Page 12 of Death and Divination
Chapter 6
Ophelia
“No one needs my help. No one ever comes tomefor help. Noooo. It’s always Cassie, or Bronwyn, or you, or Glenda. Not me.” Babylon poured me a cup of coffee and plopped it down in front of me. Then she flounced over in her yoga pants and sports bra to get one for herself.
I’d skipped sleep, opting instead for a quick shower, take out, and a visit with my youngest sister before I headed in to work. Maybe Cassie was right. Maybe Babylon would be able to shed some light on who this mysterious—and mysteriously hot—man was that kept showing up at scenes of death. And near death.
“So, you and Adrienne and Sylvie all get together and have pity parties?” I teased. “The sisters with weird magic that freak everyone out.”
She scowled, sitting down next to me with her cup of coffee. “Sylvie can’t come to the pity party. Everyone likes a luck witch. It’s Addie and I that are the black sheep of the family.”
I reached out and tugged on a strand of Lonnie’s red hair that had escaped her messy topknot. “Well, I’m here now. Guess I’ll need to figure out a reason to ask Adrienne for help so she doesn’t feel left out. Maybe I’ll have her call more bluebirds to my feeder or something.”
Adrienne communicated with animals, and they eagerly did her bidding. Most of the time anyway. Of the pair of them, Babylon had the weirdest magic, though. Necromancy. No one in our family going back to when Temperance Perkins escaped the pyre and founded our town had ever been skilled in necromancy. The closest had been that aunt back in the eighteenth century who was a medium. The unusual and scary magical ability had always made Lonnie feel like an outcast. Even though Dad had taken off on us before she’d been born, she’d always felt that was somehow her fault. It was bullshit. She’d had nothing to do with dad leaving. She’d had nothing to do with Momma’s leaving either.
Although having a baby animate a spider you’d just squashedwasa bit unnerving.
Babylon shifted in her seat, cradling her coffee in her hands. She’d gotten our father’s auburn hair, but unlike Cassie and Bronwyn who had reddish brown locks, Lonnie’s hair was bright fire-engine red. Even with her light complexion and freckled skin, she was a few shades tanner than my deathly pale, though. Like Sylvie and I, she’d gotten the rare blue eyes, except hers were a dark stormy gray-blue where mine and my twin’s looked practically neon.
“So, what do you know about ghosts?” I asked, getting right to the topic.
“Pretty much nothing.” Lonnie sipped her coffee. “You’d think I’d have some means of communicating with the dead, but no. All I get is their bodies. Lovely, huh?”
Did all youngest siblings complain this much? Sheesh.
“Cassie said you could do something where a spirit straddled both worlds, partially in their reanimated body and partially in the afterlife, so you’ve got to havesomemeans of communication with them,” I countered.
She grimaced. “That was a mistake. Even if I could replicate it, I wouldn’t want to. Yes, that undead had more autonomy and was less of a drain on my magic, but I could hear him, Ophelia. I could hear his voice in my head. I couldn’t get him to shut up about the guy who killed him, or the 2011 World Series, or what he had for dinner the night before. If I had to listen to him wax poetic about that damned shrimp scampi one more time, I was going to shoot myself.”
“So, you let him go?” I looked around, worried that I was going to find some shambling zombie in the hallway.
“Of course I let him go. I can’t reanimate for more than a few hours, especially something the size of a human. I didn’t even want to spend a few hours with that guy and his shrimp scampi story, so I let him go right away.”
I could tell that despite her light tone that she wasn’t joking. The experience had unnerved my sister. It took a lot to shake Babylon. Someone who had been able to raise the dead since infancy wasn’t a witch who was easily spooked.
“You okay?” I eyed her with concern. “Have you reanimated anything since then? Was it a one-time occurrence, you think?”
She took a long drink of coffee and didn’t meet my eyes. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Next time I’ll stick to raising road kill, or something that isn’t obsessed with his fine dining choices.”
“Why do you even do it, Lonnie?” We’d had this discussion a million times and she’d never given me or any of us a straight answer. “Unless you’re trying to raise an army to defeat an evil overlord, or it’s Halloween, I don’t see any reason to go messing with the dead.”
“It’s what I do. Now stop being freaked out about my magical talent and tell me about this ghost you think you saw.”
I repeated the story about seeing the man at the various calls, how he seemed to be watching me, how he vanished seemingly into thin air, how no one besides me had noticed him.
“But not all your calls?” Lonnie asked. “He didn’t show up at Silas Crabtree’s tail emergency? Or the anxiety attack one? Or the gnome kid with the croup?”
I shook my head. “He’s at the serious ones—ones where I’m normally too busy trying to keep someone alive to go ask him why he keeps showing up. Once I asked him who he was, and he told me Death. Then this afternoon, when I was pretty sure that goblin had drowned, he told me his name was Nirnasha right after I asked him out to dinner. Or coffee.”
Lonnie made a strangled sound. “You asked someone who could be a ghost or a weirdo stalker out to dinner?”
I shrugged. “He’s hot. At first, he had this sort of silent-dude-in-robes appeal, but now he wears a suit and you know how I like men in suits. Plus, it’s not like he’s a skeleton, or a wraith, or walks around wearing a hockey mask or anything.”
“You’re so weird.” Lonnie shook her head.
“Oh, like you’re normal,” I shot back. None of us were normal. I wasn’t sure if it was because we were witches or because we were just a bunch of weirdos, but we all had some strange quirks going on.
“So, what doyouthink?” I asked.
