Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)

I took several steps back, working carefully to stay in the aisle and avoid stepping on anyone else’s plot. When Ethan moved beside me, I gripped his hand, unashamed.

Be still, Sentinel, he said. Those were the first words he’d said to me, and words I usually loved to hear. But here, in this graveyard, while waiting for a necromancer to commune with the dead, I wasn’t loving it.

Annabelle moved to stand at the end of the grave, facing the stretch of grass and gravestone. She closed her eyes, blew out a breath, seemed to center herself.

The earth shook again, the concussion like a strike on a timpani drum.

I cursed Thriller silently again.

Seemingly oblivious to Mr. Leeds’s irritation, or maybe because she was trained to deal with it, Annabelle held out her hands, palms down, over the grass.

“Harold Parcevius Leeds, I am Annabelle Shaw. I am here to help you speak. Please comport yourself respectfully.”

Another tremor.

Eyes still closed, she shook her head, breathed through her nose in what looked like irritated resignation. “Mr. Leeds, I am not interested in taking abuse from you. I am here voluntarily to help you communicate. If you can’t be pleasant about it, I’ll leave you to silence. Neither of us wants that. You want peace, and I want to help you find it.”

She paused, waiting, as Ethan and I stood behind her, watching, and then she nodded.

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your cooperation and acknowledge it. I can assist you in momentarily revisiting this plane, which will allow me to hear your claim or your confession. Do you acknowledge?”

Consent, it seemed, was important for all sorts of supernatural creatures. Mr. Leeds consented with another concussion, this one different from the others. It wasn’t made in anger by a pounded fist. It was more like a desperate bellow, the plea of a man who needed to be heard. Pity spilled in to replace my fear, and I unclenched the fingers I’d wrapped around Ethan’s.

Thank you, Sentinel. I was hoping to use those fingers again.

Magic began to shimmer through the air.

“Very well,” Annabelle said as the magic grew around us. It wasn’t painful, but it was unnerving. It was different from Mallory’s or Catcher’s magic—and it didn’t escape my notice that it was also different from the tinny magic I’d felt in Wrigleyville. This magic felt tangible and real, as if our skin were being brushed by hanks of silk. Instinctively, I reached out to touch it, but my fingers grasped nothing more than air.

Electricity popped around Annabelle, magic sparking through the air like forks of lightning. The power grew fiercer, stronger, until the magic seemed to coalesce atop the grass into the outline of a man lying on his back, arms at his sides. His figure seemed built solely of light and shadow, like an X-ray in three dimensions.

I was actually looking at a ghost, and despite my deep-seated horror, I couldn’t look away.

And then he sat straight up, opened his mouth, and screamed.

I clamped my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help. The sound pounded through my head like it had mass, like it was beating through my skull and filling my body with noise. My eyes watered against the sudden pain and pressure, and still I couldn’t look away.

Apparently used to the noise, or maybe immune to it, Annabelle held out a hand, utterly calm and composed. “I’m here, Mr. Leeds.”

When the screaming didn’t stop, Annabelle stamped a sneakered foot atop his grave, sending a wave rippling through grass and dirt as if she’d skipped a pebble across a glassy lake.

“Mr. Leeds.”

Her words sliced through his anger like a honed katana, and the world fell suddenly silent. Slowly, I removed my hands again, my ears still buzzing from the magic or noise or whatever had assaulted them.

“Thank you, Mr. Leeds. I’m here for you, to hear whatever you’d like to tell me. You don’t need to raise your voice. I can hear you. That’s my particular gift.”

The ghost seemed to stare at her, his expression unreadable. And then he clasped his hands together prayerfully and began to speak. The words were fuzzy, garbled, like a distant station on a radio, albeit with the volume maxed out. But the earnestness in his eyes, the pleading in his expression, was clear enough.

“I understand,” Annabelle said. “I can provide a message to them, if you’d like. You only need to tell me what you’d like to say, and I will do my best to find them and see that they hear it.”

He spoke again. This time he was calmer, which made his magic less chaotic . . . and some of his words understandable. “Wife . . . Wrong . . . Unfaithful . . . Wasn’t . . . Wasn’t . . . Design . . . Please tell her . . .”

Tears gathered at Annabelle’s lashes, slipped down her cheeks. But she didn’t take her eyes off the man in front of her.

“I’ll tell her, Mr. Leeds,” she said, voice quiet but earnest. “I’ll make sure she understands. That’s my solemn oath to you.”

And then she reached forward and held out a hand, grasping his translucent one in hers, small sparks of lightning traveling between them. If the sensation hurt, she didn’t show it.