Spellcasters (34 page)

“Oh, I’m kidding. There’s no one here. Look.” She turned and gestured at the vista beyond the hill. “You can see all the way to the entrance. Nobody’s there. Anyway, Lucas is guarding the path. He’s an okay sorcerer. Not great, but at least he could shout and warn us.”

“Sure, but Leah would probably knock him unconscious before he finished whatever he was trying to shout.”

Cortez’s voice floated up on the still night air. “I can hear you perfectly well. This is a cemetery. There isn’t much in the way of noise interference.”

“Sorry,” I called down.

“Did you hear me, too?” Savannah asked.

“The part about me being an ‘okay sorcerer’? ‘Not great’? No, I believe I missed that.”

“Sorry.”

A sound floated up, something suspiciously like a chuckle. “Quiet down and get moving before we learn whether it really is possible to make enough noise to wake the dead.”

“What are we putting the dirt in?” Savannah asked as we approached the trees surrounding Mott’s grave.

I took a sandwich bag from my pocket.

“A Baggie?” she said.

“A Ziploc Baggie.”

“You’re putting grave dirt in a Ziploc? Shouldn’t we have a fancy bottle or something?”

“I thought of bringing a jam jar, but it could break.”

“A jam jar? What kind of witch are you?”

“A very practical one.”

“What if the Baggie breaks?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out another one. “Backup Baggie.”

Savannah shook her head.

I pushed through the cedars. Three graves lay in the cup formed by the U. I didn’t need to check the headstones to find Mott’s. The fresh dirt had not yet been covered with sod. Perfect.

I took a small trowel from my coat pocket, bent over, and was blinded by a sudden glare of light. As I stumbled backward into Savannah, I dowsed my light-ball. Yet the light was still there. Someone was shining a flashlight into our faces.

Savannah started an incantation, but I clapped my hand over her mouth before she could finish.

“See?” a woman’s voice said. “It is her. I told you so.”

The flashlight dropped and I found myself standing before four people, ranging in age from college-bound to mid-retirement.

“Wow,” whispered the youngest, a woman with rings through her lower lip. “It’s the witch from the newspapers.”

“I’m not—” I cut off the denial. “What are you doing here?”

“Seems we should ask you the same thing,” a twenty-something man in a ball cap said.

An older woman, the one who’d spoken first, shushed him. “She’s here for the same reason we are.”

“To find the treasure?” the man said.

She glared at him. “To communicate with the spirit world.”

“Is it true you saw her rise from the dead?” the younger woman asked, pointing at Mott’s grave “That is so cool. What was it like? Did she say anything?”

“Yeah,” Savannah said. “She said, ‘Bother me again and I’ll rip your—’ ”

I prodded her to silence. “Do you people know what you’re doing? It’s called disturbing a grave site. A—uh—” I slipped my trowel behind my back. “A very serious offense.”

“Nice try,” the young man said. “My brother’s a cop. We can’t get in trouble unless we dig her up. We aren’t stupid.”

“No,” Savannah said. “You’re just hanging around a cemetery looking for buried treasure. Hey, wait, I think I found something. Nope, just another rotting corpse.”

“Mind your tongue, child,” the older woman said. “While I disagree with the concept of using the spirits for material gain, necromancers in the ancient world often did exactly that. They believed that the dead could see all—the past, the present, and the future—thus allowing them to locate hidden treasures.”

The elderly man beside her made a noise.

“Quite right,” she said. “Bob wishes me to clarify that the dead are
believed to be able to find
any
treasure, not just that which they themselves may have buried.”

“He said all that with a grunt?” Savannah asked.

“Mental telepathy, dear. Bob has moved beyond the realm of verbal communication.”

“Maybe so, but he hasn’t moved beyond the realm of human justice,” I said, bending to pick up a saucer of dried mushrooms, which I doubted were shiitake. “Bet these help with the mental telepathy. Maybe you can explain this to the police.”

“There’s no need to threaten us, dear. We’re no danger to you or anyone else. We simply want to communicate with poor Miss Mott. A spirit who has been raised once remains very close to the surface, as I’m sure you’re aware. If we can contact her, perhaps she can relay a message from the other side.”

“Or tell us where to find treasure,” the young man said.

The younger woman rolled her eyes. “You and Joe, always on about your treasure.” She looked at me. “Joe’s another member of our group. Joe and Sylvia. Only Joe had bowling tonight and Sylvia doesn’t like to drive after dark.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We don’t need to worry about these guys raising the dead, Paige,” Savannah said. “They’re so dumb they couldn’t raise—”

I elbowed her to silence. “I’m going to ask you, once more, to leave.”

The young man stepped forward, towering over me. “Or what?”

“Better be careful, or she’ll show you,” Savannah said.

“Is that a threat?”

“That’s enough,” I said. “Now, we’re all leaving—”

“Who’s leaving?” the young man said. “I’m not leaving.”

The older woman’s mouth set. “We aren’t leaving until we’ve communicated with the spirit world.”

“Fine,” Savannah said. “Here, let me help you.”

Her voice rose, words echoing through the silence as she recited an incantation in Hebrew. I whirled to stop her. Before I could, she finished. All went silent.

“Damn,” she muttered, leaning in so only I could hear her. “It’s supposed to—”

Her body went rigid, head jerking back, arms flying out. A deafening crack ripped through the silence, like the thunder of a hundred guns fired at once. A flare of light lit up the sky. Savannah stood on tiptoe, barely touching the ground, body shaking. I dove for her. As my fingers grazed her arm, something hit me in the gut, throwing me against a tombstone.

W
hen I recovered from my fall, I saw that Savannah had collapsed. The four would-be necromancers stood ringed around her prone body. I pushed myself up and ran to Savannah. She was unconscious, her face white.

“Call an ambulance,” I said.

Nobody moved. I checked Savannah’s pulse. Weak but steady.

“Wow,” the young woman said. “That was, like, so cool.”

“Call a goddamned ambulance!” I snarled.

Still no one moved. Around us, the air had gone still, but I could still feel the crackle of energy. At a sound near the trees, I looked up and saw a shape moving toward us. Someone was coming.

Cortez. Perfect. He had a cell phone.

I raised my head to tell him to hurry, then saw the figure emerge from the trees. It wasn’t a figure at all, but a writhing mass of reddish light that twisted on itself, turning blue, then green, then yellow. To my left, wisps of light wafted from the ground, congealing into a mass that hovered over the earth, then shot into the air. We all stared, transfixed, as one after another of these airy phantasms of colored light rose from the soil around us.

“Oooh,” the young woman said. “They’re so pretty.”

Light shot up around us, gaining in speed, hurling into the air. One soared up right beside me, then swerved and dove at my head. The breath flew from me, literally was sucked from my lungs. I gasped. The light darted off into the trees.

Suddenly, the ground began to shake. Light streamed from the earth. Something knocked me hard, pushing me away from Savannah. A deafening howl rent the air. I dove toward Savannah, but a geyser of light erupted between us, pushing me back. The ground quaked, knocking me to my knees. Howl after howl tore through the night.

“Savannah!” I shouted.

The moment my mouth opened, the air was ripped from my throat. A
globe of light surrounded my head, sucking the air from me. Pain cleaved through my chest. I couldn’t breathe. As I fought, the light seemed to take form. I clawed at my attacker, but my fingers passed through it.

“Stop fighting!” a voice said at my ear.

I struggled harder, legs and arms flailing against the thing.

“Goddamn it, Paige. Don’t fight! You’re making it worse!”

Cortez? As my brain registered his voice, my body went still for a brief second. The light evaporated and I fell back, hitting the ground and gulping air. Cortez bent over me.

“They’re koyut,” he said. “They feed off energy. If you fight, you only produce more.”

I pushed him away and sat up, wildly looking about for Savannah.

“She’s right here,” Cortez said, pointing at a prone form behind him. “She’s fine. I’ll carry her. We need to move past the trees.”

He grabbed her up and we ran. When we reached the meadow beyond the trees, Cortez stopped me.

“We need to wake her,” he said. “What did she cast?”

“I—I don’t know.”

I turned back toward the grove. Light trumpeted up from treetops. The howls were muted, as if soundproofed within the grove. A man screamed.

“I need to help the others,” I said, turning to run.

Cortez lunged and grabbed me. “Koyut don’t kill. As soon as people lose consciousness, the koyut leave them alone. We need to concentrate on Savannah. What did she say?”

“It was Hebrew. I’m not good at Hebrew. I think—” I closed my eyes and willed my thumping heart to slow so I could concentrate. “She said something about summoning forces. Forces or energies, I’m not sure which.”

“Summoning the energies of the earth. It’s a sorcerer spell.”

“You know it?”

“I know
of
it. I haven’t learned it because it’s not something I can ever imagine needing to use. It calls on the spirits of the earth, not to perform any particular task, but simply to respond and do as they wish. It’s considered a chaos spell.”

“No kidding,” I said. “What was Savannah thinking?”

“It—it’s never worked before,” Savannah’s thin voice said beside us. “All it ever does is make some noise and flashing lights. Like a prank. Dime store magic. Only this time—”

“Only this time, it behaved precisely as intended,” Cortez said. “Owing, no doubt, to your increasing strength. Plus the fact that you chose to cast it in a cemetery, a place rich in energy.”

I knelt beside Savannah. “Are you okay?”

She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Yeah. Sorry about that, guys.” She gave a tiny smile. “Only it was kinda cool, wasn’t it?”

We both glared at her.

“I mean, kinda cool in a bad way.”

“I would suggest that is one spell you can safely remove from your repertoire,” Cortez said. “I would also suggest that we return to the car before the lights attract—”

“I still need the dirt,” I said.

“I’m fast,” Savannah said. “I can get it.”

“No!” we said in unison.

Cortez insisted on following me to the edge of the trees, so he could jump in if anything went wrong. It didn’t. By now the lights had dimmed to a soft glow, illuminating the glade and the four figures lying blissfully unconscious within. I scooped dirt into both bags, shoved them into my pocket, and headed back to Cortez and Savannah.

“So that’s what spirits look like?” Savannah asked, watching the swirling, multicolored glow.

“Not human spirits,” I said. “Nature spirits and their energy. Let’s go.”

Savannah stepped away from the trees, then stopped and stared, transfixed.

“Yes, very pretty,” I said, reaching for her arm. “Now move!”

Her body went rigid. A wave of physical energy shot from her, knocking both Cortez and me off our feet. The ground shivered. A low, nearly inaudible moan seemed to emanate from the earth itself. Geysers of dirt erupted, borne up on rocketing streams of light. Then the wind began to scream—not wail, but scream a high-pitched endless shriek that made me double over, hands clamped to my ears.

Cortez grabbed my shoulder and shook me, mouthing “To the car” once he had my attention. He hoisted Savannah’s limp form over his shoulder and began to run. I followed.

As we crested the hill, I saw lights in the distance. Not the glow of spirits, but the very human illumination of flashlights and headlights. I looked at Cortez, but he had his head down, struggling to get Savannah to the top of the steep hill. I shouted for him, but the wail of the wind sucked the words from my mouth.

Lunging forward, I snagged the back of his shirt. He twisted, nearly tumbling onto me. I steadied him and gestured toward the road.

The flashing lights of police cars now cut through the night, joining a mob of flashlight beams spilling through the cemetery gates. Cortez’s lips
moved in a soundless curse and he wheeled around. I pointed at the woods to our left and he nodded.

As we raced for the woods, the shrieks and lights pursued us. No, that’s a poor choice of words, implying the spirits were trying to attack us. They weren’t. They simply followed, arising from the ground in our tracks. Elsewhere, the commotion seemed to be dying down. Or maybe it just seemed that way, in comparison to the chaos erupting around us. I wasn’t about to stop for a scientific survey of the situation.

Once we reached the woods, Cortez lowered Savannah’s body to the ground. Then he turned, raised his hands, and said a few words. As he swept his right hand across the air, the spirits vanished.

“I thought you couldn’t do that kind of magic,” I said, wheezing as I struggled for breath.

“I said I saw no need to learn how to conjure such spirits. I did, however, see a distinct need to learn how to un-conjure them. Unfortunately, it’s a geographically limited spell.”

“Meaning if we leave the woods, they’ll return. Fine by me. I haven’t run that fast since grade school. No, strike that, I’ve
never
run that fast.”

I lowered myself to the ground beside Savannah and checked her vital signs. She was unconscious, but breathing fine.