Romancing The Dead (8 page)

I got off the bed and put Sebastian’s black book on his dresser. I didn’t want it in my hands because I was afraid it would become the focus of my energy. I needed to be thinking purely and openly about Sebastian ’s whereabouts, and the book would taint my visualizations, direct my search.

Since I was up, I locked the door. The last thing I wanted was for Mátyás to wander in hoping to taunt me. Then, I took my clothes off.

Normally, I wasn’t a huge proponent of going “skyclad,” which is to say naked, in solitary rituals. It served a purpose in group work—by building trust and the vulnerability that could push a person outside of their comfort zone into the place where magic lives. That being said, I tended to find it distracting now that I was past that place in my life when I felt I needed to be open and raw and exposed for the Goddess to find me. After all, I now had a Goddess, quite literally, within. But my skirt felt tight and restricting, and my shoes just plain hurt. It didn ’t make sense to be half naked, so I opted for full nudity. Besides, when trying to find my lover, it made sense.

In fact, I decided to lie down on his side of the bed. Breathing deeply of the trace of his scent on the pillow and sheets, I centered myself. Of all the rooms in his house, Sebastian ’s bedroom was the one that I could almost imagine belonging to a storybook vampire. He had a four-poster bed with an honest-to-Goddess canopy, complete with drapes. It was sexy, romantic—a lot like him.

The room had a lot of windows, all of which were shut tight against the heat. Lace curtains obscured the light from the highway. An ornate oak dresser in a Louis XIV style sat against one wall, and a dresser with a triptych mirror occupied the other. The closet, large enough to walk into, overflowed with clothes from all aspects of Sebastian ’s life—oil-spattered coveralls, T-shirts, jeans, leather jackets, opera coats, Armani suits, and a tuxedo or two.

Framed botanical drawings of various herbs hung on the walls; some were even real, pressed leaves with notations in Sebastian ’s handwriting. On the surface of the dressers, silver frames held sepia -faded photos of people who were once important to Sebastian.

This was a very personal room.

Reaching deep inside, I unlocked the door that held back my magical sight. Suddenly, the room swirled with the black tendrils of Sebastian’s residue energy. Darker spots hovered over places he’d lingered—one photo on the dresser was completely obscured. I resolved to look more closely at that picture once my work was done.

I relaxed deeper into a meditative state and felt myself floating just above my body. Looking down, I searched for the thin thread that bound Sebastian and me. It was silver, worked through with gold and badly frayed. I ’d sensed that our empathic tie was growing weaker, and it was obvious in the astral plane. I gave the cord a tug, and felt the firmness of a connection. Sebastian was still alive, at least. If he wasn’t, there would be no resistance, and the cord would have come back severed. I was just about to pull myself along the cord when I started at the sight of a man standing in front of me. Tall and reedy, built like a farmer, he had mouse-brown hair and a day’s worth of stubble on his chin. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

“Garnet?” Though I’d never heard him speak before, I recognized his voice instantly.

“Benjamin?”

It was Sebastian’s house ghost.

He looked as solid as the bedpost he leaned against. I ’d never seen him this way; it was like I ’d suddenly switched to highdefinition TV after years of rabbit ears and no cable.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you dead?”

“I hope not,” I said, glancing down at my body. Other than the fact that every time I saw myself like this I couldn’t help but think it was time to start getting serious about diet and exercise, I appeared to be breathing normally. “I’m looking for Sebastian.”

“He’s not here,” Benjamin said. A scowl darkened his face. “But that boy of his is.”

I smiled. “I don’t like Mátyás much either.”

He grunted. “Sebastian changed the wards last week. Told me I had to let the brat in.”

Last week? Sebastian must have done it as part of his plan to ask me to marry him. “You could always go downstairs and throw some things around,” I suggested mischievously. Benjamin was technically a poltergeist; he could knock pictures off the wall, flip light switches, and all that kind of annoyingly creepy stuff. “You know, rattle his cage.”

“Gypsy boy might cast a hex on me,” Benjamin said in the direction of the stairs, with a shake of his head, but he didn’t sound really concerned. “Anyway, I promised Sebastian I wouldn’t scare his boy too much.”

Lucky Mátyás, I thought. I never got the special treatment.

“Heck, sure you do, ma’am. I’m under strict orders not to kill you.”

Well, wasn’t that nice? “Uh, thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said kindly, though his eyes watched me darkly. His image flickered slightly, and I thought I caught the glimpse of a more sinister image beneath— something gaunt, empty-eyed, and hungry. Though it was gone so quickly, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it.

“So, how are you fixing to find Sebastian?”

“Oh,” I said, lifting the thread in my hand to show him. “I thought I’d follow this.”

Shielding his eyes, he peered into the distance in the direction the thread seemed to be leading. “I can’t see the end of it. You sure it’s still connected?”

I shrugged. “It’s all I have.”

“Is he in trouble?”

I was beginning to think so. I nodded.

“You’d better go,” he said. “I’ll watch over this end of you.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how comfortable I felt with that idea, especially given the way Benjamin stared at my naked body. On the bed, my body shifted as though in response to his predatory gaze. Quickly, I wove a protection spell triggered to wake me if Benjamin came within an inch of me. Sebastian might have asked him not to kill me, but he might have forgotten to include a clause about maiming.

Sensing the magic, Benjamin’s lips pursed as though he was affronted. I heard him mutter, “Offer to do someone a favor. Humph . .

. women.”

I expected him to turn heels, but he continued to lean against the bedpost with arms crossed. The dark flashed behind his eyes again as he said, “You’d better get on your way, missy.”

With a nod of good-bye, I pulled my astral self handover-hand along the thin wire. Space and time compressed in fits and starts. Despite pulling with the same strength, I seemed to speed along the county road, but slowed as I passed a spot near the side of the highway where someone had placed a handmade cross and a teddy bear. It was as though I progressed with more difficulty past places where spirits might linger, where someone else’s grief might hold a ghost in place. I shivered. I moved my feet quicker, but it was like walking through mud, or like that dream where you ’re running but can’t make any headway. The bear’s button eyes flashed in the headlights of a passing car.

Once out of the pull of the memorial, I found myself in Madison proper in less than a second. On the lake, moonlight competed with streetlights to shine on the whitecaps. Wind brushed through the leaves in the treetops. The pungent scent of lake —a strange combination of dead fish and the heady scent of fresh water—clung to the dew-dappled grass. A man walking a dog approached me. At least, that’s how my eyes first registered him. As they drew closer, I saw it was a man walking in the footprints of a coyote. Sebastian’s thread disappeared. Or, rather, it came undone in a chaotic burst. Suddenly, instead of a single cord, it diverged into hundreds of tinier ones, each leading in a different direction.

“What the hell?” Which one of these was I supposed to follow? When I tugged the microfibers, each held firm as though they
all
led to Sebastian. “This is impossible,” I muttered.

The man and the wolf stopped and cocked their head in my direction. In the darkness, I had only the impression of sharp features and dark eyes. Even at a distance, the intensity of his gaze hit me. Instinct urged me to run. This was the stare of a true predator, and I got the sense he saw me much more clearly than I could see him.

He reached up a hand and . . .

Waved?

The absurdity of his gesture made a hysterical giggle rise in my throat. I waved back. Then, fear got the better of me and I turned and fled for home. I could hear the galloping pad of paws behind me. At the highway marker, when I was forced into a slower pace, I heard a howl. I tried to push myself faster, uncertain that he would be held by the same energy. “Don’t look back,” I whispered to myself frantically, feeling like a child trying to escape a nightmare. I swore I could feel hot breath on my neck just as I snapped forward into my own body.

I sat up with a gasp. My skin felt cold and clammy. I glanced around the room for Benjamin, but, of course, could no longer see any trace of him. “Benjamin? Are you there?”

The light flicked once in response.

"Good,” I said. “Listen, please don’t let anyone in. I was followed.”

Wind shrieked around the dormer.

“Thanks,” I said. Shivering, I was grateful not only for Sebastian’s guard ghost, but also that he kept his house heavily warded. I cautiously crept over to the window, half expecting to see a wolf under the cemetery’s streetlight. All I saw was the white glow of the marble gravestones and the wind bending the tufts of tall grass that grew close to the bases where the lawnmower couldn ’t reach.

I got up and collected my clothes. On the dresser next to Sebastian ’s little black book sat the picture frame that had been so obscured by Sebastian’s lingering touches. I picked it up, as I imagine he must have so many times. The worn black -and-white photo showed a group of smiling men in uniform posing jauntily against what looked to me like a World War II military plane. I strained to pick out Sebastian among them, but he didn’t seem to be one of the men pictured. Curious. Setting the picture back down, I glanced at the clock. It was ten thirty in the evening. Too late to call a stranger, at least so my mother had taught me. My hand hovered over the book anyway. At the last minute, I took it with me as I went to the bathroom to take a long, hot bath.

After ten minutes of soaking in scalding water, my skin finally warmed up. Had my body grown cold because I nearly killed myself on my little astral walkabout? Leaning back into the bubbles, I tried to banish that thought. A knock made me shriek.

“I’m ordering pizza. What do you want on yours?” Mátyás asked through the door.

“Good luck with that,” I said, sliding deeper into the bubbles.

There was a long pause on the other side of the door. “What do you mean?”

“Sebastian’s wards,” I said. “The pizza driver will never find this place.”

“Oh, right,” he muttered.

I couldn’t tell if he was still there when I suggested, “There’s always a pizza in the freezer. I’ll take veggie.”

I heard a grunt that sounded affirmative, then footsteps going away.

With a deep sigh, I picked up the little black book from where I balanced it on the edge of the sink. My fingers made wet marks on the cover. Steeling myself, I flipped it open. Alison. Andrea. Cindy. Margaret. Susan. Traci (with an “i”, no less). Walter. Walter?

He lived six blocks from my house. Walter? I couldn ’t get over it. Walter wasn’t even a terribly sexy name. I mean, I guess I figured if there was going to be a man ’s name in this book it would be something hot or exotic-sounding like Valentine or JeanBaptiste, but . . . Walter? Who was this guy?

Then, I noticed interspersed between the entries were people with addresses in other states, even other countries. Some names were crossed out. Others had updated information— changes in phone numbers, cell numbers, even e-mail. I shut the book. The image of Sebastian e-mailing kinky notes to Walter down the block made my brain explode. I decided that what I needed was beer, food, and sleep, in that order.

By the time the pizzas came out of the oven, I was dressed in comfy sweats and on my third round. As someone who didn’t drink a lot, I knew I was utterly and completely wasted. However, as a plus, I found everything Mátyás had to say intensely hilarious, which I could tell annoyed him and only made me laugh harder. I devoured two-thirds of the veggie pizza, drank another beer, and fell over on the couch, sound asleep.

Apparently, beer gives me nightmares.

I dreamt my astral self had gotten caught in the spirit sinkhole of Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis.
All around me stood giant
marble slabs
—
some of them were ten-foot Celtic crosses, others had stone-faced angels perched on top, staring down at
me with empty, blank-white eyes. Shades drifted just out of sight. Something chased me now, a big, black dog. I kept
trying to find the front gate, but somehow ended up moving deeper and deeper into the necropolis. Grave images
—
upside
down torches, cherubs, and crosses
—
flickered through my peripheralvision as I ran. Its snapping teeth as white as
gravestones. “I come in peace,” said a crow sitting on a mausoleum.

“Yeah, right,” I mumbled sleepily.

A thorn pricked my finger and I glanced at the gravestone: Sterling. Silver, yeah, that’s what I needed, a sliver bullet.

“No, really, it’s nine o’clock. You’re late.”

I blinked to see Mátyás smiling gleefully into my face, as though he anticipated my reaction: “Oh, shit,” I said, jumping up and then grabbing my pounding head. “Oh, ow!”

With Mátyás’s laughter chasing me, I stumbled up the stairs to find a change of clothes. I went over to “my” drawer and pulled out a bloodred bra and a black halter top. Then I dug through my corner of his closet until I found a decent pair of jeans and my blackand-red Converses. As I hunted up some socks and accessories, I glanced at the bed, which was still made. It looked empty and unused. I smoothed the places I’d wrinkled when I lay on it last night and, unconsciously, checked out the window for Sebastian’s car. Turning away, I pulled a comb through my hair. Then I retreated to the bathroom to brush my teeth and try to do something with my general appearances. Given how I felt inside, I thought I managed to look half decent by the time I emerged. Mátyás stood just outside the door with a cup of coffee in one hand and Sebastian’s darkest sunglasses in the other. “You might need these,” he smirked. I narrowed my eyes at him, even though I took his offerings gratefully. “Dhampyrs are impervious to the aftereffects of alcohol, I take it?”