This is Ch. 4 of an ongoing story.
I started this story as a way to practice writing and the community here has been so warm and welcoming. I love reading and writing alongside y'all and welcome any and all feedback. Goal is to have this thing complete by July 2022 and I'm speaking it into existence.
I've been so lucky to have incredible beta readers who've dedicated their own time to my navel-gazing creative outlet and really elevated it in a way that is SO exciting. Thank you Berry, who I brag every chapter, but how could I not? B gives the story a rhythm despite how wildly incoherent the early drafts are, lol. And Thank you Ash, who's thoughts have been an amazing refocus on connection and chemistry when I get lost in the weeds.
Last note: things are getting warmer...
There were no glaring overhead lights in Lucy's apartment, only soft recessed lighting and well-placed lamps. It was tranquil, with enough amber light to see and no more. Shadow loomed in the corners and hovered, as if waiting to swallow the room whole. In the quiet of the drive Rhea found her anger about the feed faded as the details of the murders turned in her mind. She tapped a note into her phone:
Human body, won't rot
A spirit, trapped between worlds
Sick magick, cyclone
Rhea looked at what she wrote. A memory of the cyclone, pulling her in, surfaced in her mind. She then added Hungry.
As soon as they returned to the apartment, Rhea sat on the sofa and stared at the screen. Her bones felt hot and itchy and her skin burned as sharply as it did in the ether. Rhea rubbed her forearms as she recalled the cyclone's relentless, devouring pull. She looked over at the vampire, who watched her with concern.
Lucy held the documents given to her by Drew in her hand.
"How could she have killed herself?" asked the vampire. There was a plain curiosity to her voice, as if she wondered how someone could have printed something with a misspelled word without noticing. Her eyes scanned the documents impassively. Rhea wondered if Lucy really didn't understand the gravity of the situation which, after arranging a feed to coincide with their examination of the body, wouldn't surprise her.
Of course, the vampire may just have forgotten what it meant to be human.
"I'm not sure," answered Rhea. She stared at a knot in the wood of the table as acrid helplessness bubbled inside her.
"If you won't see a doctor," Lucy said behind her, "should you eat something?"
"I'm fine," Rhea said, too quickly. She was hungry, but admitting it felt like a confession. She was sick of her weak, traitorous body. The same body that fell into the vampire's arms the moment it was separated from her consciousness.
Lucy raised a brow and stared skeptically, then walked towards her kitchen.
"We still don't understand any of this," Rhea called, despondent. She felt a tension headache blooming and rubbed her temples. Lucy sat beside her and placed a small tray of cherry tomatoes on the table. Rhea took one and popped it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, the skin was tender and juice was earthy-sweet.
Lucy said, "That's not true. I just figured out there was nothing of use in any of the paperwork Drew gave me." Rhea dropped her face to her hands and scoffed.
There was a smile in the vampire's voice. She asked "Isn't this your area?" Lucy's tone was light, irreverent, and one Rhea now recognized as something the vampire used to needle her. "Necromancers. Masters of the forces of death and all," Lucy continued. Rhea lifted her head, fully prepared to berate a smirking vampire for belittling her crisis.
But Lucy's eyes were lit with tenderness that caught Rhea off-guard. The vampire smiled, warm as the amber light of the lamps that glowed in the darkness. Lucy was teasing her again, but gently so. For levity--or just a mutual reprieve from the horrors of the day. Her eyes, thought Rhea, were an invitation-- for Rhea to return the smile, to open herself to their odd solidarity.
So she would feel less alone.
Rhea sank back into the couch. The material of her shirt was suddenly constricting. A caustic awareness of the edges of her skin emerged in her conscious mind and even in sitting she felt ungainly.
And Lucy still looked at her. The vampire's skin was still pale but lustrous like her eyes. There was a quiet finesse about Lucy that, when tied to her pulsating arrogance, left Rhea on-guard. Lucy felt perpetually one step ahead of her, and Rhea still was compelled to follow.
More than anything, Rhea wished she knew how to be. Just a few hours ago, the vampire was a predator-- a calculated creature whose narrow arms made impossibly sharp angles in black sleeves. But when the vampire acted like a human, Rhea simply did not know how to be. Rhea didn't know what Lucy wanted in response to this gazing and easy-handed prodding. Perhaps if she were different-- perhaps if she was someone who knew how to be when these things happened.
But all she felt was hopeful longing that was, after all, a distraction. Once dissipated, she would be left only with the keen ache she felt every time she allowed herself to think of what might happen if she failed to stop the killer.
"What I saw contradicted everything I know about magick," Rhea said.
Lucy's eyes shadowed with concern, "Tell me."
The words spilled out of her. She told Lucy everything without stopping-- finding the witch's spirit. Without her guide. The cyclone. "She's bound," said Rhea. "Well, her spirit is. It's imprisoned. Tortured, even." She couldn't stop herself, necromancer secrets be damned. Rhea felt a mild tremble in her hands in relief.
"Well, that's good news, right? All witchcraft traditions bind," said Lucy. "And I've certainly seen my fair share of trapped spirits over the generations and many seemed tortured. Call in a necromancer, they clear it right up."
Rhea couldn't move; her heart pounded in fear. Finally she shook her head.
"Darling," the vampire asked gently, " I can't think your coven would be very happy with me if you were harmed. Should we call someone? About the bleeding?"
Rhea exhaled, "Binding magick is common," she continued, ignoring Lucy's question, "but binds should only happen in the physical world. In the otherworld, spirits are supposed to be free. The cyclone is a binding spell in a spirit realm. It just...shouldn't exist."
"And yet," mused Lucy.
"Which means," continued Rhea, "I don't know how to fix. I don't even know where to start."
Rhea looked away. Her eyes burned with hot, panicked tears.
"Hey," Lucy said. Her voice was soft but firm. Rhea felt the cushions shift beside her as Lucy slid closer. The vampire moved gingerly, as if Rhea were a wild creature. Rhea turned her head to see Lucy watching her cautiously.
Panic surged again within Rhea-- Lucy's look of concern exploded a reservoir of memory from the life she left behind. Her father was a brilliant scholar but a difficult man. Which meant her family moved more times than she bothered to remember because he couldn't keep a job.
Rhea's mother often said when she fell in love with Rhea's father--who was white and, at the time, a professor at her college-- that she knew that their union would require sacrifice for both reasons. Her own father, Rhea's grandad, forbade their wedding. It was the late 60's, of course, and they were a mixed race couple. He said her fiance had no idea the danger she would face, alone in these places she followed him to.
She wouldn't be alone, Rhea's father insisted, because she would have him.
She would, however, be one of the only Black people. Her mother remembered Rhea's early years as challenging, but their family was a happy one. At least for a little while. And that's what Rhea remembered too.
Until another move, where she would need to walk away from everything familiar to start again. The only constant were furtive looks of concern from the adults around her-- her teachers, her father's colleagues. Her friends' parents. They looked at her the way Lucy did now.
She knew those looks could cascade into something terrible in the blink of an eye.
It was almost funny, she thought, how pain that seemed far away could be summoned by a whisper and surface, strong as ever. She hated having to guess what they wanted to see from her, what would make them unconcerned And she feared what would happen if she guessed wrong.
Her chest clenched and a vile slurry of anger bubbled up-- the sensation was a relic, silent for decades.
She had survived, of course, and tried her best to feel satisfied in becoming stronger for it. And on her own, she was free. The choice to abandon her old life for witchcraft wasn't easy. But witchcraft opened something within her-- something molten that now flowed through her with ancient power. It became something she couldn't bear to live without.
She took solace in it's unflinching nature. In the outside world, she felt others recoil when faced with something beyond the tiny parcel of what they know.
Witches do not look away.
Rhea was distracted from the memory when Lucy rubbed her shoulder. Gone was the look of concern. "Have courage, darling," said Lucy. "Beings who use magick to harm others may seem strange to you, but it's been my life for more than one-and-a-half centuries."
Rhea, puzzled, asked "Is that good?"
"Absolutely!" said Lucy, with enthusiasm. "I either work for them or I'm hired by the corrupt beings they've fucked over." Rhea looked at her, unconvinced. "It means I've dealt with people like the murderer," continued Lucy. "A lot. I know their circle. I probably already know their friends."
