Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)

“You’re vampires,” she said after a moment. “I recognize you. You’re Ethan and Merit, right?”

Ethan nodded, but his gaze stayed wary. “We are. How do you know us?”

She smiled guiltily. “Gossip magazines. They’re my guilty pleasure.” She cocked her head at us. “You’re in them a lot.”

We couldn’t argue with that.

She glanced at me. “And Chuck Merit’s your grandfather, right?”

That was a much better reason to be famous. “Yes, he is.”

“I’m sorry, I’m being rude,” she said, putting a hand on her chest. “You startled me. Sorry about that, everyone,” she added, looking around, hands patting the air like the simple movement was the thing that would keep the bodies in the ground.

Fear speared me, and I tried to logic through it. Surely her petite hands weren’t the only thing keeping not-yet-walking dead from rising. Still, just in case, I moved a little closer to Ethan, ever the brave Sentinel.

He was going to give me so much crap about this.

“I’m Annabelle Shaw,” she said. “I’m a necromancer.”

“Mortui vivos docent?” Ethan asked.

“Very good,” she agreed with a smile, and must have caught my look of confusion. “The phrase means, roughly, ‘the dead teach the living.’ In this case, the dead speak, I listen.”

“I didn’t know that was possible,” I said, thinking of Ethan’s temporary death and the possibility we might have communicated during it. “Necromancy, I mean.”

“There aren’t many of us,” she said. “It’s a pretty rare magic, which is probably a good thing. The dead are talkers.”

Dread skittered along my spine.

Annabelle winced suddenly, lifted a hand to her belly. I caught the flash of concern on Ethan’s face. He stepped forward and gripped her elbow to help keep her steady.

“I’m okay,” she said, and patted his arm. She smiled a little. “Thank you. Peanut kicks like a mule. If I wasn’t certain her father was human, I’d wonder. And I’m still fairly sure she’s destined to be a kickboxer.” She winced again, staring down at her belly as if her narrowed gaze could penetrate to the kicking child within. “You know, we’ll both be better off if I have a functioning bladder.

She rolled her eyes, blew out a breath, seemed to settle herself. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m a registered necromancer, affiliated with the Illinois MVD Association.”

If there was anything I’d learned about supernaturals, it was that they loved bureaucracy. Magic wasn’t worth doing unless a supernatural could throw a council or code of conduct at it, slap it on a T-shirt, and charge a due. And supernatural bureaucracy was just about as effective as the human version.

“How does that work, exactly?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“Well, I take commissions, usually work on retainer. People have questions—they want to know if the deceased was faithful, where they put the garage key, whatever. Or they have things they want to tell the deceased that they didn’t get to say while they were living.”

“That’s nice,” I said, trying to unknot the tension at the base of my spine.

“Sometimes,” she agreed, resting her linked hands on her belly. “And sometimes they just want to tell off the—and I’m quoting—‘rotting, whoremongering, philandering, dickless bastard who, if all is right and just in the world, is spending his days in the embrace of Satan’s eternal hellfire.’” She grinned. “I memorized that one.”

“People are people,” Ethan said.

“All day every day. Anyway, I try to balance out the commissions with public service. Sometimes I get a vibe that the deceased have things to say, like Mr. Leeds here, even if nobody’s requested a commission. I give them time to get it out so they can rest peacefully.”

If there was anything I wanted, it was a peaceful ghost.

“You were singing to him?” Ethan asked.

“I was.” She lifted a shoulder. “Every ’mancer has his or her own style. I like to sing. It calms them, makes them a little more cooperative. And that means I don’t need to use as much magic to keep them in check.”

“What do you sing?” I asked, fascinated despite myself.

“I generally use slow jams,” she said. “Classic R and B from the eighties, nineties has a nice, relaxed rhythm and sets a nice tone.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Just don’t tell my grandmother that. She’s in the business, too, and she’d be pissed if she learned I was singing Luther Vandross to clients. She says gospel’s the only way to go.”