Dead Man (Black Magic Outlaw Book 1) (6 page)

"What about Emily?"

Milena's eyes sagged. Em was my girl. She had been, anyway, right before I died. We weren't engaged or anything like that, but we loved each other. My ten year absence couldn't have turned out well. I dreaded the answer, but Milena's silence was worse.

"What is it?" I asked frantically. "Did something happen to her too?"

"No, no," she asserted. "Definitely not. Emily's fine. I totally forgot you two were a thing."

I relaxed. I didn't know if I could handle any more bad news. Then I realized Milena had probably been jealous of Emily. It was silly to think she still might be, though. Her high school crush would be long gone by now.

"What aren't you telling me, Milena?"

She smiled weakly, no trace of mirth on her face. "Well, she's married now. It was a while ago. She probably has kids—I don't know. It's not like we hang out."

I counted to ten. Deep breaths.

It didn't bother me. It really didn't. I'd been dead, and faced with the other horrible alternatives, Em getting shacked up and starting her own family was pretty good news. Not for me, of course. I still loved her. It felt like I'd only seen her a few days ago—a few weeks at most. The fog in my head blurred things. But Emily still felt like mine, whatever the truth was. How could I be jealous of her happiness?

I leaned back in the Fiat. With my knees against the dashboard, I wasn't exactly comfortable, but I tried to relax. I tried to see my resurrection as a second chance.

I was alive, damn it. That had to count for something.

But all I could think of were the mutilated corpses of my family. I'd been long dead, but their blood was newly burned into my brain. Somehow, I knew, this was all my fault.

No one else in my family practiced magic. I was the only one. Not just a black sheep, but into black magic. Spellcraft is neutral, but some of the circles I'd rolled in weren't exactly the most upstanding.

I'd been on to something, I realized. Something that had gotten me and my family killed. Something that could get anyone I knew killed.

I turned to Milena, her pretty face studying me. I didn't know if she was in danger, but I had to be. I needed to keep hidden until I figured out what was going on.

"I need to go," I announced, flipping open the tiny door.

"Wha— Now?" she asked, confused. "Where?"

"I don't know, Milena, but you're not safe around me. No one is." I closed the door and leaned into the open window.

"Can I at least drop you off somewhere?" she offered.

I chewed my lip, wondering at my next destination. "You can do me a favor," I said. "You can not tell anybody else about me."

"Of course," she answered.

I smiled at her. It had been nice catching up. Visiting someone from my old life. To see that some things were still normal. But I knew my life would never be.

"It was good to see you again," I told her, and walked away.

I followed the road, lost in my head. My life would never be the same now, that much I knew. They say everybody dies alone, and that's true, but everybody's also resurrected alone. And that's what I was now. That's what I had to be. A loner.

The Fiat started and pulled alongside me on the street. "Cisco," Milena called out, her voice thick with sympathy. "Are you gonna be okay?"

I kept on trucking. I didn't know what to tell her.

 

 

 

 

I kept my next course of action from Milena. What she didn't know couldn't hurt her and all that, but it was more. I was paying Martine a visit, and no one liked Martine.

My sister thought she was spooky. Milena thought the same by proxy. My best friend Evan said I spent too much time with her. Emily
especially
didn't like Martine. According to Em, it's impossible for a guy and a girl to have a platonic relationship. I guess I could see a girlfriend being jealous, but I never did anything with Martine. Not like that. It was strictly spellcraft. And that's exactly what I needed now.

Black magic got me into this mess. Black magic was gonna get me out of it.

I'd taken care of priority number one. Sure, that meant looking out for number one, but it had also meant making a beeline for my family to offer them protection. They didn't need it. They hadn't needed it for a long time.

Now I meant to turn things around. To stop scrambling. Questions had been building for ten years, starting even before the day of my death. Questions in the fog. It was about damn time I got some answers, and one person came to mind to help me. Martine. The girl who'd gotten me into black magic in the first place.

So had she been working a tent at a job fair or what? The answer, like life, is more complicated than that (and doesn't involve a résumé). Time for some background.

I was a normal kid in middle school. A reader more than the playground type. Like all normal kids, I dreamed about being anything but. Still, I didn't decide to be a necromancer just like that. The first step was much more natural and scary. I grew curious about the dead.

My grandfather on my mom's side was the fun one. He always had magic tricks for me, and I'm talking about the cheesy pick-a-card variety. Every single time I saw him, he pulled a silver dollar from behind his ear and gave it to me.

Yes, I know he was supposed to pull it from
my
ear. That's how the trick usually works. But he told me he ate a leprechaun and could pull coins from
his
ears. What can I say? The story wouldn't work if the money came from me. Between you and me, I was a bright kid; I think he worried I'd figure it out if I got close. But I'm getting sidetracked.

When I was eleven, the old man died. My family drove up to Tampa for the funeral. I still remember sitting in the back seat playing with Seleste. She was only three so she had no idea what was going on. Me? It was the first real death I experienced. When we saw him, I knelt by the casket and prayed like a good little boy, but that was where the innocent act stopped. Looking back, I know this sounds weird, but everyone deals with death in different ways. I don't know if it was curiosity or denial, but I checked the old man's ear for that coin.

Honestly, I was shocked it wasn't there.

Even more shocked were my parents. I created a scene and was scolded the rest of the afternoon. The next day, I got the silent treatment from my parents the entire drive home. But what do you think was waiting for me in first class mail when we arrived at the house?

Before gramps had kicked it, he'd stuffed a silver dollar in an envelope and mailed it off to me. Except it was post-marked after his death. That part resonated with me. From then on, I've believed in a connection between the world of the living and the dead. I knew spirits existed.

Of course, hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that, you and I both know there wasn't anything magical about the envelope. My grandfather hadn't been alive to personally send the coin himself, but it was probably a request to a friend or a lawyer completing the terms of his will. Mundane stuff. A last "got you" from the old man. But I didn't consider that at the time, and that's when it started: my fascination with death and the beyond.

Black magic, well, that's another level entirely. An innocent infatuation through middle school became enabled when I met Martine in high school. She noticed my curiosities and took me on as a sort of lab partner. She'd learned the basics from an uncle or something, and now was free to experiment on her own. Neither of us really knew what we were doing, but it was just enough to get into trouble. We sold some powders and charms. Bush league stuff. Evan and my other friends didn't like Martine but spellcraft was a passion. Evan went off to college. I didn't.

I opted for a different kind of education.

Magic isn't like in the movies. You don't go to school to learn it. Instead, it's pretty much how every culture since the beginning of time portrays it: funneling the power of spirits into action. It takes respect and understanding more than discipline, and some are more naturally gifted than others. Yours truly always thought of himself as a hotshot. And there was a reason for it. I quickly surpassed Martine in ability.

I don't think it made her jealous, but I felt bad. And as with school, I grew bored easily. I didn't want to commit to anything. So I branched out into other patrons and let Martine be the voodoo expert. She was just as hungry as me and got pretty good, always looking for that edge.

In the end, I had a feeling we found it. The edge. And whatever it was, it turned my world upside down. If anyone knew the why and how of that, it would be Martine.

The walk to her place wasn't long. She lived further inland so I moved west on Flagler, taking in the sights. Mostly, the neighborhood hadn't changed. Not really. Some stores had come and gone, the mobile phone companies had different names and logos, but it was the same hood.

After an hour I found the grass alley that led to Martine's house. A few properties were stuck in the middle of the block and had awkward entrances off the alley. It was weird, but it was private. We had liked that back in the day.

Martine's place was situated between two umbrella trees, the same off-white unassuming house I remembered. I watched from a distance to make sure everything was normal. No activity in or around the house. I headed over the step stones leading to the backyard, skirting the garbage cans on the way.

If I knew Martine, and I did, she wouldn't be in the house anyway. She'd be in the shed around back. We called it the cookhouse. It was oversized and had various structural improvements, but it was old. The wood foundation was decayed, but the walls were sturdy, the barn door reinforced. It wasn't a bunker by any means, but there were unassuming wards in the area that warned away curiosity. The death mask statue in the lawn, the wrought ironwork above the door, the brick dust lining the threshold. Nothing to see here but your average den of voodoo.

I paused before the shed. The cookhouse. This was an important place to me and Martine. It was where we practiced. In the middle of a beautiful and sunny Florida day like today? Martine was likely in darkness working on a new powder.

Before I knocked, I spied the crow sitting on the power line above. Martine already knew I was here. That was okay. I trusted the girl. Maybe trust was a strong word, given my predicament. It was possible Martine had gotten me mixed up in this, but she wouldn't do me intentional harm. That much I knew.

I busted out our secret knock on the heavy wooden door: a little hand-rapped Doo Doo Brown. What, you don't know Uncle Luke? Maybe it's a Miami thing. "Guess who," I said with forced nonchalance. Was I overcompensating or what?

I got no answer. A flash of movement drew my eyes to the house. Nothing there, though. The yard was still, the windows empty. I considered the shed for another moment before deciding the house deserved a look. Even voodoo priestesses deserved a break sometimes.

I carefully moved up the concrete steps. The back door was unlocked. That meant Martine was around, moving between the cookhouse and the house. I entered. The laundry room and adjoining kitchen were quiet. The whole house was.

"Martine?" I called out.

I didn't expect an answer this time and didn't get one. A half-full glass of water on the counter caught my notice, though. The contents were still cool. Beside it, a pound of ground meat defrosted in a plastic bag. Nothing disgusting; it was just beef. (Sheesh, necromancers need to eat too.) But it did tell me that someone was around. Today. Now.

My arrival became a cautious search of the house. The living room and Florida room were clear. I winced as I climbed the creaky wooden stairs, but no one heard the noise. I didn't get jumped by a Haitian voodoo gang. Martine and my friends didn't surprise me with a welcome-back-to-life party. The whole house was empty. She wasn't here.

Come to think of it, I hadn't seen her Volvo outside. She must have stepped out for hamburger buns or something. I wiped my brow in relief, wondering why I'd gotten myself so worked up. I returned to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and popped a Corona. A Tupperware container full of rice gave me a great idea.

"Screw hamburgers," I decided aloud. I could start my own welcome-back-to-life party, and I was gonna do it with some of my trademark Cuban cooking. I grabbed a small paring knife and chopped onions, green peppers, and garlic. Then I heated some oil in a pan and tossed the veggies in. For a while I leaned against the counter and waited, enjoying my beer. Just as the
sofrito
was starting to smell good, I got a bad feeling.

I hadn't searched the whole place yet. The house, yes, but not the property. I glanced out the window to the cookhouse and wondered. Something told me not to go out there. To just walk away, forget about Martine, forget about voodoo, and just move on for good. But I didn't listen to that voice. I never did.

I shook up the pan to stir the base and headed outside with my beer, not bothering to close the door behind me. I tried the oversized door to the cookhouse, but it was locked as expected. Locked from the inside. I knew I needed to get in there. For others, with the wards and fortifications, that might be difficult. Not so much for me.

The shed was shaped like a barn, complete with a double-wide door that swung outward. There was about an inch between the bottom of the door and the floor to allow the door to swing over the ground freely. It wasn't much, but it was enough space for me to get through. At least as long as the tree overhead cast its shadow on the entrance.

I stepped on the shadow and phased within it, as I'd done before with the wall in the alley. This time I slipped down into the ground and slid forward.

This kind of movement is limited. It only works along short lengths of shadow and doesn't let me actually go through anything. Not really. But the space I need for passage becomes minimal. Me and my possessions, even the beer in my hand, slid under the door and were inside.

When I phased out again, the faint smell was the first thing to confirm my suspicions. It wasn't strong, but a necromancer gets used to these kinds of things. My boot cracked a piece of glass. It was too dark inside to see, so I let the black seep into my eyes. Dried animals and fish oils weren't all that greeted me. Multiple body parts in varying states of decay were scattered across the cookhouse. Research, I hoped. I mean, a guy's luck needs to kick in at some point, right?

Wrong. In the middle of the cookhouse, splayed out beside an overturned table, was the body of my friend, Martine.