Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) (15 page)

Before we left, I popped in the back room and grabbed some chicken bones she kept on order just for me and my mom. She’d never asked what they were for, and and I was beginning to realize that it was because she always knew. Now, I’d never find out what Wanda hid behind those knowing eyes. I’d never know why she sent me into the cemetery that night. There’d always been more to Wanda than met the eye, and now she’d take her secrets to the grave.

The three of us climbed into our vehicles and drove back to my house where we set up a pow wow in the living room. Astral decided to join us, meowing in bliss, as if he were immune to the troubles plaguing our town. My heart ached from the loss of one more person. It almost felt as if Seaport was disappearing one death at a time.

Constantine ripped out a page out of my parchment book and slammed it on the table before me. “I need you to make a list of anyone and everyone who could be involved in this somehow. Anyone with some kind of agenda against this town. An agenda against you.”

Sighing, I leaned forward and scribbled one name on the paper before tossing the pen at the table. Constantine glanced over my shoulder to see what I’d written, and I could practically feel the anger rolling off his tense shoulders.

“Anthony Lombardi.” He clenched his jaw. “I meant people who are alive, and you know it.”

“Well, the only person who ever had an agenda against me was Anthony Lombardi,” I said. “Trust me, I wish I had a better answer, but he’s the only person who’s done anything terrible around here. Magically speaking. Non-magically speaking, it’d probably be better for you to talk to Sheriff Lynch.”

“What about those other guys?” Laura spoke up in a small voice.

“What other guys?” Constantine passed the pen to Laura who sat curled up on Mom’s recliner twirling her nose ring. She shook her head at the pen and gave me a piercing look.

“You mean those other shamans from September?” I asked with raised eyebrows. “You know it can’t be them.”

“What are you to talking about?” Constantine asked. “Bennett didn’t mention any other shamans to me.”

Laura shifted in the recliner, hugging her knees to her chest. There was a flicker in her eyes when she began to speak, a sure sign she still wasn’t over what had happened to her earlier this fall. She’d kept quiet about that night, never speaking of it for more than a fleeting moment here and there. I knew more had happened than she ever let on, but all I could do was wait until she was ready to share the full story, whatever it was.

“Back when Anthony showed up, there were two other shamans in Seaport who were poking around town.” Laura’s eyelids fluttered shut, her face blanching. “They summoned spirits to feed on the lives of wealthy residents and then made off with their high-priced belongings when they died. There were two of them.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before” Constantine asked, turning to me with blazing eyes. “These are exactly the kind of people who could be doing this now.”

“They’re dead,” I said, voice flat. “Anthony killed them. Both Laura and I saw the bodies.”

“I see.” Constantine stared hard at me and then Laura, realization dawning on his face. He decided not to pry, and I could have hugged him for it. “Unfortunately, we need some leads. Alive leads. Anyone else you can think of?”

“There’s no one else. Everyone in Seaport is human and has no ties to magical stuff,” I said with a shrug. “Wanda, maybe, but she’s still not a shaman, and she’s also now dead.”

“Right.” Constantine began pacing, his jaw clenching and unclenching with every step he took. “Is there anyone knew in town? Anyone you’ve seen poking around where they don’t belong?”

Laura glanced at me sharply, and I could read her mind before the name even popped into my own head. There
was
someone new in town, someone who had been poking around, and someone who knew way more than she let on. She’d been right in our faces all this time, and despite our unease around her, we hadn’t suspected anything more than just plain weirdness.

“George,” Laura said, sitting up in the recliner, spine stick straight, eyes alert and wide. “The new girl at our school. She definitely knows about spirits, and she keeps showing up everywhere we go.”

I jumped up from the couch and joined Constantine in his angry pacing across the carpet. “She was at that party when Megan got attacked. She was in the water with us, but if she knows some kind of magic..”

“Yeah, and she had some weird beef with Wanda. Remember that day we took her to get her tarot card reading done?” Laura said. “And then she showed up at the shop tonight after Wanda got killed, acting weird and guilty like always. I bet she went back in there for something.”

“Evidence, maybe?” I asked, the puzzle pieces finally coming together. “I bet there was something in there that would incriminate her.”

“Oh my god, I know what it was,” Laura said, eyes widening. “Those tarot cards. She was super weird about them and wouldn’t let Wanda finish the reading. Maybe she went back for them.”

“Let’s go,” I said, excitement building up inside my chest. The answer was right in our grasp. We’d be able to stop George before she caused more harm, before any other Seaport residents died.

“Hold up.” Constantine grabbed my shoulders and held me in place. “Where are we going?”

“Back to Wanda’s. We can see if the tarot card deck is still there.” Laura stood to join me against Constantine. Despite his authority around here, we couldn’t let him push us around.

He crossed his arms over his chest and levelled his gaze. “And what is that going to tell us exactly? That she stole a deck of cards.”

“More than that,” I argued. “She’s hiding something. If the tarot cards are gone, this proves it.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I think you could be right about her involvement, but a stolen deck of tarot cards proves nothing other than she’s a thief.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll make some calls and look into her. In the meantime, you two stay here and think of more names. There has to be someone other than a teenage girl to put on this list.”

I rolled my eyes at Constantine when he strode out of the room and into the kitchen. His low voice murmured as he spoke to whoever was on the other end of the line. Probably my dad. Frowning, I resumed my back and forth pace beside the couch. It didn’t matter that Constantine was trying to help. He was bossing us around when we knew way more about the situation than he did.

Laura grabbed my arm and gave a slight nod toward the front door. “Let’s go now.”

Heart thundering, I followed after her, careful to keep my steps muted on the carpet. I snatched my shoes from the welcome mat and eased my feet inside them, deciding to grab one of the rifles just as I shut the door behind me. Moments later, we were spinning into town on the old bikes I hadn’t used in weeks, the heavy rifle slung over my back and the cool wind in my hair.

“He’s going to be so pissed when he finds out we’ve gone,” I said, shouting over the whirring of the bike wheels.

“He’ll just have to deal with it,” Laura yelled back. “That guy’s an asshole. I can’t believe you let him get involved.”

“I didn’t really have much of a choice.”

But hadn’t I? I was the one who’d wanted to be trained. Sure, Dad had spent him to spy on me, but I’d been perfectly happy to go along with the plan. I’d wanted Constantine to teach me. Insisted upon it, actually. And now he was seriously cramping my style.

“He’s really not so bad most of the time,” I said as we slowed our bikes outside of Wanda’s shop.

Laura raised her eyebrows and propped the bike up against a knobby tree. “He goes around killing spirits, and now he’s ordering us around. He sucks any way you look at it.”

“Wait.” I grabbed Laura’s arm before she could head inside Wanda’s shop. “Are you really so sure killing them is a bad thing?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged into her sweatshirt, her multicolored hair peeking out of her hood. “We’ve been given the natural power to banish them, not kill them. Don’t you think that means that’s what we’re supposed to do?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“In order to kill them, the Congress had to use manmade weapons mixed with magic.” She pointed to the gun on my back. “It isn’t natural.”

“You sound like George.” Suddenly, the weapon seemed ten times heavier than it had before, an anchor trying to pull me into the ground. “Think about it, Laura. If we’re able to kill them, then we can get rid of them for good. No more spirit attacks. No more banishments. Just life without these soul-sucking creatures.”

Laura let out a heavy sigh. “Don’t get me wrong. I understand where you’re coming from. Completely and absolutely. But it just doesn’t seem
right
.”

“I saw him kill one.” I tapped the rifle on my shoulder and let my lips lift into a smile. “He showed me earlier tonight. It made me realize that we have an incredible power with this new invention. And a responsibility to use that power.”

“It’s the other way around, Holly.” Laura took a step closer to me and dropped her hands on my shoulders. “We have a power, and we need to be responsible
with
that power. That means not using it the wrong way, like Anthony and those other shamans did.”

I took a step back, blinking at her words. “This is nothing like that, and you know it.”

“To be honest,” she said with a sad smile. “I’m not so sure it’s that different.”

Something inside Wanda’s shop clanged, echoing into the dead night. Laura and I froze and fell silent. My eyes shifted to the shop. It looked just as it had before. Empty, dark, the door swinging on its hinges. We’d scoped out the entire place only an hour before, and there’d be no one else around. Could George have come back to steal something else?

Quietly, we took long strides toward the shop and perched on either side of the door. With a deep breath, I peered around the doorframe and into the darkness. Nothing moved. We waited several more beats before stepping inside, and my hand slipped around the rifle as I brought it to my chest, out of comfort more than anything else.

We stepped carefully through the shop, eyes and ears wide open. Nothing shifted in the shadows, but we both knew we’d heard a crash in here only moments before. Reaching up, I rubbed my forehead. Pain exploded from my touch, causing me to grit my teeth and lean down to grasp my knees.

My Intuition was in overdrive, which meant something very wrong was going on in here. I gripped the rifle tighter in my hands, making a slow circle in the musty room. Laura strode past me, swept behind the counter, and ducked down. A moment later, she popped back up, hands empty.

“The cards are gone,” she said.

A gust of wind swirled through the shop. The door slammed shut, rattling on its hinges. Glass bottles blew from their shelves and smashed onto the hardwood floor. Books flew open, their pages ripping in the powerful wind. Fear clawed up my throat as I whipped around with my rifle raised.

Dark shadows moved at the edges of my vision. A heaviness landed on my shoulders, as if an unseen force was pressing me into the ground. Body trembling, I stumbled back. The rifle slipped in my sweat-stained hands, falling with a clatter to the floor.

Laura screamed. The world crashed around us as bottles and books and candles tumbled through the air. Gritting my teeth, I ran behind the counter to find Laura bucking against the floor. Her body shook as a choking sound erupted from her throat. My heart leapt into my mouth as I rushed forward, falling onto my knees and grasping Laura’s shuddering head between my palms.

“Laura,” I choked out. “No, Laura, please.”

Her body arched, chest lifting from the ground like she was a puppet on a string. She slammed back into the ground, and a gasping gurgle wrenched from her chest.

A tidal wave of tears fell from my eyes. I had to stop this. Now.

My body moved out of its own volition. I jumped from the ground, grabbed the rifle and tightened my hands around the long, sleek barrel. My fingers slipped along its sharp edges until they found the rune button. The steel trembled under my touch.

Heart hammering and throat tight with fear, I dug my fingernail into the rune.

The real world disappeared in a gust of bitter wind as a swirling blackness gathered around me. The familiar red and orange swirls of the Borderland were gone, replaced by a blackness so thick, I could feel it crawling on my skin.

Through the mist, a spirit rose high before me, abandoning its attack on Laura now that a new arrival had entered its domain. It stared at me, and I stared right back. Every muscle in my body ached to run, but I planted my feet firm on the ground and summoned every ounce of courage in my soul. My finger hovered over the trigger. For a tiny moment, Laura’s warnings echoed in my ear, but they were soon replaced by her pain-filled cries.

The spirit was trying to kill Laura.
My
Laura.

“Say goodbye, asshole.” I pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 14

A
fter I watched the fragments of the spirit melt into the floorboards, I pressed the rune button and found myself face-to-face with John Smith a.k.a. Constantine a.k.a. The Stalker a.k.a. The Guy Who Never Goes Away. He stood at the other end of my rifle, hands on his hips, muscles twitching under his tight black tee.