Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Ifind I am reluctant to leave your side.
Alaric grimaced at the line as he crossed the threshold into Rosalin’s home, Albie trotting after him.
His gaze travelled over the small space, crammed to the brim with items. The walls were covered with posters, most of which were of insects or birds.
Bookshelves lined the walls, organized by color, interrupted by an occasional plant or statue of a deity.
A dark brown, well-loved couch sat against a far wall, opposite a television.
The kitchen was similarly decorated—plants, cookbooks, cabinets without doors to expose the mismatched plates and bowls.
“It’s a bit dirty,” Rosalin said, ducking her head to avoid looking at him. She set her keys into a bowl by the door and kicked her boots off.
“You don’t need to take your shoes off,” she told him, affording him one of her sly grins.
“What of my robe?” he asked, hoping to coax another one from her.
“Depends. What’s under it?” she asked, then turned suddenly to her kitchen and cleared her throat.
“I’m sure it’s uncomfortable, wearing that for hundreds of years,” she said as she moved to her refrigerator and dug around in it.
“I am dead, nothing is uncomfortable except the silence,” he said, hovering just inside the doorway. He wasn’t sure where to go or stand, what was considered proper. His gaze darted to the half-opened door, revealing a glimpse of her bedroom.
“Silence?” she asked, retrieving something and popping it into the microwave. She turned to watch him, her back pressed into the counter. He tried not to stare at her.
“Yes—no one can see me, no one can hear me. It was…lonely,” he said. Was, because now she could hear him and see him.
“That’s awful,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “So, what’s your plan for breaking the curse? It’s a curse, right?”
Ah, yes. That.
“I was hoping that if someone did manage to see me or hear me, they’d have some idea of what held me here. I’ve many years to think back on it, and I believe the reverend cursed me.”
“You mentioned that—how is that possible? Wouldn’t that make him a witch?” Rosalin asked.
“Magic does not always care. It is about intent, is it not? Humans create magic every day, though they don’t often realize it,” Alaric said. “Or perhaps his god was listening, or perhaps one of ours thought I needed a punishment.”
“Or redemption,” Rosalin suggested, pulling her food from the microwave. She shifted it from hand to hand, blowing on the surface of it. “I really need to get microwave-safe bowls,” she murmured, dropping the bowl loudly on her small kitchen table. Alaric sat across from her, considering.
“I had redemption quickly, no need to stretch it several centuries. A punishment, then,” he said.
“Kinda funny how it backfired,” Rosalin said, blowing on her food. His gaze instantly dropped to her lips as she puckered them to blow. He was suddenly glad—and so, so very sad—that he was a ghost and not of flesh.
“Hmm?” Alaric said, forcing his gaze back to her eyes. She raised an eyebrow at him, slowly parting her lips to slide the food between them. He couldn’t not stare as she closed her lips over the silverware, slowly sucking the food off it.
“He wanted you to watch Pumpkin Hollow fail,” she said after she swallowed. “Instead, you watched it prosper. Still a punishment to be alone, that part must have been awful. But the other part?”
“Not so bad,” he agreed.
“Did you know my ancestors?” Rosalin asked.
“Yes, not well though,” Alaric admitted. “They did not like to associate with those without magic.”
“Sounds about right,” Rosalin muttered, taking another bite, this time without lingering. Alaric wasn’t sure if he wanted her to continue to eat normally or torture him more with the way her lips closed on the silverware.
“Your mother seemed supportive,” Alaric offered.
“Seemed, yes. She doesn’t know what to do with Delia and I. We very well may be the end of the Graves line, and I can’t do anything, and Delia rots,” Rosalin said.
“You can’t do anything?” Alaric scoffed, leaning over the table.
“You succeeded where everyone else failed.” Rosalin’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth, her eyes widening, pupils dilating as he leaned toward her.
“Do not make me remind you once more what you did, without even intending to. I do not like repeating myself.”
The vessel in Rosalin’s neck pulsed faster. She swallowed, nodding. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s better,” Alaric said, leaning back in the chair. He frowned and looked down at the chair, considering it. “I am sitting in a chair.”
“I noticed,” Rosalin said, laughing.
“I have not sat in a chair in three hundred years,” he reminded her. He reached across the table for her bowl, pressing his hand to it. It went through it.
“Looks like only your ass is solid,” Rosalin said. Alaric glared in reply.
“Okay, so this is where we’re at,” Rosalin said, setting her spoon down in her mostly empty bowl. “I bled on your statue and I could hear your voice. Then you…touched my hand—”
“Your bloody hand,” Alaric reminded her.
“Ah, yes. You touched my bloody hand and I could see you. Then you wiped the blood from my head. Now you can sit in chairs, but you can’t touch anything. In the past, did you just, like, float through walls?” she asked, waving her hands and wiggling her fingers.
“Yes,” Alaric said. “Though not without invitation. Public places only, I’m not in the habit of spying,” he added with disgust. He mostly frequented the downtown, the diner, the coffee shop, the bake shop.
He liked to watch dates, bachelorette and bachelor parties, birthdays—anything that brought a group together.
Over the centuries, he’d watched so much happiness, all because the reverend did not succeed.
“So you’re like…a ghost vampire,” Rosalin suggested.
“I am not a vampire,” Alaric said. “I am a ghost.
“Right, but the blood…” she started.
“You think you are the first person to bleed on my statue? Or near my grave?” Alaric asked. “It is not just blood, it is your blood. You are the link. This is what we must discover.”
Rosalin stood suddenly, taking her bowl to the sink. She stayed there several moments before turning around, her back pressed against the damn countertop again.
“I’m just unsure why…me,” she said, her gaze trained on the floor. Alaric was before her before he realized what he’d done. He tried to tilt her face up to look at him, but his hand passed through her and he sighed.
“Perhaps that is where we start. You say blood is not used in necromancy, we need to know why,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense to use it,” Rosalin said, her voice quiet. She tilted her head up at last, her wide eyes boring into his. “It’s for the living, and necromancy is about the dead. It’s like…giving gas to an electric vehicle. Oh, you may not understand that reference…”
“I have witnessed the introduction of the gas and electric vehicle,” Alaric reminded her. “And I don’t understand. Necromancy brings the dead to life.”
“Common misconception. Necromancy is more like…a conduit. Like a telephone to the dead, or a television. Yeah, a television makes more sense. They broadcast the spirit world,” Rosalin said.
“And when they reanimate?” Alaric asked.
Rosalin laughed. “That’s only in television and books.” When Alaric didn’t respond, she frowned. “Right? That’s not something they can actually do.”
“I have seen it,” Alaric said with a nod of his head. “It was saved for very specific circumstances, but it was done. Reanimating corpses so they might face their murderer. It was quite a spectacle, though I fear it’s what drew the witch accusations.”
Rosalin’s already pale face drained of color, her jaw dropping. “You’re joking.”
“I am not,” Alaric said. “I just assumed it fell out of favor with the invention of cameras and other means of collecting evidence. Does your family no longer reanimate?”
“Not that I’ve heard of. How did they do it?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s worth another trip to your mother’s house?” Alaric suggested.
“No,” Rosalin said, shaking her head. “The library, or the museum, or maybe even one of my aunts? I don’t know, this feels…
big. Intentional. When my mother realized I didn’t have the power of necromancy, she tried so many things, even shipping me off to my great aunt Franny to have her teach me.
Not once did they mention reanimation. It’s lost.”
“Or buried,” Alaric suggested. “So that’s where we start. We find old books, look for what was hidden.”
“I told you already, my family is the book,” Rosalin said.
“Apparently there are gaps in their knowledge,” Alaric said. Rosalin’s gaze searched his face, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. It took every ounce of restraint he’d developed over the last three hundred years to keep looking into her eyes.
“Okay,” she said. “If it will set you free and let you pass into peace, I’ll look.”
“We’ll look,” he corrected.
“Right,” Rosalin said, and he was rewarded with her sly smile. “Like a detective duo.”
“I suppose.”
“Alaric Blackwood and Rosalind Graves, magical PIs, getting to the bottom of ancient accidental curses. We’ll break any curse by the Pumpkin Festival,” she added, her sly smile growing.
“When the veil is the thinnest,” Alaric agreed, nodding.
“Deal,” Rosalin said, extending her hand into the small space between them. Alaric tried to put his hand in hers and thought, for just a moment, he could feel the solidity of it. Then his fingers passed through hers and the sensation passed.
“Deal.”