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Chapter Text

"Dresden, I swear to God I am going to kick your ass if you hum the Ghostbusters theme one more time."

"Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, Ghostbusters!" Harry continued with blithe disregard for the threat. I wasn't even sure if he'd heard me.

I sighed and gripped the steering wheel harder. The backroads that wound through the Ozarks hadn't seen a paver in years, making the rainy night all the more treacherous. Every now and then the frankensteined monstrosity that Harry called the Blue Beetle hit a pothole, jounced, and then slid on the pavement as I struggled to course correct. I wasn't sure how Harry could stand to drive this thing. Though, to be accurate, he hadn't been driving it for the past week. One of his arms was tucked into a sling and held close to his body, but the injury didn't stop him from being a backseat driver.

"Seriously. If I wanted to listen to a Halloween soundtrack I'd have bought a CD or something."

"But you have me."

"I wish I didn't," I sniffed. "Your singing voice could make a saint's ears bleed. I'd be doing the public a favor by strangling you."

"You know you're not the first woman to say that to me."

I fought to keep the smile off my face. Dresden could be an annoying ass, but he was also a funny one. Or maybe he was just wearing me down after so many months on the job, and I'd adapted to preserve my sanity. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, really.

"Why are we traveling to the ass end of nowhere again?" I asked, punctuating the question with a curse when another pothole attempted to swallow our tires whole.

"It's called Hog Hollow, actually," Harry said. "It's a little valley in Carter County. My mentor lives there and he wants a consult on a case. He thinks there's something from our side of the block causing trouble."

"Enough trouble to make you agree to drive nine hours and fork over a bundle for gas? This thing gets what, ten miles per gallon?"

"Twenty," Harry sniffed. "And the money isn't the point."

"It is for me. I still have to pay rent and cases have been scarce. At least tell me that he'll cover the expenses on the way down. Burger King charges excepted of course. There's only so much enabling one can tolerate."

"Ha, ha," Harry said, giving me a dirty look. "You're very funny. And no, he's not going to stiff us. He'll try to pay my fees and then some. That's just the sort of man he is. I'd appreciate it if you could keep the mockery to a minimum. He's one of the only men to ever earn my respect."

The solemn expression on his face brought me up short. In the time I'd known him, Harry was rarely unsmiling unless lives were on the line. He was serious about this. I nodded once. It was too early in the case to be clashing, especially over something so trivial. Politeness cost nothing and I could always be rude later if the situation really called for it.

"You said there was trouble?"

Harry nodded. "Ebenezer called yesterday while you were out with your boyfriend."

Was I imagining it, or was there a hint of jealousy in his tone?

"Zerbrowski isn't my boyfriend, Harry. He's been happily married for ten years. He's just an outrageous flirt and he doesn't know when to quit. That's what landed him in Special Investigations in the first place. We went to the mall to buy Katie a gift for their anniversary. For some reason, he thought I'd be better at picking out jewelry than he was. In the end, the clerk ended up embarrassed for both of us. I'm truly lousy at some of this girl stuff."

Because I'd never really been taught. Even if I had been, the makeup and hairstyles of the previous century wouldn't have flown in this day and age. So far as I knew, modern makeup didn't contain mercury or arsenic. But my childhood hadn't ever contained anything as frivolous as hair combs or face paint. Nothing so trite for the daughter of Heinrich Kemmler. The only thing to ever stain my skin was blood from human sacrifices. I'd seen my first body at two years old and had performed my first direction at five under my father's supervision to get an idea of the pieces of a body slatted together to form a whole. Necromantic theorems were my bedtime stories and requiems had been my lullabies.

Fear had kept me in seclusion even after I'd escaped him. Only now in this lifetime did I dare try to interact with my fellow human beings. I was trying to do penance one case at a time.

"What about that Richard guy? Didn't you go out with him?"

I poorly hid a smile. Someone was being transparent. I would have called him on it if I didn't need to keep my attention on the road. Richard Zeeman was my neighbor and unofficial repairman. Things broke down with distressing regularity now that I wasn't wearing my modified thorn manacles. It was a condition of my secret probation as imposed by my new teacher, Mortimer Lindquist. It was a pain and the landlord was becoming increasingly certain I was sabotaging things on purpose. If it weren't for Richard, I'd probably have been evicted by now. I was preemptively searching for an apartment that would pose fewer problems than the one I was currently in.

"A few times," I said. "I'm not sure it's going to work out."

Because I was pretty sure he was slated to die in the next year or two and I didn't want to get attached. There was a barghest lurking around our apartment complex. I would have written the spectral dog off as a consequence of my presence in most circumstances. The dead were drawn to necromancers whether they liked it or not. Death omens and scions of gods closely related to death felt a similar pull. I'd spotted this barghest in Undertown and kept a close eye on it while Mort and I fled from a scourge of Black Court vampires. But it hadn't been me it was after. Or more accurately, it wasn't only me. I'd spotted the dog lurking in the halls at night, staring at Richard's door. It stalked after him on rainy days and let out plaintive howls that only I could hear.

"Well that's a shame," Harry said, and couldn't quite make it sound sincere.

"What did your mentor say?"

The half-smile that had formed on his face evaporated, leaving him looking tired and more somber. He scrubbed at his face with his good hand and sighed.

"There's a small, unincorporated community near his farm. He goes there to sell things at the farmer's market and get feed for his animals, but yesterday when he went, he found everyone dead. The newscasters are saying that it was carbon monoxide poisoning because there aren't any marks on the corpses. If you really push, the medical examiners will admit they don't know what happened. There's no reason they should be dead."

My skin prickled with unease and I adjusted the air conditioning to hide a shiver. I thought I had an inkling why Harry had brought me in on this one.

"Black magic?" I guessed.

"He's pretty sure of it," Harry agreed. "But he's not sure what's big enough to kill this many people all at once. The M.E. said the liver temps matched exactly on every body. An entire town gone, wiped out in an instant."

"And we're going to tweak the nose of whatever did it?"

"Sounds like us, doesn't it?"

I sighed. "Yes, unfortunately, it does."

Chapter Text

Lerwick was one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it towns that routinely popped up around the swaths of farmland so common in the Midwest. The roads had devolved into alphabet soup thirty miles ago, and the homes were few and far between. Rolling hills and naked cliffsides soared above us. The trees that topped them slanted with every slope, moving ever downward in a slow-motion landslide. The rain had finally let up ten minutes ago, which was the only reason I didn't sideswipe a pickup truck parked on the narrow shoulder.

The black Ford pickup was nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding hillside. It was an older model, as tough and enduring as a battleship. A gun rack held a double-barrel shotgun and a weathered oak staff. There were more notches in the wood than I'd put on my own belt in the last century and change.

As I watched, an older man unfolded his bulk from the cab of the truck, faded work boots hitting the ground with an audible thud as we pulled up, window cranked down. Ebeneezer wouldn't have stood out from any crotchety old farmer in these parts, if not for the power crackling like a localized thunderstorm around him. There was something dark and turbulent streaking like lightning through his aura, and I pressed my back flat against the driver's seat.

I reluctantly put the Blue Beetle in park on a stretch of the almost non-existent shoulder just ahead of the truck. What I really wanted to do was gun it in the opposite direction. I had a finely tuned sense for dangerous people, and I was parked only a few yards away from one of the most powerful I'd met in a while. I waited in the Beetle, listening to the Beetle's engine settle with a grateful groan. The talent of one practitioner was enough to strain the poor thing to its limits. With two of us running around Chicago week in and week out, it needed an obscene amount of preventative maintenence to run at all.

There was a minute of quiet conversation outside the car that I didn't strain hear. Eventually, my name was dragged into it, and I had to unlock my rigid limbs, forcing myself like a badly tuned animatronic from the Beetle's cab.

I half-expected to see an ancient wizard glowering down at me, staff raised in a defensive gesture. He looked...ordinary. On the shorter side, with tufts of snowy hair migrating from his head to his chin and ears. He looked like a man on the far side of sixty, which meant he was an actively mature practitioner of the art. He had broad, scarred hands stuffed into the pockets of his mud-splattered overalls, with only his thumbs visible. There was something almost familiar about the genial twinkle in his eyes. He held out a hand to me as I approached.

"You must be Anita Blake. Hoss said you might be able to help us with a problem we're having."

"You must be Ebeneezer. And I told Harry I'd try," I said dryly, not taking the offered hand. He let it fall with a frown a second later. "No guarantees, though. I only started formal instruction a few months ago."

Ebenezer shot Harry a reproving look. "This is delicate work, Hoss. I don't think it's an appropriate first outing for your apprentice."

Harry actually looked sheepish and bobbed his head in acknowledgment. I just stared. Harry Dresden, the great insouciant fool, actually bowing his head to someone? Now I really had seen it all.

"Maybe, Sir, but she's the best person I could find for the job. And while Anita is my business partner, she's not my apprentice."

I wanted to bury my face in my hands and groan. Now this was a lot more like the Harry I'd grown to know. Concealing the facts until they could come together in some grand and arrogant wizardly plan that he'd deign to impart on the rest of us. If there was ever a time to forgo the obfuscation, it was now. I knew the age and caliber of the wizard in front of us, and my skill set would make him less inclined to like me, just on principle. If Harry had told everyone the full truth, for once, he might have had a few hours to digest the prospect before I arrived.

Ebenezer's bushy brows bounced toward his hairline. "Is that so?"

"I'm studying under Mortimer Lindquist," I said before Harry could launch into whatever well-meaning speech he'd prepared. "I am a sorceress and an ectomancer. If you don't like that, I am more than happy to climb back into the Beetle and drive the nine hours back to Chicago."

"Anita..." Harry began.

I ignored him, stepping closer to the old man. I didn't dare meet his eyes for more than a second at a time, but I gave him the best eye contact I could under the circumstances. I drew upon every meager inch this body had to offer and stood tall, daring him to judge me.

"I am tired of people looking at me like I'm about to turn into a mustache-twirling villain. I don't care that crusty old men think that ectomancy is just a gateway drug to necromancy. I don't particularly care what you think of my skill set. I'm here to solve a mass murder. If you can't get past the source of my magic, you can have fun sorting through the evidence by yourself."

Harry looked like he wanted to throttle me. He was actually blushing. I'd have taken a picture if my irritation wouldn't have blown a camera to shrapnel. He really did care about what this man thought.

By the time my common sense caught up to what I'd said, the words were already out. I wanted to swallow my tongue. But to my surprise, Ebenezer smiled. He nodded once to Harry, something like approval shining in his eyes.

"She'll do, Hoss. She'll do."

Chapter Text

"Any reason why we're up here, Sir?" Harry asked. The deference in his tone threw me any time he addressed the older wizard. "There's a perfectly good road leading into town."

"Aye," Ebenezer said. "And it's being blocked by a line of police and the vultures. You know the type. Gets a thrill outta seeing or hearing about a tragedy."

"Plenty of those in Chicago," he acknowledged.

"Anywhere you go, really," I added, the words slipping from my mouth before I could veto them. My mind wandered involuntarily back to the days when a hanging was a public spectacle.

Sometimes my father would pay families for the corpses of their loved ones. Most families were too poor to refuse even a modest amount of money. The bodies were something for me to practice on, he told Mother. It was worth the expense to train up a prodigy.

I wanted to spit.

I wondered if Ebenezer was thinking along the same lines. He nodded solemnly with a soft, emphatic, "Indeed. There are always gawkers."

He let the unpleasant statement hang for a few minutes before adjusting his weight. The Ozarks were replete with cliffsides, and a particularly steep one overlooked Lerwick. Despite this body's general fitness level, I'd been clutching a stitch in my side by the time we reached the top. From here the city looked like a simple grid, dotted here and there with some of the more outrageous colors people had chosen for their homes. I was particularly interested in knowing who'd owned the bubble gum pink two-story at the back end of town.

"So how are we getting in?" I asked, breaking the silence at last.

Ebenezer jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. The only thing behind I could make out in that direction was a gnarled old cedar tree. "That right there. This is the Armstrong family tree."

"Was it passed down through their line for generations?" I quipped, the words once again escaping my sputtering 'shut up' filter.

Ebenezer and Harry looked at me like I'd lost my mind. I supposed they hadn't watched much television in the last few decades. With my modified thorn manacles, I could usually manage to make it through at least a half hour without any incidents.

"Not in the way you're implying," Ebenezer said slowly. "The tree is on public land. It's just got significance to the family. Their matriarch was murdered in these woods. Rumor has it that she fled her house from her abusive husband and he beat her to death at the roots of that very tree. Urban legends about ghosts carved out a small gateway from the family home."

"It doesn't really matter where she really died," I said, completing the thought. "The belief was enough to gain metaphysical significance on its own."

"Bingo," Ebenezer said. "We'll be taking that corridor into town. It should dump us out just before the back door. We'll be in and out before any police know we're there."

There wouldn't be a threshold to deal with. There had to be living occupants inside to fuel that particular protection. None of us brought that unpleasant thought up either. Death was always a silent specter in every room, but people liked to ignore its presence whenever they could. It was more comfortable to live that way.

Lucky bastards.

Ebenezer raised the notched oak staff in his right hand, pointed it at the base of the tree and muttered a quiet word. The Way poured open, expanding rapidly like a bloodstain. The irregular pool of reality expanded until it touched our toes, and then I was flailing, the ground itself yanked like a rug from beneath my feet.

I would have landed hard on my ass if Harry hadn't shot out a hand to catch me. One of Harry's large, calloused hands shot out and caught me deftly by the wrist, hauling me to my feet as if I weighed no more than a feather. I stared at him for a few seconds strictly longer than necessary, taking in the gentle grin like rain on my upturned face. No one had smiled at me like that in...God had it really been almost a century?

I yanked my gaze away when the eye contact threatened to become more. I took a step back with a muttered, "Thanks" and he let me. I didn't think the color in his cheeks had anything to do with the hike we'd made to the top.

The Armstrong House was the bubblegum pink monstrosity I'd seen from above. Aside from the coat of Pepto Bismol, the house was almost cute. It certainly didn't look haunted. The white trim made the whole thing looked like a Valentine's Day confection. It stood a little way back from the street, shielded from a direct line of sight by a pair of oaks. Ebenezer was right. If we did this quickly, we'd be gone before the local police could investigate.

I turned for the backdoor, steeling myself.

"Okay," I said, more to myself than them. "I'm ready. Let's go."

Chapter Text

There was a difference between a house and a home, metaphysically speaking. It was a topic of much debate at which point one became the other. Did you go by the amount of lives in a home or the quality of those lives? For those on the fleshy side of things, the numbers game was usually in their favor. The more people in a space, the stronger the threshold would be. But for practitioners like me, quality mattered a hell of a lot more than quantity. There was no set recipe for making a spook, but a lot of negative energy lent itself to that purpose.

I expected to feel the buzz of black magic riding the air like untethered power lines. At the very least, I expected some mark of spiritual disturbance. A creak on the stairs. A muted whisper from behind a door. A cold spot. Anything to indicate that a shade was beginning to form. But there was nothing like that here. The house was just...pink..

Sunlight streamed through the wide front window, tinging the room blush pink as the light filtered through violently fuchsia curtains. The faded wallpaper had been done up with fat magenta cabbage roses. The sofa and overstuffed armchairs were an unappealing shade of salmon. Normally, I would have been grateful that the carpet was white, but the discolored stains where the body had lain, possibly for days, put a damper on my appreciation.

"Sensing anything?" Harry said, taking up a position at my elbow. He had his staff gripped loosely in his good hand, eyes scanning the room like something might lunge at me from behind the doiley-covered coffee table.

"Putrifaction," I said, scrunching up my nose. "Hard to forget that smell once you've gotten a whiff."

"And where'd you encounter a dead body?" Ebenezer said, entering the room just behind Harry. I was sure he meant the question to sound innocuous, but I bristled anyway.

"I was a detective with Special Investigations before my powers started acting up. Or didn't Harry mention that?" I asked, shooting a dirty look at my partner. "No spoilers only apply to movies. Next time we take a murder field trip, fill all of us in on the details first."

Harry held his good hand up in a defensive gesture. "I didn't think it was going to be a problem."

Uh-huh. And I was a Kewpie doll. Even someone as socially impaired as Dresden couldn't miss the Council's disdain for my art. I was torn between wanting to pinch his cheek and call him cute, and a more satisfying smack to his bicep.

No, scratch that. I'd have to jump to do either. Hard to maintain my street cred in front of the suspicious old man if I had to perform acrobatics to shush his protegee.

"We'll set up in the bedroom," I decided after a second of thought.

Harry paused, and I felt his awareness brush past me. Just the brush of his power made me burst out in gooseflesh. He was just too damn powerful. He really should have warned a girl before he whipped it out like that.

"I can't sense anything back there," he said when he was satisfied with his examination. "Is there a ghost?"

"No ghost," I confirmed. "Not even a whisper. That's odd in an older home like this. Even if no one died horribly in these walls, there should be something. A sense of the lives lived here. Life. But the place is..."

I searched for a word and drew a blank. How did I explain it to him? Dresden, for all his power, was terribly young. He hadn't even seen a century yet. He couldn't feel how common accumulated power was in mortal dwellings. It just took sympathetic magic to draw it out to fuel a spell. There was nothing here. No laughter or quiet evenings imprinted into the wall. All the furniture and knick-knacks looked like bad props on a theatre stage. The set dressing was there, but the actors were gone.

"Sterile," Ebenezer said with a frown. "Someone's scoured this place."

The grateful smile I offered him felt like physical blasphemy. Smiling at a wizard of the White Council. What would Heinrich Kemmler say? Tsk, tsk. That thought filled me with enough spiteful glee to give an almost genuine cast to the expression.

Rot in hell, Father.

I looked away, plucking the prickly projectiles from a bush we'd passed on our hike from my jeans. I wasn't sure what expression I wore, but it wouldn't be pleasant.

"The bed is the safest place for me to attempt this."

Harry half-raised his hand. The staff nearly clipped a vase of wilted tulips. I managed to catch it before it could leap from its shelf.

"I have a question."

I sighed. "You don't have to raise your hand, Harry. Is this a real question or a dirty joke?"

Harry's mock outrage swung my pendulum back toward pinching his cheeks. Damn, but he made the snark seem charming at times.

"Would I do that to you, Anita?"

"If you didn't, I'd be checking for the zipper. Clearly, someone with manners stole your skin."

He drew himself up a little, trying to look wounded. The effect was somewhat ruined by the laughter dancing in his eyes. After a moment it dimmed and he let his hand fall to his side. "Seriously, though. Why the bed?"

"Because it's the softest surface in the house, and I'm new at this. Mort can call spirits standing up, but I usually stay on the floor. Falling a few inches hurts less than falling a foot."

It wasn't a complete lie. Mort took a completely different tack to the art. The balding ectomancer didn't pit his strength against the dead in a contest of wills, the way my father taught me. My father treated ghosts as cattle, things to be driven violently toward a second, eternal demise. I still tended to fall back on old habits, and the spirits were allowed to push back on me--violently. I didn't usually fall. I was pushed.

Ghosts weren't the people they resembled, but they were still people. To be conscious was to exist, in some form. Mort never let the ghosts hurt me, but he had let them teach me forceful lessons. If you attacked a person, it was their right to defend themselves. Putting your psychic mitts on someone without their permission was wrong. Might did not make right.

But no need to spill that secret to the overprotective lug. He'd probably clout Mort over the head with his staff in defense of my honor.

"Besides, the bedroom is close quarters. If something manages to possess my body, it'll be easier to subdue me."

"Possess you?" Harry echoed.

"It's usually the other way around," I explained. "You can sort of...borrow the impression of someone if you need their skills. Sort of a reverse possession. Ghosts need permission to enter. Other entities don't. We have no clue what did this. "

I tried not to glance at the photos on the walls. I didn't want to see a kindly old grandmother with more love than good taste. I didn't want to wonder if her grandchildren had visited the day of the attack. I didn't want to shade in the impression that the house gave of her. I didn't need the guilt and accompanying nightmares. Maybe if I didn't look, they wouldn't come.

Yeah, right.

Harry stood in the doorway to the bedroom, watching me chalk out the circle and series of sigils Mort had taught me during our first official lesson.

"This is designed to keep me in," I explained. "If something from the other side tries to go all Exorcist on my ass, it shouldn't be able to cross this. Physical matter can, but spiritual matter can't. Think of it as kind of a spook trap. A lot more specific than a regular circle trap. I'd kill for a little ghost dust to make damn sure, but beggars can't be choosers. Harry's all out."

"That accident wasn't my fault," he said defensively.

"The ghost was only a foot away from you. How could you have missed it? I'm just glad the dust didn't get in my eyes. Only my feet are mildly radioactive."

"I said I was sorry."

"Sorry doesn't treat a rash."

Ebenezer cleared his throat. We both glanced up. I hadn't realized I'd pushed up on tiptoe as we bantered, putting my face a little too close to Harry's for polite conversation. I took a hasty step back, heat stinging the back of my neck like a sunburn.

"Are you certain this is the best way to go about this?"

"Best, no," I said. "But it is the most direct. When time is of the essence, that's better than best. I should be able to take stock off the field if I enter a deep enough meditative state. It could take several minutes. If you can't keep quiet, go to the living room and keep watch."

Neither of them replied. So Harry could shut his mouth when things were dire enough. Good to know. I was beginning to think that not even God himself could wire his trap shut for more than a few minutes at a time. It was as great a liability as it was a strength.

Meditation wasn't something to approach with a time limit in mind, but I'd gotten used to doing so on a time crunch. Mort kept a log of how quickly I could access the spiritual planes with only my mind. I should be able to make contact with friendly spirits in under ten seconds. I hadn't been able to get my instincts in check and get consent from specters to gain their skills in less than five minutes. The methods my father had figuratively (and sometimes literally) beaten into my head were hard to shake.

I hated that the instinct to lash out saved my life. The second I reached out, something seized my outstretched hand and tried to yank my soul straight down to hell.

Chapter Text

The Nevernever is reactive, shifting like the coils of a snake if something of enough importance happens in the physical realm it borders. That was what I expected when I sank down into a meditative state, opening my mind to allow spirits to touch me. I expected to be swarmed. To be bombarded by the unwary dead, most of whom had no idea they'd even passed on.

What I found was a cold and barren wasteland. The remnants of the Armstrong house had been flung into the distance, standing out like pale, bloodstained teeth jutting from rotted gums. The earth for miles was stained with a dusting of pale ash. Lerwick had been leveled, reducing the spiritual manifestation of every life here into only so much wood and shattered glass. It looked like a very localized explosion had gone off, scouring all traces of life from the place. There were no ghosts. There hadn't been enough left of any of them for a shade to condense.

I crossed myself, as was the body's habit. I could usually ignore the impulses that came with my body, but it felt right, somehow. I didn't put any particular faith in the Christian god. I'd seen and done too much for that. But he was generally opposed to evil, so perhaps he'd overlook that. What happened here wasn't just murder. It was annihilation.

And the monster who'd done it was still here. The psychic stench that accompanied his magic was so cloying it made me gag. Rotted flesh and stale perfume. Silks over maggot-riddled meat. Formaldehyde and wood varnish. The trappings of the grave mingled within a single, fetid note.

The figure standing in the midst of a forest of burned-out trees looked cadaverous. What I could see of him, anyway. Most of his body disappeared beneath a gray cloak. Yellow parchment skin stretched over a grinning skull. The eyes that burned far back in the sockets were feverish. A mad giggle issued from between chattering teeth. Its bones cracked.

And it spoke.

"Feed."

The earth at my feet simply exploded, scything out from under me as a dozen hands reached for me from below. My shoes disappeared, yanked painfully from my feet. One of the zombies shoved my big toe into his hanging jaw and clamped down, ripping through the flesh and bone as though it was no more than a particularly tough carrot.

I screamed.

The blood-curdling sound carried farther than it should have, echoing through Lerwick as though the acoustics had been designed to project my voice. The tattered remains of reality shifted to the sound of my voice, responding to the power in it. The zombies hesitated.

And I realized, stomach sinking, that I knew exactly what I was dealing with. Necromancers. Motherfucking son of a bitch.

I kicked hard at the zombie's skull, pushing as much of my magic as I dared into the blow. The skull shattered like fine china, bone shrapnel flying up to hit my face and neck. Small, stinging cuts opened in my skin and this time I screamed in utter rage, driving my heel down at the nose of the second zombie. My bare foot punched through the zombie's skull like it was made of tissue paper. The bonds that connected his magic to the corpses were brittle, and easily snapped if they remained in range. The practitioner who'd called the dead wasn't a novice, but he didn't have near the power he needed to consume me.

Which was enough to convince me that this wasn't Mother's work, or Grevane's. This plan had no subtlety. No chance at truly ending me. Any of the Heirs would have bided their time and waited for a chance to consume my spirit whole. You don't give another necromancer a chance to fight back. He wasn't smart enough to realize that facing Julienne Kemmler on a newly formed micro-death plane was almost as stupid as sticking one's junk into a badger's mouth. Even if you survived, your idiocy would only inspire mockery, not empathy.

So this guy was new. The real threat wasn't a wannamancer controlling these dead. It was the person who was guiding things behind the scenes. The mentor had plans to get me here. The only question was, how long had they been watching me? Months, at least, if they knew who I worked with and what my new job was. Had this been a ploy to hurt Mort while I was away?

Argent light exploded from me, setting everything within a foot of me ablaze with cold, furious fire. It chewed through zombie flesh with astonishing speed, reducing them to nothing but charred bone.

I stared. I'd never done that before.

When I glanced back up at the treeline, I found that Darth Wannamancer had disappeared. So he had at least an ounce of common sense. He'd fled, rather than face me. After all, there were always more dead to raise. He'd strike again. I knew that much.

Surfacing felt like paddling desperately for the surface of a dark lake. My lungs burned, my head pounded, and my fingertips tingled unbearably. When I broke through with a gasp, I found Ebenezer and Harry leaning as close to the circle as they dared. Harry looked pale. Even Ebenezer looked troubled, concern carving new furrows into his sunbaked skin. When I looked down at myself, I saw why.

I was bleeding from at least a dozen different bites. At least one toe was broken. Blood dripped from my chin and collected on my collar. I hadn't realized how close to accurate my Exorcist quip had been.

"What happened?" Harry asked, voice quiet with the strain of containing some emotion. He was trying to maintain professionalism. And failing.

"Necromancer," I whispered. "The town was a sacrifice an ectomancer made to become a necromancer. He ate them. Every damn one of them. This isn't a tomb. It's nuclear fallout. Nothing survived. Nothing will be able to survive here for a long time. It's officially cursed."

My arms trembled with the effort it took to sit up. Harry broke the circle and braced my shoulder so I wouldn't droop back down to the floor. My magic was flabby and out of shape from disuse. Darth Wannamancer might be able to take me in a fight if he caught me by surprise. Only reflexes kept me from being hurt badly. I needed to build up some endurance.

"I broke some of the bonds to his zombies, I think," I continued. "He retreated. He probably intended to use the bodies in Lerwick to build an army, but they were discovered too quickly. Taking them from the morgues now would just make a scene. He'll be heading to the nearest cemetery to make more. If we're fast, we might be able to beat him there. I think he's new."

"What makes you say that?" Harry asked.

"Because he couldn't kick my ass and I'm a novice. It means he's either new or he was pathetic enough to escape the Council's notice. Either way, I think that means we have a chance."

"To do what exactly?" he asked.

"To catch him, Hoss," Ebenezer said grimly.

"Oh," Harry said, seeming to get it. His expression fell. "Oh. Oh boy.."

Chapter Text

Ebenezer's pickup went a whopping fifty miles an hour at full speed, and he goosed everything he could from the old, rattling engine. I was more fearful for any wildlife that decided to dart down the backroads leading toward Hog Hollow, Missouri. The back tires slewed this way and that on the loose rock. Ebenezer rode out each skid with the reflexes and calm of an experienced surfer catching a wave. His face was set in a rictus of determination, his teeth showing. I couldn't figure out whether the expression was a manic grin or a grimace.

The truck was a relic, kept in working condition by someone who predated it by a few centuries. It wasn't likely to go down under an onslaught of magic, like the Beetle, which itself was a classic. Which is how I found myself the meat in a wizard sub sandwich. The hairs on Ebenezer's forearm were tickling my elbow. And speaking of elbows, Harry's was jabbing hard into my shoulder. I was tempted to climb into his lap like a child, rather than endure the game of Twister I was currently losing.

Harry's back hit the passenger's side door with an audible smack as Ebenezer took a sharp curve at forty miles an hour. The earth disappeared from beneath our back tires for a few heart-pounding seconds before the suspension settled with a tortured groan.

"Where are we going?" I said, shouting to be heard over the growl of the engine.

"There's a family plot up ahead," Harry shouted back. "The Thompsons, I think. They were a really distant neighbor. Lived between Hog Hollow and Lerwick. Grant Thompson tried to start fights with me when I was training with Ebenezer. I didn't engage, but it didn't stop the name-calling."

Of course, it wouldn't. To a bully, the lack of response would completely neuter what they'd been trying to accomplish. Bullies rarely grew up, they just got better at hiding what they were. The abuse came out in more socially acceptable ways. It was easy to conceal a lot of nastiness when you owned a house with a tall picket fence.

"Any chance the little bastard had any magical talent?" I asked hopefully. "I mean, it's never that simple, but a girl can dream."

Harry shook his head. "I would have felt something like that. Skin contact is usually a tip-off. Hard to conceal your aura at all, let alone when you're a complete rookie."

Which meant he'd been hit or shoved by Grant at some point. Would it be completely unethical of me to hope that he'd been in Lerwick when Darth Wannamancer strolled through? Probably.

"Grant Thompson couldn't have done it anyhow," Ebenezer said. "He's in the morgue with the rest of 'em. He was staying at his mistress' house when the necromancer struck."

And now I regretted my petty wish. It didn't feel half as satisfying as I'd hoped to hear the little jerk had shuffled off the mortal coil.

"How's the wife taking that?" Harry asked.

"Can't say," Ebenezer said, grip tightening on the wheel as we began another swift skid. I wasn't sure how he managed to steer through the dust clouds billowing around us and floating in our wake. "She's been missing for a few months."

I glanced up at Harry, eyebrow raised. It couldn't be a coincidence that a small-town scandal had coincided with a minor necromantic working. Someone with power had decided that an entire town should pay for the actions of one man. That level of insane devotion usually came with a side order of what they believed to be love.

But it wasn't truly love. Nothing that selfish could be. It was possession. The mindless desire to consume until you were sick. The vomit, and then the swift return to your gluttony. That kind of relationship wasn't satisfied with mere love. Nothing a sane person could offer would compare to the fantasy they'd constructed in their head. I knew. Jean-Claude wanted to devour me, inch by bloody inch, stringing out my demise for the next few decades. I'd die long before my heart actually gave out, but it wouldn't matter to him. He'd never wanted my mind. He just wanted his favorite fucktoy back.

"Did she run away?" I asked. "Take the kids and flee a bad marriage?"

"No kids," Ebenezer said, whipping around another corner. Dust pressed like an opaque wall on either side of the truck. "Just one sad woman. He got her pregnant once. We can't prove he's the reason she miscarried after they were married. He was a piece of work. Always cheating. Always drinking. One day she just didn't show up for work. The police didn't find anything. Cadaver dogs couldn't find a body. The case is still open, as far as I know."

The cruelty was so utterly mundane that it didn't merit anything more than a cursory glance to most people. Just another in a long putrid line of adulterous, abusive men. It was so disgustingly ubiquitous that it made me want to scream. The police had only done the bare minimum, by the sounds of it. Worse, they could have been complicit. How many of Grant's childhood friends had gone into law enforcement? Probably at least one.

It was enough to make you want to burn the whole place to the ground. The darker part of my nature whispered that everyone was guilty in that scenario. Anyone who'd seen something but taken no action. The silent enablers, who had the gall to gossip about it only when it was too late to help. It only took one person to make a difference. No one had come to my rescue when I'd been the one with a boot on my neck. No one dared. And I suspected no one had come to her rescue either. I'd been where she was, but I was a lot harder to kill.

But...the rational side of me argued, I had also been complicit in worse. I hadn't simply failed to do the right thing. I'd done the wrong thing over and over and over again. I'd killed and maimed. I'd brought untold grief to thousands. People were a lot more myopic than we gave them credit for. How could they spot the abuse when they were too busy gazing at their own navel? Their complicity came from ignorance. I'd been an active participant in a cycle of violence. I'd need an alpaca and a really good map to find high ground here.

Harry spoke, asking the question I couldn't voice. "Was she close to anyone in particular? An affair partner? A friend? A brother?"

Ebenezer shook his head. "No. Caroline was an only child and both her parents died in a car crash when she was nineteen. That girl was as timid as a field mouse. Taught kindergarten in the next town over. I don't think she even had the ability to confront him, let alone two-time her no-good husband right back."

He paused, tilting his head a little as he pumped the brakes. We were approaching a small, fenced-off plot with a wrought iron gate. It looked out of place in the nearly overgrown field. Stones peeked through the long grass, pale and ghostlike against the foliage. Some were so old that the details had worn down.

"Though...there was that one kid."

"Kid?" I echoed.

"Yeah. High schooler. Luke...ah...Luke Hill. Worked at the grocery store. He was smitten, I think. Awkward as hell when she was around. Smart, quiet, good worker otherwise. He took it hard when she went missing. Started acting out. Got himself fired."

Harry and I traded a loaded glance. It was a high school kid, probably just coming into his powers. Of course, he'd sacrifice a town full of innocent people to kill one man. A hormonal teen boy with a crush and too much magic was a dangerous thing. Add in a necromantic mentor, a juicy reason to want revenge, and the mind-warping effects of black magic use, and you have the recipe for mass murder.

And he wouldn't stop there. If we were dealing with a true edgelord, he'd spend the rage on the innocent alongside the guilty. The entire world had failed, and it was his right to demand satisfaction for that. Hog Hollow would be next. He'd eat his way through the entire Midwest if he could.

"Keep driving," I said after a moment. "We don't have to get out of the car."

Ebenezer raised one bushy brow. "We don't?"

"No. I could scan the place, but I don't have to. I know the sort of person we're dealing with. He already raised this plot. It's part of his vision to use that man's family to kill the next town over. It's," I made a face. "Poetic, if you like writing emo poetry in the margins of your notebook. You're dealing with a theatre kid with social anxiety and a hideously twisted crush, not a serious bad guy. He's powerful and he's stupid, so we don't have time to waste examining each grave."

I didn't say the part that truly worried me though. Where was the person holding Luke's leash? Who'd taught him how to perform the rite? Which of my father's lickspittles was sacrificing the idiot high schooler like a pawn on a chessboard? What was this loud distraction really a cover for?

"You're sure?" he said, glancing over my head to Harry.

I cleared my throat, fixing him with a hard stare. "I'm the expert here, Sir, not Harry. If you've got a question, you look at the person who can give you an answer."

Ebenezer met my gaze for a dangerous second before he slowly inclined his head. "Aye. You're right, lass. Are you sure?"

In answer, I put a hand on the Browning in its shoulder holster. I stared ahead. I could feel magic brewing like a storm on the horizon.

"I'm sure that more people will die if we don't move."

Ebenezer nodded again, and the truck lurched into motion once more, letting out a bass snarl as we shot down the road.

Chapter Text

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Harry said, craning his neck to look out the back window. His eyes were wider than I'd ever seen them. "He sent zombie cows to attack us? What is this, a Looney Toons sketch?"

The glass was plastered with mud. Ebenezer's truck was ill-equipped to deal with a herd of undead cows running it into a nearby field. We were ruining someone's soybean crop with our escape attempt. The tires would spin and squeal with alarming frequency, the mud trying to suck us down into a quagmire. There was no way we'd outpace the herd on foot. If we had to abandon the pickup, our choices were to be trampled or to hurl magic at a group of overactive hamburger. I wasn't sure which would be the more humiliating way to go, honestly.

"I mean," Harry said, voice rising a little as the cows closed on us. The scalpel-like cuts that had opened their throats would have been invisible if you were looking at them straight on. Unfortunately, they were running. The heads flopped with each stride, exposing a bit of glistening spine. "How? I thought zombies had to be human."

"No. Any dead matter will do," I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them. "It's thaumatergy. Like to like. A necromancer's power resonates with the absence of life as surely as a wizard's tap into the opposing force. Human practitioners of the art are drawn to dead humans. Again, like to like. You could use animals, but there's only so much power you can pour into a vessel with limited capacity."

I felt Ebenezer's eyes land on my profile. The intensity of his interest made me itch. "You know a lot about it for an ectomancer, Miss."

The tone was cordial. Or as cordial as a snake could make a threat sound. A suspicion had been building from the moment we met, and I was all but certain now. This Ebenezer McCoy knew something of my father's craft. He'd practiced it, at least once. Like called to like. This man had done necromancy before. And he recognized the potential for it in me. Neither one of us would tell on the other. It would be mutual destruction.

The real question was: How the hell had he managed not to be tainted by it? And why the hell was a warlock this old and canny so protective of Harry Dresden?

The only thing I was certain of? Ebenezer wasn't the teenager's mentor. He was too smart for that.

"Mort says that most people need to understand the principle of a rule before they'll follow it. It isn't just about knowing what not to do. It's the reason why doing it will harm other people. Raising a dead relative sounds like a completely victimless crime, but it's still a violation of the Laws. If you're too short-sighted to understand why a rule is in place, you'll be arrogant enough to try your luck."

I could tell he didn't believe that was the whole truth, but the old man let it lie. Harry nodded along, seeming thoughtful. For once, he seemed to approve of something Mortimer had said or done. And he had said something to that effect when he'd been laying ground rules. I didn't need the necromantic primer, though. I'd learned the ins and outs of death before I ever learned to spell.

"I sort of wish I'd had a similar rule when I'd been training Kim."

"Kim?" I echoed, casting a nervous glance over my shoulder. The cattle were gaining. At this rate, it looked like we were about to enter the bovine blitz, may the best mammal win.

"Kim Delaney. She was my apprentice for a while."

"And she graduated?" I guessed.

Harry's expression closed off, and he turned to look at the undead stampede, rather than meet my gaze.

Oh. Well, that explained a lot. It probably also explained his reaction to learning about my talents months back. I couldn't be sure of the details, but the parting had probably been bloody. He'd failed Kim At least, that was the way he'd view it. The man did love to perform astonishing feats of contortionism to make anything that went wrong his fault.

What happened next was over too quickly for me to be certain of the exact series of events. There was a massive jolt and I was flung against my seatbelt with enough force to bruise. I was just grateful McCoy had outfitted the truck with them. I'd bet the jalopy hadn't had belts when it was first manufactured. Without the restraint, I would have been flung forward through the windshield and pulverized beneath the pickup as it rolled.

Even with the safety features, the revolutions were enough to make my stomach revolt and my guts turn to water. I didn't realize I was clutching Harry's arm for dear life until we came to a trembling stop seconds later. My brain rattled like BBs in a can. I felt something warm slide down my cheek and soak into my hairline.

I was staring at the rearview mirror from the wrong angle. The scented tree brushed the roof like a felled pine. I reached out a shaking finger and mumbled, "Purple."

"Anita," Harry said, fumbling for his belt. He cursed when his long, spindly legs came down at an angle, folding him like a fan. He flopped in an utterly undignified fashion for a second before he rose up on his knees. "Anita, are you okay?"

Harry's voice sounded small and hushed after the crunching impact we'd just gone through. I struggled to focus my eyes on him. When I finally managed it, I found him jerking at the latch, trying to undo my seatbelt. Ebenezer was already out, somehow coming away from the impact better than either of us. I had a feeling it wasn't his first rollover crash.

"The tree is purple," I insisted.

"I think she hit her head, Hoss."

"Or the curse made contact. You felt it only a few seconds before I did. That wasn't a novice spell. It was meant to kill."

"Aye," Ebenezer said, clutching his staff tighter, taking a defensive position as the lowing cattle grew closer. "Seems like our warlock has decided he's taking a stand. Bad terrain for it, but counting on him to have brains might be giving him too much credit. Bad aim, too."

Or excellent aim. Maybe Luke knew where the real threat lay and had tried to double-tap the enemy before she even had a chance to take a defensive position. It was a solution my mother would applaud. She'd used the same logic to sell me to the White Court. The competition couldn't best you if she was too drugged or dead to participate. A more solid hit might have actually done serious damage. My chest was burning with the effort it took to breathe, but once the seatbelt came off I'd be fine.

Harry gave up trying to unbuckle the belt and flicked his wrist at the latch muttering a terse, "Forzare!"

The fragile plastic flew in every direction, and I had to throw up an arm to shield my face from the shrapnel. It felt harder than it should have and I realized dimly that the burning sensation was spreading. It centered over my heart, the old phantom wound splitting open as the curse took root.

Some injuries went soul-deep. Dying at your father's hands was one of them. It had split my soul twain, leaving a portion of me sane but comparatively powerless. The other half had the magical prowess of a demigod and the madness of Kemmler's true Heir. I hadn't realized the split had occurred until a lecherous air spirit had shared his theory. I was definitely feeling it now. I felt the absence like a gangrenous wound. There was a chunk of me missing, and it hurt.

"She's hit, Sir!" Harry said.

It sounded like he was shouting from the opposite end of a tunnel. By the time the words hit my ears, they'd been slurred into unrecognizability. Prying my eyelids open felt like trying to deadlift my own body weight. Impossible when I felt this weak.

The lowing of the cattle was nearer now. I could feel the tremors beneath the roof as a few dozen hooves hit the ground in rapid succession.

"Sir!" Harry insisted.

"Gimme a minute, Hoss!"

The earth heaved with enough force to rock the truck back onto its side. I landed with my head in Harry's lap. With my chin touching my chest, I spotted something inky black pulsing like blood from my chest with no wound in sight.

That can't be good, was my last, semi-coherent thought before the blackness seized me by the throat and dragged me under.

Chapter Text

There was no blood when my father snuffed out an entire Russian village. The minor Hallow had been too precise for any extraneous carnage. People simply dropped, sagging down into death without warning as their souls were ripped violently from their bodies.

Bursting free of my body had been the most agonizing experience of my life. So much so that I'd blocked all but a few snippets from my memory. The rest came back in nightmares like this one when I could feel their screams resonating through my soul. I was a sieve, separating the essential spark from the minds that molded them. I felt each and every one of them go silent, pulled under by a riptide of pure, necromantic energy. I screamed in their place. Screamed and tore at myself, and tried to divest myself from the tormented chorus.

When I opened my eyes, I was still folded over in the bench seat like a broken pinata. The pickup was still resting on its side like a crumpled tin can. Ebenezer and Harry had taken up positions on top of each wheel, gaining the high ground as the cows advanced. Neither looked at me when I crawled onto the muddy ground outside.

I flopped onto my back, trying to drag in a deep breath. I couldn't seem to suck in enough air. My chest was burning. Everything hurt.

A light, tinkling laugh drew my gaze upward. The sky above was overcast, half of it blotted out by a thin, angular face. The loose brown curls cascaded over her shoulders and tickled my face as she leaned over me.

She was at once familiar and alien. I'd seen her in the mirror, a long, long time ago. I knew the modestly endowed woman kneeling over me. I knew the shape of her chin, as pronounced as her father's. The eyes she'd inherited from her mother. I liked to fancy that the thin, almost hooked nose came from a grandmother, but I could never be sure. I'd never known my extended family. Lines fanned out around her eyes when I reached up to tap her nose with the end of my finger.

"Julienne," I said.

Her lips quirked. "Anita."

I shivered. I was staring at something I'd once considered me. It was an amputated limb, festering with sickness. You wouldn't have known, looking at her from the outside. She looked, for all the world, like the young woman I'd been when my father chained me to an altar and spilled my blood to further his own quest for power. I'd been through so much, been so many different women since that day. A name was only a jumble of letters and the meaning we assigned to them. The belief that there was meaning behind those sounds had a power all its own. In a metaphysical sense, she and I were different people. She'd forever be the girl who died on the altar. I'd become something different. That was the difference between a shade and a soul.

"You're the one," I said, sounding much calmer than I felt. I could barely breathe. She allowed me only enough for speech, not enough to calm my racing pulse. "You taught Luke. Lerwick was your fault."

"Our fault," she said, twirling one of my curls idly around her finger. They were longer and more slender than I remembered them being. Piantist's hands. Perhaps I could have been a mistro of another sort, instead of a necromantic prodigy. I'd never know.

"Yours," I insisted. "I didn't teach him to raise the dead. I didn't give him the secrets of Father's ascension rite. He didn't even get the boost in power, did he? You absorbed that yourself. He's just a useful idiot. He doesn't know you're going to chew him up and spit him back out."

Julienne got a hand under me and lifted me into a half-seated position. She cupped my cheek fondly, the spectral cold of her digits sinking like icicles into my skin. I shuddered, lips parting when she ran a thumb over my bottom lip. The drugging serenity that came with the art tried to pour in through my mouth. I grit my teeth and spat it out, though I wanted to drink the power down.

"Look at the hand-wringing hypocrite," she mocked with another trilling laugh. "As if you haven't done the same dozens of times since we parted. At least I'm honest about who I am and what I want."

"What he wanted," I whispered. "Not what we wanted. There's a difference."

She showed her teeth, but the expression was too manic to be called a smile. I imagined a psychotic inmate would give you a similar look before he bashed your head in. I couldn't reach her. Not really. Sanity and madness don't ever exchange pleasant dialogue.

"Indeed. The doddering old man gave us something he never achieved himself. The ability to live without fear. Stop scuttling like a roach and choke the life from the arrogant old windbags on the Council. It's your world. Your rules. You just have to be strong enough to claim it."

The thought was so impossible I almost dismissed it out of hand. It would only take a handful of wardens to end me. Dresden might even accomplish it if he managed to sucker punch me. The might of the White Council would crush me flat.

But it wouldn't crush Julienne Kemmler. We were separate beings, but we didn't have to be. She'd been a part of me once. She could be again. I was the only vessel perfectly suited to fit her. And yet, at the same time, I felt I'd outgrown this portion of myself. Her power was vast, but her mind was narrow. She couldn't squint past her own skewed view of the world to look at everyone around her. Did I really want to step back into a myopic echo of myself? Was that worth the false promise of safety? Because nothing was guaranteed. Not even when the other party was a demigod.

I shook my head slowly. "I'm not like you."

"You are me," she insisted. "I was born from your weakness. I am the fruit of your blighted womb. I am every memory you are too cowardly to face."

I tried to lurch to my feet but only managed to knock Julienne onto her back. She smiled smugly up at me, expression barely flickering when I slammed her head into the mud.

"I am not a coward!" I snarled into her face. "That is bullshit and you know it! What happened to us was not our fault. We were a child! I survived. I got through it. Whatever I did to accomplish that is my business, and mine alone. I didn't make my rage the world's problem. You would. They don't deserve what we'd do to them."

Julienne's eyes narrowed to slits. "They deserve to die. Everyone was complicit. It only took one to make a difference."

Another quiver ran through me. I'd thought something similar not so long ago. There was an echo of her in me. Which probably meant there was an echo of me in her. Something that wanted to change.

"You're not me," I said slowly. "And you won't ever get that far if I indulge you. I get it now. You wanted my attention. This was how you got it. Make me think one of the Heirs has found me. Possibly sell me the promise of power if the opportunity presented itself. You wanted to be the seductive devil on my shoulder. Convince me to give you a body. Well, you can take the fan dance and fuck off. I'm not letting you in."

Her face paled, blanching so hard that the skin was almost indistinguishable from the bleached bone beneath. Her eyes were voids as deep and terribly compelling as black holes. Her will was immense, but it couldn't crush me. For all her power, her confidence was brittle. Being murdered by your beloved father and reborn as a cosmic entity was a traumatic way to start a new life. She'd been through hell. More of it than I'd ever know. I pitied her. And I never wanted to be her again.

"You'll beg for me one day," she whispered, voice strained tight with rage. "And I'll remind you of your words. I'll force-feed you every one of them."

"And until that day, I want you gone. Get the fuck out of here, Julienne. I have a self-destructing kid to sort out."

"This isn't over."

"It is for now. Leave."

Julienne blipped out of my sight as though she'd never been. The world lurched into fast motion, sound and feeling coming back like a sensory thrashing. The pain in my chest was gone, but the ache behind my eyes was enough to make my eyes cross.

I only had time to blearily out of the window. I was still in the car. The hallucination or revelation or whatever hadn't even lasted a full thirty seconds since I'd passed out. Which meant cows were still trying to turn us into salsa.

I crawled from the car on my belly, certain of what I had to do next. I called forth my will.

"Caroline Thompson," I called into the void. "Come to me."

Chapter Text

Ghosts never seemed to fit me perfectly. Mortimer insisted the difference was all in my head. A ghost was immaterial to all but a select few and could conform to the shape of its container like vapor in a glass. Caroline Thompson's ghost wasn't actually too big for my body. In life, she'd been a little over three inches taller than I was and significantly slimmer. She wasn't actually wearing me like an ill-fitting sweater. But that was how it felt when she stood, smearing a bit of blood from the back of my hand onto my jeans.

Harry and Ebenezer both reacted to my sudden appearance like a gunshot, swiveling in my direction at the sound of my passing. Harry tried to sweep me behind his body with his staff. I dodged. Well, I staggered to one side and managed to get clipped on the elbow. I only felt the sting distantly. I was the passenger in this car, not the driver. Mort didn't encourage a more direct possession. Get used to letting spirits take center stage, and they demanded it. Better to only allow them in enough to use their skills, not to allow their consciousness to dwarf yours.

But Luke wasn't going to react well to someone borrowing the skills of his unrequited love. He wanted Caroline back, in so much as he could have her. It hadn't been easy to convince her. She didn't really want to face him. She just wanted to rest.

"Anita, get back!"

Harry tried to lunge after me again, only to come up short when Ebenezer seized his bad arm. The jolt of pain successfully diverted his attention long enough to let me pass. Our eyes met for a protracted second. He knew what I was trying to do, and he didn't like it. He also knew it was the best way to prevent casualties. Since Harry's safety was on the line, he'd let me try my cockamamie plan. It didn't matter if I died, so long as Harry kept breathing. I could almost respect the single-minded protectiveness.

Almost.

"Luke?" I called. My voice sounded small and barely carried over the sound of lowing cows.

I saw Harry jerk once in my periphery. It was my voice speaking, but that didn't mean much when you were an ectomancer. The tone and intonation were different. Softer than I'd ever be. The immense weariness of life had curled Caroline's shoulders when she'd lived, and death hadn't changed her much. Parts of my body were coiled tightly, ready to run, trained by a lifetime of abuse to flee a dangerous situation when possible.

"Luke?" Caroline repeated. It sounded louder now. The cows had stopped lowing. "Luke, are you here?"

For a moment, no one moved. The only sounds in the field were the exhausted wheeze of the still-running truck engine and the rustle of the wind through the trees. He appeared between two trunks, looking smaller and more vulnerable than the depraved grinning skull caricature he'd been in the Nevernever. The kid looked like a young seventeen. He was nineteen max, and even that was stretching credulity to its breaking point. He had pimples for God's sake. Then again, I hadn't even been a preteen when I'd begun. It seemed wrong to spoil someone so young with this kind of magic. There should be a rule. Let he who is without blemish raise the first corpse.

Luke's voice was a wavering tenor when he called, "Caroline?"

I felt my face stretch into a weary smile. "Luke. There you are."

The teenage necromancer cast a nervous glance behind my position. I didn't look behind me to see what Harry and Ebenezer were doing. He was like a nervous dog. If I twitched wrong, he'd maul me.

"It's not really you," he said, voice breaking on the last word. It was hard to believe a kid this young and distraught was the co-conspirator of a mass murderer. "You're just a ghost. You're trying to trick me."

Caroline's shade took the news she was gone in stride. Death was the first rest her spirit had in a long time. She wanted to get back to it, and not even the realization of how her peace came to be would deter her.

"Maybe. But I feel like me. And I can tell you that I wouldn't have wanted you to do this. It's wrong, Luke. You have to see that."

Luke's eyes welled with tears, and his mouth mashed into a thin line. He was too pale, like someone on the edge of illness. The minor Hallow should have given him a boost, even with only a few hundred souls. I doubted my alter ego had given him even a tenth of what she'd received. He was probably about to pass out.

"He beat you to death! I found your body buried in the Thompson cemetery in an old grave! He didn't even leave you alone when you died. He put you on top of his pervy Uncle Stan who had a stroke a month before your murder."

I grimaced inwardly. It was hard to blame Luke for his desire to murder Grant. I would have at the very least kicked the man's teeth in. But this hadn't been proportional. A mountain of dismembered eyes for an eye.

I couldn't tell you how I knew, but her expression became softer than I thought my face was capable of. She stepped closer to him, reaching toward his cheek. A shudder ran through him when my fingertips brushed his cheek. His skin was clammy beneath my hand.

"I know. But this wasn't right, Luke. You need to stop. Don't hurt anyone else in my name."

The tears fell, and he scrubbed at his face with a dark sleeve before they could drip off his chin. Hard to maintain your badass necromancer cred if you cry in front of the girl you liked. Well, the spirit of the dead girl you used to like, now possessing the borrowed body of a fugitive wizard.

"No," he said, a fine tremor running beneath my fingers. He was shaking. I couldn't tell if it was grief or rage. "I can't. I won't. You don't get an opinion anymore. You're gone. They're the reason why."

I could practically hear the lid to his casket slam shut. He was stubborn, but not nearly as strong as he'd need to beat two wizards of the White Council. Let alone the daughter of Heinrich Kemmler. And by God was the naive teenager going to make a last, suicidal stand rather than give up on a twisted crush.

"Luke-" Caroline began.

Luke backhanded me so hard that he slapped the ghost from my body. Caroline's ghost evaporated seconds after, too weary to remain where she couldn't effect change. I wouldn't have dragged her back, even if she could have been some help. She'd earned her rest.

I hit the ground with a whoosh of expelled air, knocked too senseless to even cry out. I expected a boot to come down hard on my face, cracking my skull like an egg. If I was quick, I could escape as a specter, but even that was dangerous. McCoy would sense something like that.

But the lethal boot to the head didn't come. Luke let out a rather high roar of challenge and thrust a hand toward one of the wizards behind me.

I'd never be sure which of them fired the bullet that showered me with Luke's gray matter. I was pretty sure there were just some things that a girl shouldn't know.

Chapter Text

"Ouch!"

Harry leaned closer to me, dabbing at the cut on my lip with an alcohol swab. I tried to smack his bicep, which also hurt. There was barely a surface on my body that wasn't cut, swollen, or turning colors. The rollover crash had left me feeling like I'd been ambushed by a determined kickboxing team and used as a practice dummy. The curse Luke had hit me with had never been meant to kill, but it had hurt. Like a son of a bitch, it turned out.

"Hold still. You don't want any dirt in this. Or worse. We were in a pasture."

Not to mention the brains, I wanted to add. I kept it to myself. If Harry had been the one to kill Luke, I didn't want to know. I didn't want to change the way I thought of him. Not now. Not while the quivering possibility of more remained between us.

"Still. Did you have to use alcohol?"

"It's what Ebenezer had on hand. Do you want this clean or not?"

I slumped back down. The overstuffed sofa was comfortable, and the fire in the grate across from us was soothing. I was exhausted from the day's exertion. I wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep.

It took five more minutes of fussing before Harry was satisfied with my cleanliness. I should have showered, but I honestly didn't have it in me. I ended up with my head propped on his shoulder, watching the flames lick across the kindling. The warmth was glorious after my encounter with my alter ego. There wasn't anything colder than the heart of an insane necromantic demigoddess.

"Stay with me until I wake up?" I mumbled sleepily, eyes falling to half-mast. I couldn't seem to guard my tongue. "I know I'm going to have nightmares about Luke tonight."

Visions of myself in his place. The best way to deal with a necromancer was to play dirty. I'd wonder if he could put a gun to my head and pull the trigger if he had to. And I didn't want to. I wanted to breathe in the scent of his leather duster, soaking it in until I drifted off to sleep.

"Would you kill me if I turned evil?" I wondered aloud.

Harry paused. "Why? Was that on your to-do list? Because I'm gonna need your resignation before you enroll in a school of villainy."

An exhausted laugh bubbled from my lips, dying a swift death in moments. I couldn't even keep that up for long.

"Just answer the question, please."

Harry thought about it. "It depends, I guess."

"On what?"

"Why you went to the dark side. Things are never simple. Sometimes people make choices because they're in bad spots. Not everyone gets the luxury of having clear-cut options. If you were hurting people, I'd stop you, but that doesn't mean I'd double-tap you on the spot."

I closed my eyes and curled closer to him. "If I go evil, you should. It's the only way you'll beat me."

I could almost hear his smile. "Oh yeah? You think you're a tough guy, huh?"

"Tougher than you."

"Probably. But I won't pick on you. You look like you need a nap."

So did he, apparently, because his arms came around me a moment later, and I ended up with my head in his lap, propped by a throw pillow and an arm around my shoulders. When I peeked, I found him reclining with his head lolling back. His eyes were closed. I think he might have snored. I closed my eyes and let myself drift.

In Harry's arms, there were no nightmares.