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Tonight, however, my magic was not listening to my will. Again. The simple electrical surge flashed into a purple flare that radiated outward. I felt the knot holding my hair in place vanish. Tendrils lifted, as if the magic made the air around me lighter. I knew without a mirror that my eyes had changed, too. They were my father’s reptilian eyes. The only thing he’d ever done for me was accidentally augment the magic I inherited from my witchy mother. My vision shifted as I saw trails of energy, the whispers of deaths, and—if I looked—I’d see the auras of anything living.
I felt bodies in the soil stirring, shifting, rising.
I’d used far, far more magic than I’d intended to summon.
“Shit. Double shit. Shit balls!” I was out the door and running as the shifting forms under the soil grew increasingly restless.
“Eli!” I called, despite the need for stealth. If anyone else heard me, there were plenty of excuses I could give if we were all still intact. And I couldn’t guarantee we would be if this energy kept growing.
I could feel hundreds of corpses listening for me and reaching out their hands.
Sleep!I urged them.
Their voices slipped through soil and stone, rising up on wind that should not be.
“Madre.”
“Mere.”
“Mathair.”
“Mother.”
Rest!I ordered.
“We come.” Their voices tangled together into a symphony of affectionate whispers. “Wecometo you, mother.”
“Eli!” I called again. I could see him patting down the dirt over Mr. Chaddock’s grave. He glanced up.
“Now. Go now,” I managed to say. “Dead. Waking.”
His expression was one I rarely saw: shock. He was strong, but the dead were resistant to everything but time and magic. He could sever their limbs, and the arms would roll toward me and feet would hop.
“Go!” I repeated.
The dead heard my order, too. I felt them growing increasinglytogether.Flesh and muscles knitted together atop bones as my extra surge of magic gave them temporary life.
I heard them, creatures I had called to life again, calling to me.
“Mati.”
“Moeder.”
“Rest,”I said, spoke, thought, urged.
“We go. Go with you,” they insisted.
Eli was up and moving, but so was the soil. Ripples moved as the earth looked suddenly liquid. Fingers, arms, and legs were poking through the roiling ground as plentiful as spring flowers. A roll of moving earth followed us as we ran to the fence.
“Don’t stop.” Eli cupped his hands for my foot. “Over.”
I didn’t argue. The best I could do was try not to let my sword hilt touch him. No steel should be on the pretty faery. He could handle it because he wasn’t full fae, but it hurt him.
“Plug the energy, Geneviève,” Eli urged. “Release it. Dosomething.”
I put my foot in his hands, knee against his chest, and hand on his shoulder. My breasts were at his face, and I looked down at him. Eli glowed like a small star had been sewn inside the shape of a man. With my magic, I could see that he was brighter than anything in the city.
“You’re beautiful,” I said, all but sighing the words.
