Chapter 41

Dyreseemedfinethe next day, though he absolutely refused to talk about the fear I"d seen in him when the Supernatural Alliance had shown up. I left it alone as we dove back into figuring out how to destroy the bestiary. It didn"t take us long to figure out how to disable all the protection spells and destroy the book. The necromancer really did know way more about magic than me. And although he continued to refuse to teach me anything, and I continued to refuse to ask…still, I picked up a few things along the way.

My magic was deep and strong. I had known that since I was a little child. My parents had high hopes of training me up to be the next best thing since sliced bread. They said I might even be more powerful than great aunt Rafflesia. She had been one of the most powerful witches in recorded history. But aunty Raff had died a horrible death when a rot curse she cast on an entire rival family backfired. She had literally putrefied from the inside out. I think I knew, even as a little girl—way before my parents were executed for starting a magical interspecies war—that being a powerful witch wasn"t a good thing.

I had never had any desire to hone my magic, not really. Years ago, I"d looked for a tutor just so I could learn enough basic magic to get by in the magical world. I"d had no desire to actually be good at it, or to tap into my full potential. My full potential was pure evil. So, no thanks.

But now…I had to admit that the others were right. If I knew how to use my magic effectively, I could probably set wards that no one could break. I could cast spells of illusion or protection that would keep me and everyone around me safe. I could gather information from the earth and always know if an enemy approached. I didn"t have to be an evil Lovell.

I knew this intellectually. But the fear still clung to me. I wanted to learn. And this strong, experienced witch had just been dropped in my lap. He even admitted he had been an earth witch like me, originally. I had no doubt he could teach me all I needed to know, if he was willing. But at what cost?

The more time I spent with Dyre, the less convinced I was that society was right about his kind being monsters of pure horror and evil. But…every once in a while, I got a glimpse of whatever lived inside him. And I had to wonder if that grudgingly helpful, somewhat normal Dyre was just a mask he wore to hide his true nature. A Lovell learning magic from a necromancer was a very, very bad idea.

So I soaked up what I could while we worked on this one problem, but I didn"t entertain any hopes of anything more.

"Here," he said, his long dark red hair brushing my arm as he placed an open book on the desk in front of me and leaned over to point out a passage. "Angels have an affinity for seraphinite. Ghost beads too, I think. Those are just—"

"Juniper berries," I finished for him. "I"m not that ignorant."

He chuckled darkly. "Maybe not. But I figured out what the last bit of the anchor should be. And you"re not going to like it."

I turned my head to look up at him, steeling myself not to react to the blackness I"d see staring out at me from his arresting features. His voice had changed there at the end, and I knew it wasn"t Dyre speaking anymore. It was unsettling, the way he seemed to shift back and forth between witch and…something else, so fluidly. As if he didn"t notice. Or didn"t care. Maybe he was just that comfortable with whatever dark thing possessed him. Or maybe he just had no control over it. Not a comforting thought.

"My whole life has been made up of "you"re not gonna like this,"" I informed him dryly. "What did you come up with?"

"Bone," he said, not bothering to straighten, not putting any distance between us as those eerie eyes studied my face. "Preferably from the angel"s own corpse, bathed in moonlight and dipped in banshee tears." He shrugged. "Though a wash of virgin blood drawn from the heart of a newborn child might work as well as the tears. It would be easier to come by."

I swallowed hard. He stared me down. "You"re teasing me," I said. Hopefully.

One corner of his wide mouth twitched upward, and he smirked at me. Then he blinked, his eyes becoming pure violet once more, his voice just a normal baritone. "Moonlight and banshee tears," he said again, finally standing up straight and getting out of my personal space. "We were joking about the blood."

But were they though? He looked uncomfortable for a second, but soon buried it under that cold mask of indifference. "Between myself and your boogeyman, we can get the banshee tears easily. Real, properly blessed seraphinite will be expensive, but you should be able to find some at that dreadful market you normal witches use."

"That just leaves the bone," I said, my gut clenching. "If it even exists." For all we knew, my ancestors had burned the body or sold it off for spell components after they killed Elijah.

And I was going to have to ask my ghost lover if he knew where his body was…so we could exhume it and steal a bone.

What was I just saying about not becoming an evil Lovell? Turns out I was already headed there, no matter how hard I tried to resist.

"Elijah," I whispered, knowing the task wouldn"t get any easier if I put it off. The bestiary was right at my elbow, and Elijah usually came when I called, though it could take him some time if he was lost in the otherworld at the time.

This time, he materialized after just a minute or two. "Did you call for me, Andy?"

I smiled at him, my guts twisting. Like the last time I carried him inside me during kinky times, he was maintaining a bit more solidity than usual. Sex magic was a powerful thing. Apparently, it even worked on angels.

"I have a question for you," I said, even as Dyre made a slow circle around my ghost, examining his more opaque form.

Elijah drifted away from the necromancer, clearly not fond of being studied like a specimen by a dude who could make walking corpses. "I"ll do my best to answer, whatever it is," he said in his hollow voice.

I took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "Do you know where your body is?"

He fuzzed out of existence for a second, then popped back in. "Why?" His blue eye orbs blazed with fury. "Andy…you would really let a necromancer desecrate my remains?"

I rolled my eyes. "Of course not." Although…it belatedly occurred to me that Dyre was a stranger. And a necromancer who worked black magic. Maybe he had other reasons for wanting to know the location of an angel corpse. Shit.

Dyre crossed his arms over his skinny chest, clearly able to guess exactly what I was thinking. "We only need one bone. For an anchor, since your dear witch won"t destroy that fucking grimoire until she knows you"re safe. You don"t have to tell me where it is. She can fetch it, if it makes you feel better."

Elijah let out a strange moaning sound that was probably his version of a long-suffering sigh. "Andy. You have to accept that it"s not possible. And I won"t stay here if it means the others are in danger. They"ve suffered enough. They have their lives to live. My life was already forfeit, long before I knew you."

I glared up at him. "Do you want to fade, Elijah? I won"t force you to stay here against your will. You have the right to move on, or cross over, or whatever the hell it is your soul wants. But I won"t let you sacrifice yourself just to play martyr because some angel sensibility of yours thinks that"s what all the cool kids are doing."

Dyre snorted and lifted one blood red eyebrow, but he didn"t say anything.

Elijah hovered closer to me, reaching out a ghostly hand toward mine, his touch a hint of cool mist. "Andy, I would do anything to remain here with you. But my body is gone. My kind return to the earth faster than humans or witches. Dust to dust, you know." He turned his burning blue gaze on the necromancer. "Even Lovell magic couldn"t preserve my corpse for their awful purposes. Sorry to disappoint, necromancer."

Dyre just stared at him, no expression on his face. Then he returned his attention to me. "We can use another bone. It will just make the bonding more difficult. A bone from a strong magic user would be best."

I met his eyes and groaned when I realized where he was going with this. "Not a fucking Lovell." But we did have a bunch of corpses from powerful witches still hanging around in my back yard. Playing escort to their ghosts so they could cross over and let us burn the bodies was on my list of things to do.

Dyre just shrugged. "I don"t see why not. They could be useful for once in their cursed existence."

I shook my head. "I"m not attaching Elijah to evil incarnate. Try again."

"Donate a bone?" he suggested. "I could cut off one of your toes, I suppose. One doesn"t really need ten toes. But it would work better if the bone came from one who has already departed."

"What?!" Elijah somehow managed to convey horror and disgust pretty well, even with no obvious face to make expressions and with his hollow ghostly whisper of a voice.

I sighed. "If cutting off a toe means I get to keep you, I"ll do it," I said firmly. "Fuck, you can have a whole arm or a leg, if that"s what it takes."

Elijah howled. "No! You will not harm yourself and let some stranger practice dark magic on your bones just to save a dead man. I won"t allow it."

I opened my mouth to argue, but a sudden sharp pain behind my eye caught me off guard. "Fuck," I muttered. The spell holding back the damned ghost horde was weakening again. Something had them riled up all of the sudden.

"Wait," Elijah said. "I"ll see what they want." Then he suddenly popped out of existence.

I shared a glance with Dyre as we waited. The necromancer just shrugged.

Then Elijah returned. But he wasn"t alone. "Can you let this one speak to you without letting all the others in?" He asked me, gesturing to the translucent outline of what looked like a burly young man. He was more visible to me than Elijah, probably because his ghost wasn"t as old. Or because his trauma held him here more firmly.

I nodded slowly. "For a few minutes, I think," I said curiously, pushing magic into the shield that kept the other ghosts out of my brain.

The new specter hovered closer to me, and I waved a hand at him in invitation. "I can see you and hear you. What did you want to tell me? If you"re just here to yell at me about being a terrible ancestor and a disgrace to the Lovell name, can just save your breath."

"I"m not a Lovell," he said, his voice a cool, faint whisper to my medium senses. "My name is Cory Smith."

I arched my brows at him. "So we were right. Not all those ghosts belong to people buried in the crypt."

"Yes," he said, his outline wavering a little, probably in distress. "I stood up to the Lovells. They tried to get me to join them, but I refused. I tried to tell the magical community what they were up to. But…they made me disappear. My body is under the basement floor." He flickered again. "They liked to laugh about it, every time they walked over me."

I shuddered. "I fucking hate my family."

"They tried to entice you to work with them," Dyre said, clearly tapping into his own spooky abilities. "I can feel you there, beneath us. They wanted you on their side, but when they failed at that they killed you. Because you were a strong witch."

The ghost flinched away from the necromancer, hovering closer to Elijah, as if the dead angel might protect him. "Yes. I heard you. I heard what you"re trying to do. The others are in a tizzy. They fear you"ll use their bodies for your spells."

"Andy," Elijah said, his voice holding a warning. He already knew where this was going, why this spirit sought me out.

"If we help you cross over, would you allow us to use one of your bones to keep Elijah here? He wants to stay, but the object he"s currently tied to is an awful Lovell creation that I need to get rid of."

"I"d do anything to be free from this place," the spirit whispered. "And the angel is a good soul. You are good. Not like the other Lovells. I would not mind this. As long as you"ll promise me the rest of my body will rest in peace."

I glanced at Dyre. He nodded.

"Well," I said with a fake cheery voice. "Looks like we"ve got some spirits to escort to the other side, some digging to do, and some bodies to burn, necromancer."

His voice was as even and his face as expressionless as ever. "Sounds thrilling."

Which…is how we ended up spending an entire day shuttling souls—some of them very angry and belligerent—to the great beyond. Once we did Cory, we figured we might as well get the rest of them out of the way too. It was a huge strain on my magic, but so was containing them and keeping them out of my mind. And I couldn"t exactly work the magic needed to destroy the bestiary and save Elijah while maintaining those mental shields.

Cory was easy. I helped him myself. It had been quite a while since I used my medium abilities to play psychopomp, helping lost spirits cross over to wherever they were supposed to go after death, but it came back to me like riding a bike. We performed the healings in the back yard, between the mansion and the crypt, smudging and cleansing ourselves and the entire area. My other guests all sat back and watched curiously as me and Dyre set up shop on opposite ends of the yard so we wouldn"t have to talk over one another.

I sank into a meditative state, calling up power from the earth, entreating the goddess for guidance and power as I mentally and magically took the hand of the young man before me and walked him toward the ethereal light that shone in my mind. He went happily, and I felt his overwhelming gratitude, love, and peace as he left this plane.

Dyre was right. Things might seem awful here sometimes, for the living and the dead, but there was something better waiting for us all beyond this place, and it was awe-inspiring to get this little glimpse of that peace and love.

I wondered if Dyre felt it as strongly, now that he was a necromancer. Could he really lead the spirits to that light? Or was he over there leading Lovells someplace darker?

For the life of me, I couldn"t see why I should care. But I hoped, for their sake and his, that it was the first option.

When the last ghost was finally gone, I came out of my meditative state to a silence that was almost too intense to bear. I had grown used to the constant clamoring of angry ghosts. The quiet peeping of crickets and little frogs as the sun set was the most beautiful thing I"d ever heard.

I stood on shaky legs. That had taken a lot of mental and magical reserves. My found family gathered around me to offer support and I gladly accepted, letting Aahil pet me and tell me I was stupid to exhaust myself for a bunch of ghosts while Zhong held me upright. Dyre pushed to his feet as well. Then he swayed and crumpled, his legs giving out. But he had no one to catch him.

"Dyre!" I fumbled, trying to get the others to let go of me so I could go help him. But then a chilling dark power rose around him, and he straightened, standing once more with his shoulders back and his posture radiating easy strength.

I met pure black eyes, and the voice that spoke wasn"t Dyre"s. "I have him," the thing inside Dyre said, its creepy voice echoing in my bones. "He is mine to protect."

I couldn"t look away from that glare. He broke the contact for me, turning and striding into the house.

I let out a slow breath. "Well, that was a fun way to spend the weekend, don"t you think?"

Niamh snorted. Aahil rolled his eyes. Zhong patted my head. But Hasumi was still staring at where the necromancer had disappeared. "So much pain," they muttered to themself.

I squared my shoulders and tried to pretend I hadn"t heard that.

The last thing I needed to be doing right now was worrying about a monster.

Ambrose seemed to agree. He materialized from the shadows right in front of me, his dark, suit-clad form looking a lot like a certain anime butler I"d read about once—one who was actually a demon. "Unless you would like me to visit your dreams tonight, I need to go have a wander," he informed me, his dark voice carrying a bit of wry humor. "Kiss me goodbye before I go?"

I huffed a laugh. "No thank you to the nightmares," I said firmly. "But if I kiss you, will you go away faster?" I don"t know why I said it. Loopy from brain drain, maybe?

His chiseled lips curled into a decadent smile. "Only one way to find out."

Yep. My braincells were misfiring because of all the hard work I"d done today. That is the only reason I could think of for why I found myself kissing a boogeyman by the corpse pile in my backyard.

He didn"t touch me beyond that one point of contact. His cool lips slid over mine in a soft caress that was questioning and a little playful, but surprisingly, he held the rest of himself back. Then he pulled away, winked one eerie red and black eye at me, and disappeared into the night.

I had asked if it would make him go away faster. But now I was a little disappointed.

Niamh laughed. "Andy. We need to have a talk about your thing for dangerous men."

I yawned and gave her shoulder a shove as we headed inside. "And women. You tried to shoot me, remember."

She laughed, and the sound lifted the last bit of heaviness in my heart.

We"d be okay. Tomorrow we"d dig up a body and work some black magic to bind my angel"s ghost to this realm before we absolutely trashed my family"s most prized grimoire. Then life could go back to normal. Whatever that was.