Finn Fancy Necromancy (40 page)

“Hello?” I shouted, checking each of the rooms as I passed. I reached the entry hall. Father sat on the stairs, his head in his hands, shaking back and forth.

“Father? What's wrong?”

Father looked up at me, but his eyes seemed fixed on some distant point behind me. “Interesting fact,” he said, and then his mouth snapped shut as if trying to bite a fly as it buzzed past his teeth.

Goose bumps sprang up along my arms as pieces started falling into place.

“Finn!” a woman's voice called from above. “Upstairs!”

I hesitated, looking from Father to the top of the stairs. Mort and Zeke limped up the hall, panting.

“Finn?” the woman called again. “Hurry.”

Crap. “Mort, keep an eye on Father.” I ran up the stairs.

Pete lay on the floor. He looked as though he'd gotten into a fight with Freddy Kruger and an angry bear. His body was covered in groups of ragged slashes and bite marks, some small, some large. His pajamas and bandages were little more than shredded scraps pasted to him with blood. The entire hallway was covered in blood, the walls dented and slashed, the pictures fallen and trampled, and chunks of brown and gray fur lay scattered about. And someone I didn't recognize, a beautiful black woman with a lavender afro, sat with Pete's head in her lap, making soothing sounds. An empty potion bottle lay on the floor beside her. A healer?

“Is he—” The words choked in my throat. Pressure built in my chest and behind my eyes, demanding release. I made my way past the blood and broken glass to stand next to Pete, beside the healer. Would she call in the enforcers?

“He's going to live, I think,” she said. “They didn't cover this in First Aid training. I don't really understand what happened.”

Breath burst out of me in a mixed sob and sigh.

“Thank you. You're not a healer, then? How did you know my name?”

“What?” the woman said. “What the hell do you mean, how did I know your name?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, raising my hands. “I didn't mean to offend you. I've been away for a while, so if you're a friend of the family's or something—”

“Friend of the family's?” the woman said, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Oh man. I don't know what the hell is going on here, Finn, but you'd better get your shit together and fast or you're going to wish you could forget me.”

Pete coughed. “Dawn, it's okay,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Finn got hit with a forgetting spell or something. He'll get better. Right, Finn?”

I frowned. “Next door Dawn.” That seemed familiar. Something I'd said to Joey once?

The woman, Dawn, closed her eyes and shook her head. “No. No, you don't have time to be worrying about me. Finn, you need to help Sammy and Mattie.”

“What do you mean?” I said, looking around at all the blood again. Oh, gods. No. There was too much for it to all be Pete's. “Pete? What does she mean?”

“They were taken,” Dawn said. “Vee and Heather too.”

Pete coughed again. “I—I tried to stop them. There were too many. And Father wouldn't give me the gun.”

“Waerwolves,” Dawn said. “That's what Pete said, anyway.”

Waer. Chosen so Vee couldn't infect them.

Infection. “No. Oh no.” I looked down at Pete. “Oh man. Petey—”

He'd been bitten by waerwolves.

“Finn!” Zeke shouted from downstairs, followed closely by Mort's panicked “Father! What—?”

The sharp crack of a gunshot reverberated through the house and set my ears ringing.

Father! I ran to the stairs.

Mort lay on the floor, hand pressed to his right thigh as blood oozed out between his fingers. Zeke grasped both of Father's wrists, and the two men wrestled against each other, pushing back and forth, turning in a slow circle. Father held the family revolver, straining to turn the barrel at Zeke's head.

“Father! Stop!” I shouted. But neither my father, nor the spirit possessing him, stopped.

Zeke still suffered the aftermath of his berserker rage. And Father had the strength and immunity to pain that comes with being possessed. This would not end well.

I considered jumping on Father's back, but given his strength I might only push him and Zeke apart long enough for him to shoot Zeke and me both. And Father couldn't be knocked out, not while being possessed.

Father fired the gun again. The bullet bounced off the shoulder of Zeke's protective jacket with a sharp yellow flash, the ricochet narrowly missing Zeke's head. Zeke was jerked to the side by the impact and lost his grip on Father's wrist. Father's free hand snapped to Zeke's neck, choking, and Zeke had to strain to pull it free.

“Finn!” Zeke said and coughed. “Banish whatever damn spirit's possessing him, or I'm going to have to hurt him!” He stumbled back as Father pushed hard against his hold.

“I can't!” I said. Forcing out a possessing ghost while it's controlled by another necromancer was risky enough for the possessed. But I knew now that the spirit possessing Father was my mother's ghost.

People who spend years of intimacy together often develop “sympathetic resonance,” which meant Mother's ghost would be entangled with Father's spirit and it'd be difficult to clearly identify where one ended and the other began. I had to break the other necromancer's hold somehow.

How was Mother's ghost being controlled past the house wards? The question reminded me of my conversation with Sammy when I first saw Mother's ghost:

“How can mother's ghost be here? We diffused her energy properly.”

“Apparently it has something to do with the garden,” Sammy said. “She put a lot of her energy into it.”

And Father's words:

“Branches and brains, make you do funny things.”

Felicity had worked on Mother's garden. Felicity, a witch involved with the Arcanites. I jumped over the railing to the hallway, landed hard, and ran for the back door.

“Finn!” Zeke shouted. “Where the hell you going?” His breath came in gasps.

“To free Father!”

Another gunshot rang out.

I burst out of the back door into the cool night air and paused. The garden rustled. Something was in it, moving the branches and vines. Controlling Mother's ghost through the garden, controlling Father through Mother.

I didn't know what kind of twisted combination of witchcraft and necromancy was involved, but I had a pretty good idea of how to stop it. I ran to the garden shed, grabbed up a machete, and waded into the garden, hacking and slashing a path to its heart.

Another gunshot, and a shout of pain from Zeke.

Damn it! Damn it!

Thorns and vines grabbed at me, whether out of some supernatural will or just the normal tenacity of plants, I didn't know and didn't care. I shrugged off the bites and scratches and continued to slash. The air filled with the green smell of plant juices, and pulp and droplets splattered across my face and hands as I sought out the source of the rustling.

I broke free of the tangle into an enclosed clearing, and at its center stood a plant that looked like several rose trees entangled. Standing by the mass, its hands plunged deep within the branches, stood a small brown man with a branch growing out of the top of its head. A homunculus—a mandrake root given life through alchemy and dark necromancy. It hissed at me as I entered the clearing.

“Screw you too,” I said and chopped at its head with all my strength.

The creature's scream cut short as its head and body split in half, splattering the dirt and weeds around it with dark fluid.

The garden's motions ceased. I stood for a minute panting, the night air chilling the sheen of moisture and plant bits that clung to me.

“Finn?” someone called. I looked back and saw Dawn silhouetted against the back door, leaning slumped against the door frame. “It's done,” she said. “Your father collapsed.”

I dropped the machete and followed Dawn back into the house.

Mother's ghost greeted me as I entered. “Hello, kiddo. How was school?”

“Not now, Mother,” I said, my voice thick as I fought back tears.

Zeke and Father both sat on the floor, Zeke leaning against the stair railing, Father against the wall opposite him. Zeke held the colt in one hand, his other pressed to his left ear. Father stared down at his hands and sobbed.

“You okay?” I asked Zeke as I moved to kneel beside my father.

“Yeah,” Zeke said as though drunk. “Nothing a year of sleep won't cure.”

“How about you?” I asked Mort.

“Hell no,” he said. “I've been shot! I need a frickin' doctor.”

Dawn knelt beside Mort. “I told you, it'll be okay. Just keep pressing.”

I put my hand over my father's. “Father? Can you understand me?”

Father looked up at me. “My … desk.” His hand twitched, waving in the direction of his room, then lurched out and grabbed my shirt, pulling me closer. The whole left side of his face began to spasm. “Ring around the rosies,” he whispered. “The heart always knowsies—” Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped into unconsciousness.

I pulled myself free of his grasp. The rhyme I didn't understand, but the first part was clear. I hurried back to Father's room and found a note on his desk, written in misshapen letters like when I tried to write with my left hand.

Finn,

Ezekiel must die by your hand and you take the blame for it, or the girls die. You have until sunrise.

I read the words again.

And then I heard the wail of police sirens drawing closer. Someone must have reported the gunshots.

“Bat's breath.”

27

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Dawn rushed into the room. “Police!”

“I know. I hear them.”

“You and Zeke need to get out of here. And I'll drive. I don't feel like getting shot for being suspiciously black at a crime scene.”

“Go,” Mort said. “I'll cover.”

Dawn grabbed my arm. “I'll be next door. That-a-way,” she said, and pointed, then ran out the back door.

“What are you going to do?” I asked Mort as I grabbed Zeke and flung his arm over my shoulder. Zeke still gripped the pistol in his other hand.

Mort shrugged. “I'll tell them some stupid meth head broke in thinking the mortuary might have drugs, and they shot up the place.”

The sirens grew louder.

“Be careful,” I said. “Enforcers'll be here soon, and they can read the truth.”

“I know. Just don't tell me where you're going. And Finn?”

“Yeah?”

“If I die, I'm so going to haunt you for this.”

“Right. Thanks.”

I guided Zeke out the back door and into the night.

The sirens stopped in front of our house. The night was lit up with the red and blue flashes of the police lights as Dawn waved at me from a break in the hedge. I jumped as someone shouted from the front of the house, “Open up. Police.” But nobody called for us to stop.

Dawn led us through a yard filled with piles of junk to a garage, and I helped Zeke into the backseat of an old station wagon.

“I need to lay down,” Zeke said, his words slurred, and he slumped down across the seat.

“I need the keys,” Dawn said. “Be right back.”

I climbed into the passenger seat and looked over my shoulder. “Zeke, you with me enough to talk?”

“Wha—? Yeah. Jus' keep it down,” he muttered, his eyes closed.

“Do you know this Dawn person?”

“Dawn's a mundy who grew up with your family,” Zeke replied, his words slurred with exhaustion. “And you just decided last night to tell her all about magic, and started dating her. And if I were you, I wouldn't go breaking up with her until you figure this out, fool. You break her heart, she'll break your neck.”

Zeke's words made my head spin. If they were true and I didn't remember Dawn, what else didn't I remember?

I didn't have time for self-reflection though.

“Zeke, the Legion left us a note. They want me to kill you and take the blame, or else the girls die. We have until sunrise.”

Zeke's eyes snapped open. “How do we know we can trust them fools? Why didn't they just kill the girls and blame that on you? Not that I'm complainin', it just don't make sense.”

“I'm guessing because they've already tried killing you and stopping me, but we keep managing to escape. So they're making us do it for them.”

“Still, the ARC's lookin' for us now. This fool Legion of yours coulda just sat back and waited for us to get caught and blamed for the EMP, and the Hole and all the rest.”

“I don't know, Zeke, okay? Maybe there's some kind of time limit we don't know about—I think they wanted me back in exile the day I returned. Maybe they're getting desperate. I just don't know.”

Zeke grunted. “That's what worries me. I'd shoot myself in the head right now if I knew for certain it'd save Vee. But I'd rather shoot the bastards who took Vee. 'Cept, we don't where this Legion is or where they got the girls. And we don't know why the Legion's doing what they're doing, which means they could do anything. So question is, you got a better offer than a bullet in my head?”

“Honestly? I don't know,” I said.

Dawn returned and climbed into the car. “Where to?” she asked, and started the car.

“Kingston.” As Dawn pulled out of the driveway, I said, “Zeke, I think maybe, if I turn myself in and take the blame for everything, just accept exile, that will be enough. Maybe we can even get the enforcers to fake your death, put you in witness protection or whatever the ARC has like that.”

Zeke grunted, his eyes closed. Was that agreement, or was it “fool” in tired speak?

Dawn looked at me, her face lit by the flashing police lights reflecting off the car's mirrors. “Oh, no you don't! I know I said I wished you'd never come back, but that isn't true. You can't just go disappearing again.”