The squishy part in my center. It was tugging at my spirit. My soul.
“Is this the spirit trapper?” I asked quietly, thinking about the magical electricity I’d encountered in the government building. It hadn’t beckoned to me, but when I’d focused on it, it had buzzed.
A strange scratch between my shoulder blades invaded my thoughts, the feeling of being watched Bria had mentioned. I usually equated that feeling to dangerous things. But Kieran had vowed to protect me.
“Jack, is that you?” I called, stalling. If it wasn’t, I’d be running.
“Yes,” a deep male voice whispered. “I’ve got your back.”
“Do you know if there is anyone in these houses?”
A soft rustling preceded Jack popping up like a jack in the box right next to the porch.
I jerked back, surprised. My foot hit a soft spot in the wood. A loud crack barely prepared me for my foot breaking through the porch.
“Shi—” I windmilled my arms, trying to shift my weight.
“I got ya.” Jack was beside me a moment later—his huge arms wrapped around my middle, his legs braced wide.
I dangled for a moment, catching my breath, before tapping his Popeye forearm. “Thanks. I’m good.”
“Sure, yeah.” Jack lifted me while swiveling. My feet bumped down in front of the door. “Watch where you’re stepping. If anything happens to you, the boss’ll kill me.”
“What’s going on?” Bria called from near the first house, heading my way. “Are we going on a walk-about?”
“He paired you with the crazy Necromancer,” Jack said, stepping to the side. “I heard that. Tough luck.”
“Tough luck, yeah.” I couldn’t help but get sidetracked. “Is she really…with Zorn?”
“Yeah. Don’t try to make sense of it, there is none. And don’t engage if it’s ever brought up. That shit is crazy. Best not to look it in the eyes.”
My chuckle at his flabbergasted tone dried up quickly, the strange buzz recaptured my focus. I gestured with my palm to the gaping doorway. “Is there anyone in these houses?”
“Squatters, maybe,” Jack said, staring in. “Want me to check it out?”
“Yes, please.”
He extracted a long knife from a holster in his leg before drifting into the house’s murky low-lit interior.
“Wait, did you feel anything when you walked in?” I asked.
“Nah,” Jack said. “Felt like any old doorway.”
“What have we got brewing up here?” Bria stopped on the sidewalk in front of the house, her hands loose at her sides. If she was annoyed that I’d taken a detour, she didn’t show it.
Clare, on the other hand, had thunderclouds rolling across her face. She stomped up the sidewalk toward us, her bag tinkling against her side.
“Okay. Go check it out.” I waved Jack off.
“I don’t sense any souls,” Bria said, stepping onto the brittle front yard. “What’s got your attention?”
“Isn’t it odd that all these houses are deserted?” I asked her, closing my eyes to concentrate on that hum. After a moment, I felt something else, throbbing beneath the buzzing spirit welcome mat. Almost like a warning. It told me I did not belong, that the living had no business in a place of death. A place of rot.
I furrowed my brow. I’d never felt anything quite like it. But then again, had I ever concentrated this hard on a place?
“Not really,” Bria answered. “This area housed a weird magical cult a while back. A self-proclaimed high priest sacrificed humans for power, and his disciples put their hands out for the scraps. It went under the radar for a while until they were caught kidnapping an influential Chester. That’s when Valens finally put a stop to it. He was getting heat from the Chester government.”
“How’d he put a stop to it? Let me guess, he killed them all?”
“Obviously, yeah.” Bria made a funny face. “If you can kill Chesters and get away with it, fine. But when you get caught, he makes an example out of you.” She narrowed her eyes at me before lowering her voice. I wondered if she was trying to keep Clare from hearing. “You know he’s a ruthless kind of crazy, right? That he’s unhinged and kills at the drop of a hat? I’d hate for this to be a surprise, being that you might be stepping on his toes.”
A reminder I didn’t need.
Jack drifted back into view, a graceful sort of lethal. Shadows slid across his large frame. All the training he’d done that morning with the kids, and still he looked ready for battle. The man was in great shape.
“Clear,” he said, hovering near the inside of the door. He correctly assumed I was coming in.
“And no one else wants these fixer-uppers?” I asked, affecting a light tone as I crossed the threshold. An electric zing sizzled through me, tugging at my squishy center. The cage of my body held my spirit—my soul—in place, not allowing the force field, or whatever it was, to pull it away.
“Weird.” I pu
t my hand to my sternum, my mind churning.
“What?” Bria stepped up onto the porch. She eyed the doorway. “What am I missing? And what magic are you using, or do you know?”
I made a circle in the air with my finger. “If you come through, you don’t leave.”
“Like hell you don’t,” Jack murmured.
“No, I mean—” I screwed up my face and shook my head. I wasn’t used to talking about this stuff. Up until recently, I’d had little to do with magical folk. As far as my power went, things just randomly happened and I largely ignored them. I’d never had to piece together a bigger picture before. “Spirits are invited in, and once they’ve crossed the threshold, they can’t leave. It’s a trap, like at the government building, but this trap actually invites them in.”
Bria stepped up to the doorway and put out her hands, but her expression didn’t change. She stepped through, her gaze finding me, and then stepped back out. She shook her head. Just like Jack, she didn’t feel what I was talking about.
The crisp sound of a bell interrupted my thoughts. The medium was hard at work creating racket for no reason.
I blew out an annoyed breath and hurried farther into the house. The smell of mildew and stuffy air permeated my senses despite the still-open door and one cracked window. No signs of life disrupted the dust layering the ground or the furniture. Upstairs, the two small bedrooms lay bare, the hardwood floors scuffed and closet doors lopsided. The house was empty of people and souls.
“Why would he try to lure spirits in and then trap them?” I scratched my temple and made my way out of the house, scooting past the medium who’d moved into the living room. “Why would he expend the energy? It’s not like the spell’s targeted—this would work on any spirit.”
“He, who?” Bria asked, before stopping at the front door and turning back. “No, no, Clare, I’ll shadow her to the other houses. You see if there are any spirits lingering in this one. She seems to think there are.”
“No, I don’t—”
Bria elbowed me before I could finish. Then she pushed me along toward the next house with Jack following silently, blessedly leaving Clare behind.
“First order of business, get faster on the uptake,” Bria said. “Now, what the hell are you talking about? I feel like a mime at a public speaking event.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, because she was exactly right. I usually wasn’t so slow, but this situation was throwing me for a loop.
I took a deep breath.
“I’m talking about the guy—or lady—who’s trapping spirits here. Give me a second, though. I need to check something.” I quickly moved through two more houses. Both were set up in the same way as the first, and both came up empty. “He’s not even really trapping them. He didn’t put up a wall blocking off the Line.”
“Stop. Stop, stop, stop.” Bria yanked the strap of her backpack in frustration, moving it higher on her shoulder. “Start at the beginning. I still have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
I looked down the street at all the empty houses, each abuzz with magical activity. Each empty of spirits.
I smoothed back my hair. “The spirits in the magical government building have been barred from leaving.”
Bria nodded with a furrowed brow. “That I did hear, yes.”
“Right. Well, the same thing is happening here. In each of these houses.”
Bria nodded again, her gaze darting to the empty dwellings around us.
“In addition,” I went on, “these houses have a strange sort of lure. Each one, independently, is beckoning to spirits. There wasn’t anything like that in the government building. It didn’t want new spirits, it just wanted to keep the spirits already there…in place.”
She nodded again, on board the information train.
“But here, unlike the government building, there is no wall between the world of the living”—I pointed at the ground, as if that would help—“and the Line…”
She held up a hand. “That’s the part I’m missing. What is this wall you’re talking about?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared out at nothing, thinking back. “It’s a magical concoction of some sort. It looked like a sheet of various colors, draped in the air in front of the Line to block it off. No going around, no—”
She held up another hand. “Wait. You’re telling me that you can actually see the Line? The place where spirits cross over into the afterlife—you can see it?” She put two fingers in front of her eyes. “With your eyes?”
“Yeah.” I frowned at her in confusion. “I can see the Line, the crossing point, but not beyond it.”
“Yes. The crossing point. The freaking Line.” She leaned back, her eyes widening. “Holy shit, Alexis. You’re a fucking fountain of power. No wonder Kieran is basically pissing himself in glee.”
“Other Necromancers can’t see it?”
She blinked comically at me. “Do you smoke a lot of ganga, or what? That info is pretty basic.” Sensing that I didn’t, and it wasn’t, at least not for me, she ran a hand across her face. “Necromancers, especially strong ones”—she tapped her chest—“can feel the Line, and the plane around it. It’s like bat sonar. We can create an image in our mind’s eye from feeling it, but no, we can’t actually see it. I wouldn’t be able to draw it if my life depended on it.”
That took me aback a little. I’d always thought my magic was less than interesting. I’d certainly never thought, in my wildest dreams, that I could do something above and beyond what highly paid magical workers could do. Then again, I’d never thought I could rip souls from people’s bodies, either.
It was crazy that my mother had never reacted to any of my magic growing up. If she’d known how rare it was, or how surprising some of my skills were, she’d never given me any sign. No wonder the neighbors wouldn’t let her play poker in their weekly games. She’d probably been banned for always cleaning them out.
I shrugged it off and struggled to get back on track. “Right, well, at the government building, the magical wall keeps any spirits inside from crossing over. It effectively keeps them in a magical box. They couldn’t leave the building, not even to the beyond.”
“And here…they can’t leave the building, but they can crossover.”
“Correct.” I started walking again. “Here, he’s bringing them in, but allowing them to cross over. He’s not keeping them.”
“What’s the point?”
“And now we’ve come full circle. That was my question. Why expend the energy?”
She rubbed her nose, thinking. “Maybe this is someone’s way of playing god. We can’t all be Demigods, but some want the power of one. Maybe this is his or her way of feeling powerful.”
“Or maybe Valens doesn’t want any loose spirits messing with what he has going in that house at the end of the street.” I forced myself to walk back to the house in question, with its waiting spirits.
“There were no entities,” Clare said, catching up to us, still holding a bell.
“Great work, Clare,” Bria said, her tone so seemingly genuine that I doubted Clare knew it was sarcasm.
“Do you think this was done by the same person who closed off the government building?” asked Jack, who’d been with me when I first felt the weird wall closing off the Line.
I stalled in front of the spirit-stuffed house and scratched my head, staring at the mess of faces in the window, all vying for space to look out. “I honestly don’t know. But if it isn’t the same person, they are obviously talking to each other. The principles of what they are doing is the same. And equally as fucked up.”
“Oh good, you swear.” Bria nodded in relief. “The suit threw me, I have to admit. I was worried you’d be a Mary Sue.” She turned and looked down the street. “I can do magic summoning a spirit, and I can keep a spirit in a body, but I cannot cover a house with magic. I can’t keep a spell stationary for an extended period of time. And I wouldn’t have the first clue about blocking off the
Line.”
We all stared at the house for a silent beat until Clare finally said, “Shall we finally go in?”
This was why people hated Mediums.
7
Alexis
“Now.” Clare pushed in close, right at my back. She had a large and small bell squished in her meaty hands. “If you’ll just head on in and go to the right…”
Bria opened the door, walking into the depths. I stepped forward to follow, but as soon as she got out of the way, bodies dressed in ragged clothes crowded into the doorway. The side of a man’s head was singed black, a woman’s ear was half torn, and another man was missing a hand, the stump also singed black. Hands clawed desperately at a waiting Bria, standing in their midst.
“What?” she asked, confusion crossing her expression.
“I’ll just squeeze in past you.” Clare bumped me to the side as she passed, allowing me to backpedal.
“What’s the problem?” Bria asked, leaning against the doorframe.
I sucked air into my lungs while shaking my head. Hollowed eyes and twisted expressions stared out at me from beside her. Behind her, a man babbled about nothing.
“Those people look deranged.” I pointed beyond her. “They are busted up and freaking out. One woman is screaming and beating her hand against her head. Their clothes and whatnot tell me they’re from different walks of life, but they have similar issues, which means something in this house is probably messing them up.”
“Yes, but…” She put out her hands. “It isn’t messing me up. So we’re good.”
I shook my head and swallowed hard, eyeing the surly-faced man staring at me through the window. Streaks of black ate away at the skin on his right temple. A look of vicious ruthlessness barely hid the desperation in his eyes.
Jack leaned against the porch railing and crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze rooted to mine. Without knowing how, I knew he was asking me if I wanted to go. If I gave him a sign, he’d leave with me, right now, without question.