Page 12 of Grave Expectations

“Right, but the blood…” she started.

“You think you are the first person to bleed on my statue? Or near my grave?” Alaric asked. “It is not just blood, it is your blood. You are the link. This is what we must discover.”

Rosalin stood suddenly, taking her bowl to the sink. She stayed there several moments before turning around, her back pressed against the damn countertop again.

“I’m just unsure why…me,” she said, her gaze trained on the floor. Alaric was before her before he realized what he’d done. He tried to tilt her face up to look at him, but his hand passed through her and he sighed.

“Perhaps that is where we start. You say blood is not used in necromancy, we need to know why,” he said.

“It doesn’t make sense to use it,” Rosalin said, her voice quiet. She tilted her head up at last, her wide eyes boring into his. “It’s for the living, and necromancy is about the dead. It’s like…giving gas to an electric vehicle. Oh, you may not understand that reference…”

“I have witnessed the introduction of the gas and electric vehicle,” Alaric reminded her. “And I don’t understand. Necromancy brings the dead to life.”

“Common misconception. Necromancy is more like…a conduit. Like a telephone to the dead, or a television. Yeah, a television makes more sense. They broadcast the spirit world,” Rosalin said.

“And when they reanimate?” Alaric asked.

Rosalin laughed. “That’s only in television and books.” When Alaric didn’t respond, she frowned. “Right? That’s not something they can actually do.”

“I have seen it,” Alaric said with a nod of his head. “It was saved for very specific circumstances, but it was done. Reanimating corpses so they might face their murderer. It was quite a spectacle, though I fear it’s what drew the witch accusations.”

Rosalin’s already pale face drained of color, her jaw dropping. “You’re joking.”

“I am not,” Alaric said. “I just assumed it fell out of favor with the invention of cameras and other means of collecting evidence. Does your family no longer reanimate?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. How did they do it?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s worth another trip to your mother’s house?” Alaric suggested.

“No,” Rosalin said, shaking her head. “The library, or the museum, or maybe even one of my aunts? I don’t know, this feels…big. Intentional. When my mother realized I didn’t have the power of necromancy, she tried so many things, even shipping me off to my great aunt Franny to have her teach me. Not once did they mention reanimation. It’s lost.”

“Or buried,” Alaric suggested. “So that’s where we start. We find old books, look for what was hidden.”

“I told you already, my family is the book,” Rosalin said.

“Apparently there are gaps in their knowledge,” Alaric said. Rosalin’s gaze searched his face, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. It took every ounce of restraint he’d developed over the last three hundred years to keep looking into her eyes.

“Okay,” she said. “If it will set you free and let you pass into peace, I’ll look.”

“We’ll look,” he corrected.

“Right,” Rosalin said, and he was rewarded with her sly smile. “Like a detective duo.”

“I suppose.”

“Alaric Blackwood and Rosalind Graves, magical PIs, getting to the bottom of ancient accidental curses. We’ll break any curse by the Pumpkin Festival,” she added, her sly smile growing.

“When the veil is the thinnest,” Alaric agreed, nodding.

“Deal,” Rosalin said, extending her hand into the small space between them. Alaric tried to put his hand in hers and thought, for just a moment, he could feel the solidity of it. Then his fingers passed through hers and the sensation passed.

“Deal.”

CHAPTER SIX

Roz wandered through the Pumpkin Hollow museum, pretending to read the placards beneath the paintings.

“I’ve always found this painting morbid,” said the curator, Martha. She was an older woman that came up to Roz’s chin.