Page 21 of Devils and the Dead
I hated to tell her it might be years. It was so unfair. I felt horrible for doing this to her, then leaving her with no choice but to endure while I got my shit together and figured out how to fix the situation.
“I don’t know.” I fought back my frustration. “Does that change your answer? If it takes years to figure out how to resurrect you, but I find out how to return you to the afterlife in a month or two, would you change your mind?”
She thought about that for a moment before responding. “I don’t know. I might. Let me know if you figure out how to return me to the grave. I honestly don’t know how long I’ll be able to wait like this if there’s another option available—even if it’s not the option I want.”
“I’ll definitely let you know,” I promised.
“Thank you.” Maude eyed the bones on the table once more. “I’m not sure if I want to be here while you do this. I’m curious. I’ve never seen someone work magic aside from the few times you’ve done it on me. Is this spell scary? Will there be blood?”
I remembered the screaming and bleeding as I cut into the tree trunk to extract the bone. I couldn’t guarantee the same thing wouldn’t happen here, even without the tree.
“It might be scary. It’s probably a good idea if you stay in your room with the door closed and the television on.”
She nodded, took a step away, then hesitated. “Are they…the cursed elves, are they in pain?”
Memories of the screaming returned once more. “I think one is. The others might be as well.”
“Then help him first. Help the elf that’s in pain before you help me. I can wait.”
She turned around and left. I heard the soft click of her bedroom door, then the murmur of the television and felt bad for being annoyed at her earlier. Maude was such a wonderful person. She’d been a zombie for two weeks. It was clearly difficult for her to continue like this. And still, she put another’s welfare ahead of her own.
I’d help these elves, but I wasn’t going to make Maude wait any more than she had to. With a sigh, I turned back to my spell.
It wasn’t ideal doing this sort of magic during the day, but as a bartender, my late hours were usually spent working, so I’d learned to make accommodations. I think it helped me in the long run. I might not be conventionally trained. I might have huge gaps in my knowledge. But I could work my magic on the fly, no matter the time of day, no matter the phase of the moon. Few witches could say that, and I was pretty sure that few necromancers could say that as well.
If only I knew any other necromancers to ask.
I might be able to do this at four o’clock in the afternoon, but darkness always helped. I turned off the lights then drew the blackout shades. The heavy curtains and the shades served a secondary purpose as well by ensuring no passing neighbors peeked in the window and saw something alarming occurring at my dining room table. My house was tiny and all of six feet from the sidewalk and the street. People couldn’t help but glance in as they walked by.
I lit the candles, murmuring the incantation under my breath. As I’d done in the werewolf compound, I drew runes in chalk around the table, just to make sure if something unexpected happened it didn’t go tearing through my house and the neighborhood. As an extra precaution, I lit sage and walked the perimeter of the circle.
When the preparations were done, I arranged the stones in a triangle and placed the bones in the middle. Amazonite for truth. Fluorite for clarity. Apache tears for healing trauma. Smoky quartz for grounding. I sat, folding my hands together and slowing my breathing as I concentrated on the bones.
Spirits speak, wherever you may be. Tell me your tale. Share with me your sorrows and joys. Give me the knowledge I need to ease you into eternal rest.
I closed my eyes and reached across the veil.
Darkness. Rot. A foul sweetness. And pain.
It took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t in any of the afterlives I’d visited in the past in order to communicate with the departed. I wasn’t even across the veil. My magic had latched onto the focus item of the bones and led me to where the soul that had once inhabited them now resided.
A log. A sugar maple tree that had fallen in a storm, lain across a road, been trimmed and transported to the werewolf compound, and now sat in Fists’s lumberyard. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The spirits were haunting the mountain, and this one in particular was trapped in the log. Of course my spell brought me there.
Are you able to show yourself to me?I asked.Either in an image of what you looked like in life, or as smoke or mist?
I saw nothing but darkness, but the sweet smell of rot was now laced with the faint aroma of lavender and lemon balm. Spirits this side of the veil could assume some degree of visible form but this poor elf was so entrapped by the curse that he couldn’t even manage that.
Can you speak?
The smells shifted and changed, as though a wind I could not feel blew through them. I felt the log shake, and hoped that none of the werewolves were nearby to witness this. They were freaked out enough about the haunting without seeing the log-that-screams-and-bleeds vibrating.
Help. Me.
The faint plea broke my heart.
I’ll help you and the others, too. But I need to know what happened. Who cursed you and why?
I stole…was caught…was punished. I didn’t mean for her to punish the others, too. Not their fault.
