by D. N. Hoxa
“But—”
“One minute.” She pushed me away and strode forward, holding the man by the arm still. He let her drag him behind, completely stunned.
I rubbed my eyes until there were a million tiny stars in my vision.
“You shouldn’t have brought her here,” Damian said, holding his sword over his shoulder like it was made out of paper.
“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t have kidnapped a Guild necromancer.”
“What are we going to do now? Do we kill him?” Emanuel asked, and I was pretty sure he was joking.
“Not yet.”
I turned to Damian. “You’re not killing the necromancer.” Not because Mal knew him, whoever he was, but because he worked for the Guild.
“Let’s just give Ms. Arnon a moment, shall we?” Nikola said, and out of all of us, he seemed the most relaxed. He’d rested—I could see it in the color of his skin. He wasn’t as pale as he had been the night before, and his blond hair was actually combed back.
I looked at Malin and the necromancer talking. Kit was on the hood of Jamie’s car, listening to them. Malin didn’t look scared. On the contrary—she was smiling. Curiosity burned me.
“What are they saying?” I asked, despite myself. I didn’t want to spy on them, but I needed to know what to expect.
“It looks like they went to the same school growing up,” Damian said in a whisper. “After high school, Robert moved away, tried to call your friend but she never called back.” Oh, goddamn it. “Malin is telling him that she accidentally summoned a soul and that we’re trying to help her send it back. She’s asking for his help.”
Just then, Robert turned his head and looked at us. It felt like he knew that we were talking about them, that Damian, and probably Emanuel and Nikola, too, could hear them, though they were far away.
“And? What’s he saying?”
Damian stood perfectly still for a moment, but I didn’t need him to tell me what Robert Perry said. I could see him nod his head perfectly. He was going to help us.
So why did it feel like we were just getting ourselves into more trouble?
Half an hour later, everything was almost ready.
Emanuel and Nikola had lit up the two torches that had been there last night, and there was enough light to see, just barely. Samantha Oldrick’s tomb was on the ground in front of the stone wall. Malin had prepared the ritual together with Robert. She’d had everything in the bag she’d packed. All they needed to find now were wooden sticks—and there were plenty of trees around us.
We stayed behind and let them get everything ready. Malin looked…okay. She was smiling and she was perfectly relaxed, but that wasn’t all. The way Robert Perry looked at her, one would think he was in love. Curious that she’d never mentioned him before. Maybe she had, and I’d forgotten?
Probably not.
“Just out of curiosity, how did you think he was going to do the ritual without his herbs and spices?” I asked Emanuel while we watched.
Emanuel went back to the car, opened the door to the backseat and showed me a navy-colored backpack. “Got this from his house. Figured he’d have what he needed here, but he looks to be doing fine.”
I nodded. “What happened to the body of the wizard?” I asked Damian, nodding at the ground. In fact, the hole that the vampire Helen had made before taking off was no longer there. Somebody had filled it back up, and if you didn’t know there’d been a hole there before, you would never notice something was wrong.
“What happens to all the other dead bodies we leave behind,” Damian said. “The Sythe takes them.”
I’d never heard that name before. “And who is the Sythe?”
“A group of ghouls that run a clean-up business,” Damian said. Clean-up business? “They have people in almost every Shade, and for the right price, they clean up every kind of mess, providing they can keep the bodies.”
Bile rose up my throat, the acidic taste coating my tongue. Just the thought of eating dead bodies made me want to crawl out of my skin.
“We’re ready,” Malin said, looking at me. Thank God.
I walked over to her, still unsure of how to feel about any of this. I was trying hard not to freak out, but so far it was impossible.
“Mal, are you sure about this?” I whispered, though Robert Perry was sitting on the ground, inside the circle of the ritual, just two feet away from us. He could hear us just fine.
“I am. Robbie will be doing the ritual. I’ll just be here for support,” she said. “Stop worrying. It’s going to work just fine.”
That’s not at all what I was worrying about. It was the fact that Robbie here was an employee of the Guild—a very important one. So important that they hadn’t even Nulled him. The whole thing just didn’t sit well in my stomach.
“How long will we have?” I asked. Whether I liked it or not, this was happening. Damian was right—we had no other choice.
“It depends on the soul. Possibly about two minutes,” Mal said.
That was plenty of time. We wanted to force the soul to tell us what it had told Helen and her friends. If it didn’t tell us, we would be right back to square one—but at least there would be no reason for the Guild to come looking and find the summoned soul. They wouldn’t be able to tie it to Malin’s magic, and that would be good enough, at least for now.
“Be careful,” I said to Malin and returned to Damian, while she sat down with Robert inside the circle.
“How exactly does the Guild choose which darkling not to Null?” I asked Damian, just to say something. My nerves were getting the best of me, especially when Mal and Robert grabbed each other by their hands, closed their eyes, and Robert began to speak the spell for the ritual.
“They choose based on the darkling’s level and family,” Damian said. “During the test, the children of the darkling who already work for the Guild, or worked for them in the past, get priority. If they are strong enough, the Guild skips the Nulling.”
“How many of them are there?” I wondered. I’d never met someone like Robert before.
“There are plenty of darkling spread all over the world who work for the Guild indirectly—like I used to. But darkling who have regular jobs at the Guild are very few,” he said. “They have at least a couple in every major city from every species—except yours.”
I flinched. He meant Marauders. The reason why was obvious. I opened my mouth and the words almost slipped right out of me. I wanted to ask him what Alpha Prime meant so badly, but I clamped my mouth shut again. I’d already decided that I was going to figure it out myself.
“I’m guessing you managed to get through the training without too much trouble?” Damian asked after a second.
“Yeah. It was…it was okay.” I’d been lucky because we’d trained and I didn’t have to fight for my life. I could control the spells and the magic I let out easily when I wasn’t aiming to cause real damage.
“How do you like your new job so far?” he asked next.
“I’m not sure. I’ve never gotten to actually kill a maneater yet.” I threw him a pointed look. He was the reason why. He grinned, and I had to stifle a smile before turning back to Malin and Robert.
This was…nice. I forgot sometimes that I could actually have a somewhat normal conversation with Damian without wanting to kick him in the head or kiss the hell out of him. I wasn’t even sure why it wasn’t always like this between us.
Until he spoke again.
“Are you jealous that I’m a better killer than you, little thief?”
I rolled my eyes. “I can be you, Mister Vampire,” I said in a whisper so low I doubted he would have heard if he wasn’t a vampire. Emanuel and Nikola were far too close, and though Emanuel might know, I doubted Nikola did.
“I doubt that very much,” he said. “Unless you want to show me?”
I was tempted to laugh. “Maybe I will someday.”
“It’s a deal,” he said without missing a beat.
“Open the t
omb,” Malin said without ever opening her eyes, and Damian was right in front of me, looking down at me like he wanted to devour me right there, in front of everyone. Blood rushed to my cheeks.
“You should wear red more often,” he whispered, and the next second, he was inside the ritual circle, next to the tomb he’d dragged out of the stone wall earlier, pushing the lid open.
I looked down at my shirt—it wasn’t red. It was white, but it had a red rose printed on it. Releasing my breath, I forced myself to calm the fuck down.
It wasn’t all that hard to do—not when the soul of Samantha Oldrick slipped out of the tomb and floated up in the air, arms stretched to the sides. My breath caught in my throat. I still couldn’t make out any feature on her face—just the shape of her body. And it still freaked me the hell out, just like the night before. I walked closer to the ritual circle, my palms itching to grab my daggers, but they would be of no use to me against a soul.
A soul who was laughing just like it had last night.
“Samantha Oldrick,” Damian said, looking up at her, though she hadn’t floated as high as before. The ward Robert had set up didn’t let it. The closer I got, the more I felt the magic infusing the air. “You were summoned back to Earth for a reason, and we need you to tell us why.”
Not that I expected her to answer, but when she stopped laughing and began singing again, it still took me by surprise. Mal’s eyes were open, and she looked at the soul like it was the most beautiful thing in the world. It was, in a way—until you heard it. The words of the song made no sense to me whatsoever.
“Tell us why you were summoned,” Damian asked again, louder this time, but the soul just kept on singing, floating from one side of the ward to the other.
“I know that story,” Mal said in a whisper. “It’s the Epic of Gilgamesh in its original language. Isn’t it?”
She looked at me. I knew about the book, but I hadn’t read it, and I definitely didn’t understand the soul.
“Of course,” Damian said with a nod, as if he’d just realized it. I wanted to ask what the original language was, but the soul’s voice kept growing louder and louder.
Then, it screamed. Malin had closed her eyes and was holding on tightly to Robert’s hands. He had yet to open his eyes and see the soul. It screamed again, as if it were in agony, and I could almost feel the pulsating magic spreading over the surface of the ward. Whatever it was, the soul didn’t like it.
“Tell us why you were summoned,” Damian repeated, and the soul began to slam itself against the surface of the ward.
“Make it stop!” she shouted. “Make it stop now!”
“Tell us what we want to know,” Damian said and watched her slam her fists on the ward, screaming. “Tell us!”
The words of my spell were at the tip of my tongue. Every time the soul touched the ward, Malin flinched, as if she could feel it all the way to her bones, and so did Robert. Damian kept shouting at her to tell us what she knew, and she kept screaming at him to stop it.
“She’s getting through,” Mal said, eyes squeezed shut, her arms shaking.
I began to whisper the spell of the same ward I’d used last night. No way was that soul going anywhere.
But I only made it halfway through.
“The Treasure of Saraph!” the soul shouted so loudly my ears whistled. My hands moved to them instinctively to block out the screeching sounds she let out.
Then, it stopped abruptly.
Mal was breathing heavily, sweat glistening on her forehead, but her eyes were open. She looked up at the soul, but she wasn’t in awe anymore. She looked terrified.
“What is the Treasure of Saraph?” Damian asked the soul. It was suspended on air, no longer floating around. Now, it stood perfectly still right over her tomb. “What is the—” He never got to finish speaking. The soul moved lightning fast and slammed itself onto the ward so hard, I could almost hear the magic cracking.
Then, she floated to the other side, slowly, before she struck again.
“We can’t hold it!” Malin cried, and I was already chanting my own ward before she soul began to scream again. I wrapped my hands over my ears again tightly and spoke the words of the spell as fast as I could.
Malin and Robert’s hands were shaking, holding onto one another so tightly, their knuckles had turned completely white. They began to chant again, together, and they didn’t whisper. They shouted at the top of their voices while the soul screamed bloody murder.
But she was no longer able to float—though she tried. She was being sucked into the half open tomb again, just like the night before, but this time, the ward wasn’t shrinking. It was other magic that was pulling her down, and it seemed like the soul couldn’t slam herself against it.
My magic was ready, at the tips of my fingers, waiting for me to release it, but I held it back. I held it back and watched the ghost slowly slip into the tomb, her hands reaching toward the sky, her fingers grasping at thin air. She tried to hold on with everything she had, but it was useless.
When all I could see of her were the tips of her fingers, the screaming stopped abruptly, and the golden light disappeared.
Malin and Robert let go of each other’s hands and fell back on the ground, breathing heavily, as if they’d been in a race. I rushed to Malin and grabbed her face in my hands, looking at the tomb through the corner of my eye. The lid was still half open, but the soul wasn’t coming out.
“Breathe,” I told Malin. “Just breathe.”
“We couldn’t hold it,” she said, panting. “We had to send it back.”
“You did fine,” I promised her. “Just breathe.”
Chapter Thirteen
I looked at Malin, but I wasn’t sure when to start laughing.
“You’re kidding, right?”
She shrugged and looked behind her, to where Robert Perry, the Guild necromancer, was standing by Jamie’s car with his hands in his pockets, watching her.
Oh, and Malin said she wanted to go back with him.
Alone.
In Jamie’s car.
And that I needed to get a ride with Damian and his friends.
“I know him, Sin. We grew up together, okay? He’s not gonna say anything—he promised,” Malin said.
Just ten minutes ago, she’d been covered in sweat and breathing like she’d run a marathon, but now she claimed she was well enough to make decisions like that?
“You don’t know that, Mal.” She didn’t—even if she thought she knew the guy.
“I do. If he turns you in, it will be like turning me in, and he would never do that,” Mal said and came closer to whisper in my ear. “He knew about my mom all along. I told him when we were like in sixth grade, and he never said anything to anyone. Nobody ever found out.”
Malin’s mother hadn’t been Nulled because the Guild had messed up the procedure somehow, and they’d never double-checked. If he knew back then, while Ms. Arnon was still alive, and kept it a secret, maybe…
I shook my head. “This is a bad idea.”
“It’s not. We just want to catch up, that’s all?”
“And you trust him? Like a hundred percent?”
“Yes. A hundred percent.”
“Are you sure, Mal?”
Just as the words left my mouth, I cringed. Damn it, I sounded exactly like everyone else did when they saw me with Damian.
Malin smiled and kissed my cheek. “We did it. We took the soul back. The Guild won’t ever find out, okay? I just want to have a drink with him. Call you later?” she said and started walking backwards to the car—and Robert Perry.
“Mal, come on!” I shouted, but she only waved at me and went to Robert. They got in the car—Malin in the passenger seat because she’d never learned how to drive. Kit, who’d been inside, probably sleeping in the back, came running back toward me, squeaking his complaints.
Mal didn’t stop. Robert Perry drove her—and Jamie’s car—away from me while I watched, still as shocked.
> “Don’t worry, little thief. He’s not going to say anything.”
Damian’s voice came from right behind me, and it scared the shit out of me. It scared Kit, too, who almost fell from my shoulder. His little claws stabbed me on my collarbone while he tried to keep from falling. It was an accident, but it still hurt like hell, and it made me very angry. Angry was better than shocked.
“You don’t know that! She doesn’t know that, either.” He was a Guild employee. That had to mean something to him.
“He likes your friend, very much. I could smell it on him. Unless she pissed him off, I think we’ll be fine.”
I sighed and rubbed my face. Yes, I knew Robert liked Malin. It was easy to see without having to smell his bodily fluids. And Malin liked Robert, too. Robbie, she called him, like they knew each other all their lives. Which apparently was the truth.
I needed to let go of this before it drove me nuts. The worst part was, I couldn’t even call Jamie to complain about it because she’d probably root for Malin.
“What happens now?” I asked Damian to distract myself. A car turned on behind us—Emanuel and Nikola were already in their black BMW, and they were leaving, too.
“We need more information,” Damian said. “The woman who broke out of Judicum was apparently caught trying to bury something.”
I raised my brows. “Like a body? Or maybe dig out a grave?” She’d done it before. It hadn’t exactly been digging, but she had summoned a soul. I looked back to the trees, thankful that we’d left it all behind. This time, there had been no bodies. Damian had just put the tomb of Samantha Oldrick back in place, we’d cleaned up the mess of the ritual, turned off the torches, and left. So far, so good.
“I don’t know. The information was erased from the Guild’s data completely,” Damian said, and I could tell that it bothered him. “Either way, we need to know what the Treasure of Saraph is.”
“Do you know someone who might have a clue?” None of us had heard the name before.
“Possibly, but I don’t trust them not to spread the information. That woman is trying to do whatever she was put in jail for again, and if the Guild erased the information completely, it’s safe to assume that it’s something very dangerous.”