Witch's Bell Book One Read online

  Chapter 5

  Ebony felt her heart pounding as she half-jogged, half-ran beside Ben. One hand was clenched, fingernails scraping against her palm. The other hand was removing the wide-brimmed hat from her head and unceremoniously dumping it onto the concrete floor of the depot. “What do we know?” her voice was icy, practically chilled to zero Kelvin from her usually sunny disposition.

  “Not a lot.” Ben ran a hand over his mouth, eyes rounded with shock. “But this is really bad, right Eb? I mean, do we call in the Coven?”

  “They’ll be there… if it gets serious enough.”

  That was the thing about the Coven. The entire reason they’d set up their special relationship with the police department in the first place was so the police had the means and knowledge to deal with magical crime on their own. A witch was kept on as liaison. But mostly the police were expected to deal with whatever crazy, hideous, and unfortunate magical maladies might strike the citizens of Vale, without calling in the big guns.

  If, and only if, something got completely out of hand and the sanctity of the Portal itself was at risk, would the Coven come in. They might send more representatives – add a couple more witches to the force. But the Coven – as the ruling council of the witches – would only be seen on the streets of Vale if Hell, or its equivalent, bubbled up from the depths. The Coven weren’t there to save the ordinary citizens of Vale from the everyday mishaps of magic. They were there to save people’s souls from the once-in-a-nightmare offerings of damnation.

  “Look,” Ebony unclenched her hand to grab the passenger door handle, “This is bad, Ben, I’m sure it is. But you know the rules. The Coven aren’t going to bother getting out of their rocking chairs and putting down their knitting for this.” She was about to pile into the car, when she saw Detective Nate occupying her seat. “What?” she spluttered. “That’s my sea—”

  “Just get in the back,” Ben’s voice was curt and sharp.

  Ebony, for once, did what she was told.

  “But they’ll send reinforcements, right?” Ben continued as he gunned the engine.

  “If things get out of hand.” She kicked off her high-heels, shoving them under the seat with her feet. She really, really liked those heels. They were white, soft, and reminded her of the glamor of the ‘50s. They went perfectly with this dress, and she wasn’t about to let the tormented ghost of some recently-deceased soul ruin them. A girl had to have boundaries, a witch doubly so.

  “I don’t get it.” Nate looked at Ebony through the rear-vision mirror, even though it was angled toward Ben as he sped up the ramp and out of the depot, barely waiting for the roller doors to open. “If this is serious enough to get you to follow orders, why don’t we just call for this backup now? We can’t go into a dangerous—”

  “Oh, you don’t understand.” Ebony harrumphed, pushing further into the seat behind her and crossing her arms tightly over her chest. This wasn’t how today was supposed to go. According to her wonderful morning plan, around about now she should be sauntering off to grab Turkish delight and catch a film at the old refurbished cinema at the end of her street.

  She stared out the window, her expression cold. “The entire point of the Pact, the entire point of me acting as your consultant, is so the Coven can keep their interference to a minimum.”

  “You mean they have better things to do with their time than help us mere mortals stay this side of death?” Nate scoffed from the front seat. “Sounds real nice.”

  She barely held back the urge to give the back of his seat a sharp kick. “No. Look, if we called the Coven every single time an old grandmother picked up a possessed coconut from the fruit market, then don’t you think the rest of Vale would catch on? I don’t know if you’ve realized this yet, but not every witch looks like me.”

  Nate mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “No one else looks like you.”

  She ignored it. “Not all witches have a stunning sense of fashion, excellent jewelry and, I don’t know, a face at all. The Coven consists of the most powerful of the witches, and let me tell you, when you get to that stage, you physically change. You don’t look like an ordinary human anymore, because guess what? You aren’t human any more. You’ve given yourself up to power completely, and it has seeped through every cell, every pore, and every inch of your body. So, Detective Nate,” she stressed his name like an irate principal calling the dunce to the front of the class, “If you want a group of faceless, wild hags busting down-town every other day, then I can tell you how to contact the Coven. But if you’d like the citizens of Vale to remain peacefully ignorant about the true nature of their city, then you’ll have to stick with me.”

  Nate stared at her squarely through the rear-vision mirror, his gaze as even as a builder’s level. “Right, of course. But if we need it, we have back up, right? Even if it’s a bunch of toothless, faceless, old ha—”

  “Oh shut up.” She really did kick the back of his chair now. “I might get away with calling them hags, Detective, but a word of advice – never follow me for behavioral directions. And yes, we have the backup, if we need it. But it will come at a cost.”

  Costs. She rolled the word around in her mind. Though she wasn’t about to announce it to the annoying detective, the costs she was warning about wouldn’t fall on his wide shoulders. No, they’d fall on her appropriately proportioned, much cuter shoulders instead. Maybe that’s why she was so angry. She was going into a hazardous situation knowing that if, or when, it all went to Hell, she’d be the one dragged down with it. While the police department might do an internal review if something went horribly wrong, Ebony would be called up in front of the Coven. The Coven… weren’t a very lenient bunch.

  Ebony took a steadying breath. There was only one thing she could be thankful for… maybe. Of the nine witches who sat on the Vale Coven, she knew one quite well. Fantastically well, in fact. Avery Bell, after all, was Ebony’s mother.

  Which meant Ebony faced the exceedingly uncomfortable fact that if she failed today, she wouldn’t just have to wipe the egg off her face and submit to the punishments of the Coven, she’d have to explain it all to her mother as well.

  Ebony shifted the strap on her dress in an attempt to make it sit straight against her shoulder. Lord, she hoped everything would go well, but she had that feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Tonight would end with a bang.

  “Why don’t you kick the back of my chair again?” Nate suggested, his voice harsh and sarcastic. “You’ll find that comes with consequences as well.”

  Ebony thought she caught a glimpse of Ben rolling his eyes from the driver’s seat. “You two are like my kids – annoying as hell when you’re together, but strangely companionable when you are apart.”

  She didn’t reply, just bore her practiced evil eye through the back of Nate’s chair, hoping to give him at the very least that horrible sensation of being watched, if not a mild headache.

  Silence fell again, but only in words. The sound of the tires grinding over the road, Ben’s hands sliding across the wheel as he took corners too fast, and the general hubbub of the rest of the traffic made sure things weren’t all that quiet. Still, Ebony started to feel the silence around her. It prickled up her arms like a spider in the night. It was that strange silence that would fall over a group when they were waiting for the yet-unsaid to make itself heard. Only problem was, she realized as she scratched her arms, there was an edge to this silence, an expectant edge.

  “So,” Nate said with a tortured sigh, “Are you going to tell me what the consequences are, or are you going to leave me hanging? Tell me, consultant witch, what’s going to happen to us if we have to call in for backup?”

  But Ebony was no longer listening to his words – she was listening to the pronounced silences that punctuated around them, like hail before a storm. “Shhh,” she said sharply, “Do you hear that?” She put a hand flat on the window, repositioning herself so she could get a better
view of the sky outside.

  Things were growing dark. Not the natural, welcome dark that drew on into night. This one came from the brewing storm clouds above. The very same wisps along the horizon Ebony had dismissed at midday were now collecting into a wall of blue-gray menace.

  “What?” Nate said, more irritated than interested. “I don’t hear anything?”

  “Precisely.” Ebony bit her lip. “It’s going to start raining in a second,” she predicted.

  Sure enough, as Ben slowed down at a set of lights, his fingers drumming repetitively on the leather steering wheel, the sky opened up. Tiny droplets of rain started to hit the roof of the car, slide down the windows, and streak the pavement outside. They began to grow fatter as the seconds passed, until Ben slid a hand over the wipers, turning them on with a practiced move.

  “You think I’m supposed to be impressed by that?” Nate intoned, his voice drawn out. “It doesn’t take a witch to realize clouds like that—”

  Ebony suddenly clicked her fingers with a poignant snap. “And then thunder.”

  The heavens opened up with a roar. Though the thunder wasn’t close, it still managed to jangle the lucky-charm Ben had wound around his rear-vision mirror. Ebony had given him that charm. It was a set of three golden bells on a tiny silver chain. Though it was just something she’d picked up from a trinket store, and it didn’t actually have any magical credibility, Ben swore by it. That was enough, Ebony knew, to make it thoroughly magical anyway.

  Now those little tiny bells jingled with a fitful dance as the thunder roared above.

  “How did you know that?” Nate turned in his seat when the thunder abated.

  “It’s not done yet.” Ebony angled her face upward as if confident she could stare right through the top of the car and out at the stormy sky above. She couldn’t, of course, but that wasn’t the point. “This is going to be one Hell of a storm.”

  “Sit around in your seat,” Ben said quickly, clapping a hand onto Nate’s shoulder and dragging him back around to a respectable seated position. “I’m about to hit the highway and hit it hard.”

  “Atta boy,” Ebony said appreciatively. That was the great thing about Detective Ben Tate. Well, one of the great things about him. Though you wouldn’t know it, his father had been somewhat of a misfit – running bootleg-alcohol around Vale as a young man. Ben’s father had gotten quite the reputation for driving like a bat out of hell, to borrow a phrase. A skill he’d passed on to each of his sons. Though Ben, for the most part, would drive like an ordinary police officer ought, during times of high-speed-need, Ben knew exactly where to put his foot.

  “Seriously,” Nate said, hand on the handle above the passenger’s side window in an attempt to keep himself from falling out of his seat, “How did you know there was going to be thunder?”

  Ebony sighed. She didn’t like having to explain all her magical, mysterious ways. She liked the shiny allure that reminded everyone she wasn’t just something ordinary – she was a witch. For the most part, the rest of the police department respected it. They didn’t pester her every five seconds for an explanation about her wondrous powers. They just asked her to do things. She did them – end of story. They let the magic live, she reminded herself, by not prodding it into explanations all the time.

  Then the idiot Chevalier had to come along – Detective Nathan Wall – and he was so cram-packed with questions, she was starting to feel like a full-time kindergarten teacher.

  If he wasn’t being rude and insensitive, he was asking her to explain her every move.

  “Does it matter? I mean, I’m a witch – isn’t that explanation enough?”

  “No,” he said blankly, “Because I asked how you knew, not why you knew.”

  Ebony gave a very loud, very obvious sigh. “Why do you even want to know? So you can debunk it? Offer up some better, Detective Wall pre-approved explanation that’s had all the magic stripped right from it?”

  “Blimey, you’d think I’m asking you for a kidney. All I’m asking—”

  “Is for me to explain something that can’t be explained. I’d rather give you the kidney. There’s something you obviously don’t get about magic, and it’s frankly doing my head in. You don’t get to think about it in your ordinary every day ways. Magic isn’t the same as newspapers, coffee, and cold fusion. It doesn’t fit into convenient definitions that you pin up alongside science and reason for an easy and ready comparison. Magic isn’t understandable – but that doesn’t make it unbelievable either. Magic, Detective Wall, isn’t a giant lollipop covered cake-house in the forest. It’s not silly tales of golden hair and porridge. It’s not fairy godmothers giving their charges ridiculously specific curses. That type of nonsense has been really stamped down. No, magic is when you catch a glimpse through a window into another world.” She could feel her cheeks redden as the conversation took hold of her, the words bubbling to get out like magma from an erupting volcano. “Though I doubt you’ve ever had such an experience, as you’re as square and blank as a bathroom tile. But Magic is little moments of wonder, different from all that other rubbish that tumbles through your day – little moments full of a prickly power that make you amazed at life’s possibilities, rather than routines. Magic is magical.” Ebony took an immense breath and sat there, daring Nate to respond to such a sudden soulful outburst.

  He didn’t immediately reply with a well-rehearsed, “Really, of course.” In fact, it took him some time to respond at all. “I know the feeling, Ebony. Trust me.”

  That’s all he said. Short, careful, and precise. Very not like Detective Nate.

  How dare he just leave it there? What on Earth did he mean?

  Ebony began to grind her teeth in silent rage.

  Before she could give Nate’s seat another hearty kick, Ben threw a devilish corner that took them skidding up the narrow road that led to the cemetery.

  Vale Cemetery was situated on a hill set several minutes outside the city limits. It was an imperious place, with a direct view of the city below and the mountains behind. Vale was a sprawling metropolis set with its back to a rugged mountain range and its mouth to a river that led directly to the sea. Large, wide highways ran along the coast, either side of Vale, connecting her to the rest of the country like a knot in a chain.

  From the cemetery, you could see the city below, the ocean beyond, and the mountains behind. You could walk in one direction and peer over the old sandstone wall, and only see the grays, browns, and blacks of the city below. You could trick yourself into thinking that was all there is – just the stacks, buildings, roads, warehouses, silos, depots, and houses of Vale City. But as soon as you walked to another wall, you’d see the docks leading down to the bottle-shaped mouth of the river and the ocean beyond. Though the ocean didn’t always glitter or beam at you with the warm azure smile of the tropics, it still invited the eye. It was something to do with the way the bay was shaped as it led the gaze forever out onto the horizon of simply endless ocean.

  If Vale was a knot on a chain of roads, the Portal was the protrusion around which it had formed, making the ocean and the mountains the throat around which the chain rested.

  Ebony undid her seat belt as they neared the gates to the cemetery. A line of police cars were already there, their lights flashing in the forever-dimming day. She gathered her skirt around her, ready to leap out at the first opportunity.

  It was no mistaken analogy that left Ebony thinking Vale resembled a chain around the neck of the land. It was the way the mountains led down, like a backbone, to the narrowed point of Vale, then opened out onto the head of the ocean.

  Also, it was the way the city itself felt. It sometimes gave her the impression of just floating there, sitting above the land rather than being cut into it. Yet at other times it felt as if the whole city was talking to her, not with the combined words, actions, creations, and aberrations of its citizens – but with something far more mysterious. It was as if the Portal itself was somehow summoning the whole
city at once – enlivening it with the terrible, yet wonderful magic that came from the Other Side.

  Ben pulled up alongside another car, barely turning off the engine before he was out the door.

  Now she had to concentrate on the matter at hand – some delirious idiot about to use the souls of the recently-dead to contact Death itself. Still, she couldn’t entirely forget the mysterious and foreboding architecture and placement of this darned cemetery. The witches of Vale had often wondered who had designed it, or how it had come to be. For witches past had sworn none of them had had such a hand in city planning. No, the placement of Vale Cemetery had all been down to the Valians – another magical accident to chalk up on their board of ignorance.

  Ebony managed to hide a shiver as she drew alongside Ben. He was getting the low-down from a pale-faced uniformed officer who kept shuddering at the slightest sound that emanated over the dense walls of the cemetery.

  She hoped for one thing, and she wished for it with all her heart. Because of where the cemetery was, because of the amount of natural magic it commanded, Ebony desperately, desperately hoped no other ah… thing would get involved. Her warning to Flora had been genuine. Practice magic without a direct purpose, and something with a stronger purpose will take it from you.

  Now that warning rang in her mind like a church bell over a silent city.

  Practicing magic in a cemetery was downright dangerous to begin with. No witch would ever do it alone. Cemeteries were places of powerful, formidable emotion and memory – two of the key ingredients to any magical spell. Any magical creature worth its name would know this. As such, you never knew what you’d find lurking behind the warped oaks, musty head stones, and corners of the old, dark crypts of cemeteries.

  Nate drew up beside her in his usual silent fashion. “I don’t see the ghosts,” he said automatically, using his height to peer over the wall beyond. “Shouldn’t they be zipping around the sky in trails of light, listening to loud ‘80s music, and making ludicrous faces?”

  “This isn’t Ghost Busters,” she reminded him, this time with a shiver. What with the fat rain drops and the general atmosphere of doom, she was having trouble keeping warm. Though it certainly wasn’t raining as hard as it had been in the city, Ebony could see an even darker set of storm clouds rolling down from the mountains like opaque mist over a river; which simply meant she was only likely to get colder.

  She was mildly surprised that Nate seemed to actually see and note her shiver with a bare smile. It wasn’t a mean smile, or a triumphant one – it was almost kind. But then he ruined it, “I bet you’re regretting wearing such a tiny little white dress.” He looked down at her feet, his eyebrows dancing around in amusement. “And where the hell are your shoes?”

  She instantly put a finger up to her lips. “Shhh,” her tone was harsh, “Don’t use that word around here – things might hear you.”

  He leaned in, face still a picture of sarcasm. “You mean shoes?”

  She mouthed, “Hell. Though honestly, a little trip down there might do you some good – beat a bit of manners and sense into you.”

  “Manners?” he said as he took off his suit jacket, handing it to her. “I don’t know what those are. But here’s my jacket, if you’re cold.”

  Ebony looked at the jacket, then up to him. She was trying to detect the joke, because she was sure this had to be one. “What are you playing at—” she began.

  “You’re going to run around a cemetery in no shoes and a white cotton dress that’s only going to get more see-through.” His voice wasn’t filled with its usual irritating arrogance. “I thought you could use a little… discretion.”

  She looked down, alarmed. Darn. Sure enough, her dress was starting to go a bit see-through – not that you could see all that much yet. But another ten minutes in the rain, and the world would know precisely the style and color of underwear bookstore-owning witches prefer.

  She grabbed the jacket, throwing it on in a quick move.

  Nate looked away, pretending to be more interested in the noises coming from the cemetery beyond.

  Once Ebony managed to do up all the buttons on the jacket, she coughed. “Well.” She was, for once in her life, more than thankful the dark storm-clouds were out in force, because at least Nate wouldn’t be able to see the exact shade of pink she’d turned. “Th… thank you,” she finally pushed the words out.

  Nate cracked a grin so large it looked as though his face was going to be split in two. “What did you just say?” His head bobbed to the side, and he leaned in even closer. “Because it couldn’t have been what I just heard.”

  She clutched at the jacket, trying to ignore the subtle but perceptible hint of cologne along the collar. “I said thank you.” She raised her head in defiance. “Like you will later, when I save your butt from ghosts.”

  “Okay,” he nodded, “But you ruin the jacket, you pay for it.”

  Ebony blustered. “That’s not very gentlemanly!”

  “I wasn’t being a gentleman, remember? I don’t have any manners. I was just covering you up so you don’t distract the officers.”

  She flashed her teeth. “Are you calling me distracting, darling?”

  Before Nate could snap back a quick response, or hide a careful cough, Ben turned to them. His face was dripping with rain, his eyes sallow with the cold and a hint of dread. “Okay, our guy’s in the middle of the cemetery. He’s got himself down into a crypt—”

  Ebony swore softly.

  “We don’t know his name, but we’re sure he’s not a full-blown wizard or magician, or one of the other magical races.”

  “Hold on.” Nate put up a hand. “How are we sure about that? I mean, if we don’t have an ID?”

  “We’re sure, because he’s still here and not splattered against the headstones. No actual wizard would do something this idiotic. They’re all regulated, like the witches. No one who actually knew the consequences would do something this absolutely horrible.”

  Ben took a shallow breath and continued, “We know he’s in a crypt, and we know he’s got some kind of spell protecting the door—”

  She swore again.

  “Well,” Nate rolled up his sleeves, the white fabric already distractingly see-through, “Can’t we just bust in another side? Or break the spell? I mean, isn’t that what Ebony does?”

  “This isn’t a normal situation, Nate.” Ben sighed again, the growing shadows catching underneath his eyes, highlighting his fatigue, paradoxically, with shadow. “Look, Eb, explain it to him. We’ve got to wait for more police back-up anyway. You’ve got about five minutes and then we move.”

  Ebony took her own, deeper sigh and angled her head to the heavens above. “You’ve got about another five minutes till the sky opens up too,” she said under her breath. The ominous clouds, rolling in off the mountains beyond, were now swooping toward them like crows on the wind. From the weather, to the day, to the feel of the place – she didn’t like this one bit.

  Ben marched off, pulling his phone from his pocket.

  “I don’t get it, if this is so dangerous, why don’t we just move?” Nate looked down at her. By now his shirt was all but transparent, allowing her a complete view of the detective’s impressively chiseled physique.

  If it was any other day, she would have commented on it, or at least offered a cheeky whistle. “Look, just like any other police operation, we have to wait for backup.”

  “But I thought you said the witches weren’t coming, yet? And I hate to say it, but what use are ordinary humans against whatever the hell – I mean heaven – is waiting for us in there?”

  “In a word? Guns.”

  “What?”

  “Guns, Detective Nate. I think you’ll find they’re still quite effective against most magical creatures. They make loud noises, give off smells and, if you are lucky, propel metal objects at the speed of sound.” She pulled her gaze from the detective’s wet clothes and back up to the sky above.

  “I do
n’t get it, in the past our guns have hardly done a thing—”

  “Oh, they won’t work against everything, that’s for sure. You face a cloud apparition – and filling it with lead isn’t going to count for much. Anyhow, that’s not the point.”

  Nate flattened his tie for the fifty millionth time in his life. “But we’re fighting ghosts, right? I really don’t think—”

  “Two things,” she held up two fingers, the long sleeves of Nate’s jacket almost completely obscuring them, “You won’t be using ordinary bullets today, and you won’t be fighting the ghosts.”

  “Aren’t the ghosts the ones doing all the damage?” Nate shrugged as the sound of concrete cracking rang over the walls. “Aren’t they in there right now smashing up the whole cemetery?”

  “No, they’re the victims here.”

  “The victims,” he repeated, voice empty. “But they’re ghosts.”

  “Now, now, don’t be discriminatory. Anyone can be a victim, Detective. But the real culprit today is the evil blighter who has crammed himself inside that crypt. The ghosts are just trying to protect themselves and what they were from being sucked up by his pointless spells.”

  “I don’t get this.” Nate ducked slightly as an even louder noise cracked through the dark afternoon like a bull-whip by his ear. “And shouldn’t we hurry up and do something?”

  “We’re waiting for the restricted ammo to come in. As soon as it arrives—” she didn’t finish her sentence. As soon as it arrived, she would have to think of a way to achieve the impossible.

  Somehow she would have to make her way through the cemetery – through the wild, enraged ghosts and through the various horrible creatures attracted by the excess magic – and finally into a highly protected crypt. Once inside, she’d be faced with some jumped-up, cape-wearing loon who didn’t understand magic, but still had the balls to steal into a graveyard and perform rites on the dead. And… If the idiot was successful, she’d likely come face-to-face with Death itself. She’d have to do all this in an oversized jacket, with no shoes on, and in the pouring rain. Oh, and she’d have to ensure no one else got hurt.

  Oh man, that little voice in the back of her head moaned again, you should be watching a movie by now.

  “So what are the parameters, what do we do? And what the heaven is going on?”

  Ebony looked up at him, rain trickling off his face. “Okay, time for a crash course in Death Summoning. There are several ways to directly rewrite a story, Nate. This is one of them.”

  “Rewrite a story,” he repeated, voice incredulous. “Are we going to be dealing with a bunch of Gothic copy-editors in there?”

  “Look at it this way – we are bound by our past. Our past is a reminder of who we are, but it is also a shackle. Without it, we would be lost. But if you hold too closely to the past, then it restricts what you can do in the future. If you have been an ice-skater all your life, but would really like to be a particle physicist, then you can’t just wake up one day and decide to start smashing some atoms together. Your past will remind you – your memories, your friends, the photos of you on your mother’s bookshelf – they’ll all remind you of who you were.”

  “I get it. You can’t click your fingers one day and change jobs, the color of your hair, and blood groups,” Nate said.

  Ebony gave a small laugh. “Strange examples, but they work. The past keeps us on track, but it also binds us to one path. However, there are certain ways, certain magical ways, of lessening or eliminating the hold of yesterday over today. If you can change the past, then you can do virtually anything you want in the now.”

  “And that’s what’s happening here?” he questioned, wiping at the rain dribbling down his forehead. “But what’s this got to do with death?”

  “You rewrite the lives of the living through altering the lives of the dead. You sacrifice the past for the benefit of the future.” She closed her hands before her. “By using the recently-deceased, Detective, you can summon the force of Death. And when you have it in your presence, you can use the immense magic released to rewrite your story. Death is a universal force, and its power is unimaginable. Death is the very thing that keeps stories going, not that you’d know it. The very thing that keeps the living alive, that keeps the moving in motion. Everyone thinks that Death is the end. They’re dead wrong. When things begin to slow down, when their energy begins to ebb – they die. And through death they change forms, break up, and recombine in other ways. The movement is preserved.”

  Nate hardly looked impressed by her impassioned description and simply kept blinking the water from his eyes. “But the dead are dead. Trust me. I’m an ex-homicide-detective. How exactly do you call this ‘death’ through a corpse?”

  “Death, unlike what most people believe, isn’t an instantaneous thing. You don’t die, then Death severs your soul and you skip off to the afterlife or get reborn. You dream first. It can take up to a week, or even more. But the soul goes through the memories of its life – the dreams, the achievements – and collates them. It’s like marking up a score sheet at the end of a game. It’s a way for the soul to be clear about what it’s achieved, before it moves on.”

  “Sounds like mumbo jumbo,” the detective declared with a cough.

  “No, mumbo jumbo is a special type of magic practiced by the witches of the Caribbean, Detective. And let me assure you, it doesn’t sound anything like it. Plus, I’m not asking you to believe in this, I’m just asking you to listen.”

  “Then skip to the stuff I need to know. Time’s ticking.”

  She pursed her lips. “Time doesn’t tick, clocks do. Time wanders. But that’s not the point. The point is your little bad-guy in there has found the grave of the recently-deceased. He’s probably been planning this for some time too.” Ebony wiped the water off her face, only for the now driving-rain to replace it at once. “What you do is you gather the important objects of whomever you are performing the rite on – wedding ring, photo, beloved pet, deed to their house, a book they wrote – whatever gave them incredible meaning in their lives. Anyhow, you perform the rite on the grave.” She found her stomach turning at the thought of it. She hated this side of magic, she really did. It was dark, inhuman and violated everything magic should stand for. She put a hand to her head, before continuing, “Anyhow, you perform the rite and summon up Death.”

  “So what are the objects for? Why do you want a guy’s favorite watch? Is that to get a lock on him, or something?”

  “No, that’s to threaten his soul.”

  “Threaten his soul? What are you talking about?”

  “Okay.” Ebony saw a specially painted truck finally pull up at the cemetery gates. It would be carrying the ammo they needed. It wasn’t every day the Vale Police Department would get access to magic bullets because, Ebony reminded herself with a soulful sigh, it wasn’t everyday they needed them. They were a pest to get hold of. It was all a part of the Pact. Should the need arise for more direct magical intervention, and before the Police would be forced to call the Coven, they would get access to more heavy-duty weaponry. They had to request them directly from the Coven. But once the weapons were released, the police officers of Vale would get their hands on blessed, cursed, and magic-sucking bullets – something for every occasion.

  It rarely happened that they would need them. It had only happened to Ebony three times. Once when a madman had somehow gotten hold of a banned book of spells and had held several people hostage. Another time when a powerful demon had attached itself to a cursed family ring. And once when someone had tried to kill a witch. Ebony shivered at the mere thought of it.

  “We don’t have much time. Here’s the quick version.” She began to half-walk, half-jog over to the van. “When you summon Death through someone who has died, you are replacing the magic of their life with the magic of Death. Death is a permanent, overwhelming fixture of the universe – it is powerful, powerful magic. And when it is summoned in place of someone’s life, it trumps it. You rem
ember what I told you about stories? Well this is the same thing. Rather than living for their life, if you summon Death through the dead, you rewrite the ending of their story. No longer did they live for what they achieved, what they meant – they now lived for death.” Ebony kept flexing her hands inside the sleeves of Nate’s jacket, trying to ensure the blood kept flowing to them. “But no soul would sit by and watch that happen. That’s where the ghosts come in. They arise from the body, trying to protect the lives they lived from being rewritten.”

  “So they attack the guy, right? Whoever is trying to summon Death—”

  “Yeah. But not if the maniac is smart enough to have collected enough meaningful objects from the ghost’s life. If you have a beloved wedding ring, a journal, a necklace – anything that strongly connects to some memory of life for the ghost – they won’t attack because they simply won’t let such a memory be destroyed. And heaven forbid if the Summoner manages to get their hands on a loved one….”

  “You mean a person?” Nate said quickly. “You mean that maniac could have an actual person in there with him?”

  “I don’t think so, not on this occasion. We would have been told – though don’t rule it out. Anyhow, the ghost usually becomes enraged as it watches helplessly as its life is rewritten. And, well, the ghost loses its head, figuratively speaking, and just goes off on a path of destruction.”

  “So just to clarify, we’ve got a madman in there, potentially with a hostage, trying to summon Death through the dead. And we’ve got an enraged ghost who’s going around trashing the cemetery, to boot?”

  “And maybe other ghosts.” She shivered as the cold from the sodden ground pressed up through her feet. “They always tend to band together at times like these.”

  “So an enraged ghost and his ghost friends?”

  “Yep.” She drew Nate’s jacket closer around her.

  “Jesus.”

  “No, he shouldn’t be there.”

  Nate looked down at her. There was an odd expression on his face. His chest was puffed out with his usual Chevalier strength and arrogance, but there was something else at the side of his eyes. “And you are going to go in there and take this guy down, without any shoes on? Are you sure there’s no one you can call for backup?”

  Ebony decided she didn’t like Nate’s tone – it was too nice. “Well, you don’t think I’m capable?”

  “No,” he said evenly and honestly, “Believe it or not, I don’t want you to get hurt.”