Chapter 17 – Regina #2
Her jaw works. I can see the anger building, the defensive walls going up. But underneath all of that, there’s another emotion entirely.
Terror.
And suddenly, I understand.
“Vyse can’t find evidence of the spell that’s keeping you from talking about Kyle’s location,” I say slowly, working through the facts as I speak them out loud, “because there isn’t one.”
Rebecca’s face goes blank. Damningly so.
“He didn’t tell you where he was going,” I continue, “because he didn’t know himself. He didn’t plan on disappearing. He thought the wolf would kill us after he left the meadow, and he’d be alive to spin his narrative.” The pieces finally click into place. “Which means someone took him.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her words come out clipped, and she shifts uncomfortably in her seat.
“Don’t I?” I’m leaning forward even farther now, my hands flat on the table. “Kyle didn’t run. Kyle was taken. By someone powerful enough to grab him and vanish without a trace, powerful enough to keep him hidden even from the Council.”
“That’s insane—“
“The necromancer.” Just the word makes her flinch. “That’s who it was, isn’t it? The one who helped you raise that werewolf. And now he’s covering his tracks.”
Rebecca’s composure cracks. Just for a second, but I see it.
I’m right. I’m fucking right.
Vyse’s voice crackles in my ear. “I felt an energy signature. Keep pushing her, Regina, you triggered something.”
“Kyle got in over his head, didn’t he?” I press harder. “Made a deal with someone he shouldn’t have. And now he’s going to let you and everyone else pay the price while he… what? Gets used as leverage? A hostage? A blood sacrifice?”
“Stop it,” she grits out, hugging herself.
“He always does this,” I go on, ignoring her. “Lets other people take the fall for his bullshit. He’s a Starbridge, after all. They don’t believe in consequences for their own actions.”
“I said stop.”
“What’s the necromancer’s name, Rebecca? Where did Kyle find him? What did he promise in exchange for—“
Rebecca’s scream cuts me off.
It’s not a sound of anger or frustration like I was expecting.
It’s pain.
Purple-black energy erupts in a spiderweb pattern across her skin. It spreads like ink in water, crawling up her arms, her neck, her face. Wherever it touches, her flesh begins to change. It decays before my eyes, rotting and dissolving into a thick liquid.
I’m out of my chair before I consciously decide to move, stumbling backward. The stench hits me a second later, sweet and rotten, like meat left out in the sun.
The door bursts open and Sean and Rowan are through it first, with Villeneuve right behind them. Rowan grabs me and pulls me back, trying to cover my eyes with his hands while simultaneously gagging.
“Don’t look,” he manages.
I look anyway.
The scream is mere gurgling now, wet and horrible. The purple-black magic has consumed most of Rebecca’s body. What’s left is sloughing off the chair, sliding toward the floor in thick, viscous streams.
In less than thirty seconds, there’s nothing left but a puddle of purple-gray sludge where a person used to be.
The gurgling stops, but the silence is somehow worse.
“What the fuck,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds distant. “What the fuck was that?”
“Bro, ew,” Sean whispers, petting my hair like he doesn’t know what else to do, his eye locked on the sludge puddle.
Rowan is staring at the remains, still holding me even though all the blood has drained from his face and he looks like he’s about to pass out. He mutters something in Arabic I don’t understand, but the intonations make it clear enough it’s adjacent to holy fuck.
“That is the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve caught Sean eating a burrito he found under his bed.”
“Dude, it was a quesarito, I was a wolf, and I was drunk,” Sean mutters, as if that justifies it.
“That,” Vyse says, materializing beside us with a monogrammed handkerchief pressed firmly over his nose and mouth, “was necromancy in all its glory.”
Rowan’s hand is still ineffectively draped over my eyes. I push it away fully, even though part of me wishes I hadn’t.
“Why couldn’t you sense it before?” Rowan demands, turning on Vyse. “You’re supposed to be able to detect this kind of magic.”
“All magic leaves traces,” Villeneuve says.
His voice is calm, but I can see the line of tension through his body.
“However, certain very powerful magic is able to seep into the victim’s soul and conceal itself within the very seams of reality to the point where it’s all but invisible. Until something triggers it.”
“I triggered it.” The realization hits me at his words. “By pushing her.”
“Indeed.” Vyse lowers the handkerchief slightly, a look of vague distaste on his features.
“The necromancer must have planted the spell as a failsafe. If any of the captured coven members came close to revealing useful information, the magic would activate and eliminate them. Accelerated decay of some sort. Not exactly artful, but highly effective.”
“So we have nothing.” Rowan growls. “Our best lead is fucking sludge now. We can’t exactly interrogate sludge and the same thing will happen to the other prisoners if we try it with them.”
“I wouldn’t say nothing.” Vyse produces a blue latex glove from somewhere and pulls it on with a snap. He crouches beside the puddle of remains and swipes his finger through the purple-gray substance.
Rowan gags again. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Collecting evidence.” Vyse examines the sludge on his gloved finger with a scientist’s curiosity.
He pulls a small glass slide from his pocket and carefully transfers the sample.
“Necromantic magic is messy and volatile, but it’s also distinctive.
Every practitioner leaves a unique signature in their work. ”
He holds up the slide, sealing it with some kind of preservation spell. “Now I have something to track.”
Rowan makes a strangled sound and turns away. He barely makes it to the trash can in the corner before he loses his lunch. Sean goes over and pats him on the back, as if he’s choking. “You need the Heineken, man?”
“It’s Heimlich, and no,” Rowan moans.
I should probably feel worse about watching a woman dissolve into magical goop right in front of me. And the fact that my questions literally killed her.
But all I can think is that we’re one step closer to finding the necromancer who raised that werewolf.
Which means we’re one step closer to saving Killian.
I’ll process the trauma later.
After an hour-long shower the approximate temperature of the surface of the sun.