chapter 13
GRAM poured them both some homemade lemonade and set out some sugar cookies she’d baked just the day before. They were coated with pink and yellow sugar crystals, and they smelled of citrus.
“I’m shocked your brother left any,” Gram said. “He usually eats cookies as fast as I can bake them.”
Lucy knew the cookies were delicious—she just couldn’t bring herself to touch one. Her stomach was just so twisted in knots still. But she did take a few sips of the lemonade. As usual it was a perfect mixture of sweet and sour.
Finally she looked to her grandmother and said the first thing that came into her mind. “We’re cursed, right? The whole family has got some sort of curse on it…makes everything turn to crap, right?” Lucy stopped and then felt tears burning at her eyes, ready to well up and trickle down her cheeks. “Or is it just me?”
“Lucybean, sweetheart…there’s nothing wrong with you, and you are certainly not cursed.” She said the last word with prolonged scorn. Lucy looked up into her grandmother’s smiling eyes. “You’ve been blessed.”
“Blessed!” Lucy sat forward, tears streaming down her face, her voice harsh. “Having road-kill coming to life and wanting to play isn’t a friggin’ gift! It’s a freaking catastrophe!”
“What you did is called necromancy. And it is what you are…you’re a necromancer.”
“I’m not anything!” Lucy said incredulously, pushing back from the table and standing up. She folded her arms around herself as she turned away from her grandmother, her nails biting into her flesh. “I’m certainly not a…whatever you just said.”
“A necromancer.”
“I’m not…and stop saying that!” She turned, beseechingly saying, “I can’t be…it’s just so disgusting.”
Gram looked upon her granddaughter with love and empathy. “Necromancy is a powerful gift.” She stood and put her hands on Lucy’s shoulders. “It’s your gift.”
Gift? Suddenly she remembered something. Just a sliver of a dream, and then the image of Jeff Haas holding a dead puppy in his arms, saying it was her gift. Lucy looked up into her grandmother’s gaze and felt a shock as she backed away from her.
“I dreamed about this.”
Gram’s expression grew concerned. “You’ve dreamed about this?” She held out her hands, “This moment in the kitchen?”
“No,” Lucy shook her head and turned toward the window over the sink, staring out into the backyard. “Not this. Just…” She turned back to her grandmother. “I dreamed about the dog. The one on the side of the road, but it wasn’t there. It was back at my old school.” Lucy could feel the same terror she’d felt in her dream, circling around her, practically touching her flesh. “And my ex-boyfriend was giving the puppy to me for my birthday.” She looked right at her grandmother. “He said it was my gift.”
“A prophetic dream,” Gram said, “Impressive…anything else?”
“What do you mean?” Lucy said, incensed. “Isn’t that enough?” And then she looked at her grandmother with accusing eyes. “Did you know this was going to happen to me?”
“I always knew there was a chance. But your mother kept insisting that you had no talent.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Dark talent, Lucybean. Lila swore that you were like her. She never showed the slightest mystical or preternatural ability. I never felt it from her, and truthfully I didn’t feel anything coming off you…until today.”
“Lucky me.”
“Yes…lucky you!” Gram sounded angry. “If it wasn’t for your gift, that vampire last night would’ve had you for dinner…literally.”
Lucy couldn’t argue with that. Delia would’ve sucked her dry, or at the very least snapped her neck. Lucy shook her head—the thought was just so disturbing. Being dead, killed…it suddenly felt far too real a possibility for comfort.
“Okay. It saved my life...but why me?”
“The gift passes from generation to generation. My sister and I both had it. Unfortunately your mother didn’t. And I’m fairly positive your brother won’t get it.”
Random thought, “If that’s because he’s a guy, don’t be so sure. He’s…” Should I let his secret out? “He’s not your typical teenage boy.”
“Ah huh…” Gram said. “You mean, since he’s homosexual he might get it?”
Oh crap! “I didn’t say that he was…” Gram was giving her a hard look. “Okay…but I didn’t tell you, okay?”
“Deal. But no, that has nothing to do with it. I just don’t feel anything in him.”
“But you said you didn’t feel anything coming off me either.”
Gram frowned, and then clucked her tongue. “Good point. We’ll both have to keep an eye on him. No telling what kind of trouble a boy like him can get into with this power.” She smiled. “Though, I would love to see him being chased around by a zombie.”
“Gram!”
“Just a little one.” A mischievous smile manifested on Gram’s lips.
“You know he has a phobia of little people?” Lucy said.
“Seriously?” She chuckled, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Ever since he was five. Unlocked the parental controls on the cable and lost it when he flipped onto one of those leprechaun movies.”
“Leprechauns?” Gram said, her expression sobering. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“It was a thing.” Lucy waved it away with her hand. “Now he avoids the Wizard of Oz and The Lord of the Rings like the plague.”
A goofy grin spread across Gram’s face, turning into a smile, and then she just cracked up.
“You wouldn’t think it was so funny when he freaks out at the mall when he sees a little person. It’s embarrassing as hell.”
Gram whooped, holding her belly. “What about little kids? Does he freak out over them too?”
“No. Just little grownups.” Lucy’s face fell. “Now, about all this dead-shit stuff.”
“Language, Lucybean.”
“Sorry, but I don’t want dead things coming to life and attacking me.”
“They won’t attack you. They won’t do much of anything unless you tell them to…as long as you practice controlling your power.”
Lucy shot a finger up into her grandmother’s face. “There, I knew it! There’s always a nasty catch…just like in the movies.”
“Lucy, dear, don’t worry. We’ll take some time over the next few weeks and I’ll teach you to control you power.”
“Even better, why don’t you take them away? You’ve gotta know a way.”
“Lucy.” Gram sounded so serious. “No one and nothing can take this from you. It’s a gift and you need to embrace it.”
Lucy made a disgusted face. “Gross.”
“Gross or not, seems you’re going to need it.”
Lucy frowned.
“It’s already saved your life. It will again.”
~*~
Gram gave Lucy a small, though rather thick book to read. The cover was so faded and worn Lucy couldn’t make out the title, but the title page was more than clear enough to make Lucy’s skin crawl.
A Guide to Necromancy: Harnessing Your Affinity and Power Over the Dead, Calling Spirits, Animating Corpses, Fashioning Assorted Body Parts Into Zombies, and Taking Death Into You.
Lucy dropped the book on the kitchen table when she read that last part. The thought of putting zombies together from spare parts was bad enough, but taking death into her. That wasn’t happening.
“Taking death into you?”
“That one’s a little advanced, but seeing how strong you power is right out of the box, as they say, I’ll have to teach it to you soon. It’s pretty much the ability to draw strength and power from the dead.”
“No offence, but I don’t want to draw anything from the dead. I just want to keep them from following me around, okay?”
“Lucy,” Gram’s voice went weary, “this isn’t something you can control enough to quell. Once the power activates it doesn’t just go dormant, even if you don’t consciously use it, it reaches out on its own and works its magic.”
“Magic?”
“Yes. What we do is a form of magic. A darker, older and far more primal magic than your common witch would practice…but magic all the same. And magic is what makes vampires live, and werewolves…werewolves. It’s in everything supernatural.”
“Fine, but I really don’t want to do anything with dead things.”
Gram shrugged. “Either you master your power through use, or you ignore it and it reaches out and does things on its own. And you won’t be able to control what it does, or what it brings.”
Lucy felt a chill as she waited for her grandmother to continue. She knew there was more.
“And if you can’t control what your power brings forth, then it might end up killing you. It might even kill others.”
Yep, Lucy gulped. There was more. Must stop asking questions!
“Anyhow,” Gram said, flipping through the book. “This volume has a lot to teach you. And even though you find it repulsive, necromancy has helped this family more than you know.
“After your grandfather passed, I was a single mother with a mortgage and a five-year-old little girl to support. So I waited tables at a little diner by day, and made extra money at night raising spirits and animating corpses.”
“Ewww! Now that’s disgusting!”
“It paid off this house and kept my family fed without public assistance or having to marry a man just for support. To me, that’s more than reason enough to have done it.”
“Do you still…”
“No. My power has faded quite a bit over the last decade or so. So it’s good that my child is grown.”
“But why would anyone want to bring the dead back to life?”
“Well,” she said matter-of-factly, “there are as many reasons for it as there are hearts to want it: to ask forgiveness, to say good bye, to find out if the deceased was cheating, or where they hid the insurance policy or the family fortune.”
“Sounds horrible,” Lucy shivered just thinking about it.
“It is.” Gram reached out and took her granddaughter’s hand. “And we animate the dead. We don’t bring them back to life. No matter how life-like they may seem, they are dead.”
“So, the vampire chick—Delia—she’s dead?”
“Technically,” Gram said, looking up to the kitchen’s stucco ceiling, contemplating. “Yes, vampires are dead. They were living, but they die when they are made vampire. Takes longer than you’d think, sometimes more than a week. And then a magic, somewhat like what we use to animate the dead, fills them with something very near life, but just as far removed from life too. Even the pure-bloods.”
“Pure-bloods?”
“That’s a vampire or werewolf that was born that way. There always has to be one or both parents already affected.”
Lucy thought on that for a moment.
“So that’s why I could tell her to let me go.” It started to make a sense that really wasn’t. But it did explain why she’d obeyed, and why each time Lucy had done it she’d felt the life drain out of her. She still felt pretty exhausted, and that was after a solid eight hours of sleep.
“That’s what’s confusing,” Lucy’s grandmother said. “I’ve never heard of a necromancer having any power over a vampire before. It’s interesting.”
“Interesting? Try disturbing.” Lucy drained her coffee mug a bit. “But in the handy sort of way.”
“Indeed.” Her grandmother regarded her with a stern gaze. “And that brings me to how and why you’ve placed yourself in harm’s way?”
“I didn’t do anything to that vamp-chick.” Lucy said, incensed.
Gram raised her eyebrows dramatically. “Didn’t you, dear? You’re voluntarily playing the role of her lover’s fiancée.”
“It was her idea…or so I’ve heard.”
“Yes, but even if she weren’t a supernatural being, she would still have a hard time once she started realizing what all that involved.”
Lucy had to admit, once Gabriel had pulled Delia away from her and she’d heard the resulting angry exchange—and had witnessed the naked (ha, ha) emotional connection the two shared, she actually had kind of understood. And when a vampire can smell the guy you just kissed on you, you can’t really imagine you’d get away with it.
It all just felt so damn confusing.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her…” Lucy looked to her grandmother beseechingly. “And I didn’t want to lie to you.”
“What’s done is done,” Gram said, “but I do want to know why you’ve done all this?”
Tell the truth? Why not? Lucy didn’t have anything more to hide from her grandmother.
“I wanted my old life back.” Just saying the words made a wave of relief fall over her. “I know that’s just shallow and I should be grateful for, well…grateful for everything…but…”
“You don’t feel like yourself anymore.”
Lucy looked to her grandmother, surprised. Did she really understand?
“You don’t recognize yourself anymore, and without those things you used to take for granted, you don’t feel the same inside.” Gram stood up from the table and moved to pour herself another cup of coffee. “I get that. I felt that way after your mother was born. I loved her more than life itself, but having to give up so many things, and my freedom, all to take care of this little baby…it was a shock to my identity. And then Marshal died, and I had to give up even more of myself just to survive.”
Lucy suddenly felt so stupid. She was complaining about losing a car, a line of credit, and her wardrobe. Her grandmother had lost most of her life to fate.
Another reason to be weary of love. Even now, just the word elicited a little shock through her spine.
She could feel tears threatening to spill from her eyes, but she blinked them back. “It wasn’t just the way those things made me feel.” She felt so low, complaining to a woman who’d sacrificed so much for her family—yet she was the only person in the world right then that understood, or even cared to understand how Lucy felt.
“Ever since Daddy was arrested, and we moved here…I’ve felt…no, I know that I’ve lost the future I’d envisioned for myself.” She couldn’t help it as bitter tears fell from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks. “It’s stupid, and…and really selfish…”
Gram had taken her seat at the kitchen table again, reached out and took hold of Lucy’s hand. “No, no child. Mourning those things isn’t stupid or selfish. Those things were as much a part of you as the color of your eyes. And losing your future would devastate anyone.” Gram pulled a small pack of tissues from her pocket and handed them to Lucy. “I’m just sorry you didn’t come to me with this. We would’ve thought of someway. And I don’t like you being involved in an enterprise of this nature. Even without the vampires and werewolves—which you should’ve avoided—trying to pull a con-job on others is always a good way to get hurt.”
“I know that…now. But at the time it seemed the best way.”
“The easiest way, you mean.”
Oh god, she hates me…is she going to tell me I have to stop? I can’t stop. I need this…
“But that’s neither here nor there. What we need to do now is get you through the path you’ve chosen.”
“Really?” Lucy said with too much hopefulness.
“Well, if you think one vampire having it out for you is bad, imagine having her family, and the werewolves having it out for you too.”
Lucy gulped at the thought. She had no idea what Delia’s family were like, but Lucy had a suddenly very sinister image of Gabriel’s very large family all wolfing-out and surrounding her. The thought that had entered her mind right after the kiss last night, that if they only knew she was playing them, they’d all hate her. The fact that she’d fallen in love with them immediately coupled with the thought of them turning all fangs and claws, and coming after her for retribution, made her stomach flip over.
“The thought hadn’t occurred to you until now, had it?”
Lucy shot her grandmother with an irritated look. “You’re just so comforting right now.”
They both laughed, even though it didn’t seem to relieve the sick feeling in Lucy’s stomach.
“So, as I was saying, first thing we have to do is keep you moving down the path you’ve chosen…without getting you killed.”
“Again with the comforting words.”
“That means I’ll be expecting him for dinner tonight. Shall we say at six?”
“Expecting who?”
“Why, your werewolf of course.”
Lucy couldn’t believe the cheery expression on her grandmother’s face. “You want me to bring my fiancé—that mom knows nothing about—to dinner?” She lifted her hands up and then let them fall to the surface of the table with a disgruntled thump. “Are you crazy?”
Gram looked even more bemused by her granddaughter’s displeasure. “Crazy is such a misunderstood term. I like to think that I march to the beat of my own drummer.” She raised her eyebrows again. “And yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do.”
Lucy shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t even know if he can come…he’s always busy with—”
“I didn’t ask you if he was busy,” her grandmother said in a stern, flat tone. “I said you two will be here for dinner, tonight, at six. Am—I—Clear?”
Lucy gulped. Her grandmother was getting scary. “Yes ma’am.” Lucy was still confused about one thing. “But what about mom and Seth?”
“Your mother is working a double tonight, and your brother is staying over at his…friend’s house. So it will be just you, me and your wolf.”
My wolf… Lucy felt a warmth bloom in her chest. Gabe being mine…
Lucy closed her eyes tight on the idea. Just the thought of what would happen if psycho-vamp-girl got wind that Lucy was really starting to feel something for Gabriel made her queasy stomach churn even faster.