Chapter 1 #3
She did neither.
“So, tonight…” She paused, blew on her tea, took a sip. Appeared to be gathering her thoughts, as if she felt she had to be cautious with her words.
I watched her, surprised and a little hurt. Ida didn’t do careful conversation. Usually, she just blurted out anything that came to mind—it was part of her charm.
“What Mason said back there at the cemetery,” she began again, “didn’t make sense to you. Why not?”
“He was ticked off that I supposedly ‘disappeared’ from his sight,” I said, using quotation fingers to emphasize the sarcasm.
“Except I was right in front of his mean face the whole time. I swear, that guy hates my guts. It was partly his idea that I continue to run the pack. You’d think he’d at least pretend to like me. ”
“He was right.”
“What?”
“Betty, you disappeared the second your foot touched the cemetery boundary.” She lifted the tea to her lips, took another sip.
Lowered it. The deliberate movements were a sure sign that she was guarding her words.
Ida didn’t do anything slow or precise without provocation.
She was fierce and funny and sometimes flippant, but deliberate wasn’t in her vocabulary.
“That can’t be true.”
“Did you talk to him? The ghoul? I saw you got the cutting.”
“Yes. He was standing right at the entrance. Literally ten, fifteen feet from you. Honestly, Ida. I don’t understand how you didn’t see him. One of his cloaked minions was standing under a—”
“It was him then. That’s a relief.” She nodded and stroked Meredith, who was in her little pot at the other end of the table. The mandrake still appeared agitated, though the furl-unfurling sequences had slowed somewhat.
“Seeing Dominick is never a relief,” I said.
She nodded but obviously wasn’t listening. “I was tempted to cross to the other side to make sure, but ghouls don’t like necromancers. I was worried I’d make the situation worse.”
“To the other side?” I pressed my hands to the table on either side of my cup. “Ida, what’s going on? Please, tell me.”
As a necromancer, Ida possessed the ability to traverse the otherworlds for the purpose of communicating with dead souls. She’d been retired from the professional part of that life for twenty years, but she could no more turn off the ability than I could my earth magic.
“At first, I suspected Dominick dragged you to Hades,” she said.
“What?” Fennel’s warm body pressed into my leg—his version of a hug. I thanked him by scritching the top of his head.
“He’s a ghoul. Don’t you think he could drag you to Hell if he wanted to?”
“I mean, I know he has power. But wouldn’t I have picked up on it? Surely the scenery would’ve changed. Boiling lava instead of a flagstone walkway, literal weeping willows, imps with pitchforks, that sort of thing.”
Ida tapped her index fingernail on the side of her cup. “So, nothing changed?”
I thought back to the moment Dominick appeared. The sky had been peppered with stars, the light of which hadn’t touched anything in the cemetery, including the ghoul himself. Still, there’d been enough illumination for me to see him clearly, so it had to have come from somewhere.
“The light was different,” I said. “I could see, but I don’t think I should’ve been able to. The Mini’s lights were pointed in the wrong direction, and there weren’t any streetlights.”
She nodded, as if I’d confirmed something for her.
“How could he have done that without my realizing it?” I asked.
“Myriad ways—an ability like mine, a spell, escorted by a cat guardian like Fennel, a blood rune on the ground. There should’ve been a hint—a whispered incantation, evidence of blood, some sort of transference from him to you, a chalked glyph—”
“Wait. Transference? What do you mean by that?”
“It could be as simple as him handing you something. A scrap of paper, a piece of jewelry, the proverbial fiddle from that country song…”
“What about a worm? He grabbed my shoulder, and this worm wriggled out of his sleeve and went into my hair.” I shuddered.
“Eww. That would do it.” Ida’s upper lip curled, an expression of disgust that perfectly encapsulated my feelings about the experience. “Still, I’m not certain.”
“Why else would he put a worm on me?”
“To intimidate you?” She shrugged. “Because he’s a nasty creature? Hard to know the mind of a ghoul.”
I worked up the nerve to ask the question I’d been avoiding. “Do you think it’s due to my, uh, heritage that he was able to do this? Because I have a connection to that world?”
My demon side, which I’d gotten by way of my father and grandfather, was still a touchy subject. I no longer hated that part of myself, but I’d never be fully comfortable with the knowledge that I had a demon lurking inside me.
“No. I think he could do it because he’s a powerful demon prone to trickery and evil.”
“Oh.”
“There’s something else.” She stared across the table at me, her demeanor as serious as I’d ever seen it. “I don’t think the ghoul pulled you into his world.”
“But you just said—”
“I believe you pulled him into yours.”