Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Great Aunt Selma squinted at the space beside Roz, tilting her head.
“Do you see him?” Roz asked hopefully.
“No,” Selma said gruffly, sitting back in the loveseat Roz dragged across from the couch.
Selma was pushing ninety, but had the spirit of someone half her age.
When asked how she stayed so young, she always replied, “Vaseline on your face every night, a five-mile walk a day, keeping only lovers and never, ever letting them convince you to breed.”
While most of the Graves earned the town’s unease because of their craft and standoffish nature, Selma earned hers by being insufferable.
She didn’t have much of a knack for necromancy, but she absolutely had one for gossip.
On multiple occasions it’d been hinted that Selma used the dead to spy on people, so she might know the juiciest town secrets.
And now she knew Roz’s—she’d tethered a spirit to her.
“Tell me where you heard the word ‘tethered’,” Selma asked.
“He said it, that I’d tethered him to myself,” Roz explained.
“Did he elaborate?” Selma asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I don’t understand the specifics of it, just that it wasn’t uncommon for a necromancer to do,” Alaric said. “They’d tether a spirit they wished to speak to, or they planned to reanimate.”
Roz relayed this to Selma, who smacked her lips. “Well, he’s no necromancer, whoever he is. Who is he, anyway?”
“Uh,” Roz said, her voice ticking up an octave. “Alaric Blackwood.”
Selma was shocked into silence for perhaps the first time in her life. Her thin eyebrows traveled up to her hairline, and for a moment Roz thought she looked impressed.
“Handsome devil,” Selma said once she’d recovered, her grin lecherous. “Now, how did you manage to do what generations of Graves haven’t been able to accomplish?”
“That’s just it—I don’t really know. I was at his statue, and I cut my hand and bled on the statue. I guess he was already there…”
“There already! How long had he been there?”
“Three hundred years. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. He’s been watching the town since his murder. He thinks the reverend that killed him put a curse on him, so he can’t cross to the other side,” Roz said.
Selma leaned back in the loveseat and tapped her chin with a long fingernail. “Did he state the nature of the curse?”
Roz repeated the words Alaric told her, shivering once they were spoken. There was a weight to them she disliked, a cadence to the words that made goosepimples rise on her skin.
“Nasty business, curses are. Even a talented witch can have their curse go wacky. He cursed him to watch, not interact. This must be why he couldn’t be reached,” she mumbled, partially to herself, partially aloud.
Roz glanced sideways at Alaric. He was watching Selma, his brow furrowed in the same pensive expression he wore on his statue. Roz wondered who commissioned the statue; it must have been someone who knew him dearly. To cast such a likeness, to capture such an expression…
“Roz, dear, stop drooling,” Selma said, snapping her fingers.
Roz wiped her mouth with the back of her hand then frowned when it came away dry.
“It’s an expression. About your curse, you were close enough for blood magic to bind you to this realm.
Maybe it broke you partially from the curse, maybe it ended it altogether.
Has he tried to cross since you saw him?
” Selma directed her question to Alaric even though she couldn’t see him.
“There’s nowhere to cross. If I leave town, I’m thrown back into it. The further I get from you, the the closer I get to going back to that place where no one can see or hear me,” he said.
Selma nodded slowly when Roz relayed Alaric’s words. Then she leaned forward, her voice dropping. “There’s some parts of our history that aren’t well known. I suppose he can listen in, granted he doesn’t tell anyone.”
“Who would I tell?” Alaric said, straightening.
“Ha ha,” Roz said to her aunt.
“Necromancy is a mixed art. You have the run-of-the-mill necromancers like your mother, who can communicate with the recently dead. Then you have more complex ones, like those that can channel. As you dig deeper into the art, you get little niches. For example, reanimation. There are Graves who’ve reanimated corpses before.
That practice was discontinued due to a touch of the necrophilia, if you know what I mean. ”
Roz gagged.
“Anyway, there are powers adjacent to necromancy that don’t quite fit our conventional understanding of it. Like your sister, for example,” Selma said.
“The rot.” Roz nodded sagely.
“Yeah, that,” Selma said evasively. “It’s possible you have some other niche of the craft.
You’ve never been able to commune with the dead, much less see a spirit.
But a little blood tethers the spirit of a cursed man?
Well, that’s something. Blood magic is frowned upon, you know.
The cost isn’t always immediately evident. ”
“I thought it just didn’t make sense to use in necromancy,” Roz said.
“Oh, pish posh. That’s a lie someone made up, I’m sure. Blood magic is required for reanimation, and apparently tethering. I’d say you have the gift of reanimation, but the man has no corpse,” Selma said, nodding to the couch. “So this is something else.”
“Like what?” Roz asked.
“No idea,” Selma said, waving a hand.
Roz sighed and sunk into the couch. “The pages about blood magic have been torn out of this book,” she said, motioning to the book on the table. Selma leaned forward and, for the second time in Roz’s life, looked impressed.
“Did Martha let you take this from the museum?” she asked.
“Uhm…” Roz started.
“You stole it?” Selma gasped. Roz waited for the admonishment, for her to threaten to rat her out to the curator. Instead she cackled, clapping her hands together. “Splendid! I love it!”
Roz waited for her to settle before she spoke again. “Do you know where I can find more information about blood magic?”
“I can see if we’ve any old books, but my guess is they’re all burned or buried. Unless you want to dig up everyone’s graves, I think you’re better off experimenting. I can ask Franny, but you know how temperamental she is.”
“You talk to Franny?” Roz asked.
“Oh, all the time. It’s just a rumor that I’m no good at necromancy, I’m actually quite skilled.”
“How would I experiment?” Roz asked.
“Give the man your blood! It worked the first time, didn’t it? Maybe that’s all it takes. A little paper cut, perhaps,” Selma suggested.
Roz chewed her bottom lip. Selma sighed. “What is it?”
“It’s just…” Roz glanced from Alaric to her aunt. “Tethering sounds very…constrictive. If blood brought him to this side of the veil, at the expense of being tethered to me, would more blood make that permanent? Would I keep him from being able to cross? Would I trap him here?”
Selma tapped her chin. “A good theory. Would it be so terrible to be tethered to a hot man who can’t run away?”
Alaric snorted, Roz’s face burned.
“Be serious, Selma,” Roz implored.
“I am! What’s so great about the other side, anyway? Franny’s always asking about the latest gossip in town. I think the other side must be a bore,” Selma said.
“It’s lonely,” Roz said. “No one can see him but me, and no one has spoken to him in three hundred years.”
“I’ll look into tethering more. I’m sure Franny knows something; I need to ask her about your sister anyway. In the meantime, keep stealing from Martha. I’d love to see the look on her face when she realizes her books are gone.” Selma stood and chuckled, shaking her head.
“One last thing,” Roz said, standing to open the door for her aunt. “This…tethering. Does it influence behaviors or emotions? Like, I’m not altering who he is or who I am by being tethered?”
“Unlikely, or I think reanimation would have been ‘forgotten’ much earlier…if you catch my drift.”
Roz did.
“Thanks, Aunt Selma,” Roz said, hugging her great aunt.
“Next time, come to me first. Your mother means well, but she’s not a great witch.” She patted Roz on the shoulder before she left.