Finn Fancy Necromancy (33 page)

Dawn drove in silence for several minutes. Finally, she said, “So, you're trying to get to this Verona person?”

“Yes.”

“Well, shit, I have no other but a woman's reason, yet I always thought magic but a jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, as a nose on a man's face, or a … something or other.”

“Nice. So you still don't believe me.”

“Not to sound like my old therapist, but I believe you believe.” She shrugged. “I'm sure there's an explanation for all the magic stuff. There always is, like in that Sherlock Holmes movie. Some sick bastard put a chemical in Pete's shampoo that was set off when he began to sweat or something, and you think he was hexed. And maybe there really is this ARC thing, a bunch of dudes like the freemasons or Skull and Bones or whoever, who think their hocus pocus rituals are going to help them rule the world someday. All I know for certain is somebody hurt Petey, and if that someone believes the same crazy stuff you do, then maybe you're the best way to find the bastards, and make them pay.”

“Mundies,” Zeke muttered in the back.

Mort's phone rang. He checked the screen, then answered. “Hello? No, we're fine. What—really? You okay? All right. Okay. Thanks.”

He hung up. “Mattie says Grayson left. There were two enforcers with Grayson, and they questioned everyone. They threatened to charge Mattie with obstruction, but they didn't arrest anyone.”

“Enforcers?” Dawn asked.

“Arcana cops,” I said, glancing at Zeke in his
Miami Vice
getup. “Zeke used to be one. Their outfits have changed though.”

Dawn glanced in the rearview. “Now, that's a shame.”

“Just table the label and drive,” Zeke replied.

22

Dead Man's Party

Holy crap, traffic sucks.

It took almost three hours to reach Everett, between waiting for the Kingston ferry and then getting stuck in all the traffic headed north on I-5. The freeway was three times as wide as I remembered, but still clogged with cars.

When I complained about it, Dawn said, “Maybe you guys should have flown on brooms or something?”

“And mess up my hair?”

She laughed. “You always did worry too much about your hair.”

“Well yeah, it's my best feature.”

“I always thought your eyes were your best feature. They sparkle when you smile.”

I may have actually blushed a bit. I cleared my throat. “Dawn, I wanted to tell you—” I glanced over my shoulder. Zeke and Mort were both watching me with too much interest. “Uh, I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you looking out for Pete.”

“Yeah, well, looking out for people seems to be my thing.”

We reached Everett, one of the many little cities north of Seattle, just before 3
P
.
M
. I didn't know much about it except it had a Boeing factory and the Museum of Flight. Like every other town or city we passed through, it had grown since the last time I'd seen it. Thankfully, Mort knew where we were going.

The Evergreen Cemetery sat on the edge of the city, on a little side street not far from the freeway. It had been around since the Civil War era, filled with actual stone and marble headstones, crosses, and statues worn and darkened by time and weather and sorrow. Dawn parked on the side of the road outside its gates, and we made our way across the rolling hills to the most prominent of the crypts, a large stone-gray ziggurat called the Rucker Tomb. I'd visited it many times as a child, climbing its stepped concrete sides and imagining myself exploring Mayan or Aztec ruins, while Father dealt with ARC business in the crypt below. It sat upon a raised concrete platform, and the front entrance was reached by stairs that passed between two man-size stone pylons. We stopped in front of the stairs.

“Please tell me you're not going to break into this thing,” Dawn said.

“Not exactly,” I replied. “Mort, you're up.”

Mort turned his pinky ring around so that his persona gem was palm-side down, put his hand on the right pylon, and said,
“Aperire Ostium Per Mea Ius Ex Necromantiae.”

There was a moment's pause, then a voice came from within the stone, “Mortimer Gramaraye, you may enter.”

The stone stairs receded from us with a low grinding sound, revealing a second set of stairs that led down rather than up.

Dawn touched the pylon. “Okay. I'll admit, that's some pretty cool Indiana Jones stuff right there. But nothing that requires magic to explain.”

“Just wait,” I said, and led the way down the stairs to a chilly stone passageway that smelled of Pine-Sol and earth, lit by hanging yellow bulbs. The walls were painted white, and half-columns lined the walls every few feet, with arches spanning the hall between columns.

We passed beneath several arches and reached the first sepulchral niche on our right, an alcove about eight feet tall, its base level with my knees. A man and woman stood smiling down at us. He wore a brown topcoat, vest, and ribbon tie, and had bushy sideburns that reminded me of Isaac Asimov. The woman wore a blue dress that gathered in at the waist then flared out in the rear. Each held a croquet mallet resting jauntily across one shoulder. In their left hands, the man held a small alchemist's crucible, and the woman a crystal ball symbolizing the prophecy branch of sorcery.

Dawn stared up at them for a second, then said, “Damn. Is this the part where I should start worrying you're going to drop me in hot wax?”

I laughed. “No. You're perfectly safe, I promise.”

“But those are real dead people?”

“Yes.”

“How come they don't look like mummies, or Courtney Love or something?”

“Magic,” I said.

“Uh-huh, of course, magic.” She didn't sound as confident in her denial this time.

Zeke sighed loudly. “Can we get this done, and save the tour for later?”

“You're right, sorry. Mort, lead on.”

Mort took the lead. Side tunnels branched out to either side, with symbols and dates marked on the corner columns. The sepulcher alcoves were constant now on both sides of the hall, one after the other. The people entombed in Avalon Underhill had all worked for the ARC, or did something to earn a place here. We passed men and women of all ages, sometimes teenagers, and the rare child included through some family deal made with the ARC. They represented all five branches of magic: alchemy, wizardry, thaumaturgy, sorcery, and necromancy. And their clothing styles changed as we left the nineteenth century behind and began traveling through the twentieth-century sections. I paused by a man in a baby blue polyester suit. Note to self—go for a “timeless” look when I die.

The symbols and tools of the branches of magic evolved too, incorporating plastics and electricity, as well as refinements in the use of magic itself. It used to be, for example, a wizard had one, maybe two tattoos covering their entire body. But as the ingredients of the inks evolved, and the tools and spells became more efficient, the tattoos needed less space to do the same magic. Wizards could fit up to eight tattoos on an average body by the time of my exile. I could only imagine how many tattoos a young wiz sported today.

We passed the occasional live mourner being escorted by a necromancer, and a crypt warden making his rounds. We all bowed our heads, and both Mort and I touched our hands to our forehead in a gesture of respect that also served to display our black-stoned persona rings marking us as necromancers. Nobody stopped or challenged us.

Dawn acted like she was on a museum tour whenever no strangers were in sight. She stopped occasionally to read the silver plaques at the base of each alcove, then sprinted to catch up with us. “They remind me of stuffed pets,” she said. “Why are they staring at us all creepy like that instead of being in a coffin?”

“I think the tradition started because people hoped necromancers or one of the other magical branches would find a cure for death,” I said. “Sort of like those people who have their bodies frozen just in case we can cure and revive them someday.”

“Is there? A cure for death?”

Her question made me think of Heather in biology class, hoping to create a true reanimation potion. And Grandfather had frequently grumbled about the unfair advantages of Fey immortality, first to me, and then to Grayson when I, being so wise in my teen years, decided his grumblings were boring. Heather and Grandfather were two of the most skilled and intelligent arcana I knew of, and even they had not been able to defeat death.

“No, there's no cure,” I said. “At least, not one that doesn't require a constant flood of raw magic and serious Monkey Paw consequences. And trying to find one has become pretty much illegal.”

“So why keep making these little die-o-ramas?”

“Just more fun, I guess.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, which would you rather do? Plan a display for yourself, pick out an outfit and a pose and all that, or pick out a coffin?”

Zeke spoke up. “The ARC likes to keep them in a state where the spirits can be questioned as easily as possible if we need to.”

“And there's that.” I sighed. “For some reason, Talking is less draining if the body is as close to its living state as possible and you have a sense of their personality, of who they were.”

“We can talk to them?”

“Well, I can.”

Dawn paused in front of a man dressed in a black Members Only jacket and extremely tight Jordache jeans.

“Hello! This guy looks just like Hugh Jackman. You're sure you can't hook a girl up, bring him back to life?”

“And you accused me of doing bad things with dead bodies?”

“Well, if you brought him back, he wouldn't be dead, now, would he? Maybe you could just animate him as, you know, a brainless hunk o' warm Wolverine goodness?”

“Uh, no. Trust me, both the cost and the results of raising the dead are pretty nasty.”

“Well, damn. Way to crush a girl's dreams.” We caught up with Zeke and Mort, and Dawn said, “If magic is real, so far it all seems dangerous and creepy. Where's the awe and the fun?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped. What could I say? I'd asked the same question myself more than once.

“We're here,” Mort said. “He should be down the hall on the left.”

We turned down the side hall and began reading the name plates. We found the one we wanted fourth from the end. Devon Newman was short and sturdy looking, his gray suit stretched over an ample belly, the flattop buzz cut utterly failing to de-emphasize either of his large chins. He wore a Seahawks blazer rather than a dress shirt beneath his suit jacket. His right hand held a tiny paintbrush. This, I realized, explained what appeared to be a re-creation of a World War II battle around his feet, with tiny painted soldiers fighting over a miniature landscape, cotton smoke issuing from their guns and tanks; and on a raised plain a group of wizards battled feybloods with silver wire lightning and red plastic fire.

“Okay, Gramaraye,” Zeke said. “Time for you to do your thing.”

“Yeah. Lucky me.” I closed my eyes and went through the mental exercises Grandfather had taught me, to clear my head of distracting thoughts, to bring my emotions to a neutral hum. I opened my eyes, looked into Devon's face and touched his hand.

The resonance of his spirit thrummed loud and clear.

“Devon, I summon you.”

The connection was immediate. Devon wasn't warded against Talking. Few bodies in these general ARC crypts were, since it was cheaper and more efficient just to limit access to the crypt, and then ward the crypt itself against anyone outside of it from summoning the spirits of those inside.

I felt a pull, like some invisible part of me reaching out from my center to Devon's body, and then magic and life flowed out of me, draining away in a slow but steady trickle.

“Hello, Devon,” I said.

There was a pause, and then Devon's voice replied, “Hello?” His mouth didn't move. “Shit. I'm dead, aren't I?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so.”

It took extra energy to make his voice heard by the others, not just by me. But I needed Zeke to hear him. And I wanted Dawn to believe me. I glanced at her to see how she took it. She looked at me with a wide-eyed, uncertain expression, an expression tinged with a horror I recognized. “You're really talking to a ghost?” she whispered.

I nodded. This was not the time to explain the difference between a ghost and a spirit. I returned my focus to Devon. The faster we wrapped this up, the less of my life I'd lose.

“Devon, I've summoned you to—”

“Are you sure you're a real necromancer?”

“What? Yes. I'm Talking to you, aren't I?”

“Well, yeah, it's just, I've seen my fair share of summonings, and you don't seem to be doing it right, buddy. No offense, but I don't want to be accidentally unmade or nothing by a beginner, you know? Is your boss around, maybe?”

Mort snorted. I just sighed. On its own, necromancy really isn't all that showy or impressive to observe: no flashes of light or howling winds, no fire or lightning or transformations or even a bouncing table and flickering lights in most cases. It's really just a couple of folks talking, even if one of those folks is dead. So in order to ensure proper respect for their talents, early necromancers began to wear fancy robes, and added a dash of ritual and a lot of theatrics to the whole affair.

At the height of necromantic ritualization in the Middle Ages, a summoning could take up to three days, and involved elaborate costumes, lots of chanting, and occasionally a lovely assistant. Even as recently as last century, one ritual got so out of control that the ARC had to cover it up by claiming it was a rock concert by a group called KISS (Knights in Sorcery's Service), and then had to promptly create a real band by that name in order to make the story stick.