“Okay. I think I can get her to talk without too much magic or disturbing things too much.”
I studied Lorelai for a long while, noticing her blackened witch’s mark shining from her chest, just visible above the collar of her shirt.
Sucking in a deep breath, I closed my eyes and called on the magic Owen and I had been working on. To animate a corpse partially and not have them jumping up and running around town. I just wanted Lorelai to tell me how this happened.
I sent barely a sliver of magic toward her while concentrating on Lorelai’s brain and vocal cords, trying to animate just her head and upper chest area.
“Lorelai, how did you die?” I whispered, leaning close. If I did this right, she wouldn’t speak loudly, and I’d have to strain to hear.
Scaring the crap out of me, Lorelai sat up suddenly, her blonde hair matted with the blood that had drained from her eye socket. I scrambled backward, deeper into the house as Sam and Olivia retreated onto the porch to watch in horror. “This isn’t me. That’s not my magic,” I squeaked as I jerked the small bit of my magic away from the corpse.
“Keep your magic away from the witch, necromancer,” Lorelai’s pale lips said as her head turned all the way around to stare at me with one milky eye. “Let the dead lie.”
Her body relaxed and fell back on the ground, landing in the exact same spot it had been in before I tried to raise her.
“Shit,” I whispered, rapidly shaking my hands as if to shake off the bad juju. “Shit, shit.”
“What the hell was that?” Olivia screeched from the front porch.
Sam peered around the corner with his gun pointed at Lorelai’s body and Olivia peeked around the other side of the door. “Is it safe?” she asked.
“It’s safe,” I said. “Sometimes witches put spells on themselves so that when they die, they’ll stay dead. They don’t want their bodies used by dark necromancers.” Not that I’d ever use that kind of magic. It took a real sicko for that. That’s how Alfreds were created, but ghouls didn’t normally end up benevolent chefs like mine. “But that also means we can’t use her body to get answers about her death.”
Feeling like a failure for not being able to get a lead on how the two accidents could happen and why, I moved to the front door where Sam and Olivia still waited, eyeing Lorelai’s body as if it was going to jump up again. “Can I see the coin?”
Without looking away from the body, Sam pulled a small bag from his pocket with the coin inside. I took it and studied it. “It’s the same one found on Mariam. Larry says it’s also the same as the one that was placed in his pocket moments before he died.”
“Yeah. But we don’t have Larry’s.” Sam frowned. “And we can’t use him as a source.”
I knew that. No one would believe that a skeleton claimed to die in an accident while having a coin in his pocket.
When I started to open the baggie, Sam covered my hand. “Don’t touch it. We need to take prints…you know, off the record.”
Nodding, I said, “I wasn’t going to touch it. I’m checking for magic.” But there wasn’t anything lingering. This was the freshest coin I’d been able to examine.
He took it from me after putting on a glove and then dumped the coin out of the bag into his palm. Ah, that was better. I hovered my hand over it, feeling the charge of dark power. Just as we feared, the coin was cursed. I just didn’t know how or by whom. Without that information, I didn’t know how to uncurse it. Or protect other witches from suffering the same fate.
“After you check it for prints off the record, can I have it? I might be able to do a locator spell or some other kind to find who the owner is.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
And I was out. I couldn’t take being in the same room with Lorelai’s corpse any longer. The whole anti-necromancer spell was a shock, and it had freaked me the heck out.
Chapter Nine
“Snooze, stop it.”
Mr. Snoozerton lay behind me, randomly scratching my butt with his back feet. He wanted my attention, or he wanted food. It was hard to tell with him at times. I’d swat him off, then a few minutes later, he’d do it again.
“I’m not playing right now, Snooze!” I turned and laughed when I found him splayed out on his back, showing his big, fluffy belly for pets. “I love petting your super curly belly hair, Snoozer, but I’m busy.” I gave him a quick pat on the tummy then turned back to the trunk.
Alfred shuffled over and glared down at the big, rotten cat.
“I swear, the only thing we’re going to find up here is a bunch of dust,” Olivia said as Alfred and Snooze had a staring contest. She glanced at the two, frowned, then shook her head.
Alfred grunted and Snooze rolled over the other way, taking his claws with him. “Thanks, Alfie,” I said, still marveling at the power the ghoul had over that insane cat. “I can fix that,” I replied to Olivia about the dust, not the attention-whore of a cat. There was no help for him.
I had already fixed him when he died as a kitten. I ended up turning him immortal somehow. That crazy cat was going to outlive us all. I shot Olivia an alarming look that made her sit up straight. “What’s wrong?”
“I just realized that Snooze will outlive me.”
Her eyes got big. “You need to find him a god-parent or something just in case.”
Yeah, but who could I trust with my big furry baby? “Wallie can take him and then pass him down the family.”
Olivia snorted. “He’s not a family heirloom.”
I gasped in mock surprise that she would say such a thing. “He is too! A precious heirloom.”
“Precious is right.” Olivia giggled and then motioned to all the dust.
Oh, yeah. I was supposed to fix it.
Doing my finger twirl, I gathered up the dust and sent it out of the small vent in the corner of the attic. “There. Better?”
Olivia nodded and opened another box. “Perfect, thanks. How much would you charge to come to do that to my entire house once a week?”
“Remind me, and I’ll do it every time I come over, free of charge.” I was supposed to be super powerful, yet I used my magic to clean the house more than anything.
Sam and Olivia tended to come here more than I went there, though. With all the myriad of creatures living here, I liked to be around as much as possible to supervise things. Alfred was a pretty stern babysitter, but still, he was a ghoul.
“Nothing in this box either.” Olivia sighed and rocked back on her heels. “Are you sure there are more grimoires up here?”
“I thought there were,” I said. “The really old ones that we had copied into new books and didn’t want to disturb anymore.”
“If you copied them, why are we looking for them?” Larry asked.
“Because I’m desperate,” I snapped. With a sigh, I relaxed and closed the trunk. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”
Olivia snorted, then quickly covered her mouth, and looked at the skeleton in horror.
His head had an unfortunate tendency to fall off.
I bit back my laughter and avoided looking at Olivia at all costs. The last thing I needed was to get a glimpse of her laugh-strangled face and burst out giggling myself.