Chapter 5
He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on with this case, but he didn’t like it. It had Rayn upset, for one thing. Not just saddened by the unnecessary deaths, although he was pretty sure that was part of it, but genuinely upset.
Sylvia had come to tell him that the boy—no, not boy, he reminded himself, because although the dream-persona Rayn had adopted when they first met had been a child, the man who worked with him now was a man, not a boy—had agreed to learn necromancy from Archie.
He wasn’t entirely certain what he thought about that. First instinct had been revulsion, but then he’d reminded himself that Rayn wasn’t either Preston Fitzwilliam or Oliver Picton. He wasn’t doing this in order to artificially extend his life by killing others.
He might not like necromancy, but it was a set of skills, a kind of practice, just like any other form of magic. Whether it was used for good or evil had to do with the practitioner, not the magic itself.
He had to remember that.
I sighed, wishing I hadn’t read the pen left on the table—but I’d known it was Ward’s, and he’d been distracted, his forehead creased with worry lines, his smiles shorter and smaller than they usually were.
I’d wanted to know why. I thought perhaps either Archie or Sylvia might have told him about my interest in learning necromancy—and I’d been right.
Maybe I was getting better at reading people. The ones I knew, anyway.
I didn’t know that I liked the idea that my choices were causing Ward stress or worry, but I also didn’t like the idea of having to make all my choices to please other people. But, at the same time, I owed him my freedom, my sanity, and my life—without him, I’d be a shell, or dead.
How much do you have to give up for someone who did that for you?
I didn’t much like the fact that most of my adult relationships seemed to be structured around owing other people far, far more than I could ever repay them.
Ward and Mason and Hart for saving me from Tranquil Brook.
Melissa and Sam for helping me recover from Tranquil Brook.
Ward, again, for giving me the job at Beyond the Veil.
Mason, again, for teaching me to control my magic.
Raj, for saving me from the well and forgiving me for having invaded his dreams.
Which meant that I felt a lot of guilt about the fact that I knew Ward and Mason wouldn’t like me learning necromancy, even though I knew they wouldn’t stop me or probably even say anything. But I still felt guilty because I knew they didn’t like it.
Melissa probably wouldn’t, either, mostly because she stressed out about any sort of new magic.
I didn’t think Hart would care one way or another, and Sam would probably say it was cool.
I wondered what Raj would say, and it bothered me that I didn’t know. That was the sort of thing you should know about your boyfriend—his opinion on potentially deadly magic that might go awry.
He’d probably object, at least on the grounds that I might be in danger from my own magic. Or from whatever I tried to necromance.
I didn’t even know if that was a verb.
I knew that I could just tell Archie I’d changed my mind and not learn.
But I didn’t want to do that.
I’d decided that I wanted to learn.
I wanted to have a skill that was mine. To be able to do something that was magically impressive. Something that would make me feel powerful, or at least not weak and pathetic. Something that I might be able to use to protect myself and the people I cared about.
Something that wouldn’t make me into a victim.
Archie? I asked.
You ready to raise the dead, sport? he asked, appearing in his usual baggy pants, suspenders, ratty white t-shirt, and bathrobe.
I blinked. I assumed we weren’t going to start quite that… complicated, I said.
He laughed. Oh, we’re not, never you fear, he replied. But we’ll get there eventually.
I nodded.
Archie stopped laughing and studied me. In all honesty, sport, he said. I’m not sure how this is gonna go, what with you bein’ a witch and me not. I know it’s possible to find ways to cross over between magics—his nibs does it all the time.
His what? I had no idea what he was talking about.
The ghost laughed again. His nibs. Y’know, like his majesty or whatnot.
I stared at him blankly.
Mason, the ghost informed me. He’s powerful, clever, dignified. All that.
It wasn’t how I’d ever thought of Mason, but Archie was right that he was a powerful witch. And I knew very well that Mason was able to adapt the kinds of magic Archie and Ward did to make it work with witchcraft—so it was possible. Whether or not I could do it, however, I didn’t know.
I nodded to show Archie I understood. I could probably ask Mason if we ever got stuck and couldn’t figure things out, I supposed.
Or Sylvia, who worked with Ward all the time and was also a witch, although she was learning about her magic, since it hadn’t been recognized or cultivated when she’d been alive.
Most important thing to know, Archie informed me, his usually jovial expression turning serious. Is that there’s a mighty difference between souls and bodies.
This didn’t seem particularly surprising to me. That seems obvious, I said to him.
When you’re raising the dead, it gets less obvious, he replied sternly. You don’t want to have soul in a body if it’s the body you want. And you don’t want to have a body come along with the soul when you summon a ghost.
I blinked. That happens? No one had mentioned this in any of the training sessions I’d done with Jackson and Ward, and we’d practiced summoning quite a bit.
It can, Archie replied. Usually when someone’s tryin’ to bring a body back rather than a ghost, but if you’re not careful, or if the dead man’s too fresh.
I grimaced. The idea of raising a “fresh” dead person was repulsive on several levels.
Point is, sport, Archie continued. If you put the soul back, what you get ain’t right.
What does that mean? I asked him.
It means, the ghost replied, that once body and soul split, they’re meant to stay split. You try to put me back in my corpse, it’s gonna make me all messed-up and not right.
I’m sorry, I told him. I still don’t understand. I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of trying to put a ghost back in their body, but Archie’s explanation wasn’t making sense.
The ghost sighed. You know how some people just ain’t right? he asked me.
I shook my head.
Some people, they do bad things because they like it. They want to hurt people. Want to make them suffer, that crap?
I did know that, so I nodded.
Well, what happens when you take a soul and put it back in the body, it somehow gets…
messed up, he said, repeating what he’d said before.
But he continued before I could point out that it still didn’t make sense.
When you’re not supposed to be attached to your body still, being forced back in it takes away the good things—the things that make you care about people.
So even people who were perfectly nice, if you raise them and put the soul back, end up twisted and messed up.
Why? I asked. I’d understood this time, but it still didn’t make sense why putting a spirit back into a body would have that kind of an effect.
Archie thought about this. Don’t rightly know, he admitted.
Just the way it is. My grandpappy taught me that’s how it was, and I wasn’t gonna test it.
His expression grew darker. I’ve seen it, though, he said.
Not ever because of anything I did, but once you see that, it makes you wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into.
Never asked why. He shrugged. Never much cared.
I thought about this for a moment, wondering whether or not Fiona would be able to help me find out.
I liked understanding things. Understanding how magic was supposed to work helped me to think about how to use it or how to keep from using it.
Understanding rules—whether about magic or physics or behavior—helped me to know what was going to happen and how I could do things differently in order to keep from hurting people or causing them to be upset.
If I understood why bringing a body and spirit back together caused some kind of magical corruption, I could avoid some other way that I might accidentally create that corruption or allow it to happen.
You don’t do it, though, Archie said firmly, interrupting my thoughts. Swear you won’t do it. I blinked, surprised at the intensity of his insistence.
I have no desire to mess anything up, I told him honestly. And I don’t think I’d want to put a spirit back into a body anyway.
He nodded once. You don’t, he said, and his tone was ominous. He studied me for a moment longer, then decided something, although I wasn’t sure what. Okay, then, sport, he said. We start with finding the dead.
Finding them? I asked.
This whole damn city was built on the dead, Archie said. Ask His Nibs if you don’t believe me. Slaves, Indians—sorry, Indie-whatsits—and colonists who didn’t know their arse from a teakettle.
I must have made some sort of confused expression, because Archie glanced at me and laughed.
The English who came here weren’t the brightest bulbs in the pack, he explained, and I was relieved that I at least understood that expression. Hell, some of them ate the other ones in Jamestown because they were too stupid to know to grow their own food.
I nodded. Mason had explained about what he’d called the Starving Time.
Well, between the natives and the slaves sold at auction and beaten or worked to death for whatever stupid reason their owners decided, this city is more bones than soil in some places, Archie continued. So some places it’s harder to not find the dead than to find them.
Ward had talked about this on occasion—he didn’t like trying to find spirits in some places when Dan Maza couldn’t give him a name to look for, because he might raise a lot of dead in the process, which was both tiring and counterproductive. It seemed the same thing would be true for necromancy.