Chapter 35

Everyonceina while, I delude myself into thinking that I"m a smart woman. Then life puts me back in my place. I was still fuming while I went around adjusting things in the spell circle that now covered most of the tile in the back courtyard. Too bad I believed in cleaning up all traces of spellwork after each use. It was chancy, but I was tired of all of this…I probably could have risked reusing the basic outline from the boogeyman to free the last creature from the bestiary.

Creature. Hah. Witch. The last prisoner in that cursed book—besides Elijah, whose spirit was tied to the damned thing in a different way—was a witch. I thought I was well past being surprised by my family"s evil. But this was just twisted.

Part of what made magic users like the Lovells able to cause such pain and suffering in others was that they didn"t have any respect for any race other than witches. If you weren"t a witch, then you weren"t really a person. You were an animal. An insect. Easily crushed and undeserving of even a single drop of remorse. Some of the really old families had no guilt or shame for behaving the way the Lovells did, because in their eyes they"d done nothing wrong.

But trapping and using another witch was a step beyond. It proved that no one was safe when it came to the Lovell quest for power. The hints about this particular witch"s powers were mutterings about darkness, and shadows, and veil work, alongside some other rather mundane things that hinted at an earth witch. With that theme of darkness in there, I wouldn"t be the least bit surprised if I was about to come face to face with some long-lost ancestor who had pissed the family off and ended up bound in the book.

I stood and shook out my hands, calling for my power. The others had gathered behind me, as usual. After how things had gone with the boogeyman, Bis flat out refused to stay inside, and he perched on my shoulder, gripping my shirt and a chunk of my hair with his clever little hands as he gave a running commentary on my spell prep. All he needed was a piece of chalk and a pair of glasses and he could start his teaching career at the local magic school.

It would be cute, if it wasn"t annoying as hell. "Bis," I said with a sigh. "Please do me a favor and shut up."

He huffed and gave my hair a little yank, but at least he did stop chittering in my ear.

"He was just telling you the little ways your sketching has improved since you watched Aahil draw that last one," Niamh said as she came to stand beside me. "You learn fast, Andy. If you found a teacher who understood your magic, you"d be an expert in no time. Even the Alliance would hesitate to mess with you then."

I forced my shoulders down from around my ears. "Thanks, Bis," I gritted out from between clenched teeth.

None of them would shut up about the idea that I should just trot off and find a magic tutor. As if it was just that easy. As if I hadn"t tried and failed a billion times when I was younger. They just didn"t get it. Yes, I was constantly tamping down my magic. Yes, I was a damned Lovell, and I had all the power of my bloodline—and more, I suspected. But all that power did was scare people away or attract crazies. No one with common sense and a conscience would agree to teach me once they realized how strong I was, or how wild the untrained Lovell magic inside me really was. And I wasn"t about to be twisted and used by some power-hungry dark witch. First, they"d show me all the dark and wonderful things I could do with my nasty magic. Then they"d convince me that each little slip further into the dark was for the greater good or that the people involved deserved what was coming to them. Then I"d end up the most powerful dark witch of the age.

I"d seen that play out already. It was the standard recipe for dead Lovells. That way lay beheadings. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. No, thank you.

Once I freed this last person from the family grimoire of horrors, I could work on saving Elijah and destroying the book. Then I could go home—back to my real home in the non-magical Earth realm—and forget all about Lovells, and curses, and the dormant magic inside me. Back there, the worst thing I had to worry about was paying my bills and keeping my diabetes under control. Piece of cake. I wouldn"t have monsters roaming the halls and the Supernatural Alliance showing up at my door scrutinizing everything I did. I wouldn"t have to worry about the judging glares from everyone I passed on the street. I could go to the damned grocery store without some black witch propositioning me with a new way to harvest souls or whatever nasty thing they dreamed up next.

I"d be free of all of this.

I glanced at Niamh, met her leaf green fae eyes, and ground my teeth together. Sure, there were things I"d miss. But I"d deal. Alone was kind of my thing, before this bestiary crap came along and messed everything up.

I looked away, scanning my circle one last time.

"Your lines are grotesque," Aahil commented from behind my left shoulder. "But the basic shapes are there. They"ll probably hold. Maybe."

I rolled my eyes. "Gee, thanks sweetheart. Just what I needed to hear, darling."

He scoffed, and I felt the hint of a claw through my t-shirt as he dragged a fingertip down the center of my back. "Never call me that again. It"s disgusting."

I huffed. "So sorry, Master. Aahil. Divine god of fire and sand."

He chuckled, low and smooth. "Mmm…better."

"Great ruler of assholes and idiots everywhere," I continued. "Snarky pain in my ass who never knows when to shut up and is deathly afraid of big, bad, scary feewings…."

My shoes caught fire and I snorted with laughter as I spoke the words to activate the anti-jinn fire charm I always carried with me these days. The fire went out and Aahil teleported his slinky ass over to the others, his perfect nose in the air as he pointedly ignored me.

I smirked at our stupid byplay, but the half smile slid off my lips as quickly as it had appeared. I was about to free a powerful witch who had been wronged by their own kind. This was going to be ugly. I didn"t know if any amount of explaining or apologies would save my ass. And I had no clue how the witch would react to the gathering of supernatural weirdos around me.

Only one way to find out, I supposed.

I nudged the bestiary with my foot, ensuring it was perfectly centered in the smaller spell circle to my right. Then I drew power from the earth beneath my feet and got to work unraveling bindings and booby traps.

My head pounded, my limbs shook with exhaustion, and my skin burned with dozens of tiny cuts from one of Granny"s nastier anti-tampering booby traps by the time I felt the bond break. I sagged in relief, wiping sweat out of my eyes. A strong arm wrapped around my back, and I leaned against Zhong"s side without protest. Goddess, breaking these bindings seemed to get harder each time I attempted it.

My glucose monitor beeped and I swore, pulling away from Zhong to dig some glucose tablets out of my pocket and toss them into my mouth. I knew the others were still mitigating some of the magical cost, taking it as their own to spare me. But apparently this time I"d used enough magic that the cost came out of my body as well. At least this time the blood sugar wasn"t so low that I passed out. That had nearly gotten me an arrow to the face when I released Niamh.

I chewed the chalky, orange-flavored tablets and reminisced over my previous near-death experiences as I watched the center of my spell circle. A figure had materialized there, crouching on the pavers in a fading haze of dark magic. His voice was cold and even as he pushed himself up to standing. "Hello, Lovell," he intoned. "Come to make good on our bargain? Or did you think to try and use me once more?"

I blinked at him, my brain scrambling to make sense of what I was seeing. Witch. He was definitely a witch, tall and a bit skinny, with unnaturally red hair the color of dark blood. His skin was too pale though, with that almost bluish undertone that dead people got sometimes. And his long red lashes framed eyes that had no distinction between iris and pupil, just fathomless black. His clothes were ragged—fitted workman"s pants and a button-down shirt that might have once been black or white but were now a dark, dirty gray-brown, like he"d been rolling around in the dirt.

He lifted an elegant hand and flicked his fingers at me, his thin, bluish lips twisting into a nasty smirk. "It seems your bindings have finally failed, bitch. Don"t worry. I"ll save your family the trouble of punishing you for breaking their toys."

The ground rumbled beneath my feet, not a real, physical sensation, but an echo. As if the earth was telling me there had been an earthquake somewhere nearby. My new witch friend"s smile deepened, and his thin body swayed as I felt a dark, awful power move through him.

I took a deep breath, pausing when a massive rumbling crash echoed through the air. I thought it came from somewhere behind the mansion, where there was nothing but unkempt forest and…."

"Andy," Hasumi said softly from my left side. "I feel—"

Aahil interrupted, popping into existence on my right. "You should probably take a look at your back yard, pet. I think you need an exterminator."

The witch started laughing, low and eerie. "Poetic justice," he laughed to himself, looking more than a little unhinged. "Lovells wiped from existence by Lovells. I"ll make you mine too, baby witch, once they"ve had their fun."

Then his eye snapped to the other creatures who hovered protectively around me. "And you"ve brought new treasures to add to my collection, too." His expression lost some of its cuckoo-clock madness and hardened into more of a focused cold rage. "Thoughtful of you."

"Shit." I flung up a hasty shield as he sent a ball of neon green magic at me. The spell hit my shield and almost got through, but Niamh and Aahil were adding power to my last-minute protection. The green magic hit my own with the sensation of decay—maggots and rot, putrid and poisonous. I gagged at the sensations that washed through me, even behind my shield.

But my eyes were drawn to the wall behind the witch. Movement caught my eye, and I stared in horror as a pair of skeletal fingers were followed by a head covered in desiccated skin and wispy hair, the face of the dead Lovell blank as it scrambled over the stone wall that separated this courtyard from the wilds behind the mansion. It was accompanied by others, the corpses flinging themselves clumsily over the barrier.

The red-headed witch thrust a hand backward, toward the wall, blasting the stone barrier apart, allowing his dead minions to pour in through the opening with ease. He lobbed another spell at us, trying to get in around the edges at Zhong and Hasumi. Trying to kill them and add them to his army.

Fuck me sideways.

Hasumi fell to their knees, their graceful hands over their ears as they shook their head back and forth, murmuring, "No, no, no." And I didn"t want to think about what kind of emotions they were feeling from the animated corpses. Or the fucking terror I had just unleashed on the world.

Witch. Ha. Why would my ancestors bother to keep a boring old run of the mill earth witch in the bestiary? Stupid, Andy, so stupid. What combined the powers of a witch who was a strong psychopomp with elements of darkness, shadow, and death? Glad you asked. It was witching 101, even for witches like me who lacked a formal education. I couldn"t believe I had overlooked this.

There were things that could possess even a witch. Dark things. Things that fed on death and suffering and had powers that reached beyond the veil. And that was how necromancers were made.

I pushed out a pulse of my own magic, shoving back the corpse that was currently reaching toward me, pushing its undead arms through the magic that only defended against living threats or things with auras. The corpse—which was wearing the remains of a floral dress that was suspiciously similar to my grandmother"s favorite solstice dress—stumbled backward with a weak cry, then lurched into motion again.

"Is there…Andy? Is there a fucking crypt on the property?" Niamh said as she slashed at a corpse with the dagger she had pulled from her boot.

I groaned internally. I knew I was going to regret not moving those fucking bodies. "Maybe."

Elijah poofed in and out of existence as he had his own version of Hasumi"s little meltdown. "The ghosts…Andy, what have you done? They"re all so…angry."

Have you ever had one of those moments where you suddenly regret every single life choice you"ve ever made? Well, that"s what this was. But I didn"t even have time to really slow down and appreciate how badly I had fucked up.

Aahil started setting animated corpses on fire. They somehow managed to scream with this unholy voice that echoed in every dimension like demons as they burned.

"Hey!" I shouted, my voice echoing over the sound of crumbling stone, corpse screams, Hasumi"s sobbing, and the crunch of Zhong and Niamh destroying old bones. "Yeah! You, jackass. Just stop and listen for five fucking seconds!" I waved my arms at the necromancer to get his undivided attention. He seemed to be a bit distracted by whatever unholy connection he had to the dead things around us, his thin, shadowed face relaxed into a blissful expression that looked somewhere between euphoric and orgasmic. Ugh. Necromancers.

Those black eyes slowly focused on me again and I fought the urge to cringe. "I freed you," I yelled, planting my hands on my hips and lifting my chin, trying to keep looking and sounding pissed off, when what I really felt was about ready to pee in my pants. This was like, the last straw. The cherry on the what-the-fuck sundae. I was done. So done. "Stop attacking us. You"re free. I"m not doing anything to you, so fuck off! And take the dead people with you."

He blinked. His long red hair stopped doing its weird floating thing. And his pupils shrank just enough to show a thin ring of violet iris. He held his hand up, and every single corpse, even the ones who were on fire, froze in place. "Say that again, Lovell," he intoned, his cold voice carrying across the courtyard even though he never raised his volume.

I cleared my throat and dropped my weak shield, taking half a step toward him, away from the suffocating ring of protection offered by the others. "I"m not the one who imprisoned you, as you clearly noticed. The rest of my family is dead. I"m releasing everyone who was bound to the bestiary so I can destroy the damned thing." I gestured behind me. "You"re the last one," I told him evenly. "Ask them. They were bound too."

He narrowed his eyes, his sharp features looking even sharper. "The bindings didn"t fail," he said slowly, cautiously. "You…broke them. On purpose."

I nodded and crossed my arms over my chest. "Yep." A couple of the flaming corpses finished burning, toppled over, and went out, leaving behind a pile of ash. Jinn fire was nothing to scoff at. "So…could you maybe stop throwing dead people at us now?"

He stared at me for a long time. Then he crossed his arms over his own chest, aping my posture. "You freed me."

I sighed. "Hearing not so good? Yes, you"re free!" I waved a hand at the horizon. "Feel free to ride off into the sunset or whatever. Just…maybe pick up after yourself before you go." I glanced around and let out a muttered, "Jesus tap dancing Christ," at the sight of the ruined wall and the half-decomposed body parts strew around. Yep. Probably going to have nightmares after this.

He closed his eyes in a long blink, then rubbed at his forehead, his motions sharp and agitated. "You freed me."

I shook my head. Was he stupid?

"You knew," he accused, lifting his head once again to glare daggers at me. "You knew about the bargain, so you decided to trap me in a different way, since previous Lovells failed to harness my powers through force."

I blinked at him. "I…what now? Aahil can you please put those out?" I waved at the corpses that were still burning without taking my eyes off the necromancer.

The jinn muttered something about me being boring. But the fires went out.

The necromancer paced closer. All of his corpse puppets collapsed to the ground like marionettes with their strings cut. My crew of misfit creatures tensed around me, ready to murder his ass. Mostly. Hasumi was still kneeling on the ground with their head in their hands, their curtain of silvery hair hiding their face. And Elijah kept fuzzing in and out like bad TV reception. I cleared my throat and forced myself to focus on the redheaded terror in front of me, rather than the massive horde of ghosts that were appearing behind him. Countless Lovells yelled accusations that only I could hear.

Yeah. Probably shouldn"t have locked them in the crypt. The crypt that I could now see pieces of strewn around the grounds through the hole in the courtyard wall. But you know, hindsight and all that.

"You really don"t know?" the necromancer said, drawing my gaze back to him. My head was pounding from all the ghostly yelling, and every once in a while, a cold ball of rage slid though me as the ghosts tried to attack me. My medium abilities were the least useful shit I had ever inherited.

"Um," I said intelligently, my eyes drifting over his shoulder again as my cousin Arum"s ghost called me fat and stupid and wished I had been beheaded alongside my parents. Thank goddess, my parents weren"t in the herd of ghosts. They had been killed and burned somewhere else, far from here.

"I made a deal with the last Lovell who tried to use my powers," the necromancer was saying. "That if she freed me, I would work alongside her willingly, as a partner rather than a slave. She was supposed to be considering it."

He glared down at the ground and tapped one foot impatiently. "I had planned to use the deal to get free, then let her bumble into her own death when she tried to play around with dark magic that she didn"t understand. But now the magic of the blood bargain seems to think I still need to honor this ridiculous deal."

I shook my head. "You mean…."

He snarled at me. "You set me free, so now I owe you a working partnership to satisfy the damned agreement."

He clenched his fists. "I"m tempted to just kill you and save us both the headache."

I snorted a laugh. "Buddy, it"s tempting, let me tell you." I threw my hands up and nodded at the ruined courtyard. "I didn"t ask for this shit. I was just trying to do the right thing and get rid of that fucking book. Some days, I"d prefer death."

He let out an irritated huff. "Fucking Lovells." Then he brushed past me and headed toward the house.

"Hey!" I yelled after him. "Where the hell are you going? You"ve got corpses to pick up, asshole."

He shoved his blood red hair back out of his face and gave me a cold, hateful look. "I"m going to bathe for the first time in a century or so. Maybe find a meal." His cold lavender eyes flicked around at the others. "Make your other slaves clean up the mess."

Then the necromancer just waltzed his ass into my house and slammed the door.

I spluttered. Made a weird snorting noise. Flapped my hands in helpless, frustrated confusion. Then I looked around at the others. "Did you see that? Did that just happen?"

Niamh nudged a corpse with the toe of her boot. "The corpses are still here, so I"d say it"s real. Unless the boogeyman is back. Then who knows? It could all be a nightmare."

Aahil tapped me on the shoulder with one long claw. "Can I burn the rest now?"

I seriously considered it. I"d been trying to get rid of these bodies for years. But there was probably some bad karma in that or something. And knowing my luck, it would only make the ghosts even more pissed at me. "Hold that thought for now, jinn."

I squatted down next to Hasumi and put a hand on their shoulder. "Are you okay?"

They shuddered and looked up at me with tears in their turquoise eyes. "It"s just…a lot. Pain. Anger. Mixed-up, distorted, unnatural things."

I nodded. "I"m sorry."

Elijah hovered at my side, doing his version of hand wringing. "Andy? Andy tell me it wasn"t you."

I sighed and stood.

"What wasn"t you?" Zhong asked curiously.

I ran a hand through my hair. "It was me," I said flatly. "I"m sorry, Elijah," I said, gesturing at the milling herd of angry ghosts that only me and the dead angel could see. "It was the only way to shut them up."

I had never seen Elijah angry at me before. Emotion in general was hard to sense when he moved so fluidly between here and the beyond. Plus, what was left of his angelic aura seemed to make my ghost a bit calmer than most earthbound spirits. But his anger and bitter disappointment were very clear at the moment. "How could you?" he whispered. Then he disappeared.

I scrubbed my hands over my face and paused to look at my insulin pump, then popped a couple more glucose tablets. Still low, but I"d live.

I looked up to find Niamh, Zhong, Hasumi, and Aahil watching me with curious expressions. They knew I"d done something to upset our friend. And I was surprised to realize that they truly cared. They were waiting to see if they should be pissed at me too, on his behalf. I groaned. "Okay, so…when I inherited this horror show of a house, I might have had a little ghost problem."

"This estate is steeped in long generations of evil and misery," Hasumi said softly. "Of course the souls of its dead would linger."

I nodded. "They"re bitter, spiteful, nasty remnants of awful people. Or sad, despondent leftovers of half-way decent people who came to visit and never left alive. And I"m a fucking medium. When I was younger, I couldn"t control the ability at all."

Niamh arched her brows at me, her green eyes full of pity. "Your home was filled with angry spirits only you could hear. And you refused to carry on their legacy."

I sighed. "Bunch of assholes, the lot of them."

Zhong gave me a sad look. "You can"t blame the dead for their pain, Andy."

I shrugged. "I know, okay? I tried to have the bodies moved. The Lovells were always buried in the family crypt, which of course is right out back. When I realized the ghosts would be happier if I had an accident and joined them, I knew I had to either get rid of the house or get rid of the ghosts. They almost succeeded in killing me off in ways that would look like random coincidental clumsiness."

I sank down to sit cross-legged on the ground, as far from dead uncle Hemlock as possible. "I couldn"t sell the house. It was a whole mess, but basically I wasn"t allowed to sell it to any private buyers—I agree with the government on that one, only creeps would be wanting it, hoping to find and exploit dangerous Lovell magic. And the government wanted to keep eighty percent of the sale price in "taxes and levies" if I put it up for government purchase. Hell, the lawyers had to fight hard enough just to keep them from seizing it all when my parents were executed." I was trying to live in the human world, but I knew I needed a fallback plan here in the magical world just in case. "And besides, I"ve been pawning shit from this house for years. How else would I ever live on minimum wage?" I waved that all away. "I petitioned the city years ago to let me have all the bodies moved from the crypt to the public cemetery. Most of the ghosts would leave with their bodies. But the city shot me down. Repeatedly. No one wants evil Lovells buried next to their precious loved ones."

I gestured tiredly at the back acreage and the ruined crypt that had once been hidden by tall trees and overgrown landscaping. "So, I sealed the fucker. I found a spell in one of my mother"s disgusting journals to help me bind the spirits and keep them in the fucking crypt where they would leave me the hell alone."

In retrospect, there was a lot wrong with that. Mostly the fact that it was pretty heartless and I didn"t know how it would affect the…mental health of the captive ghosts.

"I always meant to find a better solution," I muttered, guilt making my chest feel tight. "I"ve had a lot on my plate."

And honestly, it just hadn"t been too important to me at the time. I hardly ever came here. And my family was evil incarnate. Maybe they deserved a little eternal suffering. Who was I to say otherwise?

Look, I fight the good fight against the evil in my blood. But I don"t always win.

"I"ll fix it," I said as I pushed myself to my feet. "I"ll…do something with them that isn"t shoving them in a stone box." I rubbed my temples. "But I swear to fuck if they don"t shut up, I might change my mind!" The last bit was directed at the yammering crowd of invisible ancestors who were giving me a headache and doing their best to stir up all my old past trauma and emotional damage. Old aunt Nightshade was currently suggesting the most painful ways to poison me and giving graphic details of what the gruesome result of each would be.

Family, am I right?

The other living people around me were all looking at me like I was insane now. Great.

Understanding came from the last place I expected it. Aahil stepped up and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, steering me toward the house. "Your family and their eternal souls can rot in hell for all I care," he said, his smooth, velvety voice full of cheer. "Personally, I"m glad you tortured them for years. They hurt you, pet. They hurt me. The others. Probably countless nameless, faceless people over the years. A couple decades in a dark box is hardly worse than they deserve." He squeezed the back of my neck. "Only an uptight angel prick would be angry with you over that." He winked at me, his gold eyes filled with mirth. "Honestly, knowing you have that sort of vindictiveness in you is getting me hard. Would you like some company when you go out and dance on their graves?"

I couldn"t help it. I laughed. Even though it wasn"t funny. Even though I really hoped he wasn"t serious. I laughed so hard I cried, the tears washing away a little bit of the heaviness of guilt and shame. No matter how far I fell, or how far my moral compass went off course, apparently, I"d never be alone. Aahil would always be right there with me.

I paused, stumbling over those thoughts. The oblivious jinn kissed my neck and sauntered off, clearly intent on starting something with our creepy new asshole guest.

Niamh touched my hand as she passed by, headed into the house to back up Aahil"s threats with her bow and blades. Zhong gave me a searching look, then followed them.

Hasumi stopped beside me, tilting their head to look at me with those perceptive turquoise eyes. "Your intuition isn"t wrong," they said softly.

I turned my head sharply to look at them. "What?"

"About the jinn," they clarified. "Full of rage and pain. Quick to anger and afraid to show his vulnerabilities. But the man has come to adore you, in his own way. He also doesn"t have the same ideas of right and wrong that some do. So, yes, no matter what you become or how you choose to live your life, I believe you"ve gained a loyal companion in a very unlikely source."

Their perfect lips curled upward in a soft smile. "Unsettling?"

I licked my lips, then nodded. "Very."

Hasumi pressed a soft kiss to my forehead, then glanced back over their shoulder at the ruin of the courtyard before heading inside. "There will be consequences for releasing this one into the world," they said, beautiful face devoid of emotion. "But I think you"re strong enough to survive it."

I sighed and stepped over some ancient relative"s skeleton as I headed inside.

"I sure as fuck hope so," I muttered.

Because the exploded crypt full of bodies and the herd of angry ghosts were the least of my problems.

Necromancy was forbidden magic. To become a necromancer, a witch had to voluntarily taint themselves, mind, body, magic, and soul. Animating corpses was just the tip of the iceberg. A dark witch like this was probably more powerful than anyone I knew, and with no compunction about things like right or wrong. And I was now harboring that kind of evil in my home. If the Supernatural Alliance knew, they"d have all the evidence they needed to finally lock me up and severely punish me. The last living Lovell witch taken care of, just like that.

And that was without addressing the fact that the property was currently littered with debris and dead people.

Bis chittered in my ear, and I started. I had completely forgotten he was there, hiding under my hair. I reached up and petted his white-striped head. "I know, buddy," I said. I didn"t need Niamh"s interpreter skills to know exactly what my little rodent companion was saying. "We"re completely fucked."