Midnight Marked

The wind shifted and moved, directing the clear sound of a voice on the wind. We were looking for a sorcerer, and this definitely seemed like a potential hit. That meant I had to suck it up and walk into Longwood like the goddamn Sentinel of Cadogan House, with my head held high, my senses on alert, and my bravery intact.

But even still, and knowing what I knew now, I decided to take exceptionally quiet steps.

The gate led to a crushed-stone path that led straight through the cemetery and branched off to secondary trails.

The cemetery wasn’t very large, but it was well kept. Marble gravestones sat at perfect intervals along shorter rows, and there were neatly pruned peonies and rosebushes every dozen yards or so.

I stayed close enough to Ethan that our arms brushed when we walked. “Freaking Thriller,” I murmured.

“What was that?” Ethan whispered.

“Nothing,” I said, and stopped short when a figure became visible in the darkness. There, I said silently, gesturing toward her.

A woman stood in front of a grave, silhouetted in the moonlight. She was tall, slender, and pretty, with dark skin, high cheekbones, and dark, braided hair pulled into a knot atop her head. She wore a cropped white cardigan, white sneakers, and a long, pale pink dress of sharp, narrow pleats that fell over her swollen abdomen.

Ethan stepped forward, broke a twig in the process. The crack was as loud as a gunshot. She turned around, one hand on her belly, fingers splayed in protection, another in front of her, threatening magic.

I’d seen Catcher and Mallory throw fireballs before, and didn’t want any part of that. I put my hands in the air, and Ethan did the same.

The woman stared at us for a moment. “You don’t look like ghouls,” she said, but didn’t seem entirely sure about it.

“We are not,” Ethan said. “And you don’t look to be an evil sorceress.”

She snorted. “I most definitely am not. Could you move forward, into the moonlight?”

We did, hands still lifted in the air. It seemed safe enough movement; I’d yet to meet an evil, gestating supernatural.

“You’re vampires,” she said after a moment. “I recognize you. You’re Ethan and Merit, right?”

Ethan nodded, but his gaze stayed wary. “We are. How do you know us?”

She smiled guiltily. “Gossip magazines. They’re my guilty pleasure.” She cocked her head at us. “You’re in them a lot.”

We couldn’t argue with that.

She glanced at me. “And Chuck Merit’s your grandfather, right?”

That was a much better reason to be famous. “Yes, he is.”

“I’m sorry, I’m being rude,” she said, putting a hand on her chest. “You startled me. Sorry about that, everyone,” she added, looking around, hands patting the air like the simple movement was the thing that would keep the bodies in the ground.

Fear speared me, and I tried to logic through it. Surely her petite hands weren’t the only thing keeping not-yet-walking dead from rising. Still, just in case, I moved a little closer to Ethan, ever the brave Sentinel.

He was going to give me so much crap about this.

“I’m Annabelle Shaw,” she said. “I’m a necromancer.”

“Mortui vivos docent?” Ethan asked.

“Very good,” she agreed with a smile, and must have caught my look of confusion. “The phrase means, roughly, ‘the dead teach the living.’ In this case, the dead speak, I listen.”

“I didn’t know that was possible,” I said, thinking of Ethan’s temporary death and the possibility we might have communicated during it. “Necromancy, I mean.”

“There aren’t many of us,” she said. “It’s a pretty rare magic, which is probably a good thing. The dead are talkers.”

Dread skittered along my spine.

Annabelle winced suddenly, lifted a hand to her belly. I caught the flash of concern on Ethan’s face. He stepped forward and gripped her elbow to help keep her steady.

“I’m okay,” she said, and patted his arm. She smiled a little. “Thank you. Peanut kicks like a mule. If I wasn’t certain her father was human, I’d wonder. And I’m still fairly sure she’s destined to be a kickboxer.” She winced again, staring down at her belly as if her narrowed gaze could penetrate to the kicking child within. “You know, we’ll both be better off if I have a functioning bladder.

She rolled her eyes, blew out a breath, seemed to settle herself. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m a registered necromancer, affiliated with the Illinois MVD Association.”

If there was anything I’d learned about supernaturals, it was that they loved bureaucracy. Magic wasn’t worth doing unless a supernatural could throw a council or code of conduct at it, slap it on a T-shirt, and charge a due. And supernatural bureaucracy was just about as effective as the human version.

“How does that work, exactly?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“Well, I take commissions, usually work on retainer. People have questions—they want to know if the deceased was faithful, where they put the garage key, whatever. Or they have things they want to tell the deceased that they didn’t get to say while they were living.”

“That’s nice,” I said, trying to unknot the tension at the base of my spine.

“Sometimes,” she agreed, resting her linked hands on her belly. “And sometimes they just want to tell off the—and I’m quoting—‘rotting, whoremongering, philandering, dickless bastard who, if all is right and just in the world, is spending his days in the embrace of Satan’s eternal hellfire.’” She grinned. “I memorized that one.”

“People are people,” Ethan said.

“All day every day. Anyway, I try to balance out the commissions with public service. Sometimes I get a vibe that the deceased have things to say, like Mr. Leeds here, even if nobody’s requested a commission. I give them time to get it out so they can rest peacefully.”

If there was anything I wanted, it was a peaceful ghost.

“You were singing to him?” Ethan asked.

“I was.” She lifted a shoulder. “Every ’mancer has his or her own style. I like to sing. It calms them, makes them a little more cooperative. And that means I don’t need to use as much magic to keep them in check.”