This is Ch. 4 of an ongoing story.
I started this story as a way to practice writing and the community here has been so warm and welcoming. I love reading and writing alongside y’all and welcome any and all feedback. Goal is to have this thing complete by July 2022 and I’m speaking it into existence.
I’ve been so lucky to have incredible beta readers who’ve dedicated their own time to my navel-gazing creative outlet and really elevated it in a way that is SO exciting. Thank you Berry, who I brag every chapter, but how could I not? B gives the story a rhythm despite how wildly incoherent the early drafts are, lol. And Thank you Ash, who’s thoughts have been an amazing refocus on connection and chemistry when I get lost in the weeds.
Last note: things are getting warmer…
There were no glaring overhead lights in Lucy’s apartment, only soft recessed lighting and well-placed lamps. It was tranquil, with enough amber light to see and no more. Shadow loomed in the corners and hovered, as if waiting to swallow the room whole. In the quiet of the drive Rhea found her anger about the feed faded as the details of the murders turned in her mind. She tapped a note into her phone:
Human body, won’t rot
A spirit, trapped between worlds
Sick magick, cyclone
Rhea looked at what she wrote. A memory of the cyclone, pulling her in, surfaced in her mind. She then added Hungry.
As soon as they returned to the apartment, Rhea sat on the sofa and stared at the screen. Her bones felt hot and itchy and her skin burned as sharply as it did in the ether. Rhea rubbed her forearms as she recalled the cyclone’s relentless, devouring pull. She looked over at the vampire, who watched her with concern.
Lucy held the documents given to her by Drew in her hand.
“How could she have killed herself?” asked the vampire. There was a plain curiosity to her voice, as if she wondered how someone could have printed something with a misspelled word without noticing. Her eyes scanned the documents impassively. Rhea wondered if Lucy really didn’t understand the gravity of the situation which, after arranging a feed to coincide with their examination of the body, wouldn’t surprise her.
Of course, the vampire may just have forgotten what it meant to be human.
“I’m not sure,” answered Rhea. She stared at a knot in the wood of the table as acrid helplessness bubbled inside her.
“If you won’t see a doctor,” Lucy said behind her, “should you eat something?”
“I’m fine,” Rhea said, too quickly. She was hungry, but admitting it felt like a confession. She was sick of her weak, traitorous body. The same body that fell into the vampire’s arms the moment it was separated from her consciousness.
Lucy raised a brow and stared skeptically, then walked towards her kitchen.
“We still don’t understand any of this,” Rhea called, despondent. She felt a tension headache blooming and rubbed her temples. Lucy sat beside her and placed a small tray of cherry tomatoes on the table. Rhea took one and popped it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, the skin was tender and juice was earthy-sweet.
Lucy said, “That’s not true. I just figured out there was nothing of use in any of the paperwork Drew gave me.” Rhea dropped her face to her hands and scoffed.
There was a smile in the vampire’s voice. She asked “Isn’t this your area?” Lucy’s tone was light, irreverent, and one Rhea now recognized as something the vampire used to needle her. “Necromancers. Masters of the forces of death and all,” Lucy continued. Rhea lifted her head, fully prepared to berate a smirking vampire for belittling her crisis.
But Lucy’s eyes were lit with tenderness that caught Rhea off-guard. The vampire smiled, warm as the amber light of the lamps that glowed in the darkness. Lucy was teasing her again, but gently so. For levity–or just a mutual reprieve from the horrors of the day. Her eyes, thought Rhea, were an invitation– for Rhea to return the smile, to open herself to their odd solidarity.
So she would feel less alone.
Rhea sank back into the couch. The material of her shirt was suddenly constricting. A caustic awareness of the edges of her skin emerged in her conscious mind and even in sitting she felt ungainly.
And Lucy still looked at her. The vampire’s skin was still pale but lustrous like her eyes. There was a quiet finesse about Lucy that, when tied to her pulsating arrogance, left Rhea on-guard. Lucy felt perpetually one step ahead of her, and Rhea still was compelled to follow.
More than anything, Rhea wished she knew how to be. Just a few hours ago, the vampire was a predator– a calculated creature whose narrow arms made impossibly sharp angles in black sleeves. But when the vampire acted like a human, Rhea simply did not know how to be. Rhea didn’t know what Lucy wanted in response to this gazing and easy-handed prodding. Perhaps if she were different– perhaps if she was someone who knew how to be when these things happened.
But all she felt was kaçak iddaa hopeful longing that was, after all, a distraction. Once dissipated, she would be left only with the keen ache she felt every time she allowed herself to think of what might happen if she failed to stop the killer.
“What I saw contradicted everything I know about magick,” Rhea said.
Lucy’s eyes shadowed with concern, “Tell me.”
The words spilled out of her. She told Lucy everything without stopping– finding the witch’s spirit. Without her guide. The cyclone. “She’s bound,” said Rhea. “Well, her spirit is. It’s imprisoned. Tortured, even.” She couldn’t stop herself, necromancer secrets be damned. Rhea felt a mild tremble in her hands in relief.
“Well, that’s good news, right? All witchcraft traditions bind,” said Lucy. “And I’ve certainly seen my fair share of trapped spirits over the generations and many seemed tortured. Call in a necromancer, they clear it right up.”
Rhea couldn’t move; her heart pounded in fear. Finally she shook her head.
“Darling,” the vampire asked gently, ” I can’t think your coven would be very happy with me if you were harmed. Should we call someone? About the bleeding?”
Rhea exhaled, “Binding magick is common,” she continued, ignoring Lucy’s question, “but binds should only happen in the physical world. In the otherworld, spirits are supposed to be free. The cyclone is a binding spell in a spirit realm. It just…shouldn’t exist.”
“And yet,” mused Lucy.
“Which means,” continued Rhea, “I don’t know how to fix. I don’t even know where to start.”
Rhea looked away. Her eyes burned with hot, panicked tears.
“Hey,” Lucy said. Her voice was soft but firm. Rhea felt the cushions shift beside her as Lucy slid closer. The vampire moved gingerly, as if Rhea were a wild creature. Rhea turned her head to see Lucy watching her cautiously.
Panic surged again within Rhea– Lucy’s look of concern exploded a reservoir of memory from the life she left behind. Her father was a brilliant scholar but a difficult man. Which meant her family moved more times than she bothered to remember because he couldn’t keep a job.
Rhea’s mother often said when she fell in love with Rhea’s father–who was white and, at the time, a professor at her college– that she knew that their union would require sacrifice for both reasons. Her own father, Rhea’s grandad, forbade their wedding. It was the late 60’s, of course, and they were a mixed race couple. He said her fiance had no idea the danger she would face, alone in these places she followed him to.
She wouldn’t be alone, Rhea’s father insisted, because she would have him.
She would, however, be one of the only Black people. Her mother remembered Rhea’s early years as challenging, but their family was a happy one. At least for a little while. And that’s what Rhea remembered too.
Until another move, where she would need to walk away from everything familiar to start again. The only constant were furtive looks of concern from the adults around her– her teachers, her father’s colleagues. Her friends’ parents. They looked at her the way Lucy did now.
She knew those looks could cascade into something terrible in the blink of an eye.
It was almost funny, she thought, how pain that seemed far away could be summoned by a whisper and surface, strong as ever. She hated having to guess what they wanted to see from her, what would make them unconcerned And she feared what would happen if she guessed wrong.
Her chest clenched and a vile slurry of anger bubbled up– the sensation was a relic, silent for decades.
She had survived, of course, and tried her best to feel satisfied in becoming stronger for it. And on her own, she was free. The choice to abandon her old life for witchcraft wasn’t easy. But witchcraft opened something within her– something molten that now flowed through her with ancient power. It became something she couldn’t bear to live without.
She took solace in it’s unflinching nature. In the outside world, she felt others recoil when faced with something beyond the tiny parcel of what they know.
Witches do not look away.
Rhea was distracted from the memory when Lucy rubbed her shoulder. Gone was the look of concern. “Have courage, darling,” said Lucy. “Beings who use magick to harm others may seem strange to you, but it’s been my life for more than one-and-a-half centuries.”
Rhea, puzzled, asked “Is that good?”
“Absolutely!” said Lucy, with enthusiasm. “I either work for them or I’m hired by the corrupt beings they’ve fucked over.” Rhea looked at her, unconvinced. “It means I’ve dealt with people like the murderer,” continued Lucy. “A lot. I know their circle. I probably already know their friends.”
“Why does that matter?” asked Rhea.
Lucy smiled. “It means I know their weak points.” Rhea leaned in, silent. “They think they’re gods,” said Lucy, “and they forget all beings are fallible.” She flicked a brow knowingly and said, “I can prove it.”
Rhea’s kaçak bahis thoughts bobbled; not least of which was Lucy’s hand on her shoulder and why she allowed the vampire to touch her so freely. Lucy continued, “This was a spell, cast by a human. We just need to find them and stop it.”
“Ok,” said Rhea. She tried to say it with conviction.
“Look at me,” said Lucy.
Rhea felt the curve of her face rotate towards the vampire, her body obeying before the command settled in her conscious mind. The vampire said, “I know the beings who do these things and they’re all the same. The murderer may have shock and awe on their side but underneath it always comes down to greed.” She lifted her hand and stroked the soft skin of Rhea’s face just above her jaw with the backs of her pale fingers.
Lucy looked deep into Rhea’s eyes, the urgency to her voice now took on a feral quality. “And you have me. Vampires are relentless, darling. I’ll find them and tear them apart if you need me to.”
“Why would you do that?” whispered Rhea. Sensations, scattered and pleasant, traveled down her neck from the place where Lucy touched her. The vampire’s lips curled into a smile, this one crueler than the last. There was a sharpness to her features that emerged alongside the bloodlust.
And Rhea felt only relief. She marveled at how strange life could be– a few weeks ago the savage qualities of the vampire would have curled her lips in revulsion. Now she sat a scant few inches from a vampire who’s fierceness radiated off her like a large cat about to strike.
And now Rhea was grateful.
The vampire placed her hand back on Rhea’s shoulder. Her fingers grazed Rhea’s skin just beyond the collar of her shirt. “Without fail, there’s a weak point– a loose end, a spurned someone with an axe to grind. I’ve become pretty good at finding those weak points.”
Rhea sighed. “It’s hard to feel hopeful for a weak point when we’re starting with nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, darling,” said Lucy. “We know it’s a bind. And tomorrow we’ll know more. And after that even more, and then the whole thing will collapse in on itself. Or we will figure out who the caster is and I’ll destroy them and you’ll go back to your normal life.”
Rhea sighed as she took solace in the vampire’s terrible words.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” said Lucy. “How do you know it’s a bind?”
Rhea took a deep breath as an image of the murdered woman’s screaming face surfaced in her mind’s eye. “She’s not there because she wants to be,” said Rhea. “She’s trapped. And that’s how you control a spirit–you bind them. The problem is, binding spells need something material to stick to.” She interwove her fingers together tightly to illustrate then said, “With a body, the spell sticks to the physical form and sort of– rides along until it’s lifted. That’s how we keep students deviating from what we teach them back on the island. And from teaching it to others. We bind them; the spell constricts the body and causes pain should they reveal too much about what they learned, making it impossible to share. With a spirit, who doesn’t have a body, you use the bind to trap them. But to do that, you need a physical location. A home, a piece of jewelry– something human-made.”
“And that’s what that cyclone was?” asked Lucy. “The physical location?”
“Yes,” answered Rhea. “But the problem is, if it were physical, it couldn’t exist in the otherworld.” Lucy was silent for a few moments then crossed her arms over her belly and stared off in contemplation.
“I think that’s the first time you haven’t had anything to say,” mused Rhea. She wasn’t sure why she decided to prod the vampire.
Lucy gave her a knowing look and said, “I guess it’s a big day for first times.”
Rhea swallowed, “Breaking binds usually just depends on the strength of the caster but not without the material origin point of the spell. But the murderer somehow made a prison within the beyond. So there is no origin point. I don’t even know if it exists.” She sighed, “I could always try targeting the cyclone. But the idea of going back, I, I just,” She felt a surge of panic spike hot through her and her lungs clenched.
Lucy interjected. “There has to be another way, surely.” Rhea didn’t bother to question the relief that followed in the wake of Lucy’s certainty. “We’ll figure it out. You worry too much,” continued Lucy. “The killer isn’t going to be more powerful than you. You’re the one.” Lucy poked a bony finger into the soft flesh of Rhea’s arm with each word, for emphasis. “Powers whispered of, but unknown for generations.” She spoke with an affected drawl, mimicking the flamboyant rhetoric used by witch covens in formal rituals.
“Stop it,” Rhea said wearily. Lucy must have grown close to at least one coven if she had been to enough rituals to parrot their affectations. Doubly so given the witches therein were willing to talk shit about Rhea to a vampire. Since initiating into the coven, Rhea’s abilities had developed at an illegal bahis extraordinary rate. Word spread, as it always does among witches. Last year was her 27th in practice and Greta announced proudly to anyone who would listen that she had the abilities of someone twice her age. At this rate, said Greta, Rhea’s abilities may even surpass Kivan and her own within the next decade.
It felt like a papercut every time.
“What? You don’t want to hear me jabber on about how special you are? Why ever not?” The vampire spoke theatrically, and mimed placing a hand over her heart in feigned shock.
“No, it’s awful,” said Rhea with a shudder. “And how do you even know about that?” Rhea tried to sound irritated but she only succeeded at mortified.
“Gossip travels fast among the supernatural,” Lucy said with a shrug. “Our worlds overlap more often than you would think.” Rhea wondered what the local vampires said about her; she hadn’t thought much about it until now, though she had met with them once a month for decades. Then, Patrick’s image surfaced in her mind. The round blue iris, stark against the boozy red and the fine bones of his face, delicate and sharp line Lucy’s.
She frowned. “What does Patrick say? About me?”
Lucy paused, lightly stunned, only for half a moment. “What makes you think my brother talks about you at all?”
“Well, then why was he screaming about witches and abominations?” said Rhea.
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Because he knows acting like that irritates Kyle. Patrick is…sensitive. Always has been, even when we were human.” Frustration edged her voice. “Patrick is moping about because he’s been dumped. Again. And when he’s upset, he gets self-destructive.” She sighed and shook her head. That’s part of the reason I agreed to help with all this in the first place,” she said. “Patrick’s been fucking up and losing standing within Kyle’s circle. A place I worked very hard to install him into, mind you.” She closed her eyes for a few moments and gave a belabored sigh, “I can’t even remember how many times this has happened. Usually I bring him to whatever part of the world I’m in, get her off his mind off of her. But he wouldn’t come this time. I was afraid he would do something stupid.”
“Stupider than normal?” asked Rhea. Lucy shot her a warning look. “Sorry,” said Rhea, “He’s not stupid but he does cause problems. My friend back on the island calls him ‘The Ginger Scourge.'” Lucy chuckled. Warmth bloomed in Rhea’s chest and, overwhelmed, she looked away.
“Family,” Lucy added with a shrug.
“Well, then what do the supernatural say about you?” said Rhea.
The vampire smirked, “That I’m terribly fearsome. But also impossibly glamorous and irresistible.”
A laugh rolled through Rhea, “I set myself up for that.”
“They say you don’t know if she’ll take your blood or your virtue,” countered Lucy.
Rhea broke into giggle. Because a vampire said something silly. The strangeness of the situation still haunted her.
Lucy’s face shifted as she looked at Rhea. “They say I’m like a ghost– that I just materialize in the right place at the right time.”
Rhea retorted, “That doesn’t make you a ghost, that just makes you a vampire. And lucky.”
Lucy crossed her arms in mock-indignation, “Darling, I’ll have you know that’s a slur these days.”
“Saying you’re lucky?” asked Rhea.
“Saying the Irish are lucky. It’s like saying we’re drunks,” said Lucy. “Terrible stereotypes. It’s a long story, but I was given the Gift as a result of the terrible luck of an Irishman who was stone-cold sober at the time.”
Rhea paused, “I’m– I’m sorry…”
Lucy waved her off. “I’m joking darling. Mostly. Don’t worry.” She uncrossed her arms and her hand returned to Rhea’s back. “The Gift happened to me, but I’ve made the best of it. I won’t spend my afterlife wallowing. And I’ve long come to accept that the only things Americans know of Ireland are lucky, green, and whiskey.”
Rhea thought for a moment then said, “And the potatoes.”
Lucy’s brow raised just a millimeter. In a begrudging voice she acknowledged, “And some of you know about the potatoes.”
“If I didn’t know any better,” said Rhea, “I’d think you’re trying to cheer me up.” Why, she thought to herself, did she keep bantering?
“All I’m doing,” said Lucy cheerily, “is helping you understand that the killer doesn’t stand a chance. We have you, we have me, and we have all your friends back on that island.” She made a broad west-ward sweep of her arm. Rhea nodded. Hope spread through her slowly, like liquid from an overturned glass crawling towards the surface edge.
Then she felt the mist-magick lap at her skin.
Within her mind’s eye, Rhea saw an image of herself curled against the vampire. The image appeared streaked and spotty, as if she watched through aged goggles. Lucy held her and rubbed her arm soothingly. Rhea’s hand rested on the vampire’s thigh, atop her dress. The fine material slid smooth against her hand and her ring and last finger grazed Lucy’s bare skin just beneath the hem.
She pushed the image away and felt a brief falling sensation. Rhea pulled away from Lucy and rubbed her eye, “I think that mist-magick got me.”