NOT DEAD YET: A Lucy Hart, DEATHDEALER Novel (Book Two) (10 page)

But how… and why? 

There was always a reason.

He went ahead a few yards, turned back and beckoned with a wave for her to follow.  She looked back and could still barely see her grandmother’s house. But when she turned back he was still patiently waiting for her to decide to follow him. 

Like a crocodile patiently waits for its dinner just under the shallow water...

She took one step toward him, and then another, until only a foot of ground separated them.  He stepped into a cloistered area of trees and brush, and started walking down a narrow path.  She followed, and realized with relief that he was leading her away from the graveyard.

Less than a minute later he stopped by a large, arching tree.  It was too dark for her to see what kind of tree it was, but the moon touched its branches eerily. 

Oz waited for her to catch up.  He was tracing something with his fingers, something etched into the bark of the tree.

“So what do you want to show me?” she whispered.  The night was so still, she could barely speak.

Oz smiled a little smile.  “Put your hand where mine is on the tree.”

“Okay,” she said, but didn’t move at all until nearly a minute had passed.  When she did place her hand where his was, she felt a small shock as their hands grazed.  It almost made her yelp, but instead she just made a wheezy little breath sound.

Oz cleared his throat and looked down into her eyes; his gleamed black and silver in the moonlight.

“Do you feel that?”

“W-what?” Abbey sputtered.  Was he asking her if she felt the shock when their hands touched—it was probably static electricity... but it hadn’t hurt.  On the contrary, it had felt divinely good.

His eyes slid away from hers to where her hand rested on the tree, and then back.  “Do you feel what’s carved in the bark?”

Abbey gasped, and felt her face turn warm from embarrassment.  She was so glad it was dark, and that moonlight wouldn’t betray her blushing to him.  She pushed away her unease and focused on where her hand was on the old tree’s bark.  There was something carved into the wood.  It took a moment before the letters started to make sense, and that they were surrounded by a heart.  When the letters finally made sense, it was like she’d been slapped in the face.  A completely overwhelming flash of pain throbbed up through her chest, cold and searing hot all at once.

She pulled her hand from the tree, clamping her eyes shut on the tears that had swelled up in her eyes without warning.

The letters were JA & JC.  James Adams and Julie Carmichael: her parents' initials before they’d gotten married.  The world spun and Abbey was close to falling to her knees.  But she refused to let the pain take her, not even once more.  She’d almost killed her best friend to make that long suffering pain end, and she would forfeit to it no more.

“Why are you doing this to me?”  Her voice was harsh and angry, and she meant it to be.  It felt better to be angry than to be hurt.  And she no longer cared that Oz made her feel anything.  He was there for something... to take something from her, of that she was now sure.

“I’m here to show you something.  That’s all.”

She felt a wave of her dark magic flood up through her feet and into her chest. It pushed the cold pain away, easily taking its place, ready to attack the boy before her—if he was a boy at all.  She hadn’t been at it all that long, but she knew very well that things were seldom what they looked like.

Oz held up his hands in surrender.  “I swear, on my power—” 

Dear goddess, he was in the trade.  Only a witch or sorcerer... or a demon or fae, would make such a promise.  To renege on such a promise would take a huge chunk of one’s power away, permanently. 

“—that I mean you absolutely no harm.”  He stopped and stared Abbey in the eyes for a long while to let what he’d said sink in.

What the hell was he?  Any which way it turned out, being with him in the dark, alone, anywhere, was a very, very bad idea.

His gaze drifted away from her once more, and that look of being lost and hurt returned to his face.  He shook his head and then looked back to her.  He held out his hand to her.

“You’ll be able to see them here... I think.  This place was very special to them.  But you’ll have to touch me for it to work.”

“For what to work?”

He didn’t answer.  He simply stood there in the dark, in the moonlight, and held out his hand to her.  Slowly she reached out and slid her hand into his.  That surge of power, so very delicious and familiar, yet so alien in a way, swept through her like a summer breeze, making her toes curl.  She closed her eyes, savoring the pleasure of this magic, and when she opened them moonlight started to gather and streak the air before her.  In a moment two shapes came into relief against the shadowy backdrop.  A heart beat later they shimmered and came slowly into clarity. 

Abbey stared at her parents with complete silent awe.  Her mother smiled and her lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Maybe if you touch her,” Oz said in a soft voice.  “Maybe then she’ll be able to hear you.”

Abbey stepped back and pulled away from him, snapping the magic that had joined them.  Her parents’ apparition faded in the blink of an eye.

“What are you trying to pull?” she hissed, turning on him, her magic roaring to life again.  If he thought he could trick her with a little glamour, she’d make him sorely regret it.

“I’m not trying to pull anything over on you.”

Abbey swiped a hand at him and he flew back against the tree.  He hit hard enough to make the wood crackle, and let out a surprised groan.

“If you try and use illusions against me again, I’ll pull out your rib cage and wear it as a hat!”

Oz grimaced and pushed himself back off the tree trunk.  “That’s pretty gross imagery there, Abbs.”

Abbs!  The jerk was nicknaming her now.

“And that wasn’t an illusion.  I’m an ectomancer.”

The word sounded familiar.  She’d read it somewhere before.

“You know, kinda like your friend Lucy.  But instead of having an affinity for the physical dead, I have one for the spirits of the dead.”

“Spirits of the dead,” she murmured, and then a shiver ran up and down her spine.  “So what I just saw... ” She couldn’t say it, it hurt too damn much. 

“Those were the spirits of your parents.”  He looked over to where they had been glowing only moments prior.  “They’re never far from you.  They worry.”

Panic sliced through the din of her thoughts.  “You mean they’re stuck here, because they’re worried about me?” 
Oh god, oh god, oh god...

He shook his head.  “Not all of them.  Just a small part of what they were.  But it’s stronger than most manifestations.  I saw their shadow back at Wal-Mart, and then really got a good look when we were talking out front.”

Abbey shook her head and looked again at where they had stood.  It couldn’t be.  “My grandmother told me that I couldn’t bring them back... that they would be just mindless zombies.”

“As I said, I’m no necromancer.  Similar, but I deal in spirit, not flesh.  They’re not the sum whole of what your parents were, but they are what lingers.  And they stay for only one reason.”  He stopped to let Abbey catch up with his line of thought.

They stayed for me...

Tears flowed before Abbey could catch them, and she clasped her hand over her mouth, afraid she would start screaming.  Her parents were stuck in this world because of her.  Somehow she’d brought them back and they couldn’t escape her now. 

“I brought them back somehow... I’m torturing them,” she rasped. 
I’m a monster... I really am a monster.

Oz turned his gaze away from her to where her parent’s apparitions had stood.  He nodded and turned back.

“They say they’re here of their own free will.  That part of their essence stayed behind because they wanted to stay with you, always.  They stay out of love.  They are not being tortured.”

Abbey blinked the tears out of her eyes.  Those weren’t the exact words she’d yearned to hear from her parents the night she’d hijacked Lucy’s powers and raised their corpses… but it was eerily similar. 

They stayed because they love me...

Slowly she reached her hand out to Oz.  He took this as his cue, taking her hand in his.  The night glimmered and the glowing figures of her parents appeared once more.  They were closer now, so close she could reach out and touch them.  They were arm in arm, and held out their free arms to her.

Oz moved behind her, letting go of her hand, yet placing his other hand on the bare flesh of her neck, keeping skin contact.  Abbey moved forward and into her parents’ embrace.  They felt perfectly solid, but there was a little tingly shock on contact. 

She suddenly could hear their voices.  “My sweet, sweet girl... ” her mother sang.  “We’ve missed you so much,” her father’s voice ached with remorse.  “We never wanted to leave you.  We would never have left you.”

Abbey gasped and sobbed as they held her close.  She pulled them to her all the harder.

“But you didn’t... ” she cried out with joy tinged in grief.  “You were here all the while.”

What in the name of all that’s holy am I doing here?

Lucy stood at the front gate of a faux antebellum mansion—the home of the Psi Delta Beta sorority.  She remembered feeling so happy a couple weeks ago when she was getting the pre-rush invitations to all the most elite sororities on the UCLA campus.  It was part of her dream, part of her master plan—it was how she wanted most to spend her life: in the upper echelon.

She had accepted five invitations, and tonight was the first of the rushing parties.  She knew there would be some hateful, rather territorial bitches she would have to deal with—there were more than a few in every crowd, but she had decided she would overcome them, if not downright wow them with her enthusiasm...

But that was before that nut-case with the axe tried to dismember her at Wal-Mart.

Now she looked at the sea of pretty, young, well-groomed, and pampered women around her as potential assassins. 

Which was absurd… 

Really, why would anyone try to kill her at a sorority rush party?  Of course, why would anyone try to kill her at Wal-Mart either?

Lucy pushed these thoughts out of her mind.  Yesterday afternoon had just been some crazy coincidence.  Had to be.  Who would actually hate her enough to send an assassin to kill her?  Really!

And, anyway, she had all the protection she could possibly need.  Her shopping partner and—cousin-in-law-to-be?—Elaina Enoch, was standing right beside her.  She was a touch taller than Lucy, had the most serious shopping fetish Lucy had ever witnessed—good lord, could that girl shop!—and she was a full blooded werewolf.  Lucy was sure that no matter what happened, Elaina would gut anyone stupid enough to attack her here.

Elaina gracefully fixed an imaginary out of place lock of hair, and then took Lucy gently by the arm.  “You are going to love this... I promise.”

Lucy smiled back at her and they walked up the perfectly level red brick walkway that led to the front door.  Elaina was three years older than Lucy, and had already been through the collegiate rushing phenomena.  She was a ranking member of Gamma Beta Pi, and though she went with Lucy for support, she had already made it clear that Lucy should pledge to her sorority, not the lowly Psi Delta Betas. 

But Elaina was in charge of Lucy’s bridal party, and was going to be her maid of honor in... oh lord!  In less than a month!  Lucy didn’t want to impose any further on her.  Though, now that she was confronted with the overwhelming horde of lethally thin, tanned, smiling debutants and wannabes, she really wished she had just let Elaina chose for her.

Elaina pressed the doorbell with her perfectly manicured index finger, and three beats later the door swung open and the most adorable, bubbly blonde girl shot them both with a dazzling smile.  It actually made Lucy feel a little dizzy.

“Oh my gosh... you have to be Lucy Hart!  I’m so thrilled to be the first to welcome you to Psi Delta Beta.” She took hold of Lucy’s arm and gently pulled her in through the door.  “I hope you found us easy enough.  You look incredible, and that dress is just too cute for words... ” 

The bubbly blonde caught sight of Elaina.  And though none of her friendly demeanor left her, her eyes did turn a shade more arctic.

“And as I live and breathe, Elaina Enoch... whatever are you doing here?”

Elaina smiled smoothly at the blonde, but didn’t even try to match her exuberance.  “Lucy’s going to marry into the Enoch family shortly—as I’m certain you already know—so I decided to come along and keep her from running afoul with the
wrong crowd
.”

It was obvious from the tone of Elaina’s voice that “the wrong crowd” was the young woman she was looking at.

The blonde didn’t even blink at the implied insult, but simply smiled all the brighter.  “It’s always been such a shame we couldn’t lure you to our house when you first came to UCLA.  It would have been a real feather in our cap.”

She turned that radiant smile back to Lucy, and held out her perfectly manicured hand.  “I’m Giselle, by the way.  I’m the vice president of our little house here—” she flourished her hand like Vanna White.