Elemental Shadows (22 page)

"How are you here?" My voice sounded muffled like his and everyone else's. It sounded like I was talking through a pillow. "You were arrested…"
 

"That was two days ago, Sam. Jack Roberts helped clear my name."
 

Two…days ago? I'd been asleep for two days?
 

"Jack's good at what he does, and he has some pull with the people he works for. Apparently the IP that was reportedly given as being your shop was spoofed. That's the evidence Ronald Kennett sent to the cyber team. But Jack's like a forensic net person. He found the discrepancies and proved
Bell, Book and Candle
didn't even have an IP."
 

"So how do we get Internet?"
 

He winked. "Me."
 

Oh. Yay. Ivan was a human router too.
 

"The agent in charge wasn't happy when I didn't turn out to be their man, but he was good at noting Jack's logic and his skills," he grinned and winked. "I also think Jack's got a crush on Kyle. But just wait."
 

Ivan sat back and I watched him as he closed his eyes, held out his hands palms up and then opened his eyes. They were green now, and I knew what he was doing. And somehow…just knowing was enough for me to find the strength to push myself up on the bed.
 

The Hammer formed between his hands. Not in the necklace USB anymore, but in a fully formed book. One I'd become intimately acquainted with. And there was something else—

I saw his magic. How was it I'd seen his magic when I no longer had any magic of my own?
 

The book finished assembling and dropped into his lap. He turned it around so that it faced me and with his head bowed, placed it in my lap. "I seem to know the answer is inside this."
 

The book swirled with glittering red Arcane. I could still see it! I put my hand on it and the stuff came up in spirals to brush against my fingers. I felt it there, feathered brushes of a spider's web, and with each touch there was a white spark of life.
 

I licked my lips. "I…I shouldn't be able to see this."
 

Ivan looked relieved as he nodded. "I knew it the moment Arden explained what a warlocking was. It's taking way your Elemental connections, but it's not taking away your power. You've touched Arcane, Sam. I've heard all the stories of how it changes people, and it takes things away and how bad it is, but I haven't seen a single ill effect with you. So I thought…what if you could still use Arcane Magic."
 

I clasped the book in my hands. It pulsed as the red magic whirled around me and my hearing didn't sound so cotton-filled and my mind wasn't so slow to comprehend and react. I opened the book and watched as the spells moved and shifted around the printed words, the only words those not anointed with the magic of Arcane would see. "You're saying I should do what I've always done, but use Arcane."
 

Ivan shrugged. "Why not? Sam, I've been watching it pulse around your body ever since we found you at Ina's that night with the vampire bite. Whatever it is, whatever gives it its mystical mojo or its forbidden power, it's obvious to me it resonates with you."
 

"But it's not supposed to work like that, is it?" My voice was my own again as my mind cleared and the final bits of fog lifted.
 

"Who says? The ones that can't wield it?" He put his hands on mine. "When you first told me I had to be careful about what I could do because there would be people who wouldn't understand, the problem was I didn't understand. And since then I've encountered those people and now I do understand. It's human nature to hide or suppress or destroy what they don't know."
 

"He's right."
 

Ivan whirled around as I looked past him. Crwys stood inside the room, his arms down at his sides. I narrowed my eyes at him. "That door didn't open."

"No. It didn't."
 

I looked at the Hammer in my hands and then looked at Ivan. "You told him."
 

"He already knew."
 

Crwys returned to my side as Ivan stepped away. "Did you think I couldn't see it, flashing around you sometimes? Did you think I couldn't sense your signature in that Circle? I have a good idea of what happened that night."
 

I put my hand to my mouth and fought back nausea.
 

"And see
that
?" He pointed at me. "That reaction right there, that sickness you feel in your soul, that's why I know it was an accident. Arcane Magic doesn't make people into killers. It just gives them the power to kill because they want to kill. But it's not in your nature."
 

I searched his face. "So….what? You and Ivan think I need to just use the Arcane? The Clerics will know, won't they?"
 

"Don't use it like you've been using magic. Use it to stay sane until your Elementals are returned. Let the Arcane keep your sanity in check." He glanced back at Ivan. "Did you tell her?"
 

"I was getting to it."
 

Crwys smiled. "Ivan's traced Ronald Kennett's location."
 

I looked at both of them in turn. "He's got a location? I don't understand."
 

"The children were tossed into that limbo world through a Coyote Flame. It created a pocket and the children never crossed over to the other side. They stayed right where they came in. They all knew instinctually the door was also the way out. But Ronald and the Elders…their situation is different."
 

"You know this?" I stared at Crwys.
 

"Don't ask how. I'll tell you one day. They came into the same limbo a different way."
 

"Right, they didn't come in through a Flame but through the computers?" Ivan asked.
 

"No. Not even that. They came in without bodies."

I pushed back into the pillows. Oh…damn. I hadn't even considered that. Of course. The kids were put in with their physical bodies. They had vehicles to travel in and out. But Ronald died while in cyberspace. That limbo between living and dying. "Did he lure the Elders to him?"
 

"I think he tricked them in some way. He definitely killed them so they could get in the way he did. So when that didn't work and using the kids didn't work when they showed up, I think Ronald started looking or for other means. He learned about the Malleus Maleficarum. He wanted that book. I assume he learned about how entities in other worlds possess human bodies, like Daemons, Revenants, Leviathans, Succubus, Incubus…"
 

"And he thought he could do the same. With the old men," Ivan gave a long sigh. "If I were going to possess a body, I would not want an old man body."
 

"It was the magic that attracted him," Crwys glanced at Ivan. "The Arcane in them. Those old men had messed with Arcane before." He smiled. "I checked their graves, and the urn one of them is cremated in."
 

I smiled at him. "You could see it."
 

"And I think, or suspect, Ronald found you somehow, sensed the Arcane and wanted your body."
 

Putting my hand to my neck, I thought about the shadow in the shop. "But he never attacked me."
 

"As a Witch, you weren't vulnerable."
 

"But now he thinks I am," I hissed. "That bastard set me up to get warlocked."
 

"I would almost count on it." Crwys pushed back and stood next to Ivan. "I think they're going to try something stupid to get your attention and they're going to try and lure you to them."
 

I watched Ivan. "You already know this is true."
 

"Which is why we have to move on Ronald and his band of three nasty old men before he comes at you. Ronald has to have a home base, a place he can draw power from. And Ivan found that place in a residence in Picayune, Mississippi. It could be a home computer with a good sized hard drive with a lot of empty space—"
 

All of those calls from Pauline suddenly took on a greater importance. Dad talking to something in the house. Dad begging Pauline to call me because I could exorcise their home.
 

I threw the sheets off of me and slid out of bed, not caring if my bare ass was visible to anyone in the room. I didn't feel the dizziness I felt before when Cromwell took my Elementals. Instead I felt stronger. I willed the Hammer to revert to the charm and it did, with no spoken command. I put it around my neck. "Where's my phone?"
 

"It's with your things in that bag over there." Ivan pointed to the chair.
 

I grabbed the bag and dumped it out on the bed. My phone bounced to the right and I grabbed it, unlocking it immediately. There were three more missed calls, all from Pauline, all from yesterday. Nothing since. I redialed the last call and waited.

No answer. It didn't even flip to voicemail.
 

I played the messages. All of them said about the same thing.
"Sam, I really, really need you to call us back here. There is something in this house and it's got your father all worked up. He's scaring me, and if you can't get here I'm going to have to call the doctor."
 

I tried my dad's landline.
 

The old answering machine picked up and I waited for the beep. "Dad it's Sam, can you pick up? If you don't know where my voice is coming from, it's the phone in the corner. The blue one."
 

I felt Crwys's and Ivan's eyes on me. I'd never told anyone about my dad's condition.
 

When he didn't pick up, I hung up and called Pauline's cell phone again.
 

This time it went to voicemail.
 

"Sam why did you call your dad?" Ivan said.
 

I stared at my phone. "What's the address you traced Kennett to?"
 

Ivan repeated it.
 

Crwys cursed under his breath.
 

"What?" Ivan said.
 

I turned and looked at him and it took a lot not to cry. "That's my dad's address."
 

C
rwys drove a '64 Mustang Fastback. It was in cherry condition, but it couldn't carry everyone. Five comfortably. After an abrupt departure from the hospital, with yells of more tests, we got to
Bell, Book and Candle
in record time. The weather at least had cleared up a bit. Scattered clouds moved over the sky, throwing shadows on the December morning. The temperature was in the lower fifties, which was cold for the South.
 

I ran upstairs and changed clothes, refusing to look at the break room, the scene of my incarceration. I wasn't sure I could ever go back into that room without suffocating when I thought of the looks on my Elementals' faces. I worried about them, how they were being treated, if they were being misused or neglected, and decided it didn't matter what sort of heinous crimes a Witch committed—punishing the Elementals was not acceptable. It wasn't their fault.
 

New jeans, tank top, shirt and jacket, new socks and then boots. The Hammer buzzed against my chest, warm and almost comforting. I felt good.
Really
good. And powerful, even though I shouldn't. Not with my essence capped.
 

Once I had everything I needed, I went down the stairs and heard the others talking in the break room. I stopped where I was and listened. I didn't snoop normally, but when I heard my name mentioned, I reacted.
 

"…normal. This is dangerous shit here." That was Kyle. "I don't care if it seems right or feels right to her. She shouldn't be using Arcane."
 

"I just want to know how she's using it.
Shugar
, I got all kinds of horror stories in my family of members trying to make that shit work. The results will curl your hair," Arden said.
 

"Arcane or not, what's dangerous is there is a Shadow Asshole still out there with a vendetta against me and Sam," Ivan sounded angry. I'd never heard that tone from him before.