The Ravaging in Between (The Reanimation Files Book 3) (20 page)

Just as I was about to leave, I got another text message from Carlos. There was a ghost on Fifty-Seventh and Lexington Avenue. I quickly dialed Micah and told him. The conversation was not long enough for me to question his absence at Ilyse’s fading because it was important that this location reach Tielle and the PTF as soon as possible. The ghost on Liberty Island had been caught, so I hoped they’d be able to catch this one too.

I drove out to Sacred Heart Cemetery, which was in Queens. I was a bit apprehensive about heading back to the Underground after my last experience there, but it made me feel better that Magda kept herself away from the rest of the Underground riffraff in that area. Of course, step one would be to find out if she was even still there. And if I did find her, step two would be finding out if she could help me.

I parked some distance away from the cemetery, picked up the pouch, and started walking.

I avoided the front gates of the cemetery. Only a rookie would think it best to try and get in that way. I headed to the east wall and walked about halfway down the block. Lucky for me, the stone wall that surrounded the graveyard was not very high, or in the best shape, so the irregular stones made for good foot and handholds.

Once I made sure no one was around, I hoisted myself up and over the wall. I had a brief moment of déjà vu as I recalled climbing over the stone wall that led to Renton’s hideout. I hoped my current journey over another wall wouldn’t be quite as horrific. Although seeing as I was jumping down into a cemetery, my chances weren’t great.

The moon was full and not obscured by clouds, so there was just enough light for me to see my way through the cemetery. The last thing I’d want would be to trip over someone’s headstone and twist my ankle, or fall into an open grave. An uncomfortable feeling rippled over me as I moved forward, and I had to beat down my overactive imagination or else I’d be convinced that zombies were about to jump out of all these graves and devour me. One would think being a necromancer, I wouldn’t be susceptible to such irrational fears, but I was only human after all. And I’d once binge-watched three seasons of
The
Walking Dead
over one weekend. That was a bad idea.

All right, time to focus
.

Find the crypt with the angel statues and see if Magda still set up shop below it. I inspected every crypt I came across, and after about ten minutes of searching, I found one that matched Ilyse’s description. Now nervousness and apprehension came over me. I stood there for a moment and took a deep breath. Despite Ilyse saying no one had been buried here, I doubted I could find someone who wouldn’t pause at the prospect of slipping into a crypt at some hour of the night. Plus, if Magda wasn’t down there, it’d just be me below ground…surrounded by hundreds of corpses.

OK, time to stop psyching myself out or I wouldn’t do this.

I took another deep breath, walked up to the wrought iron gate that served as the mausoleum’s door, and put my hand on the knob. The thick darkness behind the gate spooked me even more. It really just had to do with the position of the moon and the way the shadows were cast, but to me it seemed like an impenetrable wall of darkness that would either push me back or swallow me whole.

I opened up the trusty flashlight app on my phone, and slowly turned the knob. It creaked in protest of its lack of use, and that didn’t make me feel good. If no one had been here in a long time, maybe that was because there was no one to find.

I pushed the gate open, though the creaking made me afraid the graveyard’s security would hear and come running. No one approached, and I opened the gate just enough for me to squeeze through. Once inside, I saw the stone coffin that sat in the middle. It was the only thing in the small space.

I put my phone on the ground so I could still use the light but have my hands free, then put my hands on the coffin’s lid and pushed. In a normal scenario like this, I’d be faced with a skeleton once I got the lid off. Ilyse had told me there’d be a staircase instead, but there was a small part of me that was bracing to see some garish remains.

The lid was heavy, but not impossible for me to move by myself. I managed to work it open, though I didn’t push it all the way off. I picked up my phone and tentatively shined the light in. There were no remains, thankfully. Just a cobwebby staircase. Ilyse had not led me wrong. She had a great track record with that.

With slightly less reluctance, I pushed the lid open more, then hoisted myself into the coffin and landed on a stair. Holding my phone out to light my way, I slowly descended, all the while praying that I wasn’t about to make this my own grave.

It seemed like the stairs went on forever, although I was sure that was just my brain trying to convince me that I was walking down so far I was about to meet the devil and be surrounded by fire and brimstone and all that.

It was deathly quiet down here. The graveyard at least had the wind in the trees and the occasional distant car horn to break the silence. Here, there was nothing. The sound of my uneven, nervous breathing was all I had to comfort me, and it was no comfort at all. I’d welcome a distant water drip or a mouse running over my foot to break up the stifling quiet.

And speaking of stifling, it was hot down here. Which made sense seeing as the air from outside could only reach so far. I was soon sweating, and my hair was matted to my head. I wished I’d brought a bottle of water with me.

Finally, I stepped off the last stair onto a narrow path. The ground was packed dirt, as were the walls on either side of me. There went my imagination again, picturing the dirt collapsing and burying me alive. I moved forward, walking a little quicker than I had while coming down the stairs. The faster I saw Magda or verified that she was not here, the faster I could get the hell out of here.

There were no other paths branching off from the one I was on, which I was thankful for because I’d hate to have to guess which path to take, and then double back if I was wrong and try again. After walking for about five minutes, I saw something that gave me a flare of hope, but also fear. There was light up ahead. I hoped that meant that Magda was present.

I slowed down the closer I got to the light. I trusted Ilyse, but she had advised me to be cautious. I was ready to snatch my rune gun out of its holster if needed.

I sidled up to the wall when I reached the opening and peered in. The first thing I saw were numerous, small lights positioned on the ground or pushed into the dirt walls. They were those battery-operated lights that could be turned on and off by pressing on them. Made more sense than trying to be old-school and use torches. In an underground room with no ventilation, that was asking for death.

It was slightly cooler here, and that was because there were several tunnels branching off from this area, which was roughly circular in shape. Maybe they led to exits in other crypts in the graveyard.

“Don’t be shy, come in.”

The sound of a voice made me suck in a gasp and jump back. I swallowed hard and forced myself to relax. She was here after all. That was a good thing, even if her throaty voice sounded like it’d be perfectly at home in a horror movie.

I eased into the space and turned to the right where I saw Magda seated in the corner behind a huge, cluttered, wooden table. You weren’t an Underground worker unless you had a cluttered workspace full of things you likely weren’t supposed to have. There were also bones everywhere. Skulls were embedded in the dirt walls as though the skeletons had pushed their way from their coffins to come say hello. Or they were strewn on the floor among other types of bones from the human body. It did not give me a comfortable feeling. I turned my attention back to Magda.

My first impression of Magda was that she was incredibly short, and then I realized that she was a little person. She looked to be around three and a half feet tall, and had a small frame to go with her short stature. Her wrinkle-lined skin was pale as though she didn’t see much sun, which made sense given where she set up shop. She was probably in her late sixties, but the eyes that were currently assessing me had a sharpness I didn’t see much in older people. My Grams had been like that too. She knew a lie was coming before it left my mouth.

“Come forth, girl. I don’t assume you came all this way to gawk at me.” She looked away and started fiddling with the objects on her table as though I had disrupted her from something she was eager to get back to. There was an electric charge to the air that gave me a sense of trepidation.

Power oozed from Magda. She was no ordinary dead witch. I had never felt power so strong from any dead witch before. Tielle might as well be a baby in diapers compared to what I felt from Magda. It made me feel more confident that she could help me, but it also made me feel as though I had to be extremely cautious around her.

I walked forward. There was a rickety chair in front of her table so I sat down. It was covered in dust that I hadn’t bothered to brush off, but it did indicate that it had probably been a long time since someone had made their way here seeking Magda’s services. If she was surprised or excited at the prospect of a customer, she did not show it.

Movement in my peripheral made me turn to the corner of the wall behind Magda. I was startled by a pair of glowing red eyes that stared at me from a face and body that was vaguely feline, but was larger than a regular cat. A long, shadowy tail snaked lazily through the air behind it. I was reminded of the monstrous ghost horse and dog I had seen in the In Between. My eyes widened as I stared at the creature. Darkness roiled off it. Needless to say, its presence did not help me feel any more comfortable here.

“How the hell do you have one of those things here?” I spoke before I could stop myself. Magda paused what she was doing and looked up at me, holding my gaze for a long moment. I swallowed hard.

“How can I help you, girl?” Clearly she was not going to explain her otherworldly…pet? The ghost cat didn’t move from where it was crouched, and kept its disconcerting gaze on me. Right now I didn’t have it in me to try and figure this out, so I decided to ignore the ghost cat shadow thing for now.

Magda had returned her attention to her runes, powders, and vials of strangely colored liquids. I was taken by the way her bone-white hair seemed to glow under the dim battery lights. It fell around her face in waves, reaching just past her shoulders. Every time she moved her hands, the light glinted off the numerous rings on all her fingers. There were also many chains draped around her neck, some thick and twisted, some delicate, with pendants of all kinds dangling from them. Some were rune necklaces, but I couldn’t really tell what kind. Her ears were graced by tiny, stud earrings from cartilage to tip, and she had a ruby stud for a nose ring.

“Um, I’m here on the recommendation of my friend, Ilyse Nurou.”

Magda looked up again. Her eyes could have been brown, but in the bare light they looked like pools of black. A smile tugged the corners of her mouth.

“Ilyse,” she said. “I remember her well. It has been many moons since I last encountered her. And her friend Amelia.”

“My grandmother. They’re both dead.”

“I know,” Magda said. “I felt their deaths.”

I frowned slightly. “Felt their deaths?”

“Those with power who know how to use it can do so much more than they think can be done,” she said. “But I ask again, how can I help you?”

I opened the pouch and placed the binding runes on the table. Magda’s brows rose slightly when she saw what I’d brought with me.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of me,” I said. “Since, uh, I don’t know if you get out of this place much…”

Magda laughed. “If I never left here, I reckon it’d smell a lot worse, don’t you agree?”

It took a second for me to get what she was talking about; then I realized she was referring to the fact that there were no modern luxuries down here, such as a bathroom. So she did leave her little hidey-hole. Boy, was I grateful. If she was the type of eccentric who didn’t leave, I didn’t think I’d have the stomach for this meeting.

“So I guess you’ve heard of me, Selene Vanream, and everything that’s been going on with me these past few months.”

Magda nodded.

“Well, as you know, I killed the man who stole my reanimation power. But instead of dying permanently, I died for two minutes, then fell into a coma for a month. There’s been speculation as to why I didn’t die for good, and I was able to figure out that it was because not all of my reanimation power died. Some of it remains within these binding runes, which I’ve used to hide my reanimation power every time the government did their check to root out and strip reanimators. Ilyse suggested that if anyone could help me get my power back from these runes, you could. I know binding runes are powerful and dangerous, so I didn’t want to try to get it back on my own and end up blowing myself and half of New York City to smithereens. So…can you help me?”

That ghost of a smile was back on Magda’s lips. She picked up one of the binding runes and gently turned it over in her hand, caressing it with her fingers. “Thrumming with energy, thirsting to unleash power.” She looked at me. “I gave your grandmother these runes a long time ago.”

“I know. And they’ve proven helpful in more ways that just hiding my reanimation power. Ilyse told me that a spark of my reanimation power always remains within the rune though, keeping it active.”

“That is right,” Magda said. She was handling the rune almost lovingly. “Binding runes used to be made from the bones of human skeletons, did you know that?”

I sucked in a gasp. “What? Are you serious?”

Magda’s smiled widened as she shook her head. “You textbook necromancers and dead witches, how I feel sorry for you. You go to school, learn what they choose to teach you, align with a ghost agency, leech house, or join the PTF, spend thirty years or so working with ghosts, then you retire thinking you had a life well-lived when there is so much you never knew.”

“I’ve come to realize that there are more things in the paranormal world than we know of.”