How to Claim an Undead Soul Page 17

  “You should ask Boaz to set you up with one of his friends.”

  “Have you met my brother? Oh, that’s right. You’re the kook currently dating him.” She winked at me to show she was joking. Mostly. “I don’t want to date my brother, and all his friends are carbon copies of him. They’re all chest-beating knuckle-draggers.”

  “Does that mean you think I enjoy being clubbed senseless and dragged into caves?”

  “I do worry about brain damage.” She patted my head. “How many times can you fall for the old want to view my cave etchings line?”

  “It’s not the etchings,” I purred. “It’s the way he looks in his saber tooth cat fur thong.”

  Amelie rolled down her window and made retching noises that might not have been faked.

  When we turned onto Whitaker Street, I spotted the absence immediately. I parked under the light, racing the dawn, and we examined the lamppost. I painted an amplification sigil on my palm, and when that got me nothing, I tried a more complex design on my forehead. Nothing I tried earned me the slightest tingle. There was no energy here other than the manmade, electrical kind.

  “I don’t understand how the residual energy can hang around for years,” Amelie said, “and then poof.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip for too long, and she caught me at it, forcing me into a confession. “I don’t think this was random.”

  “What do you mean?” She darted a glance up and down the street like poof might be catching.

  While I filled her in on my visit to Odette, I pulled out wet wipes and started cleaning off my hand and scrubbing my forehead. I watched for Cletus, but he was too well hidden for me to pick him from the evaporating shadows.

  “I think you’re right,” she said when I finished. “I’m not supposed to say anything.” She gestured for me to get back in the car and waited until we had both settled in to talk. “Mom got a message from Clan Peterkin two days ago. Her youngest brother’s wife was High Society, but she gave up the title for my uncle. She’s a classically trained practitioner, and she’s continued to practice even though she commands a much lower price these days. She performed a resuscitation for the Peterkins about three years ago. It was textbook. They got a new vampire, we got gold. Everyone was pleased.”

  “I’m sensing a but here.”

  “All made vampires come with a fifty-year guarantee from the matron of the practitioner’s family, and the Peterkins called to demand a full refund from Mom.”

  I twisted in my seat to face her. “What happened?”

  “They found his corpse in his bed. He was a husk, they said, drained of the magic animating him.”

  “It does happen,” I allowed. “How certain are you of your aunt’s talent?”

  “She’s no Woolworth,” Amelie said, a trace of bitterness tucked between the words. “But she’s competent. She was well-regarded until she married down.”

  And there was the rub. Any shine on her family’s name from having a practitioner in its ranks was dimmed by her association with them. “What will your mother do?”

  “Fight.” There was no hesitation. “Even if the family was at fault, she would fight for our reputation.”

  “Hmm.” I considered the problem. “How did the dybbuk get to the vamp without his clan noticing?”

  The defensive cant to her shoulders eased, and apology was written all over her face. “I don’t know.” She twisted her hands into a complicated knot. “That was about the time Mom remembered she wasn’t home alone and that her daughter studied very quietly. That’s probably why she came down so hard on you tonight. We’d already been fighting before you got there.”

  Eager to draw her out of her misery, I cranked the engine. “Let’s check The Movie Rack.”

  We did, and it was much the same. The spirit energy that had animated the sign for so long was gone as though it had never been. No wonder Timmy was frightened. Though, I had to wonder, if the dybbuk knew where to find him, and there was no mistaking he was a supercharged poltergeist, why hadn’t he been, well, devoured?

  And did I really have to keep thinking dybbuk when I was ninety-nine percent certain the culprit was Ambrose?

  “What now?” Amelie yawned until her eyes squinched closed. “Food?”

  “Food,” I agreed. “You can stay here. I’ll run inside the Waffle Iron and grab the usual.”

  “You are an angel,” she murmured, curling against the door. “Remember pecan waffles are how you get into heaven.”

  Necromancers didn’t go to heaven. We were buried beneath yew trees under full moons and returned to Hecate. But pecan waffles sounded good, so I placed the order.

  Amelie was out cold when I returned, so I parked in her driveway and divvied up the food.

  “What about Jolene?” Her eyes kept drooping. “You can’t leave her out all day.”

  “I’ll catch a cab and drive her home after I eat.” I walked Amelie to her house then nudged her inside before shutting the door and carrying my food to Woolly. “Hey, girl. Quiet night?”

  The porch light flickered, the equivalent of a shrug.

  “How are the wards treating you?” I kicked off my shoes and climbed on the porch to reach for them. A few stanzas of beautiful music flowed through my ears before scratching and dissolving into a muted whine. The discordant noise threatened to give me a headache. I hated that Woolly was stuck with it for the day. “I bet that’s uncomfortable, huh?”

  A few more blinks signaled her agreement.

  “I promise to finish the job tomorrow, even if I have to bail on Taz and call out of work.”

  A warm glow bathed my face, her gratitude like sunlight on my cheeks.

  “I’m going to sit out here and stuff my face,” I told her, plopping down in the swing. “After that, I need to catch a ride back to HQ to pick up Jolene.”

  Woolly dimmed, her disappointment clear. She was still not a huge fan of me leaving, though she was better about letting me go.

  “It’s all right,” I soothed her. “I won’t be gone long, and I promise to make no pit stops.”

  A whistled note had me checking the trees for wind, but the branches were still, the predawn quiet.

  I set my carryout container aside and munched on a rolled-up waffle as I went in search of the sound. I wasn’t surprised when it led me around the side of the porch that faced the carriage house. I wasn’t surprised when a flash of movement, the pop of a white button-down caught my eye. But I was surprised when the luminous creature stalking through my garden in another borrowed shirt sketched a courtly bow in my direction before he vanished as a sigh on a nonexistent wind.

  Eleven

  I studied the spot where Ambrose pulled a Houdini like he might pop back into existence and let me question him if he noticed me staring too long. I didn’t make the conscious choice to go knock on the carriage house door, but I shocked back to awareness when my knuckles hit wood.

  Suddenly it mattered that Linus answer.

  But he didn’t.

  I tested the knob and found it unlocked. This time I didn’t hesitate and invited myself into Linus’s temporary home. The living room still held an assortment of trunks. I smelled maple syrup and pancakes and, below that, bacon and sausage, like breakfast was the only meal ever cooked here. The dining room table contained the same clutter as always. The addition of Linus’s sketchbook was new, and he’d left the book open to the drawing of me. Or Ambrose had.

  I didn’t want to think too hard about that last possibility.

  The bedroom I saved for last, and its pin-neatness worried me. The bed was made, the quilt tucked snug against the pillows. It didn’t look slept in at all. But Linus was an everything in its place kind of guy. Just because he made the bed didn’t mean he never slept in it. I was being ridiculous. Right?

  I accepted there were no clues to find about the time I got a handful of Linus’s cotton briefs. I shoved his underwear back in the drawer I had no business searching and left the house before he caught me
being a creeper.

  I wasn’t a fan of cabs, but I called one all the same. I couldn’t bear leaving Jolene in a parking lot all day. The driver who pulled up to the curb wasn’t the chatty sort, and I appreciated that. It wasn’t until I was straddling Jolene that Cletus appeared.

  His somber outline sharpened, dark against the lightening sky, and he hovered above me, looking forlorn.

  I watched his sullen flutters for a full minute, but he didn’t perform any tricks. “Where have you been?”

  The fabric of his hood rustled as he lifted his head and turned his facelessness toward the fading imprint of the moon.

  “I appreciate your discretion. Amelie is…” I hesitated, unable to put my finger on the reason why I had kept Cletus a secret from her. “I’m not sure what she would make of you.”

  Cletus appeared to have no opinion on the matter, which suited me fine.

  When I cranked up Jolene, instead of heading home as I’d promised Woolly, I found myself idling in the empty street in front of the Cora Ann. Morning was on the rise, and the lights onboard were all extinguished. Only the dock remained lit. There was no movement, no sound. It was gloomy, its splendor unraveling, the way a boat with a ghost ought to look.

  The wraith gazed after it with what I could only describe as longing, but he stuck to me.

  An early morning runner breezed past, a reminder I ought to be heading home. “What is it with you and that boat?”

  His skeletal arm raised, and his bony finger pointed to the second deck, at the window I was certain belonged to the dining room.

  “I don’t get it.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I would take you there, but you can’t cross water.”

  Cletus neither agreed nor disagreed, as was his way. Again, I was struck with a resounding certainty that Linus had misled me about his wraith. Cletus wasn’t all black smoke and claws, and I didn’t buy that he was operating within set parameters, either. Moments like this betrayed him.

  Quick as a rattler strike, a black-clad arm snaked around me and twisted the key, killing Jolene before coiling around my waist. A small palm clamped over my mouth as I sucked in air to scream, and a smooth cheek brushed mine. “Boo.”

  Adrenaline roaring in my ears, I bared my teeth then bit down hard enough to taste blood.

  “Goddess, Grier.” Becky leapt back, flinging her hand. “Is that any way to say hello?”

  “Hello, Becky.” I spat pink on the sidewalk. “How do you want to die?”

  Who did that? Tackled people on the street? She could have gotten herself killed.

  “I have a very specific fantasy, if you must know,” Boaz drawled as he crossed the street to join us. “It involves me at age ninety-nine, a bottle of oil, and—”

  “Cletus could have hurt her.” I dismounted Jolene and advanced on him. “I could have hurt her.” I glared at him. “I might still hurt you.”

  “No offense, Squirt, but your wraith might be defective. And you wouldn’t hurt me.” He winked, and the morning warmed. “You like my face too much to wipe the floor with it.”

  Aware I was only reinforcing bad behavior, I couldn’t help smiling as he stroked my ego. Brownie points were awarded for pretending I was a threat to him. Smart man. Maybe he realized one day I would be. Plus, he was right. I did like his face. Especially now that I knew what he could do with his lips.

  Boaz was staring at my mouth like he’d done the same math and wanted to check our answers against each other.

  “Becky, never sneak up on Grier. It’s not fun or funny.” His flat delivery left no room for argument. “Not when you’ve been where she’s gone and survived.”

  “Sorry, Grier.” Becky was sucking on her wound. “I spook the guys all the time. I didn’t think.”

  “No problem.” My heart would stop attempting to blast open my chest cavity and escape at any moment, I was sure. “It happens.”

  Boaz shot her a pointed look, and she backed off to give us privacy.

  “Where is your shadow?” Boaz tipped his head back. “I haven’t seen him.”

  Cletus, a wraith of few moans, joined us then. Late to the party, he nonetheless billowed menacingly, swiping out with his claws and catching Boaz on the forearm. The kittens had done worse, but Boaz got with the program and took a healthy step away from me. His job done, Cletus returned to watching the Cora Ann.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I conceded. “I’ll talk to Linus about him.”

  Hooking his thumbs in the back pockets of his tactical pants, Boaz rocked on his heels. “You haven’t asked the obvious question.”

  I rolled a shoulder. “I doubted you’d answer me.”

  “I could tell you,” he said, playing along, “but—”

  “—you’d have to kill me?” I finished for him.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of chaining you in the basement at Mom’s.” His fingers closed over my wrist. “I have manacles in just your size.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “I’m not going to ask.”

  “It’s probably best you don’t.” He pulled me closer and dropped a kiss on the tip of my nose. “I don’t want to scare you off.”

  “I’m a necromancer.” I huffed. “I don’t scare easy.”

  “Then what were those cute panicked mouse noises you made a minute ago?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What panicked mouse noises?”

  “The ones you breathed the second before you bit through Becky’s middle finger. How is she supposed to flip people off now?”

  “A, those weren’t mouse noises. I was sucking in oxygen to scream bloody murder, and her hand caused air to whistle—not squeak—through my nose.” I caught his wrist and examined the faint scores in his skin. “And B, it’s rude to flip people off.”

  “Well, doc?” The fingers of his other hand tangled in my hair. “Am I going to live?”

  “Don’t be a baby. He barely broke the skin.” I reached for the pen in my back pocket and drew a healing sigil beneath the wounds. The skin knit together before my eyes, and I capped my weapon of choice. “There you go. Good as new.”

  “What was that?” He gawked at the pen, then the sigil, and then me. “I’ve never seen one of those.”

  “Um, can you continue to never have seen one?” I winced at my careless mistake. “It’s an invention of Linus’s. I shouldn’t have used it on you without his permission.”

  “So that’s how he makes his money, huh?” He tapped the end of the pen, but his voice lacked the edge I had come to expect when he spoke of Linus. “I can respect him wanting to earn his own keep.”

  “I’m sorry. I seem to have gone momentarily deaf.” I wiggled my right pinky in the corresponding ear. “Were you just civil to Linus?”

  “It is easier to be civil to Linus when Linus isn’t here, but yes.”

  Hmm. Maybe he could be trained after all.

  Boaz winced and tapped a device hugging his ear I hadn’t even noticed he was wearing. “Yes, sir.”

  “Look at you all mannered up,” I teased, but a burst of insight had my jaw dropping. “You’re hunting the dybbuk, aren’t you?” There was absolutely no other reason for him to be playing Man in Black with an Elite unit in Savannah otherwise. “Admit it. I’m right.”

  “How did—?” He touched his earpiece again. “Yes, sir.” He bent down, lips brushing my throat. “Meet me in Forsyth Park in two hours. I can sneak away then.”

  “Care to be more specific?” Forsyth Park spanned thirty acres. And then it hit me. “The playground.”

  “The playground,” he agreed, and then he was gone.

  A cool hand brushed my arm, and I found Cletus half-formed beside me. “Ready to go home?”

  The wraith didn’t answer either way, but he did drift toward Jolene.

  Woolly’s disco light reception as she flickered in panicked bursts made me feel like dirt for breaking my word to her, so I played a card guaranteed to earn her instant forgiveness. “I’m sorry.” I gripped the doorknob she w
asn’t allowing me to twist. “It turns out Boaz is still in town on some kind of covert mission. He spotted me and came to say hello.”

  The brass spun in my palm, the door opening in her eagerness for details.

  “He’s hunting the weirdo that’s been hanging around in our backyard.” I should have outed Ambrose to him, but there hadn’t been time. And, okay, I owed Linus one last chance at explaining their connection before involving the authorities. “He wants to meet at Forsyth Park.”

  The floor register exhaled a dreamy sigh that had me rolling my eyes.

  I called Linus, but it dumped straight to voicemail. Exiting Woolly, I made the trek across the garden, already certain of what I would discover. I knocked, and no one answered. I called out, and no one answered. I kicked the door, and no one answered. Sensing a theme, I braced my forehead against the wood and debated my options.

  “Far be it from me to interrupt, but can I perhaps be of assistance? Whatever it is you want, the door is in no position to give it to you.”

  That voice.

  I whirled, putting the door at my back. “Ambrose.”

  Cletus materialized in front of me, a shield forged of churning nightmares, and hissed at the garish interloper.

  “Ah, she remembers.” He kept to the far end of the garden, where the deepest shadows clung, but the living flame masquerading as hair cast flickering light across the sharp planes of his face, too bright for Cletus to douse. “You remember so little, I’m flattered I made the cut.”

  The barb struck, but it was a flesh wound. I’d suffered worse. “You’re trespassing.”

  “Oh, I think not.” He chuckled, and the sound was made of sparkling moonlight. “What is it you want, little goddess?”

  After swatting Cletus aside, I bared down on Ambrose. “Where is Linus?”

  The angle of his jaw hid the cut of his smile. “Unavailable.”

  The sound of my molars grinding ought to have warned him of my mood. “When will he be back?”

  Ambrose cocked his head. “Do you want him back so badly?”

  “We need to talk.” About you I left unsaid.

  “Alas, I am not his keeper. I do so hate leaving a woman unsatisfied, but I fear I must.”