Affairs of the Dead (7 page)

* * *

When I got home, Luna immediately let me know how enraged she was that she had not yet been fed or taken out for the night. If she was a bigger dog, she probably would have mauled me. As it was, she yapped and nipped at my feet until I filled up her food bowl. Then she was quiet for a full ten minutes before she started pawing and barking at the front door, dragging her leash in her mouth.

While she ate, I’d changed clothes, thankful beyond all belief to get out of those pumps. Then I took her for a longer walk than usual to make up for being so late. Poor Luna had to deal with a scatterbrained, slightly neglectful owner like me, but hey, I had managed to keep her alive for over six years. Even though I’d kept her little bladder waiting numerous times, she’d been broken out of doing her business in the house. She was so good to me, and I didn’t deserve it.

Once we got back inside, Luna was pacified and curled up on her doggy bed to nap. I could now take a shower and grab something to eat, but there’d be no curling up and sleeping for me just yet. I had to wait for Ethan to return, and before he came, I had to do something about the fact that the reanimation check was tomorrow.

First, I retrieved a bag of supplies I kept hidden under a floorboard in my bedroom closet. I then rummaged around in my handbag until I pulled out a flat, circular, dark-blue rune stone that I had stolen from Trevor. My visit hadn’t been only to antagonize him, and when I’d been rifling through the rune stones on his table, I had really been looking for this particular stone.

It was a binding rune, and not only was it extremely rare, it was also illegal. Thus, the Underground was the perfect place to sniff one out, and I was glad when I’d spotted several in Trevor’s possession. It would have been great if I only ever needed one of these, but for some reason, they became inactive after one use. I had a stash of defunct binding runes under the floorboard because I couldn’t risk throwing them away and having them found and traced back to me.

I moved aside my coffee table and the rug under it, then emptied the contents of the bag and picked up a vial of white powder. After carefully drawing a circle on the floor with the powder, I sat back on my heels for a moment so I could focus. I was confident in my ability to do this, but I always felt nervous when it actually came down to doing it.

Long ago, my grandmother had been the one who taught me how to hide my reanimation power. She was also a reanimator and had lived her entire life without being found out.

My grandmother had her own secret supply of binding runes, but after she died, all I had was what she’d left behind. When they’d been used up, I had to find more on my own. That’s where the Underground came in handy.

The process of binding my power was exhausting, and the reason I was nervous was because even though I knew it worked, I still didn’t know much about the powers of the binding stone. My grandmother’s knowledge was all I had: it was used to bind. I had studied and researched rune stones a lot while I was in training school, but there was decidedly less to find about obscure and illegal runes. That meant that even though the stone helped me hide a part of my power, that didn’t mean that was all it was capable of doing. I always felt like I was taking a dangerous risk whenever I used it.

But when my options were using an illegal rune to protect myself versus having my reanimation power removed and possibly going insane from it, I was gonna go with door number one.

I opened several other vials of powder and spent the next twenty minutes using the powders to draw runes inside the circle I’d made. The powders were made up of finely ground rune stones. They were different colors, and each had a different role to play in the ritual I had to perform.

After the runes were drawn, I placed the binding stone in the middle of the circle. Keeping my hand on the stone, I channeled energy into it. After a few moments, it started to glow, and as I filled it with energy, the stone’s power activated the runes I had drawn until they were all glowing, including the circle that encompassed them.

Now came the part where I concentrated like a motherfucker, because I had to give the binding stone only my reanimation power. If I wasn’t careful, I wasn’t at all sure the stone wouldn’t just suck me dry and leave me with no power at all, or hell, no life. And since I was channeling a lot of my personal energy into the stone to keep it active, I had to be careful, because if I took too long and the stone exhausted me, I’d be in big trouble.

I closed my eyes and focused on the power inside me that responded to reanimation. It was easy to differentiate, and I actually did picture it to be a streak of red in a sea of blue. Whereas my necromancer magic felt warm, my reanimation power felt hot, probably because it was more focused on things that were alive than things that were dead. I had to peel away that streak of red and push it outside of myself and into the rune stone, where it would be stored until I was ready to take it back.

It might have made sense for me to just keep my reanimation power permanently bound in the stone, and I had tried to do that once, but after a few days, I’d felt sick, started hallucinating, and felt like something was attacking me from the inside out. It was like I was slowly dying. When I took my power back, I’d instantly felt better.

If that was what it was like to live with my reanimation power permanently stripped, then I was going to do whatever it took to ensure that never happened. I couldn’t blame Trevor for running, and I was appalled for all those who’d had no choice but to succumb to the stripping. It was no secret that a lot of them ended up in asylums afterward.

I grew progressively more tired the longer I sat there with my hand on the stone, trying to peel away a part of my metaphysical body. The fact that my necromancer magic thought I was trying to channel it somewhere and was willing to go didn’t help. I had to constantly hold it back while at the same time try to take something from it and give it away. It was like holding back an ocean while trying to let only a specific wave ripple through.

My body ached, my body temperature plummeted, and I started to feel light-headed. Still, it was working. The binding rune was taking my reanimation power.

Once I felt it completely leave me, I opened my eyes and lifted my hand off the stone. I wanted to collapse, but I had to deactivate the circle first. It was never wise to leave a rune circle active. The magic within it could become inclined to do things you didn’t want it to do. The process would take a few minutes since I had to draw my energy out of each rune until there was no more glowing. I went at it even though my eyelids drooped, and my body felt weak, like my bones had dissolved into water.

“Hey, I got a shirt!”

My head snapped up and I saw Ethan walking toward me. I’d left my door unlocked and told him to let himself in.

“Stop!” The tone of my voice made him freeze, but he’d already touched the outer circle. Some of the powder was displaced.

He looked down at his foot then looked at me. “Did I do something bad?” He slowly slid his foot back.

“I don’t think so,” I said, though my heart was thumping fast.

I had just about finished deactivating the circle when he’d come up to it, so I hoped it had been dormant before he touched it. I stared at the runes for a moment, and thought I saw them give a faint, pulsing glow, including the binding rune, but that could just be my eyes playing tricks on me because I was so exhausted. I felt no energy coming from the runes though, so I was reassured that they were no longer active. I released the breath I’d been holding.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Just give me a few minutes and stay away from the circle.”

Ethan nodded and moved away, sitting on the sofa and watching as I used a handheld vacuum to clean up the powder. Now that the runes were no longer active, they were easy to clean up, and nothing worked better than a vacuum. Afterward, I put my bag of supplies back under the floorboard in my bedroom, including the binding stone. Once the inspection was over tomorrow, I would take my power back. I then flopped down onto my bed and closed my eyes. I was so weak and tired, my vision was literally spinning. Keeping my eyes open made me dizzy.

“Uh, Selene?” The voice outside my door reminded me that I had a ghost waiting on me. I so could not deal with doing the tracking spell for Ethan’s physical body tonight. I literally had no energy to do it.

“Come in,” I said. I cracked my eyes open to see Ethan tentatively open my bedroom door and walk in. I forced myself to sit up as he came over to the bed. I took the shirt he held.

“Dragonball Z?” I said, glancing at the shirt. “Anime nerd, huh?” He didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. I spied something else in his hands. “And what’s that?”

“My DS,” he said. “It’s a video game system…”

“I know what it is,” I said, laughing. “I just have no idea why you brought it.” I took the DS from him as well, then beckoned him to lean forward and took the runes from around his neck, making him intangible again.

“Couldn’t I keep them on?” he said sadly. “It’s been nice being able to touch things. I thought I’d be able to play my game.”

“They’re about to become dormant anyway. The energy isn’t everlasting.” I dropped the shirt and runes on the floor and fell back onto the bed.

“So I bought you one of my shirts. Shouldn’t you get started?” He wasn’t even trying to hide his anxiety.

“Ethan, I just performed a ritual that has quite literally depleted my energy, so I don’t have enough juice to do the tracking spell tonight. I’ll do it tomorrow, promise. Your body will still be walking around with someone else in it then.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Okay. Guess I’ll just go wander around…”

“No,” I said sharply, which made his eyes widen. “If you go out wandering, you run the risk of some other necromancer on track duty coming across you. Even though they might not be able to use rune stones on you, there’s no telling how they’ll try to deal with you. So I suggest you stay here. Got it?”

Ethan nodded, looking even more sad and pathetic, but I was too tired to feel much sympathy for his predicament right this moment.

“Great,” I said, letting my body completely relax and closing my eyes again. “But just don’t stand there and watch me sleep. It’s creepy.”

Chapter Six

The next morning Ethan was sitting on my couch, looking no less pathetic than he had last night. I couldn’t imagine how he had passed the time. Ghosts don’t sleep, and without the runes to make him tangible, he wouldn’t have been able to use the remote to watch TV or play his game.

I hadn’t recovered enough to charge up some energy runes for him, so I decided to leave the television on so he’d have something to occupy himself with.

“What channel would you like?” I asked.

“Food Network,” he said, to which I raised an eyebrow. He shrugged. “I like to cook. Well, I like to learn.”

“Impresses the ladies, I’m sure,” I said with a smile.

“That’s not why I like to cook,” Ethan muttered. If he wasn’t a ghost, he’d be blushing. I laughed.

“Sure, sure. Hey, I’m not knocking your game, a home-cooked meal has gotten me into bed more than once.” I switched on the Food Network, then reiterated my speech about him staying indoors. I also promised to do the tracking ritual when I came home later. He tried to persuade me to do it now, but other than not having fully recovered yet, I was, as usual, on the verge of being late, and didn’t help myself by taking the time to play with Luna when we came back from our walk.

Eventually, I got myself together. I didn’t feel like doing sexy office attire today, so I dressed down in dark-washed trouser jeans and a purple blouse and headed to work. I felt a little unstable without my reanimation power, but I wasn’t in the danger zone yet. It took a few days of being without it before I’d feel like I was dying a slow, torturous death.

When I got to work, the entire suite was filled with restless energy. Andrew stood in the middle of the cubicle area, talking to people.

“Our boss has deigned to come down off his mountain and mingle among his peons,” I said when I walked up to Andrew. He chuckled. Always took my sense of humor in stride, he did.

“I’m trying to calm some nerves,” Andrew said, his eyes quickly looking over my outfit. It may not have been as sexy as yesterday’s number, but I liked to think I looked good in whatever I wore.

People’s faces reflected what I’d expected to see today—extreme anxiety. They would have found out first thing when they arrived that it was inspection day. Not everyone who carried reanimation power knew they had it, because it manifested at different times for different people. I didn’t know I had the power until I was in my teens and had accidentally yanked the neighbor’s dog’s soul out of his body. Usually reanimation needed specific rune stones, and a lot of concentration, to perform, but the first time the power awakens, it’s wild and uncontrolled, so I was lucky it was a dog’s soul I’d pulled out. Not every newly awakened reanimator is so lucky.

Micah was among those standing near Andrew, and when he caught my eye, I didn’t quite understand the look on his face. He didn’t look friendly, but there was also some other emotion that he seemed to be trying to rein in. I hoped he didn’t make waves for me today. Warning me about the search didn’t mean he planned to keep quiet about me.

I decided to try and improve the odds that he would keep his mouth shut by being nice, so I gave him a smile and wiggled my fingers at him. He immediately turned and walked away. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Yet I was moving away from Andrew and his crowd toward Micah’s cubicle. Playing with fire, who, me?

“What’s up your butt?” I asked, leaning my hip against the edge of his desk. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best opening line I could have come up with.

“You get on my last nerve, do you know that?” Micah said. He was staring very decidedly at his computer screen though it was booting up and there wasn’t anything of interest to see there.