CHAPTER FIVE || TOBIAS
A fter my conversation with my sister, I decided that the only way to protect Bryan would be to work this case with him, whether he wanted my help or not. Which meant figuring out exactly what kind of ghost we were dealing with.
I hadn’t really been paying much attention to Bryan’s setup, but I had caught some of it. A warding circle made from salt and iron, two of the most powerful protective substances on earth. And he’d gotten his hands on one of the coven’s books of necromancy. Which meant he had just enough information about ghost hunting to get himself killed.
For instance, when you use a warding circle and manifesting sigils, the sigils are supposed to be drawn inside a mostly sealed warding circle, luring the ghost into it. After the spirit shows itself, that’s when you seal it up, trapping the entity inside the ring. Bryan had done it literally backward, sealing himself inside the ring and giving the fully manifested and highly malevolent spirit full reign of the house.
It was about as bad an idea as you might imagine.
While I might have been able to go back to the house and step into the spirit world long enough to figure out what type of entity we were dealing with here, it was too dangerous to do that without another witch to guard my body. Possession isn’t especially common or anything, but it can and will happen if you leave a perfectly good body lying around unprotected. Especially if you’re dumb enough to do that in the presence of an evil spirit.
Given that it would be at least a few hours until my sister could get me the location of Lisa Chamberlain so I could question her, the next logical thing for me to do would be to view the body of the latest victim and check it for any telltale markings.
With that in mind, I drove to the morgue on the outskirts of town. I ended up having to put the lone security guard to sleep with magic in order to get past him, but I was sure he’d be fine once he woke up.
Bryan was already there with the morgue attendant when I took the elevator down to the subbasement where the bodies were kept. They both glanced up at me through the large glass window beside the solid steel door leading into the morgue as I stepped off the elevator.
The woman looked puzzled at my sudden and unannounced presence, but Bryan hardly even looked surprised. Instead, he glared daggers at me through the glass.
I beamed back at him. Then I tried the door. It was locked.
I might suck at divination and locator spells, but I’m fantastic at getting into locked rooms. I didn’t even pause to consider it. I performed a simple Gaelic unlocking charm under my breath, which my mentor, Ms. Davenport, had taught me years ago. It had the benefit of only being three words long, though unlike most other spells to open locked doors, it required the caster to touch the locking mechanism.
The lock clicked and the door swung open.
“This is a restricted access area,” the morgue attendant informed me as I walked into the room, managing to sound both startled and indignant at the same time. “I don’t know who the hell you are or what you think you’re doing, but you can’t be in here.”
“Sure, I can,” I told her, gesturing to Bryan. “I’m with him.”
If looks could have killed, I would have been six feet under on the spot from the way Bryan was glaring at me right then.
The morgue attendant’s eyebrows shot up and she gave me a doubtful look, no doubt taking in my rumpled clothing. “You’re FBI?”
Before I could stop myself, I chuckled, glancing over at Bryan. He was still looking like he might set me on fire at some point in the very near future.
“Yup. We’re definitely the FBI,” I told her brightly. “And, um, he’s my partner.”
“Who was supposed to be waiting for me in the car,” Bryan hissed. The steam was practically coming out of his ears.
“I got bored,” I told him, playing along. “You always get to do all the fun stuff.”
“You can go back upstairs now,” Bryan enunciated every word, his fists clenched and his jaw tight. “I’ve got this covered. Partner. ”
“Actually, I think I would like to speak to your superiors,” the morgue attendant cut in. I turned to look at her and saw that she was clutching a phone. “You see, there were two other men here earlier today, asking to look at this same body. They claimed to be FBI agents, too. Two sets of FBI agents in one day, none of whom have any jurisdiction over this case at all, seems pretty strange to me.”
I glanced over at Bryan and saw that he seemed startled by this fact as well.
“So, then. You didn’t know,” the attendant said, obviously catching our surprise. She sounded far warier this time. She took a step back, toward the door. “Yeah, I’m going to need to call your bosses, so I can verify that you’re actually who you say you are.”
“That’s not necessary,” Bryan replied, flashing her an innocent smile. “Seriously, this kind of thing happens all the time. I mean, bureaucracy, am I right?”
She took another step back. “You know what? I think I’ll just call security.”
I sighed. “No. You won’t.”
“Tobias, don’t,” Bryan hissed, shooting me a warning look.
Grimly, knowing that he wouldn’t like it one bit, I launched into a compulsive spell, very similar to the one I’d used on the demon the night I had learned that Bryan was in danger, except a much weaker version of that. It wasn’t like I was trying to get the morgue attendant to open a portal to her home dimension and be on her way. I just needed her to put the phone down and think we were who we said we were.
There was no accompanying light show this time, but the result was still pretty much instantaneous. All the suspicion drained out of the morgue attendant’s face and her gaze became unfocused and staring, like somebody under deep hypnosis.
“What did you do?” Bryan demanded, coming around the gurney that the body was on. He looked more startled by what I had just done than angry. “Did you just use magic to control her mind? What is wrong with you?”
“It’s not like I enjoyed it. But she was going to call the police. This would have gotten a lot messier and harder to handle if she had.”
“Look, I was doing fine until you got here!” Bryan snapped. “She was about to show me the body!”
“No, she was about to call security to have us forcefully escorted out of the building! Or maybe she would call the cops and have us arrested for impersonating federal agents,” I retorted, gesturing to his outfit. “I had to stop her, didn’t I?”
“You can’t just play with people’s minds like this!”
I winced at that; it wasn’t like he was wrong. “Look, I promise that I don’t do this sort of thing unless I have to. And the damage is done now. So, the sooner we examine the body, the sooner I can release her from my spell.” I paused, then added, “She’ll be fine, I promise.”
“No.” Bryan shook his head. “You should leave. I don’t know how much clearer I can be. I don’t want you here.”
“You’re looking for markings on the chest of the corpse if it’s a revenant,” I replied, pretending I hadn’t heard that. “They tend to—”
“Siphon the life-force off their victims as they’re dying. It leaves marks on the body that look like welts. Usually near the heart,” Bryan cut in, still glaring at me. “Yeah, I know. Thanks. Now, please go away.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t need you to be with me if you don’t want to. That sucks but it’s fine. I get it. That’s not why I’m here, I swear.” I said, hoping he’d hear the truth in my words. “And I won’t ask you not to do something that makes you happy, no matter how insane, so I won’t ask you to stop doing this.”
“Gee, thanks so much for that.”
“But I do need to know you’re safe before I can leave. I really did have a vision of you dying. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
He nodded grudgingly, though it seemed like the small admission cost him something. “Look, I know you’re not a liar. I believe you saw something that freaked you out.”
“You dying,” I reminded him. “I wouldn’t be here, otherwise.”
“Fine. I believe you saw a vision of me dying.”
“Good.”
Then he winced, and some of the stoniness of his expression softened, as the truth of his own words seemed to register for him.
“Uh. So, you really saw me die? You’re sure?”
I nodded, though the movement sent jolts of pain through me. “Yup. Sure did. Hence why I drove four hours and barged in on what you’re doing, after I promised not to.”
Absent-mindedly, I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to get the kink there out. Sleeping in the car was turning out to be a painful experience. And this was only after one day. Fantastic.
Bryan seemed to catch it too because his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Did you mess up your neck or something?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, too quickly.
I made a mental note to try a spell to cause the stiff muscles of my neck to relax. But I’ve never been much of a healer, so I doubted it would work all that well. What I really needed was a long, hot shower and a place to sleep that wasn’t my car.
“Okay. So you saw a vision of me dying. And you’re here. But you’re not going to ask me to stop what I’m doing…?” He trailed off, sounding almost puzzled.
“So, that means I’m helping you work this until it’s done,” I confirmed, nodding again and wincing at the pain it caused. “This is still your show. I’m just your backup. Or your bodyguard, I guess.”
He scowled at that, but there was no heat left in it.
“Like hell you are.” His eyes narrowed even further and, seemingly almost unwilling, his gaze trailed to where my hand was still absently trying to massage the tension out of my neck. “And seriously, what did you do to yourself?”
“I’ll leave afterward,” I told him, ignoring his question. “You have my word. Once I know you’re safe, I’ll take off. I won’t interfere with what you’re doing once I know you won’t come to harm.”
Bryan hesitated, and for a split second I could have sworn I saw a flash of pain in his eyes at my offer to leave. But then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone.
It was probably nothing more than wishful thinking on my part.
“Do you promise? That you’ll leave, I mean?”
I swallowed the hot coal in my throat, the selfish desire to beg him to stay with me, to not walk out of my life and ditch me like just about everyone else in my world had.
“I promise,” I said instead. “I’m here strictly to protect you. Nothing else. And if you want me gone—after I know you’re safe—then I’m gone, easy as that. And I won’t come back. Not until you say I can. Not until you tell me to.”
The relief clearly visible on Bryan’s face was enough to break my heart in two.
“What if I never do?” he asked.
“Then you’ll never see me again, I guess.”
“Fine,” he said, giving me a strange, unreadable look. “You have a deal. You help me work this case and avert whatever you saw that’s got you so worked up. And then we’re done. You’re gone for good and so am I.”
“Right,” I agreed, feeling hollow inside.
“I guess we’d better examine this body, then. The sooner we can figure out what kind of ghost we’re dealing with, the sooner we can get this over with.”
It was impossible to mistake what he meant by ‘this.’
He meant us.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, fighting to keep my face completely neutral, so he couldn’t see how miserable I was. Because I knew that I couldn’t—wouldn’t—break a promise to him. Not now and not ever. Which meant that when this was all said and done, once I had protected Bryan and made sure he was safe, I would need to walk away from him.