Asa adjusted so that his back rested against the headboard, and he pulled a small bag onto his lap that held knitting supplies. Sometimes I envied his ability to indulge in his hobby while doing something else. Put a book in my hands, and my brain left on a mini-vacation to another world and left this one behind. I loved that about reading, but it wasn’t something you could multitask with movie watching or casework.
“When,” I told them once Asa was click-clacking away, and I was leaning against him.
Thirty minutes later, I began to understand what Colby meant. The similarities were disturbing. The plot, if you were feeling generous, contained marked similarities to our case. No LARPers, but instead gamers who had had enough with bullying and decided to take revenge on their tormenters by summoning their favorite video game bosses to kill them.
Easy to see how the movie might have planted the seed, but it was far from a how-to manual.
Someone with real arcane knowledge taught the Amhersts how to summon and where to find the Boos.
“When was this movie released?” I figured Colby would know. “How widespread?”
“About a year ago,” she told me. “It didn’t make it into theaters.”
“Do you think this could have been in the planning stages for that long?” Asa kept his eyes on the screen to ensure one of us was paying attention. “There are obvious nods to the movie in our case, but who taught the Amhersts to summon? How did they know where to find the Boos’ remains? Why them? There’s no game or LARP link there. The Boos died before Mystic Realms was released.”
“Summoning fictional characters is, well, fiction.” That meant they couldn’t recreate the movie exactly. “Instead, the LARPers chose to summon paranormal pop culture icons with bloody histories. Maybe the choice is based on the summoners’ proximity to the burial sites? Except that leaves us with the problem of how the LARPers are finding these guys in bulk. Someone must be feeding them that intel.”
“You’re going to miss the best part,” Colby fussed. “Watch the last ten minutes. It’s worth it.”
The last ten minutes were a bloodbath where the gamers lost control of their boss, and the boss killed them. Their deaths were chalked up to yet another murder in a long string of them, and the bosses were yanked back to their reality, into their games. The crimes went down as unsolved mysteries.
“That was not a satisfying ending,” I remarked. “You liked that?”
“The point,” she said in her best kids know better than everyone voice, “is the creations turned on their creators.”
“The Boos are already threatening the Amhersts.” I recalled that wink from Malcom but still couldn’t make sense of it. “As the first summoners on our radar, their clocks are ticking the loudest.”
“I called a buddy in Savannah.” Clay ended the shared movie. “A necromancer.”
“That has bad idea written all over it,” I muttered. “They get tetchy when anyone brings anything back to life without paying their consultation fee.”
“She doesn’t need the money, and she cares more about saving lives than crunching numbers.”
“Another ex of yours?”
“Just an old friend who got a raw deal. She’s not a fan of the Society. That’s why I trust her. She’s not swayed by politics. She’s been the victim of them too often.”
The Society for Post-Life Management was the necromancer ruling body, and they were based in Savannah, Georgia. Since his contact was also in Savannah, she had a finger on the pulse of the Society.
“What did she have to say?” I had trouble picturing a helpful necromancer, one who didn’t charge by the hour. Or by the question. “Anything useful?”
“The summoners would have had to inter the remains of their boss of choice in graveyard dirt from their original grave but rebury them on property owned by the summoner who wanted to control them. She believes they’re onryo, a rare type of vengeful spirit that preys on those who wronged them in life. They can interact with objects and people, the better to murder the people with aforementioned objects.” He paused, as if checking his notes. “Since ours aren’t naturally occurring, they’re attacking their summoners’ tormentors rather than their own.”
Gold star for Colby.
The kid was right on the money with that gorefest we watched earlier.
“What level of magic is required for an undertaking of that size?”
“I like how you said undertaking.” He chortled. “She claims most of the magic is in the bones, and in the death itself. The victims—in this case, our bosses—were targeted for the popularity of their lore. It gives them life after death the same way gods get a kickback from being worshipped. Factor in their violent ends, and you’ve got magic waiting to be tapped by anyone with a thimbleful of skill. And they were all paranormal creatures. She’s certain of that. Which means the Boos, whatever they were, weren’t plain vanilla human.”
“Does she think this is an untrained necromancer?”
“Not a chance.” He explained, “Their magic, ironically enough, brings the dead back to life. Unlife?”
Vampires weren’t alive so much as they were reanimated, the same with pets, but his contact was likely protecting trade secrets with broad answers. Necromancers were a secretive bunch. Taciturn and cheap.
“Let me guess.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “This is the work of a black witch.”