“I wanted Larry to hurt the ones who hurt me,” Trevor said. He had pulled himself together and stood with his fists pressed against the table in front of him. “I wanted him to hurt Athena, Andrew, everyone at Affairs of the Dead who turned their backs on me and didn’t want to associate with me when it was found out that I had reanimation magic. But Larry didn’t do just that.”
“No,” Micah said, voice hard. “He also killed his ex-wife and almost killed her cousin’s husband, who used to work for him, correct?” Trevor nodded.
“Not to mention the guards and dead witches from the office,” I added.
“And he’s murdered a lot of people who crossed him when he was alive,” Trevor said.
“With a gun,” Micah stated. Trevor nodded again. Guess Micah’s theory after he’d looked into the amount of people murdered recently had been correct.
“And he doesn’t plan to stop,” Trevor said. “There are a lot more people who wronged him. He plans to kill all of them.”
“So you’re upset that Larry doesn’t want to just kill for you, he wants to kill for himself?” I said angrily.
Trevor said nothing, and I felt sick for ever feeling any pity for him.
“That’s Larry’s true unfinished business,” I said. “That’s the reason he’s been hanging around for the past five years. What he really wants is revenge on everyone who did him wrong. He needed all those other things taken care of too, but they also helped stretch the time out until he could figure out a way to do what he really wanted.”
“Makes sense,” Micah said. “Affairs of the Dead wouldn’t be able to help him murder people, and even Underground necromancers are reluctant to do murder on behalf of ghosts because it’s too much of a risk.”
“That bastard,” I said, enraged over the deception Larry had played over us. “How long have you been working on trying to get Larry into a physical body?” I asked Trevor.
“Ever since I went into hiding,” Trevor replied, which didn’t surprise me. “It wasn’t easy figuring out how to do it. I even stole bodies from fresh graves to see if I could reanimate Larry that way, but it didn’t work.”
“Until you bound yourself to Larry,” I stated. Trevor nodded.
“He helped me steal some books from the dead witches’ library, and that’s how I found out about ghost binding and the power that’s gained through it,” Trevor said. “And—”
“Why me?” That outburst came from Ethan, who stepped forward to face Trevor. He seemed to have shaken off his fear now that Micah and I had things under control. “Why did you have to do it to me?”
Trevor wouldn’t meet his gaze. “You were at the right place at the wrong time,” he muttered.
Ethan balked. “That’s it? I was walking home, and you two happened to be in the neighborhood and…” His voice caught, and he paused for a moment. “Your brother is in my body committing murder! The last face people have seen before their death was mine! And now I’m a fucking ghost!” I think that was the first time I had ever heard Ethan swear. “How could you do this to me?”
“How could they have done this to
me
?” Trevor yelled, even more forcefully than Ethan. He banged his fist on the table, his body trembling. “They treated me like I was a monster! Like I carried a disease that had to be burned out of my body!” He hung his head and pounded the table again. “You don’t know how they treat you once they have you in their grasp. They made it seem like it was my fault for being born with this power. Only Larry stood by my side. The only person I had was a ghost!”
“I understand your anger,” I said.
“No you—”
“I’m a reanimator too,” I said, cutting him off. His eyes widened. “I’ve kept myself under the radar by using a binding rune. I stole the last one I used from you actually, and it’s come in handy for blasting away beasties, but I’m sure you already know that.”
“I found out too late about the binding runes to save myself,” Trevor muttered. “But I know all about them now.”
“How did you get those beasties to do your bidding?” Micah asked.
“I bound them to a binding rune,” Trevor said. “And that way I can control them.”
“So you took control of a couple of beasties and sent them to get Ethan,” I said. Trevor nodded. “Look, Trevor, no matter how mad you were, it doesn’t justify what you did. You’ve fucked with a lot of people’s lives, mine included. Now you want ghost Ethan; why?”
“To get rid of him,” Trevor said sullenly.
“I gathered as much,” I said. “But why do you need to do that?”
“Because it’s the only way to stop Larry,” he said, looking up at me.
“What?” Ethan, Micah, and I said at the same time.
“I told Larry that he needed to capture Ethan and bring him to me because disposing of him would make it so he could permanently stay in his body. I was going to use the binding rune to send Ethan into the afterlife.”
“But isn’t Larry already permanently in Ethan’s body?” I asked. Trevor shook his head.
“He can go in and out,” he said. “And that’s been helping him keep up the appearance of still being a ghost.”
“That’s probably why the tracking rune you created didn’t work at first,” Micah said to me. “You must have activated it when Larry wasn’t in Ethan’s body, and it started to work when he was.” That made sense. The night the rune had worked was the night I confronted Larry in the Underground.
“But you’re saying that blasting away Ethan’s ghost won’t actually make Larry able to keep his body?” I asked Trevor.
“When ghost-bound reanimators used to put ghosts into living bodies, they harnessed the soul they kicked out and kept it in a rune stone,” Trevor said. “Without it, the body would reject the occupying soul. I tried to capture Ethan’s ghost the night I put Larry into his body, but we were almost seen so we had to leave him.”
“That’s something Ilyse’s book didn’t mention,” I muttered. Or maybe I just hadn’t read enough.
“If I get rid of Ethan’s ghost, his body will kick Larry out,” Trevor continued. “Then I can…take care of Larry.” He sounded sad.
“Well, there’s just one catch,” I said. “I’m not going to let you get rid of Ethan, so we’re going to have to come up with a plan B.”
“If Larry has the ability to go in and out of Ethan’s body, we’ll need to catch him while he’s out of it,” Micah said.
“He hasn’t left the body recently,” Trevor said. “He’s done with keeping up appearances for Affairs of the Dead. I haven’t seen him in days; he’s become obsessed with his quest for revenge.”
“Seeing as he’s been waiting around for five years, I’m not surprised,” I said. “But you’re still going to figure out a way to help me stop him that doesn’t involve hurting Ethan’s ghost or his body. I was using a new kind of tracking rune to try and find Larry, but it started leading us to all the animals you’ve reanimated over the years. So that didn’t turn out to be the ideal process.”
“Is there any way you have of finding Larry?” Micah asked Trevor.
“When I concentrate, I can feel my connection to Ethan,” I said. “Maybe you can feel where Larry is.”
Trevor’s head snapped up. “You’re bound to him?”
“It happened by accident, but it happened, so you can say I’m very much invested in not having his ghost blasted away.”
“So this connection thing,” Micah said. “Do you feel it with Larry? Can you use your bond to find him?”
“The bond has been released,” Trevor said. “Getting him into a physical body meant I no longer had to be bound to him.”
My jaw dropped. “So if I can get Ethan back into his body, he’ll no longer be bound to me?”
“Yes,” Trevor said. “Because being bound to a ghost incurs the Rot, you see—”
“Yeah, I know about all that,” I said. “I just didn’t know the solution was as simple as that.”
“I wouldn’t call it simple,” Trevor said. “Since Larry isn’t going to leave just by us asking.”
I thought about the binding rune. “I have an idea as to how to get him out,” I said. “So all I care about is finding him.”
“Which is exactly the problem,” Micah said.
I started pacing as I thought. “We can’t track him with runes, so that means we have to figure out where he is.”
“I’ve tried calling and texting him, but he hasn’t answered me,” Trevor said. “I’ve been begging him to stop killing, but he said he isn’t going to stop until he hurts everyone who hurt us.”
I stopped pacing and looked at him. “He has a cell phone?”
Trevor nodded.
“Then try calling him again,” I said. “But this time, instead of asking him to stop killing, tell him you have ghost Ethan and need him to be around when you destroy the ghost so he can keep Ethan’s body.” Ethan gasped, and I gave him a look. “Relax, you know I’m not actually going to let that happen.” I turned back to Trevor. “Let’s go outside so you can make the call since there won’t be reception down here.”
The four of us headed up, and when we were gathered on the pavement, Trevor called Larry. To my relief, though the phone rang for a while, Larry eventually picked up. Micah kept his gun to Trevor’s side to make sure he didn’t say a word out of line, but as their conversation progressed, I was beginning to get a worse and worse feeling about what Larry was doing. Sure enough, when Trevor lowered the phone, his eyes were wide and he looked regretful and afraid.
“He’s heading to Affairs of the Dead,” Trevor whispered. “He says he’s going to kill them all. For me.”
Micah, Ethan, and I immediately headed to the car Micah had stolen, dragging Trevor with us. Then Micah sped off to the office, and I said every prayer I knew that we would be able to stop a psychotic ghost from carrying out a massacre.
Chapter Twenty
My heart was in my throat by the time we neared the office building. I gripped the headrest in front of me to keep myself from throwing my body out the car door, rolling to my feet, and running the rest of way. Because that was totally how it would go if I threw myself out of a moving car. Ethan wanted to be as far from Trevor as could be managed, so I sat in the back with him and Trevor sat in the passenger seat.
Had Larry already made it to the office? I didn’t want to walk into a bloodbath. Seeing Andrew’s dead body had been traumatic enough. Seeing a room full of my dead colleagues would do something to me that I knew I’d never recover from.
Micah finally swung into a parking space, and we ran like maniacs to the building. Down in the lobby the guards were dead, like the night Larry had murdered the dead witches. Larry had beaten us here.
We ran for an elevator and headed up to the tenth floor. When the doors opened and we rushed to the suite, it was clear that my worst fears were confirmed. Larry was here, in Ethan’s body, and he had taken everyone hostage. The sick feeling in my stomach spread when I counted at least five bodies on the ground. Larry had wasted no time in picking people off. There were about twelve people left alive, and I guess I should consider it a good thing that most people were probably out on jobs right now.
When Larry turned and saw us, the look on his face was venomous. He was clutching Amy to his chest, holding a gun to her head, while she looked appropriately scared out of her mind. Ethan’s body looked worse for the wear. Larry breathed heavily and was bleeding in several places. The necromancers and dead witches must have tried to fight back, but Amy’s eventual position as hostage had halted that. At first, he looked shocked and angry to see us, then he smiled when he noticed Trevor. Trevor stepped forward to face his brother.
“You brought the ghost,” Larry said. He fixed Ethan with a stare that made him whimper and edge behind me. “Good job, brother.”
“Larry, what are you doing?” Trevor asked, looking around at the tense, motionless people standing around. Trevor’s voice was a little shaky; he was afraid of the monster he had created.
“I’m getting you retribution!” Larry said, spreading his gun arm wide.
When I swept my eyes around, I caught sight of Ilyse. I was glad she was okay…well, still alive at least. I had the binding stone, but I couldn’t use it against Larry if he was holding Amy, not to mention the fact that there were people all around. Knowing how much damage the stone could do, if I unleashed it on Larry, even if he did let go of Amy, I was pretty sure I’d kill people in the process. I couldn’t risk it. So what the hell could I do?
“I’ll kill them all,” Larry was saying. “And you will finally have your revenge for what they did to you.”
“W-what did we do?” Amy asked. Larry yanked his arm tighter around her chest, and she squealed.
“You all turned your backs on my brother, that’s what you did,” he snarled into her ear. She closed her eyes, and her whimpering increased.
“B-but I don’t even know him,” she wailed. “So I d-don’t think it’s fair for you to kill me.”
Bravo,
Amy. I applauded her efforts to reason with the madman.
“This is Michael Griffith,” I announced to everyone, making them gasp. Trevor had altered his appearance so much that he really bore little resemblance to the man they knew as Michael Griffith. I nudged Ethan so he could move from behind me enough for everyone to see him properly. “Micah showed you before that this is the real Ethan and that he’s now a ghost because Michael forced him out of his body so Larry could take over.” I wanted everyone to be clear on what we were dealing with because an idea was slowly forming in my mind.
Beside me, Micah was standing tensely. I knew he was itching for an opportunity to open fire on Larry, but I had warned him in the car that I wanted as little damage done to Ethan’s body as possible.
“Now that the introductions have been made, how about we get started with the massacre?” Larry sneered. “Trevor, destroy the ghost. I want that done before anything else.”
“Larry, you’ve lost your mind,” I said, stepping forward. “And you’re a deceitful bastard. I have to give you credit for that. All this time, you made us help you with mindless tasks because the ultimate reason your ghost stuck around was so you could get revenge on everyone who wronged you and your brother.”
“You’ve always been smart, doll,” Larry said, giving me a sick smile. How the hell could I get Amy away from him? That had to be done before I could do anything else. “The kind of life I lived taught me that you trust no one, and if someone crosses you, you cross them back, tenfold, and I ain’t nearly done giving out just desserts.”