Chapter 34

Chapter

Thirty-Four

The first person to speak was, unsurprisingly, my business partner.

"Well, fuck me." Arkady put her hands on her hips. "That explains a lot ."

Matthias studied me, his head tilted. I could only imagine all the thoughts and realizations crashing in his brain at the news.

Arkady's visible anger at me evaporated, replaced by her usual wry cynicism. "I didn't have find out my business partner and bestie has a whole secret identity on my bingo card for today, but I guess here we are anyway."

"I guess so," I said with a sigh. "You're taking it well."

"I get why you didn't tell me sooner. That's the kind of secret that's tough to share, and I've got plenty of those myself. And honestly, I'm way more pissed at myself than I am at you."

"What? Why?"

"Because I should have figured it out sooner." She scowled. "I got that you aren't who you say you are. That part's kinda obvious to someone who puts clues together for a living. Sussing out that you're the mysterious Murphy granddaughter everyone thinks is dead is a much bigger leap. "

I cleared my throat. "For the record, Sean figured it out about six months ago, with way fewer clues than you've had."

Her eyes narrowed.

"It's okay," Sean said, feigning sympathy. "You can't expect to out-hunt a werewolf."

" Anyway ," she said icily, "I want the whole damn story, but we don't have time for that today, what with murderous necromancers to find and witch rituals to set up and so forth." She marched up to me and poked me not-at-all gently in the chest with her index finger. "But don't think for a minute I don't know the reason you didn't tell me this before now. You're still trying to protect everyone around you, even though like Sean just said we're in the same amount of danger either way."

"Well, when you put it like that, it makes me sound bad," I said.

"You're not bad. You're just—" She rubbed her face with her hand. "Jeez. I don't even know what you are. I'm going to have to process this for a while. If even half the stuff we think we know about how Murphy runs things is true, I can't even begin to wrap my brain around what you've been through. No wonder you're…" She trailed off.

"Deeply traumatized?" I suggested.

"Overly protective and hyper-independent?" Sean interjected.

Malcolm poked his head up through the floor. "A hot mess express?"

Matthias crossed his arms and eyed me before rumbling, "Funny?"

"Good call," Malcolm said approvingly. "That which does not kill us makes us funny as hell." He disappeared back into the basement.

Arkady sighed. "Yeah, you're all those things and a whole lot more."

Sean kissed the top of my head. "Told you it would be okay," he murmured into my ear. I kissed his jaw.

"Anyway, you wanted me over here because—?" Arkady prompted .

"Like I said in the text, we need your brain." I tapped the contract. "You said a geas can be broken by unraveling the spell and the key is in the wording. We just need to crack the code."

"Code-cracking is one of my many talents. However …" She turned to Matthias and met his amber gaze. Something passed between them—a kind of understanding between former lovers who might be finding a way to be colleagues, if not friends. "I know what Alice and Sean want, but nobody's gonna try to crack jack shit unless it's what you want. They'll have to go through me to try."

As much as I wanted Matthias free of the geas , I for one would not be trying to go through her. Alpha werewolf or not, Sean didn't look excited about the prospect either.

"So it's your call." Arkady's voice had a gentle note I'd rarely heard before. "Do you want me to try to crack the code or not?"

"I'm not ready to answer," Matthias said. "It's not just that trying to remove the geas might kill me, though that's a big concern in itself. I don't know what other things might happen if you fail…or if you succeed. This is a big decision."

"Had you not thought about getting out of it someday?" Sean asked. "Or did you truly believe it wasn't possible?"

"I didn't know it was possible," Matthias admitted. "And since I learned it was, I didn't believe anyone would be able to get a copy of the contract."

"Fair enough." Arkady's mouth quirked. "I did tell you I was trying to get a copy, though. Knowing me as well as you do, you didn't think I could make it happen?"

"I thought you had the best chance of anyone," he said, rather diplomatically. "But obviously the Court is extremely highly motivated to keep documents of this nature secure. How Murphy accomplished it, I don't know."

"Probably the usual combination of money and threats." Arkady shrugged. "Throw enough money at something and threaten to break enough bones and the impossible magically becomes possible. "

Hearing them talk casually about Moses felt jarring, though I wasn't sure why. I knew my true identity was safe with them, but maybe I felt like my secret had spread a little too far for my comfort. A year ago, no one had known who I was but me. Now the list of those in the know was up to eight people—and possibly also two vampires who could not remotely be called trustworthy.

Carly would probably tell me this uneasiness was more about my need to control my environment than anything else. I supposed those counseling sessions were paying off because I found myself psychoanalyzing myself almost as much as Carly did these days.

I was about to change the subject away from Moses when my phone buzzed in my pocket and saved me the trouble. The screen showed a text message from Diaz: Pizza arrives at 1800 .

"Diaz is going to leak the information about the necromancer at six o'clock," I told the others. "That's two hours from now. I fully expect widespread panic and for the chief of police and SPEMA to order a curfew, among other things."

Sean nodded grimly. "I think you're right. What time should we expect Carly and Katy?"

"They're witches, so of course they want to begin the ritual at midnight," I told him. "But if there's a curfew they'll have to be here before that. The big X factor is what level of chaos this information causes. We'll have to see what the police and SPEMA do after the news breaks."

"And in the meantime?" Arkady wanted to know. "I mean, you're about to go up against some real nasty hombres. If we were doing this my style, I'd be cleaning my guns, polishing my knives, warming up with some cardio and difficult blade throws, and getting in the zone by firing up my favorite ass-kicking playlist and envisioning the many creative ways I'm going to unalive the bad guys. What does a mage do to prepare for battle?"

"I make a pot of coffee." I dug a piece of chalk from my pocket and held it up. "And then I draw."

I spent the next three hours in my basement, drawing spellwork on myself with marker and then crawling around on the concrete floor using up nearly an entire box of chalk to complete the intensive and intricate spellwork Carly had requested for the ritual.

About an hour into that project, I took a break to create the binding spell that secured Liam to the anchor crystal so he would be safe without needing to stay inside a ward. Once we were satisfied that the spellwork was strong enough that he couldn't be tracked or stolen back by one of Moses's mages, he and Malcolm left "to talk about ghost stuff," as Malcolm put it. They planned to return before the ritual began.

At a little after seven o'clock, I'd just finished the last of the wards Carly wanted when Sean opened the basement door and called down that the news about the necromancer had spread like wildfire.

I wiped chalk dust off my hands with a towel and trudged upstairs on aching knees to watch the red-faced chief of police and the assistant director of the local SPEMA bureau host a chaotic press conference. They denied and condemned the rumors emphatically, but announced a city-wide curfew of nine p.m. for public safety.

Arkady had plunked herself on the couch, sitting cross-legged as she surfed local news sites on her phone. She looked up as I settled into my usual chair with a mug of coffee. "If the necromancer wanted fear and chaos, they've got it now," she said. "I sure hope however Diaz got the word out that he did it in a way that it can't be traced back to him because the chief looks ready to string somebody up by their balls."

As far as I could tell, none of the news agencies and local bloggers claimed the police or SPEMA were the source of the information about a necromancer. Several cited "an independent investigative team" as the party that had determined the killings were connected and the work of a necromancer and malevolent spirits under their control. I guessed that was who Diaz credited—or blamed—for coming up with the idea a necromancer was involved. As long as no one down at the cop shop suspected I might be the "independent investigative team" in question, we should be fine.

"I haven't seen this much ducking and dodging since middle school dodgeball," Sean said as the chief restated some version of We have no information or evidence that substantiates these rumors for the umpteenth time. He stood next to my chair with his arms crossed. "All these denials could drive the necromancer to do something to prove the chief is lying."

"We knew doing this was no guarantee of anything," I said. My voice sounded as tired as I felt. Three hours of creating and drawing spellwork was no joke. "All we can do is hope this is the attention the necromancer has been craving and they'll hit pause on the killing until we can get them."

Without warning, Sean confiscated my coffee cup. "Hey," I protested. "I need that."

"What you need is food and rest." He held the mug out of my reach. "You have time before Carly and Katy get here to at least take a power nap. Go upstairs to bed and we'll stay quiet down here. You can eat when you get up."

"There's no way I can sleep with all this going on," I protested, then reconsidered. "At least, not by myself."

"Daisy is up there already," Sean pointed out. "She's perfect for nap-time snuggling."

"She is, but I think I need your snuggling more." I yawned to emphasize the point. "Pretty please?"

"Might as well go cuddle with your boo," Arkady told him. "I think Matthias and I can hold down the fort for a while."

Sean got the long-suffering look he often had when Arkady was around. I couldn't tell for sure if she phrased things deliberately to elicit that reaction, but I wouldn't put it past her. Her number one love language was giving people shit, and I supposed it said something about all of us that we adored her for it. Well, mostly .

We left my coffee mug on the kitchen island and went upstairs. I heard the shower running in the guest bathroom. "Matthias punched the bag for a long time while you were in the workshop," Sean said at my inquisitive look. "He thinks while he punches."

"I get that." I squeezed his hand. "He's going to be okay, I think. Eventually."

"He will." He kissed the top of my head and shut our bedroom door to block the low murmur of the television downstairs. "You get a lot of credit for that, Miss Magic."

I didn't feel that I'd done all that much, but I was too tired to argue. I crawled onto the bed fully clothed except for my bare feet and curled around Baby Daisy. Sean toed off his shoes and spooned behind me, his arm around my tummy to hold me close as he nuzzled the back of my neck.

Exhaustion made my arms and legs feel like lead, but as the minutes passed, sleep didn't come despite Sean's comforting warmth and Baby Daisy's snuffly snoring.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw the photos in the file Diaz had given me. And I heard the spirit's raspy voice on repeat: We's comin' for you. Jus' you wait, little birdie. Jus' you wait…

I let out a sound that was part groan and part whimper.

Sean kissed my shoulder. "Shh. Rest, love."

"I can't." I turned my head so I could see his face. His expression was grim. I hated to see him look like this, especially when I knew I was the main cause of his worry.

"It all just spins in my head like there's a puzzle here I haven't solved yet," I said. "Like somehow I've missed something, or something hasn't clicked into place that's important."

He didn't say anything for a while. I could tell he desperately wanted me to rest. The shadows moving in his golden eyes told me his wolf was extremely unhappy too because I was exhausted, and when I was exhausted, I wasn't at my best. I had to be at my best tonight—my life and many other lives depended on it .

"Let's solve the puzzle, then, so you can close your eyes," he said finally. "What's bothering you?"

What was bothering me? Everything, sure, but something in particular nagged at me. My instincts were trying to get me to figure something out.

What didn't we know? Well, we didn't know the identity of the necromancer yet, but I believed we would discover that tonight. We also didn't have the identities of the spirits. I wasn't sure that mattered all that much. The mission there was to capture them and send them back where they belonged. Names weren't required for that.

Or were they?

"Maybe these spirits aren't just puppets controlled by the necromancer," I said, mostly to hear the thought aloud. "That's how I've been thinking of them, but I could be wrong. It doesn't feel right to call them puppets or pets. There's a power dynamic here that's more complicated."

"This is your gut telling you this?" Sean asked. "Or your magic?"

"Maybe both?" I thought about it more. "When one of the ghosts threatened me yesterday, he said We're coming for you . I thought he meant himself and the necromancer, so I didn't really think about it all that much. But that was before I knew there were two spirits. Now I think he meant himself and the other spirit, which means they have a sense of themselves as individuals with purpose, not the mindlessness of normal summoned spirits. Maybe that's why those words keep popping into my brain every time I have a minute to think. My subconscious, or my gut, or whatever you want to call it, is trying to tell me the identity of the spirits is important in some way and they aren't just pets or pawns. I think this might be closer to some kind of partnership between the necromancer and the spirits. There's a give and take."

The more I talked it out, the more this sounded right, and the less I liked where this train of thought was headed .

That must have shown on my face, because Sean raised up on his elbow. "How does that change the situation?"

"I don't think it's going to be as simple as capturing the spirits and then sending them back to Hell like we planned. They're powerful in their own right and apparently capable of having intention and making decisions. That means if we sever their binding to the necromancer, they won't be mindless and easy to catch. We may need their full names."

"How would you get that information?"

"I do not even know." I rested my head on his bicep. "The necromancer has it, obviously, but they're not likely to tell me or anyone else. And we have to trap the spirits before we take on the necromancer, or we up the danger level of that meeting by about a hundred times."

"So it's like the worst version of the chicken or the egg conundrum." His expression turned wry. "You need the names of the spirits from the necromancer to capture them, but you can't confront the necromancer before you capture the spirits."

"That's about the size of it." I sighed. "Well, I feel a little better since I figured out what's bugging me, but now I'm wondering how to get out of this mess."

He ran his nose along my hairline to my ear and kissed me gently. "We figured out what was bugging you, but I suppose a nap is still not happening?"

"I wish I could, but I don't think so." I cupped his face with my hand. "I'm sorry. You love me so much, and yet I can't even take a nap when it would take a little of the edge off your stress. I'm the worst fiancée ever."

"Maybe so, but I knew what I was getting into." He kissed the tip of my nose and held up my left hand with our fingers entwined. "I bought this ring with the biggest, dumbest, goofiest smile on my face, and I didn't even care what the clerk in the store or Malcolm thought. I could not have looked less like an alpha werewolf in that moment if I'd tried. And the other night when I watched Daniel put Nan's ring on her finger at their wedding, all I could think about was the day I get to have that moment with you. Nothing is going to get between us and that moment, or any other moment of our lives, if I can help it—necromancers and their murderous spirits be damned."

I blinked at him. "You took Malcolm with you to buy my engagement ring?"

Sean's patented long-suffering look returned. " That was what you heard out of what I just said?"

I laughed and drew him down to me for a kiss. "I heard every word," I promised. "I'm just trying to focus on the funny part so I don't get sniffly."

"That's fair." He sighed. "I will admit Malcolm helped me choose the right ring. The tough part was listening to him give advice while not letting on to the clerk that a ghost was helping me shop."

"Welcome to my life," I said dryly. "It's tricky having a ghost sidekick sometimes, but I wouldn't trade it for anything."

My perimeter wards tingled in a way they hadn't in a very long time. I sat up abruptly. What the hell?

My confusion deepened when I looked out the window. The sun hadn't even set yet. Seriously, what the hell?

Sean was off the bed and on his feet instantly. "What's wrong?"

"Vampire," I said. "In the yard."

I had a strong suspicion who it was, too. I'd wondered when Charles would get desperate enough to talk to me. The answer, apparently, was tonight.

Sean's eyes blazed gold, and then he was gone—out the bedroom door, down the stairs, and judging by the crash from the direction of the living room, through the plywood that covered the already broken patio door, all before I made it to the upstairs hallway.

"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered as I ran.