Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (Dead Things Series Book 1) (30 page)

50

MACE

M
ace watched as Cael tried to digest the story Quinn told him. Periodically, he would look at Mace for confirmation but Mace would only shrug. He hadn’t been there but the boy had no reason to lie. He could tell the reaper found the story as bizarre as he had. Nothing about Kai’s situation made sense.

“So you’re saying he found her in New Orleans?”

“Yes.”

“How’d he get there?”

Quinn looked confused at such an obvious question, “He drove.”

“Your friend and the girl, his sister, drove out of the city, unescorted?”

“What? Yeah, what do you mean unescorted?”

Cael didn’t answer, just leaned back in his chair. “What happened when he saved the girl?”

“They brought her back to Belle Haven.”

Cael shook his head, tapping his clothed wrist, “What happened to his mark? The girl’s name?”

“It disappeared.”

He nodded as if this is what he thought he’d say. “Your friend is being set up.”

Quinn sat up straighter, “How do you know that?”

“Collectors don’t collect people they know. They certainly don’t collect family members, which I’m willing to bet your friend suspected all along. Collectors also tend to work within certain…territories. Long distance travel isn’t convenient in our line of work. They wouldn’t have sent him to collect her all the way in New Orleans. This had to have been another red flag for him. Had this been a legitimate collection, the name wouldn’t have disappeared simply because you rescued the girl. Death will find a way. Just because she thwarted it once, doesn’t mean it won’t try again. The Grove likes to pretend they maintain some sort of balance but, in reality, the balance has maintained itself just fine since the beginning.”

“So it’s like the movie Final Destination? Like, if Ember was really supposed to die, death would have just kept chasing Ember until she finally did?”

Mace chuckled at the reapers confused expression but Quinn didn’t notice. He was grinning, his look of relief making him look even younger than he already did. “This is great. If the universe never meant for Ember to die, Kai didn’t do anything wrong. The Grove can’t come after him.”

Cael sighed. “I said she wasn’t meant to die, I didn’t say they couldn’t come after him.”

“What? But why?”

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to get your friend to that cemetery in New Orleans. They obviously wanted the girl brought back to Belle Haven. That doesn’t mean the Grove won’t make an example out of him. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t the Grove’s intention all along.”

“The Grove may be setting up Kai?” Quinn asked, bewildered. “That makes no sense. He’s not even a good reaper. He doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time.”

“You said the sister, she’s a banshee?”

Quinn looked uncomfortable at the sudden shift in topics. “Well, yeah, sort of, her powers were dormant for a long time.”

“Let me guess, until the cousin came back into the picture.”

Quinn swallowed hard, not sure how much to tell the reaper. “Um, yes, I guess so. Why?”

Mace watched as the collector started putting the pieces together. He knew he’d say nothing more than he had to but Mace would love to know what Cael was really thinking, “Listen, kid. I can’t say for sure why anybody would go to these extremes to set all this in motion, but tell your friends to be careful. If the Grove didn’t start this, somebody with a great deal of power did. If the girl’s name disappeared off his arm, he can argue she was never meant to die in the first place. If they try to punish him anyway, you know it was the Grove who set this in motion. But I doubt that will be a real comfort once they get ahold of you.”

“Me?”

“All of you. You’ve all been complacent in Kai’s perceived criminal act. The Grove, should they see fit, could punish all of you.”

“But what if it wasn’t the Grove?”

“Then you should pray it’s nothing worse.” He stood abruptly. “I have to go.”

“But, wait-” Quinn started.

Cael held up his hand, “I’ve said all I can say. I’ve nothing else to tell you.”

Quinn slumped, shoving his hat back down on his head, defeated. “Okay, thanks.”

Cael looked at Mace, “You and me…this isn’t over. If you survive the Grove-which I’m sure somehow you will-we’re going to finish what we started in Nashville.”

Mace nodded once.

When Cael reached the door, he looked back at Quinn, “See ya ‘round, kid.”

51

EMBER

E
mber cursed as she tripped over another hidden root, ankle twisting painfully in the dark. It was uncharacteristically cold. Cold enough Ember wore an appropriated flannel shirt from Kai’s closet. In her defense, the sudden cold snap caught them all off guard. “Please tell me whatever we are doing out here is worth it because this is literally the worst day ever.”

Tristin whipped around and Ember squinted against the blinding glare of the other girl’s flashlight, shielding her eyes.

“Don’t you want to know what’s in the book we found in your father’s office? The book he probably used to perform creepy blood magic on you?”

Ember sighed. She did. She really did but they had been trudging through the woods for hours. Okay, according to her phone it was twenty minutes but her feet hurt like it was hours. Even in jeans and boots, she couldn’t shake the feeling that things were crawling up her pant legs. The sounds of the woods were much louder when you were amongst them and not just enjoying them from the back porch. The tree frogs calling to each other sounded like thousands of angry crickets. Bugs buzzed past her ears, landing on any available inch of skin. She decided she definitely hated the woods.

She tried to keep up but Tristin had the advantage of knowing where they were going so instead she settled for following the beam of light bouncing from her cousin’s flashlight. “Is it much further?” Ember asked, slapping her neck and wiping the corpse of a bug on her pant leg. That was one animal she wouldn’t be bringing back.
“I thought mosquitos didn’t like the cold,” she muttered to herself.

“No, you big baby, it’s right up here.”

She stopped at a clearing surrounded by sand pines and dropped to her knees near a large stone.

Ember cocked a brow at her. “Really? You hid the book under a rock?”

Tristin pulled a box from the ground and opened the piece of cloth that protected it.
“As opposed to what? Hiding it in a spot that looked like every other spot in the middle of sixty acres of woodlands?”

Tristin sat, parking herself against the trunk of a thicker tree. Ember had little choice but to join her. They looked at each other before Tristin opened the cover. It wasn’t as old as Ember would have thought. Somebody had handwritten the text in several scripts and different colored ink. Tristin fanned through the pages rapidly, just to see if it was the same throughout.

Ember propped the flashlight against her knee so she could shine the light on the pages.
“What is it?”

“It’s a
grimoire
. A spell book. Probably your families.”

It seemed crazy. Somebody in her family had painstakingly labeled each of the pages with the name of each spell, the list of ingredients and detailed instructions. It looked like an old family cookbook.

Ember supposed essentially it was, except instead of her Grandmother’s meatloaf recipe it was a recipe ‘
To Release a Spirit from this Plain’
. She and Tristin silently flipped through pages with titles with mundane headings like ‘
To Find a Lost Item
’ and ‘
To Bond with Your Familiar
’ interspersed with much darker things such as ‘
To Invoke a Familial Curse
’ and ‘
To Bind a Witch’s Magic
’.

“That’s it,” Ember cried, jabbing her finger at the spell. “That has to be it.”

They both leaned closer. The ingredient list read like something from a nightmare. Coffin nails, viper’s venom, graveyard dust, blood of the intended, the jawbone of a corpse. There was a list of seeds and herbs as well. The purification ritual was exactly as described by her uncle in excruciating detail. Her father had poisoned himself a little bit every day of the last twelve years to keep her protected.

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, cheeks flushing. She was not a crier. Why did this keep happening to her? Especially in front of Tristin. The girl already thought she was useless.

Tristin reached into her pocket and handed her a tissue. “Here, I brought this in case you started leaking again,” she told her without looking up.

They flipped a page and Tristin stopped short at a page entitled, ‘
To Protect Yourself from a Banshee’s Scream
’. Tristin sucked in a sharp breath at the spell.

“Protect yourself? What does that mean?” Ember asked.

“How should I know?” Tristin snapped.

Ember read aloud. ‘“Caveat: This spell will only protect the user from the lethal scream of a fully grown banshee. It cannot prevent the death foretold by the warning wail of the banshee only the lethal scream she uses to kill her prey. Coat a talisman in the mixture and keep with you always.’” Ember turned the light towards the girl who was pale under her tan. “Banshee’s can kill people?”

Tristin said nothing for a long while, “I guess so.”

Ember side eyed her cousin, trying to pick up any emotional queues. She and Tristin were just starting to form an uneasy alliance and she didn’t want to take two steps back. Tristin wanted an active power but one that killed people? They were quiet long enough that all Ember could hear was her own teeth chattering in the quiet of the woods.

“So, you may get an active power after all.” Ember said slowly, looking back at the book in her lap before finally asking, “And how do we feel about this new information?”

“We don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

Ember’s brows furrowed, “Wait, isn’t this why you went to New Orleans in the first place? I thought you wanted to know about what you are.”

“No. That is why we told Isa we wanted to go to New Orleans. We actually went to see if any of the books there said anything about how to save Kai from the Grove. I don’t care about my banshee powers.”

She was lying but Ember didn’t call her on it. What was the point?

They jumped as something vibrated between them, both embarrassed when they realized it was Tristin’s phone.

Tristin frowned at Isa’s smiling face on her screen. “Hey, Isa. You guys home early?”

She could hear the wolf’s frantic tone but not her words. Tristin’s already pale face went corpse white. All she said was, “When?”

There was another long stream of conversation from the other end of the phone before she said,
“Okay.”

She stabbed the end call button and began to flip through the pages of the
grimoire
with furious determination.

“What is going on?”

Tristin ignored her, tearing through the pages with so much speed Ember thought she would rip them in two. When she hit the end of the book a second time, she screamed, flinging the book far into the woods.

“Are you crazy? What’s wrong? What is happening?” Ember asked, jumping to her feet to retrieve the book. It was all they had. It was all she had left of her father.

Tristin stood brushing her legs off and heading back towards the car. “Let’s go. Hurry.”

She snagged Tristin’s shoulder, yanking her back around. “Tristin, stop. What’s going on? What is it?”

Tristin swallowed hard, “They’re coming. They’re coming tonight.”

“What? Who?”

“The Grove.”

Ember’s body went numb, as if somebody dumped a bucket of ice water on her head. They were out of time.
Tristin snagged her phone and tried to dial her brother.

It went straight to voicemail. She made a noise like a whimper. “Let’s go.”

She started to walk but Tristin snatched her arm, “Are you crazy? Leave that here.” She jabbed a finger at the book she was holding. “Possession of that book is a death sentence.”

52

MACE

“H
ello, Shelby.”

“Are you insane?”

Mace ducked as a stapler sailed past his head. “I’m not the one flinging office supplies at my guests.”

“You brought a human and a reaper-you brought teenagers-to my place of business?”

The woman behind the desk glowered at him, yellow eyes luminous in the dim light of her office. If she’d had a tail, it’d be twitching in agitation. She raked long red nails through inky black hair. “You know, you’ve done a lot of stupid things in the last couple of centuries but this?”

“Now you are just being melodramatic. They are harmless.”

“Don’t play with me. You know exactly what I mean. Trying to get my hands on this little item almost got me killed.”

So she was angry about the job then. He shrugged, “That’s why we pay so well.”

She sneered at him. “I don’t find you charming. In fact, I loathe you.”

“Well then, how about we finish doing our exchange and then I collect my charges and leave your sight.”

She gestured to a small crate in the corner. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m not going to do anything with it. I’m a simple courier.” He smiled wanly.

“Cut the crap, Mace. What is he doing with Osiris’ blade?”

Mace’s eyes cut to the box, smile faltering. He’d lied to him. He shouldn’t be surprised. He was hardly one to talk; he was lying as well, but for good reason. This changed everything.

“He doesn’t really include me in the details. I’m more here for the wet work,” he told her absently, head spinning.

“You’re lying,” she growled, revealing razor sharp teeth.

“Not this time. I really don’t know his plans,” he lied. “What about that little matter I asked you to look into?”

She dropped her elbows to her desk and stared at him as if he was mad. “You must really think I’m stupid.”

Mace sighed, “I get that a lot. It’s not true though. I think you’re very smart. One of the smartest people I know, in fact. It’s just my face, it tends to throw people off.”

Her nostrils flared. “Cut the crap, Mace. I know all about your little reanimator. Everybody does.”

He forced his face to be expressionless. “Do they?”

“Yes, but I know something they don’t, thanks to you.”

“What’s that?” he asked, boredom dripping into his voice.

She smiled in triumph. “She’s not a reanimator.”

“That’s not true. She raised a rather manky looking mutt just the other day. Dodgy looking thing but she loves him. Reapers,” he shook his head. “What can you do?”

She smirked at him, not buying a word he said. “Really? Then why ask about the amulet?”

“Interested third party. Doing a little subcontracting.”

“So, you want me to believe that in the span of a month you’ve managed to find a reanimator, your employer develops a desperate need for the blade of Osiris and you have a ‘third party’ interested in blocking the magic of a necromancer. Wow, things sure are picking up in the reaper community.”

“Did you find the amulet or not?” he asked, losing his patience with the situation.

“No. Nobody has heard a peep about that gaudy bit of jewelry in centuries. Some say it was buried with its owner, others say it was destroyed. Sorry,” she told him, every indication pointing to her most definitely not being sorry.

He grunted his frustration, jaw set. That had been his easiest shot at attempting to block Ember’s ability to control him. As long as she held that power over him, they would never be able to move forward. “Nobody had even an inkling of an idea?” he pressed.

“That amulet is long gone, if it ever existed in the first place. Maybe it’s a sign you should find better company?”

“I’ve been around almost two hundred years; I think I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.”

“Well, I was dining with Kings and sorcerers’ in ancient Mesopotamia and I’m telling you that you have no idea what you are playing at.”

“And yet here we are in the back room of an abandoned warehouse, both making shady deals. I guess being a feline consort to royalty didn’t help improve your social standing by much.”

She flicked her hands, claws releasing with a sinister snick. “You would do well to remember that I am not one to be trifled with. I’m nobody’s consort. I’m the daughter of a Goddess. I’ll not be talked down to by some parasite.”

Mace grinned then. “Calm down. I meant no offense.”

He took a deep breath. He couldn’t make an enemy out of Shelby. She might look like a twenty-five year old law school grad but she was older than most of the known world and had a temper much like her mother. He’d seen her eviscerate men simply because she was having an off day. Demi-Gods were fickle, especially the descendants of Bast. Her offspring had been around so long they were more cat than human. Shelby merely played to her strengths. Sneakiness and curiosity came in handy when acquiring magical objects.

She flexed her fingers, shredding the paper in front of her.

“I used to find you charming. Now I merely tolerate you. I’d hate to send you back to your employer in bite size pieces.”

He bowed his head, “Point taken, I’ll mind my tongue. However, I do need the object. It’s of great importance.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but the amulet is out of the question.”

He nodded once and retrieved the package. He had no choice but to take it. He had to keep up appearances. He couldn’t let anybody know what he was doing. It would not work out for Ember and it would certainly not work out for him.

He opened the door. “Oh and Mace?”

He turned back around with a longsuffering sigh, “Yes?”

“Tell Allister that I’m not going to continue to be the one who gets my hands dirty while he plays the good guy.”

He inclined his head. “I’ll relay the message.”

He turned and walked directly into Quinn who stood just outside the door, a small leather bound book in hand.

“You work for my father?” He shook his head like he should have known.

Mace’s eyes widened. “Quinn, I can explain.”

“Oh, I just bet.”