Better Off Dead (23 page)

Gram looked over at Lucy, and abruptly her expression changed to worry.  “You look so pale.”

Lucy ran her hands down over either the side of her face.   “Oh, I wonder why?”

“Just breathe…” her grandmother said, turning off the interstate and then pulling onto the ramp leading back the way they’d came.  “I’ll explain everything when we get back home.”

Lucy was okay with that.  She didn’t think she could stomach an explanation right then, not with the car moving and the image of that poor little dead dog still so fresh in her mind.

GRAM
poured them both some homemade lemonade and set out some sugar cookies she’d baked just the day before.  They were coated with pink and yellow sugar crystals, and they smelled of citrus. 

“I’m shocked your brother left any,” Gram said.  “He usually eats cookies as fast as I can bake them.”

Lucy knew the cookies were delicious—she just couldn’t bring herself to touch one.  Her stomach was just so twisted in knots still.  But she did take a few sips of the lemonade.  As usual it was a perfect mixture of sweet and sour.

Finally she looked to her grandmother and said the first thing that came into her mind.  “We’re cursed, right?  The whole family has got some sort of curse on it…makes everything turn to crap, right?”  Lucy stopped and then felt tears burning at her eyes, ready to well up and trickle down her cheeks.  “Or is it just me?”

“Lucybean, sweetheart…there’s nothing wrong with you, and you are certainly not cursed.”  She said the last word with prolonged scorn.  Lucy looked up into her grandmother’s smiling eyes.  “You’ve been blessed.”

“Blessed!”  Lucy sat forward, tears streaming down her face, her voice harsh.  “Having road-kill coming to life and wanting to play isn’t a friggin’ gift!  It’s a freaking catastrophe!” 

“What you did is called necromancy.  And it is what you are…you’re a necromancer.”

“I’m not anything!”  Lucy said incredulously, pushing back from the table and standing up.  She folded her arms around herself as she turned away from her grandmother, her nails biting into her flesh.  “I’m certainly not a…whatever you just said.”

“A necromancer.”

“I’m not…and stop saying that!”  She turned, beseechingly saying, “I can’t be…it’s just so disgusting.”

Gram looked upon her granddaughter with love and empathy.  “Necromancy is a powerful gift.”  She stood and put her hands on Lucy’s shoulders.  “It’s your gift.”

Gift?
  Suddenly she remembered something.  Just a sliver of a dream, and then the image of Jeff Haas holding a dead puppy in his arms, saying it was her gift.  Lucy looked up into her grandmother’s gaze and felt a shock as she backed away from her. 

“I dreamed about this.”

Gram’s expression grew concerned.  “You’ve dreamed about this?”  She held out her hands, “This moment in the kitchen?”

“No,” Lucy shook her head and turned toward the window over the sink, staring out into the backyard.  “Not this.  Just…”  She turned back to her grandmother.  “I dreamed about the dog.  The one on the side of the road, but it wasn’t there.  It was back at my old school.”  Lucy could feel the same terror she’d felt in her dream, circling around her, practically touching her flesh.  “And my ex-boyfriend was giving the puppy to me for my birthday.”  She looked right at her grandmother.  “He said it was my gift.”        

“A prophetic dream,” Gram said, “Impressive…anything else?”

“What do you mean?”  Lucy said, incensed.  “Isn’t that enough?”  And then she looked at her grandmother with accusing eyes.  “Did you know this was going to happen to me?”

“I always knew there was a chance.  But your mother kept insisting that you had no talent.”

“That’s harsh.”

“Dark talent, Lucybean.  Lila swore that you were like her.  She never showed the slightest mystical or preternatural ability.  I never felt it from her, and truthfully I didn’t feel anything coming off you…until today.”

“Lucky me.”

“Yes…lucky you!”  Gram sounded angry.  “If it wasn’t for your gift, that vampire last night would’ve had you for dinner…literally.”

Lucy couldn’t argue with that.  Delia would’ve sucked her dry, or at the very least snapped her neck.  Lucy shook her head—the thought was just so disturbing.  Being dead, killed…it suddenly felt far too real a possibility for comfort.

“Okay.  It saved my life...but why me?”

“The gift passes from generation to generation.  My sister and I both had it.  Unfortunately your mother didn’t.  And I’m fairly positive your brother won’t get it.”

Random thought, “If that’s because he’s a guy, don’t be so sure.  He’s…” 
Should I let his secret out?
“He’s not your typical teenage boy.”

“Ah huh…”  Gram said.  “You mean, since he’s homosexual he might get it?”

Oh crap!
“I didn’t say that he was…”  Gram was giving her a hard look.  “Okay…but I didn’t tell you, okay?”

“Deal.  But no, that has nothing to do with it.  I just don’t feel anything in him.”

“But you said you didn’t feel anything coming off me either.”

Gram frowned, and then clucked her tongue.  “Good point.  We’ll both have to keep an eye on him.  No telling what kind of trouble a boy like him can get into with this power.”  She smiled.  “Though, I would love to see him being chased around by a zombie.”

“Gram!”

“Just a little one.”  A mischievous smile manifested on Gram’s lips.

“You know he has a phobia of little people?”  Lucy said.

“Seriously?”  She chuckled, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Ever since he was five.  Unlocked the parental controls on the cable and lost it when he flipped onto one of those leprechaun movies.”

“Leprechauns?”  Gram said, her expression sobering. “You’re not joking, are you?”

“It was a thing.”  Lucy waved it away with her hand.  “Now he avoids the
Wizard of Oz
and
The Lord of the Rings
like the plague.”

A goofy grin spread across Gram’s face, turning into a smile, and then she just cracked up.

“You wouldn’t think it was so funny when he freaks out at the mall when he sees a little person.  It’s embarrassing as hell.”

Gram whooped, holding her belly.  “What about little kids?  Does he freak out over them too?”

“No.  Just little grownups.”  Lucy’s face fell.  “Now, about all this dead-shit stuff.”             

“Language, Lucybean.”

“Sorry, but I don’t want dead things coming to life and attacking me.”

“They won’t attack you.  They won’t do much of anything unless you tell them to…as long as you practice controlling your power.”

Lucy shot a finger up into her grandmother’s face.  “There, I knew it!  There’s always a nasty catch…just like in the movies.”

“Lucy, dear, don’t worry.  We’ll take some time over the next few weeks and I’ll teach you to control you power.”

“Even better, why don’t you take them away?  You’ve gotta know a way.”

“Lucy.”  Gram sounded so serious.  “No one and nothing can take this from you.  It’s a gift and you need to embrace it.”

Lucy made a disgusted face.   “Gross.”

“Gross or not, seems you’re going to need it.”

Lucy frowned.

“It’s already saved your life.  It will again.”

~*~

Gram gave Lucy a small, though rather thick book to read.  The cover was so faded and worn Lucy couldn’t make out the title, but the title page was more than clear enough to make Lucy’s skin crawl. 

A Guide to Necromancy:  Harnessing Your Affinity and Power Over the Dead, Calling Spirits, Animating Corpses, Fashioning Assorted Body Parts Into Zombies, and Taking Death Into You.

Lucy dropped the book on the kitchen table when she read that last part.  The thought of putting zombies together from spare parts was bad enough, but taking death into her.  That wasn’t happening. 

“Taking death into you?”

“That one’s a little advanced, but seeing how strong you power is right out of the box, as they say, I’ll have to teach it to you soon.  It’s pretty much the ability to draw strength and power from the dead.”

“No offence, but I don’t want to draw anything from the dead.  I just want to keep them from following me around, okay?”

“Lucy,” Gram’s voice went weary, “this isn’t something you can control enough to quell.  Once the power activates it doesn’t just go dormant, even if you don’t consciously use it, it reaches out on its own and works its magic.”

“Magic?”

“Yes.  What we do is a form of magic.  A darker, older and far more primal magic than your common witch would practice…but magic all the same.  And magic is what makes vampires live, and werewolves…werewolves.  It’s in everything supernatural.”

“Fine, but I really don’t want to do anything with dead things.”

Gram shrugged.  “Either you master your power through use, or you ignore it and it reaches out and does things on its own.  And you won’t be able to control what it does, or what it brings.”

Lucy felt a chill as she waited for her grandmother to continue.  She knew there was more.

“And if you can’t control what your power brings forth, then it might end up killing you.  It might even kill others.”

Yep,
Lucy gulped
.  There was more.  Must stop asking questions!

“Anyhow,” Gram said, flipping through the book.  “This volume has a lot to teach you.  And even though you find it repulsive, necromancy has helped this family more than you know.

“After your grandfather passed, I was a single mother with a mortgage and a five-year-old little girl to support.  So I waited tables at a little diner by day, and made extra money at night raising spirits and animating corpses.”

“Ewww!  Now that’s disgusting!”

“It paid off this house and kept my family fed without public assistance or having to marry a man just for support.  To me, that’s more than reason enough to have done it.”

“Do you still…”

“No.  My power has faded quite a bit over the last decade or so.  So it’s good that my child is grown.”

“But why would anyone want to bring the dead back to life?”

“Well,” she said matter-of-factly, “there are as many reasons for it as there are hearts to want it: to ask forgiveness, to say good bye, to find out if the deceased was cheating, or where they hid the insurance policy or the family fortune.” 

“Sounds horrible,” Lucy shivered just thinking about it.

“It is.”  Gram reached out and took her granddaughter’s hand.  “And we animate the dead.  We don’t bring them back to life.  No matter how life-like they may seem, they are dead.”

“So, the vampire chick—Delia—she’s dead?”

“Technically,” Gram said, looking up to the kitchen’s stucco ceiling, contemplating.  “Yes, vampires are dead.  They were living, but they die when they are made vampire.  Takes longer than you’d think, sometimes more than a week.  And then a magic, somewhat like what we use to animate the dead, fills them with something very near life, but just as far removed from life too.  Even the pure-bloods.”

“Pure-bloods?”

“That’s a vampire or werewolf that was born that way.  There always has to be one or both parents already affected.”

Lucy thought on that for a moment.

              “So that’s why I could tell her to let me go.”  It started to make a sense that really wasn’t.  But it did explain why she’d obeyed, and why each time Lucy had done it she’d felt the life drain out of her.  She still felt pretty exhausted, and that was after a solid eight hours of sleep.

“That’s what’s confusing,” Lucy’s grandmother said.  “I’ve never heard of a necromancer having any power over a vampire before.  It’s interesting.”

“Interesting?  Try disturbing.”  Lucy drained her coffee mug a bit.  “But in the handy sort of way.”

“Indeed.”  Her grandmother regarded her with a stern gaze.  “And that brings me to how and why you’ve placed yourself in harm’s way?”

“I didn’t do anything to that vamp-chick.”  Lucy said, incensed.

Gram raised her eyebrows dramatically.  “Didn’t you, dear?  You’re voluntarily playing the role of her lover’s fiancée.”

“It was her idea…or so I’ve heard.”

“Yes, but even if she weren’t a supernatural being, she would still have a hard time once she started realizing what all that involved.”

Lucy had to admit, once Gabriel had pulled Delia away from her and she’d heard the resulting angry exchange—and had witnessed the naked (ha, ha) emotional connection the two shared, she actually had kind of understood.  And when a vampire can smell the guy you just kissed on you, you can’t really imagine you’d get away with it.

It all just felt so damn confusing.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her…” Lucy looked to her grandmother beseechingly.  “And I didn’t want to lie to you.”

“What’s done is done,” Gram said, “but I do want to know why you’ve done all this?”