Midnight Marked: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (8 page)

Ethan smiled. “That is a key for a safe-deposit box.”

A hidden box that led to a vaulted box. That was a pretty interesting find.

“So our murdered shifter, who defected from the Pack, has a hidden cashbox and a key to a safe-deposit box.” I glanced at Ethan. “What does an unaffiliated shifter keep in a safe-deposit box?”

“I’ve no idea,” Ethan said, eyes gleaming with interest, “but I’m eager to find out.”

I slid the key back into the envelope and put the envelope in my pocket. Then I put the cashbox back where I’d found it, pulled the plywood and brick back into place.

And realized we weren’t the only ones to have been here. The ground here was as soft as it was near the swing, so it had saved the impressions of the large, rough footprints.

I pointed them out to Ethan. “We aren’t the only ones poking around out here.”

“Then we’d best be the first to solve the mystery.”

•   •   •

We made a final pass through the house, looking for information that might identify the bank Caleb had used, the location of the box. But we found nothing.

We turned off all the lights and walked outside, setting the lock on the doorknob to deter intruders. We were on our way back to the car when I heard a faint murmur of sound, a voice carried on the wind. And with that voice came the buzz of magic.

“Listen,” I said quietly, when Ethan joined me on the sidewalk.

He tilted his head, and when he caught the sound, alarm crossed his face. “Magic,” he said.

“Our sorcerer?”

He flipped the thumb guard on his katana. “Someone is doing magic in this neighborhood. Let us be prepared either way.”

I nodded, kept my hand on my katana’s handle as we walked across the street and down the block, pausing every few yards to check our position in relation to the sound. Silently, I touched Ethan’s hand, nodded toward a small cemetery, the graves surrounded by a chain-link fence. Unlike much of the rest of the neighborhood, the fence and grass beyond it looked well tended.

“Longwood Cemetery,” Ethan whispered as we reached the front gate. It was a double gate and standing open, large enough for cars to drive through.

I stopped at the entrance, gathered up my courage. I didn’t like cemeteries. My brother, Robert, and sister, Charlotte, and I had held our breath when we passed them on car trips as kids. I was the youngest and always held my breath the longest. I had been completely terrified by the thought of all those people underground waiting,
Thriller
-like, to thrust out their dirty hands and grab my ankles. If I stayed quiet and still, they’d stay happily asleep beneath the earth.

The wind shifted and moved, directing the clear sound of a voice on the wind. We were looking for a sorcerer, and this definitely seemed like a potential hit. That meant I had to suck it up and walk into Longwood like the goddamn Sentinel of Cadogan House, with my head held high, my senses on alert, and my bravery intact.

But even still, and knowing what I knew now, I decided to take exceptionally quiet steps.

The gate led to a crushed-stone path that led straight through the cemetery and branched off to secondary trails.

The cemetery wasn’t very large, but it was well kept. Marble gravestones sat at perfect intervals along shorter rows, and there were neatly pruned peonies and rosebushes every dozen yards or so.

I stayed close enough to Ethan that our arms brushed when we walked. “Freaking
Thriller
,” I murmured.

“What was that?” Ethan whispered.

“Nothing,” I said, and stopped short when a figure became visible in the darkness.
There,
I said silently, gesturing toward her.

A woman stood in front of a grave, silhouetted in the moonlight. She was tall, slender, and pretty, with dark skin, high cheekbones, and dark, braided hair pulled into a knot atop her head. She wore a cropped white cardigan, white sneakers, and a long, pale pink dress of sharp, narrow pleats that fell over her swollen abdomen.

Ethan stepped forward, broke a twig in the process. The crack was as loud as a gunshot. She turned around, one hand on her belly, fingers splayed in protection, another in front of her, threatening magic.

I’d seen Catcher and Mallory throw fireballs before, and didn’t want any part of that. I put my hands in the air, and Ethan did the same.

The woman stared at us for a moment. “You don’t look like ghouls,” she said, but didn’t seem entirely sure about it.

“We are not,” Ethan said. “And you don’t look to be an evil sorceress.”

She snorted. “I most definitely am not. Could you move forward, into the moonlight?”

We did, hands still lifted in the air. It seemed safe enough movement; I’d yet to meet an evil, gestating supernatural.

“You’re vampires,” she said after a moment. “I recognize you. You’re Ethan and Merit, right?”

Ethan nodded, but his gaze stayed wary. “We are. How do you know us?”

She smiled guiltily. “Gossip magazines. They’re my guilty pleasure.” She cocked her head at us. “You’re in them a lot.”

We couldn’t argue with that.

She glanced at me. “And Chuck Merit’s your grandfather, right?”

That was a much better reason to be famous. “Yes, he is.”

“I’m sorry, I’m being rude,” she said, putting a hand on her chest. “You startled me. Sorry about that, everyone,” she added, looking around, hands patting the air like the simple movement was the thing that would keep the bodies in the ground.

Fear speared me, and I tried to logic through it. Surely her petite hands weren’t the only thing keeping not-yet-walking dead from rising. Still, just in case, I moved a little closer to Ethan, ever the brave Sentinel.

He was going to give me so much crap about this.

“I’m Annabelle Shaw,” she said. “I’m a necromancer.”

“Mortui vivos docent?”
Ethan asked.

“Very good,” she agreed with a smile, and must have caught my look of confusion. “The phrase means, roughly, ‘the dead teach the living.’ In this case, the dead speak, I listen.”

“I didn’t know that was possible,” I said, thinking of Ethan’s temporary death and the possibility we might have communicated during it. “Necromancy, I mean.”

“There aren’t many of us,” she said. “It’s a pretty rare magic, which is probably a good thing. The dead are talkers.”

Dread skittered along my spine.

Annabelle winced suddenly, lifted a hand to her belly. I caught the flash of concern on Ethan’s face. He stepped forward and gripped her elbow to help keep her steady.

“I’m okay,” she said, and patted his arm. She smiled a little. “Thank you. Peanut kicks like a mule. If I wasn’t certain her father was human, I’d wonder. And I’m still fairly sure she’s destined to be a kickboxer.” She winced again, staring down at her belly as if her narrowed gaze could penetrate to the kicking child within. “You know, we’ll both be better off if I have a functioning bladder.

She rolled her eyes, blew out a breath, seemed to settle herself. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m a registered necromancer, affiliated with the Illinois MVD Association.”

If there was anything I’d learned about supernaturals, it was that they loved bureaucracy. Magic wasn’t worth doing unless a supernatural could throw a council or code of conduct at it, slap it on a T-shirt, and charge a due. And supernatural bureaucracy was just about as effective as the human version.

“How does that work, exactly?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“Well, I take commissions, usually work on retainer. People have questions—they want to know if the deceased was faithful, where they put the garage key, whatever. Or they have things they want to tell the deceased that they didn’t get to say while they were living.”

“That’s nice,” I said, trying to unknot the tension at the base of my spine.

“Sometimes,” she agreed, resting her linked hands on her belly. “And sometimes they just want to tell off the—and I’m quoting—‘rotting, whoremongering, philandering, dickless bastard who, if all is right and just in the world, is spending his days in the embrace of Satan’s eternal hellfire.’” She grinned. “I memorized that one.”

“People are people,” Ethan said.

“All day every day. Anyway, I try to balance out the commissions with public service. Sometimes I get a vibe that the deceased have things to say, like Mr. Leeds here, even if nobody’s requested a commission. I give them time to get it out so they can rest peacefully.”

If there was anything I wanted, it was a peaceful ghost.

“You were singing to him?” Ethan asked.

“I was.” She lifted a shoulder. “Every ’mancer has his or her own style. I like to sing. It calms them, makes them a little more cooperative. And that means I don’t need to use as much magic to keep them in check.”

“What do you sing?” I asked, fascinated despite myself.

“I generally use slow jams,” she said. “Classic R and B from the eighties, nineties has a nice, relaxed rhythm and sets a nice tone.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Just don’t tell my grandmother that. She’s in the business, too, and she’d be pissed if she learned I was singing Luther Vandross to clients. She says gospel’s the only way to go.”

“We’ll keep your secret,” Ethan said. “And sorry we interrupted you.”

She waved it off. “No worries. Some of them like to listen in, and cemetery conversations are usually pretty morose.”

“Do you do a lot of work in this neighborhood?” I asked, thinking again of Caleb Franklin.

“We work territories. Not many want to work this close to Hellriver.” She shrugged. “I don’t tend to get bothered. And if I do, I know how to protect myself.”

“Fireballs?” I asked, thinking of Catcher.

“Screaming ghouls,” she said, her expression so serious I had to choke back a silent, horrified scream.

She must have sensed my concern. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. They don’t typically manifest physically, so they don’t usually cause any physical harm.”

“I’m stuck on ‘typically’ and ‘usually.’”

She smiled. “Job hazard. And speaking of which, did you say earlier I didn’t look like an evil sorcerer?”

“That’s actually why we’re here,” Ethan said. “We’re looking for a sorcerer—someone not of the Order, but actively practicing. The magic is likely to be dark, or at least unusual.”

“What kind of unusual?”

“Alchemy.”

Annabelle’s eyebrows lifted. “Alchemy. That’s not a word you hear very often.” She frowned. “I’m doing the darkest magic around here that I’m aware of, and that’s only because it’s literally dark,” she said, waving a hand in the air to indicate the nighttime. “You’ve checked with the Order?”

“One of our colleagues is doing so,” Ethan said. “Although we’ve found them to be relatively useless.”

“No argument there. The MVD Association exists because the Order didn’t consider us sorcerers. In Europe, in Asia, India, magic-doers of all types are part of the same conglomeration. But in the good ol’ U.S. of A., we are not good enough to join their party.”

“Supernaturals pick the oddest swords to fall upon,” Ethan said.

“You are preaching to the choir.”

“What about a shifter named Caleb Franklin?” I asked. “He lived nearby. Did you happen to know him?”

She pursed her lips as she considered. “Caleb Franklin.” She shook her head. “No, that doesn’t ring a bell, either. And I don’t think I know any shifters.”

“How about this man?” I asked, pulling out my phone and showing her the grainy photograph Jeff had captured.

She frowned. “Hard to tell from the picture, but I don’t think so. I feel like I’d have remembered the beard.” Her eyes widened, and she lifted her gaze to mine. “Is this about what happened to that poor shifter at Wrigley? I mean, they didn’t release his name, but a vampire and shifter were involved, right?”

“Caleb Franklin is that shifter,” Ethan confirmed. “We believe he was killed by a vampire, and may have been involved in the alchemy. Alchemical symbols were found nearby.”

“I’d have liked to have seen them,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry for his death, but it’s interesting the way that rare magic is. Like walking down the street and seeing, I don’t know, a diplodocus or something.”

It was the kind of joke I’d have appreciated, if a concussion hadn’t immediately shaken the ground beneath us. I gripped Ethan’s arm with clawed fingers.

What. The. Hell?

He patted my hand supportively, but I could tell he’d gone on full alert.

“And that’s my cue,” Annabelle said, moving closer to the gravestone and resting a hand on a marble curlicue. “Mr. Leeds knows I’m here and thinks I’m ignoring him, so I need to let him talk. I don’t, he’ll get angrier and angrier. And that’s when ghouls become a real possibility.”

I managed a weak smile. “That must keep your dance card full.”

“It does.”

“Do you mind if we observe?” Ethan asked. “And please say no if it would disrupt your process.”

“Or add to their potential ghoulishness,” I added. “Because we don’t want to do that.” God, did we not want that!

Annabelle smiled. “I don’t mind at all. But you’ll want to take a step back and cover your ears. Sometimes they come up screaming.”

Every cell in my body shuddered in simultaneous horror.

SHAKE THE BONES

I
took several steps back, working carefully to stay in the aisle and avoid stepping on anyone else’s plot. When Ethan moved beside me, I gripped his hand, unashamed.

Be still, Sentinel,
he said. Those were the first words he’d said to me, and words I usually loved to hear. But here, in this graveyard, while waiting for a necromancer to commune with the dead, I wasn’t loving it.

Annabelle moved to stand at the end of the grave, facing the stretch of grass and gravestone. She closed her eyes, blew out a breath, seemed to center herself.

The earth shook again, the concussion like a strike on a timpani drum.

I cursed
Thriller
silently again.

Seemingly oblivious to Mr. Leeds’s irritation, or maybe because she was trained to deal with it, Annabelle held out her hands, palms down, over the grass.

“Harold Parcevius Leeds, I am Annabelle Shaw. I am here to help you speak. Please comport yourself respectfully.”

Another tremor.

Eyes still closed, she shook her head, breathed through her nose in what looked like irritated resignation. “Mr. Leeds, I am not interested in taking abuse from you. I am here voluntarily to help you communicate. If you can’t be pleasant about it, I’ll leave you to silence. Neither of us wants that. You want peace, and I want to help you find it.”

She paused, waiting, as Ethan and I stood behind her, watching, and then she nodded.

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your cooperation and acknowledge it. I can assist you in momentarily revisiting this plane, which will allow me to hear your claim or your confession. Do you acknowledge?”

Consent, it seemed, was important for all sorts of supernatural creatures. Mr. Leeds consented with another concussion, this one different from the others. It wasn’t made in anger by a pounded fist. It was more like a desperate bellow, the plea of a man who needed to be heard. Pity spilled in to replace my fear, and I unclenched the fingers I’d wrapped around Ethan’s.

Thank you, Sentinel. I was hoping to use those fingers again.

Magic began to shimmer through the air.

“Very well,” Annabelle said as the magic grew around us. It wasn’t painful, but it was unnerving. It was different from Mallory’s or Catcher’s magic—and it didn’t escape my notice that it was also different from the tinny magic I’d felt in Wrigleyville. This magic felt tangible and real, as if our skin were being brushed by hanks of silk. Instinctively, I reached out to touch it, but my fingers grasped nothing more than air.

Electricity popped around Annabelle, magic sparking through the air like forks of lightning. The power grew fiercer, stronger, until the magic seemed to coalesce atop the grass into the outline of a man lying on his back, arms at his sides. His figure seemed built solely of light and shadow, like an X-ray in three dimensions.

I was actually looking at a ghost, and despite my deep-seated horror, I couldn’t look away.

And then he sat straight up, opened his mouth, and screamed.

I clamped my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help. The sound pounded through my head like it had mass, like it was beating through my skull and filling my body with noise. My eyes watered against the sudden pain and pressure, and still I couldn’t look away.

Apparently used to the noise, or maybe immune to it, Annabelle held out a hand, utterly calm and composed. “I’m here, Mr. Leeds.”

When the screaming didn’t stop, Annabelle stamped a sneakered foot atop his grave, sending a wave rippling through grass and dirt as if she’d skipped a pebble across a glassy lake.

“Mr. Leeds.”

Her words sliced through his anger like a honed katana, and the world fell suddenly silent. Slowly, I removed my hands again, my ears still buzzing from the magic or noise or whatever had assaulted them.

“Thank you, Mr. Leeds. I’m here for you, to hear whatever you’d like to tell me. You don’t need to raise your voice. I can hear you. That’s my particular gift.”

The ghost seemed to stare at her, his expression unreadable. And then he clasped his hands together prayerfully and began to speak. The words were fuzzy, garbled, like a distant station on a radio, albeit with the volume maxed out. But the earnestness in his eyes, the pleading in his expression, was clear enough.

“I understand,” Annabelle said. “I can provide a message to them, if you’d like. You only need to tell me what you’d like to say, and I will do my best to find them and see that they hear it.”

He spoke again. This time he was calmer, which made his magic less chaotic . . . and some of his words understandable. “Wife . . . Wrong . . . Unfaithful . . . Wasn’t . . .
Wasn’t
 . . . Design . . . Please tell her . . .”

Tears gathered at Annabelle’s lashes, slipped down her cheeks. But she didn’t take her eyes off the man in front of her.

“I’ll tell her, Mr. Leeds,” she said, voice quiet but earnest. “I’ll make sure she understands. That’s my solemn oath to you.”

And then she reached forward and held out a hand, grasping his translucent one in hers, small sparks of lightning traveling between them. If the sensation hurt, she didn’t show it.

“Let your soul rest, Mr. Leeds. Let your mind and heart calm. Your message has been heard, and will be delivered, and you can depart from his earth and seek your rest. You can sleep now.”

The magic shifted, softened. By listening to this man, by doing that simplest and most important of favors, she’d changed him. Even as he drew his hand away, his image began to fade, the hazy magic diffusing into the darkness. He lay down on the grass again, and drifted away.

Silence fell, and we honored it long enough that crickets began to chirp nearby.

After a moment, Annabelle wiped her cheeks and turned back to us.

“Thank you for sharing that with us,” Ethan said, breaking the silence. “It was . . .” He seemed to struggle for words. “Quite a thing to see.”

“You’re welcome. They aren’t often as visible. He was trying really, really hard to talk.”

“Can we ask what he told you?”

She started to speak, but stopped and pressed her lips together, working to control her emotions. “He died after a car accident. Earlier that day, his wife had seen him with another woman. When he was in the hospital, before he passed, he heard her say she believed he was having an affair. But he wasn’t. The woman was a jewelry designer. Her name was Rosa de Santos, and he was having a special necklace made for his wife. He asked me to tell her all that. To tell her that Rosa has her necklace.”

“Oh, damn,” I said quietly, tears threatening me as well. We worried about our own, our Novitiates, our House, when there were a million tiny tragedies every day. And as Annabelle’s work tonight had proven, a million tiny miracles.

“Yeah,” she said. “I have a lot of nights like this. But I’ll call Mrs. Leeds, and tell her about Rosa and the necklace. She’ll grieve again; it’s inevitable. But now the fog across her memories, the fear of infidelity, will be gone.”

“We’ll let you get to that,” Ethan said. “And we’ll get back to our search.”

“You know,” she said, glancing toward the south, “if there are any maverick supernaturals around here, you might find them in Hellriver. The chemicals shouldn’t hurt immortals, and there are plenty of sups who just don’t care about that kind of thing. Where better to wheel and deal than in a neighborhood like Hellriver?”

“And since the CPD doesn’t risk its officers’ health by sending them into Hellriver,” Ethan said, “there’s protection for them.”

Annabelle nodded. “They do sweeps once a year or so. Usually around Christmas. Charitable types will come around, shuffle any remaining humans into shelters, and the cops will follow, round up any stragglers. But when the holidays pass, there’s not so much goodwill, and temps get cold again, people find their way back into the houses.”

Living on the edge,
Ethan said silently to me.
Much like Caleb Franklin.
He glanced at Annabelle. “How do you know so much about it?”

She smiled. “I come across all types, and I pick up information here and there, file it away. Context is important in my business. You never know what information you’ll need. The folks who request my services aren’t always on the up-and-up. And, frankly, ’mancers like to talk. This job can be dangerous. We try to keep each other aware.”

“Any idea where in Hellriver the sups might be?”

“No, sorry. I stay out of there physically.” She patted her belly, as if her touch would protect her child from the darkness around her. “Especially with Peanut, who is currently again kickboxing my internal organs. Enough already, kid.”

“We’ll let you get back to work,” Ethan said. “If you do hear anything, could you let us know?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile, and we exchanged numbers.

“It was a pleasure meeting you.” Annabelle smiled and offered a hand.

I looked instinctively down, realized the skin of her palm was dotted with hundreds of black dots the size of pinpricks. When I looked at them, she looked down, squeezed her fingers.

“Each handshake with a client leaves a mark,” she explained. “Not all ’mancers do it; they don’t like the permanent reminder of death. But it’s important for me to keep a memento of the ones I’ve spoken to. They trust me, and I take that trust very seriously.”

I had no doubt of that. I took her hand, shook it. “I’m really glad we got to meet you, Annabelle.”

“I’m glad you did, too. Be safe. And stay away from ghouls if you can.”

I intended to, absolutely.

•   •   •

“Where to now?” I asked Ethan when we made our way to the sidewalk again.

“I suppose we should take a look at Hellriver. See if we can find alchemy or other sorcery.”

I nodded, and we walked south toward the broken fence that marked the boundary between Franklin’s neighborhood and Hellriver.

“We’ve discovered something our stalwart Sentinel is squeamish about,” Ethan said. “Dead things.”

“Dead things should stay that way. Present company excluded,” I added at his arch look. “Because you’re the most handsome ghoul of them all.”

He snorted.

“Annabelle seems cool. Very levelheaded for a woman who does what she does for a living. She seems like the type who gets the job done, takes care of her family, fries up the bacon or whatever.”

“Are you casting a sitcom?”

“It certainly sounds like it.”

We reached the chain-link fence that separated Hellriver from the rest of the world, which still bore enormous yellow signs warning of the chemical spill. We walked over a section of fence that had been flattened against pavement, passed a peeling billboard of the neighborhood’s once-famous dogwood trees.
FOR BACKYARDS, FOR COMMUNITY, FO
R YOUR FAMILY
, it read.

Belle River hadn’t made good on the promise.

The houses beyond the billboard were nearly identical—one-story rectangles with overgrown shrubs and attached, single-car garages. Their bright pastel paint had faded and chipped, yards were full of last year’s dead weeds, and the asphalt was pitted and buckled. Streetlights had pitched over across sidewalks. The spill and evacuation had happened during the summer months, and lawn mowers still sat abandoned in the middle of several yards. Their owners had picked up and walked away from their lives.

Much like Caleb’s, this neighborhood was utterly silent, which added to the sensation that we’d fallen into an alternative, dystopian universe.

“Is it just me, or is this just . . . wrong?” Ethan asked.

“You’re not wrong, and it is.”

If there were supernaturals or anybody else currently living in the neighborhood, they weren’t showing themselves. The houses were dark, and nothing but dead weeds in the light breeze.

But there was something else, I thought, as the hair on the back of my neck lifted. There was magic.

You feel that?
I asked him, switching to silent communication.

Ethan nodded, coming to a stop.
Look,
he said, and I followed his gaze to two images stenciled in dark paint onto the sidewalk. The alchemical symbols for the sun and moon—a circle with a dot inside, and a thin sliver of crescent moon.

I didn’t think this was supposed to be part of an equation. It didn’t feel like that, didn’t have the same number of symbols or breadth of magic, of energy. It seemed more like a calling card. The demarcation of territory.

He’s been here,
Ethan said.

Yeah. He has.

Annabelle’s instincts had been right. Hellriver was the type of neighborhood for a maverick supernatural. And more specifically, for an alchemical sorcerer. It also meant Caleb Franklin lived only a few blocks away from what seemed to be the sorcerer’s territory. And wasn’t that interesting?

Be ready,
Ethan said as we moved forward again.

I nodded, my fingers already on the handle of my katana.

We reached a four-way stop, reviewed our options. Belle River was built to be a self-contained neighborhood. The houses surrounded a small commercial area—shops and diners around a central square. It was supposed to simulate a New England village, like Stars Hollow come to Illinois. Houses stretched to our left, the square to our right.