“Tricks are for kids, silly rabbit,” I said, skating around my intentions. Alden was here already, and he’d brought the sixteen-inch daggers that I’d trained with for most of my life at the Guild. They were custom made for my small hands and fighting style. They were on the long side for being daggers, yet shorter than what short swords would typically be. The Guild Armorer had handcrafted them of iron and some lighter weight metals to keep them as light as possible while still being durable and deadly to the Fae.
I carefully set my iPod down on Larissa’s grey headstone, and looked around; waiting, before sending enough magic out to light the torches Alden had set up. Flames shot up around us, circling the area in which the large group was standing.
The faces of those who had come to help were shadowed by the flames that leapt to life. Adam and his father had come along with a few of their men who had come to protect them if this got too messy. Alden had also brought with him a few Guild members that he still trusted.
I stepped away from them to use the knife that would cut through my flesh and help me to raise the dead. I needed blood for the spell Alden would cast. Tonight, unlike the other times I woke the dead. I needed them to awaken with Dark Arts instead of Light, so that I would be able to borrow some of their strength. As the blood touched the hallowed ground it sent flames shooting from the torches, high into the sky. I whispered a few more words in Latin, completing the ritual, and smiled as I felt the rush of power when the dead rose from their graves.
Billy, a young child who had been here for at least fifty years and loved my iPod more than he actually liked me, was the first to greet me. He didn’t have his normal cheeky grin on as if he could sense the seriousness of why I was here, and knew that this would most likely be the last visit I had with him.
Billy and I had an arrangement, as I did with the other ghosts in this cemetery. I came once a month to dance with them and allow them to feel alive for at least a little while and they blessed the earth around the graves of my friends and family. Billy normally picked the songs that we would all dance to.
“Billy, I need to know if you and the others will help me.”
He tilted his cherubic face, and narrowed his eyes with a keen sense that a child his age shouldn’t have possessed. A moment passed in silence while he spoke to the others around him. The living were not meant to talk to the dead, but tonight Alden would cast an ancient spell that should allow me to hear them. Normally, I tried to interpret what they said by reading their lips or gestures.
“Alden, cast the spell,” I whispered, and felt a small tingle of the rush that came from casting with a coven. I had missed it ever since I’d buried Larissa a little over a month ago. I hadn’t even tried to cast with a coven since her death, not that I’d had any opportunities.
The ghosts watched in open curiosity as Alden, and his fellow Witches and Warlocks, stepped up with items that were needed for the spell. They formed a circle and spoke together in Latin. The wind picked up, and my hair flew into my face as the chanting grew louder. The flames from the torches shot up high into the air as leaves blew from around the trees in a circular pattern behind the coven, shielding them from the Fae in the cemetery.
I breached the circle, and smiled as the hands broke from each other to touch me. I would be taking the taint of the spell into my soul tonight. I’d asked them to cast it, but I couldn’t ask them to take the darkness that came from casting the spell; not when it was I who needed and had asked for this. I was no longer part of the Guild, and asking them to take darkness for me just felt wrong.
“It’s done,” Alden said, stepping back, as did the coven he’d brought.
I turned to look at Billy, who was watching us intensely. I waited for him to say something, and when he finally did, it wasn’t to me, but someone I couldn’t see.
“She’s nuts. You sure you want to be stepping in now, Lady?” he spoke to someone beside him.
“Billy,” I finally whispered, after years of waiting to hear him speak, I could.
“My name is not Billy, its Quinn. So stop calling me the stupid goat’s name!” He balled up his fist and glared up at me.
I smiled and nodded. “Sorry about that,” I replied, a little embarrassed. I was waiting for the language of the dead to take over my tongue, but it didn’t come this time. “I need your help,” I started to say, but he held up his hands, and shook his head.
“We know what you have come for, but it can’t be done. Only she can help you,” he replied with an accent I couldn’t place.
“She?” I asked confused.
I didn’t have long to wait, when she stepped out of the shadow veil that only the dead were allowed to enter, and into the cemetery. I gasped and took a step back. “Oh my God,” I cried and Adam made an anguished sound behind me.
Larissa stood in front of me, as beautiful as she’d been before the Mage had cut her open. “Syn,” she whispered, and grabbed my hand, which made me shake to my very center.