Still Not Dead Enough , Book 2 of The Dead Among Us
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Authors: J. L. Doty
Still Not Dead Enough
Book 2 of
The Dead Among Us
by
J. L. Doty
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Still Not Dead Enough, Book 2 of
The Dead Among Us
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Copyright © 2013 J. L. Doty
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ISBN: 978-1-938701-33-7 (eBook)
Version 2013.04.26
Contents
Chapter 6: The Secret Uncovered
Chapter 7: An Ancient Invocation
Chapter 9: The Alice Connection
Chapter 10: Immortality Truncated
Chapter 11: The Triple Goddess
Chapter 13: A Bargain Fulfilled
Chapter 14: An Unexpected Visitor
Chapter 21: Not Really Welcome
Chapter 22: The Truth of the Beast
Chapter 23: Many Paths to Betrayal
Chapter 25: A Choice of Desires
Other Books Available by J. L. Doty
Still Not Dead Enough
Book 2 of
The Dead Among Us
When the dead refuse to rest in peace,
perhaps they just need a helping hand.
“Focus,” McGowan growled. “Try to remember that feeling you got when your wife’s spirit came to you.”
Seated with the older man at the table in McGowan’s kitchen, Paul only made a half-hearted attempt to comply. The feeling he’d gotten when Suzanna had come to him—relief that she’d come back, and fear that he was bug-fuck nuts—the old man didn’t understand.
“For me it’s like an itch,” McGowan said. “Kind of in the back of my thoughts.”
They wanted him to learn some simple spells—in this case a fire spell—so he could develop control. If he could turn simple spells on and off at will, then he’d have a conscious understanding of what he’d been doing spontaneously, and, hopefully, he’d get rid of the spontaneous part. At least that was the theory, a theory that didn’t seem too valid at the moment. After three such lessons Paul had failed miserably.
“For you it’ll probably be different. It’s different for everyone. You have to find your connection to power and focus it.”
Paul clung to a belief—or perhaps more a hope—that these wizards and witches were all a bunch of nut cases. Even after his experience with the Secundus, he wanted desperately to find a rational explanation for all the irrational crap he’d gone through. He’d rather just walk away from it all, start rebuilding his life, a normal life where wizards and witches and demons and pointy-eared elves were great fun in some book. But they wouldn’t let him. If he didn’t apprentice to someone they were afraid he’d start doing crazy stuff again. And then they’d all want him dead, including the Mad Queen and her fairy friends. Certainly, McGowan was better than that asshole Russian.
“The spirit of your wife didn’t just come to you,” McGowan continued. “You brought it with an act of will.”
He did remember how Suzanna and Cloe had come to him. His desire to see them again had combined with the pain of losing them, and that had coalesced into something real and solid deep inside him, a hot spark of need.
“Yes,” McGowan said, “I can feel it. Your power is coalescing nicely. Now focus on the paper, feed the power into the paper. And don’t think of it as heat. Remember, fire is an elemental. Think of it as pure fire, an elemental that can consume almost anything.”
McGowan had placed a cast-iron frying pan in the middle of the table with a crumpled piece of paper in it. Somehow, Paul was supposed to light that paper on fire with this magic stuff.
Play along,
Paul thought.
Play along and keep them happy.
Paul focused that hot spark of need on the paper in the pan. He felt some sort of energy swirling about him, a quiet maelstrom that didn’t manifest in a physical sense, and he fed some of that into the spark, though still nothing happened. But the spark responded almost as if it were alive, as if it was a conscious being rather than some form of elemental energy. And he sensed it hungering for more. He reluctantly gave it a little more, and it responded like a small kitten purring happily.
“That’s it,” McGowan said. “You’re headed in the right direction. I know this is difficult for a beginner, but you’re not strong enough to cause any harm. So focus and give it everything you’ve got.”
I want your all,
the spark said to him, a silent whisper buried somewhere deep in his soul.
“Don’t hold back,” McGowan said. “Push yourself.”
All right,
Paul thought.
He took hold of the maelstrom forcibly, gathered all of the energy he could handle and fed the whole thing into the spark.
A massive ball of fire roared to life in the middle of the table, and a blast of hot air forced Paul to stand up and step back, singing hairs on his face and arms. On the other side of the table McGowan shouted, “Holy shit!” He jumped up from his chair and backed away from the raging inferno licking at the ceiling of the kitchen.
The life Paul had sensed in the spark had come fully awake, though it was nascent, almost embryonic, and it wanted more from him. McGowan said something and waved his arms, somehow manipulated that maelstrom of energy and the spark receded. But as the flames died, Paul had the oddest feeling that the life he’d sensed hadn’t really left him, though sooty black smoke continued to rise from the ruin of the kitchen table as a reminder that something had come from somewhere and joined them in the kitchen, no matter how briefly.
Sarah, McGowan’s personal assistant, appeared in the kitchen entrance, feet spread, fists knuckled on her hips, an angry scowl on her face. “I warned you this kind of training should be done in your workshop.”
McGowan said something to her but Paul had stopped listening, had turned inward and focused on that spark of power within him. It was there, and he had nearly burned down McGowan’s house with it. He, Paul Conklin, had done some magic stuff, some very dangerous magic stuff. That, he couldn’t deny.
~~~
“Salt,” Katherine said, “silver and iron.” Paul and she were seated across from each other at the new kitchen table in McGowan’s home. Katherine lifted a mug of coffee to her lips, blew on it and took a sip. Paul sipped his own coffee as she continued. “Three substances that are unique when it comes to the Three Realms.”
It had taken three weeks to repair the ruin of the kitchen. Paul had melted the cast-iron frying pan into a blob of slag, and it had burned a hole right through the table, would have burned its way through the floor to the rooms below had McGowan not quenched it with his own powers. The ceiling and cabinets had been scorched, the appliances scored and blackened, an amazing amount of damage for such a simple little spell. For anyone else it would have taken a couple of months to gut the kitchen and repair it properly. But money talked, and apparently, McGowan had plenty of that kind of talk.
In the middle of the kitchen table sat a simple arrangement of salt and pepper shakers, a small basket of paper napkins, and a vase of colorful flowers. Katherine reached out, took the saltshaker, twisted off its cap and poured a thumbnail-size pile on the table in front of her. Then she pinched a bit of salt between her thumb and forefinger, and rubbing the two fingers together in a circular motion, she sprinkled a fine dusting of white crystals in front of her on the table. She did it slowly, almost absentmindedly.
She’d been like that since that night Paul had destroyed the Secundus demon and they’d learned he was a necromancer, distant, absent. Whenever Paul was around it was as if she wasn’t there, her thoughts focused elsewhere. Either that or she was in a hurry to be away from him.
“Salt is quite unique,” she said, drawing a line with her finger through the dusting of powder on the table. To a cursory glance one might think she was looking at her finger tracing the line through the salt, but her eyes remained unfocused in a thousand-yard stare. “It makes an excellent protective circle, though you can use almost any substance for that, and each has certain advantages. But lay down a ring of salt, push power into it and invoke the proper spells, and you can form an impenetrable circle, a circle no being can cross—mortal, demon or fey—a circle through which no magic can pass, through which no physical substance can pass.”
One side benefit if apprenticing to McGowan was that Paul had more opportunity to run into Katherine, purely by chance, of course, as had happened today.
She looked up from the salt on the table and her eyes settled on Paul, though it took them a long second to focus. “Salt can also break a spell, or mute it badly. You saw that happen when we were doused with seawater at the Secundus’s mansion. It’s good to carry a little salt on you. If you’re ever spelled, mix it with water and rub yourself down.”
Paul had come to McGowan’s place for one of his lessons. He’d run into Katherine, and as soon as she’d seen him she’d tried to leave, and he had to insist she sit down and talk to him, had to be almost rude about it. And then she’d managed to avoid really talking to him by turning it into an impromptu lesson.
“Now silver,” she said, “is quite interesting. Soft and compliant here on the Mortal Plane, you’d never think to make a knife or sword out of it. But take that same piece of silver into Faerie, and it’s harder than the hardest steel. Sidhe warriors carry thin rapiers made of pure silver, and they can easily cut a man in two with such a blade—at least in Faerie.”
She picked up her mug of coffee, held it just below the edge of the table and brushed the salt into it. Then she stood and crossed the room to the sink. Now that her bruises had healed, she’d returned to wearing expensive looking business suits, the skirt cut just above the knees, high-heels clacking on the kitchen floor. The suit would fit in any corporate boardroom, but it was cut to emphasize her figure, and somehow, on her, a business suit was something quite sexy. She dumped the salted remains of her coffee into the kitchen sink, rinsed the cup out with a little tap water and left it there. She said she looked good in high-heels, and she did, but Paul wasn’t looking at her shoes.
A voice whispered in Paul’s ear, “You’re staring at my daughter’s ass.”
Paul jumped and turned to find that McGowan had snuck up on him, was standing over him frowning unhappily. All he could think to say was, “Uhhhh!”
Katherine said, “Was he now?”
Paul spun back to Katherine. She was still standing with her back turned toward him, but had twisted about to look down at her own butt. “A girl likes to know her best . . . assets . . . are appreciated.” Her eyes lifted to look at Paul, and it was the Katherine he knew, no blushing, no shyness. She batted her eyelashes at him. “I’m flattered, Conklin.”
