Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13) (17 page)

“No.” He crossed his arms. “I was expecting Nolan’s crew to come back and pull some other stunt, so we were all awake, keeping watch. Milo was out front here, all by himself. There was a bang, like somebody setting off a bomb, and I came running. Nothing was there, not even a puff of smoke, and Milo was dead, just like that. They did something to him, didn’t they? Nolan and his werewolf?”

The story didn’t sound right. Kuzniak wasn’t one of Layne’s heavies. He didn’t even carry a gun. He wouldn’t have been keeping watch at the end of the driveway all by himself.

Nolan didn’t do this, Cormac was sure. Dumb as he was, the guy wasn’t dumb enough to come after Layne on his own ground. He would have sent Eddie, and Eddie would have just torn the guy up. Even if Kuzniak had been out here by himself.

Layne wasn’t telling everything that happened. Of course he wasn’t.

“Did you listen to the message I left you?” Cormac asked.

“Not yet—”

“Nolan doesn’t have a werewolf working for him. Nolan didn’t do this. You’re being paranoid.”

“Easy for you to say. Can you tell me what happened or not?”

There’s a way to learn more.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he didn’t have any other ideas.

“I still think you should call the cops.” He couldn’t believe he was saying this, but missing people and dead bodies drew attention sooner or later and Cormac didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of this.

“I am not calling the cops.”

“Then I take it you have a hole to drop him into?”

“Of course.” He sounded offended.

Right. What now? he asked Amelia.
We’ll need privacy.

“You go back to the house. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“What are you going to do?”

He glared. “You want me to do this or not? Go back to the house.”

Still nervous, still gripping the rifle like he’d be happy to use it if he just had a target, Layne shuffled back on the gravel drive. Cormac watched him go, all the way to the house’s porch.

“He’s going to keep watching, you know,” Cormac murmured.

Yes, but at least his paranoia will be far away from here. And really, we don’t want him to see this.

Dead body. Mirror. Candles. “Wait a minute—”

Just let me do this. Please?

“Goddammit,” he muttered.

Get the chalk and candles. First, we’ll need a circle.

This was what Amelia’d been doing with Lydia Harcourt when she’d been arrested: questioning the body about its own murder. Convenient.

He followed her instructions. They’d worked together enough that he knew about protective circles—they didn’t just keep the magician safe while she was working her spell, but they also kept the sometimes dangerous energies from escaping and causing harm. Amelia was careful with her protections, and Cormac took his time marking out the circle, both with ground-up chalk that he kept in a jar in the Jeep, and also with the candles. The thing started looking downright sinister, and he wondered what Layne back at the house was making of it.

Pay attention, if you please.

One of these days, he was going to lose his temper at her and just walk away from this shit. And she’d stick right there with him. He could ignore her—but she’d invade his dreams and stand there, scowling at him. He couldn’t get away.

He was going to need a drink after this.

Perhaps it’s time you simply let me take charge of this.

Fine with him. Without her knowledge and experience, he could only do so much. So he stepped back.

He’d gotten used to the feeling, like he was dreaming while also being awake. He watched through his own eyes as his hands moved, his body turned, and his senses dimmed. It should have been terrifying, but it was like hunting predators, bears and wolves and the like, with the ability to turn on you and maul you to death: you couldn’t panic. Simple as that. Stay calm, keep breathing, get through it.

She always stepped aside when she finished whatever magic she was working. He kept watch, ready to take action if he needed to.

“You should trust me by now,” she spoke, using his voice. The sound was his, but the words and syntax were not.

He didn’t trust anyone. She knew that.

She pulled out the mirror she’d had him pack, laid it by the body’s head. Lit candles, burned incense, whispered words of invocation.

He felt it. Even if he hadn’t been watching for it, he would have felt the power rise from the ground itself, a tingling across his skin, a prickling as individual hairs rose on his scalp. This wasn’t scrying. Not exactly. This wasn’t just trying to read an imprint of whatever magic had happened here, this wasn’t just tracking the lines of power—she wouldn’t have needed so much ritual for that. This was something else, something more.

Knowing abstractly what was going to happen and seeing it happen were two different things. When the power rose, feeling like the whole universe was going off kilter, he almost let the panic take hold. He wanted to run. Kick her out of his mind and get the hell away.

The dead body moved. The faintest flush passed through it.

“It’s all right,” she murmured. To the body, not to him. He held his breath, waiting.

The mirror fogged, as if hot breath blew across it. Breath from the body. Then the eyes blinked, and lips pressed together. Brief flickers of movement. Amelia murmured, “Shh, it’s all right, Milo. Just a question or two, then you can rest.”

He blinked again; his eyes were shining, moisture gathering in them. Tears, maybe.

“Milo Kuzniak,” she said. “I know you can hear me. I need to know what happened to you.”

The lips worked, struggling to form words. Amelia leaned close.

Of all Cormac had seen in his life, this was the first thing he’d ever thought to call horrifying. She’d called the man’s soul back to interrogate him—and he was in pain.

The mirror fogged with breath again, and he spoke in a wheezing whisper.

“Back. It came back. It came back.” Lydia Harcourt’s throat had been cut deep; she hadn’t been able to speak when Amelia summoned her a hundred years ago. Kuzniak could, and it sounded wrong.

“What came back, Milo?” Amelia said, gently as she could, but clearly impatient. “Was there a creature? One of your enemies? Was it Jess Nolan and his skinwalker?”

He—the body—grimaced, his whole face contorting with grief or pain or terror. He could talk, enough of him had been drawn back to his body that he was aware—but he couldn’t move. He had no power.

“Pocket. Book. Pocket.” A low keening started in his throat, a scream that couldn’t break loose. He bared his teeth, as if an electric shock traveled through his body. Still, only his expression stirred. His body was dead. But what was speaking?

“Milo—stay with me. I want to know who did this to you. Help me learn who did this, and how.”

“No one.” The words hissed, then the lips clamped shut.

The light sputtered; the candles around the circle had burned down to stubs in just a few minutes. Soon, they’d burn out.

Amelia said, “Do you have any messages? Anyone you’d like to say good-bye to? I’ll pass along any words for you, if I’m able.”

“No one. No one.”

The fog across the mirror’s surface vanished, and Milo Kuzniak’s face went slack. Dead, absolutely dead. His eyes were closed.

Cormac’s stomach was turning, and he wasn’t sure any of this had been worth it. Three sentences and a lot of pain.

Damn,
Amelia murmured.

She slipped away, and Cormac’s body was his own again. His skin tingled, his muscles clenched. He stretched his gloved fingers, rolled his shoulders back, and took a deep breath. He was back behind the wheel, taking over from a lousy driver.

It’s not so bad, is it?

None of what dead Milo had said made any sense. Something had come back, something about a pocket book—or just a pocket. Cormac tipped the body on its side to pat down the overcoat, jeans, feeling in the front and back pockets. And there it was. His little moleskin notebook, worn around the edges, elastic around the cover stretched out, pages dog-eared.

Another damned book of shadows, he’d bet. He slipped the book into his own pocket to look at later. Another mystery, another secret, and maybe they had a chance of finding the answer
this
time. As long as he hadn’t written in code. Cormac resisted an urge to stand up and kick the body, just in case he’d feel like doing it later.

Instead, he cleaned up after the spell, gathering the mirror and candle remnants, brushing the chalk circle into oblivion with his boot.

“What the hell was that?” Cormac muttered. A rhetorical question mostly, but directed at Amelia. “Fucking necromancy?”

She wasn’t apologetic.
I haven’t worked that spell since I was arrested. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.

“Then was that me panicking, or you?”

She didn’t answer.

“So, what is it? A ghost, haunting their body? Their souls? Does the spell trap them?”

I’m … not entirely sure.

“You don’t know what happens to them after? You’re chaining some kind of spirit to their body and pulling their strings, and you don’t know? You might be trapping them, torturing them—you stop to think that Lydia Harcourt’s ghost may really be haunting that house in Manitou, after what you did to her?”

Silence. He couldn’t even feel her lurking.

Layne was walking back up the drive. Show was over.

“Well?” the man asked.

Something wasn’t right here. “I still need to do some checking around. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“But what killed him? Is it going to happen again?”

“I don’t know,” Cormac said.

“Then what good are you?”

“I never said I was any good, you just assumed.”

If it helps, I don’t think it will happen again. I think this was something that targeted magicians, someone who was working spells.

So where does that put us? Cormac asked. “I don’t think it’ll happen again. Looks like what got him might have been magic gone wrong. Avoid magic, you’ll be fine,” he said to Layne. “Keep an eye out, though.”

“Okay. Good. I believe you. Oh, and I’ll take that book you found in Milo’s pocket.”

So he’d definitely been watching. Cormac thought about responding with, “What book?” Just to see the look on Layne’s face, and just to see what the guy would do about it. But he was supposed to be walking away from all this. Might as well just let him have it.

Amelia did panic at this.
No, he can’t have it, he wouldn’t even know what to do with it. We have to know what Milo was working on—

Layne put out his hand. “Give it. Now.”

“You think you’ll know what to do with it? You know anything about spell books?”

Layne’s eyes widened, a flash of surprise, of hunger. He hadn’t known what it was, but now he did, and he wanted it.

I
want it!

A headache started pounding behind Cormac’s ears, throbbing dully. He hadn’t had one like this since he was back in prison, when Amelia was first trying to break into his mind. This was her, fighting back.

Layne was an idiot. He was going to get himself in trouble. Cormac decided he didn’t much care. He pulled the book out of his pocket and handed it over.

“This means you don’t call me again. If you do, I’m not going to come running.” He walked away, back to the Jeep. Amelia grumbled at him the whole time.

“Whatever you say.”

Two of the henchmen came up from the house. Cormac watched from the Jeep, morbidly curious about how they were getting rid of the body. He expected Layne had a ditch somewhere, an old mine shaft or even just a cave, and that Milo wasn’t the first body to get tossed there. If it was on private property, no one would ever find it to be able to report it, and if Milo didn’t have anyone around to declare him missing—well then, he was as good as gone.

Milo couldn’t have expected to end up that way. But you spend enough time with a guy like Layne, well …

Which was why Cormac was driving away.

Milo was telling us what he was doing, what killed him, it’s all in the book, I must have that book!

Cormac didn’t want to argue. He was thinking more about how this—disappearing down some backwoods hole, dead and lost—could never happen to him. Ben wouldn’t let it. Hell, neither would Kitty. Strangely comforting, having people watching his back. He drove, glancing in the rearview mirror to see the guys hauling the body, arms slung over their shoulders, down to the woods at the back of the property.

Ten or so miles later, when the gravel county road met asphalt, he pulled over and parked on the shoulder. The headache was pounding now, Amelia refusing to be ignored.

“What?” he said out loud.

We cannot walk away from this.

“Yes, we can. I just did.”

He leaned back against the seat, tipped his head back, closed his eyes. He could fall asleep, right here. The bruise around his eye throbbed in time with his pulse. The headache didn’t dim.

If you won’t go back for Kuzniak’s book, the only way to learn more about Kuzniak and Crane is to go to the plateau and work the Sand Creek spell to re-create what happened, perhaps even summon Crane’s spirit—

“No. No more summoning. No more talking to dead people.”

One might think you were squeamish.

“I just know better than to go sticking my head where it doesn’t belong.”

You’re a coward.

Almost sounded like his father saying that. Time was, he’d start a fight over those words.

Cormac. Come and talk to me. Don’t shut me out like this, I can’t stand it.

He caught a whiff of fear at that. She argued because she was stubborn, but while she did she worried—how precarious was her place here, really?

Sometimes he thought about what it would take to get rid of her. If he thought hard enough, if he found the right spell or incantation—hell, if he ignored her long enough—could he eject her spirit? Just kick her out, to dissipate on the wind or astral plane or whatever happened to spirits that didn’t have bodies. Or would she find some other way to bother him. Haunting his Jeep, maybe, shorting out spark plugs whenever she disagreed with him. So yes, the situation with Amelia
could
be much more annoying that it was now.