“Close the door,” Joanna instructed. “Draw the curtains and take her out of here.”
Ingrid did as told and guided Emily out of the room. “What’s going to happen? I mean, he’s dead, right?” Emily asked, looking at the two witches fearfully.
Ingrid and Joanna exchanged another glance. “Not quite. Even without a machine, the heart keeps beating, it’s just undetectable as it’s a very, very low pulse,” Joanna said, hoping the newly bereaved woman would believe her tiny white lie. But it would be too difficult to tell her the truth: that she was going to bring Lionel back from the dead. He had been gone for only a few minutes, not even an hour, which was well within the allotted time.
When she was alone in the room, Joanna took Lionel’s cold hand in hers. She closed her eyes and stepped into the glom, the twilight world of disembodied souls. In the glom was a path, a trail in the sand. Using her wand to light the way, Joanna saw that Lionel had made it only to the second level; he was climbing the mountain toward the gate, and once he crossed the gate it would be much harder to bring him back. For beyond the Kingdom of the Dead lay Hell’s frontier.
There was something different about the glom, a sense of malice and despair that she had never felt before. “Lionel! Lionel!” she called. She wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
Lionel Horning turned around. He was bald and severe-looking, dressed in his usual attire of paint-splattered clothing. When he saw her he smiled. “Mrs. Beauchamp, what are you doing here?”
Joanna climbed up next to him so that they were both looking over the view. “Taking you home.”
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” he asked.
“Only in human terms. Your heart has stopped beating,” Joanna said.
“Did I drown? I seem to remember being all wet.”
“You did.”
“Emily always said that ocean would get the better of me one day.”
Joanna analyzed his spirit. There were traces of a silver spiderweb around his soul; she had never seen that before and it worried her. “Would you prefer to stay here?” she asked Lionel.
He looked around. “Not really. What is this place?”
“Think of it as the halfway station. See that gate up there? Once you reach it, it’ll be harder to get you to the surface.”
“How’s Emily?”
“Not good. She’s about to get thrown out of your house.”
“My parents!” he groaned. “I know I should have forced her to marry me. She’s stubborn, you know.” He sighed. “I can’t leave her.”
“Then don’t.”
He stared at the glimmering path, at the mountain trail that reached toward the silver gate. She knew how hard this decision was. He had been in the underlayer, in the glom, for a week now. He had forgotten about hardship and fear; he was beginning to transition to the spirit world. Perhaps this wasn’t such a great idea. Perhaps she should never have agreed to do this.
He looked at the faraway gate, shining in the distance. “Right. Let’s go, then.”
Joanna took his hand and led him back down the way he had come. He started to walk back but suddenly stopped. “I can’t move,” he grunted. “My feet are stuck.”
“Try harder,” she ordered. She felt the hard tugging on the other side; that would be her sister, Helda, holding on to his spirit.
“Do not test me, sister!” Joanna called, waving her wand in the air so that it flashed with a hot white light. “Remember you agreed to keep to the Covenant! It is not his time yet!” She kept her hand on Lionel’s arm and pulled. The wind howled, the oceans crashed, lightning flashed. The Kingdom of the Dead did not give up its souls that easily.
But Joanna’s magic was stronger; this was the power that was rooted in her, older than the earth, older than the Dead, and her ferocious will held on to Lionel and pulled him up and out of the trail. . . . There was a mighty flash. . . .
Joanna was sitting by Lionel’s bedside, holding his hand in a tight grip. The dead man blinked his eyes. He coughed and looked around. “Where’s Emily?”
Lionel’s parents were thrilled to have their son back, if a bit sore about losing the house, although they tried not to show it. Joanna and Ingrid bade their good-byes.
“How can I ever thank you? I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but thank you.” Emily wept. “What can I give you? . . . anything. Take the house,” she laughed. “Lionel’s putting me on the deed.”
Joanna embraced her and kissed her on both cheeks. “Take care of each other,” she said. “And keep an eye on him. He might be feeling a bit off for the next day or two. If anything changes with his condition, let us know immediately.”
Ingrid led them down the hallway. “So, about this whole restriction . . . I’d say bringing a man back to life kind of breaks each and every one of those rules, doesn’t it?” she teased.
Joanna smiled. The whole adventure had felt fantastic, like the good old days again. She stuck her wand into the bun of her hair. “To hell with it. We might as well admit it. We’re witches. Just let them try to stop us this time.”
chapter nineteen
Rhinemaiden
Matt, hi. Caitlin’s just finishing up processing a few new books; she’ll be out soon,” Ingrid said with what she hoped was a friendly smile.
The handsome detective nodded and took his usual seat at the bench across from the main desk. Ingrid felt as if she had blinked and when she opened her eyes, Matt and Caitlin were a couple. It happened so fast that she suspected Freya had slipped one of her now famous love potions in the lawman’s coffee. Her sister swore up and down that Matt had not been to the bar in a while; nor had she recently served Caitlin, who was one of those girls who got drunk after one glass of wine and was hardly a North Inn regular.
Ingrid tried to concentrate on the files in front of her, but knowing Matt was sitting right across from her made it difficult. If he had been something of a regular before, there was no escaping him now. Every afternoon he would appear at the library around five o’clock right on schedule. Sure, today was Thursday and the beginning of a holiday weekend, but still. Didn’t he have something better to do? How did he have so much time to spend lolling about waiting? Weren’t there crimes to solve? It had been more than six months since Bill Thatcher had been found dead on the beach, and the police had no leads. His wife, Maura, was still in a coma, which was too bad as she was the only witness to whatever had happened to them.
The detective’s constant presence was annoying, but not half as irritating as watching Caitlin get ready for her dates. The girl was in the back room, furiously slapping on blush and lipstick, telling everyone in earshot everything about her new relationship. Even Tabitha and Hudson had been pulled into the drama—Tabitha because she adored romance in all forms, and Hudson because he soaked up drama like a sponge. Ingrid had attempted to escape all the girly commotion only to find the lawman idling by the main desk.
She tried to pretend he wasn’t there, or that she was immune to his presence, which was difficult, as something about seeing him made her throat tighten and her body freeze so that she could actually see the goose bumps forming on her arm. Ingrid pulled her cardigan firmly together and tried not to shiver. She would not let him affect her this way. Ingrid was concentrating so hard on appearing indifferent that she did not register that someone was standing in front of the main desk until Emily Foster poked her in the shoulder. “Ingrid? Earth to Ingrid?”
“Emily! Sorry. I was . . .”
“Daydreaming.” Emily smiled and handed her a few books. “Don’t worry, I’m used to it. Lionel’s always gazing off into the distance.”