Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) (14 page)

“Mildly?” I raised my eyebrows as I plopped against the opposite wall, stretching my legs out before me. The floor was cold and damp. Great.

“You don’t want to be asleep when the spirit arrives,” he said. From this distance, I couldn’t see the expression on his face. It was too marred by shadows. But I could imagine it. Cold, dark, stern. I wondered what had happened to this guy to make him end up like this.

“How did you end up with my dad?” I asked, kicking my sneakers at a rut in the wooden floor.

“Now’s not the time for small talk,” he said. “We need to be alert and keep our eyes and ears open.”

“Won’t you at least tell me your real name?”

A moment passed in silence before he answered. “How about this? I’ll tell you my name if you succeed in this training mission. Until then, you have to follow my instructions and stay quiet.”

“You’re seriously impossible,” I said, shaking my head. But I fell silent. I guessed if I was going to do this, I needed to do things his way.

What felt like years passed, my eyelids drooping and my mind going numb. The silence was almost as annoying as a Homecoming dance DJ. All I wanted was to get up and actually do something. Whip out the rifle, shoot a spirit in the face, cast some powerful spells. This waiting around thing wasn’t getting me any closer to learning shamanism than I had been before.

A rustle sounded from somewhere in the barn. At first, I thought John was shifting in his boots, but he hadn’t made a single noise all night long. Sitting up straight, I scanned the shadowy room.

“Holly,” he whispered so low I almost missed it. “Come over here by moving along the wall.”

Quietly, I pressed up from the floor and tiptoed my way around the barn until I was by John’s side. He stood from his crouch and pointed to the center of the barn just as the temperature dropped several degrees.

He hefted the rifle from the floor and dropped it into my hands. “Hold on to this and just watch me. Don’t actually shoot anything.”

I nodded, my palms slick with sweat. John slid his own rifle into his muscular arms and tapped his finger on the rune carved into a bright orange button just by the trigger. We’d gone over this in our training several days before, but this was the first time he’d demonstrate what happened when someone actually pressed the rune.

“All I have to do is press this button, and I will astral project far enough into the Borderland to see the spirit, but not enough to lose contact with my body.” His voice was low, almost a whisper. “Follow suit, so you can see what happens. Are you ready?”

I nodded, swallowing hard. My heart throbbed like a jackhammer against my ribcage, and my hands were so sweaty, the gun slipped around like it was made out of oil. The candle in the middle of the floor had brought the spirit here, but soon enough it would find me. I reeked of fear.

“One. Two.” John’s finger twitched as he said the last word. “Three.”

I pressed the button hard, and a zapping sound exploded in the silence. Biting magic tore at my fingers and traveled up the length of my arm. My body was engulfed by electricity, and the entire world went dark. Suddenly, the swirling mass of the Borderworld flickered in before me. Every single inch of my body felt as if I would be torn apart at the seams. I choked down a scream of pain and watched the spirit rise high in the air before us.

It hissed, catching sight of us. I wondered how much it could see if we were still partially trapped inside our bodies. I wondered if it could see our guns.

Before I could wonder any longer, a loud shot rang out. It exploded from John’s gun and tore through the space between us and the spirit. The world seemed to chug to a stop, the bullet twisting in the air, a sharp red streak left in its wake as it spun toward the spirit. A moment later, it pierced the spirit’s dark body. A tormented scream flew from its mouth, burrowed into my eardrums, and shook the very core of my bones.

The spirit exploded. Fragments of black rained down on the ground like shards of glass. They melted into the floorboards, leaving behind nothing but black stains that spread toward us like blobby fingers. My eyes were frozen to the stains, my heart still thrumming in my chest. The spirit was dead. John had killed it.

I stared in awe. Shamans had a way to truly fight back against the spirits now. Being able to kill them meant getting rid of them for good. We’d have a long time to go before we got there, but maybe we could eventually rid the world of every spirit in existence. Maybe we could make humanity safe once and for all.

The real world blinked back in around me, and the first thing I saw was John’s face hovering before mine. His hand covered my fingertips, rough and warm. I blinked and stepped back, slamming into the wall and dropping the gun to the floor.

“Are you okay?” He frowned. “You didn’t push the rune to go back into your body. I had to do it for you.”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” I swallowed and grabbed the rifle from the floor. “I just…”

“Seeing it for the first time is always tough,” he said. “They don’t die like you expect them to.”

“It exploded,” I said with a slow shake of my head. “Even though I knew your team was out there doing this, I didn’t fully realize until tonight what this means. We can kill spirits. For good.”

John flicked on his flashlight and began to pack up his supplies, blowing out the candle with one quick breath. “Now, do you see why we’re doing this?”

“We can get eliminate spirits from the world.”

“And by
we
, I hope you’re referring to your father and his team.” John gave me a sharp look.

“I want to help.” I dropped to his side and grabbed the candle from the floor. “Maybe if I talked to my dad, he’d let me join the team after you’re done training me.”

John raised his eyebrows and let out a noise that resembled a chuckle, though his lips didn’t betray the show of emotion. “I had a feeling you’d say something like this. You know what he’ll say. You’re too young.”

“You can’t be that much older than me.” I dropped the candle into his bag and stood. “I’ve had plenty of experience with spirits, and now you’re training me to the next level. I should be able to join if I want to.”

John hefted the bag onto his shoulder. “You’ll have to take that up with Bennett. It’s his call, not mine. But for tonight, we’re done.”

“Fine.” I shifted to block him from exiting the barn, a smile beginning to form. “But there’s one thing you’re forgetting. Your name.”

His lips quirked. “I guess I have to give you that. You should call me John, but my real name is Constantine.”

“Constantine?” I raised my eyebrows. “Constantine what?”

“That’s all you’re getting tonight, Holly. Be lucky I told you that much.”

My phone chose that moment to ring, zapping away every chance I had of learning more about this strange guy who was teaching me how to fight—the real way. I glanced at the readout. Laura. She was going to be so pissed when she heard I’d done this without her.

I answered the phone, noticing John a.k.a Constantine hovering by the open barn door. “What’s up, Laura?”

“Holly, where have you been?” Her voice sounded tight.

“It’s a long story. Is something wrong?” My hands gripped the phone as I prayed for anything other than more bad news.

“There’s been another attack,” she said. “You’re not going to be happy when you hear who it was.”

Bees swarmed into my ear canals as I processed Laura’s words. “Not Nathan. Please tell me it’s not Nathan.”

“Don’t worry, he’s safe.” She cleared her throat. “It was Wanda. She’s dead.”

***

When I told Constantine what had happened to Wanda, he wanted to check things out immediately. So, I told Laura to meet us at her shop in ten. Moments later, we pulled into the parking lot along the main drag, and everything was dark. The ambulance was long gone, and the only thing that gave away a troubled night was the open door, swinging back and forth on rotting hinges.

“The victim lived here?” Constantine asked as he stared at the magic shop’s gorged front door.

“This is her store, but she lives in the back.” I shook my head and shivered. “Lived.”

“And she’s selling magical items?” he asked.

“So she said.” I shifted in my seat to face him. Now that I’d spent some time around him, I could read his expressions better than his words. And the way his stony face crinkled around his eyes conveyed a combination of curiosity and confusion. “Why?”

“It just seems like a strange coincidence.” He opened the truck door and hopped outside. I followed just behind him, glancing down the street to look for Laura’s car. A pair of headlights bounded our way, but the dilapidated junker that turned into the space next to ours did not belong to my best friend. It belonged to George.

“What the hell?” I mumbled under my breath.

“Who’s that?” Constantine stiffened, and I saw his hand move to his back pocket, fingers poised as if to grab something. Interesting. So, he didn’t carry only magical weapons. I wondered why.

“That’s George. You met her a few days ago,” I said as she pushed her creaking car door open. “She’s our local weirdo.”

“Thanks, I heard that,” George said, joining us on the empty sidewalk.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, noting she wore her usual tank top, sans coat.

“I heard about what happened to Wanda and wanted to check things out.” She looked from me to John back to me again. “Which is what I’m guessing you and this army dude are doing.”

“So, Laura told you we were coming here.”

George frowned. “No, Laura’s been ignoring my texts. I guess you guys decided I was too weird for your group.”

“It’s more that we don’t know what to think, George.” I glanced at the next incoming pair of headlights. “You seem to know about things you shouldn’t, and you talk in riddles. It makes it hard to know what your angle is.”

She shrugged and headed toward the shop’s open doorway. “Have it your way.”

“What are you doing?” I twisted to watch her run her fingers along the grooves in the door.

“I’m checking things out, like I said.” George disappeared into the shop just as Laura pulled into the last space in front of Wanda’s shop.

“I’m going in, too,” Constantine said. “I don’t trust her.”

Laura climbed out of her car with eyebrows raised just as Constantine followed after George, his hand still hovering by his pocket. She frowned and joined me on the sidewalk, shrugging her hands into the deep pockets of her hoodie. “What’s that guy doing here?”

“He stayed behind to spy on me, as per my dad’s instructions.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “George showed up here, too.”

Laura’s mouth dropped open. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “She’s in there right now ‘checking things out’ for some reason.”

“Okay, this girl keeps getting weirder and weirder.” Laura frowned. “I’m sorry I brought her into things, but I had no idea she’d be like this.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

George chose that moment to emerge from the shop, a strange smile ghosting her lips. She strode past us, got in her car, and drove away. Laura and I watched, frowns pulling down the corners of our lips.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Laura finally said. “Why did she come all the way here just to leave again?”

Constantine popped his head out of the shop. “Holly, can you come here, please?”

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. The tone of his voice was full of something I hadn’t heard in it yet, and that made me more nervous than I wanted to admit. Until now, he’d been calm, collected, cool. But this wasn’t that at all.

When we stepped through the door, the whole shop seemed doused by shadows. Constantine pointed to the front desk, and when I leaned in to see what had caught his attention, a low whistle escaped from my throat. It was the same slash marks I’d just seen him make in the barn. The ones meant to lure a spirit. Off to the side, a black candle had tipped over, burning the edges of a paper.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would someone else use that rune?”

Laura frowned. “I’ve never seen that one before.”

“It’s the rune for luring a spirit,” Constantine said to Laura before turning to me. “I think there’s something else going on here besides some spirits escaping from a headstone.”

My mouth went dry. It only confirmed my thoughts, but hearing someone else say it made my worry seem all the more real. “What do you think is going on?”

“Someone brought this spirit here,” he said. “And it must have been a shaman-resistant one or this woman wouldn’t have died so quickly. I think we have another rogue spirit on our hands, and I believe someone in this town pulled it through.”

CHAPTER 13

C
onstantine’s words chilled me to the bones. There was no other explanation for the events that had happened in Seaport in the last week. There was someone behind all of this, someone who had an agenda. It was September all over again, and this time, I had no idea what to do.

We took another glance around Wanda’s shop and her tiny two-room apartment in the back, but we didn’t find anything useful. Magic supplies were everywhere, old books stacked on all spare surfaces, teacups scattered about in every shape and size. But nothing else to tell us what had happened here tonight.