CHAPTER 15
Emery Vale arrived that rainy afternoon, and he didn’t come alone.
The man with him was a walking conundrum. He cut an intimidating figure, muscular and eerie with his white hair and black collar of runes tithed around his neck, yet he had a cheerful disposition, beaming sunnily as he introduced himself.
“Ambrose. Nice to meet you.”
“He’s my partner,” Emery said, and I looked between them again.
Business partner or—
Partner partner?
I bitterly hoped for the former. My time with Briar and Rowan had already given me one too many reminders of my permanent bachelor status, and I didn’t need more, but as I donned my waterproof and wellies and marched out with them into the rain, Ambrose put a hand to the small of Emery’s back.
Definitely not business partners.
Kessian leaned in to whisper, “Aww, see? The gays can be happy.” He used his cane to get down Lunaris’s steps, wincing as he got used to the new rhythm.
He’d asked whether he could come. I’d hesitated, not because I didn’t want him there, but because he’d already overextended himself helping me. There’d been much back and forth as we danced around propriety.
I’d said, “If you’d rather rest, I don’t mind.”
“No, I’d like to come, but he’s your grandfather, and I’d understand if it would be awkward.”
“Because we had sex?”
“No! I mean, if that’s awkward to you, then yes, but I mean because you haven’t spoken in so long, and I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not. You knew him, too. If you want to come, you can.”
He’d settled on joining me in the end. Secretly, I was glad of it. The idea of speaking to my grandfather again was nerve-wracking. I hadn’t known what to say at his funeral. Kessian didn’t struggle for words like I did.
The graveyard where they’d laid my grandfather to rest was a modest plot next to the church I’d attended as a child. It was in the farthest row, under a horse-chestnut tree, which shed a confetti of conkers over the ground.
“We’ll prepare everything,” Emery said. “But first, a word of warning. Spirits of the deceased aren’t always coherent, nor are their memories complete.
Murder investigations don’t accept the testimony of ghosts for a reason.
Too often, their recollections prove faulty.
His spirit might offer you leads or clues, but it will be up to you to recover any true evidence. ”
“You told me this already in your letter,” I said.
Emery smiled. “Most people need things repeated, but I’ll get on with it.”
He opened a pouch and went to place something from it on the headstone but paused. With one finger, he stroked a line over the stone, pausing to rub some indentation or flaw. I stepped closer but couldn’t see anything.
“Someone’s placed a seal over his grave,” Emery said darkly.
“A seal?”
“To prevent you from doing exactly what we’ve set out to. The seal traps spirits, preventing their summoning.”
Frustrated, I said, “Can you figure out who placed it?”
“If we had a drop of blood, strand of hair, or sentimental object from every witch we might suspect, sure. Otherwise, no. We could try to break it, but …” His finger worried the spot on the stone, though I could see nothing there. “It will take something powerful to break an enchantment like this.”
My heart sank. “I never had a formal education in magic. I’m capable of small spells, charms, nothing grandiose. If you can’t break this, I certainly can’t.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Ambrose said. “The magic on the mug you sold would be no small challenge even for great witches.”
Emery agreed. “None of us would be able to do this, except we happen to have an artifact that can.”
Ambrose slouched the canvas rucksack off his shoulder, undid its leather straps, and opened it.
It appeared empty, but as he reached in, his arm delved deeper than should have been physically possible, then emerged holding the haft of some great weapon.
Opening the mouth of the rucksack wide, he retrieved a war axe, elaborately engraved and glimmering with an enchantment like firelight along its edge.
“You’ve got stuff like that just lying around?” Kessian said, putting voice to my thoughts exactly.
“The story behind it’s a long one,” Ambrose said.
“And rather grisly. A bit of an overshare for first meetings,” Emery agreed.
“But perhaps we’ll tell each other tales over drinks one day when all this is over.” Ambrose grinned at Kessian and I. “It could be a—what do you call these things again?”
“A double date,” Emery supplied.
I colored. Kessian, wiggling his eyebrows at me, said, “We’d be delighted.”
I was pretty sure he was only teasing me, but the way the rain had plastered some of his hair to his cheeks like sweat had done on the night we met, I foolishly hoped he meant it.
The axe looked weighty, but Ambrose swung it in a circle with a deft movement of the wrist that made it appear light as a fairy wand. Raising it above his head, he brought it down as if the tombstone were a stump he could split in half.
Steel rang against stone but didn’t sunder it. Something else shattered, though. It rang like a wind chime. The axe’s enchanted light flared, and when my eyes adjusted, I saw what looked like shattered glass over the gravestone and in the grass.
“There!” Emery said as though Ambrose hadn’t just performed an impossibly miraculous spell. “Now we can begin.”
On top of the grave, he placed a candle, enchanted to stay lit in the rain, and a parcel of leaves tied together with string.
With an incantation and a tithe of igneous rock, he lit this last on fire as well.
It smelled strongly of herbs, rosemary and sage among them.
As it burnt, Emery clenched a hand, as if trying to dig his fingers into the grave soil and wrench my grandfather’s spirit up.
My heart thumped like a rabbit kicking the ground to warn its warren. I’d called Emery here with a purpose in mind, but it had all been abstract until now.
Icy mist and light formed in the air, my breath clouding in front of me. A tremor went through Emery, and Ambrose silently put a hand to his shoulder and squeezed.
It was a quiet show of comfort he performed unasked, and my heart gave an unexpected twist.
Before Kessian, when was the last time someone had done that for me?
Lunaris tried. She could tuck the blankets around me tighter in bed. She could put the kettle on for a hot cup of tea. But the warmth of another’s arms—
The last time had been the day I left Shearwater, and Grandad had hugged me for what felt like an age.
At the time, I’d tried to pull back, but he held on.
I’d never been very touchy as a boy. Hugs sometimes felt forced or coerced.
Go give your grandparents a hug, they’d tell me, and I’d try to get it over with, not because I didn’t love them, but because touch sometimes felt like too much.
Cats got to slap you if you kept stroking them when they’d had enough, but not me.
Nine years spent alone had reversed that. If I’d known, I might have held on to Grandad a little longer.
The mist coalesced into the vague shape of a man. The light swirled like an oil spill until it formed a mirage of my grandfather’s face. It didn’t open its eyes or speak, and I wondered if I could, my throat closing around a knot of—something. An emotion I was too overwhelmed to name.
Beside me, Kessian met my eyes.
He mouthed, You okay?
No, I thought. This is the first time I’ll speak to my grandfather in nine years, and he’s dead. He probably won’t even recognize me.
But the first thing that came out of my grandfather’s mouth was my name.
“Taliesin?”
His voice sounded like a scratched record.
“Grandad?”
“My boy … missed you.”
I choked on my words. “I’m sorry. I was afraid if I came back … And now you’re gone anyway.”
“Gone … but still love you.” His spirit flickered like a television tuned to a dead channel.
“Keeping spirits this side of the veil is difficult. Your time is limited. I suggest you be quick.” From the strain in his voice, Emery was struggling to maintain the spell.
I had to gather myself quickly. “Grandad, listen. The strid. We think it’s poisoned, and Kessian’s Keeper now. We need to cure it or people will keep dying. Do you know how we can do that? Cleanse the poison?”
His words were grated cheese, raw and crumbling. “The strid still has you.”
That wasn’t an answer. “I—I know that, but what about the poison? Is there an antidote?”
“Tried to find a way to bring you back. All my research—for you.”
“Research? What research?”
He kept going, wheezing like a car’s dying exhaust. “You … you were half the equation. Needed the other half to solve.”
His mouth opened wide, a sound like a dying breath and the rush of water chilling me to the bone. Rain dripped into my mouth, tasting like the strid.
Emery had to shout to be heard over the noise, his voice strained. “You don’t have much longer.”
“Grandad, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where do we find your research? How do we cleanse the poison?”
His voice was a gale. “You swam the strid! You drank its water! The blood of Shearwater runs through you. Is tied to you.”
I took a step back, the sudden clarity and meaning of his words an arrow through the heart. “What?”
“The wraith is a part of you and a part of the strid. A manifestation of the strid’s rage and your grief. It is the poison, but not the poisoner. It must be healed, or it will get sicker and sicker, a place of houses and no homes, unless you—”
“Unless I what?”
“Hurry,” Emery growled through gritted teeth.
The spectral mist, musically composed into a body, shifted and burst apart, coming together again by the force of Emery’s will. My grandfather’s stricken ghost wailed the final verse of his song.
“You must find the one who poisoned Shearwater, and discover the truth behind the wraith.” His voice warped, inhuman and shrill. “The true face of the one who killed me!”
The magic keeping him there collapsed like a miniature dying star. The vacuum of its waning power tugged on my insides. The rain poured like it grieved my grandfather’s last words as much as I did.
It poured, but I wasn’t as soaked as I should be.
I looked up at the umbrella over my head, then over my shoulder at the man holding it.
Kessian opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Silently, he touched my arm, a question and comfort in the gesture. It confirmed for me what I couldn’t quite grasp, even after hearing it from my grandfather’s own mouth.
He’d been murdered.