Summoning Courage

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Bree took the passenger seat. Technically, Lilly had not called shotgun for the return ride, so I didn't say anything, but I wondered how long Lilly would pout in the back seat.

I started the engine and switched on the A/C in the 4Runner to dry us out.

Bree watched me turn the key, fiddle with the dials on the dash, then rest my hands on the steering wheel. She glanced down at the gearshift, and back at my unmoving hands. Then she looked out the windshield at the funeral procession.

"Are we waiting for someone?" Bree asked.

"My apprentice, Lilly."

Bree let loose a nasal chortle that was almost but not quite a snort. "I'm sorry, did I just hear you say 'apprentice?' As in, you have one? Mack Kincannon, Mr. Fight-the-power, stick it to the man, down with all tradition, now has an apprentice? My God, it is the end of days!"

I shot her a disapproving glance and tried to squeeze as much impatience into it as I could. "Lilly's an orphan rogue. The Guild was going to reel her in and assign her to God-knows-who. I figured better me than them."

Bree was still laughing. "Oh, I can't wait to tell my wife, she'll fall out of her chair!"

"Wife? Whoa, back up. You got hitched?"

Bree held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers so that her wedding band caught the light. "Last year. I guess your powers of observation haven't improved."

"I'll be damned. I didn't think Mare was the marrying type."

"Neither did she," Bree said with a knowing smile. "But I'm hard to resist."

"Did she change her name?" I asked.

Bree laughed again. "Hey, I can work magic, but not miracles!"

Lilly's pink head appeared outside the passenger window. She frowned and raised her eyebrows at me. With my thumb, I waved her to the back door. Lilly shook some rain off her umbrella, folded the mechanism, and climbed into the back seat.

"Are we picking up hitchhikers now?" Lilly asked before shutting the door.

"Lilly, this is an old friend of mine, Brianne Costas. Bree, Lilly Osgood, my apprentice."

"Hey," Lilly said, still looking confused.

"Nice to meet you, Lilly," Bree said.

"Bree is a Protector of the Relic, like me," I told Lilly. "And a summoner. She's going to help us talk with Claudius."

"It's about time," Lilly said. "That ghost is getting on my last nerve with those creepy dreams."

It was Bree's turn to give me a confused look. "You have a haunting? And you named it?"

I put the car in gear. "It's a short drive, so I'll try to give you the abridged version. My friend, Recca Mann, is, or was, captain of the Seers Guild for the southeast district. There's some kind of political rift within the Guild. On one side, the Guild oligarchs and their cronies are trying to collect every relic of power they can get their hands on. On the other side, Guild members like Recca are trying to keep the relics out of their hands. Recca was helping us work against them, to keep them from obtaining Marina's key to the Piero Gate. She went head to head with one of their top agents. It didn't go her way. Now Recca is imprisoned in the Ring."

"Wow," Bree said. "I had no idea the Seers Guild had become so polarized. But, what's that got to do with your haunting?"

"Claudius is a spirit that was bound to Recca's family bloodline hundreds of years ago. When she passed through the portal to the Ring, he got left behind. He has been pestering us to try to get her out ever since."

"You want me to exorcise him?" Bree asked.

"No! Recca's an ally, and by extension so is Claudius. I just want you to talk to him, find out what he knows. He talks to us, but he doesn't speak English, so we haven't got very far."

"He talks to you? But, you're not a summoner. How the hell are you communicating?"

"He projects himself onto the astral plane," I said. I waited for the shock to appear on Bree's face. It did. Astral projection is not something spirits can normally do. "Recca summoned him to the astral plane and sort of introduced me to him. I guess there was some residual from that spell that allowed him to cross over from the spirit plane. But he can only do it for brief moments, and they're getting farther apart. I think he's losing his mojo."

"So," Bree said, "he's been invading your dreams, trying to communicate that way. Interesting. He must be a remarkably resourceful spirit."

"Resourceful, and dangerous," I said. "I saw him kill a man who threatened Recca."

"What? How?"

"Possession."

Bree's face went white. "Are you sure you don't want me to exorcise him?"

"Positive. Anyway, that might just piss him off," I said, and gave her a wink.

A few minutes later the three of us paraded through the front door of Lilly's small apartment.

"I need to get out of this monkey suit," I said.

"Huh-uh," Lilly contradicted. "My need to pee trumps your suit allergy. Get in line." She headed into the bathroom. I rolled my eyes and stood in the foyer, dripping.

Bree's attention was immediately drawn to the work wall.

The work wall was a long wall of the apartment. Three days earlier, it had been a pretty standard apartment wall, with a TV in the middle and big picture frames on either side showcasing some of Lilly's adventures. Now, the picture frames were gone, and the TV was shoved into the corner. To Bree, it must have looked like a tornado hit an office supply store. The wall was covered, side to side and floor to ceiling, with inconsistently spaced sticky notes in three different sizes and seven different colors. Pieces of colored string ran through the notes, connecting them in a crisscross of branches and merges.

"What the hell is all this?" Bree muttered.

"It's a Fate map," I said. "Lilly and I have been scouring the Tapestry of Destiny for days, trying to find the stolen key to the Piero Gate, or Recca. Trying to find a way to get one or both of them back. It got too big to hold in our heads. And then I got tired of shuffling through stacks of legal pads. Lilly needed to learn this technique, anyway."

"So, this is what the Tapestry of Destiny looks like? The threads of Fate?"

"No. The Tapestry is a five-dimensional space, you can't really represent what it looks like. This is just a technique for simplifying a trace and mapping connections."

"Simplifying? This is the simple version?" Bree whistled her amazement.

"What can I say, Destiny is complicated."

"Any luck?"

"Not a jot."

Lilly came out of the bathroom breathing a sigh of relief. I let Bree have it next. When my turn came, I hung up my dripping suit on the back of the bathroom door. Showered. Dressed. When I returned, Bree and Lilly were chatting about Bree's life at Berkeley. They interrupted their chat when I entered.

Bree said, "Your spirit isn't around at the moment. If you want me to summon him, I'll need something of Recca's. Something he will recognize and connect to."

"That's odd," I said. "I figured he was just always hanging around here."

"The spirit plane isn't connected to the physical plane the way the astral plane is," Bree said. "Spirits rarely occupy the same physical space for long, unless they are bound to it by magic or trauma. You said this spirit is bound to your friend's bloodline?"

"So I'm told."

"May be visiting other family members. I suppose we could sit around and wait for him, but it's hard to say when he might return. Spirits experience time differently from us."

I scratched my chin. "Something of Recca's, huh? I'm driving her car, will that work?"

Bree grimaced. "Um, you got anything smaller? More personal?"

I shrugged. "Not really. But maybe she left something in the car. Wanna help me look?"

Lilly said, "Y'all do that, I'm gonna order some food. Bree, what do you like on your pizza?"

Bree frowned. "I'm vegan, pizza isn't really on my menu."

"How about Chinese?" Lilly countered. "Veggie stir fry, steamed rice?"

"Sure."

Lilly smiled. "And a double order of General Tso's for the home team."

Bree and I swam through the drizzle to the parking lot and opened up Recca's 4Runner. "The stuff in the back is all business," I said. "But I haven't looked through the passenger area or the glove box."

Under the seats Bree found nothing. Not so much as an old French fry wrapper. It was factory clean. In the glove box, what I found was quintessential Recca, but mostly useless. Car registration. Proof of insurance. Box of sanitary wipes. Couple of emergency tampons. Bottle of hand sanitizer. Lip balm. The original manual for the vehicle itself, with, I kid you not, several pages dog-eared. But at the bottom, I found what I was looking for. An ivory cameo. The one Recca had worn on our first "date." The date had been a ruse to sneak into a party for an investigation, but the kiss at the end of it had seemed real enough to me.

The cameo still held a gentle glow of her astral energy. I held it up for Bree to look at. "Hey, will this do?"

Bree smiled. "Oh yes, very nice!" She grabbed the cameo from my hand and examined it closely. "The spiritual essence is very strong. It must be a family heirloom."

"Then we're in business," I said. "Anything else you need?"

"Just chalk, but I always carry some with me. I have his name, and a connected object. This spirit is willing, so the summoning spell shouldn't need any additional elements."

We went back inside, dried off, and discussed the kind of information I wanted Bree to get from Claudius while fighting over the spicy mustard packets that came with the Chinese food.

"So," Lilly said when we were done with the discussion and the food. "What do we do now, hold a seance? Hold hands around a table or something? I have a Ouija board in the closet if you need it."

Bree stared at Lilly with incredulous eyes, dumbstruck. Then she turned to me with an accusing look.

I smiled a little, shaking my head. "I told you, orphan rogue. No training at all."

Bree sighed. "Come with me, Lilly. You can help me set up, and I can explain to you how real summoners feel about charlatan mediums."

The spell was relatively simple. Lilly cleared some space on the floor and provided Bree a cushion to sit on. Bree placed the cameo on the floor. Wrote the name of the spirit she wanted to summon in chalk around it. Chalked a set of sigils at the four compass points around that. Then enclosed the whole thing in a circle.

Bree sat down and prepared to cast the spell. She crossed her legs in Lotus position. "We will be communicating on the spirit plane. I may be silent for quite a while. You won't be able to hear us."

With that Bree closed her eyes. She was silent for forty-five minutes.

Lilly popped up from her seat on the sofa. "Oh, I almost forgot," she mumbled. She dashed off into the bedroom. When she returned, she held an eight by ten picture frame. She handed it to me.

The photo was of Lucas Delgado. He looked tall and strong and young. He was smiling. Behind him, sunlight bathed a wooded mountainside.

"Marina had a bunch of these made for the funeral. I wasn't sure if you would want one, but I grabbed one for you just in case."

I accepted the photo from her. Held it in both hands. I used to have a framed photo of my parents. From their wedding. Mom looked so happy in that photo. I didn't have that photo anymore. I didn't have any mementos of her. After years of running from the Guild, living out of a backpack, I had lost almost everything I had ever owned.

I ran my fingers around the gilt frame. "Thank you, Lilly." I carefully stowed the picture in my go-bag, in the padded compartment with my laptop.

Lilly and I went over to the work wall. Spent the time reviewing our notes on the fortune teller's activities since she stole the key to the Piero Gates.

When Bree returned to us, she didn't speak at first. She unfolded her legs. Lay back on the floor. Stretched her body lengthwise, like a house cat in the sun. Then she got to her feet. She stood silently for a moment, staring into the corner where we had shoved the TV.

"That was the most complex, coherent, intelligent spiritual entity I have ever encountered," Bree said, admiration coloring her tone.

"I'm glad you two hit it off," I said, trying to suppress a note of sarcasm. "Did you find out what he knows, or not?"

Bree's head turned, and her sky-blue eyes locked mine. "Mack, do you trust this spirit, Claudius?"

I pursed my lips. "I trust that he has Recca's best interests in mind. Beyond that?" I shrugged. "I have no reason to distrust him, other than general distrust of everyone."

Bree nodded, her brow wrinkling. "Then we are going to have to talk to the Elders of the Order. According to Claudius, everything we need to know to rescue Recca and safeguard the Codex is written in the Codex itself. And you have to read it."

My shoulders slumped. "Great. Thirty-six years old and getting homework assignments. From a ghost."