A shadow passed over his face. “We don’t know.”
“How can that be?”
“You and I have an affinity for ghosts, hence my attachment to you. Becca has an affinity for animals.”
“Which brought Pru to her. What other powers do the two of you have?”
“Pru can talk to animals and heal. I can talk to ghosts, affect the weather, and—” He flicked his hand and Samhain skidded out from beneath the bed. She hissed at him and scurried back.
“If you can toss things, why didn’t you toss McHugh?” Into a tree.
“He brought minions—a lot of them. Using our powers takes energy. Your mother was still weak from your births. I needed to have enough strength to send three souls though time. We could fight, or we could save our children.”
“Why didn’t you run? Hide?”
“Even if we triumphed that day, over those hunters, there would always be more. Once we drew the attention of the Venatores Mali, we were marked for as long as we lived. It wasn’t as if we could move quickly or easily with three infants. We definitely couldn’t move silently and avoid notice for long.”
“So you stood your ground, and you died for us.”
“I didn’t mind.”
I felt the urge to thank him again, but words would never be enough. I considered his seemingly solid form and thought of how my fingers had ached with cold after swiping right through him.
Hugs weren’t going to work either.
“Protecting you and your sisters was my purpose in life. It is also my purpose in death. I loved all of you from the moment I saw you. I love you still. I will always love you. I will never let anything hurt you if I can stop it.”
I swallowed, nodded, lowered my gaze until I was able once more to speak. “I want to love you, but I don’t know you. You’re a stranger.” And an odd one at that. “I’m sorry.”
“My love isn’t based on your loving me back. True love never is.”
I didn’t know much about love, though I wanted to learn. I hoped I’d have time.
“We have other things to worry about,” Henry said.
He was right. It would take me time to come to terms with who he was, who I was. But, in the meantime, I had so many questions.
“I had bruises on my arm where Anne McKenna grabbed me. I never had bruises from a ghost before.” I stared at my fingers, wiggled them. They tingled but they weren’t black and blue. “What gives?”
“You’re sensitive,” he said. “I’ll assume she was agitated?”
“Getting an arm hacked off can do that to a person.”
“Indeed.”
“Bobby had bruises too. Why?”
“Same reasons.”
Genevieve had been understandably agitated, but—
“He can see ghosts?” That might be the reason he was so snarly about the supernatural.
“No. But he feels them. He refuses to acknowledge anything that hints at the mystical, but he has magic in his blood.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with that. Right now I had more important questions.
“Someone suggested that the Venatores Mali might be trying to raise McHugh.” From the expression on Henry’s face, he’d already gotten there before me. “Is that possible?”
“It isn’t easy, but it’s possible.”
“How?”
“Raising the dead is dark magic. I’m not familiar with the particulars.”
“You’re dead.”
“Is there a reason you keep pointing that out?”
“You’re here. You’ve been raised.”
“I’m a ghost not the risen dead. There’s a difference.”
I lifted my eyebrows and waited.
“I’m spirit not form. Here for a purpose and then I’ll be gone.”
“And the risen dead?”
“Once raised they remain until they are vanquished. They are form and not spirit. Solid without a soul.”
“McHugh will come back without a soul?” That sounded worse than his coming back at all.
“He never really had one in the first place,” Henry said.
“How do you vanquish a risen spirit?”
“I have no more idea about that than I have about how they’re raised.”
I let out a breath. “Now what?”
“You’re going to have to familiarize yourself with dark magic. Only by understanding it can you thwart it.”
A shiver traced my spine. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Very.” His gaze looked beyond me and into the past. The high collar of his coat shifted, revealing the brand of a snarling wolf that matched the one on Anne McKenna’s ghost. “But so is McHugh.”
*
Henry made me promise not to summon him again unless it was life or death.
“If you call me, I’ll come if I can. If I don’t come—”
“You can’t. Got it.”
Henry began to fade. “Get rid of the sage and the candles, brush away the pentagram. Those are always so difficult to explain.”