The group chuckled, exactly the response she'd been aiming for. Leenah believed in treating the dead with respect, but that didn't mean the stories had to be reverent. The spirits she'd encountered over the years appreciated humor far more than hollow platitudes. Death was serious enough without making the telling of it stuffy.
"Now, if you'll follow me toward the older section," she said, adjusting the leather satchel slung across her shoulder. The bag held the usual tour guide essentials of recording equipment, notebooks, sage bundles, and a few pieces of protective hematite that had belonged to her grandmother. "We'll visit the area where the original pact was?—"
"Miss Carrow?" The young witch, barely out of her teens, raised her hand tentatively. "Is it true that you can actually see spirits? Like, not just sense them, but really see them?"
Leenah paused, considering her answer. This question came up on every tour, usually asked with the same mixture of curiosity and skepticism. The supernatural community might be more accepting of unusual gifts than humans, but necromancy still made most people uncomfortable. Death magic, they called it, as if communing with the departed was somehow inherently sinister.
"Sometimes," she said finally, opting for honesty over the usual deflection. "But mostly I just listen. The dead have stories to tell, and I've found they appreciate having someone who bothers to hear them."
Minerva, her sleek black cat, wound between her legs with a soft purr. The cat had been following Leenah's tours for three years now, ever since she'd shown up as a kitten at Leenah's cottage door during a particularly violent thunderstorm.Minerva's heterochromatic eyes—one blue, one green—seemed to track movement that others couldn't see, making her the perfect companion for someone who worked at the boundary between worlds.
The tour group murmured among themselves as they followed Leenah deeper into the cemetery, past newer headstones marking the graves of more recent residents. She'd moved to Hollow Oak six years ago, drawn by stories of a town where supernatural beings could live openly without fear of exposure or persecution. What she'd found was exactly what those stories promised—a community that asked few questions about her past and accepted her unusual gifts without judgment.
Well, mostly without judgment. There were still some who crossed themselves when she passed, old habits from childhoods spent in more traditional supernatural communities where necromancy was viewed with suspicion. But Elder Varric had welcomed her request to settle in town, and Twyla at The Griddle & Grind made the best coffee this side of the mountains. After years of feeling like an outsider everywhere else, Hollow Oak had become the closest thing to home she'd ever known and the first place she had made real friends.
"The founding families' section is our oldest area," Leenah explained as they approached a cluster of elaborate headstones dating back nearly three centuries. Morning mist clung to the ancient oaks overhead, their massive trunks twisted with age and the weight of accumulated magic. "These graves mark the resting places of the original supernatural settlers who established our protective wards. They were refugees, mostly. Witches fleeing Salem's trials, shifters escaping European persecution, fae seeking asylum from iron-wielding humans."
She'd researched every family represented here, spending countless hours in The Hollow Oak Book Nook pouring over historical records and genealogical texts. The stories weren'tjust tourist attractions to her; they were the foundation of everything that made Hollow Oak special. These people had built something beautiful from tragedy, creating a sanctuary that had endured for generations.
"But they weren't the first to call this place sacred," she continued, approaching a section where the headstones were even older, their carved names barely legible after decades of mountain weather. "The Cherokee considered this valley holy ground long before European supernatural fled across the ocean. The early settlers made agreements with the indigenous spirits, promising to?—"
The words died in her throat as her necromantic abilities suddenly spiked without warning. Power surged through her like electrical current, making her stumble backward as the familiar tingle of spiritual presence exploded into something far stronger. The air around the oldest graves began to shimmer, and ethereal figures started materializing among the headstones. More spirits than she'd ever seen manifest at once.
"What the hell?" one of the werewolves gasped, his nostrils flaring as his supernatural senses detected the sudden shift in the cemetery's atmosphere.
Leenah tried to speak, to reassure her tour group that everything was under control, but the spirits were pressing closer now. Ancient faces materialized in the morning mist, their features marked by centuries of sorrow and growing anger. These weren't the usual restless dead she encountered on her tours of gentle spirits seeking closure or comfort. These were older, more powerful, and they were calling her name in languages she didn't recognize.
Leenah... Leenah... come closer, child of between...
The voices whispered in Cherokee, in what might have been ancient Gaelic, in tongues that predated written language. Her necromantic abilities had always allowed her to understand thedead regardless of linguistic barriers, but these spirits carried an urgency that made her pulse race with adrenaline and something deeper, like recognition, perhaps, or inevitability.
"Oh god, oh god, they're everywhere!" The young witch's voice rose to a shriek as more spirits materialized, their ethereal forms becoming increasingly solid and visible to even those without supernatural sight.
The tour group panicked. The werewolves were the first to flee, their enhanced fight-or-flight responses kicking in as they raced toward the cemetery gates. The witch couple followed close behind, the young woman sobbing as her partner dragged her away from the manifesting spirits. Even the fae photographer, who should have been accustomed to otherworldly encounters, abandoned his expensive camera equipment in his haste to escape.
Their screams echoed across the cemetery as they fled, but Leenah stood transfixed among the swirling spiritual energy. She should have been terrified, any reasonable person would have run from dozens of manifesting spirits calling her name with increasing insistence. But instead, she felt a strange sense of rightness, as if this moment had been inevitable from the day she'd first set foot in Hollow Oak.
Minerva hissed and arched her back beside her, the cat's fur standing on end as she sensed the disturbance in the spiritual realm. Her mismatched eyes reflected the ethereal light emanating from the spirits, and she positioned herself between Leenah and the most aggressive manifestations with fierce protective instinct.
"Easy, girl," Leenah murmured, kneeling to run her fingers through Minerva's fur. The cat's solid warmth anchored her to the physical world even as the spirits pressed closer, their whispered urgency growing more insistent.
The pact... broken promises... time grows short...
She is the one... the bridge between worlds...
Help us, daughter of Salem's blood...
The spirits weren't threatening her, Leenah realized. They were pleading. These ancient dead carried wounds that ran deeper than personal trauma. They were of a collective grief, betrayal, centuries of being forgotten by those who had promised to remember. Her necromantic abilities had never felt this powerful, this connected to something larger than individual encounters with restless souls.
Whatever was happening here went beyond her usual work helping spirits find peace. This felt like awakening, like recognition, like the moment when all the scattered pieces of her life suddenly clicked into a pattern she'd never seen before.
The morning mist swirled thicker around the oldest graves, and shadows moved with purpose through the ethereal light. Leenah Carrow had built her reputation on helping the dead, but as she stood surrounded by manifesting spirits calling her name in ancient tongues, she wondered if perhaps the dead had been waiting all along to help her find something she'd never known she was looking for.
Minerva's warning hiss drew her attention to movement at the cemetery's edge, where a large figure was approaching through the mist. Even at a distance, she could see the purposeful stride of someone drawn by the same supernatural disturbance that had awakened the spirits. Her necromantic abilities were still surging, making it impossible to focus on anything but the pressing urgency of the manifestations around her.
But something about the approaching figure made her pulse quicken. As if her life was about to change in ways she couldn't possibly predict.
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