She was unbelievably happy that he was by her side. When she had spent that harrowing night in the church on her own, entertaining her own death and future, she had felt more isolated than any creature ever had.

  Now he was by her side, blustering, yes, but there.

  She wanted to reach a hand out to him.

  He obviously picked up on it because he shook his head and batted her hand back. “No time for comfort, only for action. We need to come up with a plan to get those bozos to see you. Holding hands and hugging because a demon wants your soul is not going to further that goal.”

  Ebony crumpled her lips and let out a frustrated breath, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Now if it was me,” Harry narrowed his eyes and glared down the street, “and some epically powerful demon had tried to contract my mind and body,” Harry twitched his shoulders and actually wobbled his butt like a proud peacock, “which would make perfect sense considering how powerful I am—”

  “Harry,” she interrupted him quickly, realizing that if she didn’t, he would spend the next half hour talking about how great he was.

  “Right. Well, if it were me, the first place I would start would be the funeral.”

  Ebony made a face. A disgusted one.

  “Don’t look like that; this is serious business, and you are a serious witch who wants to keep her soul fully intact. It’s not even like you’ll have to stare down at your dead body – they don’t have it.”

  Ebony still felt sick, and she coughed into her sleeve. “I don’t want to see people… crying over me.”

  Harry turned to her, stopping dead in the street. “Let them cry. This is their grief. Don’t you dare try to control it for them.”

  He was powerfully serious, and as the brunt of it struck her, Ebony doubled back.

  “Don’t feel ashamed of it. Don’t withdraw. Let them cry. They’ve lost something, and you don’t get to tell them they can’t grieve.”

  Ebony swallowed uneasily. “I just don’t want to see it.”

  “You have no choice. No one said this was going to be easy, Ebony Bell; you are in a race for your life, of course it’s going to get uncomfortable. If we want to win, we can’t be put off by little things like attending your own funeral. Once this is all over, you can apologize to people, pay them back for the coffin, flowers, and service, and get on with living again.” Harry’s voice rang on the word living.

  She really, really wanted to get back to that.

  So she let Harry lead her through town.

  “Ben has already come around this morning, while you were out talking to your demon friend, and he told me they are going to have the funeral in the graveyard, then follow it up with a service at your mother’s house. I don’t imagine there’s any point in going to the service.” Harry gave a cough. “I don’t like the idea of facing your mother.”

  Ebony shook her head. Neither did she. If this ever did turn out right, Ebony knew for a fact Avery Bell would have some succinct, direct words to share with her daughter about making pacts with demons and spending a week in an in-between realm of the half-dead.

  Not to mention what she would have to say to Nate.

  Ebony’s fingers started to tingle, then her arms, her torso. Before the energy could spread to her heart and face, Harry whacked a hand on her back. “Oh, knock it off. You’ve got that look on your face. You’re thinking about him.”

  Ebony whirled on him, her lips slack. “How do you know that? I mean, I’m not,” she quickly recovered.

  Harry sniggered. “Less wallowing in the memory of your precious knight, and more thinking like a hard-nosed witch ready to kick a demon in the tail and break its contract. Now we are heading to the graveyard. Before we stand back and watch your touching ceremony, we are going to sniff around the place. See what clues we can dig up from the ground.”

  Ebony sneered. “I may be a ghost capable of traveling through objects, but I’m not going to dig up anyone’s grave.”

  “Dig up a grave?” Harry gave her a disparaging, scandalized look, “how disgusting. You are a bad witch for even suggesting something like that. No, we are certainly not going to dig up the final resting place of someone’s body. We are, however, going to waft right through the ground and have some conversations with some ghosts, dead bodies, and whatever else we can find.”

  Before Ebony could protest, they were well on their way to the graveyard.

  The weather in Vale that day was blustery, cold, and dark. Heavy, thick, slate-gray clouds hunkered in from the mountains behind, and they gave the city a strangely dead mood.

  That might have had something to do with Ebony’s current state, but still, she could appreciate how different the street looked. Any sun that had broken through the clouds that morning was now fully hidden by the gray blanket of sky.

  The wind still rolled around them, pushing into the trees, rattling the bins, shaking the roofs.

  As Ebony walked closer and closer toward the graveyard, her sense of the weather and the city changed.

  She became distracted.

  The dark, evil side to Vale she had seen in the street drew more of her attention. The closer she neared the cemetery, the more distracting it became.

  Ghosts at first, shooting around, their voices wailing behind them as they made their way over the landscape, pushed on by whatever desire remained within. Then there was a demon crouching high in a tree hunting birds. She saw more of those strange worm-like creatures, and then a few dark, bubbly, liquid-like spiders to match.

  It disgusted her.

  At first sight, each of those strange and dark creatures made her want to retch, then catch them and put them in the clinker.

  Then… they began to fade into the background.

  They were just part of the scenery. Every time this started to happen, and Ebony became aware of it, she practically kicked herself. Just because she was in this strange realm, she should not let her attitude to the dark and evil side of magic change.

  Just because the bird-hunting demon didn’t seem bothered by her as she walked under its tree, shaking her head at it, didn’t mean she should start to feel comfortable with it.

  As Ebony tried to solidify and lock-in her contemptuous attitude of the dark and all its menagerie of creatures, a crow cry filtered from above.

  They were now at the gates of the cemetery.

  The dark energy it contained rippled off it like heat buffeting from a great wall of fire.

  There was nowhere and nothing that could hide her. She could try to press her face and arms and torso into the back of one of the great oaks, but her flesh would push through, and the energy would meet her.

  “Right, your funeral starts in a half hour. Time to talk to the dead,” Harry said as he clapped his hands together and shook them.

  “Harry, won’t they be expecting you to be at…” she couldn’t say it.

  “Your funeral?” his voice trilled on the word your.

  She swallowed.

  “I’m a possessed bookstore, and more to the point, I’m your closest friend. I’m eccentric and impossible to predict. Also, I already told Ben I was busy,” Harry replied as he leaned down and picked up a shard of ghost grass, twirling it around between his fingertips.

  Ebony stared at him, outraged. “Too busy to go to my funeral? But I’m your best friend!”

  Harry slowly turned his head toward her, gaze askance. “I’m busy because I’m helping you try to break a demon curse so you can come back to life.”

  He did have a point there.

  The graveyard, quite rightly, was a harrowing place. Especially considering Ebony could now see all the dead in their glory, or lack thereof.

  She stared, sickened as Harry walked her through the gravestones.

  There were ghosts and apparitions of the dead everywhere. They littered the grass like lazy campers enjoying a sunny picnic. Some sat on their gravestones, swinging their ghostly legs back and forth, while others actually sprawled out on the grass, playing cards with the corpse next to them.

  Ebony was a witch. As a witch, she was familiar with many theories about what happened to people when they died. None of those theories accounted for corpses playing cards and making daisy chains.

  “What are they doing?” Ebony hissed close by Harry’s ear.

  “You don’t need to whisper,” he said in a booming voice, doing a turn with his arms held out wide, “nobody cares about your problems, Ebony. These people are dead and dealing with it, unlike you.”

  Ebony reined in her fright at his tone and the fact he was drawing attention to them. Then she pursed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. “That’s not what I mean. Why are they here? Why haven’t their souls gone… to the evermore or the afterlife or Hell, or wherever they are headed?”

  Harry turned on his foot, his shoe not impacting the grass underneath him, even though it was soft and yielding. “Don’t expect to know the secrets of reality. Don’t expect me to know them either. What happens after death is beyond certainty and knowledge; that’s the point.” Harry pointed obviously at the shadowy outline of some corpses chewing ghost grass and leaning against a large headstone, chatting merrily. “If you knew what would happen to you after death, it would lose its power. Death is one of the strongest forces in the universe and one of the strongest magics of the soul. The power and fear of it drive creatures on. But when you eventually cross through it, it’s a place where you don’t need your theories anymore, a place where certainty doesn’t matter. Death matters only to the living – not to the dead.”

  Harry’s speech was impassioned, bold, and his voice sung with his words.

  Ebony paused, letting his statements settle. “You don’t know, do you?”

  Harry faltered. Then he pulled himself straight and shrugged his shoulders. “Nope.”

  Ebony rolled her eyes. Then she hesitated, drawing back as Harry marched up to the faint outline of a person as they lay on their back, hands under their head as they stared at the sky.

  “Watching clouds are you, my good fellow?” Harry cleared his throat. “I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

  Ebony felt powerfully awkward. Even though the guy before her was dead, wasn’t it rude to interrupt him? Shouldn’t they make an appointment or at least introduce themselves first?

  The guy didn’t reel up and sock Harry on the jaw, mumbling that the bookstore should get its fathead out of the way.

  Instead, the apparition rolled his eyes around as though they were little more than white marbles lodged in his skull.

  Ebony brought a hand up and clamped it over her mouth, retching into it.

  “Don’t be rude,” Harry chided her under his breath. Then he cleared his throat. “I wonder if you could help us with our inquiries. You look like you have been here for a while,” Harry nodded low at the ghost grass that was growing over the man’s shoes and chest, “have you noticed a change in energy in the past day or so? I don’t suppose you have seen any large and ominous demon wings blotting out the sun, have you? No denizens of the devil congregating in corners and chatting about embodying a certain witch?”

  With a sound like a great mound of earth shifting under an earthquake, the man moved his head to face Harry. Then he shook his head. “Energy never the same,” he answered as he twisted his face back to the sky, his eyes rolling around until the glazed-over pupils stared up, “everything changing always.”

  Harry got to his feet with a polite nod of his head. Then he raised his hands and shrugged at Ebony. “A wise answer, but one that doesn’t really further our investigation.”

  “I don’t know what you think we’re going to achieve if we disturb the dead,” Ebony half snapped.

  “Don’t be so precious, madam; you’re dead too,” Harry shot back. “What I’m trying to achieve is something masterful indeed. I want to know its name.” His eyes glinted. “The demon.”

  Ebony’s neck stiffened as she jolted backward.

  Know a demon’s name, and you gain power over it.

  “We must face the possibility that you will fail, and that you will be unable to make even a blade of grass aware of your presence. So we need a backup plan. That plan is to learn its name. Then, Ebony Bell, you pull the magic you still have around yourself, and you fight it.”

  Ebony winced as she listened.

  “You fight the demon, and you reclaim your life.”

  His voice echoed, no, boomed, through the graveyard.

  It caught Ebony’s attention and made her look up.

  As she did, she saw her father.

  Off in the distance, coming through the gates.

  Her mother was there, Ben, but no Nate.

  As her friends and family arrived, Ebony forced herself to walk up to the group. But not once did she clap eyes on her knight.

  “Avery, I’m so sorry for your loss.” One of the Coven witches walked up to Ebony’s mother and placed a hand flat on her shoulder.

  Avery Bell was in a long black and blue dress. It shimmered even though the sun was still blocked by the banks of clouds above.

  Somehow it created its own light.

  Avery was magical, after all.

  And… powerful, very, very powerful.

  Ebony flung herself forward until she was right in front of her mother, staring up at Avery’s blank gaze.

  “Mom, I know you can’t hear me, but… try, please try to listen to my voice,” Ebony begged.

  Harry hung back.

  He didn’t intervene.

  Whether he thought Ebony’s attempt was doomed to failure or not, he didn’t interrupt and bring himself between a witch and her mother.

  “Avery,” she tried, “mom, please. I know you are powerful; I know you can sense all kinds of magic,” Ebony forced her eyes closed and really, really tried to concentrate, “so please sense this.” Ebony’s words were a stuttering mess as the emotion broke through them.

  She really tried to pay attention. She tried to force her magic up to a level where her mother would recognize it.

  Ebony tried for minutes, her desperation growing.

  In fact, the only thing that stopped her was Harry’s hand on her shoulder, pulling her backward.

  Through the frustration and grief, Ebony started to cry, and she wasn’t ashamed as her face became awash with tears. “I don’t get it,” she spluttered, “I used everything I had. Why can’t she sense me?”

  “It’s not going to be that easy,” Harry said, voice quiet. He wasn’t exactly cooing her, but maybe it was the most compassion he could offer.

  She turned to him. His eyes were hooded with sadness.

  Ebony took a breath. Then she forced another and another. She kept on breathing, concentrating on the sense of it as the air rushed past her lips and throat, until the distraction it provided pulled her attention from the scene.

  From her mother, from her own funeral.

  She couldn’t take this. She turned to Harry and closed her eyes.

  “Just hold on, little witch,” Harry whispered.

  She stood close to her mother, next to her father, her own arm and leg brushing through a witch of the Coven on one side, and the Police Chief on the other.

  Though she managed to open her eyes once or twice, she could never pick up Nate.

  It appeared he wasn’t here.

  “He’s in a bad way,” Ben said roughly under his breath, his tone shaking with sadness. “I’ve never seen him like this. I went to his house to pick him up, but he wouldn’t even open the door. Blames himself.” Ben was standing just behind the Chief, talking in hushed tones to Mahoney, one of the new police magicians.

  Ebony closed her eyes again.

  Poor Nate.

  In a way, she was amazed that he hadn’t come to her funeral, not because she felt it was evidence that he didn’t have feelings for her, but because she understood how shaken he had to be to shirk duty.

  “I just can’t believe…” Ben trailed off. “So fast, no warning. Nothing.”

  Ebony jolted, moving away as Ben took a shuddering breath, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  She couldn’t watch Ben cry.

  She stepped backward through her own father.

  She saw his face. He was not looking forward, was not paying attention as the Chief beside him mumbled his apologies. He simply stared at the same section of grass as if he would never look up again.

  Ebony jostled backward, the guilt at seeing her father like this crippling her.

  It made her step through a witch of the Coven, her arms brushing through the woman’s middle.

  Then Ebony turned to face her own mother, Ebony’s hand resting against her mother’s face.

  Avery looked dead.

  They all looked dead. As if they’d lost some part of their lives.

  As Ebony shifted and jostled and stumbled, it felt like she was the most alive one there.

  She started to shake, jolting backward again as though she’d been electrocuted.

  Her legs brushed up against the coffin behind her.

  Though there was no body, as she wasn’t quite dead yet, there was still a coffin.

  The sight of it sapped last of her resolve.

  Ebony collapsed to her knees and started to sob.

  “No, no, no,” Harry dropped down beside her, hooking his arm over hers and pulling her up, “no,” he kept on saying.

  Then he pulled her back. Through the crowd. Not between them, but right through their arms and legs and black dresses and shoes.

  Harry pulled her all the way back until the funeral was a speck on the other side of the graveyard.

  “Push through it. Let it motivate, not destroy you. This is what you will give up if it wins,” Harry cooed in her ear.

  What she’d give up if it wins.

  She twitched violently, uncontrollably, wrenching her arm free from Harry as she fell to her knees again. She planted a hand over her face, the fingers digging into her eyes, but she just didn’t care about the pressure. “Give up?” she repeated.

  She could give up.

  The demon would not kill her. That was not part of the contract. It wanted to embody her, whatever that meant. That would take her back to the land of the living. Though her soul would be part demonic, Ebony would be able to face and see her loved ones again. What was more, they would be able to see her.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24