Chapter 38

"Idon"tseewhy we can"t just burn them."

I glanced up from the book I was pouring over—one of the coveted ancient Lovell tomes most witches would soil themselves over—to meet the honey-gold eyes of Andy"s jinn.

My witch hostess saved me the trouble of a reply as she threw an agate at him, not even looking up from her own book. "Because it"s cruel with their ghosts still here. Freaks them the fuck out."

The slinky elemental braced his hands on the workbench by Oleander and effortlessly lifted himself up to park his ass beside her spell book. The man looked like an expensive genie-themed stripper, since he refused to wear shoes—or a shirt, at the moment. The gold and gemstones of his necklaces, earrings, body piercings, and wrist cuffs glinted in the afternoon sun that streamed through the window, giving me a headache. Those catlike gold eyes slid my way again and he quirked a sensual smile. "The necromancer didn"t disagree with me," he purred. "Don"t be so squeamish, pet."

I wasn"t falling for his vacant-headed sex toy act. I could sense the deep well of dangerous, simmering elemental magic in the man as easy as breathing. It called to the dark thing inside me. So much life and warmth. I wanted to pull him apart and sink my hands into his being, see what made him tick, what generated such destructive and awe-inspiring light.

I cleared my throat, shoved the monster down inside me, and put my eyes back on my book, making a slow, deliberate show of turning the page as if I was completely disinterested in the conversation.

Over the last day and a half, Oleander and I had nearly figured out how to unweave all of the bestiary"s protections and destroy the book once and for all. The problem was how to keep the final failsafe from triggering and blowing up the entire mansion. Oh, and how to save the woman"s damned ghost friend.

It was ridiculous, a medium getting so attached to a dead person. Bodies were only shells. And ghosts were only remnants.

But still.

I interrupted the jinn"s poking and prodding, which had moved on from burning things to trying to convince the curvy witch to suck his cock. It must be horrible to have so much of your magic tied up in sensuality. What a waste.

How does that work? His sex magic? Maybe he would show you? How long has it been since a living person willingly touched you, Dyre?

I ignored the voice in my head that wasn"t my own. "It will cause them pain if they still have a moderately strong connection to their bodies," I said without looking up. "Life is suffering, jinn. Why should death be any different."

I flipped another page, still not finding what I wanted, forcing myself to be patient, even though I really wanted to be done with this whole farce so I could leave.

"They might have been assholes in life," Andy said to her bored flame. "But if I torture what"s left of their souls, how am I any different?"

He huffed and slid off the table. "I figured you"d say that. You are two depressing peas in a boring pod. Let me know when something exciting happens." Then he vanished, off to annoy someone else.

"He"s dangerous," I said as I skimmed yet another useless page of cramped writing. "Aura"s unstable."

She set her own book aside and stretched before reaching for another. "I know. But he"s getting better. You should have seen him when he came out of that book." She let out a low whistle. "Thought I was going to die for real." Then she snorted. "And several times after."

I closed the useless old book with a thump and set it aside. "Then why do you put up with him?"

I wasn"t judging. I truly was curious. Normal people"s relationships and social interactions were an enigma to me. I lost what few friends I had when I was eighteen years old and my family decided to stuff me full of evil against my will. Now, people mostly just screamed and ran the other way when they saw me. Not much opportunity for making friends.

Oleander didn"t take offense, she just chuckled softly to herself. "I have no freaking clue," she answered, running a hand over her face. "I guess I just felt guilty for everything my family has done. People have treated me like I was just another evil Lovell all my life. I guess some part of me believed them and thinks I have something to make up for." She shrugged and shoved her book carelessly aside, pausing to rub a hand over her face again. "Did you mean what you said about death?"

I looked up to find her curious gray eyes studying me. "What I said?"

She nodded. "You said life is pain and so is death. Do we really never get to rest?"

This girl. For all she acted tough, she was incredibly naive. "Not on this plane," I said flatly. The dead didn"t belong in this world. Which was why I wasn"t thrilled about her trying to keep her ghost friend here when we destroyed the book that anchored him. "Haven"t you ever served as a psychopomp?"

The ability was what had made me such a likely candidate for necromancy. I assumed she had a similar talent, since she could see and speak with the spirits. And her family hadn"t held her down and forced an undead monster inside her body. So she probably used her skills the way nature intended.

She looked down at her hands, which rested in her lap, her skin normal and flushed pink with life, oblivious to my dark thoughts. "I"ve done it a bit," she said softly. "When I could be certain the spirit was ready to cross over."

I nodded. "Then you know there is a chance of peace for them. Somewhere. Just not here."

She pushed a hand through her green hair, shoving the unruly waves back out of her face. "Sorry. I guess it upset me more than I want to admit, coming face to face with all the dead ancestors." She sighed. "And it"s giving me a headache keeping them out of my mind. I kind of wish I was the sort of person who could just set them on fire without remorse."

I let out a dry chuckle. "No you don"t."

She quirked a wry look at me. "I suppose I should be worried when I have less mercy than a necromancer."

I stared her down, well used to the jabs and the judgements. "Indeed."

The silly witch let her eyes trail over me, then smiled. "Blue"s a good color on you."

I arched a brow at her. I had bathed, and borrowed some clothes from the water weaver. The elemental was quite a bit smaller than me, but their clothes were loose fitting and neutral. Better than swimming in the giant gargoyle"s things or wearing the female fae"s blouses. Goddess knew the jinn"s clothes wouldn"t cover half of me—even if I wanted to dress like the main event in a harem burlesque show.

"I"m so glad you approve of my appearance," I snapped. "But I"m still not joining your little poly family." As if she really wanted anything to do with a half-corpse like me.

She scowled at me. "I meant you look better than you did yesterday, dude. Goddess. I don"t want to fuck you. I just want to make sure you"re not gonna fall over dead before we help Elijah and get rid of the bestiary! You look like a corpse."

Just as I thought. But for some reason it stung a little bit anyway. Absurd.

I saw her jaw clench the moment she uttered those words, but I didn"t care about her guilt. "Hosting this thing that lives inside of me is like housing a parasite. It feeds on my lifeforce and my magic. I am a corpse, witch. Or I will be when I finally lose control and he drains me. But thank you for your concern. I"ll make sure to wear more blue to make myself more palatable to you."

I won"t kill you, the voice inside my head insisted. Then how would I walk the mortal plane?

Awkward silence stretched between me and my uncomfortable hostess. Her face was red. She wanted to yell at me for being an asshole, but she pitied me too much to say anything. Though it wasn"t as common as the screaming and running, it was a reaction I knew all too well.

"Aww, there you both are," a dark, smooth voice called as the boogeyman materialized in the doorway. He was dressed in an immaculate black suit that reminded me of a fairytale butler. It was a nice disguise, for a monster. So was the easygoing smile that crossed his features, despite the sharp teeth he displayed.

The ghost materialized in the center of the room a beat later. "Andy," his hollow voice said as he worked to form his ball of ethereal matter into a roughly body-shaped wisp. "The—"

"Alliance is on its way," the boogeyman said with a smirk. "I beat you here, spook. Told you I"m faster."

Andy stood, not noticing how her ghost friend wavered when she turned away. I narrowed my eyes. We might not have to worry about destroying the specter when we got rid of the bestiary. It seemed he was fading away all on his own without our interference. Oleander had probably just been a bit too busy with everything else that was going on to notice she was losing her ghost.

"What do you mean the Alliance is on its way?" our witch snapped, yanking her t-shirt straight and raking a hand through her messy green waves. As if the Alliance cared about how she looked. "The freaking Alliance is headed here and you two are playing games? Have you seen my damned back yard?"

"Something is off about their frequent visits," Elijah whispered. "Why would they be visiting you again so soon? You"ve done nothing wrong."

Andy snorted. "Yeah, nothing but unleash a big surge of magic again. And that ward is still down. So they"re probably watching my every move. I hope they got an eyeful this morning when I used the toilet. Fuckers."

"I"m sure they have better things to worry about than your bowel habits, dove," the boogeyman sniped. "I"m surprised they"re wasting time on you at all, honestly."

Andy narrowed her eyes at him. "What do you mean?"

He shrugged an elegant shoulder, all insouciant calm. "I heard things while I was out…reacquainting myself with the world. It sounds like our lovely Supernatural Alliance is having some internal issues. Unrest. Corporate uprising. Who knows?"

I rolled my eyes at the man"s unhelpful information. But Andy nibbled at her fingernail, her brow furrowed. "Things were weird the last couple times that team came out here to poke around," she mused. Then she shrugged. "But who cares? Unless the whole pain in the ass organization suddenly collapses and decides to leave me alone, how does that help me?"

"It doesn"t," Ambrose said, palms up as he shrugged. "I just thought you"d like a bit of warning before they rang the doorbell." His black eyes with the red pupils landed on me and he lifted a black brow. "I can simply slip into the otherworld. But no one will see him and think "witch.""

I chuckled darkly. No. If the Alliance people saw me, there"d be a good deal of screaming and throwing around magic with intent to kill. There was a reason necromancers were so rare. Aside from the whole risk of dying of possession and all. The Supernatural Alliance and most clean witches or other supernatural creatures of any power had a "kill on sight" policy where my kind were concerned. Not that I blamed them.

"Where"s your nearest pitchfork closet," I asked the green-haired witch. Some savior she was, releasing me from servitude just to put me in the path of the Alliance. Maybe this was her plan all along. Maybe she had called them herself to get rid of me. Maybe she had just pretended to tolerate me, so she"d be safe until the supe cops came riding in to rescue her.

You"re losing the thread,the voice in my head said. And I felt the cold press of his consciousness asking to take over. I struggled for a moment, then gave up. I trusted him to be rational. Cold. Heartless. Not the least bit understanding of mortal foibles, of course. But rational, at least where our continued aliveness was concerned.

"Your pitchfork closet?" we said in the voice that made people shudder.

Andy"s pupils dilated and her aura swelled, gathering magic around her instinctively. But she answered. "Um…I don"t…."

"You don"t have a pitchfork closet?" Ambrose said in shock. "Every witch has one of those. Or twelve."

Pitchfork closets were safe spaces—panic rooms and bolt holes used by witches everywhere to avoid being found when the need arose. The name came from days gone by, before the treaties. When a mob of pitchforks and torches meant no good to a witch, in this world or in any other.

"Every damned hidey hole in this place is probably booby-trapped," she said, drumming her fingers on her jeans-clad thigh. "I"ve never used them. And I know I haven"t disarmed all the nasties yet. Not by a long shot. If someone without Lovell blood tries to hide under the floorboards, this house is probably going to eat them alive." She shuddered. "I swear sometimes the place is sentient."

"Andy!" Niamh called up the stairs. "Visitors."

"I"ll get it!" Aahil called merrily, nearly skipping down the hall from his bedroom toward the stairs, flames flaring up all along his body. "I can"t wait to talk to my friend Jacki again."

I frowned in confusion at that, but Andy grabbed my arm, dragging me along after her. "Go hide in the creepy pink room that looks like it belongs to a teenage Victorian girl who somehow found out about boy bands," she bit out. "There"s a false back in the closet there. I have no clue where it leads or if there are any traps in there. I only made note of it in case I wanted to use it to store ugly Lovell garbage. Sorry."

When I didn"t move fast enough, she grabbed my arm. The monster and I looked down at the witch as she dragged us into an absolute nightmare of a child"s room. It was just so…pink. And dusty. Clearly empty in a way that was unsettling. Where was this child now? Had it been Andy"s room growing up? Somehow, I thought not.

"We can handle simple Lovell traps," my mouth said. Even though I really wanted to ask what the hell was going on. Maybe spy on the lot of them while they talked to the Alliance.

So mistrustful, the voice in my head said with dark humor. As if he didn"t know why I might have trouble trusting people—especially other witches. You know we can simply create some dead and raise them if it comes to that. You already have an army waiting out behind the house.

So I stepped into the shadowy closet, found the release for the false back, and shut myself in. Claustrophobia immediately settled in when Andy"s voice disappeared back down the hallway. This was hardly the first time I"d been shut in a closet. At least this one wasn"t locked.

This wasn"t the bestiary. And I wasn"t a helpless child anymore. I was strong enough now to get out even if it was locked. My monstrous magic made sure of that. But still, I fidgeted. My fingers found a folded slip of paper sticking out of the seam where the wall met the floor, and I worried the edges for a moment before finally giving a frustrated sigh and stuffing the damned thing into my pocket. Necromancers didn"t fidget. They didn"t panic. I had raised hordes of undead and set them upon my enemies, laughing at their screams of terror. My best friend was a creature so rare and powerful many had forgotten his name, though his legends lived on. I was not about to lose to a fucking closet.

Crossing my legs under me, I rolled my shoulders back, closed my eyes, and meditated, letting my body recharge and my passenger enjoy the sensations of breathing and having a heartbeat while we waited.