13. The Quick and the Dead

Martha was right. The air felt charged. I searched my mind for the dead—not the cold, green blips of vamps, but the haze of the spirit world. My stomach dropped. A lightheaded swoop of dizziness meant that a moment later I was flat on my back, staring up at the undersides of branches.

The black void of the dead swirled in my mind in a kind of vortex. Afraid I'd soon be sick, I rested my hands on my stomach and breathed deeply. It was too much. I'd done this in New Orleans as well. When I'd tried to find the dead in St. Louis Cemetery #2, I'd opened myself to a darkness too vast to navigate.

I did now what I'd done then. I pulled back, focusing on the dead in close proximity. Mind awash in gray mist, I tried to differentiate the spirits crowding around me. They were legion, but I methodically discerned and acknowledged each one, and in doing so, helped them to regain individual forms.

Remembering I wore the wicche glass pendant around my neck, I pushed the nausea into the glass ball and felt better instantly. Sitting up, I found myself surrounded by hundreds of ghosts jostling for position, trying to get close. Positive I'd gone about this all wrong, with pale, ghostly eyes staring at me, I said the first thing I could think of.

"If anyone would like to pass on, I can help. I've done it before. You need only reach out and touch my hands."

As one, the crowd stepped back. Well, that was clear enough.

"What on earth do you think you're doing?" The crowd parted as Martha glared at me. "You couldn't leave me in peace for one day?"

"No. I'm sorry. I wasn—I didn't intend to disturb you. You'd said there was power for us here, so close to the dead, so I was trying to teach myself how to find them, to call them."

"Too strong for your own good," she grumbled as she made her way across the courtyard. "All of you, scat!"

A ripple went through the ghosts, but most remained where they were standing.

She sat at a small table with chairs in the center of the courtyard. "You called them. You get rid of them."

Staring out at hundreds of hazy faces, my stomach dropped again. "How?"

She drummed her fingers on the table, waiting for me to figure it out. Okay, I could do this. Channeling my inner Clive, I adopted an imperious tone and said, "You may all leave us now." I added a mental push and they scattered. Nice.

"Good. Did you use the wicche glass I gave you to hold the payment?" She studied me from across the courtyard and I suddenly felt stupid sitting on a tabletop.

"Of course." I slid off and took the seat across from her. "I mean, eventually. Once I thought of it, yes."

Giving an exasperated shake of her head, she pulled her shawl close around her shoulders. "Judging by the recent crowd, you've learned how to locate and call the dead. Good."

Shrugging one shoulder, I explained, "I have no idea if what I'm doing is correct. I found them the way I find vampires. Self-taught over here. I could be doing it all wrong."

"It worked, didn't it? That's all that matters." She ran a fingertip along a shallow groove in the wood. "Are there specific spells for what we do? Yes. Do you need to learn them? No. Given your little experiment, you've already proven you have enough power to call all the dead on the West Coast to you."

Her gaze slipped off my face as she stared over my shoulder, into the vast, dark forest. "There aren't many true necromancers left. A few who've inherited a bit of power, the ones who need the spells. Once every few generations, a Corey is born with our gift." She paused, shifting her gaze back to me. "We usually aren't alive at the same time. This overlap, as far as I've been able to determine, is quite unusual."

"How do you research something like that?"

"I have the Corey grimoire. The first few pages contain a family tree that goes back centuries. I'll pass it to you, but not yet. I'm still searching for a way to deal with my niece. I'm sure there's something in the book that will work against her. I just haven't found it yet."

A low, almost inaudible murmuring emanated from the forest. I turned sharply, staring into the trees, the deep shadows. I saw nothing, but I could feel a presence.

"What is it?" Martha asked.

"There's something out there, watching, listening." I angled my chair to the side, not wanting the forest, or anyone hiding in it, to be at my back.

Martha closed her eyes, tipping her head to the side. Almost instantly her shoulders lost their tension and she called, "Pippin, come out."

There was a full minute of silence while we waited. A mad rush of twittering sounded before a loud, "Shh," and then a tiny person climbed up the gnarled tree root and stared at us.

"I'm closed today, Pippin."

"Why?" His voice was high, the word little more than a bird's chirp. He appeared to be dressed in leaves and blossoms. He looked like a tiny, six-inch-tall human with light hair, pointed ears, and soft green skin.

"Is he a pixie?"

"I'mstandingrighthere." His voice was a bright bell in the stillness and so fast, it took my brain a moment to catch up.

"Sorry."

He sneered at my apology and turned his attention back to Martha. "Whyareyouclosed?Where'sGaladriel?"

Martha's hand clenched on the table, but her voice betrayed no distress. "Gad had to go back home. She'd been hurt badly."

After a flurry of tiny chirping sounds coming from every direction, Pippin asked, "WhohurtGaladriel?"

"I guess I did," I explained. "Something that looked like a troll or an Orc came out of the mirror yesterday and attacked me. Galadriel healed me."

"Whoareyou?WhyisFaerieattackingyou?"

"This is my grandniece Sam. As to why, we have no idea."

"NevergoodwhenFaerietakesadisliking." Frightened chirps accompanied that statement.

"If you hear anything in the wind, in the rustling of the leaves, you will tell me, won't you?"

Pippin looked over his shoulder at the multitude of pixies I could hear but couldn't see, and then turned back to us. "Betcha." He hopped off the log and returned to invisibility.

"I'll get out of your hair now." Poor woman; she just wanted to be left alone and I had to cause a commotion outside her door.

When I started to rise, she waved me back down. "The next part is extremely important. You know how to find and call them, but you must always remember to give them a choice." She paused, letting that sink in.

"Choose your words carefully. It must always be a request. If you start commanding the dead, given your power, you will create a mindless army. They will be compelled to do your bidding. In overtaking their will, you will become a black wicche."

"Got it." I went cold at the thought. "Always put it in the form of a question."

"Yes. It's also quite helpful to create a relationship with one particular spirit, one with whom you share an understanding, one who can be trusted. The dead, like the living, have their own histories, their own wants and needs. You could be giving valuable information to one who passes it on to any number of mildly talented spell casters."

That could be a real problem, considering the number of powerful people I kept company with, people who wouldn't thank me for my inadvertent breech of secrecy. "So, how would I go about finding someone trustworthy?"

"Has anyone already made themselves known to you?" At my head shake, she continued, "I have Rose. We were children together, neighbors and best friends. When we were teenagers, there was an accident. We left at three in the morning to drive to Tahoe for a ski day. After a week of temps in the fifties and sixties during the day, there'd been a cold snap overnight. Rose hit a patch of black ice and we slid, spinning, across the freeway.

"We hit an eighteen-wheeler going south. Driver's side. Rose was killed instantly. The big rig sustained minimal damage. There was so much blood, bright red against the white snow. I had whiplash and a concussion, but that was it. They told me Rose had died on impact. She appeared to me for the first time while I was in the hospital."

She tied the ends of her shawl in a knot. "I thought they'd lied to me, that it had been some cruel joke. She looked fine. Beautiful, really. No blood, no damage of any kind. It took a long, very confusing conversation—one I assumed was caused by my concussion—for me to understand that she was dead. She was dead but I could see and speak with her."

"I'm so sorry about your friend." Poor teenaged Martha, her best friend dying beside her.

"Hmm? Oh." She patted my hand. "Thank you. It took me by surprise, you see. Up till then, I'd shown no gift for magic. I was a failure at every lesson. My sister Mary was the star pupil. I was the family disappointment, the one they didn't discuss, the one who never seemed to make it into family pictures."

She let out a gust of breath. "And who would have guessed I was still harboring resentment over that?" Shaking her head, she continued, "Once it was discovered that I was one of the rare Corey necromancers, I was welcomed back into the family with open arms. I knew their true faces by then, though. Aside from my sister, your grandmother, they could all go to hell for all I cared.

"But that's neither here nor there. The point was Rose. She was my dear friend, in life and in death. I can call her and ask for help when I need it. Your homework," she said with a smile, "is to think of someone, now dead, who would be loyal to you. Someone restless, who never left this plane. Don't ever try to call someone back who's crossed."

She stood, a bit shakily, and raised a hand in farewell to the pixies in the woods. "Enough for now. I want to rest." She shuffled off, back toward the Wicche Glass tree. "Gad waits for me in my dreams," she murmured.

When I stepped through the spelled gate, I checked the time on my phone. That couldn't be right. I checked the date, to make sure I hadn't lost a full day. Nope. I walked out of the Wicche Glass Tavern one minute after I'd walked in.

Wondering why time was on my side today, I set out on the long run home. The Slaughtered Lamb was closed until further notice. The vamps wouldn't be awake for training for hours yet. I had the afternoon free. Altering my route, I ran along Skyline Boulevard and the Great Highway, straight to the San Francisco Zoo.