Grave Debt Read online

  "I'm not going anywhere," he said, kissing the top of my head. "So you can just forget that right now. Fuck, I don't want to hurt you either, Vexa. But you wouldn't let me run away from you just because of that, so I'm not letting you out of it either, okay? We're in this together. We'll figure it out."

  "I'm sorry," I whispered into his chest, crying into the collar of his shirt, wishing I was strong enough to push him away.

  "Yeah, me too," he said softly, fingers combing through my hair. "But hey, this is just my luck, right? What deity did I piss off? I finally find someone who can deal with my weirdness, and it turns out she's a negative energy beacon."

  I laughed through my tears, shaking my head. The more time I spent with Ethan, the more I couldn't understand why anyone would curse him. I should have fought him, tried harder to make him leave. After what had happened with the curators especially, I wanted him still on my side.

  "Come on," Ethan said, pulling me toward the car. "Let's go home. You've got a lesson with your new teacher, remember?"

  "Oh, great," I said, getting into the Jeep. "And my makeup is ruined. Perfect."

  Ethan laughed as we pulled out of the parking lot. "Somehow I don't think he'll care."

  I wasn't sure what we'd find when we got home after leaving Cole and my aunt alone all morning. Maybe a smoking crater? But the house was just as we'd left it. And as we opened the front door, I heard unfamiliar laughter, surprisingly bright and honest.

  We found Cole and my aunt at the kitchen table almost where we'd left them, talking over empty coffee cups. Morgana, the cat, was sprawled out between them.

  "I was young and desperate," Aunt Persephona said. "It was all I could get my hands on!"

  "But Vermeer's Transfiguration?" Cole asked. "It's terrible! It's written like Vermeer turned to the dark arts after being rejected by poetry school."

  "You can't tell me you didn't love that corny nonsense when you first started," my aunt teased. "A boy like you? I bet you ate up purple-prose nonsense like Vermeer."

  "No, I preferred the too-edgy-to-live nonsense of Marquis Ofelia's Complacency of the Stars."

  "As though that's any better!"

  "If anything, it's worse."

  I cleared my throat and they stopped talking. Morgana opened her eyes and jumped off the table to come wind around my legs.

  "Back already!" Aunt Percy said, standing to greet us. "Any luck?"

  I shook my head, unsure if I wanted to explain it all, bending to stroke Morgana while I gathered my thoughts.

  "They said they couldn't help," I said, summarizing, "with Aethon or with Ethan's curse."

  "Ah, I'm sorry darling," Aunt Persephona said, and as I straightened up, she pulled me into a warm hug. "At least they let you in the door! It's progress."

  "I didn't figure they'd be any help, either," Cole said, tipping his chair onto its back legs. "I've tracked down some more productive leads. We don't need those assholes."

  "Four on the floor, Cole," Aunt Percy said casually. Cole rolled his eyes but obeyed, which surprised me. My aunt must have really gotten through to him.

  "Deshawn suggested we visit an associate of the curators," Ethan said. "A Fae who lives on this side of the mirror. I haven't really met him, but he was helping them with the candle, and he might have something for slowing down the progress of my curse temporarily."

  "Shouldn't stopping Aethon take priority over your hairy little problem?" Aunt Persephona asked.

  "I'd normally agree," I answered first. "But Ethan's curse is progressing fast. And it's only going to get faster the longer he's around us. If we don't do something about it now, we're not going to get the chance. And I'd much rather have him helping us than turning into a mindless monster that wants to kill us."

  "Fair point," Aunt Persephona conceded.

  "Whatever the Fae will have will be a Band-aid solution," Ethan said. "But if it stabilizes me long enough to deal with Aethon, that's all that matters."

  "In that case, we'd better get to work," Cole said, standing up and heading for the back yard. "Come on, we've got a lot to do."

  "We're starting now?" I said. "I just got home—"

  "You just said yourself we don't have any time to waste." Cole led me out into the garden, with Ethan and Aunt Percy following.

  Mort, the dog, jumped to his feet as I got up, hurrying over to sniff at me and butt his big shaggy head into my hand. I scratched him behind the ears absently as Cole kicked off his shoes and stepped out into the grass.

  "Come on," he said impatiently, shedding his jacket and throwing it onto the patio chair. "You promised me a lesson. We can go see about your boyfriend's curse later. I want to get an idea of where you're at."

  His T-shirt was a little too small, showing off how surprisingly muscular he was. He was thin and rangy, but definitely not weak.

  I took a deep breath, slipped off my shoes, and joined him in the grass.

  "What's the biggest thing you ever raised?" he asked.

  "Probably a human," I replied honestly. "I almost woke a dead horse once."

  "How many at once?"

  I had to think about that for a moment.

  "Um, four or five?" I said. "Right after I first touched the candle. I'd never done more than one at a time before that."

  "And were you actively controlling them?" he asked. "Or just letting them bumble around chewing on things?"

  "Um, I've never really actively controlled more than one at a time," I admitted. "And with humans, it wasn't so much actively controlling them as much as just nudging them in the direction of the morgue drawers so I could put them back down as quickly as possible."

  "Still pretty impressive," Cole said with a shrug that said it might have impressed someone other than him, who was chronically un-impressible. "Now, what's the smallest thing you've ever controlled? Do you even know?"

  I thought about it for a moment but I didn't have a solid answer. Probably some kind of bug.

  "And how many of those do you think you could directly control at once?" Cole continued.

  I didn't have a solid answer for that either, but bugs were so simple and easy to control and I’d done it before. If I really tried again, the number would be exceptionally high.

  Cole raised his arms, and I jumped as a swarm of dead insects rose from seemingly nowhere. They filled the air around him and the grass at his feet, moving in intricate patterns and graceful synchronized routines. Cole didn't even look strained.

  "Never waste your energy trying to control one big thing when you can control a million little things," Cole said. "A rival necromancer can force you out of something you're controlling and take it from you. Even follow your energy back to you and attack you directly that way. Do you want him to have one big target, or a million tiny completely disposable pinpricks? Try to take one of these bugs from me."

  "I've never done that before," I said, an arm crossed over my chest.

  "Just try," Cole said. "Ninety percent of necromancy is instinctive. That's why wizards can't stand it, jealous bastards. You don't need to sit studying formulas and techniques. You just have to figure out what you want to do and do it."

  I wasn't so sure it was that easy, but I closed my eyes and reached out with my energy. The swarm of insects was so dense that I could barely distinguish one insect from the rest.

  "It moves like it's all one thing," I said, frowning. "The energy reads like it's just one life form."

  "It is," Cole explained. "It's me. My energy, moving them together. But it's more than that. Part of really understanding necromancy is understanding the connections between all living things. The common understanding of necromancy, that it's just about messing with dead stuff, is missing the point.

  “Necromancy is about life. About moving life from one place to another. It's about understanding that everything, the entire planet, is one big organism. Your cells, the bacteria that live inside you, they're all still you, but also their own distinct organisms, living and dying ind
ependent of you. You are the earth. Your cells and bacteria are humans and animals, living their own lives so far down you can barely even conceive of them.

  “But you're all still one thing. And once you realize everything is just one thing, all alive and connected and working together, necromancy can do just about anything."

  I struggled to understand the concepts, but I wasn't sure I quite got it. The bacteria inside might be part of me, but I couldn't tell them to do anything or bring them back when they died.

  "I've read about necromancers who specialized in revitalizing plants," Cole said. "They realized plants are basically constantly dying, so they could constantly channel energy into them and direct that energy, to make them grow bigger and stronger. Another specialist learned to seize control of dead microbial life. Imagine pissing someone off and in retaliation they kill off all your gut flora. Hope you didn't enjoy digesting anything, dumb fuck."

  I laughed.

  "I mean, is that really useful in a fight?" I asked.

  "Who's going to fight you when they're all shitting themselves to death with IBS and Crohn's disease?"

  Ethan, standing on the sidelines, snorted.

  "Necromancy isn't really great for direct head-to-head fighting," Cole said. "But it's great for making sure the fight never gets started. Preparing ahead of time makes a necromancer pretty much unbeatable."

  "And Aethon has had centuries," I said, my hopes sinking.

  "No, fuck him," Cole said sharply. "He doesn't have the faintest fucking idea what's coming for him. We're going to come flying out of his blind spot to sucker punch him in the teeth, all right? Now, are you going to try and take one of these bugs from me or not?"

  "Oh, right."

  I closed my eyes and focused again, picking out one of the small insects, which was easier said than done. I pushed my energy into it, trying to force Cole's out. Cole patiently waited, not even resisting, as I struggled to unseat him. Just as I was about to succeed, Cole cut off his connection to the insect. It dropped to the ground, dead again.

  "See?" he said. "Completely pointless. Even if you were faster at taking control from me, it only takes me a second to let go of that insect, and then I have a million more to take its place. You could try to take the whole swarm one at a time, but good fucking luck with that."

  "Could I take it all at once?" I asked, wrinkling my nose as I tried to grasp what he said. "You said it's all really one thing, right?"

  "You're starting to get it," Cole said with a smile. "But nah, I doubt it. It takes more than just saying everything is connected to be able to take advantage of it. You've got to internalize it, really believe it. And then you've got to be able to separate it from me all at once. It's way easier to push me out of an insect then it is to push someone out of a large, complex organism."

  "But it is possible?" I asked.

  "Yeah, but don't focus on that," Cole said dismissively. "You're not going to be able to do it right now. Focus on trying to take a single insect for now. It took you a good twenty seconds before. With practice you should be able to do it pretty much instantly. Then we'll try doing small groups. Try again."

  I scowled. I didn't like being told I couldn't do something. I closed my eyes and tried to look at the swarm as a single thing. One big, moving creature. I bit my lip, mentally pulling back, like zooming out on a camera. If I could just see it from far enough away, it'd be easier. But every time a section of the swarm moved unexpectedly away from the central mass or darted behind Cole, I lost track of them. If they would just hold still, or if I could just corral them all together into something more solid, I was sure I could do this.

  I opened my eyes, startled, as something heavy leaned against my leg. I looked down as Mort butted his nose against my hand, and I reached down to scratch the huge dog's ears absentmindedly. He had a couple of very confused fleas wandering around. They wouldn't get anything out of him, but I didn't want him carrying them inside where they'd end up on Morgana, either. I buried my fingers in Mort's fur as I turned that thought over in my mind, glancing at Cole. Was that the problem? I was trying to catch individual fleas without acknowledging the dog they were on? That wasn't a great metaphor, but still. I couldn't acknowledge the swarm as a whole because I wasn't acknowledging that Cole was a part of it. He'd said it himself. They were him.

  I tried again, remembering how I'd wrapped my power around Ethan's curse like hands. I closed those same vast spiritual hands around the swarm and Cole, enclosing them.

  "What are you doing?" Cole asked with a frown.

  "Hush, I'm trying something," I told him.

  "This is supposed to be a lesson, not experimentation time," Cole said, sounding annoyed.

  "Just shut up and let me try this," I hissed.

  I held Cole and the swarm in my “hands,” their energy pooled together like holding water. It was a struggle to hold onto that visualization. It was not many things, but one, with Cole at the center. And if I could separate Cole, like the yolk from an egg, or snip the swarm off, like fruit from a tree . . . If I could just visualize it the right way—not like pouring in and washing him out but like surrounding and separating—

  Suddenly, the swarm of insects around Cole froze. Cole's eyes widened as the cloud of bugs drifted toward me. I opened my eyes, grinning.

  "Okay," Cole said. "That's impressive."

  My grin only got wider.

  "Now," Cole said, crossing his arms over his chest. "How are you going to control them?"

  Shit.

  "Uh . . ."

  I tried to get back to that visualization of the cupped hands, but the bugs were moving under their own instinctive control now, meandering around aimlessly. I couldn't corral them together again. I cursed under my breath as I struggled to directly control them all at once. It was much, much harder to see them as a unit when I was trying to grasp each of their tiny little minds, seeing through their compound eyes, feeling each twitchy little limb.

  Within moments the swarm had almost completely dispersed, and I struggled to hold onto the twenty or so in front of me. Cole laughed, and with a casual sweep, took control of them. After another few moments, he'd regathered the rest of the swarm.

  "Done experimenting yet?" he asked.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, flustered and frustrated.

  "You're still thinking too big," he said. "Necromancers like us work best on the small scale. Having all that power is impressive but it doesn't do you any good if you can't control it."

  "Then what's the point of it?" I asked, as Mort flopped over in the grass next to me. "Why have the candle, why have all the power, if it's useless?"

  "It's not useless," Cole said with a huff. "Any more than a jet plane is useless just because you don't know how to fly it. You've got to train first. Now focus. Clearly you can take control, but you have trouble directly managing more than one subject at a time. Let's work on that."

  Chapter 9

  For the next hour, Cole drilled me on a dozen different aspects of basic necromancy, some of which I'd never even tried before. Again and again, the result was the same. I was like a barroom brawler, all raw force and no technique, trying to learn Judo. By early afternoon, I was sweaty and exhausted, and Cole looked similarly strained. Ethan sat on the patio watching us, occasionally dozing off, Mort lying at his feet.

  "You've got to sharpen your energy into a point," Cole said. "A point!"

  "A point is too hard," I said, hassling him with a cloud of midges. "Hands are easier!"

  "Hands don't work!" Cole snatched the midges and sent them right back at me, and I retaliated by sending a dead sparrow to nest in his hair. "You're supposed to be fencing and instead you're slap-fighting!"

  Ethan laughed from the patio, both at Cole's words and at the sight of him shrieking and batting away the sparrow attempting to take a dusty bird shit in his hair.

  He showed me how to cause targeted cell death—the same technique Aethon had used to wither parts of us during our fi
ght. I was not good at it. I was also not very good at controlling lots of tiny things at once. Ditto for identifying dead things at a distance or directing a single undead thing through a series of complicated actions. I was very good at fuck all.

  "Why am I so bad at this?" I complained, scrubbing my hands over my face.

  "You're not," Cole said, exasperated. "You've barely started. Did you expect to be a master of it all at once?"

  "Kind of!" I said. "It's supposed to be instinctive, and I've been dealing with it all my life. Between that and the candle, I should be amazing at this!"

  "Well, get over that," Cole said, impatiently. "This takes time and daily practice. And you've been doing your best to pretend it wasn't there for twenty years. It's going to take a little while to get good at it."

  "I don't have that kind of time," I said. "I needed to have been good enough to face Aethon yesterday."

  "That's not how it works," Cole said. "All right. All right, let's try this. You're overthinking and second-guessing yourself. You need to move instinctively."

  He turned away, looking around for a moment, and finally picked up a big stick from the overgrown brush under the maple tree.

  "I'm gonna try to hit you with a stick," he explained. "You try to stop me with the necrosis thing."

  "What if I actually hit you with it?" I asked, worried.

  "Frankly, I don't think you will," Cole said. "And if you do, you managed to heal it on the mutt, you can heal it on me. I'm curious to see that in action again, anyway. You ready?"

  He raised the stick. I glanced at Ethan, who looked a little worried. But I took a deep breath and steadied myself.

  "All right, I'm rea—"

  Cole was already swinging the branch at my head full force before the words were out. I yelped and darted out of the way only for him to hit me hard across the back with it.

  "Ow!" I shouted, hurrying out of his range. A stinging welt rose across my back, wider than my thumb. "Jesus shit, that hurt!"

  "It's supposed to," Cole said. "So stop me next time. You ready?"