Low Midnight

Chapter 16

BY DAWN, he was driving back down the freeway.

Perhaps Nolan and company aren’t as harmless as we thought.

He didn’t have a clue. But a guy named Milo Kuzniak dying under mysterious circumstances—he had to check it out. Layne hadn’t been able to tell him much, just that Milo didn’t have a mark on him, which ruled out Eddie the skinwalker and Nolan’s rifle, and nobody knew what had happened. Cormac had told him to call the police, let them investigate. But that would have invited scrutiny of everything else Layne had going on at his compound. So, no, he would not call the police. He wanted Cormac.

Cormac kept thinking he should have refused to help. But he also thought he could stick around just long enough to get an idea about what happened. Maybe he’d find the key to the whole damned puzzle.

Amelia had him pack a few things, different odds and ends than what he usually carried around in his pockets: red pillar candles and a round, frameless mirror. There was something familiar about the items, but it was from one of her memories, not his, and she was keeping thoughts about it to herself. Something he ought to learn to do, since she always seemed to be able to tell exactly what he was thinking.

Because you’re very emotional. You do a good job of hiding it from everyone, but behind all that you’re rather a mess.

Last thing he needed was the back of his own head psychoanalyzing him. He knew he was a mess. He dealt with it. He turned up the radio in the Jeep so he wouldn’t have to hear himself think.

The sun was up and burning off the winter chill when he arrived at Layne’s compound. He turned into the drive, ready to roll all the way to the front of the house, but a body lay in the middle of the dirt tracks. Milo Kuzniak the younger, splayed face up, arms and legs spread out, no obvious signs of violence on the body.

He considered slamming the Jeep into reverse and getting the hell out. This—approaching a potential crime scene, disturbing a crime scene with no intention of telling the cops about it—was exactly the kind of thing Ben and Kitty were worried about him getting into. This could get him thrown back in jail.

You have gloves, yes?

Sometimes, he wondered if Amelia wasn’t worse than he was. He found his leather gloves shoved on the dashboard.

Layne had been watching for him. He came walking up from the house as soon as Cormac left the Jeep, and had a rifle tucked under his arm. Cormac glanced at the house, wondering if Mollie was around. He hoped not, what with people dying and all. He ignored Layne and went to the body.

Cormac wasn’t a forensics guy. He’d read a couple of books because Amelia wanted to learn, and he figured, why not. Mostly, it told him where the TV shows got everything wrong. But he knew a little. The body’s stiffness meant Milo had been lying here for a while, but he hadn’t started to stink. His eyes were open, his lips slack. No blood, no wounds, no nothing. The guy looked smaller, somehow.

He questioned Amelia: did magic do this?

We’ll find out.

“Thanks for coming,” Layne said, which was decent of him. He seemed a lot calmer now than he had on the phone. The panic had subsided. That made Cormac suspicious.

“I ought to just keep driving, Layne. I’m doing you a favor.”

“I figure I paid you enough for the werewolf job, I earned a little extra work from you.”

That was exactly what Cormac thought he’d say. He gave Layne a look and stepped up to the body. He studied the surrounding area for anything out of place, signs of violence, a fight, or magic. As it was, Milo might have had a heart attack and fallen over. This needed a coroner, not a magician.

Kneeling by the body, he looked closer. Maybe not a heart attack—he didn’t look like he’d died in pain. He wasn’t tense, curled up—his muscles hadn’t been clenched. Really, the guy looked like he’d been surprised. He hadn’t even had time to turn around. Something had happened that he hadn’t expected, and it had been instantaneous.

Milo’s arms were outstretched, his hands turned up, and soot streaked his palms, as if he’d held an exploding firecracker. Or put his hands up to fend off an attack.

Cormac looked up at Layne, who stood a ways off, refusing to approach the body. “You see what happened?”

“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.

Without her, the apartment would be very quiet.

Cormac. Please come and talk to me, face-to-face.

He let out a breath and fell into their mental space, his memory turned real. He was standing in the middle of a damp meadow, looking around for her. The place was cold this time. A sharp, wet wind was blowing, the kind that came through the mountains in autumn, smelling of impending snow. Cormac shivered, wondering why he couldn’t just make a wish and bring back summer. This was all in his head. But the bad weather reflected his mood. Both their moods.

The trees across the valley swayed in the wind, the trunks creaking.

Amelia appeared, just far enough away that she had to raise her voice to be heard. She stood primly, as if she were arguing her case in court. “Without Kuzniak’s book, without learning what happened to him, our options are limited.”

“I already told you the option I pick—quit the whole thing.”

“I think we should go back to the plateau.” She seemed unaffected by the chill, maybe because her old-fashioned gown with its thick wool and high collar kept her warm. Maybe because she didn’t have a body anymore, she couldn’t feel the cold. “I want to try my spell.”

“No. It’s not right. The dead should stay dead. Let them lie, don’t scare them up and try to talk to them, don’t bring back the past.” He looked across the way, studying the clouds rolling in from the west, gauging what the weather was going to do next. As if it were real weather.

Amelia moved around him, putting herself in his line of sight, trying to catch his gaze. He kept looking out to the wild, which he understood better.

“If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were having moral qualms. What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid. It’s just wrong.”

“Are you afraid your own dead will rise up to speak to you? To berate you? How many people have you killed, Cormac? Including the monsters. You’ve never told me that. You never let that knowledge slip out.”

He’d never told anyone. Not even Ben knew all the hunts he’d been on, all the contracts he’d taken, the exact number of people he’d killed. He’d never asked. Amelia was the first person who had.

He knew the number without having to stop and count. “Eighteen.”

She didn’t seem at all horrified. Just nodded thoughtfully. “The first was the werewolf who killed your father, when you were sixteen? And the latest was the skinwalker, the one that put you in prison?”

“There was the demon back in prison. And the werewolf in Chinatown, the one I stabbed. He’s eighteen.”

“You count the demon as one of your kills?”

“It was sentient. Devious. It was a hunter. Maybe it wasn’t a human being, but it wasn’t an easy kill, so why not count it?”

She raised an eyebrow. “One might make an argument that it was my kill, not yours.”

“All right—seventeen and a half kills, that make you happy?”

“Fair enough. The rest of them—were they all vampires and werewolves and other monsters? Have you ever killed a mortal, normal human?”

“Two. Two of those were human.”

“Any regrets?”

“No. They all deserved to die. I’m pretty sure they did.” Even the one who’d just gotten in the way had chosen to be there, had known what would happen if he stayed. That was what Cormac figured.

“Then why do the dead haunt you? Why are you afraid of speaking to them?”

Her questions, her pushing him, made his neck stiff. Caused an itching deep in his spine, and he wanted to swat at the bugs crawling there. He walked. Realized he was pacing, like a predator in a cage, and didn’t much care. Kept going, down the sloping hill along the creek. But this wasn’t reality, wasn’t a physical space, and Amelia appeared at his side, keeping pace with him. Studying him. He didn’t turn to look at her.

“Cormac?”

It wasn’t the dead that scared him. He wasn’t afraid of hearing from any of the people he’d killed. When he couldn’t sleep at night, it wasn’t any of their voices he heard, keeping him awake.

“Cormac,” she said. “Your walls are going up again.”

He hadn’t realized he was doing it. In prison, when she’d first tried to contact him, her spirit edging its way into his mind, he’d resisted. He’d built walls, imagined them going up stone by stone to keep her out. She’d almost driven him crazy, trying to break through. He’d finally let her in so they could stop the demon that was killing prisoners.

The wind, the freezing snow—his mind was going cold.

He said, then, “My father.” He stopped walking, still couldn’t look at her. But he could at least stop trying to escape.

“If you start speaking to the dead … you’re afraid you would have to start speaking to him.”

He didn’t even have to channel the man’s spirit. Cormac heard his voice berating him for getting caught, for going soft, for not being good enough, for not being good. Right after he was attacked and infected with lycanthropy, Ben had wanted Cormac to shoot him. Being a monster was supposed to be worse than being dead. But Kitty changed that. Cormac refused to kill Ben, and the world was better for it.

Douglas Bennett would have killed Ben without hesitating.

Cormac was weak, and he imagined his father’s ghost whispered to him. He was wrong. He’d been given a legacy, an inheritance to protect the world from monsters. And now, he was shirking his duties, working with the monsters instead of killing them. He was just about a monster himself. A guy with two auras and a pocketful of magic spells.

He didn’t have to speak any of this out loud to Amelia. She sensed it pouring out of him. The walls were down.

“That voice isn’t real, you know,” she said. “It’s your imagination. I’m sure he wouldn’t be so … so judgmental.”

“You didn’t know him.”

“No, I only have your memories to go on. The memories of a sixteen-year-old boy—not entirely reliable, if I may say so. If it would lay his spirit to rest in your mind, we could try to channel him. Just to see.”

He shook his head. No. Just no. He didn’t need to do that. His father was wrong, he was moving forward, that was all.

Amelia stepped closer, her manner oddly hesitant. “Perhaps … there are other ways of laying spirits to rest. I—I would like to see the place where he died. Have you ever been back there, since it happened?”

“No.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. The gesture felt strangely tangible, her touch warm and gentle. “Let’s go, why don’t we?”

And why not? He needed to take a walk. He needed to get out of here.