CHAPTER 14
The forest released us once the wraith weakened from its pursuit and dissolved into morning mist.
In dawn’s peach glow, we returned to Lunaris. While Rowan rooted under the hood for the cause of her engine troubles, Briar and I worked together to re-enchant the broken wards.
They would be stronger with the magic of two witches behind them, but not strong enough. If the wraith was a part of me, no ward that permitted me passage wouldn’t grant it the same.
We volleyed back and forth about the revelations of the night.
Somehow, the strid had been poisoned, and Kessian had become Keeper, and we would either save or kill each other, and talking to my dead grandfather, who’d been the Keeper before—which was news to me—would help us solve the whole tangled mess.
Or Kessian and I would both die in the attempt.
Lovely.
“It would have been nice to know we needed to speak to your grandad a week ago,” Kessian said. His leg was still bothering him after the fall last night, so he sat in the passenger side with the window rolled down, leaning against its edge.
“Actually, I might know someone who can help with that,” I said while inscribing a rune on Lunaris’s wing mirror. “A necromancer I once met in Belgrave.”
Kessian grimaced. “We’re not going to dig up Edwin, are we?”
“Er, I hope it won’t come to that. I was thinking more like a spirit summoning.”
“That could work,” Briar piped up, coming around to our side, dusting charcoal from his hands and flicking down his sleeves.
It had been a shock when he’d rolled them up, one arm and most of the second covered in runes from countless flesh tithes.
I wasn’t one to judge, but I’d rarely seen people use them.
He continued, “Spirits are notoriously difficult to get straight answers out of, but it’s worth a try. ”
“I’ll give the necromancer a call after we cast these wards.”
“Ready when you are,” Briar said.
Magic surged between us as I pressed my palm over the rune on the wing mirror, the enchantment running between Briar and I like we were two filaments in a bulb. A golden carapace of wards encased Lunaris entirely, then faded to invisibility.
“That’ll do,” Rowan remarked. “I suppose you won’t be lingering long enough for lunch?”
I exchanged a worried look with Kessian. The wraith had already found us here. It wasn’t a good idea to tarry any longer. “I think it’s best we get a wriggle on. But thank you. For everything, not just the lunch offer.”
“Not a bother,” Rowan said.
Briar, looking a little too wise for someone with tutu sequins still stuck in his hair, said, “You know who to call if you need any more help with your strid, but I suspect you have what you need in each other already.”
They waved and turned to go, leaving me to wonder what he meant by that exactly, when I noticed his cane leaning against Lunaris’s bumper.
I snatched it up and jogged after them. “Wait, you forgot this.”
Briar turned and feigned surprise. “Ah, silly of me, but you keep it. You never know when it might come in handy. I can have another made.” Eyes glimmering, he turned to Rowan. “Dear husband, carry me, please.”
Rowan looked fondly at him as he scooped Briar up, whisking him off up the road.
The familiarity of the frost pattern curling up the cane’s surface only struck me as I turned back to Kessian. In our shared vision, he’d been using a cane. This cane. I carried it back to him, but he looked at it like it might bite.
I know someone who can make you one, too. There’s no shame in it, Briar had said.
I thought Kessian had injured himself last night, but there’d been other instances of Kessian moving stiffly, looking as though he was in pain and dismissing it. He folded his arms across Lunaris’s window frame, casting me a wary look. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
“Are you ill?”
“No. Yes. It’s complicated. I didn’t want to bother you with it.”
“It can’t be any more complicated than the mess I’ve dragged you into. I’d be thrilled if you evened the playing field a bit.”
His mouth twitched but didn’t quite smile. I waited patiently, twirling the cane between my palms. It was pretty, sturdy yet delicately painted.
“I was cursed with Bowen’s Wane. That’s how I know Briar. He had it, too, and he developed the cure.”
I stopped twirling the cane. I’d heard a bit about Bowen’s Wane, a curse that had cropped up sporadically a decade ago, draining a witch’s magic. It was fatal. Or it had been.
I could only imagine how it might have wreaked havoc on Kessian’s life. “I didn’t know non-witches could get it.”
“Briar thinks I may have been a witch, but I got Bowen’s Wane young enough it stunted my magical growth.
No magic pool to draw from, no familiar, but no way to know for sure.
It would have killed me if not for Briar.
It left me with a few souvenirs. Tin-man hips and knees, chronic pain, fatigue.
Some days, I feel fine. Other times, if you put a backpack on me I’d probably fall over backwards. Lately …”
“I’ve put you through the ringer,” I realized.
He cringed. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I’m not very good at knowing my limits, but I don’t like having to sit something out. Don’t like being treated like I’m fragile, either.”
“I’ve been told I’m subtle as a sledgehammer.” I met his eyes and looked pointedly up at his fringe. “You’ve had leaves stuck in your hair all morning.”
He sat straighter to look in the wing mirror, plucking at the offending memento courtesy of the forest. I leaned in and helped, picking the leaves out and smoothing a few wispy strands. He froze, gaze locking with mine, trepidation in his eyes.
I swallowed, aware of his breath fanning the heavy pulse in my wrist. Seized by the memory of winding his hair around my palm, I had to forcibly shove my hands in my pockets.
“The whole reason I’m doing all this—going back, figuring out how to fix things in Shearwater—is because I don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” I said. “If you can’t do something, I’d rather you tell me.”
I held out the cane to him. He looked disappointed, and I didn’t know if it was because of what I’d said or because I’d taken a step away rather than leaning in, but he took the cane.
He said, “I’m not good at asking for help.”
“Then I’ll offer more. If there’s something I can do. I don’t know what, to tell the truth. A glass of water, a piggyback ride, rub your shoulders.”
“You can rub something.”
“I didn’t mean—” At the sight of his teasing smile, my protests died.
If he found it easier to deflect from uncomfortable topics with humor and flirting …
I wouldn’t complain, even if it was becoming increasingly difficult not to steal that kiss I’d forgone last night.
As he traced the frost pattern with a finger, I said, “Think of it this way: It will be fun to whack people with it if they annoy you.”
Kessian smiled appreciatively. “Now you understand me. Enough about the cane, though. Tell me about this necromancer.”
I’d first crossed paths with Emery Vale when I’d traveled to Belgrave for a day.
Lunaris and I had set up shop near the university, fully aware it would be the most caffeinated populace, and thus the most likely to buy my hand-thrown mugs.
I’d glazed them with colors like the milky way and enchanted the stars to glimmer.
Most people liked my staple enchantment, which kept hot drinks at perfect temperature, but one man had an odd request.
“Can you enchant it to make all coffee mocha flavored?”
“I … could? But why not just make a mocha?”
“I’ve discovered I’m lactose intolerant, and I refuse to entertain the soy- and nut-milk varieties.”
He’d looked world-weary, and in spite of his tithe belt and other indications of magical aptitude, his familiar was conspicuously absent.
I wondered if his had, like Lunaris, given up its form for some alternate purpose, though I’d never met one who had.
It was hard not to see myself in the rings of insomnia under his eyes, or the premature graying of his hair.
It meant staying longer than intended, but I couldn’t deny his request and stayed an extra two days to fulfil it.
When he returned to collect, he said, “Ignore me if this is all a trade secret, but how do you enchant the mugs so that their charms last?”
I’d explained how I incorporated the tithes into their making, cast the spells while I threw the clay, put potions into the glaze. I joked that perhaps a little love went into them, too, and maybe that helped. All the while, I kept looking over his shoulder. And mine. Feeling watched and hunted.
I’d parked Lunaris on the campus green, within sight of a bridge crossing a river, a weeping willow on its bank. Between the swaying reeds I’d glimpsed movement. After years, I’d come to recognize when the quality of a shadow seemed darker than usual, or when something moved with a particular gait.
The strid wraith was under that bridge. I could tell, and needed to hurry this conversation along, so I could pack up and move once more.
“I should really get going,” I’d said.
That’s when he’d written something on a napkin, folded it, and handed it to me.
I’d only had the presence of mind to open it once Lunaris and I were far from Belgrave, speeding along the motorway northward to whatever temporary home would have us.
The napkin contained his name, contact details, and a short note.
If you’re ever in need of a necromancer.
The address was unlike any other I’d seen and came with instructions for correspondence using a unique spell.
I had written to ask about my problem. I wasn’t shy about it, and someone who called themselves a necromancer could be trusted with discretion.
That he’d seen how jumpy I was and offered to help mattered more to me than the fact his magic was on the edge of taboo.
If it could rid me of the strid wraith, I didn’t care.
His spells hadn’t worked, but hope was a rare indulgence. One I couldn’t help but savor whenever it arose.
Now, as I charmed a letter to be delivered to The Ruined Chapel in the Bog, I hoped Emery could help me speak to my grandfather.
By the time we’d teleported back to Shearwater, he’d already sent a response. He would come at once.