Page 4 of Death and Divination
“Oh, really?” I grinned, remembering Cassie setting her ex-boyfriend’s pants on fire in the middle of the courthouse.
“I paid for that. I’m still paying for that. I’ve got to attend anger management meetings every Friday night until I’m dead and in the grave,” she shot back.
“Good thing you’re going to end up immortal,” I teased. “I wonder if they have anger management meetings in hell, where you’ll be a princess or something. Perks of bonding with the son of Satan, right?”
“Oh, there are plenty of perks beyond that.” She wiggled her eyebrows and I immediately thought of the two of them naked and sweaty in bed. Lucky duck. Lucien was totally hot. Not my type at all, but totally hot. And yes, I was just a little bit jealous over my sister’s fortune in the love department.
Maybe someday I’d be as lucky.
“How are things with the werewolves?” I asked, half afraid of what she might say.
“Dallas has made a move to break up Clinton’s faction and reclaim that section of the mountain. He’s made some headway, and I fully expect Clinton to retaliate next week some time.”
I thought of the visions I’d been having the past two weeks and winced. “Do you think it will come to war? Bloodshed? Death?”
“I don’t know. The last alpha war was bloody and brutal. A lot of wolves died or were executed after it was all over. But this is different. Clinton is Dallas’ son, and I think they’re both reluctant to take that step. I don’t think either one really wants to kill the other, but I fear if there’s no resolution to this, that’s where we’re headed.”
“Can you just forbid it?” I was half pleading with her, sick at the thought of what sort of slaughter a war among the werewolves might bring. I wasn’t a huge fan of the pack. I’d always considered the werewolves to be a bunch of backward bullies. But I didn’t want them dead. I didn’t wantanyonedead.
“Sure, then I’d have a different war on my hands. Both factions would unite and try to wipe us out instead.” Cassie ran a hand through her dark hair. “I’m trying to be diplomatic here—and yes, I know how amusing that sounds. Me. Diplomatic. But the werewolves have been allowed to have their own rules and their own culture for nearly two hundred years. I can’t just walk in and smash that. I’ve insisted they bring their pack law into alignment with certain fundamental town laws, and I’ve instituted a sanctuary policy for any wolf that wants to leave the pack. Those two things have pissed Dallas and Clinton off enough. I don’t want to push it too far too fast.”
“I don’t want anyone to die.” I sucked in a ragged breath and slowly let it out, trying to keep the panic at bay. Every time I faced death, whether in my paramedic job or in a divination, I saw myself as some sort of crusader, fighting to hold back fate, to allow someone just a while longer in this world. In reality, I knew how powerless I was. Perhaps the people I saved weren’t meant to die. Perhaps those whose deaths I’d averted hadn’t been predestined to lose their life that day after all. Maybe it was all an illusion and I was tilting at windmills, believing I was making a difference, all while the grim reaper mocked me and took whom he pleased.
Grim reaper. The man at my emergency calls. Was he really Death as he’d said, or a ghost, or something else entirely? When I’d first seen him, he’d been a figure in robes, a man with black lifeless eyes in an indistinct face. But over the last two years he’d changed. Morphed. Become someone who made my heart speed up in a good way when I saw him. Become someone I’d considered to be... well, hot.
How sick was that?
“What’s wrong?” Cassie’s forehead creased with concern and she reached over to place a hand on my cheek, just as she used to do when we were children. “You look tired, Ophelia—tired and…defeated.”
I didn’t want to tell her what was wrong. I didn’t want to tell her about my strange fantasies of battling death. And Ididn’twant to tell her about the disturbing visions I’d been having. They were too confusing, too vague. I didn’t want to worry her about something that we had no way of combating—at least not until I figured out exactly what it was we needed to deal with.
“It was a rough night at work last night,” I said instead. “A pixie overdosed on persimmon seeds, there was a merman with a torn fin who nearly bled out, and Silas Crabtree got his tail caught in the sliding door at the twenty-four-hour grocery.”
“Again?” Cassie rolled her eyes.
“Again. That wasn’t the worst, though. There was a wreck out on the interstate. Six cars, one of them with an ejection. It was touch and go for a moment. We weren’t sure if she was going to pull through.”
“But she made it?” Cassie’s eyes searched mine. She knew how upset I got in the face of death. As I child I’d sobbed over smushed earthworms and every roadkill. My youngest sister, Babylon, had taken to re-animating any animal body we came across in an effort to console me. It hadn’t worked but try telling a five-year-old that the zombie frog hopping around the pond wasn’t the same as the pre-death version.
I know. Paramedic probably wasn’t the best choice of careers for someone who was gutted every time a patient didn’t make it, but it felt like a calling. I felt as if somehow, I could singlehandedly hold back death. If I could save just one person through my efforts, then it was worth the personal anguish I went through each day.
“Yes, she made it. If she hadn’t been a gargoyle, it would have been a different story.” I cleared off a space and sat down next to my eldest sister, thinking there was one thing Icouldconfide. “I’ve got a weird question, though. What do you know about ghosts?”
“Uh, nothing. The closest any of us is to a spirit worker is Babylon.”
I shuddered. “Necromancy doesn’t have anything to do with ghosts or spirits. It’s animating the dead.”
“Sometimes it does,” Cassie argued. “A skilled necromancer can hold a spirit in check, straddling both worlds. A bit in their body, a bit in the afterlife.”
That whole thing gave me the heebie-jeebies. I loved my youngest sister, but her skill creeped me out. “I really hope Lonnie isn’t doing that. It’s bad enough when she does the reanimated corpse thing. Do you remember Thanksgiving?”
“How could I forget?” Cassie drawled.
Babylon had drunk too much wine and animated the turkey. Suffice it to say we ended up having take-out Chinese for Thanksgiving dinner.
“Well, I think I’ve been seeing a ghost,” I told my sister. “For years now, I’ve been seeing someone at my calls. He’s always at the ones where there’s a critical or serious injury. It happened again last night. I was working on the gargoyle, and suddenly the guy was there. He was standing near us, looking at me. He does that. Usually when we go to load the person in the bus, and I look for him again he’s gone.”
“A bystander?” Cassie suggested.
